by Carla Kelly
“Can you stand if I help you?” she asked.
He nodded, biting his lips as she hauled him to his feet. He sucked in his breath from the pain as she half-carried, half dragged him to the opposite side, where she sat him down as gently as she could. Bracing herself against the current, she swung his legs onto firm ground, then sat beside him.
In silence he clutched his ankle and rocked back and forth. Hanneke knelt over him, touching the spot he held, feeling the break. She breathed a prayer of thanks that no bones protruded, even as she knew Pablo’s journey had ended.
“We have to find help,” she said, her arms around him.
“Who is here to help us? Look around.”
She didn’t need to look to know that they were alone in midafternoon on a cold day somewhere in Spain. They would sit here, soaked through, starved and shivering, until they died.
“Let me see what I can do.” She wrapped her borrowed cloak around the boy and stood up, moving away from the stream, seeing no one, not even an enemy. She stood still, listening, then shook her head. She thought she heard bells, but how could that be? The shelter of trees was no shelter because the branches were bare. No birds sang. There were no churches. How could she hear bells?
She heard them again, and closer, then stepped back in surprise when a child in rags and carrying a bucket came slowly toward her.
The bucket looked too big for one so small. Upon seeing Hanneke, she hesitated, then shook the bells more vigorously. Hanneke watched as realization dawned. The bells warned her to come no closer. Lepers.
The child stopped, dropped the bucket, and turned as if to run. Hanneke raised her hand. “Please don’t run. I need your help.”
“No one needs us,” the child said, but she did not run.
“I do. My friend Pablo – he’s at the river – broke his leg crossing the stream. Could you go back to your…your village? Your camp? Please send someone.” She came forward slowly, her hand out. “See here. I will fill your bucket while you get help.” She grabbed the bucket, knowing the girl would bring help, because she needed her bucket back. “I’ll fetch water for you.”
The girl ran, her bells setting up a clamor. Hanneke watched her go, wondering if she had done the right thing. You don’t even know what the right thing is, she scolded herself. After all, your turn to be winnowed is long overdue.
She returned to the stream and carefully filled the bucket, balancing herself on the rocks. When she told Pablo what had happened, he shook his head. She saw all his despair. She took the bucket up the slope. She waited.
To her infinite relief, she heard a few bells, then many, and then she saw them – all of them cloaked in mountains of rags and looking like walking haystacks. As she watched in grateful appreciation, she saw one among them that made her draw in her breath.
“It cannot be,” she said. Tears came to her eyes and she started walking, then running, which frightened the lepers.
“No, no,” the man said. “She will not hurt you. Far from it.”
She wasn’t mistaken. She slowed to a walk, then sighed with relief as Father Bendicio embraced her.
Chapter Forty-eight
She had last seen the priest galloping away from her, fleeing in fear from approaching Almohades, her husband near death. He held her off, filled with his own questions. “Why are you here? Where is Santiago? What of Antonio?”
Break my heart, coward priest, she thought, then dismissed her sudden anger. Other matters pressed more on her heart. “I will tell you everything, but first you must help me. Pablo’s leg is broken, and we are freezing.”
She gave him a push that seemed to recall him to his duties. “Yes, certainly. Ernesto!” he shouted. “I need you.”
A giant of a man came forward, rag-covered like the others. He picked up Pablo, who had lapsed into unconsciousness, and draped him gently around his shoulders, as a shepherd carries a lamb. When he raised Pablo, his cloak fell away and Hanneke saw open sores.
Father Bendicio touched her hand. “Do not fear. This is my little parish. Ana, I have found my flock.”
She followed him without another word. She turned once to speak her thanks with her eyes when a woman with half a face wrapped her own cloak around Hanneke’s shoulders, murmuring words that fell half-formed from her ruined mouth.
The child with the bucket walked next to her. “This is my mother,” she said, as she held the woman’s hand.
“You are lucky, child,” Hanneke said, “for she is kind.”
Not far from the stream they came to a huddle of shelters made of twigs and straw, not even approaching the dignified title of hovel, or even shack. Ernesto the leper carried Pablo into one of the shelters, followed by Bendicio.
“Go with the woman,” Bendicio said. “She will find you something dry to wear.” He must have noticed her hesitation. “Fear not, my dear. Trust me.”
“I do not know why I should, Father,” she said simply.
“I don’t either,” he replied. “We will talk later.”
She followed the mother and child into another shelter, ducking in the low doorway. She did as the child said, and removed her soaking dress and camisa, then wrapped herself in the blanket the mother held out to her.
Eyes lively, the young girl ran her hand down Hanneke’s arm. “Your skin is like mine,” she said, then ducked her head in her mother’s embrace, embarrassed.
