The Horse Healer (8 page)

“I can't imagine what ugly situation he has gotten himself wrapped up in, but knowing him …”

Once he had confirmed his assistant's technique with the next two horses, Galib directed his attention to Don Álvaro Núñez de Lara and his wife. While Galib bled the fifth horse, Diego had only managed one, but after a while, he began to pick up speed. They were so far apart that in the end, Diego couldn't hear what they were saying.

“After the loss at Alarcos,” Don Álvaro carried on, “our king met his cousin Alfonso IX of León in this very castle. Stunned by the defeat, the Castilian reproached him for his absence from the battle, though the other one justified it as the consequence of a delay against his will. It seems it was then that the Leonese, seeing his cousin's weakness, took advantage to reclaim from him some castles on the frontier that have been disputed for years. Since our monarch denied him, and was moreover angry at his opportunism, we have heard that when he returned to his lands, the traitor signed a treaty to fight alongside the Almohad caliph against Castile.”

Madame Urraca, moved by her husband's respect for her father and always loyal and faithful to her king, intervened.

“I can't manage to understand what filthy interests could make him join with that fanatical Muslim who has already spilled so much Christian blood. Castile has tried to unify the rest of the kingdoms to fight together against their ruthless invader. If we don't oppose them, they'll make us slaves to their faith, subjugating all of us without the least mercy. They are cold and wicked. I've heard dreadful stories from the siege before the loss at Alarcos. It seems impossible that Christian blood could flow through the veins of Alfonso IX. I only ask God that one day he be made to pay.”

Diego had approached them to consult with Galib when he heard the words
siege
and
Alarcos
. Without being part of the conversation, he was moved, and he couldn't help but ask them: “My apologies, my lady; without wanting to, I have heard you speak of Alarcos, and …” He hesitated.

“Ask without fear, young man.”

“On that day, two of my sisters were captured in Malagón by a group of dark-skinned Africans after they had murdered the third one, the older one. No one has known what might have happened to them or how I can find them. I wondered whether you might have heard of what happened afterward.”

The answer came from Don Álvaro.

“The most likely thing is that they ended up in a harem, maybe belonging to the vizier of Seville, or one of the many governors in Al-Andalus.”

Doña Urraca took pity on the boy and tried to soften her husband's crudity.

“I am sorry it sounds so terrible, but it is what usually happens with the female prisoners.”

Diego lowered his head and went silent, swallowing back his tears and his pain, with his mouth dry from anguish.

He went back to finish his work and felt a jabbing pain in his stomach after taking in what he had just heard. While he pierced the vein of a giant Breton with his lancet, he imagined those men with dark skin and longed for their deaths.

The heat of the blood running between his hands stoked his desire for vengeance against those who used religion to frighten and cow the rest of humanity.

XI.

D
iego's pain preferred silence and darkness.

In one of those magic nightfalls of Toledo, when the sun had given up its strength and was lost in the last colors of ocher, Galib found Diego leaning against a fence, pensive. He was watching a black mare, its glimmer intense and almost blue, with a very long mane. He watched her run the circular track where they normally trained the horses.

Galib respected his silence and for a while watched the magnificent stride of that lovely horse.

“One of our prophetic traditions affirms that the first horse created was a dark bay. And Allah, blessed and praised be his name, said: ‘I have made you Arabian. I wanted you to have the most abundant sustenance from among all the animals; the sheep will follow at your back and you will have the finest pastures.'” He recited from memory. “Also there are those who say that the first man to mount a horse was Ishmael, the son of Abraham, who was also the first to speak in Arabic, the language that Allah used to reveal the sacred book to the Prophet. He had five horses, and he commanded us to take care of them, to be kind to them, to love them and admire them as you are doing right now.”

Diego kept his gaze fixed on the spirited mare, drunk with feeling. The thin, calm air from the recently ended day combined with the soothing effect of Galib's words.

“The Prophet also said that there were three classes of horse: ‘some dedicated to combat for God, which would deserve all grace in the Last Judgment; others dedicated to ornament, which deserved nothing; and others devoted to the vainglory of their owners, which would be disdained on the last days of this world.'”

Galib breathed deeply and opened his heart.

