The Horse Healer Read online

  The killer jumped into the driver’s seat and took the reins. Blanca and Estela were thrown over the haunches of the two horses and landed at their captors’ feet. They turned the cart around and headed toward the south. Just three-quarters of a league afterward, they overtook the hill, shrouded in a cloud of dust.

  He was going to speak when he heard steps once again, this time on the stairs. He threw the crossbow to his father and hid, sword in hand, behind the door. He felt his heart pounding, and a cold sweat dripped down his neck. He asked himself if he would be brave enough to face them.

  By the sound of the steps, it was clear there were two of them.

  Diego nudged the door with his right arm to surprise the first person who came in with his sword. He squeezed it with all his might, preparing himself to pierce a coat of chain mail if necessary. He heard one of them breathing and poised for attack.

  He looked at his father.

  He had the crossbow aimed in the same direction. And when Diego saw the first shadow cross the door, and his sword began to travel through the air, a shout stopped him.

  “Hold back, son! They’re from our side.”

  Two knights of Calatrava appeared in the doorway bearing two heavy blades. The tension of the past few hours was legible on their faces.

  “Are you the innkeeper?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “We’ve come with orders to help you flee, just as our brothers are doing in all the other villages. We have to get away immediately,” he continued, his voice faltering. “They’re close on our heels.”

  The one who looked older tried to help Don Marcelo get out of the bed, but he refused.

  “You saw your sisters in danger, right, Diego?”

  The boy nodded, full of anguish, without daring to recount what had happened.

  The knights were watching but didn’t understand what lay behind those words.

  “Run and help my daughters,” he said to the Calatravans. “Something has happened to them and they’ve tried to get away. They need you more than I do. Go fast, before it’s too late.”

  The men looked at each other without being able to hide an expression of absolute disagreement. That was going to complicate their task. They were knights, and they couldn’t abandon a defenseless man, but they also did not wish to leave women in danger.

  They decided to split up and help both the father and the girls, but at that moment they heard a great rejoicing on the lower floor. They heard voices, crystal-clear, speaking in Arabic.

  “They’re already here!” One of the Calatravans looked out the window to see the location of the stables. He confirmed there was no danger in going to them. “We can hold off the first attack and maybe even the second, depending on the number of our enemies, but we won’t hold out for much more.”

  “Tell me how I can help,” Diego interrupted.

  One of the knights gave him a severe look.

  “When they get here, you jump out of this window,” he said, pointing to it. “And then I want to see you run to the stables and get on a horse. Once you do it, ride off, and don’t let it stop until you’re far away from here. You should head north.”

  “I won’t obey you!” he responded.

  “My son …” Don Marcelo struggled, enraged amid the sheets, and pierced the boy with his gaze. “You’ve already made one mistake! Don’t do it again.”

  “But, Father, how can I abandon you?” Diego ran up to the bed.

  “You disobeyed me and now your three sisters are in danger. It’s time you do what you’re told for once! Listen to the man!”

  “They’re coming up!” The Calatravans stood one on each side of the door.

  “Run, now!”

  One last look full of pain, full of love, between the boy and his father before madness struck. Three men with black complexions, turbans, and flamboyant uniforms gave off loud cries, shaking Diego from his stupor. The first clashes of the swords, the enraged faces of the Christians, his father’s entreaties—maybe all of it together filled him with confusion as he stood beside the window. He jumped and rolled over the earth. Then he ran and ran. The stables seemed farther away than normal. He found his mare, who was nervous and trying to tear herself loose. To save time, he jumped on her without saddling her and grabbed hold of her mane, weaving it between his fingers.

  “Get me out of here, Sabba,” he whispered in her ear. “Fly … and don’t stop until I tell you.”

  The mare headed toward the wooden doorway and when she’d stepped out of the stable, she flew into a gallop, leaving behind twenty soldiers who were snooping around the area of the inn, looking for more Christian victims. Just as quickly, three of them hopped on their horses to pursue him. Diego, almost falling over his mare’s neck, spoke to her gently, encouraging her to show the power her breed was known for, the strength of her noble blood. He needed her to outrun his enemies.

  Going over a low promontory, in shock, he found his sister Belinda’s body. He saw it from afar and felt the sting of powerlessness. He knew he couldn’t stop. When he looked back, he saw a thirst for death that infused the faces of those who stalked him, the fury of their horses, and the danger in their intentions.

  He came within a few feet of her. Her face showed a terrible, bottomless fear. Her body was covered in blood and her nails were digging into the earth, as though by holding on to it, she could hold on to life as well.

  Still at a gallop, without ceasing to look at her, Diego understood what his obligation was, remembering the promises he’d made his father, and he decided to go help his other sisters. Sabba, disciplined, noticed the slight pressure of his knee in her left ribs and changed direction.

  Hundreds of pebbles flew up from her hooves, even more so when she understood her master’s wishes. In fact, he scarcely had to guide her; she herself chose the route. She stayed clear of the rockier areas that would slow her down and sped up over the smooth, sandy plains.

  On reaching an elevation, Diego looked back, thinking he had put some distance between himself and his attackers. But it wasn’t so. One of the men, perhaps with a stronger horse, was coming up on him with hellish speed.

