The Horse Healer

by Gonzalo Giner

  Apart from that, she knew he had been courting a lady from a neighboring county and was already bedding her. In fact, he only came to Ayerbe one day a month to settle accounts with his employees and vassals.

  She would go out to ride her horse every afternoon through the extensive woodlands surrounding the castle, remembering her walks with Diego.

  What can have happened to him? she asked herself every day.

  Five years had passed since the wedding in Albarracín and four since she’d last heard he was residing in Cuéllar, in Castile. A long time not to find another woman, enough time even to have his own descendants.

  “My lady, my lady …” Her lady-in-waiting rushed into the music room. Mencía was playing a difficult piece on the clavichord.

  “What is it?” She was alarmed when she saw her so upset.

  “The master … The master … Dear God …” The woman brought her hands to her head.

  “But it’s only the middle of the month… The poor vassals don’t have to pay him yet. Or is he in one of his ill humors and he’s decided to see me?” she asked sarcastically.

  “No, it’s not that, no … The master has had a terrible accident.”

  “What are you saying?” She grabbed her shoulders, imploring more information.

  “His page just arrived, my lady. He will tell you himself.”

  “Show him in then, quickly!”

  The boy came in, pale, and approached her with urgency. He kissed her hand and begged her pardon for his appearance.

  “Do not worry about that and tell me, what has happened?”

  “A bad fall from a horse, my lady. I’m sorry …” He breathed in to calm himself down. “He was close to the castle of Monzón when a tree branch knocked him to the ground and he broke his neck. It killed him.”

  Mencía remained calm. She made sure he knew he was dead and sent away her servants so she could be alone. They imagined she would weep from grief in her solitude, but that was not the case. She regretted Fabián’s death, to be sure. Her pain was the same she would have felt for anyone close to her, but nothing more. Of course it was her husband, but only by dint of force and subterfuge. That is why she had never managed to love him.

  He had been a good man and had always respected her. Though recently he had looked for the warmth of another woman, Mencía hadn’t held it against him. It was even something of a relief to know that in the beds of others he had found the kisses and caresses she had denied him, and of course, the descendants she couldn’t provide for him.

  Mencía dressed in black for the well-attended funeral that was held two days later. A long veil hid her from the better part of the gazes that tried to divine her inner state from her expression. And yet it was everyone’s opinion that Mencía showed great restraint and self-possession, virtues appropriate to a well-raised woman like herself, at all times.

  Despite the recent nature of the occurrence, many figures from the kingdom of Aragon attended, including Queen María de Montpellier and the bishop of Lerida, requiring Mencía to pay great attention and feign a sorrow that in fact she didn’t feel.

  During the reception, people were astonished at her beauty, which many had heard of but had never actually seen. The rumors about the infidelities of the deceased were told and retold among the attendees. Some even affirmed that, contrary to what had been told, he had died in the bed of a woman who might even be attending his funeral. It was hard for them to understand what could have provoked those marital betrayals when a woman sweeter and more beautiful than his wife was unthinkable.

  When the interment was over and the body of her husband was in the tomb, all eyes turned to Mencía as the moment came for her to approach in silence and give her last good-bye. Aware that she was the center of attention in that moment, Mencía knelt beside the pit, sighed heavily, and took a handful of earth to scatter over the dead man. After, a chorus of choked-back tears erupted from the women when, in a gesture charged with emotion, she took the gloves from her hand, kissed them sorrowfully, and left them over her husband’s breast.

  For all, it was a beautiful gesture, but for Mencía it was the last moment of a marriage she had never wanted, the freedom to act as she wished from then on, and, why not, to dream of finally meeting her true love again.

  She was moved, of course that was true, but a light of hope glimmered inside her. The death of her husband changed everything, affected her future, opened new possibilities, like being able to make her own decisions or finally following the dictates of her heart.

  With the coolness of the air on her cheeks and her heart fluttering, there amid the people watching her, she felt alone, and made her first decision, thinking of nothing else. She would wait for her inheritance, then take a long journey to Castile, a journey with no turning back.

  In just two weeks, Mencía had managed to arrange all the formalities that followed the funeral and the testament was read. From then on, Fabián’s grand fortune would be in her name. She was named an administrator with power to decide the ends to which his lands would be used, and she ordered the sale of a palace that he possessed in the village of Jaca, to raise money for her purposes.

  The day after she received the payment, she concluded a couple of minor matters, took off her mourning clothes, and mounted one of her best horses.

  It was the last morning of that long autumn when she was last seen leaving the castle in the company of her lady-in-waiting. No one but her minister knew where she was headed.

  Mencía reached the city of Cuéllar on the tenth day of her travels, full of excitement to see Diego. She needed to discharge the enormous debt she owed him, explain to him the true reason she had left him and why she had gotten pregnant. Even if he was engaged to another woman, it would only be right to let him know the conditions that had been imposed on her by her mother if Mencía had given in to her love for him.