Hanneke and the woman with the ravaged face smiled at each other. “Your daughter is a treasure beyond price,” Hanneke said. “I envy you.”
The woman hugged her daughter speaking low words that only the child understood. I am envying a leper, Hanneke thought, touched to her heart. She wrapped herself in the blanket and slept.
When she woke, Father Bendicio sat beside her. She sat up carefully, making sure the blanket covered her.
“I wanted to be here when you woke up,” he said, with no preamble. “These people, good as they are, can be” – he searched for the word – “disconcerting.”
“Pablo?” As much as she owed him now, Hanneke didn’t know if she wanted to talk to Father Bendicio.
“He sleeps. I did what I could for his ankle, and wrapped it tight.” He sighed and looked away. “All he is concerned about is that he knows he will slow you down. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he isn’t going anywhere for many weeks.”
What could she say to that? She could have said, “You never have had the courage for anything, have you?” She saw the face of a penitent sinner, and she could not. Better to say nothing. She looked away, sick at heart because she had to leave her true knight with this unworthy man.
He wouldn’t let her ignore him. “Ana, I must know what happened! Why are you here in such a state? Where is Santiago? Antonio?”
In that miserable hut, with other lepers gathering, she told Father Bendicio, Las Claves’ coward priest and the man who taught her Spanish, about Santiago’s death first of all. If she could get through that, then the story was hers. “You rode away when you saw the Almohades. I stayed with Santiago until he died.” He didn’t need to know about the necklace. “Why they did not kill me, too? I was ready to die, even as I am now.”
“Ana, I…”
“Let me finish. Felipe Palacios and a few of his thugs are now in charge of Las Claves. He wants to force me to marry him and get the dowry. I refused him and ran.” He didn’t need to know about Antonio, either. Suppose Felipe should ride in here tomorrow and force an even greater coward to blurt out more? “Pablo and I are being hunted. Carlos is likely dead. Antonio is trying to gather in the rest of the soldiers that my dowry has bought, if he still lives. There you have it, Father Bendicio. Make of it what you will.”
“I know I am a coward,” was all he said as he left. “I need to tell you what I have learned.” He managed a smile. “It will keep.”
The others lef
t, too, until only the woman and child remained. The girl returned her black dress. “I held it over the fire to dry it and scorched it a little,” she said. “Your camisa, too.”
“At least they are dry and warm,” Hanneke said. She looked closer. “My dear, did you burn your fingers doing this?”
She nodded. “Father Bendicio has some salve. He brought some wonderful salve with him.” Her face clouded. “The trouble is, no one gets better with it except me.”
Hanneke took a good look. “You’re not a leper, are you?”
“No. Only my mother.”
“What is your name?”
She shrugged. “We are not sure. Mama calls me something, and I answer to it, but we cannot tell.”
The mother said something, and held out her hand to her daughter, who told Hanneke, “Our meal is ready.”
Hanneke gathered with the lepers around the iron pot under a shelter. Father Bendicio raised the lid. “Meat,” he said, his eyes lighting on Ernesto. “Thanks be to God.”
Ernesto beamed at him, then lowered his gaze and murmured, “Some people are more careless with their early lambs than others.”
“You know that is wrong,” Father Bendicio chided, but gently.
“We’re hungry,” Ernesto said.
“Thus is every theological argument I ever learned at Salamanca rebutted,” Father Bendicio said. He raised his voice in prayer, then handed Hanneke a spoon.
“We have no bowls. It would be better if you went first. I have set some aside for Pablo, when he wakes.”
She took the spoon, mindful that everyone watched her. She ate quickly, holding her hand under her chin so she did not lose a drop. She could have wolfed down the entire stew, for it was only a small lamb. She handed the spoon back to Bendicio.
The girl ate next, then all those who could feed themselves. When they finished, Bendicio motioned the others forward, the ones with mouth and throat lesions. As she watched, Father Bendicio put a piece of meat in his mouth, chewed thoroughly, then leaned toward an old man with no lower jaw. The man tipped his head back like a fledging in a nest as Bendicio spread the meat in his ulcerated throat and added a little broth.
“Very good sir,” Bendicio said, when the man swallowed as best he could. “A little more?”
He fed the same leper more, then another. By this time, the girl had chewed meat for her mother. Others who could chew helped those who could not.
Bendicio glanced at Hanneke. “It took me some time to get used to that, but now…” He shrugged. “I am learning, Ana. Please believe me.”
“I believe you, Father,” she replied, as her heart began to soften toward this imperfect man. What if he was only doing the best he could?
The first old man grunted for more food. Bendicio fished another piece of lamb from the pot and handed it to Hanneke. She chewed it soft for the leper and despite everything felt kinder, wiser and more grateful. What an odd journey this had become.
