The Horse Healer

by Gonzalo Giner

  Diego looked at a nearby sundial on a tower close to the river and was surprised to see it was still midday, the hour agreed upon, and he still hadn’t seen any visitor.

  “Oranges are bitter this season …” The voice surprised him. It belonged to a man in a turban and blue tunic.

  “I prefer the winter ones as well.”

  With that answer, each knew who the other was.

  “I’ll take you to my house, but first you need to know the location of the three great conduits that open onto the river.” The man pointed to a place very close to where they were. “You see the first one there? The other one, the next one, used to be named for Saint Bernard. And the third of those old pipes that still bring water to the city is called the cat’s cradle.”

  “I’ll use the first one to leave, it’s the closest one to the castle. Now let’s go; we’re too exposed and besides, I’m hungry as a wolf.”

  “Then follow me. My code name is Blue Heron.”

  In the neighboring village of Coria, on the left bank of the Guadalquivir, the man had possession of a mill and a villa with large stables. They left their horses in there and ate while they discussed their next steps.

  “I am only acting as an intermediary,” the Blue Heron explained. “The next thing you’ll do is look for Wild Fox inside Seville. I can’t help you any more. For security reasons, I don’t know where he lives. That way we avoid getting each other caught if one of us happens to get arrested.”

  “Don’t worry, I know where to find him. He has to help me with the plans for the castle. Something else: I’ve noticed a lot of troops gathered on the outskirts of the city. Do you know what might be going on?”

  “There are rumors of an imminent attack against Castile. Wild Fox is in charge of confirming that information and then alerting Salvatierra if necessary. Ask him; I don’t know anything else.”

  During lunch, they discussed what Blue Heron had found out about the Almohad’s head of espionage; they believed he was of Castilian origin, but no one knew anything about him. Diego devoured the flavorful fish with cabbage and carrots without knowing when he might eat hot food again. The fragrant wine that accompanied it helped to draw out their midafternoon rest.

  Shortly after he’d left Blue Heron’s villa behind, Diego saw the skyline of Seville and was conscious that from then on, the most dangerous part of the plan was in motion. He would finally be taking action.

  He rearranged the disguise he would employ to get in and followed the riverbank until he arrived at the city, then crossed over a new bridge with the idea of entering through the Gate of Water.

  He walked without fear of being recognized. The niqab hid his head entirely, save for the small slit he saw through. Under a long tunic, he wore a closer-fitting shirt that he had stuffed with cotton to give the appearance of a woman’s breasts. From outside, no one could doubt that he was a woman, and the donkey that accompanied him, loaded down with containers of water, also left no doubt as to her profession.

  “Where are you going, woman?” A soldier stopped Diego before he made it to the gate.

  Diego raised his hand to his throat, implying that he was mute.

  “You can’t speak, I understand. … Let me see what you have here.” He uncovered the containers and bent over to see what was inside them. Once he saw it was water, he let Diego through. “You may go ahead.”

  He crossed through the archway and promptly turned down an alley to the left. Before it ran into a wall, he took another, circuitous one that went right and then diagonally, crossing a small square that was known throughout the city for its famous baths. Only two streets away, to the right, once he had crossed through another, smaller square, he should find a dead end and just before that, the house of the Wild Fox.

  An old man stopped him short while he was trying to cross through the second of these squares and tried to buy a pitcher of water.

  “Some water bearer you are. … If you don’t shout, how are you going to sell?”

  Diego once more made the gesture suggesting he was mute while he filled up the man’s pitcher. He drank it in one swig.

  “Water bearer and mute, what luck.” He spit on the ground and asked for another. He looked for two coins and gave them to Diego, who began to feel uncomfortable under the pressure of the man’s gaze. He lowered his head so he wouldn’t look him in the eyes, praying for him to leave as soon as possible, which he did.

  Shortly after that, he was inside the home of his contact, in his courtyard. The Calatravan received him with a nervous gesture, but Diego was relieved to find himself safe. His face seemed familiar.

  “It’s urgent that they know!” He shook Diego as if his life depended on it. “It’s a disaster!”

  “But what’s happening?” Diego took off the niqab and helped the man to calm down.

  “I just found out the caliph is going to attack Salvatierra, and the worst thing is, they’re already on their way.”

  “How can that be? I haven’t crossed paths with any army except in the fields here on the outskirts of the city.”

  “Those are the last of them. The rest have taken another route, I think through Jaén, where they will be joined by troops coming from Africa.”

  Diego asked him if he had sent a message in warning.

  “I was just about to do it. Come with me, fast.”

  Diego left the donkey in the courtyard and lifted his tunic to be able to run up the stairs to the roof of the buildings. On one end, he saw a small dovecote with no more than a dozen birds.

  Before he took one, the man remembered that he hadn’t given him the plans to the caliph’s palace.

  “Take this before I forget. You’ll find three of his rooms marked with a blue cross; the book you’re looking for could be in any of them. The red crosses indicate the places where the caliph’s personal guard is housed. Stay away from them. I risked a great deal to get this information, but I trust it will help you. And one last thing, I must remind you that to leave Seville, you’ll need to return to this house. I will furnish you with a new identity and the proper clothes.”

