The Horse Healer (21 page)

He breathed in and remembered the second, the one he agreed with the most.

“One should always go after the cause of the complaint, and fight against the principle that produces it. And last, abstain from acting against incurable illnesses, accepting their inevitability.”

V.

S
ancho VII had fallen so far in love, he was losing his mind.

He had arrived in Marrakesh for a short diplomatic mission, but Princess Najla compelled the king to stay almost two years.

“Bringing him to us has been an excellent decision. …”

Caliph al-Nasir ordered his pipes refilled with those herbs that raised his spirits.

“You remember how hard it was for me to convince you? No?” Don Pedro de Mora filled his lungs with a deep mouthful of smoke.

“It's true, but the decision to use my own sister as bait was not easy for me to take. You are right, though; now I have no doubts about it working.”

A slave came over on her knees, without looking at them, with a tray full of sweets made of almond, honey, and coconut. They tried them. Al-Nasir lifted her veil, stroked her cheeks, touching a fatty finger across the corner of her lips.

“I don't know you. What's your name?”

“Abeer, sir.” She looked into his eyes, taken aback by their intense blue color.

“What does her name mean?” Don Pedro asked, entranced by her beautiful body.

“Fragrance. … An insinuation of passion. Doesn't she strike you as beautiful?”

“She's majestic.”

Al-Nasir stroked the girl's chin.

“Come back later.”

“Thank you for choosing me, sir.”

The caliph slapped her with extreme violence.

“Did no one warn you yet that you shouldn't speak to me if I haven't asked you to first?”

The woman lowered her head submissively and left them alone, without turning her back at any moment, as they had explained to her.

The caliph and Mora went out to the terrace to take in some fresh air and saw King Sancho walking with Najla through the palace gardens.

“When I visited him in Navarre, he had just separated,” Pedro de Mora remembered. “You were necessary to him for his policy of territorial expansion. … And Najla, in her youth, dreamed of being loved by some noble and valiant knight. All I had was to put the two pieces together, and—”

“The accord with his kingdom is good for us, very much so,” the caliph interrupted him. “With Navarre on our side, we will break the dangerous unity of the Christian empires that Castile has been seeking so ardently.”

“Can you imagine how King Alfonso VIII would see a marriage between Najla and Sancho? Al-Andalus united with Navarre …” Don Pedro rubbed his hands together as he thought of it.

“What I don't understand is how he still hasn't asked me for her hand. They've been like this more than a year.” The caliph pointed at them. The two lovers looked at each other with absolute commitment, holding hands, Sancho stroking Najla's hair shyly. “What the devil could he be waiting for?”

“Think, my lord, that since Sancho has moved into the vizier's palace, he is too far from your sister, whom you also never let leave here, no matter what the excuse. If you facilitate their intimacy, perhaps they will taste love's essences together and they will thus accelerate your wishes.” Don Pedro confirmed that al-Nasir had captured the sense of his words.

“I will think about it. Every day I pray to Allah that he bless their love and make it grow, but also that it be soon. I need to seal this accord once and for all.”

That same night, a bundle of nerves, Najla entered the harem looking for Blanca and Estela, anxious to tell them the news.

“They are going to move him. …”

The princess didn't even wait to reach the blue chamber where they were normally found. She spoke to them in Arabic, since the sisters had begun to speak it. For some time now they alternated between one language and the other.

“Who? What are you talking to us about?”

“Sancho. I just found out my brother is going to allow him to lodge in this palace.”

Blanca winked at Estela. Some months back, the princess had promised to take them to Navarre if she finally managed to get married. They understood that the lovers' being closer to each other could speed up their relationship, and if they announced their wedding at last, the sisters' way out of that hell could be closer.

“He's such a marvelous man. …” Najla let her hair down in front of a large mirror. Immediately her hair flooded down over her shoulders and breasts. “Do I look pretty?”

Blanca got behind her.

“You are beautiful and young. You have a gorgeous body and you radiate grace. Any man would get lost in your eyes, as soon as he caressed your silken skin. I assure you that you will drive him mad.” She tugged Najla's hair upward, leaving her lithe neck free, and breathed in her scent. “To captivate him, perfume yourself with sandalwood and honey, put on a tight-fitting dress, and ask your slave to draw something beautiful on your breasts.”

“I've never been with a man. …” The princess grew red, looking at them with an almost childish face. “And there's a lot that I don't know. I don't know how to please him. I imagine you both know very well what I'm talking about.”

Estela's face clouded over with a grimace of restrained rage and humiliation. It was still hard for her to swallow that truth. They were nothing more than two concubines, kept alive and well fed for the sole purpose of pleasing the caliph and various of his closest collaborators.

