Sacred Sierra (27 page)

Me-eh
. A curious sound came from the side of the church. I looked up: on top of the wall, where it met the façade, was a black goat, staring down at us with wide, curious eyes.
Me-eh
, it bleated again, its mouth like a red gash against its coat. For a second it seemed to be holding its ground, perhaps even trying to frighten us away, but it suddenly
became
startled by something, jumped down behind the wall and vanished. I tried to climb up the wall to see where it had gone, but it was too high and there were no footholds.

I was beginning to get the feeling I’d walked on to the set of a B-grade horror film.

There was a cry. El Clossa was pointing back up the mountain.

‘Smoke!’ he said. ‘Up there.’

We all followed the line of his pointed finger and looked up at the top of the valley. A plume of black smoke was rising and blowing out almost horizontally as it was caught by the powerful winds.

No one said anything for a moment as we stared, transfixed. Up above, a forest fire was catching hold.

‘Quick!’ El Clossa cried, as though breaking everyone out of a trance.

No one stirred. Concha and Pau looked at one another.

‘Come on!’ El Clossa called. He was already scuttling back to the car at lightning speed. I started after him, the others eventually rousing themselves and following.

By the time we managed to get back up the side of the valley, smoke was pouring out across the sky, a grey and black shoot curling and twisting as it headed out to the east. At its base, almost smothered by the fumes, small licks of angry orange and red flame could be seen, greedily consuming bushes and small trees. It lay about a kilometre from the track, and was blowing in the opposite direction, but even so I felt a primitive fear grow inside me. Pau was on the phone to the local foresters, but already we could see the blue and yellow flashing lights of the fire brigade in the distance making their way over. Within minutes they would be on the scene.

‘We’ll have to go,’ El Clossa said. ‘Can’t stay around here.’

We remained in the car as Pau talked to some of the arriving foresters. The firemen raced past, slinging their heavy jackets on as they jumped out of the engines. A sickness grew in my stomach as I tried not to look out of the window at the blaze, praying that they would be able to bring it under control. It was a good job Salud wasn’t seeing this. The very thought of it would be enough to make her weep.

The firemen eventually waved us out of the way and we headed
back
. Pau had wanted to stay, to help, but they didn’t want him around. Dusk was falling and they would have to act quickly in the remaining hours of daylight. We watched the plume of smoke as it fell away into the distance, growing smaller and smaller, our fears growing. I couldn’t help wondering if, in making her curse, Marina had got her bearings mixed up and sent it in the wrong direction.

By the time we had reached Concha’s
mas
, Pau had received a phone call saying the blaze was under control. It would burn out that night, but would quickly be extinguished in the morning. As long as the winds didn’t change.

‘Not much chance of that, I should think,’ I said, looking up at the Ponent still blowing in stiffly from the west.

‘Can’t rule it out,’ Pau said, getting out of the car. ‘Knowing our luck …’

The Story of the Three Lemons of Love

ONCE THERE WAS
a prince who one night dreamed of the most beautiful girl in the world. When he woke up, he went to the King and said, ‘Father, I must leave, for I have dreamed of the woman I would marry and must go out and find her.’

And with that he packed his things and set out on his search.

After he had been travelling for some time he came across an old woman along the way.

‘Where are you going, fine prince?’ asked the old hag.

‘I’m off to find my bride, for I have dreamed of her,’ said the prince.

‘Well,’ said the old woman, ‘take these three lemons. When you find a spring, cut them in half and the woman you seek will appear before you. But make sure to give her some water to drink if she asks for it!’

The prince thanked her for the three lemons and they both went their separate ways.

Not long afterwards, the prince came across a spring underneath a carob tree.

‘Here I shall find my princess,’ he said to himself, and he cut one of the lemons in half as the old woman had told him to. No sooner had he done so than the girl who had appeared in his dreams suddenly stood before him. And she was even more beautiful than he had remembered. The prince was overwhelmed by her beauty, and when the girl asked him for some water to drink, he was so dumbstruck he couldn’t say anything. And so at the striking of the church bell the girl vanished as quickly as she had appeared.

The prince carried on his way until he came across another spring, not unlike the first. There he cut open the second lemon, and again the beautiful girl stood before him. But once again he was so struck by her that when she asked for something to drink he couldn’t move, and so she vanished once again.

The prince decided that he wouldn’t let this happen the next time,
and
so when he came across a third spring he pulled out a goblet and filled it with water first before cutting open the lemon. And when the girl appeared before him again, her beauty lighting up the whole world around him, he was just able to give her the goblet when she asked for something to drink. And so she drank, and this time she stayed.

Now the couple fell quickly in love, but the girl had nothing to wear.

‘Climb up into the tree there,’ said the prince, ‘and wait for me here. I’ll go to the palace and tell them what’s happened and I’ll bring back the finest robes for you to put on. Then we’ll go back and get married straightaway.’

So the girl climbed the tree and the prince ran off as fast as he could.

While he was gone, though, another young girl came to fetch water from the spring. But this girl was not as pretty as the first. In fact she was so ugly everyone knew her as ‘Pig-Face’. Now as she was bending down to fill her water jugs, she caught sight of the face of the beautiful girl up in the tree reflected on the surface of the water. Pig-Face had never seen her own reflection before, and she started to wonder.

‘Why do they all call me names?’ she said, ‘when in fact I am as beautiful as this?’

And she was so angry that she lifted her water jug and smashed it on the ground. But as she looked up she caught sight of the girl in the tree.

‘Who are you and what are you doing there?’ asked Pig-Face.

And the girl told her all about the prince.

Now Pig-Face became jealous on hearing her story, and so she said to her: ‘Your hair needs combing if you are to marry a prince. Let me come up there and do it for you.’