“These teachings led me to embrace the albéitar's task. I decided to dedicate myself to helping others by caring for horses, a good so beloved of Allah. Soon I learned to do it without any sort of training, but if wisdom is in my hands, my mind, or my perception, it is thanks to the will of Allah. He wanted it thus, just as now he wants you to have it.”

Diego sighed and swallowed his saliva, plagued with doubts. To become an albéitar seemed as exciting as it was intimidating. He was suffering a difficult inner conflict. It was a profession of Arabian origin, and Galib was a believer in Islam, a servant to that God in whose name Diego had suffered such terrible torments.

“Other sons of Allah like you, undoubtedly invoking his name, killed my father and my older sister and took my other sisters away. … Since then I have hated your religion and everything related to it.”

“Believe me, your pain hurts me as though it were my own.” Galib did not look away when Diego stared at him imploringly, wanting answers that gave some reason for his pain. “Many have mistaken the words of Allah. In their filthy hearts they believe he is talking to them when in fact it is the devil.”

Galib came over to the boy and sat down by his side. When he saw his young assistant's desperation, he wanted to confess his feelings.

“Your enemy is not Islam, Diego, it is the Almohads. They have interpreted the Koranic law in an absolute way, and since they entered Al-Andalus, they are trying to convert everyone to Islam by force. If they are not stopped, they will impose their values and their beliefs on all the world. They will not accept any other religion than that of Allah, the one, and they will say that the trinity of your God is the worst of heresies. That is why, in their eyes, they try to convert everyone by force, Christians and Jews. They tried with me when I lived in Seville and it was their fault I had to emigrate. …” He stopped and, after taking another deep breath, continued: “I was never a believer in their principles, they knew it. They couldn't accept that someone who wasn't one of their people could hold such an important position, and they ended up hunting me down with the sole end of ruining me professionally, ruining my reputation. They threatened me with death, and in the end I had to leave everything behind and escape, like you did, Diego.” He looked into his eyes with determination. “They are the ones who carry out the devil's will, believe you me. They are wrong, their doctrine is mistaken. My religion is kind and does not support evil; it is based in love and charity, just like yours.”

Diego turned to Galib, his eyes filled with tears.

“You speak beautiful words and the truth seems to lie beneath them. And yet I feel so much hate still. My heart bears so much pain, so much that it won't let me see clearly who are my enemies.”

Galib did not doubt it and embraced the boy, taking in his grief. For a moment he felt strong emotion, as if he were playing the role of father. A shiver ran over his flesh.

“You have to learn Arabic, Diego. If you come close to our culture, you will learn to love it. To understand the language of horses, you have to understand the language of the desert, if Allah wills it. And when you have mastered it, you will think the way our greatest scholars did. You will understand why Allah used this language to reveal his laws to us. Its sound is beautiful and it will caress your tongue. Its echoes will soften your palate and you will recognize in it the language of love and the power of the wind.”

She began by teaching him the numbers, then the letters and their sounds. She followed that with common expressions, making him repeat them countless times until he could memorize every aspect and reflect their depth or subtleties as she said. Further on they went into the verbs, and afterward, a copious vocabulary. Thousands of words, of complex but beautiful sounds, some whispering, others sharp, like a restrained sigh.

Diego was now almost sixteen and Benazir a bit over thirty. Except for his mother, whom he scarcely remembered, and his three sisters, he had never spent so much time close to a woman.

Every morning, when he finished his forging and shoeing and whatever other chores Sajjad had in store for him, Diego would enter the large house.

Until then he had hardly heard the voice of Benazir. It wasn't customary. But when Galib had given his blessing to that daily contact, it charmed him, above all its musicality. When she spoke, the words seemed to flow like silk until they struck against the veil that covered her face, almost ethereal, but then they would disperse in the air like a soft breeze.

Every day, Diego went to the dining room and he waited for her, going through everything he had learned the day before in his memory. Those waits became the most longed for and exciting moments of the day. To see Benazir appear was like a mystery. Every day she wore a different tunic, and if not, she would change her vest.

She had slippers of every color, and hundreds of sashes, adorned with gold, of the most distinct shapes, and more than a dozen bands she would wrap around her waist. There was only one thing that was always the same, her perfume. A blend of sandalwood and violet, an intoxicating aroma that rocked all the senses to sleep.

