The Horse Healer

by Gonzalo Giner

  For a while he enjoyed that silence, only broken by the occasional creak or the crackling of the fire. But when he went to get more wood, he accidentally made too much noise and awoke Marcos.

  “But look who we have here!” The two men gave each other a sincere embrace.

  “Marcos, my dear friend … how has your trading gone? You have to tell me everything. But first you have to tell me how Mencía is. By the way, you’re looking a little heftier.” With each question, Diego tried to make up for the five long months away from the city.

  “Relax … You’re trying to make me talk to you about too many things at once,” Marcos protested, perhaps to put off the one bit of news that was actually important.

  “The trading couldn’t have gone better, but what about you? How was your war experience? And have you been by the castle yet?”

  “No, I needed to warm up and change clothes first; I smell like a horse.” Diego smiled openly; he looked beaming, anxious to see his beloved. “I have to admit, my experiences in the war helped me to make new decisions. Among them, I’m going to ask Mencía to marry me, and there’s another one I’ll tell you in a moment, but I need to have some time to think it through.”

  Marcos’s face twisted into a grimace of displeasure.

  “I have to tell you something …”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s about Mencía.” Marcos grabbed a poker and began to jab at a piece of wood to work up the fire.

  “What happened to her?” Diego felt a sudden sensation of anxiety. “Is she sick?”

  After holding his breath a moment, Marcos finally spoke.

  “You won’t find her in Santa María de Albarracín. …”

  “Is she traveling?”

  “No, it’s not that. …” He looked at Diego downcast. “She married that man she met before we arrived, the one from Aragon.”

  Diego put his head in his hands and felt a sharp pain in his stomach, as though someone had pierced him straight through with a sword. His eyes began to water. He couldn’t speak.

  “Everything happened after you left. One day this Fabián Pardo showed up and a month later, to everyone’s surprise, their marriage was announced. A while later they went to Ayerbe, to live in the castle of the Aragonese.”

  Marcos, crestfallen, put his hand around Diego’s shoulder.

  “She swore her love to me. …” Diego was defeated, desolate. “She told me she loved me more than anyone. How could she deceive me this way?”

  “I should tell you another thing. …”

  “There’s more?”

  “She was pregnant when she married.” Marcos cleared his throat nervously. “And I didn’t know whether to ask you or not, but understand, from the dates when she’ll be giving birth …”

  “I never made her mine, if that’s what you want to know. So there can be no doubt about the child’s paternity. …”

  “I’m sorry, Diego. Women … They’re like that; unpredictable, volatile. That’s why I never trust them. They change from one day to the next, and what goes on inside them is a mystery. That’s why I enjoy them, I let them love me from time to time, I sample their plump bodies, and nothing more. You should do the same and stop being so romantic. It’s not worth suffering so much over them.”

  “I don’t understand, Marcos.” Diego had gone pale. “I … I thought she loved me, she swore it. I thought she could overcome the barriers that came between my world and hers. … But she didn’t. How naive I was! Just like others told me, lineage was stronger than love.” He brought his hands to his head again, wounded. “I don’t know how I thought I would win the heart of a girl who was a daughter of the nobility, when I was a commoner, a miserable son of the earth. I thought I was someone because I was an albéitar, the way I saw Galib was when he walked around with the nobles in Toledo, but it’s clear it’s not enough. Mencía … yes, she gave in. Her surroundings made her choose something else, different for me, and she let their will break her.” He pushed the air from his lungs until he thought he would choke. “And what will I do now, Marcos? Die from pain?”

  “You have to see it’s just how women are. Like I said …”

  “But she didn’t leave you a note for me, something written before she left, nothing?”

  Marcos lowered his head without answering. He understood his pain. When he looked at Diego again, his friend was trembling from rage or mourning. Marcos saw him go to the window, the one that opened onto the square. From there, he could see a corner of the Azagras’ castle. Diego imagined Mencía in the arms of another, kissed and caressed by another man, and he couldn’t take it.

  One question, always the same, assailed him over and over. What could have happened to make Mencía break her oath of love and fidelity?

  “This city, the streets, the air … Everything is making me sick,” he confessed to Marcos. “It’s all impregnated with betrayal, lies, mocking. I can’t go on living here another day, Marcos.” He began to pace nervously through the room until he stopped suddenly in front of his friend. “I need to get far away from here.”

  “What do you mean?” Marcos did not seem convinced.

  “Maybe it’s time for me to go to Marrakesh and look for my sisters.” Diego’s eyes explored a spot on the ceiling. “Of course, that’s it! Now I can do it; I will cross over again into Al-Andalus.”

  Marcos frowned. He didn’t like that idea at all; Diego had told him about the difficulties he’d had to pass through when he crossed the marshlands, and he thought it was madness to go there again. Besides, it would mean abandoning his trade.

  Anticipating what Diego’s reaction would be, Marcos had already thought of another solution days before. If he managed to convince Diego of it, the fate Marcos had chosen would be even more profitable than selling sheep to the Valencians. While Marcos tried to find the best words to explain his plan, Diego made it easy for him.