And so she climbed the tree and started combing and combing the girl’s hair. As she did so, she pulled out a pin and stuck it into the girl’s head. The beautiful girl suddenly turned into a dove and flew out of the tree and high up into the air.

When the prince returned he looked up into the tree at his bride and was amazed. How had he thought the girl was so beautiful before, he thought. But he had given his word that they would be married and so he dressed Pig-Face in the fine robes he had brought – still thinking she
was
the girl of his dreams – and took her back to the palace, where they were married.

Some time after the wedding, when the prince had now become King, some of the servants in the palace kitchen saw a white dove flying around the open window, and it sang to them:
The King has married Pig-Face, the King has married Pig-Face
.

The servants laughed, but didn’t pay it much attention. The next day, though, the dove came back, and the next, and always singing the same song. So the servants went and told the King. When he heard about the dove, the King ordered them to capture it and kill it. And this they did. But where they killed it, three drops of blood fell to the earth.

A few days later a lemon tree had grown where the drops of blood had fallen, and the servants went and told the King. The King told them to look after and nurture the tree, and so after a few more days they brought him three large ripe lemons that they had picked from it, and placed them in front of him as he was eating.

The King cut into one of the lemons, and in a flash there was the girl he had dreamed of all those years earlier. As before, the girl asked him for something to drink, and, reaching for his goblet, which was always filled with water, the King handed it to her and she drank. And so she stayed.

Now the King was very perplexed by all this, and so he asked the girl to tell her story. The girl told of how she had appeared out of a lemon, and how she had climbed a tree to wait for the prince to bring her fine robes so that they might go to the palace and be married. But that a girl had climbed into the tree with her to comb her hair, and had stuck a pin into her head and turned her into a dove.

The King turned to his wife, who hung her head in shame. And she confessed the truth of what the girl had said.

And so the King declared that from that moment on the girl who had appeared from the lemon would be his wife, as it was she he had intended to marry all along. And Pig-Face was condemned for having tricked him, and was put to death.

And the King and the girl who came out of a lemon lived happily ever after.

APRIL

The month known
as
Aprilis
in the Latin tongue is called
Nisan
in Syriac and
Ordibeheshtmah
in Persian, and is made up of thirty days. It is the month of roses: for making rosewater, as well as rose sherbets, sweetmeats and oils. Azib says this is the month that horses are set to mate with mares, having to spend seventy days with them until the day of
Ansarat,
or 24 June. On the sixth of this month the star
al-simak [Spica]
begins to dip below the horizon, it being the third of the constellations known for their beneficial influence on harvests. During the last five days it usually starts to rain – by 5 May at the very latest. In Spain this is the end of the sowing and planting season. During the last ten days of the month and the first ten days of May, olive and fig trees begin to bud. Bees begin to swarm and the water in springs and wells rises
.

Ibn al-Awam,
Kitab al-Falaha
, The Book of Agriculture, 12th century

FARMERS DOWN IN
the valley are starting to prune their olive trees, so I’ve decided to try doing the same. Ours look like they haven’t had much attention in a good many years. Whereas theirs are neat, small affairs, never more than about eight feet high and branching out parallel to the earth like vast umbrellas, ours reach proudly up to the sky with shoots like arrows stretching high, high out of reach. We didn’t have that many olives at the last harvest: pruning may hold the key to a larger crop.

It is, needless to say, more complicated than it looks. The general idea, from what I’ve gathered, is to get rid of anything that’s growing vertically, leaving only the horizontal branches, from which the olives are then easier to pick. In addition, some amount of general weeding
out
of branches is required, just enough, so the folk wisdom goes, to let a bird fly through unhindered. So far, so good. The problem is, of course, that not all branches fall easily into the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ categories. Some are diagonal, others start off being vertical, then become horizontal, and end up with an attempt at a vertical flourish at the end. So which to cut off? Which ones to get rid of? Arcadio said you had to learn to be ruthless with plants. It sounds like good advice – but only if you have some kind of an idea about what you’re doing.

So, armed with some long-handled pruning shears and a saw I have now given half a dozen of the trees a short back and sides. They look terrible, with stumpy branches sticking out in all the wrong places, not at all like the perfectly manicured specimens you see elsewhere. I have to keep telling myself they’ll recover, and that we’ll enjoy the benefits come the next harvest. The proof will be in the pudding – or rather the olive oil – that we get next winter. Or not.

In the meantime we made a new culinary discovery while I was out pruning. Salud popped down to see how I was getting on and spotted some long green sprouts pushing out of the ground at the side of the terrace. I had barely registered them before, lost as they were in the rest of the undergrowth, but she suddenly got very excited: this was wild asparagus. I was doubtful at first – they looked too thin, not enough like the thick stalks I was used to buying in supermarkets, but over lunch I was persuaded: fried with a little oil, some salt and a squeeze of lemon juice they were absolutely delicious. Afterwards, we spent the rest of the afternoon scouring the hillside for more: it looks like they will be appearing regularly on the menu for the next few days or so.

*

‘There they are!’

El Clossa lifted a crutch and pointed up towards the top of the hill. Far in the distance, wending their way through bushes standing shoulder high, a group of men emerged. They walked in a steadily growing line, more and more of them pouring over the crest of the hill and snaking their way down towards us. Silence fell over the small huddle of people resting in the shade of a carob tree nearby. Our ears strained to listen. I caught the clatter of horses’ hooves beating the stones along the path. The procession was almost a mile away, but even
from
here the sounds seemed concentrated, as though hearing them through a stethoscope. Peering through binoculars, I could see the horses come into view, stepping carefully, heads down, eyes fixed on the way forward, men walking in front of them and leading them gently and patiently by the reins.