The Horse Healer (37 page)

Part IV

Lands of Confusion

At the end of 1203, Pope Innocent III obliged Alfonso VIII of Castile to annul the marriage of his daughter Berenguela with the Leonese King Alfonso IX. The rivalry between the two monarchs grows until their recent accords fall to pieces. Alfonso IX, enraged, calls the enemies of Alfonso VIII to his court.

Don Diego López de Haro returns to León and takes over the lands of Sarria, Toro, Extremadura, and the capital of the kingdom, León.

That same year, a treaty is signed by the kings of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon; each monarch uses it to reinforce his own position. Pedro II, recently married to Maria of Montpellier, fights to broaden his realm to Valencia, and Mallorca falls into the hands of the Almohad caliph al-Nasir.

Alfonso VIII of Castile, wishing to compromise the power of the great nobles, begins to concede charters of freedom to numerous villages and towns that benefit their trade and permit him to make use of their militias without contracting costly obligations later.

Such is the case of Cuéllar, a town with surrounding territories deep in the heart of Castile.

I.

I
n his exile, Diego drowned his lovelessness with wine.

That night, Marcos cursed to himself while he looked for the young albéitar urgently. It wasn't the first time he'd taken the carriage late at night to Matias's inn, on the outskirts of Cuéllar, to retrieve Diego, half drunk. But on this occasion, the news was worrying. Sabba had begun foaling and was having serious problems.

For the five months since they'd arrived in Cuéllar, Diego's bitterness had infected everything. Even the most run-of-the-mill actions, like deciding where to live, became an almost impossible task. Nothing seemed to satisfy him. In every house he found some irreparable defect, some imaginary, others perhaps real.

They had changed their lodgings four times before arriving at the splendid house where they now lived. It leaned against the walls of the fortress, in the very center of the town, just a few steps from the town square. It was noble in appearance and large in size. Though the rent was high, Marcos was making ten times as much as he had with his former business in Albarracín and had money to spare.

Owing to a general lack of knowledge about the care of animals in Cuéllar, Diego became very popular as soon as he began to work as an albéitar, though he practiced with little passion now. He didn't care about learning more or investigating the causes of one illness or the other. Nor did he look, as he had before, for the deeper origins of pain, suppuration, fever. When someone called for him, he went. He tried to fix what was wrong, he prescribed a remedy, and he gave advice as he saw necessary. But he knew he had lost the most important thing he needed for his job: his happiness.

His emotional fiasco had thrown everything in his life into chaos, his job as well. That noble calling he had fought for so much since his days in Toledo no longer filled his life; in fact, he was restless.

Over the months, all Diego did was let himself be dragged along by life. And amid so many upsets, wine became one of his closest allies. It was his ideal companion to drown the nights, to leaven his misery, and to mend, in part, his broken heart.

On the other extreme, for Marcos, Cuéllar was a magnificent opportunity for wealth and success. The wool trade kept him busy all day, and he gave it all his attention and strength. Huge flocks roamed the land; many belonged to the clergy or the nobility, but others, more than a few, were the property of the
pecheros
. That's what they called the free men and women who came from the north of Castile searching for opportunities, which the king would give freely to whoever wished to come repopulate these territories that had been won back from the Moors.

Marcos soon controlled the better part of the wool trade thanks to his friend Abu Mizrain from Valencia. After buying the wool at a good price, Mizrain would leave for the great markets of Egypt, Damascus, and Persia. There they needed more and more and were willing to pay a good price for it.

For this reason, it was easy for Marcos to convince almost all the herdsmen that he was better than their former customers from Flanders.

“Sabba, my Saaaaabbba …” Diego began to sing, riled up by the rocking of the cart. “You are the maare of the suuuun and the moooon …” he wailed out, his tongue lolling around, in a pathetic state.

Without loosing the reins, his friend turned to look at him and was immediately discouraged.

“Save that music and try to get your head on straight; we need you thinking clearly when you have to look after Sabba.”

Marcos had needed the help of two men to get Diego out of the inn, and not even two buckets of water over the head were enough to clear his mind. When they got home, Marcos helped Diego out of the carriage and almost dragged him into the kitchen. He sat him down close to the fire.

