To Play the Fool by Laurie R. King Read Free Book Online Page A

my bones because of my sin." His beautiful
voice paused to draw a breath that was more like a groan, and the noise
seemed to find an echo in the electrified audience. Whatever they had
been expecting, it was not this. "My wounds grow foul and fester
because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate,- all
the day I go about in mourning."
    It was something biblical, Kate could tell, but with little relation
to the readings she had heard in the chapel half an hour earlier,-
those cool tones had been nothing like this.
    "My loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness
in my flesh. I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the
tumult in my heart." The young man standing next to Kate did
moan, deep in his throat. Nearby, a thin young woman began openly to
weep. "I am like a deaf man, I do not hear, like a dumb man who
does not open his mouth. Yea, I am like a man who does not hear, and in
whose mouth are no rebukes." He paused again, eyes still shut,
swallowed, and finished in an almost inaudible voice. "Do not
forsake me, O Lord. O my God, be not far from me."
    He bent forward until his forehead touched the grass, held the
position for a moment, then knelt back onto his heels again. His eyes
opened and he smiled a smile of such utter sweetness that Kate was
instantly aware that Brother Erasmus was not altogether normal.
Disappointment and relief hit her at the same moment and dispelled the
spookiness of the scene she'd just watched: Probably a third of
San Francisco's homeless population had some form of mental
illness. Erasmus was obviously one of them, and very likely he had
cracked John across the head because a voice had told him to, or John
had angered him, or just because John had happened to be there. No
mystery.
    This cold splash of sobriety had not hit the others,- they still
stood around him enthralled. Kate heard feet on the cement steps and
turned, to see the dean coming down. He nodded at her politely, and
then he saw the tableau beyond.
    "What's happened?" he asked. Before Kate could
attempt an explanation, another man, one of the group from the chapel,
turned and answered in a low voice.
    "He recited Psalm Thirty-eight, making it very...
personal. I've never seen him like this, Philip. It's
very--"
    "Wait," commanded the dean. Erasmus was speaking again.
    "I am a fool," he said conversationally, and scrambled
to his feet, bending to brush off the knees of his cassock. For some
reason, this phrase, an echo of Beatrice Jankowski's cryptic
judgment, seemed abruptly to defuse the tension in the crowd. The
weeping young woman pulled a tissue from her pocket, blew her nose, and
raised her head in shaky anticipation. There were two people with pen
and notebook in hand, Kate noticed. Was this to be an open-air lecture?
Erasmus had both hands in the pockets of the garment again, and when he
pulled them out, there were objects clutched in them--a small
book, a little silver plate--which his left hand began to toss
high into the air, one after another, rhythmically--juggling! He
was juggling, four, five objects now in a circle, and he began to talk.
    "It is actually reported that there is immorality among
you," he declared fiercely, glaring at a figure Kate had noticed
earlier, a tiny wrinkled woman in the modern nun's dress, plain
brown, with a modified wimple. She blushed and giggled nervously as his
gaze traveled on to the man behind her. "I wrote to you in my
letter not to associate with immoral men. Not to associate with an
idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Not even to eat with such a
one. Drive out the wicked person from among you! Do not be deceived,
neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals,
nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers
will inherit the kingdom of God."
    Oh Christ, thought Kate in disgust, he's just another
end-of-the-world, repent-and-be-saved loony. Why the hell are these
people listening to this crock of