The Horse Healer (19 page)

“I like what you're telling me. …” Friar Servando looked at his weak arms and legs. “The work I can offer you is hard. Do you dare?”

“Try me,” Marcos answered.

“Since I will have to arrange food and lodging for you, and for your animals as well …” Those words sounded glorious to them. “I will have to take half your wages. The work begins after morning prayers and ends with the evening prayers, after dinner. Now, go clean the stables, and you”—Diego assumed he meant him—“don't ever call yourself an albéitar again in my presence. Use the Latin term
veterinarius
or if you want, horse healer, it's all the same to me. That is what I will call you from now on. If I manage to speak with my superior, tomorrow you will come with me to visit a client, outside the monastery.”

“I thank you for it,” Diego said.

“Don't patronize to me. I hate courtesy. I only require loyalty and sincerity. I reject people who try to cover up reality with excuses. If we accept you in this monastery, you will have to follow certain norms and rules that are sacred among us. Don't neglect them.”

He arched his enormous brows and adopted a serious tone to stress the importance of their behavior.

“You will only give an opinion when it is asked of you, whether you understand or not. I will not allow you to compare the treatment you receive with that of the friars, nor the food, and you must always respect them. You will be silent throughout the premises and you will not be able to explore them without my permission. You will help in everything I ask of you, and that includes any kind of cleaning or maintenance tasks. And for now, that's all.”

“Pardon me, but I have a question. Could I see your famous library?” For Diego, that was a matter too vital to be forgotten.

“Before that, you will have to win my trust. If that happens, maybe after some time, I will tell you that any reading you do will be guided. That is how I think. I will not say that science is bad, but it has do be well dosed so that it doesn't damage the conscience. That will be my job.”

He sat down next to the anvil and gave a final warning.

“Don't take any action without consulting me. I expect loyalty from you. And last of all, remember always that if there is one thing I hate, it is people hiding things from me. … Ah, and also, I will expect you at Mass every day, and at sexts, nones, and vespers.”

In spite of the challenges they would have to survive to live every day, Diego felt happy. Marcos and he had managed to get into the monastery, he was almost accepted as apprentice, and that meant his education could continue. He didn't like the name veterinarius or being called a horse healer—he preferred the term albéitar—but it was far from the most important thing. Although Friar Servando's character seemed the exact opposite of Galib's, Diego wanted to believe that his knowledge was broader.

He thought about the library. Among those stones, caressed by the tranquility of silence, reposed a great part of human wisdom. As though it were a precious treasure, there it was, waiting for him, until the moment when that obstreperous friar blessed him.

Diego closed his eyes and saw himself submerged in thousands of pages, unraveling their theories, absorbing their science … an awareness that would improve his diagnoses, would make his hands more skilled when he operated, and would stir his intuition so he would see further than the external signs of illness.

But Marcos, who hadn't seen any special advantage in being in the monastery, didn't care for Friar Servando. Unlike Diego, he started to doubt whether this had been the best decision. Though he was safe from his pursuers, what awaited him seemed discouraging.

Both, from the same moment, and with different thoughts, began to sweep the stable, obeying the friar's first command.

III.

F
riar Servando did not call Diego the next morning to accompany him on his visit. Nor did he give any explanation. In fact, for the following week he disappeared from the monastery without anyone knowing where he had gone or why.

Obeying his directions, when they had finished cleaning the stables, Diego and Marcos cleaned out an enormous pit into which the latrines emptied, located in the monastery's cellars. It took them three whole days, and when they finished, they changed to another job that was less arduous but more dangerous.

The new task consisted of unclogging all the gargoyles that bordered the top of the church and cleaning the moss and filth from the roof tiles. To get to those places, they had to climb wood scaffolds and make a crane to raise the containers of water they needed for cleaning the stone. Armed with coarse brushes, some tied to long rods, they did their work, accompanied by an icy wind.

That took them three whole weeks and made Marcos sick.

When Friar Servando was back in the monastery, Diego watched his friend's cold get worse day by day. He began to get really worried when, apart from a fever, Marcos began to blather, remembering his first thefts and cons nostalgically, or reliving the brutal beating that had been the cause of his escape from Burgos.

Diego spoke to Friar Servando, asking him to excuse Marcos from work for at least two days, since the coming days would be colder and windier. But the friar didn't like the idea and wouldn't tell Diego when he thought his apprenticeship would begin either.

“Son, vigor is a virtue for all Christians. …” was the first thing he said. “And on occasion, there come hard tests that God presents to measure our strength.” He crossed himself. “And now, get back to your work and don't bother me anymore. When you're done with the roof of the church, you'll continue with the cloister. And please, don't be so anxious to accompany me. Everything will come in its proper time. Remember that to be a good healer, you need to exercise patience. You have to practice it a great deal so that one day, it will become a virtue in you.”

