The Horse Healer

by Gonzalo Giner

  “I’m an albéitar. Science is all I know.”

  “I don’t deny its power, but your science isn’t good enough for everything.”

  “What is it not good enough for, in your opinion?”

  “To reach the world hidden behind reason. The magic realm.”

  Diego laughed when he heard that.

  “Magic? Magicians? Farces, they’re only good for entertaining the gullible at markets and fairs, with tricks and sleight of hand …”

  “You’re a fool,” the old man replied drily.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “One more simpleton. … One of those who only believe in what they see. The limit between the real and unreal is very fragile, like the one between science and magic. Don’t get me confused; I’m not a wizard or someone juggling at the market. I am acquainted with dimensions of reality you can’t even imagine.”

  “You are speaking with a man schooled in science. I only believe in the tangible; everything else sounds like trickery.”

  “Science. … For you everything is science, yes? You mean, then, that everything outside of reason is false, or a clumsy trick. I see … And if I gave you a potion or a remedy that would make you see clearer, that would be helpful to Sancha, so that she would never be bothered by her husband again?”

  Diego lost his breath and stopped.

  “How do you know about that?” He looked for answers in the depths of his eyes. “She … I don’t know, she’s always kept that a secret, it’s impossible.”

  “I already told you I knew many things.”

  “But you didn’t finish. No one can know what took place in that house. And besides, it’s been months since anyone’s heard from her husband.”

  “He’ll return, wait and see.” The man’s face turned somber. “He’ll come back full of evil and will sow darkness in the house. He will come back soon. As I told you, I am acquainted with magic, and I know how to guess many more things. … Now do you believe me?”

  “I admit you’ve surprised me.”

  “Magic is everything that confounds reason; sometimes it is words, sometimes deeds. Magic is in the surprise, in enchantment, sometimes in charm. … All that, the cause of which is hidden to reason and hard to clarify, is magic.”

  Diego listened to him with real interest. He thought he had read something similar in Mekhor Chaim, the treatise on philosophy and kabbalah that Friar Tomás had lent him. It was explained there that the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were spiritual forces that had formed the universe. And it also described the ten Sephirod and the hidden meanings of life and of the realities that surrounded us. But he remembered that it wasn’t a book of magic. Diego’s mind was open to any sort of knowledge, call it kabbalah or call it magic, but still, even though he had guessed the situation with Sancha and her daughters, the man’s way of working clashed with Diego’s habitual manner of learning. Diego approached the truth through observation and study, not daydreams or journeys into the ether, as this old man did.

  “They call me Efraím. Now I have to go, but if you need that potion I mentioned before, look for me. I’ll prepare it so that you can believe me as well.”

  A few months passed before Diego remembered that potion and that strange magician, until the following spring had come and gone and it had rained nonstop for a week straight. It happened one day when he was visiting Sancha. His last job for the day had been very close to her house.

  As soon as she saw Diego, the woman looked very nervous and didn’t speak until the two girls were in the stables and they could be alone.

  “He was here yesterday. …” She was twisting a cotton kerchief in her hands.

  “Your husband?”

  “Yes, Diego, yes. He wandered around the stables and then he disappeared. Since then, I’ve been staring out the window imagining him coming to the door. I’m terrified. He’s crazy. He painted some strange black figures on the doors of the stable and also on the walls outside. I don’t know what he wants. … I don’t know what he’ll try to do to us now. …”

  Diego embraced her to calm her down and then remembered his conversation with the magician. He had predicted that Basilio would come back to sow darkness in the house. He was sure those had been his words and the worst was that they matched what Sancha had just told him.

  “I’ll sleep here tonight with you and the girls. If he sees I’m here, he won’t dare to come in.”

  “I thank you from the bottom of my heart, but the terrible thing is, the danger won’t end tonight. How will we protect ourselves when you go to work? What will become of us? Nothing and no one will stop him and he’ll hit us again. … You’ll see.” Sancha felt her legs giving way and had to sit down. “In the past, there were times when I was tempted to do something so he would never touch us again. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Diego nodded. “But I wasn’t able.”

  Diego thought of Efraím again. He felt confused. Just the idea of asking for his help turned his stomach, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his offer of a potion that would prevent Sancha from suffering such humiliation and abuse.

  “There may be a way to avoid it.” Sancha opened her eyes wide and begged him to explain.

  “I still haven’t talked to you of Efraím, right?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s time for you to meet him.”

  Sancha entered the Jewish quarter of Cuéllar that afternoon, but alone. Diego had thought it was better for them not to be seen together on the street and for that reason he had stayed behind, half a league outside the city walls. Before he said good-bye, he explained how and where she should look for the magician and what his incredible prediction had been.

  Once he was alone, Diego dismounted from Sabba and began to walk through the cool, tree-lined path alongside the river. A little while later, he heard the noise of hoofbeats. He made sure it wasn’t Basilio, but to his surprise, Marcos had come. Diego didn’t call or make himself known since his friend was with the only daughter of the lord of Cuéllar, and he looked very occupied.

