There are wicked men on these roads. You cannot trust anyone. Best if the girls are not seen. Cover their faces, at least,“ she added before she left. Diego did not know how to relieve the women’s discomfort, particularly that of the one most important to him, Juliana. Tomas de Romeu had entrusted his daughters to him, and what would he think if he could see them now? Accustomed to feather mattresses and embroidered sheets, they were resting their bones on a pile of corn and scratching fleas with both hands. Juliana had been admirable: she had not complained once during that arduous day, and even ate the raw onion without comment. In fairness, he had to admit Nuria had not put a bad face on things, either. And as for Isabel, well, she seemed enchanted with the adventure. Diego’s fondness for the women had grown as he saw them so vulnerable and brave. He felt an infinite tenderness for their aching bodies and a tremendous desire to erase their fatigue, to shelter them from the cold, to save them from danger. He was less worried about Isabel, who was frisky as a filly, and Nuria, who was coping by nipping at her restorative liquor. But Juliana… The laborer’s sandals had worn blisters on her feet despite her wool stockings, and the scratchy habit had scoured her skin. And what was Juliana thinking? I cannot say, but I imagine that in the dying light of evening, she found Diego handsome. He hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and the dark shadow of his beard lent a rough, virile air to his looks. He was not the clumsy, skinny boy who had come to their home four years before, all smile and ears. He was a man. In a few months’ time he would celebrate twenty intensely lived years; he had grown tall, and had poise. No, Diego was not bad-looking, and besides, he loved her with the moony loyalty of a pup. Juliana would have had to be made of stone not to soften toward him. The healing lard gave Diego an excuse to rub his beloved’s feet, and in the process forget his gloomy thoughts. Soon his optimistic nature prevailed, and he offered to extend the massage to Juliana’s calves. ”Don’t be depraved, Diego,“ Isabel scolded, breaking the spell. The sisters fell asleep while Diego went back to mulling over his various worries. He concluded that the only good part of this journey would be Juliana; everything else would be struggle and exhaustion. Rafael Moncada and other suitors had been eliminated; finally he had an open field to win the beauty: weeks and weeks in close company. There she was, an arm’s length away, exhausted, dirty, in pain, fragile. He could reach out and touch her cheek, rosy with sleep, but he did not dare. They would sleep side by side every night, like chaste spouses, and share every moment of the day. He was the only protector Juliana had in this world, a situation that favored him enormously. He would never take advantage of that, of course he was a caballero but he could not help but notice that only a single day had worked a change in her. Juliana was seeing him in a different light. She had fallen asleep curled up in a corner of the shed, shivering beneath the sheepskins, but as she got warm and wriggled to find a comfortable spot on the corn, her head emerged. Bluish moonlight filtered through the chinks of the boards and fell on her perfect face, abandoned in sleep. Diego wished that the pilgrimage would never end. He moved so close to her that he could sense the warmth of her breath and the fragrance of her dark curls. The good countrywoman was right; they must hide her beauty and not attract bad luck. If a gang assaulted them, he alone could do little to defend her now that he did not have his sword. There were a hundred reasons to worry, but there was no sin in giving free rein to his fantasy, and he drifted off imagining Juliana exposed to terrible dangers and saved again and again by the invincible Zorro. ”If she does not fall in love with me now, it is because I am a dolt,“ he muttered. At the cock’s crow Juliana and Isabel were shaken awake by Nuria, who had brought them a cup of warm goat’s milk. She and Diego had not rested as peacefully as the girls. Nuria had prayed for hours, terrified of what lay ahead, and Diego had only half slept, aware of Juliana’s closeness and keeping one eye open and a hand on his dagger to defend her, until the timid light of a winter morn put an end to that eternal night. The travelers prepared to begin another day’s journey, but Juliana and Nuria’s legs would scarcely obey them; after a few steps they had to lean on something to keep from falling down. Isabel, on the other hand, demonstrated her physical prowess with a few knee bends, congratulating herself on the endless hours she had spent practicing her fencing in front of the mirror. Diego’s advice to Juliana and Nuria was that if they would start walking, their muscles would warm up and the cramping would pass, but that didn’t happen; the pain only got worse. Finally those two had to ride on the horses while Diego and Isabel carried the bundles. It was an entire week before they could make the six leagues a day that had been their goal when they started. Before they left that day, they thanked the peasant woman for her hospitality and left her a few maravedis, which she stared at with amazement, as if she had never seen a coin before. In stretches, the route was a mule path, in others, nothing but a narrow trail snaking through primeval growth. An unexpected transformation took place among the four false pilgrims. The peace and silence forced them to listen, to look at the trees and the mountains through new eyes, to open their hearts to the unique experience of following in the footsteps of the thousands of pilgrims who had walked that road for nine centuries. Some monks taught them to