They would sit side by side atop comfortable cushions, over a gorgeous rug brought from her country of Persia. With her legs bent to one side, she would hold a chalkboard on which she would write out the different words. To Diego's surprise, she did so from left to right, the opposite of him. When she passed him the piece of chalk she would write with, sometimes she grazed his hand. Those subtle touches began casually, but as time went on, Diego tried to make them happen intentionally.

She was more than just another woman; she was the pure essence of woman. The smoothness and generosity of her body, which he could sometimes make out beneath her garments, began to shake Diego like a palm tree in the wind.

They awoke in him an infinity of feelings, first contained, but eventually becoming turbulent temptations.

One day, Benazir lifted her veil for the first time, to vocalize a difficult word.

“Pay close attention to my lips and try to put yours in an identical position.”

Diego did so, immediately quivering as he saw the textured flesh of her own. He stuttered a few times until he finally tried to pronounce the word.

“No, no, no. You have to tense your upper lip and make an echo against the roof of your mouth. Look …”

She took one of his hands and drew his fingertips toward her lips. Then she repeated the word a number of times.

“Do you see the difference?”

Diego breathed three times until he had regained control of himself and drowned the desire to kiss her then and there. When he felt that sweet touch, he thought he had died. He tried to pronounce the word, though with little enthusiasm, so that he could repeat that caress. Benazir knew what he was thinking and put his fingers on her lips again.

“Try one more time.”

In his solitude, Diego would savor that sensual memory, like others that would come over the following six months. But particularly that day, he smelled his hand and looked for the remains of Benazir's fragrance that lingered there. And again he wanted her, though with shame, because she was Galib's wife.

The force of instinct, of his unbridled youth, the sensuality that Benazir gave off from each of her pores, weighed more than his own sense of wrong.

XII.

T
heir naked bodies shook in the warm breeze.

It was the breath of the desert that came through the windows of the luxurious harem of Yusuf ben Yaqub al-Mansur in Marrakesh, over them, the two new slaves brought there expressly for his pleasure.

They had just emerged from a room saturated with steam. They were lying atop marble tables suffering the rasping of rough gloves. Women were cleaning their skin and seemed almost to be peeling it off. In compensation, they would receive an agreeable bath with hot water.

Blanca and Estela looked at each other. They had slept a whole day after the long and painful voyage, first in carriage for several weeks, then in a ship for two days, and at last on horse back for four days more.

That morning, from daybreak, a huddle of women had watched over them and the first thing they did was undress them. They looked at their intimate parts without concern, and amid laughter, they pointed incredulously at their orange hair. Blanca and Estela were defeated. They could scarcely put up any resistance.

“What will they do to us?” Estela looked with terror at her older sister.

“I don't know, but I'm afraid we'll find out soon.”

Blanca turned to a high window that rose up from the floor. Through it could be seen a fantastic pond next to the building, full of calm blue waters. And in the distance, magnificent mountains raised their snow-capped summits against the horizon.

A tear slipped down her cheek when she imagined how much humiliation and suffering still awaited them, now inside a palace, perhaps to be enslaved by some man of high rank.

Estela tried to push aside a woman with a rotund body and a cold face who was feeling the firmness of her breasts, but the woman paid no attention and went on to her hips and buttocks. Blanca pretended to trip and fell against the woman to push her away from her sister, but in return she received a violent slap and a torrent of imprecations in Arabic. Angered, the woman began to push at their backs with the intention of moving to another room.

Holding hands, the two sisters were walking completely nude, but no one seemed to care.

The new room was completely lined in pink marble and had an enormous pool in the center. Blanca and Estela had to lie down so that their heads were just over the water. Two young women with dark eyes and olive skin, almost their same age, entered the pool and washed their hair from inside it. With their hands covered in a reddish mud, they scrubbed their heads, massaging them unhurriedly. Then they rinsed them, over and over, until their hair was loose and silky. Once it was dry, they scrubbed their feet with a rough stone until they were well polished, and then they left without saying anything.

Estela covered herself with a cloth and remembered the inn and her family.

“Every day I pray for Belinda, and I also remember Papa and Diego. … Something tells me we won't see them again. …”

“Don't say that!” Blanca said angrily.

The women who had washed their hair came back, now with trays and two steaming containers. Blanca and Estela immediately perceived a sweet scent of caramel with a touch of lemon.

