Listen to the Mockingbird by Penny Rudolph Read Free Book Online Page A

cave I’ll give you some bark for the pain.”
    Thanking him, I stowed the leaves in my bag. “These came from up there?” I jutted my chin toward the area about the tangle of brush. He nodded. “There’s a way through the brush then?”
    He gave me a sharp look then his eyes slid away. “Of sorts, but one must brave the rattlers. There’s a nest of the vipers up there.”
    That dampened my interest in the area. “The local rattlesnakes can be awfully mean. We’ve lost a couple of colts to bites. You’d be safer on a horse than walking about among them. If you really have the healer’s art with those herbs, I daresay you could trade your skill for enough money to buy a sturdy gelding.”
    “Perhaps. But I’m comfortable this way.” Pairs of laugh lines appeared at the corners of his eyes and he glanced at his feet. “I wager these have carried me nigh as many miles as the circumference of the earth. Not all in one stretch, mind you.”
    I wondered if he was having me on. “You said you were once at seminary. Where?”
    Wisps of fragrant smoke curled around him like slim strips of rain cloud. “Italy.”
    “Really? I’ve always wanted to see Rome.”
    He gave me a slow smile and leaned his head back against a rock. “It’s full of ugly hulking buildings that cut off the air.”
    “Why were you in Italy?”
    The sun made a bright triangle on his forehead. “I was born there.”
    That explained his not-quite-Spanish looks. “You don’t like your homeland?”
    “I don’t like Rome. I was born in a village near Milan.”
    “And you always wanted to be a priest?”
    He peered at me quizzically as if over spectacles. “Not exactly. I happened to be a third and unnecessary son, so I was sent to the Franciscans when I was nine.”
    “What does one do among the Franciscans? I’ve always imagined them just sitting about feeding birds.”
    He chuckled. “There’s a little more to them than that. They taught me about plants. One of the brothers knew Hildegard’s Medicine and the Leech Book of Bald by heart and compiled his own catalog of formulas. I became his apprentice.”
    “Was it very complicated?”
    “A little. Sometimes a plant material’s properties change if it’s dried or heated. There’s a root from South America that is poisonous if you eat it raw. If you boil it one hour, it is safe to eat and quite nutritious; but if you boil it for two hours, it is again poisonous.”
    “Eating it at all sounds a bit risky.”
    “So is eating nothing.”
    “So it is,” I agreed. “Was it the Franciscans who sent you to America? Like a missionary? I’m afraid I don’t know much about how the Church does such things. I shouldn’t think they had even heard of New Mexico.”
    He gazed at the branch of piñon needles above his head. “My path was not quite so direct. I left the Franciscans to see the world. Eventually, I took passage on a ship to Mexico City and found my way to Chihuahua, where I worked with a priest in a small church until a drought killed almost everyone. I went east to Pennsylvania and lived with the Moravians for a time, but I found I missed the desert.”
    He fell silent, his face like that of a boy who has recounted what he ate for supper. For an odd instant I wanted to touch his cheek. How many years had it been since such an impulse had warmed me? Five? Six? I knew all too well the path that sort of feeling could set a woman’s feet upon. I had survived by becoming neuter, as sexless as if I had cut off my breasts.
    Discomfited, I turned my head to hide the blood rushing to my cheeks.
    “There’s something witching about these mountains,” he said. “Once they have called to you, you can never be happy anywhere else.”
    Chapter Six
    I watched the battle from the shelf-land near the cuevas. It was a July Sunday; and heat smothered the land like a massive feather pillow, cutting off the air. The sky was almost white, and empty save for the relentless sun, which seemed