The Horse Healer

by Gonzalo Giner

  “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.

  “This is absurd,” Marcos protested when he found out what happened. “I don’t know what we’re doing here. They’ll never let you get to those books, and you won’t learn anything from him.”

  “Maybe I was showing a lack of loyalty when I contradicted his words. I admit he’s a difficult person, maybe impossible. I know my attitude may seem absurd to you, but I came here to finish my education as an albéitar and to enter into that magnificent library, and I won’t leave these walls until I do it.”

  Marcos didn’t try to explain how he would do it, but from that moment he decided to intervene so that Diego’s wishes would come true faster. If they respected Friar Servando’s rhythms, they could spend years there without managing anything but a shiny polished floor. And he didn’t have the patience for that.

  For a few days the two friends didn’t see each other again since Diego had been sent to the latrines, but Marcos’s luck changed suddenly, and only because he heard a conversation.

  It was between two monks; the key keeper in charge of the kitchens and another who managed the finances. Marcos was helping the first to empty a wheelbarrow of olive barrels when the other came over to ask a question.

  “Have you talked yet with the prior?”

  “I did, but he still hasn’t offered me anyone. Can you believe it?” He slapped his knees. “Right now I only have one helper, and to top it off, he’s sick. My previous employees will be arriving in Salvatierra to help defend that fortress. How am I going to feed two hundred friars, organize all the purchases, store the necessities, and clean everything on my own. Anyone who thinks that’s possible is mad. For me it’s impossible. …”

  Marcos saw the opportunity to get out of the stables and away from Friar Servando and do something he liked better.

  “Maybe you’re not being insistent enough,” the friar replied.

  “I’ve already gotten a serious reprimand from the prior. He says I don’t show sufficient interest in my job, I don’t know how to sacrifice, and I’ve lost my trust in providence.” The man put his hands on his head in desperation. “Providence … I don’t imagine providence plucking chickens, but that’s what I have to do.”

  “I could help you with that job,” Marcos soon interrupted.

  “Excuse me?” The man was surprised.

  “Since I was very young, I’ve been working around ovens.” He was lying, as was customary. “And I know cooking well enough to let you get a bit of sleep.”

  The friar, fat, but in excellent health, remembered the prior’s words. Could this boy be the fruit of that famed providence?

  “Boy, I have no idea how you know I’ve been suffering from insomnia lately, but I like your proposal. Tell me who’s in charge of you and I’ll claim you for myself right now. You work in the stables?”

  Marcos nodded.

  It didn’t seem too hard for Friar Jesús, as he was called, to convince Friar Servando, because from that afternoon on, Marcos began to work with him in the kitchens of the monastery, content and more enthusiastic.

  But for Diego, those days were not as fortunate as those of his friend, and in fact, a few days after he left the latrines, he became acquainted with Friar Servando’s true character, as well as making an already bad situation much worse.

  And all because of a horse illness that almost everyone calls “fig.”

  IV.

  Friar Servando, as a horse healer, attended to different cases both inside and outside the monastery.

  At last Diego had managed to accompany him a few more times, not many but enough to begin to feel deceived.

  He couldn’t understand where the monk’s reputation came from when his shortcomings were obvious and the consequences to his patients grave. Diego came to think that the friar lacked even a quarter of the knowledge Diego himself had; he had never seen him use any diagnostic technique that Diego didn’t already know, and his catalogue of remedies was both limited and often absurd. His limitations were so grave that Diego began to suffer even when he saw him shoe a horse, because he wasn’t particularly good at that, either.

  Nevertheless, Diego was quiet, preferring not to speak, until that morning when everything went against him.

  A stallion belonging to the royal ensign of Navarre arrived at the stables. It was the first time he had been there and he arrived with a squire.

  Diego was lighting some kindling to start up the forge when the animal entered in the stable, led by the squire. The stallion was a beautiful specimen, strong, with an enormous frame. Its coat was cream colored with an almost cherry undertone.

  When Diego saw it, and especially when he discovered the enormous lump on its hindquarters, he couldn’t resist the temptation to come and watch when Friar Servando attended to it.

