flask of liquor. These excursions took all afternoon; in addition to succoring the poor, the women visited the nuns who ran the hospices.
That year Isabel had started to accompany them. At fifteen, she was old enough to learn compassion instead of wasting time spying on Diego and fighting a duel with herself before a mirror, as Nuria put it. They had to walk through narrow alleyways in barrios of raw poverty, where even the cats were on guard to keep from being caught and sold as hares. Juliana submitted with exemplary rigor to that heroic penance, but it made Isabel ill, not simply because the sores and boils, the rags and crutches, the toothless mouths and noses eaten by syphilis frightened her, but because that form of charity seemed a cruel joke.
She believed that all the duros in Juliana’s purse would do nothing to help the enormity of the misery.
“To do nothing is worse,” her sister would reply.
They had begun their round a half hour before and had visited only one orphanage when as they came to a corner, they saw three dangerous-looking men coming toward them. The men’s eyes were barely visible because they were wearing kerchiefs around their faces and hats pulled down to their eyebrows. Despite the official ban on wearing a cape, the tallest of them was wrapped in a cloak. It was the dead hour of the siesta, when very few people were about. The alley was bounded on either side by the massive stone walls of a church and a convent; there was not even a door recess to take refuge in. Nuria began to scream, but one of the rapscallions silenced her with a slap on the face that knocked her to the ground. Juliana opened her coat and tried to hide the purse with the money as Isabel glanced around, searching for a source of help. One of the footpads grabbed the purse, and another was just about to tear off Juliana’s pearl earrings when he was stopped by the sound of a horse’s hooves. Isabel yelled at the top of her lungs, and an instant later no other than Rafael Moncada made a providential appearance. In a city as densely populated as Barcelona, his riding to the rescue was little less than a miracle. Moncada needed only a glance to appraise the situation, to unsheathe his sword and confront the lowlifes. Two of them had already pulled out their curved knives, but two slashes of Moncada’s sword and his determined manner made them hesitate. Their rescuer looked enormous and noble on his steed: black boots gleaming in silver stirrups, tightly fitting, snow-white trousers, dark green velvet astrakhan-trimmed jacket, long sword with its rounded gold- engraved guard. From that vantage, Moncada could have dispatched more than one adversary without trying, but he seemed to enjoy intimidating them. With a fierce smile on his lips and his sword glinting in the air, he could have been the central figure in a battle painting. The aggressors huffed and panted as he goaded them mercilessly from on high. The horse, whirling in the midst of the fracas, reared, and for a moment it seemed that it would throw its rider, but Moncada merely gripped tighter with his legs. It was a strange and violent dance. In the center of the circle of daggers the steed circled, whinnying with terror, as Moncada reined it in with one hand and flourished his weapon in the other, surrounded by ruffians looking for the moment to sink their knives into him but not daring to step within his reach. Nuria added her yells to Isabel’s, and soon people came out to look, but when they saw iron gleaming in the pale light of day, they kept their distance. One boy went running to get the constables, but there was no hope that they would get there in time to help. Isabel took advantage of the confusion to yank the money purse from the hands of the cloaked man, then grabbed her sister by one arm and Nuria by the other and urged them to run. She could not move them; they were glued to the paving stones. The whole episode was very brief, but the minutes dragged by in the unreal time of nightmares.
Finally Rafael Moncada swatted one of the men’s dagger from his hand, and with that the three attackers realized that they would do better to retreat. The rescuing caballero made a sign of pursuing them but stopped when he saw how upset the women were and leapt from his mount to calm them. A red stain was spreading down the white cloth of his trousers. Juliana ran to take comfort in his arms, trembling like a rabbit.
“You are wounded!” she cried when she saw the blood on his leg.
“Only a scratch,” he replied.
