The White Doe · I

In a small place in Aragon, and back around the thirteen-hundred-and-odd years, there lived retired in his manorial tower a famous knight named Don Dionís, who, after having served his king in the war against infidels, was resting at the time, given over to the cheerful exercise of the hunt from the harsh fatigues of combat.

It happened once to this knight, while he was finding himself at his favorite pastime accompanied by his daughter, whose singular beauty and extraordinary whiteness had earned her the nickname of the Lily, that as they entered deep into the day absorbed in pursuing a deer in the mountain of his fief, he had to take shelter, during the hours of the siesta, in a glen through which a stream ran, leaping from rock to rock with a gentle and pleasant noise.

It would be about some two hours that Don Dionís had been in that delightful place, reclining on the fine grass in the shade of a poplar grove, chatting amicably with his huntsmen about the vicissitudes of the day, and recounting to one another the more or less curious adventures that had befallen them in their life as hunters, when from the top of the steepest slope and through the alternating murmurs of the wind that agitated the leaves of the trees, there began to be perceived, ever closer, the sound of a small bell similar to that of the bell-wether of a flock.

Indeed, it was so, for shortly after the little bell had been heard, about a hundred lambs, white as snow, began to leap among the dense bushes of lavender and thyme, and to descend to the opposite bank of the stream, behind which, with his hood pulled down to shield his head from the perpendicular rays of the sun, and his bundle on his shoulder at the tip of a stick, appeared the shepherd boy who was driving them.

“Speaking of extraordinary adventures,” exclaimed upon seeing him one of the huntsmen of Don Dionís, addressing his master: “there you have Esteban the shepherd boy, who for some time now has been acting sillier than God naturally made him, which is no small feat, and who can make you pass an amusing time recounting the cause of his continual frights.”

“Well, what is happening to that poor devil?” exclaimed Don Dionís with an air of piqued curiosity.

“A trifle!” added the huntsman in a mocking tone: “the thing is that without having been born on Good Friday, nor being marked with the cross, or finding himself in dealings with the devil, to what can be gathered from his habits as an old Christian, he finds himself, without knowing how or why, endowed with the most marvelous faculty that any man has ever possessed, save perhaps Solomon, of whom it is said that he even knew the language of birds.”

“And to what does that marvelous faculty refer?”

“It refers,” continued the huntsman, “to the fact that, according to what he affirms, and swears and perjures by all the most sacred things in the world, the deer that roam these mountains have plotted together to give him no peace, the funniest part of the matter being that on more than one occasion he has surprised them concerting among themselves the pranks they are to play on him, and after these pranks have been carried out, he has heard the loud bursts of laughter with which they celebrate them.”

While the huntsman was saying this, Constanza, for that was the name of the beautiful daughter of Don Dionís, had approached the group of hunters, and as she showed her curiosity to know the extraordinary story of Esteban, one of these stepped forward to the spot where the shepherd boy was giving his livestock to drink, and led him into the presence of his master, who to dispel the confusion and visible shyness of the poor lad, hastened to greet him by his name, accompanying the greeting with a kindly smile.

Esteban was a boy of nineteen to twenty years, strapping, with a small head sunk between his shoulders, small blue eyes, a gaze uncertain and clumsy like that of albinos, a snub nose, thick and half-open lips, a receding forehead, a white complexion but blackened by the sun, and hair that fell partly over his eyes and partly around his face in rough, red locks similar to the mane of a sorrel nag.

This, more or less, was Esteban as to his physique; regarding his morals, it could be assured without fear of being contradicted either by him or by any of the persons who knew him, that he was perfectly simple, although somewhat suspicious and malicious like a good rustic.

Once the shepherd boy had recovered from his confusion, Don Dionís addressed him again, and with the most serious tone in the world, and feigning an extraordinary interest in knowing the details of the event to which his huntsman had referred, asked him a multitude of questions, to which Esteban began to answer in an evasive manner, as if wishing to avoid explanations on the matter.

Pressed, however, by the interrogations of his master and by the pleas of Constanza, who seemed the most curious and interested in having the shepherd recount his astounding adventures, he decided to speak, but not without first casting a look of mistrust around him, as if fearing to be heard by persons other than those who were there present, and scratching his head three or four times trying to gather his memories or string together his discourse, which at last began in this manner:

“The thing is, sir, that according to what a priest of Tarazona told me, whom I went to not long ago to consult my doubts, with the devil no games serve, but rather mum’s the word, good and many prayers to Saint Bartholomew, who is the one who knows how to tickle him, and let him walk; for God, who is just and is up there, will provide for everything.”

Firm in this idea, I had decided not to say another word on the matter to anyone, nor for anything; but I will do it today to satisfy your curiosity, and faith, faith, that after all, if the devil holds it against me and comes back to bother me in punishment of my indiscretion, I carry good Gospels sewn into my leather jacket, and with their help I believe that, like other times, the club will not be useless to me.

“But come now,” exclaimed Don Dionís, impatient upon listening to the digressions of the shepherd boy, who threatened never to finish; “leave off the roundabout ways and go straight to the point.”

“To it I go,” answered calmly Esteban, who after giving a loud shout accompanied by a whistle so that the lambs would group together, which he did not lose sight of and were beginning to scatter through the mountain, went back to scratching his head and continued thus:

“On the one hand your continual excursions, and on the other the constant hammering of the poachers, who now with trap or crossbow leave not a deer alive for twenty leagues around, had not long ago exhausted the game in these mountains, to the extreme of not finding a single deer in them even for the love of God.”