  It was possible that for Diego all that was now in the distant past, but not for her. She needed to explain it to him, regardless of what would happen, even if she didn’t have any hope of bringing about a new relationship with him.

  When she crossed the walls of the town, Mencía felt deep emotion and the tears welled in her eyes. She wanted to see him so much … to hold him.

  As soon as she took the first street she stopped an older man and asked him if he knew where to find the albéitar Diego de Malagón. To her astonishment, the man ran away from her without responding, gesturing like a madman, as if they had mentioned the devil.

  “Señora …” Mencía got down from her horse and stopped a woman with a child. “Could you tell us where the albéitar Diego de Malagón lives?”

  “Lord Jesus!” She crossed herself twice and did not stop walking. “What sort of question is that!”

  Mencía looked at her lady-in-waiting without understanding what was happening to these people and why they weren’t answering. A young man came toward them dragging a mule by its bit and Mencía guessed that he must have known Diego.

  “Boy, excuse me, boy …” When he turned, the boy saw a beautiful woman, blond with incredibly blue eyes, who took his breath away.

  “Señora,” he said, and coughed involuntarily. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’ve come from afar looking for Diego de Malagón, and …” The boy put his hand to his mouth in fright. “What is it?” Mencía grabbed him by the shirt, ready to get the information from him however necessary.

  “You don’t know anything of what happened?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Are you from his family?”

  “I’m simply a friend he hasn’t seen in a long time.”

  “A terrible tragedy happened.”

  Mencía was choked by a terrible fear.

  “Explain yourself, please.”

  “He was accused of poisoning the people, and many of our neighbors
died …”

  “What nonsense!”

  “It’s not nonsense, Señora. More than a hundred of us died and so they put him on trial. And then …”

  The boy lowered his head, distressed at having to recount his terrible end.

  “And … what happened after?”

  “Well … what happened is … they hanged him.” The boy studied the woman’s reaction. “I’m sorry to say it like that. I regret having to tell you, but unfortunately that’s what happened. It was several months back.”

  Mencía heard the news like a blow from a club. She leaned against her horse, and, almost fainting, she looked at the boy with a destroyed expression, feeling utterly helpless, dying with anguish. She breathed deep to recuperate a bit of strength but she couldn’t speak; her voice failed her. Her servant, seeing her in that state, spoke for her.

  “Do you know where he lived? Could we speak with someone who had contact with him before he died?”

  “They were in a house close to the town square, right against the walls of the citadel. Ask around there.”

  “Who else are you referring to who lived with him?”

  “A trader named Marcos. He disappeared just before your friend’s trial.”

  “Can you come with us?” Mencía regained her speech and placed a gold coin in his hand.

  After finding out that the house where Diego lived was now occupied by another family, the boy went with them to where Veturia, his former servant lived.

  Mencía paid him another five coins for his service, before saying good-bye to him at the door of a house that was excessive for a woman of the servant’s stature.

  “You’re Veturia, correct?”

  As soon as she opened the door, the two women came in without being invited.

  “But … Who are you, and what do you want?” Veturia was shocked by their boldness.

  Mencía explained to her the scantest details and began asking about what had happened with her former masters. Of Marcos, Veturia would only say he had gone to Burgos shortly before the execution, taking all his possessions with him. But when she spoke of Diego, her face flushed and her voice began to falter.

  “I’m sorry, señora. Without meaning to, I was partly guilty for what happened to Diego.” Mencía didn’t wish to tell her that she was talking about the love of her life. “I just confessed to alleviate my conscience about a series of events he’d been at the center of, and then, everything happened so fast. … I saw him die myself, hanging from that terrible rope.”

  Veturia began to cry while Mencía observed her, boiling over with sorrow and rage. She felt powerless and disgraced. Her illusions of seeing him again were shattered in a thousand pieces. A sharp pain pierced her soul. And she cried without consolation, as no woman had ever cried before. She was drowning in her own tears.

  A few hours later, in the cemetery, Mencía found Diego’s tomb, topped with a rough cross of wood, half rotten and painted with his name and the date of his death.

  She knelt and caressed that mound beneath which her beloved was resting.

  Her lady-in-waiting looked at her mistress full of anguish, lain out on the ground, and embraced her, covering her with tears. The pain she exuded was so great it filled the air and the grass growing around her. And she listened amid whispers as Mencía told Diego how she had loved him, promising him her eternal affection, broken beneath the pain of never again seeing his eyes, feeling his arms or lips.

  Mencía began to kiss the earth with grief-filled passion, looking for his soul inside it. Though her servant tried to drag her away, she took pity on her and could not manage to do so. She begged her aloud, pulled at her belt, insisted, and maybe for that reason, neither of them heard the arrival of the person behind them.

  “Who are you?” the person exclaimed.

  When they turned, the two women shouted. They were tense and frightened by the man’s strange looks until they found out what he wanted.

  “I saw you down there on the ground hugging the earth like you’d been the lover of the person buried there, but I don’t know you. I didn’t see you during the trial or after. Who are you?” Mencía stood and looked into his eyes.