“Don't try to be what you aren't,” Blanca went on recommending. “Be natural and let yourself go. When you disrobe, don't be fast, look at him with ardor, and then …”

The door opened suddenly and a black guard came in, an Imesebelen.

“They are looking for you, ma'am. Come out from here. You should get back to your bedroom as quickly as possible.”

Blanca and Estela were paralyzed, almost shrunken. The vision of his black face took them back in time. The horrendous images of their abduction, the brutal death of their sister, Belinda, the uncertain fate of their father and brother—all those terrible experiences were relived every time one of those men came near them.

“Which of you is named Blanca?”

“Me.” She looked back at him with an almost physical fear.

“Right now, they're looking for you as well. Move quickly.”

“Thank you for letting us know,” Najla interrupted. “Tijmud is my most faithful protector. Don't be afraid of him; he is different from the rest of the Imesebelen who guard me.” When she finished this phrase, she took leave of them, and in an instant she disappeared, turning off down the hallway.

The two sisters arrived at their room and lay down as fast as possible, hearing footsteps. Shortly afterward, two men entered. They were servants of the caliph. One of them asked after Blanca from among those present, and when he found her, he came over and touched her shoulder. That was the signal the concubines all knew too well for when they were expected to spend the night with someone. She rose and followed the men.

Unusually, they took the east wing of the palace and walked through other hallways. Blanca couldn't imagine to where.

They reached a beautiful gilded door and opened it for her to pass through. At the moment, she didn't see anyone inside. The soft breeze that greeted her face as soon as she entered came from a window through which the reflections of the moon filtered as well. She walked toward it and looked outside. The night in Marrakesh captivated her. She listened to laughter in the distance, maybe in some plaza or side street, and sighed. She dreamed of being free again, she missed her former life, she wished to escape from that terrible prison.

Soon she heard some footfalls behind her and turned.

Once more it was the individual she hated. To look at his long scar made her relive the most hateful moments in her life. His face reflected a deep and subtle intelligence, but also wickedness.

“You are precious, as always. …”

Resigned, she received his first kiss on her lips.

VI.

H
orse manure, sweat, and science.

Those three ingredients characterized Diego's life for the following six months, as well as a permanent atmosphere of reproach from Friar Servando. That man had pledged not to forgive a single error on the part of Diego, though he also wouldn't teach the boy any of the little that he knew. Maybe it was for that reason that Diego sought a refuge in books.

A year after arriving at Fitero, the winter had penetrated the walls and Diego continued soaking up knowledge. He needed hours and days to order his learning, assimilate what he was reading, and think about how he could apply it to the future.

On one occasion, without Friar Servando's noticing, he dissected the hoof of a deceased horse before it was buried in quicklime. Thus he could understand how it worked, what forces and pressures were borne by the bones and tendons, how movement was generated. He rooted around inside it, trying to find answers to where the maladies inside it had their origin, the tumors and swellings, impactions and decays.

He also decided to order the illnesses differently in his mind from how he had read and done up till that moment. He would do so according to their anatomical location. This way, it would be easier to distinguish one sickness from another.

One day Marcos found Diego thoughtful, seated on a pile of straw, close to his mare, whom he still visited every night.

“Talk to me about your sisters. …”

On that occasion, Marcos had brought him a book written by a Palatine nun, Hildegard of Bingen.

“I already told you what happened. … God! It's horrible; it was already six years ago. … Can you tell me why you're asking me now?”

“It's something that eats you up … and yet, you never talk about it.”

Diego pensively stroked the smooth cover of the book and opened it brusquely, with such anxiety that he seemed to be looking for the answer in its pages. Then he closed it and approached Sabba. She shook with pleasure.

“If they're still alive, which I think they are, they could be living as slaves in Marrakesh. Many days I think that I could do something to help them, but I usually end up demoralized. The idea of saving them is so far from my possibilities. For that reason, every time I think it, I come to the conclusion that now I can only prepare myself, gain the sufficient strength and braveness, as well as the money, to be able to travel later.”

Marcos stayed there thinking.

A month back, sick of so many restrictions and so much poverty, knowing that at this point, no one was looking for him, he had been tempted to leave the monastery. But he decided not to. For him things had begun to change. His situation in the kitchens was good, no one oppressed him the way Friar Servando had before, and he could leave the monastery whenever he liked. And he did so every two or three days, to one of the neighboring villages, to buy food.

Thanks to this freedom, he no longer felt caged in and he began to stray off, though less frequently than he would have liked, with some nice girl or other he had met.

Diego opened Hildegard's book again and read the first thing he saw.