  “Yes, of course. Count on it.”

  Diego hid the plans in the inner pocket of his tunic and watched what the man did with the doves. Amid the rush and the scrambled nerves, the man let one escape; another one almost did the same, but he caught it by the neck.

  He looked for the strongest one and began to wrap a small fragment of parchment around its leg while he repeated over and over what a disaster awaited them if it didn’t arrive at Salvatierra in time. The matter was so urgent that there was no time to use their more secure systems like the cylinders Diego had seen before. With the dove, the information would hopefully beat the enemy there.

  Diego looked at their surroundings from the roof. When he found a small raised spot, he got an excellent view of the city. They weren’t far from the minaret, and therefore from the castle, and they could see a few of its battlements and outer walls.

  The sky was beginning to turn pink and orange as the sun escaped behind the horizon, when Diego heard voices. Below them, in the square, he saw a group of men singing and women applauding them. Everything seemed normal.

  He turned to Wild Fox. He had just tied the cord around the dove’s foot and was about to set it free for the first leg of its critical flight.

  “Go, little one,” he whispered into its ear. “Travel swift as the wind, let it carry you. Duck the headwinds, escape the storms, and reach your destination soon.”

  He let it go, and the bird winged away with zeal. It rose and made a couple of circles over the house. The two of them followed it, waiting for it to find its direction and finally fly toward the north. But at that moment, a shadow appeared, large in size and ragingly fast, threatening the dove in its flight.

  “What is that?” Diego asked.

  “No … It’s a hawk!” Th
e Calatravan choked as he said it. “That means they’ve found us. We have to flee!” he screamed.

  They saw the brutal collision of the hawk with the dove; a cloud of feathers left a sign of the hunt, and the dove beat its wings once more in the clutches of the sharp claws. Diego watched it until he saw with fright that its flight ended in the main square. There was a detachment of soldiers there, and he saw one catch the hawk on his leather glove. Their eyes crossed. Now there was no room for doubt. The situation was desperate.

  He heard a high-pitched whistle pass by his cheek. Out of instinct, he ducked. It had been an arrow.

  “Where can we flee to?” he asked Wild Fox.

  When he turned, he had to hold out his arms to keep from falling. He saw that the arrow had entered in one of the man’s eyes and was lodged in his brain. The poor man was already dead.

  Diego left him stretched out on the ground and heard a chorus of voices underneath the house. He looked around, clueless as to how he would escape. No one had foreseen this situation, but there was no time to regret that and even less time to hesitate.

  He ran to one edge of the roof and studied the situation. Close to the building, there was another, a bit lower, but it seemed too far to jump. Before deciding, Diego looked to see if there was any other way. Then he lifted his tunic to his waist, tied it in a knot, hid the niqab inside, and gave himself a running start.

  While he was in the air, he thought he wouldn’t make it, regardless of the enormous force of his leap. He felt all the blood in his body accumulate in his legs when he took off. A few feet from the edge, his temples began throbbing from clenching his jaws. Without breathing, harnessing all his might, he made it to the other roof, rolling across it and feeling a shower of arrows coming down around him. He ran, avoiding them as best he could, and jumped onto a lower sloping roof. When he looked back, he saw two soldiers on his trail. One had just jumped onto the roof of the first building. The second, snagged on a ledge, recovered and ran after him as well, screaming something incomprehensible.

  Diego guessed at the distance between himself and the street and jumped, seeing no one else close by. Once on the ground, he began to run through a confused network of streets that seemed to lead to nowhere. It was getting late, and in the darkness, everything blended together, but Diego was still able to follow the path he had memorized without the least hesitation.

  When he could tell the soldiers were getting closer, he thought about his alternatives. To turn back to the gate where he’d entered the city was suicide, because the guards would already be notified of his flight and would have sealed the exits. He thought of the tunnels, which didn’t seem a bad idea, but he had just left the closest one behind and couldn’t turn back. With few other options, he concentrated on gaining speed to at least get as far as possible from his pursuers.

  After recognizing a small mosque in one of the alleyways, he thought of the other buildings that he would be coming up on, in case any could serve as a temporary hiding place. When he went over them one by one, he suddenly thought of a brilliant solution.

  He calculated that only three streets away he would come upon the palace of the Persian ambassador, and he remembered Benazir. Years ago he had heard she’d gone back to Seville after her separation from Galib. Though it was true that many years had passed, whether she was there or not, that was his only hope of salvation.

  He covered his head with the niqab and ran as fast as he could until he arrived at the palace gates. He pounded for them to open, looking behind himself the whole time. No one answered. He tried again, this time with an enormous knocker shaped like a panther’s head. He waited, panting, all his muscles tensed. No one would open. He looked for somewhere to hide and found two large barrels against a wall. He ran to them and hid himself. Soon afterward, he could see the same men who had followed him and after them at least a dozen more. All overlooked him, and Diego seized the moment to return to the door and knock again.