That same morning Diego had to tell Marcos he had not been relieved of his duties and they went back up on the dome, explored the buttresses, and reached the cupola in the center of the nave, the last area they had to clean. But Diego didn't let him work, not that first day or the following two. Since no one could see them at that height, as soon as they had ascended, Diego covered Marcos with two blankets to protect him from the bad weather and make him sweat out his sickness. Marcos passed hours in this way, curled up and sleeping, leaned against a low wall.

From there, Diego observed the work in the scriptorium, where he saw a group of monks copying books and embellishing them with drawings on the page. They worked behind windows filled with an abundant curtain of light, not far from where Diego was scraping the stones.

The next week, Marcos recovered his health and his good humor.

That improvement coincided with the beginning of the labors inside the cloister and the chapter house beside it. Both agreed that if the first was beautiful, the second was even more so.

The roof supported nine vaults held up by four columns in the center and others built into the walls. The cinnamon-colored stone changed tone when struck by the light, and especially at midday, the effect it produced was incredible, almost magic.

Diego and Marcos had a hard job there but it was more gratifying than the previous ones. They scrubbed the stone floor and the benches until they gleamed, and then they carefully cleaned the columns and walls.

“From what I could hear yesterday, we are right under the library,” Diego remarked while he used a chisel to clean a leaf carved into one of the columns.

“You have too much faith in that man.” Marcos sighed. “You think he's going to let you go with him to teach you what he knows, and that after he'll open the doors to the scriptorium, but I don't think he'll do either of the two.” He had to lower his arms a moment until the blood began to circulate again. He was cleaning the ribs of the vaults and the job required him to keep his arms raised. “As I see it, we're living a farce. He's cheated us like two idiots, you'll see.”

Soon they heard steps. When they looked to the cloister, they saw a group of friars in a procession. They were headed to the church to pray the terce, which Diego and Marcos had fortunately been excused from. They respected the monks' silence until they saw them disappear.

“I take a man at his word and Friar Servando promised,” Diego responded, without abandoning the previous conversation.

“And I believe in my intuition.”

“Intuition, you say? Intuition is a very necessary ability for an albéitar, since our patients don't tend to talk much.” He smiled at him.

“It's always worked for me. That's why every time I see Friar Servando, it reaffirms what I just said: He's using us.”

“Maybe it's true, but he's the only person who can help me right now. If he wills it, I can finish my education, and he has the power to open the doors to the library for me or to keep them sealed. I don't want to imagine that he's lied to me; I prefer to think it is hard for him to believe us. Sometimes we come to erroneous conclusions early on. That could be what's happening with Friar Servando. For example, take the feeling you get being in a place like this one. …” He explored the room with his gaze. “I'm excited by such beauty and grandeur. And you?”

“I just see work. Lots of work.”

“You see? We see the same thing but we feel different things. You look to these stones and that's all you see, stones. But if you look at them with other eyes, you can find messages, stories hidden in them. Do you know what I'm referring to?”

“Not really.”

“These structures are authentic books in stone, edited by stonemasons. Some wanted to leave the sacred history written for those who didn't know how to read book. Others tried to hide messages enclosed in shapes or symbols, sometimes mysterious ones. Some of these you might have seen in this room. … When you see it, you'll say I'm right.”

Marcos looked at the walls, columns, and roof and stopped on a rather special design.

“You mean that one?” He pointed to a column on the east wall. Under the capital, there was a curious form sculpted in relief, a braid of three cords. They rose and fell in diagonal, and every twist closed at an angle, both on the upper and lower parts. Small hands held it, as they seemed to hold the column itself.

“Right!” Diego traced that curious figure with his finger. “It attracted my attention the first day, and since then I haven't stopped thinking about why. I think it was placed there to speak to us about the goodwill of the brotherhood, the bonds between them, their unity toward a single destiny. If you think about where you find it, it seems like an appropriate message, given that this is where the monks gather every day to talk about ideas that—”

A deep voice rose from behind him.

“Diego, I want you to come with me right now.”

Friar Servando had entered the chapter house in a rush. He seemed to be in a hurry, so much so that he didn't even check on how their work was going.

“And you, Marcos, go to the courtyard and help receive the poor. Today is Friday and the refectory is open to them.”

He pushed Diego's back, trying to get him out of the room.

“Go saddle my horse and then yours. We have to go to a neighboring village, to Cascante.”

Without understanding why, Diego saw him look at both sides of his hands and ask him to do the same.

“Mine are too thick and I need some that are leaner …”

Although Diego's first reaction was to ask why he needed him, the excitement of being needed filled him with optimism.

The small village of Cascante, only three leagues to the southeast of Fitero, had an important Jewish quarter and a populous mudéjar neighborhood. But they were going to the Christian area, to the baker's house. It wasn't difficult for them to find it; they just followed the scent of bread.