  “My name is Mencía Fernández de Azagra. I loved this man with all my soul and one day I abandoned him, without ever telling him why. To my great dismay, I couldn’t live at his side, and believe me, I wished to dreadfully. …” Though her tears mixed with the traces of dirt on her face, the man could see sincerity and purity in her eyes, and he felt a deep sorrow for her.

  “I’m the gravedigger, señora.” Mencía pinned him in her blue gaze. “I think you should know something.”

  “Speak, I pray you.”

  “That day, when they hanged him, everything was very strange. Weird stuff was happening. That night, some men gave me money, they did …”

  “I still don’t understand …”

  Mencía clenched her fists until her nails dug into her hand.

  “They paid me not to bury him and asked me to leave the cemetery for a few hours.” He looked at Diego’s tomb. “So I couldn’t see anything, and since then I’ve had the suspicion that they didn’t ever put him in the earth.”

  “What?” Mencía choked when she heard him. “You think there’s nobody there?” She pointed to the place where Diego was supposed to be.

  “That’s what I believe.”

  “Where do you have a shovel?”

  Days later, a smiling woman, accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, waited for someone to open the door to a house in the center of Burgos. She called twice, until a man of undefined age answered the door.

  “Could you please tell Marcos de Burgos that Mencía Fernández de Azagra is here to see him?”

  IV.

  A year after his arrival at Salvatierra, Diego was preparing for his first mission.

  On a table sat a number of creams, wigs, paints that would darken his eyes, and a paste that would wrinkle his skin until he looked like an old man. Pinardo explained how to use them and what each one of them was for.

  To the techniques of disguise was added an extensive training in bettering Diego’s sense of orientation. Hundreds of times he had traveled blindfolded through the entire fortress, his hands tied behind his back, following the odors he smelled and being guided by the sounds and the feel of his feet over the floor. He had also learned to handle every sort of weapon and to camouflage his face. He mastered forging documents and making invisible ink and had recently learned a complex sign language that the knights sometimes used to communicate.

  Before being with Pinardo, Diego had worked with Otón. As a test, he’d been forced to memorize a difficult text in under an hour. It was written in Arabic, a poem with complicated rhymes. With a first quick reading and a later, slower one, Diego had managed to recite it without wasting time and without a single error.

  “This one will defeat you,” Otón said, choosing one in Latin and throwing it on the table almost offended, since he himself had needed at least a week for it.

  Diego took it in his hands and read it in a low voice. It was a treatise entitled Origin of the False and the True and it was written by Saint Augustine. For a while he shut himself off from all else, concentrating on those reflections. Then he closed the book and began to recite the first paragraph.

  “‘Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi; in interiore homine habitat veritas …’”

  “That’s fine. … There’s no fooling you. Come tomorrow so we can go over the maps of the cities of Seville, Córdoba, and Granada.”

  Diego told Pinardo what had happened with Otón while Pinardo was disguising his face.

  At midday, when his transformation was complete, they went to the courtyard of the fortress to see how it had turned out. Diego attracted so much attention that people came from all areas of the fortress to see him, astounded at his appearance.

/>   “I’m almost scared to pat you on the back.” Bruno stared into the false wrinkles around his eyes, impressed by the magnificent results. “You look like a fragile old man.”

  Diego was stooped over, walking with a cane and wearing a long white cotton tunic like the ones common among the Saracens. He was employing a fragile, hollow voice, pretending to lose his breath as he spoke.

  “Excellent work, Pinardo,” Bruno said, looking over at him. “And good acting, too, Diego. I hope everything functions according to plan. Now, follow me to the meeting room and I will tell you the next steps before we put everything in motion.”

  Diego stood up and smiled at those present before disappearing into the subterranean tunnels. He was accompanied by Otón, Pinardo, and Tomás, as well as six other knights who frequently attended their meetings.

  Bruno was already seated at the center of the large table, and as the knights filed in, they all sat as well, not losing any time. He raised his voice to call their attention.

  “Our informers assure us that the enemy courier left Seville with the message three days ago,” Bruno said, bringing them up to date. “He’s also been seen passing through Jaén and Écija, which means that if he keeps up that pace, he’ll arrive at the Muradal Pass tonight around midnight. The idea is to place Diego near its end, before he enters the plateau, on the edge of the road. For everything to turn out the way we want, we need to take care of a number of issues before nightfall. While Pinardo finishes with his makeup, Otón will organize a party to distract the enemy, pulling them away and leaving the path open for Diego. Use twenty horsemen!” Otón showed his agreement. “The more they are, the more troops they’ll devote to chasing you down. The key in this mission is to get Diego’s disguise to provoke pity,” Bruno continued, turning now to Diego. “What do you do then?”

  “He’ll believe I’ve been wounded and when he comes close, I’ll stab him in the neck with my dagger.” He breathed nervously, not yet resigned to that difficult task. “So he doesn’t shout, I’ll have to do it fast, and the cut needs to be deep. Then I’ll take the message and hide his body in one of the small caves that run along the slopes of the gulley.”