I was talking about this very thing in the place, sitting on the porch of the church, where after Sunday mass was over I used to meet with some laborers of those who till the land of Veratón, when some of them said to me:

“Well, man, I don’t know what it consists of that you don’t run into them, for of ourselves we can assure you that we don’t go down to the fields once without finding a track, and three or four days ago, without going any further, a herd, which to judge by the footprints must have consisted of more than twenty, mowed down a patch of wheat ahead of time for the sexton of the Virgin of Romeral.”

“And towards what place did the track lead?” I asked the laborers, with the intention of seeing if I ran into the troop.

“Towards the lavender glen,” they answered me.

I did not let the warning fall on deaf ears, and that very night I went to post myself among the poplars. Throughout the whole of it I kept hearing here and there, as soon far off as near, the bellowing of the stags calling to one another, and from time to time I felt the branches stir behind my back; but try as I might to make myself all eyes, the truth is I could not distinguish a single one.

Nevertheless, at break of day, when I took the lambs to water, to the bank of this river, about a couple of slingshots away from where we now stand, and in a poplar grove where not even at the hour of the siesta does a ray of sunlight slip through, I found fresh tracks of the stags, some broken branches, the current a little turbid, and what is most peculiar, among the trail of the beasts the brief traces of feet as small as half the palm of my hand, without any exaggeration.

Upon saying this, the lad, instinctively and seemingly looking for a point of comparison, directed his gaze toward Constanza’s foot, which peeked out from beneath her kirtle, shod in a precious yellow morocco slipper; but as Don Dionís and some of the huntsmen surrounding him lowered their eyes along with Esteban’s, the beautiful girl hastened to hide it, exclaiming with the most natural tone in the world:

“Oh, no! Unfortunately I do not have them so tiny, for of that size they are only found in fairies, whose history the troubadours relate to us.”

“Well, the matter did not stop here,” continued the herd-boy when Constanza had finished; “but another time, having placed myself in another hiding spot through which the stags were bound to pass to make for the glen, right around midnight sleep overcame me a little, though not so much that I did not open my eyes at the very moment I thought I perceived the branches moving around me. I opened my eyes, as I have said; I sat up with the utmost care, and paying attention to that confused murmur which sounded ever closer, I heard on the gusts of the air, like strange cries and songs, bursts of laughter and three or four distinct voices speaking among themselves, with a noise and hubbub similar to that of the village girls when, laughing and joking along the road, they return in flocks from the fountain with their pitchers on their heads.”

Judging from the proximity of the voices and the nearby snapping of the branches that cracked as they broke to give passage to that mob of giddy girls, they were about to emerge from the thicket onto a small clearing formed by the mountain at the spot where I was hidden, when entirely behind my back, as close or closer than I am to you now, I heard a new fresh, thin, and vibrant voice that said... believe me, sirs, this is as certain as that I must die... said... clearly and distinctly these very words:

This way, this way, companions, for there is that oaf Esteban!

Upon reaching this point in the herd-boy’s relation, the bystanders could no longer contain for much longer the laughter that had been frolicking in their eyes for a long while, and giving rein to their good humor, they broke out in a thunderous guffaw. Among the first to begin laughing and the last to leave off were Don Dionís, who despite his feigned circumspection could not help taking part in the general rejoicing, and his daughter Constanza, who every time she looked at Esteban, all suspense and confusion, went back to laughing like a madwoman to the point of bringing tears to her eyes.

The lad, for his part, although paying no heed to the effect his narration had produced, seemed all troubled and uneasy; and while the lords laughed to their hearts’ content at his simpleton tales, he turned his gaze from side to side with visible signs of fear and as if wanting to discover something through the crossed trunks of the trees.

“What is this, Esteban, what is the matter with you?” one of the huntsmen asked him, noticing the growing unease of the poor fellow, who now fixed his terrified pupils on Don Dionís’s smiling daughter, now turned them around him with an astonished and stupid expression.

“A very strange thing is happening to me,” exclaimed Esteban. “When, after listening to the words I have just mentioned, I rose up promptly to surprise the person who had uttered them, a hind as white as snow emerged from the very bushes where I was hidden, and making huge leaps over the holm oaks and the mastic trees, she moved away followed by a troop of hinds of their natural color, and both these and the white one that was guiding them did not emit bellows as they fled, but laughed with bursts of laughter whose echo I would swear is still ringing in my ears at this very moment.”

“Bah!... bah!... Esteban,” exclaimed Don Dionís with a mocking air, “follow the advice of the priest of Tarazona; do not speak of your encounters with the roe deer that are fond of jokes, lest the devil should have it that you finally lose the little judgment you have; and since you are already provided with the Gospels and know the prayers of Saint Bartholomew, go back to your lambs, which are beginning to scatter across the glen. If the evil spirits return to trouble you, you already know the remedy: Pater noster and a good thumping with a cudgel.”

The lad, after stowing away in his scrip half a white loaf and a piece of wild boar meat, and in his stomach a hearty gulp of wine given to him by order of his master by one of the grooms, bid farewell to Don Dionís and his daughter, and scarcely had he walked four paces when he began to whirl his sling to gather the lambs together with stones.

As Don Dionís noticed at this juncture that between one thing and another the hours of heat had already passed and the afternoon breeze was beginning to stir the leaves of the poplars and refresh the fields, he gave orders to his retinue to prepare the mounts that were grazing loose in the nearby grove; and when everything was ready, he signaled to some to unleash the leashes, and to others to blow the horns, and issuing forth in a throng from the poplar grove, he continued on with the interrupted hunt.