When they got there, a woman waited for them at the door with an expression of absolute worry.

“I thought you would never arrive.” She looked at them with consternation. “Be fast, please.”

They dismounted from their mares and left them tied outside.

“I only have one horse to deliver bread through the rest of the villages. This is a disaster! I had to ask a woman for help to … Well, it would be better if you saw with your own eyes.”

“How old is the animal?” Friar Servando knew what they were going to find, unlike Diego.

“It's passed eight winters with me, but when I bought it, I believe it had worked previously for a farmer. It could be twelve.”

They entered a filthy and narrow stable, poorly lit. As soon as they got used to the poor visibility, the scene they saw left them stunned. The intestines had come out of the horse and were hanging there free, full of flies, with a dark red color, and very swollen.

Beside it was an older woman who seemed determined to put everything back where it had been. Without hearing them arrive, the old woman panted and sweated terribly as a consequence of the enormous effort she was exerting. Between pushing, besides uttering a few blasphemies, she spread her legs to press them better into the floor, and used both hands to begin to push inside, little by little, all that had come out. To her despair, the horse whinnied in pain and at that moment, the little she had managed to push in came out again with surprising ease.

“Don't expect me to work with that ill-spoken old witch doctor. …”

Friar Servando looked at the baker and then at the woman. He had seen her three times before, and every time, apart from solving the main problem he had been called for, he'd had to repair the consequences of her errors.

“Well, of course the priest had to come!” the old woman shrieked contemptuously.

“I don't have to put up with her. …” The friar stood before his customer and the woman reacted. It was to the detriment of the old woman, and soon she was pushing her out of the stable against her protests.

Once they were alone, Friar Servando and Diego approached the animal to study the situation.

“What would one of those albéitars do faced with a situation like this?” Friar Servando's question was certainly a double-edged one, but Diego answered nonetheless. Besides, he understood why the man needed his hands.

“I would prepare a paste of fish and salt and would mix it with a good bit of oil. Then I would anoint the tissue that's come out with that unguent before trying to put it back where it was.”

“I'll leave the cure in your hands. Ask that woman for what you need, but first, I recommend you add a bit of incense to your ointment. You'll see how the swelling goes down faster.”

The baker listened to what they needed and brought the ingredients over without being asked. While Diego ground the ingredients in a mortar, Friar Servando took advantage of the wait to question the woman.

“Maria, I've heard things about you that don't make me happy at all.” The woman reddened, surely aware of what he was referring to.

“I don't know …” She pretended, scratching her nose nervously.

“Yes, you do, and also that he's married.”

“Are you questioning my honor?” The woman bit her lip and offered her help to Diego with the mixture, trying to escape from the uncomfortable conversation.

“I'm not the one responsible for your virtue being on everybody's lips,” Friar Servando insisted. Recently he had been informed of the adulterous relations the baker was keeping with a farmer who maintained one of the farms belonging to the monastery.

The woman tried to change the theme, asking after the cure for the horse.

“This never happened to him before.” She looked at Diego. “What could be the cause of it? You're a horse healer, no?”

Friar Servando saw the moment had come to give the horse a little arnica, and to begin, he tried to answer her question.

“Illness is a penitence that God sends to purge us of our sins, which in your case are many, Maria. What has happened to your horse was provoked by your sinfulness. You are incapable of suppressing your lower instincts, and that is why our Lord continued placing new adversities in your life, so that you will smite the disorder in your soul. … Confess as soon as you can and stop seeing that man!” He raised his voice. “If you go on this way, everyone will treat you like a whore, and I will accuse you of it at trial.”

Diego had felt uncomfortable at first, but when he heard all that, he was indignant at the humiliating behavior of Friar Servando. He hadn't come there to judge whether the woman's actions had been good or evil. He understood that such a job was the exclusive provenance of God. But it seemed to him despicable and frankly cruel to relate the horse's illness with the behavior of the woman.

When he saw the woman's downcast expression and saw how she shook, he felt compelled to put a stop to it, and there was only one way he knew.

“Don't believe him!” Diego interrupted. “This horse's problem has nothing to do with any sin, and much less with divine retribution. The fact is, it's old, and you probably make it work too hard. It may have been forced to carry loads that were too heavy recently. … Don't worry for him; there's a solution for his problem.”

Friar Servando didn't react for a moment, but when he did, he was enraged. He couldn't bear to be contradicted, even less in the presence of a woman. He began to insult Diego and to accuse him of being a Moor. Infuriated, he spit on the floor very close to Diego and predicted for him, amid his imprecations, a long bout of cleaning the latrines.

On the way back to the monastery, the monk didn't talk or look at him, though Diego could tell what his thoughts were by his face; Friar Servando was deeply disappointed.