  At last someone opened it a bit. A woman stuck out her head and asked the purpose of his visit.

  “I need to speak to Benazir, it’s urgent.” Diego disguised his voice to not sound too masculine. The woman could tell there was something strange there. She began to close the door when someone spoke from inside.

  “Who is it?”

  “Who are you?” the woman at the door asked him.

  “Please, I pray you, tell her it is one of Galib’s sisters.” Diego thought that would provoke her immediate interest. He needed them to open up the gates, to enter as soon as possible, or else he would be discovered.

  The door opened a bit and Benazir appeared there, more mature but still as beautiful as he remembered. She looked askance at that woman hidden under the niqab, curious as to why she would have mentioned that name.

  Had it not been for the presence of the servant, Diego would have taken off his head covering at that moment, revealing his identity. But if he did, she might take fright and call the guards. He decided to keep up the subterfuge.

  “He sends me. … You must listen to me, it is a matter of extreme importance to all, especially for you.”

  Benazir recognized something familiar in that voice, though it was distorted by the presence of that thick cloth.

  “Come in and tell me.” She let him through, finally, and Diego rushed in, causing both women to feel nervous.

  “May we speak in private?”

  Benazir was unsure whether it wouldn’t be prudent to remain with her servant. That woman, her hurried appearance, the time, the strangeness of the situation … She was going to tell him no.

  Diego could guess her thoughts, and knowing he could be thrown out, he tried another strategy.

  “I’m from Malagón; do you remember me?”

  Benazir brought her hands to her lips, stunned. She hadn’t heard word of that place since she lived in Toledo. And now the voice was a little deeper, more masculine. It couldn’t be, she thought.

  “Ishamadi, you can go now. If my father looks for me, I’ll be in the reading room.”

  She tried to recall whom those eyes beneath the niqab could belong to and finally she recognized him.

  “And you come with me …” Before she finished the phrase, she made sure her servant could no longer hear. “Diego de Malagón.”

  VIII.

  In scarcely an hour, Diego had recounted all his ups and downs from the time of his escape from Toledo until he had appeared at that door, dressed as a woman, with half the city chasing him.

  Benazir listened to him nervously, because his presence, besides joy, stirred up bad memories.

  “How could I make that mistake?” she mourned. “Believe me, I’ve thought of it so many times. To lose my head that way, when you were only a boy …”

  A sharp pain, very deep, was reflected in her wounded, fleeting stare.

  “Maybe it’s better to leave all that behind us …”

  “I never could, Diego. I’ve thought about it many times, maybe in an attempt to clear my conscience, or else to just understand myself. And I’ve realized that throughout my life, I’ve only known how to waste everything good that’s been given to me. In Toledo, I was always obsessed with appearing to be something I wasn’t; I tried to be a desirable, charming, seductive woman, forgetting what I really cared about: my husband. I looked down on his work, his responsibilities; I began to hate how even-tempered he was. I acted without maturity, spitefully; I was foolish … or just stupid, to be more exact.” She caught a tear that was streaming down her cheek. “I came to Toledo and to married life without ever learning how to be myself. Though the years had passed, I was still a girl, I couldn’t take on the role life had chosen for me, be a responsible woman, faithful, a loving wife … I did everything wrong, Diego, terribly—”

  “Maybe you’re being too hard on yourself,” Diego interrupted.

  “Hard? Hard, you say?” Her chin
trembled and her nervous hands flew from her lap to her chin and then to her dress. “Can you imagine what it feels like when you take stock of your whole life and you don’t find anything important in it? Does it not seem incredible to you that a person can be marked forever by one tragic mistake, just one, however unimportant it was?”

  Diego was filled with compassion and felt the need to embrace her. Despite that terrible occurrence, Benazir had been an essential part of his path in those early years of his youth, so full of doubts. At her side he had learned to speak Arabic and discovered the universe of translation in Toledo. She was the one who gave him his first book; he still remembered it, and he remembered, too, that ill-fated trip through the marshes of Guadalquivir. But more than anything, she had been a fascination for Diego, the object of his passions, a savage temptation, awakening his sensuality.

  And he realized he still adored her.

  He stroked her hair in silence while he remembered those deep conversations with Galib, when he defined her as unique, irreplaceable, a precious essence, the inheritor of the desert, indomitable, indefinable, shifting as the sands. He could still see his master with his eyes inflamed and his hands quivering with emotion when he uttered each of those words.

  “From what you say, you have achieved almost everything you set out to do.” Benazir admired him with her warm, honey-colored eyes. “When I saw you for the first time in Toledo, you were no one, just a young commoner, son of a poor innkeeper. At fourteen you were already full of ambition and the will to be someone.”

  “You’re right. At that moment I wasn’t just running from the Saracens, I was trying to achieve a dream forbidden to people of my class: to learn, to acquire the necessary experience, to brush up against the wisdom hidden in books, absorb the principles of science, master the knowledge of things. How innocent I was; I didn’t imagine then that knowledge went hand in hand with power, and that only the nobles or the priests could have it. It wasn’t there for a poor son of the earth like myself.”