“I don't feel very good.” Diego leaned his head over a table, feeling on the verge of death, nauseated and covered in a cold sweat.

Marcos heated up a piece of tallow in the fire with castor oil and an infusion of thyme, an infallible remedy on these occasions. He looked for a wooden bucket to hold Diego's vomit and shouted for Veturia, whom he had employed as soon as they moved into the house. Veturia was a single woman, robust and not very smart, though she had a divine talent for cooking. One of her many defects was her rather contradictory character; she could be loving and protective, and yet prickly and cold at the same time.

When she appeared in the kitchen with her hands stained with blood, Marcos decided not to ask. He had left Sabba in her care but had asked her not to touch anything. Judging from her appearance, she had paid him no mind.

“How's it going?” Marcos asked, worried.

“Worse. It's getting very ugly, señor. She's not having contractions anymore.”

“All right, all right …”

Veturia saw Diego and was filled with compassion.

“The wine again, right?” The women knelt to look into his eyes and clicked her tongue. “Today he's much worse than usual.”

Diego, far from worried about his compromised dignity, smiled at her idiotically, grasping her hair in his hands as if he were looking at the woman of his dreams.

“Señora … it's such a pribbulege”—he tripped over his words—“to meet a woman as beautiful as yourself.” He ended by bowing reverently.

“Good Lord! Like this, we can't hope for any miracles,” Veturia concluded.

Marcos approached with a steaming pitcher, and the two of them made him drink it. It didn't take long for it to reach his stomach.

“Now I'll go down to the stables,” Marcos explained. “When he's better, send him to me.”

Veturia soaked a few cloths in cool water and put one on Diego's forehead and one on his neck. Once he had emptied his stomach, he began to feel a bit better.

“You should go see her fast, sir. Your mare needs you. She's in very bad shape. The poor girl …”

Diego went to look for his instruments first and then went down to the stables, still clumsy and a bit sick at his stomach, but when he saw Sabba in her distressed state, he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen.

He coughed, swallowing the rest of the stomach acid, and regretted not being there before. He called her by her name and Sabba responded immediately, turning her head to look for him. A weak gleam shone in her eyes while she blinked, signaling she was calmer now.

“I see … You think everything's going to be better now, right?”

Sabba whinnied loudly, showing her agreement.

Diego pushed aside her tail and inspected the birth canal. Part of the placenta was hanging out and had an ugly, almost black color. He soaped his arm to the elbow and looked at Marcos, warning him that this would hurt the mare. He conscientiously explored Sabba's interior, not losing a second, and was filled with fear when he realized what was happening. Now he would have to act fast if he wanted to save the two of them. Her offspring was so twisted that if he wasn't careful, he could tear Sabba's insides. He saw that the sac was broken and the foal on the point of suffocating. That operation would require not only skill, but great concentration, and at that moment, he had neither the one nor the other.

His hands shook, he couldn't feel his fingertips, and his head felt like it would explode, but he set to work and put all his soul into the task.

He turned the foal's neck and pushed it toward him, then felt for its front hooves. He moved them bit by bit when he could, but whenever he managed to get them to the right place, the foal would return to its previous position.

Diego sighed, terrified by the delicacy and difficulty of the work that stood before him. He took the small forelegs again and managed to move them, but they slipped away once more. Sabba began to complain. He tried once more and managed to get the legs. He tied them, and then, now more hopeful, he passed the end of the rope to Marcos so he could hold it tight and keep the foal from reacting.

“Tell me if you feel anything strange. I'm going to start with the hard part.”

Now Diego would have to turn the rest of the body with nothing but his fingers, overcoming the foal's resistance. He clenched his teeth and tried with all his might, but it had hardly any effect. He felt weak, he wasn't sure of what he was doing … the fact was, he was still too drunk.

Then he felt a heaving, and he left Sabba and ran to a corner to vomit. When he came back, there was a terrible powerlessness in his eyes.

He slid in his hand again and looked for the foal's mouth to get a sense of where things stood. Then he found its neck with his fingers, and when he reached its backbone, he put his weight on it, trying to drag the creature out; but strangely, he felt no reaction from the foal.

