“Esperanza’s Way” opens with backstories of three healing women

Ponferrada

Spring 1259

A mangle-eared mutt cocked his head toward the sky sniffing the breeze, sensing the approaching storm. The dog lowered his head, hunched his shoulders, and sidled into an alley. A concussive boom tore the clouds open, and torrents of rain sluiced over the stone-built town of Ponferrada. Up and down the street people scurried for shelter. 

“Amika, help me haul this table up against the wall out of the rain. It will take both of us.” Gabriela struggled to muscle a heavy oak table under the covered walkway along the ancient pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago.

“I’ll be right there,” Amika propped her broom against the wall. Like the dog, she turned a weather eye to the skies. This rain is going to be hard enough to drown fishes, she thought. Together the two women dragged the table under the portico.

“Esperanza, take the jars and bottles inside.” A waif-like girl scooped their wares into a well-worn wicker basket. Her serious demeanor belied her twelve years. 

Inside their stone house on their ancient cobblestone street, an apothecary cabinet, burnished by age to a rich mahogany patina, dominated the room. An intricate warren of compartments and drawers held ointments, elixirs, and infusions. Bundles of herbs hung upside down from the ceiling. A symphony of spicy, citrusy, fruity, minty smells harmonized like a fragrant orchestra. Customers inhaled deeply and their spirits lightened when they walked through the door. When their wares were safely inside, the three companions settled on a bench, warming themselves before a capacious open hearth.

“This is the third downpour we’ve had this month,” Amika said. “It will be a good wildflower season, after it warms up a bit. Esperanza and I will scour the hillsides for wild garlic and sorrel. Won’t we, Esperanza?” Amika placed her work-hardened hand atop the girl’s soft, delicate one.

The girl turned her smokey grey eyes toward Amika. Roaming hillsides too steep for the farmers’ plough was the greatest pleasure Amika and Esperanza shared. In the two years since Amika discovered the girl curled next to the body of her dead mother along the Camino de Santiago, the two had grown as close as any natural mother and child.

“You’re a good student. You’ve learned so much since we’ve been here.”  She beamed at the girl affectionately pinching her ear.

“I’m too old for that!” Esperanza protested. “I’m twelve years old, almost a young lady!” She tilted her chin up defiantly. 

Amika smiled, her features broadening into an expression of true affection.  “Alright then, no more pinches. I wouldn’t want to annoy my little mountain goat. What would I do without you scampering over the hills for me, when all I can do is limp along behind? I need you.”

Though only nineteen years old, her childhood living rough as an orphan in the wild hills of the Basque country had made Amika wise beyond her years. Her knowledge of plants, learned under the wing of a Wise Woman of the old tradition in her Basque homeland, could fill volumes. The two had ranged over the hills, among the feral grasses and wildflowers, until the antagonism of the Catholic church toward her mentor’s traditional ways forced Amika to flee. Her flight ended here in Ponferrada, at the foot of the Cantabrian Mountains, after an injury crippled her left leg. But all she had learned still lived within her, and she was eager to pass it along to Esperanza, the orphan with stormy grey eyes and an ineffable power to perceive illness. 

Amika limped along as she taught Esperanza the uses of every plant that grew. 

“God did not create a single plant without a purpose. You just need to learn the virtues of each one. Where others see grasses and flowers, I see foods and medicines,” Amika grew passionate tutoring her young protégé. Under her wing, Esperanza learned quickly, growing from orphaned waif to beloved daughter.

Gabriela mumbled, gripping her woolen shawl tightly around her shoulders as she retreated into the house. She said nothing as she plopped down heavily on a wooden bench facing the hearth. When her stomach was empty, as it was now, her disposition soured and could focus only on satisfying its insistent grumbling.

“The farmers and herders will be happy with the rain,” Amika explained. “They can expect bountiful crops, and fat sheep covered by pelts so thick wolves will be  rewarded with a mouth full of wool rather than a meal.”

Esperanza smiled at the vision of sheep so fat and wooly that they were impenetrable.

“I expect we’ll see many customers coughing and wheezing,” Esperanza predicted. “We will need plenty of mustard greens for poultices, and catmint for fevers.”

“Alright then, I’ll cook up some onion tea and hearty bone broth to comfort the pilgrims along their way to Santiago,” Gabriella added.