  Diego spoke to Sabba again, asking her to run harder, to give it everything she had. And she did it, without knowing where such energy came from. She galloped tirelessly southward, ignoring the strain of it, measuring neither time nor distance.

  After making sure he’d been able to leave his attackers behind, he came up to a tortuous mountain pass. There, in the deepest part of a narrow gulch, he found the cart, but not his sisters.

  A large group of soldiers, black skinned like the others, were seated on blankets, passing around a variety of objects. It seemed they had stopped to gloat over the spoils of war.

  The camp consisted of a single, fairly small tent, round and vivid red in color.

  Diego dismounted from Sabba, told her to keep quiet, and crouched behind an enormous boulder, studying how to make his approach.

  He spied ten women tied together close to a fire. His sisters weren’t there.

  When twilight fell, white-faced men began to leave from the tent, dressed in their battle clothes with shields, turbans, and leather helmets. One of them was dragging Blanca by her hair while she kicked and screamed. Behind her, in the hands of a taller man, was her sister Estela. Her skirt was shredded and her shirt torn and hanging open. The scoundrel was dragging her by the wrist as if she were an animal he had hunted and killed.

  Diego breathed rapidly, imagining with dread what must have happened to them. When he saw the man with Estela, he noticed an unmistakable particularity in his face. A scar ran across his forehead, from one end to the other. But something else called his attention as well: both in his dress and in other aspects, he seemed to be a Christian soldier and not a Saracen.

  He sat up to see him better, and it was then that the man, tu
rning his head and looking in the same direction, revealed his face in full. Diego memorized it. He saw how Estela hit him and how her captor, enraged, slapped her face. And suddenly the black guard looked up to where Diego was. There was no chance to hide. Had he seen him? Diego doubted it.

  He heard horses approaching and realized he couldn’t risk waiting if they were coming from those who had chased him before. Aware that alone, he could do nothing, he thought of the Calatravans; they could help him.

  He mounted Sabba and decided to turn back toward the inn. At his orders, the mare flew off, pushed ahead by the fury of the deserts that coursed through her veins. The wind blew away her sweat and the earth seemed to press her ahead. The animal was compressing all the strength of her breed in that dazzling getaway. And in that way, they distanced themselves from the area, so much so that she began to gain confidence and to slow down to a soft trot. A little later, once again close to the inn, Diego studied the situation with extreme care, making sure that nobody was lurking around.

  Soon he found Belinda’s stretched-out body, but she was not alone. Vultures were tearing at her clothing and her flesh. He prodded Sabba to frighten them off, holding back his urge to vomit. It took various attempts before he managed to run them off, and afterward, he got off the horse to embrace her. He squeezed her in his arms, telling her he loved her, screaming into the air so all the world would know of her misfortune. But he refused to look at her; what he held in his arms was not his sister anymore.

  He raised up and hopped back onto Sabba’s flanks. With Belinda’s mutilated cadaver, he headed toward the inn with no idea of what else he would find there. When he arrived, he left the mare tied to a tree and looked for the entrance. He crossed through the dining room. Everything was quiet and disordered. Nothing indicated the presence of another soul. He climbed up to the second floor and found the two dead Calatravans. The bed was empty and the sheets scattered on the floor, blotched with blood. Diego looked for his father among the three other bodies lying on the floor, but none of them was him. Unsettled, he couldn’t figure out what had happened.

  He went downstairs to look for some clue but could find nothing inside the house. He went outside, and when he turned toward the stables, he stopped short.

  There he was, in a horrendous pose. Diego’s pulse began racing and he ran over to his father. They had thrown him out the window, and his head was cocked at an impossible angle.

  Diego wept for him, bit his lips, felt a hate inside himself he’d never known before. And there, crouching down at the side of his father’s body, he remained, without knowing how many hours might have passed. Drowning in agony and fear, his mind had fogged over, as though he was living in an all-encompassing nightmare with no exit.

  The coolness of the afternoon finally pulled him from his delirium. He had to think of what to do with those dead bodies. He grabbed his father by the ankles and pulled, dragging him over the ground, unable to look at him and horrified by what he was doing.

  He looked for Sabba. The mare recoiled nervously on seeing them appear and Belinda’s body tumbled to the ground. Diego, panting, laid his father beside Belinda while he cried disconsolately. He thought of where to bury them and looked around. He remembered the two knights. He knew he couldn’t dig four graves and he thought of burying them in the same pit. But when he saw the lake, another idea occurred to him.

  With Sabba’s help he took them all to the edge of the shore and tied heavy stones to them. Afterward, out in the water, he sank the two brave men, saying prayers for them.

  When Diego saw his father’s and sister’s faces disappear in the cloudy water, his soul was torn in two. Only a few hours separated him from his previous happiness, normality, his life together with his family, the beings he loved more than anything. And now, his father and his sister were sunk in the lake and Blanca and Estela victims of a cruel destiny.

  Everything he was—his family, his roots—everything had been devastated at the hands of those barbarians whom he now hated down to the very depths of his soul.