He pulled again and felt a small quiver, barely anything, or so it seemed. He couldn't tell, because in that moment he grew sick again, and when he came back, there was nothing he could do. Marcos looked at him with pity. Diego looked for the foal's heart and couldn't feel it beating. It was dead.

If what had happened was already bad, what lay ahead was worse; he would have to cut the creature into small pieces, take everything out, and then clean the mare's interior.

He explained it to Marcos, asking for more hot water and thyme to prevent problems in the wounds, as well as silk thread and needles to sew, and a set of thin iron saws that he himself had forged.

“We have to stand her up; if she's lying down, it'll be impossible to tell if she's completely clean.”

“She's too tired. …” Marcos warned, trying without success.

Whenever Diego gave her a pat on the rump, Sabba would normally stand. He tried two or three times, but she wouldn't react. He whispered to her and pinched her at the base of her mane, the way she had always liked. Sabba snorted in response, flared her nostrils, and moved her ears a little, her exhaustion evident. When he touched them, they were hot, she had a fever.

A terrible grief overcame Diego at that moment. His eyes went damp, and for a flash he was afraid of being left without his mare. He felt guilty for all that had happened. He hadn't been at her side when she needed him, the way he had always been. If he hadn't been drinking that night, he would have gotten the foal out alive. Diego looked at his arms, his hands, and he saw how they were shaking, and then he looked at his mare.

And then he made the decision to act.

It was then that Marcos saw him work one of those miracles that only Diego knew how to bring about.

He had hunched down over Sabba's back, placed his head against hers, embraced her neck, and kissed her, in a scene full of tenderness. Marcos heard him whisper in her ears, making brief, almost inaudible sounds in Sabba's language, so that she understood.

Soon the animal began to breathe more energetically. Diego spoke to her and she seemed to respond with short whinnies, snorting, hardly perceptible echoes, and soft grunting; it was a strange conversation, intimate and profound, but effective.

At that instant, though with obvious difficulty, Sabba stood up, and remained there still for as long as the extraction of the foal took. Diego sped up the work as much as he could. Several times, he made sure he had left nothing of the placenta inside her, sewed her wounds, and then began to wash her insides with a system he himself had devised. It was a hollow can sewed to a pig intestine that he filled with warm water and a brew of garlic and thyme.

After three cleanings and a last inspection, he considered his work done. Then he helped her lie down and rest on a soft bed of new straw.

Diego watched her, choked with guilt. That foal had died because of his irresponsibility, as a consequence of how slow his hands had moved during the operation, all as a result of the damned wine that had blurred his thinking.

Sabba was anxious. She raised her head and began to look around in all directions, as though she was expecting her little foal to appear at any moment. A thick milk began to flow from her teats and her eyes reflected a sharp pleasure. She whinnied a few times, calling her offspring, without understanding why the creature wouldn't call back.

Tired from receiving no response, she rested her head on the straw, disappointed, though her ears remained attentive.

“I'm going to change, Marcos. When I got to Cuéllar, I made a series of decisions that have turned me into a complete wreck. I took the wrong path, and now I've hurt a creature as innocent as Sabba.”

“Will you stop going to the tavern?”

“I will devote myself to working. That is what I'll do. Yes. I'll get back my way of being, my goals, my lust for learning …”

Months after her foal had died, Sabba was better physically, although from then on, she seemed sadder.

Diego stopped drinking and took his work much more seriously. He thus reached a degree of fame throughout the region, and without realizing it, he was provoking a growing interest among a number of women. He was an attractive, well-built young man, and single besides, and he soon became the target of their desires.

Over the following months, he turned from one to the other, leaving his old self behind. That definitive, conclusive love he felt for Mencía gave way to other, more fleeting feelings, less vital but still interesting. He decided to imitate Marcos in that game of his, enjoying whatever woman crossed his path.

And thus an entire year passed, until one cold Christmas Eve.

It was then that he came in contact with a person full of mysteries, disgraces, and worse. …

Her name was Sancha de Laredo.