The Horse Healer (11 page)

XVII.

G
alib and Diego worked night and day.

Busying himself with the animals, the albéitar wanted to think of nothing else. His wife was passing through a bad moment and his young assistant seemed always ill because he was so tired. Still, Galib had been sucked into a spiral of work and it didn't even permit him to see anyone else's problems.

Diego and Sajjad had proposed to Galib that he contract a builder to organize the new stables, but Galib either didn't want or couldn't permit himself a single expense except for returning the money for the animals that had died in the fire.

For that reason, Diego and Sajjad began to rebuild the stables themselves with the little they knew about construction. At the same time, Diego accompanied his master and gave remedies to the animals that had to stay with them regardless of the circumstances, but if they cured them during the day then they wouldn't have to sleep outside.

Galib lost his serenity. He paid visits during the day, helped to raise the new stables in the afternoon, at night, before dawn. He tried to get everything ready as soon as possible and all he managed was a ramshackle construction that collapsed after a few days and wounded Sajjad's already injured leg. Sajjad had to remain bedbound a few days and Galib felt responsible as well for what had happened to his old helper. For that reason, whenever he could, he went to see him to attend to whatever his needs were. To his misfortune, he had lost a worker and now had another task on his hands.

“This situation is madness!” Benazir shouted at him one day. “I can't do it anymore. You don't sleep, you don't eat, you don't leave anyone in peace. It was your small-mindedness that led to Sajjad's accident. You made him work on something he didn't know how to do. You should have paid someone to build the stables. … Our life has become a madhouse!”

“I can't do anything else. It will only be awhile, then it will be over.”

“I can't do it anymore. I think you're losing your judgment. I see Diego working alone on the construction and he's going to get hurt, too, or else you will, I don't know … We can't go on like this.”

That day, Galib left the house so he wouldn't argue with Benazir. He knew she was right, though he didn't want to admit it. He had put useless pressure on everyone, since getting back to his previous situation would take lots of time that he didn't have. He spent all the day away without anyone knowing where he had gone, and when he came back, well into the night, he told everyone his decision.

“I will go to Las Marismas with Kabirma and his daughter. I've already talked it over with him. He assures me there is a route that almost no one else knows. That's the one we will take. Getting through the guards who normally watch over the wetlands is another matter, but we'll figure that out when we get there. We'll leave in four days. I'm counting on you”—he looked at Diego—“to take care of Benazir and Sajjad in my absence. I can't risk your safety.”

When he heard this, Diego felt crestfallen. He was going to be left in Toledo. For three years he had dreamed of only one thing, going to rescue his sisters, and his master knew that was what was most important for him.

“Don't ask that of me, I beg you.” To stay looking after the house and Sajjad would mean being too close to Benazir, and many hours alone with her. And he didn't want to even imagine that torture.

“It's decided,” Galib said. “I understand your disappointment and I can imagine the cause of it, but I cannot put my wife's life in danger, and besides, I will try to make the journey quickly, take what animals we can, and return. If we had to go looking for your family, we wouldn't even know where to start. You don't know Seville. It's a big city. Perhaps you think you would arrive and they would be there waiting for you. That is the furthest thing from reality. I don't know where they might be. Nobody does. It would complicate everything and it would leave me exposed. It can't be, no.”

Diego clenched his fists with rage, angered by Galib's lack of sensitivity.

“I don't understand.”

“What more can I tell you? Have I not been very clear?” Galib stared at him firmly.

Diego thought of a new argument, refusing to accept the situation.

“I don't understand how you can leave Benazir in Toledo after knowing the fire was set on purpose, maybe by someone who considers all Muslims his enemy. … Have a good time. Even if I try to take care of her, there will be many times when I will have to be away, and I remind you, I have to sleep in my house at night. Remember the prohibition?” Galib was affected by the reasonableness of what the boy said. “Imagine what could happen to Benazir if word gets out that she sleeps alone at night, her only help a cripple, which is what Sajjad is now.”

“And what will we do with Sajjad?” Galib replied, clearly with less strength than before. “We can't take him with us, but I think he can take care of himself.”

“Sajjad no give problem. … His leg better,” the poor old man said.

“And how will we manage to convince them that you are not Christian?”

“Take me with another name. I will dress like you. I don't see the problem in it.”

“If they find us out, they will kill us. This journey will not be easy.”

“If Fatima is going,” Benazir said, “I don't see what is wrong with all of us going. Diego is right, it's no less dangerous going than staying here.”

“It's very risky, Benazir, and you know it. We live in very troubled times. I am especially worried about our entrance into Seville. Who doesn't know you there?”

“Diego can go to Seville with Kabirma. We can wait for them elsewhere, far from there.”

Galib spent three days more preoccupied than normal, barely speaking, as if he still hadn't decided one way or another. But the next morning, Benazir found him setting clothing over a blanket and laying his surgical instruments in a small suitcase.

“Well?” his wife asked him.

“Get ready, I will go to speak with a friend who owes me a favor so that he comes to see Sajjad from time to time. Tell Diego as well, we are going. When you have everything ready, we will go look for Kabirma. He will be waiting for us.”

Hours later, once they were together, they headed west and then south. They had decided against taking the route that united Toledo and Córdoba, the one everyone used. Their path would take them two days more, but it was scarcely populated when it wasn't completely empty. It passed far from the castles and fortresses, both the Arab and the Christian ones, and it was the one Kabirma always took when transporting his merchandise.