“Wild lettuce: the best remedy for the stomach pains of donkeys. Nettles for horse fever. Lovage or wild celery for colds.”

He closed it again and studied the face of Marcos.

“Easy remedies, certainly. … Hildegard, like others before her, investigated many remedies that they wrote down for the good of following generations.” He chewed a piece of straw pensively, savoring its bitterness. “The Greeks called albéitars
hippiatros
or horse healers, as Friar Servando likes to say. The Romans said veterinarius. How can I be a good hippiatros, albéitar, horse healer, veterinarius, if I don't know first what this nun, or others much wiser than her, left written down?” He remained pensive, staring at the sky. “Marcos, this library holds the better part of all knowledge, human as well as medical. If I manage to soak it up, I will be able to help many people who have nothing but animals to support them in the future. Do you understand the real reason I'm staying in this monastery?”

“Fine, fine,” Marcos answered. “Keep going with your nuns and Greeks, I don't care. But leave the practical things to me.” He shook his hand with a disdainful expression. “Because what's practical are the four hundred
sueldos
I've managed to save.

“How?” Diego feared the worst.

“Friar Jesús, my mentor and as sensible a friar as you could find, is the keeper of the keys of the monastery and has placed all his trust in me. And to test me, he puts me in charge of all the monastery's purchases. A good opportunity, believe me.” He winked.

“You're not robbing them, are you?”

“It's not that. … I've managed to convince the monastery's main suppliers to reserve a bit of money from each order for me. It's good for us.”

“You'll never cease to amaze me. You're a scoundrel!”

“By the way, now that I think about it … Remember that squire from Navarre and the lump you made disappear from his horse?”

“Of course. That was the root of the worst punishment I've received in my life, almost a year back.”

“They tell me he came to see you today. Apparently they gave him some excuse. And besides, from what I understand, this isn't the first time he's tried.”

“Why would they have hidden that from me?” Diego felt a deep rage. He remembered the man and his warm praises as well. “What did he want me for?”

Diego didn't get an answer to his question until three months later, at the beginning of the spring of 1202, in the sunny month of April. Diego had just turned twenty-one. Friar Servando now had no choice but to tell him why his presence had been requested.

“Get ready to travel the day after tomorrow,” he blurted out sternly, without bothering to justify his words.

“Could you tell me where and why?”

“You'll be away three days, and you'll go alone.” He carried a basket of oats on his shoulder and came over to the troughs to spread it out for the horses. The monk didn't seem disposed to give him more information.

Diego observed him, intrigued.

“Where do I have to go?” he insisted, happy as he saw the irritating effect his questions were producing.

The man snorted, cleared his throat two or three times, and finally answered.

“You're trying to make it hard for me, eh?” said the monk. Diego adopted a face of false surprise. “It's fine. … There's going to be a tourney or a joust, I don't know, really, in Olite. It's a town close to here that belongs to the kingdom of Navarre and they've asked us to send you.”

“Me?”

“You know Gómez Garceiz?”

“The one with the tumor on his horse's rump?”

“That was his squire. The one who's asking for you is his master, Gómez Garceiz, the royal ensign of Navarre.”

“And he wants me?”

“I would say so!” he exclaimed even more dryly.

Friar Servando was green with envy.

“And why would they need an albéitar, or better said, the apprentice of a horse healer, at a tourney?” Diego had never seen one, but he had heard fantastic tales of those contests between knights.

“For some absurd reason, he wants you there. I don't know, it might be for your horseshoes; I can't imagine another reason.” He swallowed, humiliated. “And that's enough! Don't ask me more.”

Diego reckoned on the enormous power that ensign must have to make Friar Servando let him go and swallow his pride as well. If Gómez Garceiz preferred Diego's services over the friar's, who was supposed to be famed throughout the land, that had to be eating him up inside.

“I'll go gladly!” he exclaimed with joy. “Thank you so much for remembering me. …” Friar Servando's look couldn't contain more rage. “But I will ask you for one thing more.”

“Don't force the situation more.”

“I'll need my friend Marcos.”

“Agreed.” He sighed, resigned. He thought of his prior and how he had forced him to respect the ensign's order.

The two days that passed until they left the monastery felt like an eternity for Diego.

He was excited for many reasons. It would be the first time he would go out of the stronghold in fifteen months. He was going to attend an unknown spectacle and, moreover, for the first time, he had been asked because of his knowledge and not just his skill in pushing a broom.

Once Diego set out on the path north with Marcos, feeling the warmth of his mare beneath his legs and the fragrance of the fields in flower, he thought they were getting back something much more immaterial but deeply pleasing, a little bit of freedom.