  His father’s final rebuke resounded in his mind. His disobedience had brought about his older sister’s horrid death and the kidnapping of the other two.

  “I made a mistake,” he repeated over and over, crying without respite. “I beg the forgiveness of God, of the heavens, of everyone …”

  With his feelings on edge as he traveled to Toledo where he would look for help in rescuing his sisters, Diego slowed Sabba down, almost stopping her. He turned back. It was almost night.

  His gaze turned southward, toward nothing in particular.

  At fourteen years of age, without family, without money, abandoned to an uncertain future, he felt lost. He had the feeling he had lost his past forever.

  And there, trailed by a cool westerly breeze, surrounded by the aroma of broom and with his mare, Sabba, as a witness, he swore out loud he would avenge his people’s deaths.

  One day, he would defeat the Imesebelen.

  IV.

  Toledo didn’t want them.

  The doors to the city were closed by order of the bailiff, who was alarmed by the massive numbers of country people coming from the south.

  An endless line of carts had blocked the bridges over the Tagus River as well as the other roads into the city and its outskirts.

  The authorities had tried to convince people to set up camp in the royal gardens, the Huerta del Rey, to the north, over a broad field bordered by the river, which the king himself had placed at their disposal, but nobody obeyed. To the contrary, the embittered masses began to respond with sticks and stones, and they menacingly waved their rakes and pitchforks.

  Thousands of throats shouted, indignant, complaining of their rejection. Voices of farm workers and commoners, men and women turned out of their houses by war, still terrified, thinking the enemy was at their back.

  Never before had Toledo been witness to so much desperation in one place, nor to such a clamor.

  Diego had arrived at dawn, protected by a large caravan, and now he found himself trapped between the entrance of the bridge of Alcántara, pushed by a furious sea of men and beasts, carriages and freight.

  On the way, he found out that the caliph’s troops had taken all the land stretching from Malagón to the Guadiana River. The place where his family’s inn had stood no longer belonged to the kingdom of Castile. The situation was so dangerous there that to turn back could only be called suicide, not valor. Those he talked to assured him he would find no one willing to help him find his sisters and that he would die if he attempted to turn back.

  With the memory of his disgrace still fresh before him, and the contagious nervousness all around, he sensed the proximity of disaster as he stood there on the bridge. Sabba did as well. She shook her head tensely and tried to find an opening amid the multitude. Diego began to scream at the people around him, pressuring them to step aside. Fearing they would be trampled, some let them through, glancing at Diego and Sabba with jealousy and rage.

  And all of a sudden, a mounting racket drowned out the din of the people. Thousands of women, filled with tenacity and rage and weary of so much disdain, began beating their pots and pans and all sorts of other objects against the stones of the bridge. That penetrating noise became lodged in the stones of the city walls themselves, as well as in the consciousness of those who had barred the people entry, and began to echo in their ears.

  Sabba, terrified, reared up angrily and lifted her forelegs, at last making an opening. Horse and rider managed to escape from the lunacy just in time to avoid the frightful wave of panic that swept through the crowd right afterward.

  Someone shouted that the Saracens were coming and that word coursed through the procession of the displaced like a terrible wind. Such terror arose that the people made a mad dash for the city walls. Some, in despair, jumped from the bridge into the river. Others leapt over the crowd, until others pu
lled them down and, finally, they were trampled. The horses kicked and bucked around them. Many women, arduously carrying their children, fell to the ground and disappeared amid the hysterical multitude. Those who were closest to the gates were crushed against them, and even still, they weren’t opened.

  Luckily Diego had managed to make it onto a hill from which he could see the profusion of jagged stone that bore up the city of Toledo, three of its four sides protected by the jagged cliffs leading down to the river. From there he could also see the frightened multitude. The people massed together flowed over the bridges then pressed themselves into the gates of the city amid wails and howls. The air shattered before them and panic descended upon everyone.

  When they figured out the warning had been false, a chorus of grief and sorrow shuddered through the scene before him. The carts were piled with bodies and the atmosphere was dense with an extraordinary grief. Little by little, as the hours passed, the refugees dwindled away and they began to be seen again at the Huerta del Rey.

  Diego remained still, standing before the city with his soul in torment. The memories of his previous trip to Toledo made him forget the enormity of the experience he’d just lived through for a moment.

  He had gone with his father three years ago, when Don Marcelo’s terrible illness was only beginning. There had been a few severe but inconsistent fevers that would sometimes cause him to lose consciousness. Then there were the spasms, and immobility in his arms. The village barber declared it beyond his abilities and counseled Diego and his sisters to take their father to the offices of a famous surgeon in Toledo, a Hebrew of great fame and hands of gold.

  As he gazed now at the city’s profile, Diego had no problem making out the Jewish quarter, the aljama; it was an enclosed area, walled in on the eastern side. He remembered its tortuous alleys leading up to the house of Josef Alfakhar. He was a scrawny person of wizened aspect, old, with a cultured way of speaking, graceful manners, and a sharp gaze. Diego could still remember the intense aroma that infused everything there and the image of flasks of herbs and colored powders extending far and wide over the walls of his office.