The Road to Damietta by Scott O’Dell Read Free Book Online

shimmering garden of Eden. I saw, written in fire, the words I had copied so carefully from the Holy Bible, from the second chapter, twenty-fifth verse, of the book of Genesis, "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed."
    The earth trembled beneath my feet. Heavenly sounds came down from above, stopping my ears. The sun burst forth, blinding my eyes. Yet clearly I saw that the man, Adam, was Francis Bernardone, and his wife, Eve, was Ricca di Montanaro.
    I made no movement that I remember. I said nothing to Clare nor uttered a word of what I saw or heard. Though the earth trembled, I kept my feet. But suddenly and mysteriously, as if other hands had helped me, my clothes lay upon the stones. I stood there before the bishop's palace in Santa Maria Maggiore Square, white and naked to the wind.
    Francis was standing on the palace steps. He had turned from his father to face the crowd. He gazed in my direction. Doubting that he would ever find me, surrounded as I was, I took a step toward him. A hand grasped my shoulder. I heard Clares beseeching voice as her cloak covered my nakedness.
    At the same moment Bishop Guido had taken off his jeweled cloak and was throwing it around Francis Bernardone, amid the wildest of laughter. Clare pulled at the hood of her cloak and tried to cover my face. My gown, my shift, my shoes had disappeared.
    "Ricca," she said—said it twice more as she led me away—"what possessed you? How could you do such a terrible thing? What will your father..." She choked on the words and glanced fearfully about as if she expected to see him come stalking through the crowd. Pleading with a wayward child, she shook me. "You are mad, you are mad," she cried. "Gather up your wits."
    The sun disappeared. The wind grew bitterly cold. The dream faded. People were staring through Clare's thick cloak at my nakedness.
    "There's one good thing," Clare said. "You are not quite a woman yet. Those who saw you might have taken you for a boy."
    We hurried through the scattering crowd. Snow, driven by a chill north wind, had begun to fall. We both were freezing, she without her cloak and me naked beneath it, my feet shoeless on the slippery stones.
    "I'll take you home," she said, "and give you clothes and you can wait until the storm's over. By that time your father will be less angry than he is now."
    "My father's anger will not be less. It will grow. He'll be angry forever," I said, beginning to be aware of the enormity of what I had done. "It's best that I go home, but you must come, too."
    Guards stood at the portal. They glanced at my bare feet as they opened the door. In the hall the serving woman looked askance as she reached for my cloak. I waved her aside.
    We ran up the stairs to the tower and bolted the door behind us. But no sooner had I slipped out of the cloak into a sedate, high-necked costume than there came a series of loud raps.
    I had scarcely opened the door when my father brushed past me. He crossed the room and stood stiffly at the window.
    "I cannot believe what I have heard," he said, his back to me. "Not from one citizen but from twenty, and not from any enemies but from my friends as well, friends who would say nothing to cause me distress."
    He turned and stared at me. I was a stranger he had never seen before.
    "Is it true?" he shouted in a choked voice. "Can I believe what I have heard? Is it possible? Did you disrobe in Santa Maria Maggiore while the crowd whistled and cheered and beat on drums?"
    "With all respect to you and your good friends," Clare said,
"she did not disrobe for the crowd. Few saw your daughter because I threw my cloak around her."
    "She did disrobe?"
    His question was directed at Clare, but I answered it. "I did disrobe, but not for the crowd."
    "Not for the crowd, not for the crowd," he said to mock me. "If not for them, then for whom? For the guard in the tower? The priest in the belfry who rings the hours? The serf looking down from the