  “Efraím’s house, please?”

  A young redhead, with long curly hair and a mischievous face, pointed it out to Sancha. She turned left and took the street that ran on the inner side of the ramparts.

  An enormous line of people in front of a small door was the definitive clue that she had found what she was looking for. Some identified her upon her arrival.

  “You’re Sancha, correct?” The woman at the end of the line was one of her neighbors from the village. “I’m here for my daughter. She can’t have children and I heard this man concocts excellent remedies for all types of ills.”

  “I understand,” Sancha said, not wanting to make conversation.

  “And you, what do you want from Efraím?” The woman looked at her shamelessly, not respecting her silence.

  “I don’t really know,” she responded softly. Her life didn’t matter to anyone.

  “You can’t come here without a firm reason in mind,” the woman went on.

  Sancha waved her hands, compelling the woman to talk more quietly.

  “Don’t tell me, it doesn’t matter. … You’re going to ask him to make your husband come back. Or maybe it’s the opposite you want, so that albéitar will take his place. Of course, that’s it!” she shouted.

  “Leave me in peace, señora,” Sancha protested.

  The comment bothered her, and she hoped no one else had heard. She observed those who preceded her in the line, and judging from the murmurs she heard and a few sidelong glances, she could see she wasn’t correct. And moreover, the woman had turned her back to her, indignant.

  “How dare you,” Sancha protested in her ear.

  “You’re a harpy. Look how you take advantage of your husband’s absence to shack up with another man. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life!�
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  When she heard that, Sancha became enraged and was tempted to choke the woman then and there. She was saved by the opportune appearance of an old man with a hooked nose who peeked out from the door of his shop.

  “You, Sancha, come in!” Efraím pointed a finger at her, and she looked back, thinking there might be another person with the same name.

  The rest of those present protested, but the old man silenced them with a sharp stare. While she walked to the door, she was surprised by the submissiveness his clients showed. As soon as she entered, she asked him how he knew her name.

  “I saw it in the water this morning. I knew you would come.”

  The man had her pass through to a circular room where there was only a table in the center with a collection of strange figures. He showed her where to sit.

  “You don’t believe in this, do you?”

  “Not very much. I’m coming on Diego’s recommendation.”

  “That’s good to hear. You are the proof that finally he has begun to believe. … Do you love him?”

  “What?” That question not only disconcerted her, but also made her blush brightly. “Are you talking about my husband?”

  Efraím looked deep into her eyes, and she felt ashamed.

  “I know what you want; that is why I’ve prepared a potion that will make him disappear from your life.” He coughed loudly and wiped his mouth with a black cloth. “Now, it depends on you whether the effect is fatal, definitive, or only temporary.” She didn’t hesitate to confirm that was what she wanted, though she didn’t understand the implications of his commentary.

  Efraím picked up some small knucklebones, shook them, and threw them down on the table. He pushed his hair out of his face and looked at how they had landed. Then he sniffed them anxiously and looked at her again.

  “When I was talking about your love, I didn’t mean him. … You have to understand that I see into realms no one else can reach. That is why I know what is moving inside your heart.” He closed his eyes. “You like Diego, you feel more and more attracted to him, you want him …”

  “He’s never touched me! From the first day he’s respected me, and I have him as well,” she protested, though the man was partly right.

  “Make him yours, if you love him so much.” He lifted a hand to stop her from commenting further. “But now you have to decide about the potion. I have much to do and little time. Do you want it, or no?”

  “Yesterday he was wandering around my house. I hate his face, his voice, his breath. I don’t want to see him ever again.”

  “Then you are deciding to have a more definitive effect on your husband, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I will not ask any further.”

  Sancha looked at his sharp fingers and felt disgust when she saw his nails; they were long and painted black.

  Efraím read out a fragment of a strange book entitled Picatrix that he had picked up from the table.

  “‘You take a leaf of laurel and tear it with one hand, not letting any of it fall to the floor. It should be placed behind the ear of the person the spell is meant for. Then he is to be given wine. He should take as much as he wants. Then love will disappear from his eyes and it will never return with its erstwhile passion.’”

  “Forgive me, but that doesn’t seem strong enough,” Sancha affirmed.

  “Fine. Urgency is a bad companion to wisdom, but let us see what one of the ancient Hindus tells us, something stronger.” He turned two more pages of the Picatrix and read aloud again: “‘The Rowan is a tree contrary to human beings, not by nature, because it kills, but its properties, because it changes hearts …’” He raised his eyes and pinned her with his gaze. “This is the one you need,” he said, and he slapped the table, convinced, before reading on: “‘If a man tries its flower on a full moon, he will no longer be slave to the vice that tormented him, and if he still attempts to engage in it, he will die that very day. No antidote can work against this recipe.’”

