CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A TRIP TO HUESCA

Fevers were always a problem, but at the end of winter an abundance of coughing fevers kept him especially busy. The home visits were much the same.

“Señor Callicó, there is pain in my very bones (coughing).… The thrush is severe, I cannot swallow.… The pain (coughing).…

“Sometimes I am on fire, other times I shiver with cold (coughing).”

An old man, a youth, two old women and a child died. He hated not saving them, but he could hear Nuño telling him to think of those who lived. He went from house to house, prescribing hot drinks, honey with heated wine. And theriac against the fever.

It was by no means a pandemic or even a notable epidemic, but there were so many house calls to be made. He told himself that so long as everybody’s fever cycle didn’t begin and end on the same day, he would be able to manage. He promised each patient that if they followed directions for ten days, magically the illness would be gone. For most, it was so.

Often when he got home he was too tired to do housework or cook a hot meal. Sometimes he would set the pieces on the draughts board and try to play, making the moves for both sides, but it was not at all enjoyable to play that way. He felt a general dissatisfaction and unrest, and when finally the fevers had abated and the coughing had eased, he decided to take a day off and ride out to see Reyna.

*   *   *

The place in which she lived was merely a collection of tiny farms and the houses of woodcutters, half an hour’s ride from the outer limits of Saragossa. It had no name or government, but the people who had lived there for generations shared a sense of community, and they were accustomed to referring to the place as El Pueblecito, the Village.

When he came to the little settlement he stopped his horse by an old woman sitting in the sun; he asked for Reyna and was directed to a house next to a sawyer’s. Close to the walls of the house, two men in breechclouts—a man with long white hair and a younger, more muscular fellow—stood in a pit and thrust a long saw back and forth across a pine log, sawdust clinging to their sweaty skin.

Inside, he found Reyna shoeless and on her hands and knees, scrubbing the stones of the flagged floor. She looked as healthy as always but somehow older than he had remembered. When she saw who had entered she stopped working and smiled, wiping her hands on her dress as she got to her feet.

“I brought you some wine. The kind you like,” he said, and she thanked him as she accepted the jar.

“Sit at the table, if you please,” she said, and then took out two cups and a jar of her own. It proved to hold coñac.

“Salud.”

“Salud.” It was good. Its strength made him blink.

“Have you found yourself a housekeeper by now?”

“Not yet.”

“Two good women I sent you. Carla and Petronila. They said you told them to go away.”

“Perhaps I was accustomed to the way you kept the house.”

“You must accept change. All of life is change,” she said. “Do you wish me to send somebody else? In the spring it will be time for a thorough cleaning of the house.”

“I shall clean my house.”

“You? You should be the physician. You must not spend your time so,” she said severely.

“You have found yourself a very good house,” he observed, to change the subject.

“Yes, it will make a hostelry. There is no other shelter for hire nearby, and we are on the road to Monzon and Catalonia, with many travelers.” She said she had not begun to take in paying guests, as the house required additional carpentry before it could serve as an inn.

They sat and sipped the coñac and he brought her up to date with the news and gossip of Saragossa while she described the life of the Village. From outside came the soft rasping sounds of the saw.

“When have you last eaten?”

“Not since early morning.”

“Then I shall make you a meal,” she said, standing.

“Will you make me a potted fowl?”

“I don’t make that dish anymore.”

She sat again and looked at him. “Did you see the two men cutting wood out there?”

“Yes.”

“Soon I will be married to one of them.”

“Ah. The young one?”

“No, the other. His name is Álvaro.” She smiled. “His hair is white but he is very strong,” she said drily. “And he is a wonderful worker.”

“I wish you the good fortune you deserve, Reyna.”

“Thank you.”

He knew she was aware that he had traveled to the Village to persuade her to come back to his house, but they smiled at one another, and in a little while she got up again and set food on the table: a loaf of fresh bread, eggs cooked hard, garlic paste, half a yellow cheese, onion, tiny olives with wonderful flavor.

They each had several cups of the wine he had brought, and he left after a little while. Outside, the two men were fitting a fresh log over the pit.

“Good afternoon,” Yonah said. The younger man didn’t reply, but the one called Álvaro nodded as he picked up the saw.