set their course by the stars, as travelers had done in the Middle Ages, and by the rocks and boundary stones marked with the symbol of Santiago, a scallop shell, left by previous journeyers. In some places they found words carved on pieces of wood or written on stained parchments, messages of hope and wishes for good fortune. That journey to the tomb of the apostle James became an exploration of their own souls. They walked in silence, in pain and weary, but content. They lost their initial fear and soon forgot that they were fleeing. They heard wolves at night and expected to meet highwaymen at every turn of the path, but they went forward with confidence, as if some superior force were protecting them. Nuria began to make her peace with Santiago, whom she had cursed whenTomas de Romeu was executed. They traversed forests, broad plains, lonely mountains, in a changing and always beautiful landscape. They never lacked for a welcome. Sometimes they slept in the houses of peasants, other times in monasteries and convents. And perfect strangers always shared their bread or soup with them. One night they slept in a church and awoke to the sound of Gregorian chants, enveloped in a dense blue mist as if in another world. On another occasion they took their rest in the ruins of a small chapel in which thousands of white doves were nesting, sent, according to Nuria, by the Holy Spirit. Following the counsel of the peasant woman who had sheltered them the first night, the girls covered their faces as they approached populated places. In villages and inns, the sisters lagged behind while Nuria and Diego went ahead to ask for charity, passing themselves off as mother and son. They always referred to Juliana and Isabel as if they were boys, and explained that they hid their faces because they had been disfigured by illness; in that way they did not pique the interest of the bandits, rustics, and army deserters who were wandering the land that no one had cultivated since before the war. Diego calculated how far it was to the port at La Corufia by distance and time, and to that mathematical computation added his progress with Juliana; it had not been spectacular, but at least she seemed to feel safe in his company and was treating him more seriously and with less teasing: she took his arm for support, allowed him to caress her feet, let him prepare her bed, and even let him spoon soup into her mouth when she was too tired to eat. At night Diego waited for the other three to fall asleep before he crawled as close to her as decency allowed. He dreamed of her and waked in glory with his arm across her waist. She pretended not to notice their growing intimacy and during the day acted as if he had never touched her, but in the black of night she invited that contact, and he wondered if it was because she was cold, afraid, or moved by the same passions he felt. He awaited those moments with delirious eagerness, and made the most of what befell him. Isabel was aware of that nocturnal nestling and was not bashful about making jokes on the subject. How the girl found out was a puzzle, since she was alw
ays the first to fall asleep and the last to wake up. One day they had walked for hours; they were tired and had also been slowed when one of the horses came up lame. The sun had set, and they still had a way to go before reaching the convent where they planned to spend the night. They saw smoke rising from a nearby house and decided they would try to stop there. Diego went ahead, confident that he would be welcomed because it looked like a rather prosperous place, at least compared with others. Before he knocked at the door, he reminded the girls to cover their faces, even though it was dark. Eyeholes allowed them to see through the cloths, which were so caked with dust that they looked like lepers. A man opened the door; against the light he looked as threatening as an orangutan. They could not see his features, but to judge by his attitude and rude tone he was displeased to see them. At first he refused them shelter, using the excuse that he had no obligation to help pilgrims, that was what monks and nuns and all their wealth were for. He added that if they were traveling with two horses, they must not have taken the vow of poverty and could pay for their own expenses. Diego did not give up, and finally the farmer agreed to give them something to eat and permission to sleep beneath his roof in exchange for a few coins, which he demanded in advance. He led them to a stable that housed a cow and two Percheron plow horses. He pointed to a pile of straw where they could bed down, and told them he would be back with something to eat. In half an hour, after they had begun to lose hope of eating that day, the man reappeared with a companion. The stable was dark as a cave, but they were carrying a lantern. They set down a loaf of black bread and half a dozen eggs, and some porringers containing a hearty country soup. As they bent down, Diego and the women could see in the lantern light that one of them had a scar running from his eye down his cheek, and that the other had no nose. They were short and strong, with bull necks and arms like logs, and their expressions were so formidable that Diego fingered his daggers and Isabel her pistol. The sinister men did not leave all the while his guests spooned their soup and broke bread, watching Juliana and Isabel with malicious curiosity as they tried to eat without removing the face cloths. ”What is the matter with those two?“ one of them asked, pointing to the girls. ”Yellow fever,“ said Nuria, who had heard Diego mention that plague, but had no idea what it was. ”It’s a tropical disease that eats the skin like acid, and rots the tongue and eyes. They should have died, but the Apostle saved them.