EIGHT
A half-day’s ride from Almuradiel, when the grasses gave way to shrubs and stands of trees, Ramiro took the pair of horses off the narrow track and began to look for a suitable place to dispose of the three dead Moors. There were several washes, narrow tracks between nascent hillocks where winter runoff carved transitory streams. Some were deeper than others, but he didn’t think he would find one deep enough that scavengers wouldn’t get to the bodies. In fact, he needed one deep enough that only the scavengers would find them.
As the shadows of the mountains started to darken the terrain, he found a suitable place. Two of the corpses were slung across one horse, and he pulled those two off first, rolling them into the rocky stream bed. The third had been slung across the rump of the horse he had been riding, and the animal kicked lightly as he undid the ties holding the body in place. After dragging the third body into the gully, he spent some time hauling rocks in place, obscuring the corpses.
He hadn’t bothered striping them naked. He kept their swords and what other trinkets about their persons that might have value, but otherwise he left them alone. It was monstrous enough that he wasn’t burying them, but he hoped that anyone who might find them would think they had been waylaid by bandits.
Unencumbered, he led the horses back to the path, and when he looked to the north, he spotted a horse approaching. It was carrying two riders, and as it got closer, he recognized the pair. He stood, letting his horses crop the isolated clumps of grass.
Fernando slowed his horse as it reached Ramiro. Maria spoke first. “Your wife needs someone to care for her,” she said.
“Aye.” Ramiro nodded, not trusting himself to say any more than simple acknowledgement. He had let his temper get the better of him, and the death of the riders had not only put the lives of Fernando and Maria in danger but Louisa as well. He had failed to secure the services of the midwife; in order to find another one, he would have to travel over the mountains—a journey of several days. He would do it, if that is what it took, but it meant leaving Louisa alone for nearly a week. In her condition, he feared what might happen.
This fear made him angry, which only fueled his self-recrimination for what had happened in Almuradiel. He knew this never-ending cycle—it was what had sustained him for years after Alarcos—but it would not help Louisa. That which had kept him alive was only going to kill the one thing that he cared about.
Which only increased his fear.
“You will do anything I ask of you,” Maria continued. “Including staying away from her.”
“Aye,” Ramiro agreed.
“I will stay until I am confident that she and the child are strong enough, and you will provide food and shelter for me and my husband during that time.”
“Aye,” Ramiro said. “You and Fernando may stay in the villa; I will sleep in the stables with the horses.”
Maria nodded, finding this acceptable. “You will pay us well when we leave so that we might have enough to start a new life,” she said.
Ramiro hesitated for a moment before agreeing.
Maria nodded, and turned her head to say something quietly to Fernando. He slid off the horse and she nudged it into a walk. She did not look at Ramiro as her horse ambled past, leaving Fernando and Ramiro and the two remaining horses in her wake.
Ramiro and Fernando stood awkwardly, unsure of what to say to one another. The horses noisily cropped grass nearby. Finally, Fernando cleared his throat. “We couldn’t stay in Almuradiel,” he said. “Other riders would come. They’d ask questions. The bag of silver you left would not have done away with all the questions, and then…” He shrugged. “My father was a farmer; I never cared for the back-breaking work, and so I sold it when he died and bought the tavern. This land has been both Christian and Muslim for many years, and no one ever cared much. Just as long as we knew who to give tribute to.” He glanced down at his boots, seemingly embarrassed by these words. “If the caliph comes north and means to make these lands his, I fear Maria and I would not be safe. We need to make a new life somewhere.”
Ramiro struggled to find the right words. He knew he was responsible for their decision to leave Almuradiel, and while it would benefit Louisa, it was not the way he had meant to engage Maria’s services. “I am as rough and broken as I appear,” he said. “I do not know how to apologize for what I did and more silver cannot undo the grief I have brought to you and Maria, but know that I am grateful nonetheless for the decision you have made to aid me and mine.” It was the longest speech he had made in a long time.
Fernando tried to smile, but his mouth kept drooping down. “Where else would we have gone?” he asked.
Louisa was waiting for them outside the house. The day was overcast and cool, and she stood mutely, one of the heavy wool blankets wrapped around her slight frame. Ramiro did not know how long she had been standing outside, waiting for them, but it had been long enough that she was over any surprise at seeing three people and three horses instead of just Ramiro.
Fernando helped Maria down from her horse, and the midwife went to Louisa and began asking questions about her health. Louisa offered terse replies, her eyes not leaving Ramiro. When Maria started to lift the blanket to peer at Louisa’s belly, she finally looked down at the inquisitive midwife and caught the older woman’s hands with her own. “In a moment,” she said, politely but firmly.
Maria frowned, and then glancing back and forth between Louisa and Ramiro, waved Fernando over. “I will go prepare some water,” she said curtly. Louisa nodded absently, and Maria marched into the villa as if she owned the place—Fernando following behind her.
“What happened?” Louisa asked when she and Ramiro were alone with the horses.
“I brought the midwife,” Ramiro said. “And her man. They’ll stay with us until the baby comes.”
Louisa touched a horse lightly above its nose and then let her hands trail along the bridle and the neck of the animal until she could finger the fringe on the saddle. “This is Moorish tack,” she said.
“It is,” Ramiro nodded, aware of the three swords wrapped in an oilskin bundle across the back of the horse. They, too, were Moorish blades.
Louisa looked at him, staring at his face. In the past, he had disliked her attention, and he had, on more than one occasion, shouted at her to stop looking at him. His scars would never go away. He would never be anything other than the wrecked man standing in front of her—no matter how hard and long she looked at his face. But, over time, he had come to realize that such a reaction sprung from his own guilt and fear. For too many years, his face had frightened people—much like that dying mercenary weeks ago—and he had come to believe that was the only way he would ever be seen.
Louisa wasn’t afraid of him, which only made her inquisitive stare so difficult to bear. She saw past the scars and the anger and the rest of the armor that he had carefully built over the years; she saw him, and what she saw sometimes saddened her.
“Go inside,” he snarled.
She lifted her hand from the saddle and reached out to him, but he took a step back, turning his ruined face away.
“Ramiro…” she trailed off into a sigh, and then with a slight shake of her head, she turned away from him and began her slow walk back to the villa.
He watched her go. He knew that she would get the story from Maria and Fernando, and he knew he should have offered her his version. But what would that be? One of the riders took offense to his face and so he killed the man? And he killed the other two simply because…well, why? What reason could he give to Louisa that she would understand?
The fire in his chest had not gone out, not even after his speech to Fernando. It had died down, but it was still there, deep in his chest. Fueled by a tiny refrain, the thing he told himself over and over: I did it to protect you, Louisa.