  “Wait, no …” Diego realized how selfish he was being. “You should stay. I’m sorry, I’m insensitive. You’ve already put down roots here, and I don’t want you to leave behind what you’ve worked so hard to get. I’ll go, but alone. That’s what I’ll do!”

  “I won’t allow it.”

  “I won’t allow you to come with me.”

  “I know you too well not to have guessed what you’d be thinking, Diego. So I already made the contacts I needed to set up somewhere else, and …”

  “Forget it, I insist. … I’ll leave tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Listen to my idea first.”

  “Fine, tell me.”

  “First remember this name, Cuéllar.”

  “I don’t know it. Where is it?”

  “It’s a free village south of the Duero River in Castile. From what I hear, it has an enormous herd of sheep. Two months ago I found out that Abu Mizrain, my intermediary with the buyers in Valencia, had the thought of setting up shop there, but to buy wool and not just meat. Apparently the sheep they raise in the region of Cuéllar have finer coats than those here, and the lamb is tastier, with more fat. I managed to go with him, and I liked it. I have a good contact with one of the largest livestock owners, and he could definitely help us break into that market.”

  Diego was only half listening. Disappointment and misery were drowning him and nothing tied him to this or any other place. He didn’t even have the strength to decide. … All he wanted was to be lost to the world, to disappear, to cry out his pain.

  “I’m going to Al-Andalus. …”

  “Why?” Marcos decided to change his strategy and at least make him delay the trip.

  “I swore I would do something for my sisters; that is my plan,” Diego answered firmly.

  “It sounds to me like a very noble decision on your part, but I suppose you also must have thought about how much it will cost you to carry it out. You’ll need lots of money and someo
ne to go with you, and it’s best if you go armed; and you’ll need a good excuse to be down there among the Moors, and lots of bravery above all. I don’t deny that you have the courage, but the rest of it you still need.” He put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Listen, Diego, great debts like the one you have aren’t paid with weapons and strength. You need brains, intelligence, and especially a good plan. And to make it, you need time and plenty of economic resources. Let’s go to Cuéllar, Diego. We’ll do business there and we’ll make money. We’ll figure out afterward what to do with it, I promise. What do you think?”

  Diego embraced him. He had never felt so wretched, but he’d also never received such a sincere show of friendship.

  They sat in front of the fire and watched the wood burn with a feeling that they were sharing not only heat, but their lives and destinies as well. The tongues of fire twisted around the dry wood, in silence, until another crack opened and they devoured its interior.

  Diego was so absorbed in his pain that he couldn’t even move. His eyes were prisoners to those flames and couldn’t pull away from them. He felt wounded in the deepest part of his being, as if he had been torn in half, from his head to his toes. Without Mencía, life itself had no meaning.

  “I’ve been cheated, humiliated …”

  He promised himself he would forget it, but he couldn’t. He saw her blue eyes again, her beautiful hair, her sweet voice. Mencía had been his only love.

  Part IV

  Lands of Confusion

  At the end of 1203, Pope Innocent III obliged Alfonso VIII of Castile to annul the marriage of his daughter Berenguela with the Leonese King Alfonso IX. The rivalry between the two monarchs grows until their recent accords fall to pieces. Alfonso IX, enraged, calls the enemies of Alfonso VIII to his court.

  Don Diego López de Haro returns to León and takes over the lands of Sarria, Toro, Extremadura, and the capital of the kingdom, León.

  That same year, a treaty is signed by the kings of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon; each monarch uses it to reinforce his own position. Pedro II, recently married to Maria of Montpellier, fights to broaden his realm to Valencia, and Mallorca falls into the hands of the Almohad caliph al-Nasir.

  Alfonso VIII of Castile, wishing to compromise the power of the great nobles, begins to concede charters of freedom to numerous villages and towns that benefit their trade and permit him to make use of their militias without contracting costly obligations later.

  Such is the case of Cuéllar, a town with surrounding territories deep in the heart of Castile.

  I.

  In his exile, Diego drowned his lovelessness with wine.

  That night, Marcos cursed to himself while he looked for the young albéitar urgently. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken the carriage late at night to Matias’s inn, on the outskirts of Cuéllar, to retrieve Diego, half drunk. But on this occasion, the news was worrying. Sabba had begun foaling and was having serious problems.

  For the five months since they’d arrived in Cuéllar, Diego’s bitterness had infected everything. Even the most run-of-the-mill actions, like deciding where to live, became an almost impossible task. Nothing seemed to satisfy him. In every house he found some irreparable defect, some imaginary, others perhaps real.

  They had changed their lodgings four times before arriving at the splendid house where they now lived. It leaned against the walls of the fortress, in the very center of the town, just a few steps from the town square. It was noble in appearance and large in size. Though the rent was high, Marcos was making ten times as much as he had with his former business in Albarracín and had money to spare.

