“It is not our custom in the south,” Miguel says quietly.
“Ah, but it is custom here,” Athanric says. His voice and the rhythmic beat of his sword move closer. “As well as law. And lawbreakers must be punished.”
Mencia cries out. Her hand jerks from mine. Her husband shouts and there is an awful, thick sound of fists on flesh and scrabbling in the wet dirt. Tearing fabric rips the wet air.
“Perhaps we will dispense justice here and now,” the Visigoth says.
Save us, I pray, shaking with cold and furious impotence. Save them. Save her. Don’t let anyone else suffer because I am helpless to stop it.
Mencia screams, longer this time and more pained.
This cannot be Your will, I say to God. If it is, I will not bow to it.
And then there are hoofbeats on the slope behind us, dozens, loud as war drums, kicking up stones and spattering mud as they skid to a stop behind our party.
“Look what we have today,” a man says. “Athanric of the Wese.” His voice is full of humor and menace in equal parts, and my heart near stops, for I would know it anywhere. It belongs to Adán Hadid. The man who gave up his life in service of mine. Who defied God’s law and rode out to save me on a Shabbat eve.
“This is none of your concern, de Lanza,” Athanric says.
“Perhaps,” Adán says, easy with his false name. “But I see you have taken some of my countrymen, so perhaps I will find it is my concern after all.”
The Visigoth swears in his own tongue. He calls to his men, and their horses stamp as they mount and draw away.
“Some day I’ll find you outnumbered,” Athanric shouts over the sound of his men’s retreat.
“Be sure it’s four to one,” Adán calls after him.
The pounding of their hoofbeats fades into the distance. Mencia cries quietly as her husband murmurs and soothes her. I am frozen, locked still as stone. My heart is the only thing moving. Will Adán recognize me, changed as I must be? And will Lázaro know his quarry by sight, or by name only?
Adán’s horse clops toward Lázaro’s band, grouped on the side of the road. “Gentlemen, if you’re in need of an escort, my men and I will be happy to accompany you for a small fee. Where are you going?”
“Roussillon.” Lázaro coughs.
“What do you say, shall we go to Roussillon?” Adán calls to his men.
“To Roussillon!” they shout in response, and beat their swords on their shields.
“With your consent, of course,” Adán says to Lázaro.
“Por supuesto,” Lázaro says, the strain evident in his words. “We would be grateful, sir.”
Adán spends several moments making sure Miguel’s cart is undamaged, he and his wife secure within it, and calls for a beaver-skin blanket to shield Mencia from the icy rain. Then we are off again, moving through the trees at a steady clip with Adán’s men riding in a protective circle around us.
I walk on, steadying myself with one hand on the cart. My legs shake with every step.
A horse veers close to me and slows to my pace. “Do these men know who you are, brother?” Adán says quietly.
I turn my face up to him, even though all I can see is the hazy, muted green of the damp trees all around us. Joy hits me like a wall, and I stop. The cart rolls on without me. “No,” I say.
“We’ll move faster if we place this man on a horse,” Adán calls up to Lázaro. “And bring him some spare boots.”
Lázaro mutters to himself, but sends one of his men to the back of the line with an older mare and a pair of worn riding boots. Adán dismounts and helps me up onto her back, then ties my horse’s reins to his own. They trot side by side. It is all I can do not to reach out and take Adán’s hand.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you?” Adán says.
“I didn’t know if you were alive,” I say. “My father laid a death sentence on you before the vizier seized control, and that man Lázaro is looking for you.”
“I have more men than he,” Adán says. “And better trained. Though I do ask myself what you’re doing following him into Catalunya.”
“Sofia,” I say. “He’s bringing these horses to her uncle in Roussillon. She’s there with them.”
We ride in silence for several minutes. The air is full of the steady grate of hooves on loose stone.
“So that’s where they’ve been keeping her,” Adán says.
“You couldn’t find her?” My last memory of her, bleeding and wild-eyed, unfurls before me again.
“I’m sorry.” Adán leans over in the saddle and grips my wrist. “I tracked them as far as the Pyrenees, but I didn’t know how deep they’d gone. It isn’t friendly territory for Jews, even those with their own war bands.”
Silence laps over us again. The sleet falls steadily, but my horse’s heat steams away some of the cold.
“What will you do when you find her?” Adán asks after a time. “I don’t suppose her grandmother and brothers will usher you into her arms.”
“No,” I say. “I had only figured out the part where I lived to come this far.”
“You were always terrible at strategy.” I can hear the boyish smirk in Adán’s words.
“I’m out of practice,” I say.
“When this is done, I’m tutoring you.”
A piece of my youth flexes in my chest. Maybe it is the feel of a horse beneath me again, the way my body remembers and responds to its sway, keeps me righted. Maybe it is that I am riding closer to Sofia, and the invisible cord between us is tightening, transmitting the vibration of our hearts. Or maybe it is that my friend is at my side again, speaking to me as a man, and he has always carried some piece of me wherever he goes.
After another run-in on the road, with common thieves this time, Lázaro decides to keep Adán and his men on. Lázaro suggests the party will travel faster if they leave Miguel, Mencia, and me to find our own way while they go on to Roussillon, but Adán won’t hear it. And so we deliver the mapmaker and his wife to Orgañá, where we buy furs for the journey higher into the Pyrenees.
As we prepare to go, Miguel hurries to push a folded square of vellum into Adán’s hand. “A map of Roussillon,” he says. “In case you find some difficulty leaving.”
While we ride, Lázaro’s men talk of the vats of mulled wine awaiting us at Filipe’s castle, venison on spits, the sweet crackle of pine logs on the hearths in the great hall. The mountain road slopes sharply. It whips around corners and narrows so we must ride single file. On the fourth day of our trek, we wake to a fine glaze of frost stiffening our blankets and the mat of fallen leaves where we made our bed the night before. The clouds hang low and chill in a fog across the road. And then, on the twelfth day, the men at the front of the line shout that they’ve sighted the timber barricades circling Filipe’s thatch-roof fortress.
“I can’t go in,” I say to Adán under my breath. My horse jerks her head, picking up on the fear seeping from my body. “Lamia, Sofia’s brothers—”
“Hang back.” Adán reins in my horse.
We slow until the last of Adán’s men pass us. “Ride on,” Adán tells them. “I’ll catch up.”
We veer into the trees, Adán leading my horse, and wend our way deeper until we come to a dense thicket. Adán wraps me in skins and furs, pushes a knife into my hand.
“Stay here,” he says. “I’ll see what I can find and bring you word.” He hurries to his horse. Its hoofbeats disappear into the silence.
I shiver under the skins and chafe my arms for warmth. Cold burns in the fissure where Sofia’s brothers broke my leg nearly two years past. I am afraid to warm myself by walking, in case I should become lost in the woods and Adán come back to find the thicket empty. I sit and rock instead.