“Speaking of cool, wet weather, I have just what we need.” Gabriela heaved herself up off the bench and trundled into the kitchen, emerging with a thick stew of beans, onions, and lentils. A smile crinkled the corners of her blue eyes as she handed Amika and Esperanza wooden bowls and heels of barley bread. The three companions huddled together like birds in a nest. The warmth of affection enfolded them like a well-loved quilt, Gabriela plump as a partridge, Amika tall, lithe and still beautiful, with cupid’s bow lips and acorn-brown eyes, and Esperanza, defiant and serious, her smokey gray eyes peering out from under a wide forehead and springy mouse-brown hair. In the years since their unlikely meeting, they had settled into an amicable partnership that did not require words.

Gabriela had not realized how lonely she had been after her husband’s death. Without the money he earned, she resorted to doing what she did best – cooking. Her husband had not been good company. Taciturn and gruff, he was often hard to live with, but she had loved him, nonetheless. When he died, he left her with nothing but this ancient building. Its dark and joyless interior reflected the gloom of lives together. Its one redeeming feature was that it faced the well-traveled route of the Camino de Santiago.

Every day, an assortment of pilgrims shuffled past her doorway – threadbare penitents, aimless vagabonds, and wealthy grandees riding richly caparisoned horses.

“Have a cup of hearty broth!” She called out to the peregrinos. “Look at these! Wouldn’t you love some of these vegetables, picked fresh from the garden this morning?”

Regardless of her humble position in life Gabriela was generous to all. To those who could drop a coin or two into her bowl, she gave thanks. To those who could not, she gave encouragement. “Ultrea! Onward!” she called out to the weary pilgrims.

One day a young woman with a pronounced limp blew in on a gust of wind.

“Do you remember the day you arrived on my doorstep?” Gabriela mused.

Amika and Esperanza exchanged knowing glances. The story of her arrival had been repeated so many times it had attained the status of legend. It was the glue that held them together.

“Of course, I do. You took one glance at me, and realized I was not going to buy anything; you couldn’t wait to be done with me,” Amika chuckled.

“But you didn’t leave, did you? I don’t think I had ever met such a young woman as bold as you. How old were you? Fifteen?”

“Seventeen.” Amika murmured, lost in reverie recalling the fate that brought her to Gabriela’s door.

“You walked right up and made a proposal. You were certain you could improve my business. What gall! We hadn’t even met yet.” Gabriela smiled with delight.

Amika glanced down at her malformed knee, so twisted that she would always be a cripple. “After my fall I couldn’t finish my pilgrimage to Santiago. The sisters at the convent nursed me back to health. But after I was healed, they asked me to leave.”

“I understand that now, but that day when you showed up at my stall, you were as strange as a beard on a baby,” Gabriela chortled. “Now look at us. You were right. Thanks to your boldness we have a full-blown apothecary.” She flung her arms wide encompassing home, hearth, and self-made family.

“As if having you in my life was not enough, two years later this Mateo friend of yours dropped off this homeless orphan girl.” One meaty arm reached out to squeeze Esperanza’s shoulder sending the soup bowl in her lap sloshing. “And I resisted taking the girl, didn’t I?” She winked at Esperanza.

“Mateo is your heart throb,” Gabriela’s elbow shot out nudging Amika’s ribs. Amika raised a palm in the air, ready to argue, but quickly gave up the pretense of innocence. Her friendship with Mateo was as complex as intertwined rose petals, layered with desire, disappointment, and love.

“You know our story perfectly well!” Amika’s voice twanged defensively. “I would marry him the moment he asked. He has been the love of my life since I met him along the Camino,” her smile turned sour. “I was never going to be enough for him. He had ambitions. And now he is a successful, educated man with excellent prospects.”

“He still loves you, you know.” Esperanza stretched across Gabriela’s broad lap to squeeze Amika’s hand.

“Ah, well.” Gabriela chose to see the rainbow, not the storm. “He is a kind and generous man. You could do worse than Mateo.” She winked conspiratorially, and Amika smiled demurely.

Esperanza sat silent. She had a story of how she came to this place too, but she had shared it with no one. A single tear seeped out from her eyes remembering her mother’s last words before she died in her arms.

