The Barefoot Queen by Ildefonso Falcones Read Free Book Online

behind the hut. She followed him toward Cava Vieja. At the height of the Inquisition Castle, without turning around, the potter questioned her.
    “Are you a runaway?”
    “I’m free.”
    In the castle lights, Caridad could see the man nodding his head.
    His was a small workshop, with a living space on the upper floor, on the street of the potters. They went in and the man pointed to a straw mattress in one corner of the workshop, beside the woodpile and the kiln. Caridad sat down on it.
    “You’ll start tomorrow. Sleep.”
    The warmth of the kiln’s embers eased Caridad, frozen stiff from the Guadalquivir’s dampness, into slumber, and she slept.
    SINCE THE Muslim period, Triana had been known for its fired-clay production, especially for its glazed low-relief tiles; the masters sank a greased cord into the fresh clay and achieved magnificent drawings. However, some time ago that artisanal ceramic work had degenerated into repetitive, charmless pieces, which now had to compete with English flint stoneware and people’s changing tastes, which leaned toward Oriental porcelain. So the trade was in decline in Triana.
    The next day, at dawn, Caridad began to work alongside the man from the night before, a young man who must have been his son and an apprentice who couldn’t take his eyes off her. She loaded wood, moved clay, swept a thousand times and took care of the ashes in the kiln. The days passed that way. The potter—Caridad never saw a woman emerge from the upstairs floor—visited her at nights.
    “I have to cross the bridge to get to the church of Los Ángeles, where the Negroes are,” she wanted to say to him one night, when the man, after taking her, was preparing to leave. Instead she just stammered, “And my money?”
    “Money! You want money? You eat more than you work and you have a place to sleep,” answered the potter. “What more could a Negress like you want? Or would you rather be on the street begging for alms like most free Negroes?”
    In those days, slavery had almost completely disappeared from Seville; the economic and demographic crisis, the 1640 war with Portugal (which was the major supplier of slaves to the Sevillian market), the bubonic plague that the city had suffered a few years later (which showed no mercy to the black slaves), along with the constant manumissions orderedin the wills of pious Sevillians: all contributed to a significant decline in slavery. Seville was losing its slaves at the same rate it was losing its economic strength.
    You eat more than you work
echoed in Caridad’s ears. She then recalled what Master José’s overseer on the plantation always used to say: “You don’t work as much as you eat,” was his accusation before letting the whip fall onto their backs. Not much had changed in her life; what good had being freed done her?
    One night, the potter didn’t come down the stairs. The next night he didn’t show up either. On the third night, when he did come down, he headed toward the door instead of toward her. He opened it and let in another man, then pointed him over to Caridad. The potter waited by the door while that man satisfied his desires, charged him and then bade him farewell.
    From that night on, Caridad stopped working in the shop. The man locked her up in a miserable little room on the lower floor, with no ventilation, and he placed a straw mattress and a chamber pot beside some debris.
    “If you make trouble, if you scream or try to escape, I’ll kill you,” the potter threatened the first time he brought her food. “Nobody will miss you.”
    That’s true,
lamented Caridad as she listened to the man turn the key in the door again: who was going to miss her? She sat on the straw mattress with the bowl of thin vegetable stew in her hands. She had never before had her life threatened: masters didn’t kill slaves; they were worth a lot of money. A slave was useful for its whole life. Once trained, as Caridad was as a girl, Negroes