  Sancha seemed to be more satisfied with this remedy. She still wasn’t sure what she was doing there or if it would work, but she could see that the man had something that floated around him, a power she had never seen in anyone. She would try it; she had nothing to lose, however absurd it might seem.

  “What tree is this?”

  “Relax, you won’t have to look for it or wait for next spring to get one of its flowers. Every year I pluck a number of them and dry them out.”

  He got up from his chair and looked in a clay jar. He took out a handful and showed them to her. Sancha saw that he kept them in branches of six.

  “Heat up a tea with two dozen of these and give it to him to drink. It will take effect immediately, and from that moment you will be free of him forever.”

  Efraím wrapped the flowers in a cloth of white cotton and passed it to Sancha.

  “That will be ten sueldos.”

  “Ten?”

  “No one said magic was free. You get what you want and I pay my debts.”

  Sancha took the ten coins from a sack and shook his hand.

  “Tell Diego I will look for him in three days, at sundown, at Arroyo Grande.”

  “Should I tell him anything else?”

  “Yes, let him know I will open the doors to other worlds for him.”

  V.

  Mencía felt something moving in her stomach.

  Her son went on growing inside her without knowing that his mother would never consider him the fruit of love, only of deception.

  Full of bitterness and sorrow, Mencía was looking from the window of her bedroom in the castle of Ayerbe, the property of her husband.

  This was her second pregnancy. She had lost her first child months before the date of birth arrived. No one knew what the cause of death had been, but she did: that baby had been engendered against her will, against her heart, and her body itself had rejected it from the beginning.

  Now, in her sixth month of pregnancy, she had the sense that the same thing was going to pass.

  She listened to a loud thunder peal penetrate the castle walls and saw how the water beat against the stone. The storm took her back to another one, that night in the abandoned chapel. She crossed her hands over her breast with an expression of pain and deep grief. Diego had been her only love, a love broken by her mother’s ambition, someone erased from her life for the sole reason of maintaining her noble name.

  She thought of him every day, remembered his expressions, his words, the sweetness of his kisses. There was not a single night when she went to sleep without saying good night to her beloved Diego. Even when her husband took her, she pretended it was her true love.

  Her pain was intimate, fatal, inconfessable.

  It was already getting dark when a great bolt of lightning suddenly lit up her bedroom with a cold blue light.

  “My lady …” Mencía turned away from the window to speak with her lady-in-waiting. “Your messenger has just arrived.”

  “Let him in, quickly, before my husband comes.”

  Mencía rubbed her hands together nervously, waiting to see if the news she expected would come.

  As soon as he entered, she ran to him anxiously.

  “Tell me, what have you found out? And how is he? Have you spoken with him?”

  The boy pulled his rain cover from his belt and made ready to answer a series of questions. His throat felt very dry.

  “Before I explain, do you have a little water?”

  “Blanca, bring him a pitcher, hurry!”

  He drank two whole glasses, cleared his throat, and began to speak.

  “He’s no longer in Albarracín.”

  “Then you couldn’t give him my message?” Mencía clenched her hands in fury.

  “No, I didn’t manage to. But I found out where he is presently staying …”

/>   “Where is he, where?” Mencía’s eyes bulged out. “For God’s sake, answer me! I’m dying to know everything.”

  “In the town of Cuéllar, in Castile,” he answered, satisfied.

  “I don’t know that place.” Mencía felt a kick in her belly and stretched out in her chair to find a more comfortable posture.

  “Between Segovia and Valladolid, halfway. Apparently it’s a town rich in pine forests and sheep. I was told this by a trader who had met someone named Marcos. …”

  “Of course, Marcos is his friend; he’s been with him for years,” she confirmed.

  “Well, his friend chose that area for its excellent commercial possibilities.”

  “Cuéllar, in Castile …” Mencía savored that name aloud, but at just that moment, her husband, Fabián Pardo, entered.

  “What’s happening in Cuéllar?” He greeted her with a kiss on her lips and stoked her round belly. “My love, has it been a tough day for you?”

  “You can go now, young man.” Mencía touched her face and felt it burning.

  The messenger bowed respectfully and sprinted from the room, faced with the questioning stare of Mencía’s husband. She tried to think of an explanation for his question about Cuéllar.

  “May I know who that boy you were speaking to was?” Fabián waited until he’d shut the door. “I don’t recognize him at all.”

  “Well … I don’t think so. In reality, he’s …” She coughed three times. “I mean he’s …”

  “Leave it, don’t continue. You aren’t trying to tell me that actually he’s your secret lover. Confess it!” He smiled before kissing her on the lips again, with renewed passion. “My God, but how can someone love a woman so much? All day, the only thing I long for is to be by your side.”

  “Blanca, you can leave. I don’t need anything else.”

  Mencía stood up with difficulty from the chair and walked to the window. It was still raining. Fabián’s arms wrapped around her back and met at her breast. He began to kiss her neck and cheeks.

  “My love, how I want to feel you again, to recover the passion of our encounters,” he said, stroking her belly, “like before …”