The man from Jerez had a prized safe-conduct paper signed by the vizier himself, which gave Kabirma freedom to roam and to buy and sell in Al-Andalus. Still, that pass did not render the travelers invulnerable, especially during the first four days of their travels, before and after they crossed the frontier. There, the tension was higher, given the numerous raids that took place among the different groups of bandits. In total, they calculated it would be fifteen days until they arrived at Las Marismas, as long as they didn't take too long in Seville. Diego promised he would lose little time there, even though he would try to figure out where his sisters had ended up. All of them had a spare horse and the utensils and rations they would need so that they would be able to make it through the whole trip. Fatima rode her handsome Asmerion, an Arabian stallion with an almost white coat and a mane so long it almost stretched to the spurs. Her small, lithe body seemed almost lost atop his enormous back.

A few leagues from Toledo, on the way to Pulgar, they came across a dozen Calatravan knights and their squires. They were coming back from an incursion into enemy territory, a place near where Kabirma's group was about to pass.

That first night, they camped on the banks of a creek and built a fire. A little after dinner they slept, barely speaking, in pain and tired from their many hours on the road, seated in the hard saddles. The next day, a long journey up to the most dangerous portion of the journey, the frontier, awaited them.

They woke up very early and headed south. At midday they stopped at the banks of a small river where Kabirma explained to them the next steps.

“For the next few days, we will follow a long ravine that was used by pastors looking for the cool pastureland of the north in the summers and those of the south in the wintertime.”

Kabirma knew it well, since he had used it transporting horses in times when it was prohibited. That path, between low hills and mountainous ports, valleys, mountain paths, and plateaus, trailed along far from the important villages and was peopled only by jackdaws, thrushes, and many vultures. It was the perfect path to pass unperceived at least to the Sierra del Norte in Seville. From there, they would have to be more careful, because the later routes were more traveled.

When the afternoon was almost over and they were close to the frontier, they skirted a small town called Alcoba and then scaled a series of hills from which they could see the narrow valley and then beyond it, the Guadiana River. When they finally reached its edge, darkness enveloped everything, and they decided to stop on the outskirts and cross over the following day.

“If we light a fire, it will give us away,” Kabirma said, stopping Galib. “It's better if we eat something cold.”

The tension in the air was evident. They all knew that it was one of the most dangerous moments of the trip and Kabirma and Galib tried not to worry their companions, but it was clear that they felt rather nervous.

The man from Jerez decided to set up camp in a narrow clearing between a group of twenty or so hundred-year-old birches. While Benazir made something for dinner, Diego and Fatima took the horses over to the river to let them drink.

They descended down a sharp slope to a flat terrace at a bend in the river, with plenty of pasture and easy access to the shore. They let the horses loose and sat on a tree trunk while they observed their movements.

“It seems that your mare and Asmerion are becoming something more than just mere friends.” The stallion sniffed at Sabba with interest and she did not appear to reject him.

Fatima loosened her ponytail and let her hair fall over her shoulders flirtatiously. She saw that Diego was very stiff. He looked around to see if anyone was spying on them. The girl tried to lower the tension and resumed the conversation they'd had several months back.

“Are you in love again?”

Diego swallowed and sighed uncomfortably without giving an answer. He felt incapable of expressing his sentiments and didn't know how to distinguish them. Love, attraction, he didn't know what he felt. Except for Fatima and Benazir, the only feminine references he'd known in his life were his sisters, and he'd never spoken to them about these matters. He looked at her askance and felt something like vertigo, as if he was pushing into an unknown world, rife with uncertainties.

Fatima didn't realize that Diego didn't enjoy talking about these topics and thought he was just on edge because of the danger that Kabirma and Galib had warned him of.

“I don't know if you've ever felt true love. But … the real thing,” she stressed. “Do you know what I'm talking about?”

Fatima had been suffering from it for weeks. Since that fleeting visit in the stables, Diego's mere presence, or the very echo of his voice, woke up feelings that she had never known she could have. The past few nights, she had even fallen asleep imagining herself in his arms.

“I think so,” the boy answered.

She imagined that Diego didn't share her feelings and that he was still enchanted by Benazir's maturity and beauty. In fact, she had caught him more than once glancing at her secretly. Fatima wanted to attract him but she didn't know how. She had tried during the journey, but for one reason or another, without rejecting her outright, he hadn't shown any interest.

“Let's go swimming in the river!” She stood up and pulled him so he would follow her to its banks. Before Diego could react, she removed her bodice and her skirt and jumped into the water in her petticoat. Her head emerged from the river and she looked at him, laughing.

“What are you waiting for?” She splashed him. “It's great!”

Diego felt pressured, so he ignored the caution he should have displayed and undressed with more speed than good fortune. He threw himself in the water, but he didn't find it as agreeable as his friend had told him.

When he came over to Fatima, she tricked him again, telling him to be careful not to trip over a large rock on the river's floor. Diego tried to walk slowly to keep from falling. When he got to her side, she pushed his head under and splashed away.

Diego lurched after her and managed to grab her ankle. She kicked and resisted, but at last he managed to grab hold of her and dunk her under as well. When her head emerged, a metallic crack came from the trees and caused her to prick up her ears. He turned toward that point. Some branches of broom were moving. It could be a man or an animal. There wasn't enough light to see it. The flowing of the river was the only sound, and Fatima, more and more frightened, grabbed hold of Diego's body, looking for protection. Almost without breathing, they followed the track of those movements through the darkness until they saw who was making them. It was a soldier with a turban, a sword in his hand, wearing a leather cuirass, and he walked out onto the rock terrace. He approached the horses and gazed around in search of their owners. Luckily for them, it didn't occur to him to look in the river, though it would have been hard for him to see them, since nothing was showing of them but their eyes and their noses. They made sure he was alone and waited without moving to see what he was going to do.

“If he sees us, he'll kill us.” Blowing water out of her mouth, speaking very softly, Fatima conveyed her fear to Diego.