*   *   *

Yonah knew Passover was approaching, although he wasn’t certain of the date, and he threw himself into the task of spring cleaning—dusting and scrubbing everything, opening the windows to the fresh, cold air, beating and airing carpets, cutting fresh rushes and spreading them on the stone floor. He took advantage of his privacy by making a credible version of unleavened bread, baking irregular portions on a metal sheet suspended over the fire. The resultant product was a bit burned and somewhat softer than he remembered, but it was definitely matzos, and he ate it triumphantly at a one-man seder, for which he cooked a leg of paschal lamb and prepared bitter herbs to remind him of the trials of Israel’s children, fleeing Egypt.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” he asked the quiet house, but there was no answer, only a silence more bitter than the herbs. Because he wasn’t certain of the dates, he held the seder every night for a week, relishing the lamb meat for three nights before it went high and then burying the rest in the orchard on the hill.

*   *   *

For a few days winter seemed to have left, but it came back, chill and rainy, turning the roads into rivers of deep, cold muck. He sat in front of his table for hours at a time, thinking long thoughts. He was a wealthy man, a respected physician, living in a stout stone hacienda surrounded by good land that he owned. Yet sometimes in the sleepless night he seemed to hear, louder than the strident howl of rainy wind, his father’s gentle voice telling him he was only partially alive.

He was weary of being a minyan of one, tired of being caught in a cage, even though the cage was as large as all of Spain. He thought of fleeing to France or Portugal. But he had neither the French nor the Portuguese language. Even though he might slip across one of the borders, if someone demanded proof of his baptism, in France he might burn and in Portugal he would surely be enslaved. At least in Saragossa he was known and accepted as an Old Christian. His work as a physician made up for a great deal that was missing from his life.

Yet he had a yearning for something nameless, something he couldn’t identify. When he slept he dreamed of the dead or of women who drew the seed from his sleeping body. Sometimes he was certain he was going to go as mad as the friar, and when the warm and sunny days finally came he regarded the season with suspicion, unable to believe the bad weather had departed.

It was fortunate the fevers didn’t return, because talking with Fray Luis Guerra Medina, the apothecary, he learned that there was no theriac to be bought anywhere in the district.

“How do we obtain more?” he asked Fray Medina.

“I don’t know,” the old Franciscan said worriedly. “It is available in good quality only from the Aurelio family of Huesca. Each year I have traveled to Huesca myself to buy theriac from the Aurelios. But it is a ride of five days, and I have grown too old. I cannot go.”

Yonah shrugged. “Let us send a rider.”

“No, if I send someone who is not familiar with theriac they will give him a compound that is worthless as medicine because it is years old. It must be bought by someone they will respect, someone who knows the appearance and qualities of sound theriac. It must be freshly compounded, and purchased in a quantity that will last no more than a year.”

Yonah’s home had become a prison, and here was a reprieve.

“All right. I will ride to Huesca,” he said.

*   *   *

Six months before, Miguel de Montenegro had been summoned to Montalvan, where the bishop of Teruel had been stricken by a trembling fever, and Yonah had cared for his patients in his absence. Now Montenegro and another physician named Pedro Palma, for whom Montenegro vouched, agreed to care for Señor Callicó’s practice, content that they and their own patients would benefit from the theriac he was to bring back. He took the gray Arab and a single pack burro. As usual, his spirits lightened as he began to wander over the land. The weather was fine and he could have made better time, but the Arabian horse was growing old and he spared the animal, seeing no need for haste. The trail wasn’t difficult. In the foothills there were valleys with fields in which livestock grazed, and small farms where pigs snuffled on land that would be planted soon with grain or vegetables. He always chose a place of beauty in which to camp for the night. The hills quickly turned into small mountains, and then larger ones.

When he reached Huesca he sought out the Aurelio family and found them doing business in a converted stable that was fragrant with the odors of herbs. Three men and a woman worked at powdering and compounding the dried plants. The maestro herbalist, Reinaldo Aurelio, was a pleasant, sharp-eyed man wearing a rough leather apron covered with chaff.

“And what can I do for the señor?”

“I need theriac. I am Ramón Callicó, physician of Saragossa. Ordering for Fray Luis Guerra Medina of Saragossa.”

“Ah, it is for Fray Luis! But why does he not come for it himself? How is his health?”

“His health is good, but he is growing older, so he has sent me.”

“Oh, yes, we can supply you with theriac, Señor Callico.” He went to a shelf and opened a wooden bin.

“May I see it?” Yonah said. He crumbled a bit between his fingers, sniffed it, and shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “If I brought this back to Fray Luis he would geld me, and deservedly.”

The herbalist smiled. “Fray Luis is most particular.”

“For which we physicians are grateful. I need fresh theriac in quantity, a sufficient amount of the compound so Fray Luis may supply a number of physicians in the districts around Saragossa.”

