The Leper's Companions Read Online Free Page A

head of a monstrous fish, he took the creature in his arms but was spared the shock of its deformity and only guessed that it was dead because it was cold. They buried it beyond the boundary of the churchyard, and as he struggled to see the shape of a wooden box being lowered into the unforgiving earth, he knew that something must be done.
    â€œLook at my eyes!” he said to his wife as they made their way back along the village street. “Look at them! What is wrong with them?”
    She stopped and pulled his head towards her with firm hands. She put her face close to his so that her warm breath flowed over his skin. She said, “It’s as if milk has been spilt into them. Your eyes are covered with a layer of curdled milk.”
    He had no wish to go to a doctor who would only suggest cutting and bleeding, so he went instead to the woman who could use charms and herbs.
    She made a mixture out of wild honey and fox fat and the marrow from a roe deer. She sang over it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost as she rubbed it sticky onto his closed eyelids. But it did no good.
    He went to the priest. The priest listened quietly and said the best thing to do was to buy an eye made from wax and take it to the church, leaving it in front of the statue of Saint Clare who could always be trusted to help with such afflictions.
    So the shoemaker bought himself two eyes, smooth unblinking things as big as hens’ eggs. He kissed them carefully and presented them to the saint.
    But his sight only got worse. There was a dark crack opening across the left eye now, so that he saw a remnant of the world torn through the middle as if it had been slashed with a sharp knife. A shadow was creeping around the edge of his vision as well, like the sky before the eruption of a thunderstorm.
    He became afraid. The fact of seeing so little made him feel as if he no longer existed. He could not bear to touch his wife or to be touched by her because that only hammered more loudly on the door of his isolation. He felt he was being punished for some terrible crime although he could not think what that crime might be, unless it was simply the hugeness of his own despair.
    Someone told his wife about a new shrine dedicated to Saint Anselm, with one of the saint’s thigh bones encased in a golden casket. She decided to take her hasband there.
    It was a journey of many hours to reach the shrine and when they arrived the shoemaker sat exhausted with his head in his hands. He had no expectation of recovery and felt that he must learn to accept the damnation of darkness that had come upon him.
    But his wife was filled with a rush of wild energy. She stood facing the shrine and began to shout at it in a loud voice, “Give him back his sight! Give my husband back his sight!”
    She wasn’t praying to the saint or begging for help, she was demanding what she felt to be hers by right. She shouted for six days and six nights. At first her voice was clear and strident but gradually it weakened until it was nothing more than a grating whisper, although the indignation within it was never diminished. She didn’t pause to eat or sleep, she didn’t even defecate. She just stood rooted to the earth and shouted, her words like waves beating against a rock.
    A crowd of people had gathered around the shrine to find out what was happening and there was a sense of growing excitement in the air.
    And then the miracle happened. The scales that had covered the shoemaker’s eyes fell away. He saw the blue of the sky, the green of the grass, the intricate dazzling beauty of leaves and trees. But he also saw the mass of staring faces gathered around him.
    All the people who had witnessed the miracle wanted to have a share of the blessing. They reached forward to touch the shoemaker, to cut off a piece of his cloak or a lock of his hair. They clung around him, asking questions and demanding his attention. He was horrified by