  Owing to a general lack of knowledge about the care of animals in Cuéllar, Diego became very popular as soon as he began to work as an albéitar, though he practiced with little passion now. He didn’t care about learning more or investigating the causes of one illness or the other. Nor did he look, as he had before, for the deeper origins of pain, suppuration, fever. When someone called for him, he went. He tried to fix what was wrong, he prescribed a remedy, and he gave advice as he saw necessary. But he knew he had lost the most important thing he needed for his job: his happiness.

  His emotional fiasco had thrown everything in his life into chaos, his job as well. That noble calling he had fought for so much since his days in Toledo no longer filled his life; in fact, he was restless.

  Over the months, all Diego did was let himself be dragged along by life. And amid so many upsets, wine became one of his closest allies. It was his ideal companion to drown the nights, to leaven his misery, and to mend, in part, his broken heart.

  On the other extreme, for Marcos, Cuéllar was a magnificent opportunity for wealth and success. The wool trade kept him busy all day, and he gave it all his attention and strength. Huge flocks roamed the land; many belonged to the clergy or the nobility, but others, more than a few, were the property of the pecheros. That’s what they called the free men and women who came from the north of Castile searching for opportunities, which the king would give freely to whoever wished to come repopulate these territories that had been won back from the Moors.

  Marcos soon controlled the better part of the wool trade thanks to his friend Abu Mizrain from Valencia. After buying the wool at a good price, Mizrain would leave for the great markets of Egypt, Damascus, and Persia. There they needed more and more and were willing to pay a good price for it.

  For this reason, it was easy for Marcos to convince almost all the herdsmen that he was better than their former customers from Flanders.

  “Sabba, my Saaaaabbba …” Diego began to sing, riled up by the rocking of the cart. “You are the maare of the suuuun and the moooon …” he wailed out, his tongue lolling around, in a pathetic state.

  Without loosing the reins, his friend turned to look at him and was immediately discouraged.

  “Save that music and try to get your head on straight; we need you thinking clearly when you have to look after Sabba.”

  Marcos had needed the help of two men to get Diego out of the inn, and not even two buckets of water over the head were enough to clear his mind. When they got home, Marcos helped Diego out of the carriage and almost dragged him into the kitchen. He sat him down close to the fire.

  “I don’t feel very good.” Diego leaned his head over a table, feeling on the verge of death, nauseated and covered in a cold sweat.

  Marcos heated up a piece of tallow in the fire with castor oil and an infusion of thyme, an infallible remedy on these occasions. He looked for a wooden bucket to hold Diego’s vomit and shouted for Veturia, whom he had employed as soon as they moved into the house. Veturia was a single woman, robust and not very smart, though she had a divine talent for cooking. One of her many defects was her rather contradictory character; she could be loving and protective, and yet prickly and cold at the same time.

  When she appeared in the kitchen with her hands stained with blood, Marcos decided not to ask. He had left Sabba in her care but had asked her not to touch anything. Judging from her appearance, she had paid him no mind.

  “How’s it going?” Marcos asked, worried.

  “Worse. It’s getting very ugly, señor. She’s not having contractions anymore.”

  “All right, all right …”

  Veturia saw Diego and was filled with compassion.

  “The wine again, right?” The women knelt to look into his eyes and clicked her tongue. “Today he’s much worse than usual.”

  Diego, far from worried about his compromised dignity, smiled at her idiotically, grasping her hair in his hands as if he were looking at the woman of his dreams.

  “Señora … it’s such a pribbulege”—he tripped over his words—“to meet a woman as beautiful as yourself.” He ended by bowing reverently.

  “Good Lord! Like this, we can’t hope for any miracles,” Veturia concluded.

  Marcos approached with
a steaming pitcher, and the two of them made him drink it. It didn’t take long for it to reach his stomach.

  “Now I’ll go down to the stables,” Marcos explained. “When he’s better, send him to me.”

  Veturia soaked a few cloths in cool water and put one on Diego’s forehead and one on his neck. Once he had emptied his stomach, he began to feel a bit better.

  “You should go see her fast, sir. Your mare needs you. She’s in very bad shape. The poor girl …”

  Diego went to look for his instruments first and then went down to the stables, still clumsy and a bit sick at his stomach, but when he saw Sabba in her distressed state, he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen.

  He coughed, swallowing the rest of the stomach acid, and regretted not being there before. He called her by her name and Sabba responded immediately, turning her head to look for him. A weak gleam shone in her eyes while she blinked, signaling she was calmer now.

  “I see … You think everything’s going to be better now, right?”

  Sabba whinnied loudly, showing her agreement.

  Diego pushed aside her tail and inspected the birth canal. Part of the placenta was hanging out and had an ugly, almost black color. He soaped his arm to the elbow and looked at Marcos, warning him that this would hurt the mare. He conscientiously explored Sabba’s interior, not losing a second, and was filled with fear when he realized what was happening. Now he would have to act fast if he wanted to save the two of them. Her offspring was so twisted that if he wasn’t careful, he could tear Sabba’s insides. He saw that the sac was broken and the foal on the point of suffocating. That operation would require not only skill, but great concentration, and at that moment, he had neither the one nor the other.

  His hands shook, he couldn’t feel his fingertips, and his head felt like it would explode, but he set to work and put all his soul into the task.