The Horse Healer by Gonzalo Giner Page A

sensitive areas, Estela could not restrain her tears and shouted in pain.
    Then the women opened some small jars and smeared their fingers with a whitish paste. To their surprise, the women inhaled it at one go. Then they took another small quantity and came closer. Though the sisters resisted, the women pressed it into their noses. Immediately they felt nauseated, but with a pleasant sense of well-being just afterward, as if they were floating. Half dazed, they hardly complained during the rest of the depilation, and not at all when they made contact with the warm water of the bath, where they were left to relieve their stinging skin.
    Amid orange and almond trees, in the gardens surrounding the great pond of the palace, two men were talking.
    One of them represented the maximum authority of an empire based in the north of Africa and Al-Andalus: the Almohad. He was the great caliph Yusuf ben Yaqub. The other, a Christian and a knight of noble birth, wanted nothing more than the defeat of the Castilian king, his worst enemy, though he also appreciated the gold he received from the caliph and the promise of great tracts of land in exchange for his service. An enormous scar spanned the width of his forehead. It felt tight in the dry air and reminded him of who had given it to him and when.
    Five years had passed, but he still remembered the sword of King Alfonso running across his face in the duel that no one would attest to. The friendship that they professed since childhood had shattered into pieces when the king threw in his lot with the Lara clan in a plaint that they had levied against his family, the Moras, which represented a loss of enormous domains for them. Don Pedro had put all his effort into achieving the opposite result and, because of his influence, even though he knew they didn’t belong to him, he pushed Alfonso to unbearable limits. He even threatened him with making public the adulterous relationship that the monarch himself carried on with a Jewess from Toledo, violating a debt of secrecy. That filthy ruse won him a challenge to a duel, a defeat at the hands of Alfonso VIII, and Mora’s later eternal exile from Castile, to which he was sentenced by the king himself.
    The caliph knew what he could get from Mora without ever forgetting his true nature as a traitor. The name Mora, as illustrious in Castile as that of Lara or Castro, had been tarnished for some reason he did not know, but so gravely that it had made him come to hate the king.
    For Yusuf, the friendship of the Christian was useful, and for that reason he paid him with his generosity and favors. But he also took care and watched out for him.
    â€œOur holy war bears a resemblance to that game, one that not all poets dare to engage in. Do you know it, Don Pedro?”
    â€œNo, sir. I have had little experience of poetry.”
    Yusuf II looked at him with disdain. He loved poetry. To cultivate the spirit through the different arts was the most precious gift a man could possess.
    â€œIt consists of improvising and continuing with a verse that another person has begun. Now do you remember it?”
    â€œI believe I’ve seen such a thing before in Al-Andalus.”
    â€œCertainly. It is very popular there, even among the country people. The war we are engaged with against the Castilian king has taken a form up till now very similar to that game. In fact, I began the first stanza with my victory at Alarcos. Then, the kings of León and Portugal, by suing for peace, have gone on adding rhymes, and now you should help me finish my recital.”
    â€œHow?”
    Yusuf laughed at his confusion.
    â€œYou will leave to speak with Sancho of Navarre. You should convince him to sign a peace treaty with me as well. Make it happen however you must. Do what you think necessary. Buy his ambition, look for his weak point. Give him all the gold he wants, if that is what he longs for. If we do it, we will break apart the various kingdoms and