All the commotion was too much for the girl. Her vision clouded, and her knees buckled, but before she hit the ground, Moncada’s waiting arms swept her up. Isabel grumbled impatiently that this was all they needed to complete the picture: her sister swooning. Moncada ignored her sarcasm and, limping slightly but never stumbling, carried Juliana to the plaza. Nuria and Isabel followed, leading the horse and surrounded by a crowd of curiosity seekers, each of whom had an opinion about what had happened and all of whom wanted to have the last word on the subject. When Jordi saw that procession, he jumped from the driver’s seat and helped Moncada get Juliana inside the carriage. Loud applause burst out among the onlookers. Seldom did anything as quixotic and romantic happen in the streets of Barcelona; there would be something to talk about for days. Twenty minutes later, Jordi drove into the patio of the de Romeu home, followed by Moncada on horseback.
Juliana was sniffling from nerves, Nuria was counting with her tongue the teeth loosened by the blow to her face, and Isabel was shooting sparks and holding on to the purse.
Tomas de Romeu was not a man to be impressed with aristocratic surnames in truth, he hoped to see them abolished from the face of the earth or with Moncada’s fortune because he was open-handed by nature but he was moved to tears when he learned that this caballero, who had suffered so many rebuffs from Juliana, had risked his life to protect his daughters from irreparable harm. Although he professed to be an atheist, he fully agreed with Nuria that divine providence had sent Moncada in time to save them. He insisted that the hero of the day come in and rest while Jordi went for a doctor to tend his wound, but Moncada preferred to retire discreetly. Except for an occasional sharp intake of breath, nothing suggested that he was injured. Everyone commented that his sangfroid in the face of pain was as admirable as his courage facing danger. Isabel was the only one who showed no signs of gratitude.
Instead of joining in the flood of emotion flowing from the rest of the family, she merely clicked her tongue several times with disgust, something that was ill received. Her father sent her to her room and told her not to stick her nose out until she apologized for her vulgarity.
Diego had to listen with disciplined patience to Juliana’s detailed account of the assault, in addition to speculations about what would have happened had her savior not intervened in time. Nothing so dangerous had ever happened to the girl before. The figure of Rafael Moncada grew in her eyes, adorned with virtues that she had not perceived until then: he was strong and handsome, he had elegant hands and wavy hair. A man with good hair has a head start in this life. She suddenly noticed that he resembled the most famous torero in Spain, a long-legged, fiery-eyed man from Cordoba. This suitor, she decided, was really not so bad. With all the excitement, however, she was running a fever, and she went to bed early. That night the doctor had to sedate her, after applying a tincture of arnica to Nuria’s face, which had swollen like a squash.
In view of the fact that he would not see his beauty at dinner, Diego, too, retired to his rooms, where Bernardo was waiting. For the sake of decency, the girls were not allowed in the wing of the house where the men had their rooms, the one exception being the time when Diego was convalescing from the wound he suffered in the duel, but Isabel had never paid much attention to rules, just as she did not fully obey punishments her father set. That night she ignored his order to stay in her room and appeared in Diego’s and Bernardo’s without warning, as she often did.
“Didn’t I tell you to knock? One day you are going to find me naked.”
Diego scolded.
“I don’t think that would be such a memorable sight,” she replied.
She plopped down on Diego’s bed with the smug expression of someone who has something to tell but won’t say it, waiting to be begged; Diego successfully refused to play her game, and Bernardo was busy tying knots in a rope. A long minute went by, and finally her eagerness to tell them was too great. In the unladylike language she used out of Nuria’s hearing, she said that her sister must be a dumbass not to suspect Moncada. She added that the whole thing smelled of rotten fish; one of the three attackers had been Rodolfo, the giant from the circus. Diego jumped up like a monkey, and Bernardo dropped the rope he was knotting.
“Are you sure? Didn’t all of you say that those ruffians had their faces covered?” Diego protested.
“Yes, and besides that, he was wrapped in this cloak, but he was huge, and when I grabbed the purse I saw his arms. They were tattooed.”
“It might have been a sailor, Isabel. Lots of them have tattoos.”
Diego contended.
“They were the same ones the giant has, I am absolutely sure, so you’d better believe me,” she answered.
From there to deducing that the Gypsies were involved was but a step, which Diego and Bernardo immediately took. They had known for a long time that Pelayo and his friends did Moncada’s dirty work, but they