They were told to lie down again and each woman grabbed a small wooden spade. With them, they spread that sticky brew and anointed the women's arms and legs, armpits, and sex. … All the hair on their bodies was covered with that unguent, which was then left to dry. When the women began to peel it off, especially in the more sensitive areas, Estela could not restrain her tears and shouted in pain.

Then the women opened some small jars and smeared their fingers with a whitish paste. To their surprise, the women inhaled it at one go. Then they took another small quantity and came closer. Though the sisters resisted, the women pressed it into their noses. Immediately they felt nauseated, but with a pleasant sense of well-being just afterward, as if they were floating. Half dazed, they hardly complained during the rest of the depilation, and not at all when they made contact with the warm water of the bath, where they were left to relieve their stinging skin.

Amid orange and almond trees, in the gardens surrounding the great pond of the palace, two men were talking.

One of them represented the maximum authority of an empire based in the north of Africa and Al-Andalus: the Almohad. He was the great caliph Yusuf ben Yaqub. The other, a Christian and a knight of noble birth, wanted nothing more than the defeat of the Castilian king, his worst enemy, though he also appreciated the gold he received from the caliph and the promise of great tracts of land in exchange for his service. An enormous scar spanned the width of his forehead. It felt tight in the dry air and reminded him of who had given it to him and when.

Five years had passed, but he still remembered the sword of King Alfonso running across his face in the duel that no one would attest to. The friendship that they professed since childhood had shattered into pieces when the king threw in his lot with the Lara clan in a plaint that they had levied against his family, the Moras, which represented a loss of enormous domains for them. Don Pedro had put all his effort into achieving the opposite result and, because of his influence, even though he knew they didn't belong to him, he pushed Alfonso to unbearable limits. He even threatened him with making public the adulterous relationship that the monarch himself carried on with a Jewess from Toledo, violating a debt of secrecy. That filthy ruse won him a challenge to a duel, a defeat at the hands of Alfonso VIII, and Mora's later eternal exile from Castile, to which he was sentenced by the king himself.

The caliph knew what he could get from Mora without ever forgetting his true nature as a traitor. The name Mora, as illustrious in Castile as that of Lara or Castro, had been tarnished for some reason he did not know, but so gravely that it had made him come to hate the king.

For Yusuf, the friendship of the Christian was useful, and for that reason he paid him with his generosity and favors. But he also took care and watched out for him.

“Our holy war bears a resemblance to that game, one that not all poets dare to engage in. Do you know it, Don Pedro?”

“No, sir. I have had little experience of poetry.”

Yusuf II looked at him with disdain. He loved poetry. To cultivate the spirit through the different arts was the most precious gift a man could possess.

“It consists of improvising and continuing with a verse that another person has begun. Now do you remember it?”

“I believe I've seen such a thing before in Al-Andalus.”

“Certainly. It is very popular there, even among the country people. The war we are engaged with against the Castilian king has taken a form up till now very similar to that game. In fact, I began the first stanza with my victory at Alarcos. Then, the kings of León and Portugal, by suing for peace, have gone on adding rhymes, and now you should help me finish my recital.”

“How?”

Yusuf laughed at his confusion.

“You will leave to speak with Sancho of Navarre. You should convince him to sign a peace treaty with me as well. Make it happen however you must. Do what you think necessary. Buy his ambition, look for his weak point. Give him all the gold he wants, if that is what he longs for. If we do it, we will break apart the various kingdoms and that way, we can defeat Alfonso of Castile. My plan is to enter from the west, crossing the river Tagus and taking back Toledo. That way the poem will be finished and we will win the game.”

“Excellent thinking, sir. … I admire you.”

The caliph proudly breathed in the dry desert air mixed with the fragrance that transpired from an enormous jasmine. He believed in the success of his plan because the Christians always fell victim to the same mistakes: greed for widening their territories and an obsessive need to feel different from one another.

Very frightened, the two sisters entered into a round hall where a group of women were seated on the floor listening to another older woman. They were dressed in diaphanous garments, perfumed silks, and seemed lulled to sleep by the music of the words coming from her mouth.

A young woman with black skin came over to them and showed them where to sit. The two sisters looked at each other without knowing what lay in store. They observed the girl who was preparing a mixture of rice powder and egg white in a container and then came over to spread it on their faces. With a salve of incense and carbon she darkened their eyebrows and eyelashes, and then she painted their eyelids with a red cream.