Señor Aurelio nodded. “That is not a problem, but it will of course take us time to compound that much fresh theriac.”

“How much time?”

“At least ten days. Perhaps a bit more.”

Yonah had no choice except to agree. Indeed, the situation didn’t displease him because it left him free to continue to wander into the Pyrenees. They calculated what the charge for the herbs would come to and he paid in advance. Fray Luis had said their word was sacred, and he didn’t wish to be burdened by carrying the gold. He arranged to leave the pack burro with the Aurelios while he was gone, and promised that he would stay away from the herbalists for at least a fortnight so they would have time to do their work.

*   *   *

He rode due north, through foothills. He had heard that between Huesca and the border with France the mountains rose so sharply that they appeared to reach the heavens. Indeed, he saw mountains before he had traveled far, some with snowy peaks. In a meadow rich with early flowers he found a brook filled with tiny, brightly clad trout. In a moment he had taken a hooked line from his bag, as well as a little tin box that held worms from his manure pile back in Saragossa. The fish were eager to bite; too soon, he had his meal. Each trout provided no more than a mouthful but they were gutted in an instant, and he spitted them on a green wand and broiled them over a small fire, relishing the melting bones along with the tender flesh.

He let the horse crop the grass and flowers for a time, and then he followed the trail up into the mountains. The lower regions were thickly forested with beech, chestnut, and oak, rising to stands of fir and pine that he knew would thin and then disappear at the higher levels where even small plants would be sparse. The warm sun sent snow melt tinkling and rushing toward lower ground, filling the banks of a roaring stream with muscular rapids.

As the afternoon came he saw his first snow in a fir grove. It contained the perfect tracks of a bear, so discrete he knew they were freshly made. The air was sharper there, and night would be colder; he decided he wanted to sleep in lower, milder air, and he turned the horse around and descended again until he came to a likely spot under the protection of a great pine that offered dead branches for fuel. Remembering the bear tracks, he tethered the horse close to him and kept a fire burning all through the night, waking now and then to break the dry wood from the living tree with loud snapping sounds that warned of his presence, then sleeping again as the fire burned high.

*   *   *

On the afternoon of the third day out of Huesca he was turned back by deep snow in a high pass. It would have been safe to ride through it but hard on the horse, and to do so would have made no sense. Ascending, he looked for a side trail that would take him around that mountain, but he saw none. It was only when the gray Arab sought to turn in that he saw what the horse had perceived, a path almost indiscernible in the wall of trees. When he investigated, it became a wide and stony trail along a tumbling stream that over long centuries had cut its way through a sheer rock face descending the mountain.

He rode down and down.

After a long descent, he smelled the smoke of a wood fire, and presently he emerged from the trees and found himself in a small valley, gazing at a village. He could see perhaps a dozen small stone houses with steep slate roofs, and the cross-topped roof of a church poking up over the low horizon. Cows and horses grazed in a pasture, and he saw several cultivated fields, the soil black.

He rode past two houses without seeing anyone, but a woman had gone from the third house to the stream for water and now was carrying back the laden bucket. When she noticed him she began to hurry toward the shelter of the house, the water slopping over the rim of the bucket, but he reached her before she was halfway there.

“A good day to you. What village is this, if you please?”

She stopped in her tracks as if frozen. “It is Pradogrande, señor,” she said in a clear and guarded voice, and as the horse brought him closer the sight of her face struck him sharply, so he could hear his own breathing.

“Inés. Is it you?”

He dismounted clumsily and she fell back in fear. “No, señor.”

“You are not Inés Saadi Denia, daughter of Isaac Saadi?” he said stupidly. The girl was staring at him.

“No, señor. I am Adriana. I am Adriana Chacon.”

Of course, he was a fool, he told himself. This was a young woman. When last he saw Inés she was little younger than this girl, and since then all the hard years had passed.

“Inés was my aunt, may her soul rest in eternal peace.”

Ah, Inés was dead. It gave him a pang to hear that she was gone: another door was closed. “May she rest,” he muttered.

“I remember you,” he said suddenly. He realized this woman had been the child Inés had cared for, the small daughter of her older sister, Felipa. He remembered walking with Inés in Granada with that little girl between them, he and Inés each holding one of her hands.

The woman was looking at him uncertainly.

Yonah turned at a shout that said his presence was discovered by others. Men were running toward them desperately, three men from one direction, two men from another, holding work tools like weapons they would use to kill an invader.