“Esperanza, child of my soul, you will not be alone. I will send two others to you, and they will care for you as their own.” Her mother had closed her eyes and breathed a long rasping breath, then fell silent. When Esperanza was sure she had crossed over to the life beyond, her mother took one last gulp of air and whispered. “You will have intuitive powers far beyond those of ordinary people. You will be sure it is real when your eyes burn and your ears buzz. This is my gift to you.” Then she was gone – no last gasps, no more final words. Esperanza’s heart was too broken with grief to ponder her mother’s strange prophesy.

Before Esperanza’s mother’s body was cold, Amika and Mateo found the girl sheltering under a rock ledge cradling the body of her dead mother. Here they are. The others who would care for her. Just as mother had foretold.

The three women settled into a comfortable silence. Gabriela and Amika believed they would live in harmony forever. Esperanza however, sensed change rolling toward them as surely as the mangle-eared dog sensed the storm rolling in.

“Listen!” Esperanza said tilting her head upward. “I think the rain is letting up.” She gathered their wooden bowls, brought them to the kitchen, walked to the door, and drew a deep breath. The air smelled like freshly cut hay. “Today will be special. I can feel it. “

Gabriela and Amika no longer questioned Esperanza’s remarkable intuition. The orphan girl with eyes like thunder clouds and hair as wild as a storm at sea had a rare gift. They had seen it often when she diagnosed invisible ailments. She seemed to see behind the curtain of everyday life to a realm where past, present, and future blended into a continuous rhythmic flow, like the confluence of three rivers.

“That’s wonderful,” Amika stood, gathering her herbs, preparing to go back to work. “I would love to have a special day. Days have been so dismal this spring.”

The three of them wrestled the heavy oak table back into the street. Within minutes an old woman approached, tugging a sunken-eyed child by the hand.

“She has a cold with a nasty cough,” the old woman declared. As though on cue, the girl unleashed a spasm of uncontrolled hacking. By the time the fit subsided the child’s ragged breath came in short, wheezing gasps. Her cheeks flushed red. Her narrow shoulders crumpled. The episode exhausted her.

“Poor dear.” Amika bent over the table to pat the child’s head. She placed the back of her hand against her cheek. It was warm and swampy to the touch. “Stir a spoonful of honey into warm water. Add a little radish juice and a pinch of salt. Do this three times each day.”  Amika prepared a packet with a small square of honeycomb and a vial of radish juice. She pressed it into the old woman hand and curled the woman’s fingers around it.

The old woman opened her other hand. Lines like dark rivers scored the valley of her open palm. She dropped a single copper coin into the offering bowl. “Thank you. I would hate to lose her to the coughing disease as I lost her mother. She is all I have left.”

As they walked away, a burly man of middle years who had been lingering in the shadows approached the table. He did not raise his eyes but looked forlornly at the ground, kicking his toe in the dust in embarrassed silence. Eventually he spoke.

“I can’t explain what’s wrong. I don’t even know why I came here today, but I just don’t feel right.” He appeared to be in excellent health with the muscular build, and ruddy skin of a hard-working man in his prime.

“Are you getting enough sleep? Do you and your wife have a crying baby disrupting your nights? Are you eating enough?” Amika peppered him with questions.

“No, our son is almost grown. My wife sleeps the sleep of the innocents as I lay awake turning from one side to the other like a hare roasting on a spit.”

Amika’s questions shed no light on the cause of his vague symptoms. She paused, cradling her chin between her thumb and forefinger. When she could think of nothing further to help the man, she pulled open a drawer and sprinkled a palm full of willow bark chips into a cloth bag.

“Simmer these. Wait until the water cools. Strain them out and drink the tea. It may taste like chewing wood, so you might want to add a little honey.”

“Willow bark tea,” he mumbled. “My wife has made this for me many times. Do you have anything else I might try?”

Esperanza moved to the front of the table to examine him more closely. The man was a giant compared to the slight girl with unkempt hair and large grey eyes.

“Please show me your ankles,” she said. The man looked sharply at the girl, shocked by the cheeky request, then pushed his leggings up a few inches to expose swollen ankles.

“Give me your hand.”

Reluctantly he extended his arm toward her. Esperanza turned his hand over several times. The skin under his fingernails was a purplish blue and there was a blue tinge to his lips. She laid her fingers lightly on the veins radiating from his hand up his arm. She closed her eyes as she held his palm upward.

“You are exhausted, aren’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, she continued. “Yet you have trouble sleeping. You are short of breath. You have moments of confusion.”

The man was stunned. “How did you know?”

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Type of Story: Review

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