The other women murmured, pointing at them and laughing. One of them, a redheaded one, with blue eyes and fine features, stood up and came over to them. She appeared to be a Christian.

“My name is Yasmin. You are now in the harem of Great Caliph Yusuf and I am his favorite wife. Behave well and you can live here tranquilly and according to your wishes.”

To their surprise, the woman spoke Romanic, which relieved them to a degree. Blanca was going to speak, but the woman gestured for her to be silent. Without another explanation she pulled back Blanca's veil, looked at her mouth, and smelled her breath. She did the same with Estela. Afterward, she gave an order in Arabic to two girls who ran off.

“We were kidnapped,” Estela whispered into her ear.

In her innocence she thought the woman would help them once she found out about their misfortune. But not only did she fail to demonstrate any kind of sensitivity, in fact she laughed back at her cruelly.

“I haven't heard anything so funny in a long time.” She dried the tears from her eyes. “You are talking to the caliph's first wife and the mother of the heir to the throne. I was born a Christian in your lands, but then I was married to Yusuf and I owe myself to him and to Allah. I am in charge of this harem, where I live with the rest of the women. Two hundred concubines also live here, and other women who distract him with their dances, their songs, and their poetry.”

The two girls who had left the chamber returned with something in their hands.

“Now we will whiten your teeth with ground eggshell. Then you will wait until you are ordered to enter.”

“Enter where?” Blanca asked.

The woman delivered her a resounding slap.

“Don't talk to me again without my permission. Do you understand?”

Both girls responded by nodding their heads.

“I am made by Allah for the glory of my master, and I walk proud down my own path. I give power to my lover over my body and my kisses I offer to those who desire them,” she recited without taking a breath. “These rhymes were written by a wise poetess from Córdoba, and you will live them out tonight. Offer them your kisses if they are desired.”

Marrakesh had become the capital of the Almohad Empire and boasted its finest buildings and its artists, thinkers, and sages.

From a broad terrace of the palace, with the sun on the point of disappearing, the city began to live the night. The new mosque shone, proud, a lofty tower a copy of which had been built in Seville. When the sun had fallen, you could begin to see the first torches being lit.

“Shall we serve you your tea, Your Highness?”

Caliph Yusuf lifted a hand and shook it a few times. It was his particular way of saying yes.

Lying over soft cushions and among leopard skins, he contemplated the nightfall. A fantastic range of colors, ocher, copper, and orange, were splayed out over the houses, plazas, and alleyways of the beautiful city.

A smooth melody rose to his ears and provoked an immediate shiver of pleasure. He breathed in the night air, savored the warm notes floating through it, and felt all his senses sharpen. At a second clap of his hands, he had a servant kneeling at his side. He ordered him to bring dancers.

“Also, I have brought you a gift from my travels,” Don Pedro said, as he continued his conversation with the Yusuf.

“I like surprises.” The eyes of the caliph shone with feeling. “What could it be?” He stayed there pensive. “You know that I love literature … I know. You've come with some new writing salvaged from some library in Córdoba.”

“No. I am sorry I cannot give you such a pleasure, but I trust this will be even sweeter to you. You will know soon,” Don Pedro de Mora answered mysteriously.

Only a few moments later, two shivering women knelt in front of them pushed along by various servants. They looked at Don Pedro and were filled with fear. That wicked man had dishonored them numerous times in the course of the voyage.

“Here is my gift. Two beautiful Christians who are, moreover, sisters. Look at their bodies, at their hair.” He pulled away the cloth that covered them. At once two orange manes unfurled.

Yusuf ordered them to come close so that he could see them better. They resisted, furious, but they were dragged to him. He took Blanca's chin and kissed her on the lips. Then he grabbed a handful of hair and brought it to his nose, absorbing its aroma, while he stroked one of her breasts.

She glared at him in disgust.

Then he touched Estela's thighs and was surprised by how smooth and firm they were. Her lips pleased him even more.

“Dear friend, you are always wise in your gift-giving. God willing, you will be as assiduous with my requests.”

He clapped twice, calling his secretary and personal servant over.

“Take them to my chambers and make everything ready.”