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

said. "You're not eating enough."
    "Enough," he answered. "Too much."
    "You'll die one of these days if you don't care for yourself." I would have said more had not my father been within hearing.
    At a bend in the road we passed the leper house and soon thereafter saw a young leper walking toward us. He carried a warning bell but something was wrong with it, and though he shook it with all his might the bell was silent.
    I looked for Francis to take to his heels. Instead, he greeted the young man, grasped him by his bloody hands, and kissed them not once but again and again. Shocked, I remembered the day on the road to Assisi when he had quavered at the mere sight of a leper and had fled across the river to avoid a meeting.
    My mother said, "Do you see the miracle? A golden light hovers above the tree where the leper is now hiding. Do you see it, Ricca?"
    She frequently saw these apparitions and usually, to be a comfort, I saw them too. "A shining cloud," I said, "the same color as the mist on the river."
    "Not mist, not a cloud," she cried. "It is our Lord. It is Christ Himself standing beside the tree, guised as a leper. The moment after Francis Bernardone kissed his hands, He revealed Himself." She turned to Raul, calling out to him, "Is this not so, Santos? You, too, saw the miracle!"
    Raul, who was not so apt to agree with her as I, pressed a hand against his forehead and thought for a moment with closed eyes.
    "A misty cloud hovered above the tree, it's true," he said.
    "A glow," Mother insisted. "A light suddenly shone. Where else could the light have come from?"
    "I recall," Raul said, replying with a parable, as was his custom when pressed, "a night in my childhood. One night when my nurse, carrying a lighted candle, put me to bed, I asked her where the light had come from. She blew out the candle and said, 'Tell me, my dear, where the light has gone and then I'll tell you where it comes from.'"
    Mother pointed to the tree. "Look," she said triumphantly. "The leper has gone. He is nowhere to be seen. It
was
our Christ who stood there."
    I didn't dispute her, though when I glanced back after we had passed, I caught a glimpse of the leper. He was lying flat against the earth, hiding until we were out of sight.
    I was disturbed by this strange encounter. I dreamed about it at night. I became a leper myself and hid in the deep grass, rejected and sad. Then Francis appeared from somewhere and comforted me, kissing my hands. I thought of little else. It was on my mind when Bishop Pelagius visited the house to choose what I was to copy from the Bible.
    Assisi had become a nesting place for heretics. Why I do not know, except that it was a beautiful city resting like a jewel among meadows and mountains, put there by God Himself in one of His most gracious moods. But whatever the reason, heretics were with us in great numbers.
    To cleanse the city of heresy, old Bishop Guido was moved to the far north and Bishop Pelagius was brought in to take his place. Most of the heretics were Cathars, people who prayed by day and by night, yet thought that the Church's sacred cross was the symbol of Satan's victory over Christ. There were also a number of Manicheans in our midst—indeed, our master of guards was one of them—people who believed that Satan, not God, had created the world. And the Waldensians, the ones who preached that Christians should live in poverty like the apostles. And the many Donatists, Apollinarians, Sabellians, and one or two Priscillianists. In all, according to a careful count by Bishop Pelagius, there were some thirty different sects in the city.
    The bishop came to supper at my father's request, bribed by a vast gift to the cathedral. He was born in Lucia, a place near Granada. A tall, pale man, he had a hawkish nose and a bulging forehead that could easily hold the world's facts and wisdom. Impressed by his high office, Mother had a sumptuous meal prepared—eels, truffles, poached trout, roast