  Diego looked at the color and texture of the tumor. Luckily for the animal, it was red and seemed recent. He had seen those tumors a number of times with Galib, but never as large as this one, which was as big as an orange. He remembered that in the treatise on the albéitar, his first book, the one Benazir gave him, such tumors were described in detail. They called them “figs,” and they were classified by color: the black ones were more serious, then the red ones, and finally the white ones.

  Without taking even a breath, the stable boy returned with the news that Friar Servando was not in the monastery and that no one knew when he was coming back, whether that morning or even at night.

  Given the situation, Diego couldn’t resist and decided to treat that malformation. He looked for a piece of leather and made a hole in it equal to the size of the tumor. Then he put it over the horse to isolate it from the rest of the skin.

  “It has what’s called a fig, sir.” The squire said he didn’t know what it was. Diego explained it to him and begged pardon for Friar Servando’s absence, presenting matters as though he was the assistant as well as a horse healer.

  “You know how to cure it?” The man studied Diego. He didn’t seem to be sufficiently convinced to leave that valuable horse in unfamiliar hands, but the boy was so secure and firm in his words that he managed to convince him.

  Diego began to compound various ointments. One was made of lime and earth. The other, a paste, from dry river herbs and water. And a third, with a repugnant scent, warm chicken feces mashed in a mortar with soap.

  With the herb paste, he made little cakes and took them over the forge. He placed the first on a hot iron and afterward pressed it against the horse’s lump. When it was cold, he changed it for another. And he worked this way for a while until the tumor began to whiten. Diego explained to the man that this was a way to lower the blood before he cut it with a sharp knife.

  All the stable boys left their labors and gathered around to watch him in action.

  “I need you to give me a hand holding the horse. It’s going to feel a good bit of pain now.”

  With ropes and cinches, a number of them working together managed to immobilize it. Diego approached with a knife, the tip of which he had heated in the fire, and began to cut the fig down to the base, pressing down the flesh on either side of it. He cut deep, but carefully, not wanting to damage any nerves. It was fast, demonstrating that he had a sure hand and wasn’t intimidated by the sharp whinnies of protest on the part of the animal.

  “Now he’ll bleed a little. That’s a good thing.”

/>   The knight’s eyes were focused on the enormous lump that had been extracted and its enormous size.

  Diego dusted the wound with a mix of lime and earth and quickly pulled away from the animal, foreseeing its violent reaction. Then he took a red-hot iron and passed it around the edges of the wound to stop the bleeding. The horse, furious and in pain, wouldn’t stop moving.

  “Does he have to go through all this?” the squire asked, white from witnessing the terrible pain the animal was suffering.

  “Be calm. The next ointment will relieve his pain.”

  Diego soaked a linen cloth in the blend of feces and soap and laid it over the wound. Last, he prepared an unguent of honey and pentamyron and told the man to apply it warm once a day.

  “If it grows back, ask them to make you a thin rope with hairs from a young nag that has never been with a mare. Use that to tie off the fig until it’s strangled. You can do it one, two, even three times, as many as necessary until it falls off.”

  Diego ordered them to untie the animal carefully and he spoke, very low, into its ear, at the same time scratching its breast to gain its trust. The horse began to look at him timidly, but shortly after, it was neighing more calmly.

  Diego felt pleased with his work. The silence that had accompanied him while he operated was suddenly broken by spontaneous applause. All present were sincerely impressed.

  “You should find the most comfortable place for him inside the stable, keep him away from dampness, and make sure he doesn’t lick the wound. If he does, it will complicate the healing process.”

  The squire was satisfied with his explanations and congratulated him without any criticism. He asked the young man for his name in case he might need him in the future.

  “My name’s Diego, Diego de Malagón, apprentice albéitar or horse healer, whichever you prefer to call me.”

  The squire, the horse, and its illness left, as did the rest of the stable boys, still amazed by the abilities of their companion. And yet that satisfaction lasted for too short a time; Friar Servando was not appreciative of Diego’s work.