Soon the pot was empty. Father Bendicio handed it to the little girl, who scampered away with it to the stream.
“Father, you didn’t get any,” Hanneke said.
“I swallow every now and then.”
“It isn’t enough.”
“It is,” he assured her. He picked up a tin with the remaining stew. “Let us take this to Pablo.”
They walked slowly from the campfire. “I fled north, after that dreadful night,” Bendicio said, picking up his narrative of that awful night she craved to remember less relentlessly. “There is a monastery in Toledo. The abbot took me in and did not question me until I was ready.”
The child returned with the pot. He motioned for her to fill it with water and return it to the campfire.
They went into another shelter. Pablo lay on his back, staring at the fading sky through the hay and twig awning. Hanneke fed him the stew as Father Bendicio held up his head. When he finished, Pablo closed his eyes and returned to sleep.
As Pablo slept, Father Bendicio continued his narrative, his voice lower. “I told the abbot I didn’t want to be a priest anymore, but he wouldn’t hear of that.” Father Bendicio’s voice took on a wondering tone. “He told me, ‘You will always be a priest, so you need to start learning how.’”
“And then?” she prompted, when he fell silent.
“He gave me that pot and told me to find the lepers. ‘Let them teach you,’ he said. “Here I am.”
Pablo stirred and cried out. He tried to sit up, but Hanneke held him, brushing the hair from his forehead.
“When do we leave?” he asked, his eyes anxious. “Felipe might even be at Rincón now.”
“I know, I know,” Hanneke said, soothing him. “We will discuss it tomorrow. Sleep, my true knight.”
“I cannot,” he said as he closed his eyes and slept.
“You will sleep with my little friend Luz and her mother,” Bendicio said, as he helped her from the shelter.
“Luz?”
“That is what I call her. Everyone should have a name.” He smiled into the unknown distance. “She is everyone’s light, so it is the perfect name.”
They stopped at the women’s shelter. She leaned close and whispered, “Father, how much longer will Luz’s mother live?”
He shrugged. “How much longer do any of us have in this vale of tears? The ulcers in her throat will dig deeper and deeper. One day she will not be able to swallow at all.” He hunched his shoulders against the cold. “We will pray, and she will starve to death before our eyes. Then we will praise God for something or other.”
“Father,” she chided gently.
“I have a little way to go before I am a perfectly reconciled priest.”
They paused before the shelter. “I am leaving tomorrow, Father,” she said.
“Where will you go?”
“I do not know. Antonio said there is a convent south of Toledo.”
“Santa Catarina. Yes, go there.” He became all business, and not the floundering man she was more familiar with. Poor Father Bendicio: not for him the bold stroke, the chance circumstance. “It is directly north from here. Let us say, two days. Someone will help you.”
Hanneke doubted she had two days, not with Felipe determined to find her, and Amador and Baltazar thirsty for revenge. She had to ask the hard question. “Father, I do not doubt that Felipe will be on my trail soon, if not already. If he shows up, what will you tell him? If he only sends Amador and Baltazar, they are even worse.”
He could not look at her, which chilled her heart. Worthless priest, she thought, then reconsidered. “At least hide Pablo among the lepers, before you tell them where I am heading.”
“Ana …”
She couldn’t leave him so despondent. She owed him little, but even that little could not be ignored. “Father, your courage is of a different kind,” she told him, wondering if this was true, but determined not to ruin an already fragile creature. “Tend your little flock. Hide Pablo.”
“Very well. That I will do. Go with God, Ana, bravest of women.”
Chapter Forty-nine
Hanneke left at first light, after accepting a handful of wheat from Luz, shyly given, and two coppers from Father Bendicio, who regretted he could not give her more. She didn’t check on Pablo, knowing that if he was awake, her departure would overset him. Ernesto the leper gave her a walking stick, telling her not to hesitate to use it. “Beat any scoundrels soundly, dama,” he told her.
Too exhausted and hungry to beat anything, Hanneke assured him she would be vigilant. Her cloak from the death cave was returned cleaner. She gathered its warmth around her, dismayed how heavy it was. Could she even wear it?
Father Bendicio blessed her and walked a little distance beside her, either to assure himself that she was someone else’s problem soon, or to pretend to put a brave face on the matter. Or perhaps he was only do
ing the best he could.
He pointed her north. “Two days to Santa Catarina. You are nearly there.”
The handful of wheat was gone before the sun struggled through the clouds resting, as though exhausted, on the horizon. The kernels clumped into a ball that sank to the bottom of her shrunken stomach; she wished she had never eaten them.
Relying on Ernesto’s walking stick, she walked through a wintry landscape – devoid of trees, fences, animals and houses. She hoped the slight undulation of the land would be a refuge from detection, but no one rode this way. The flinty soil cut into what remained of her shoes and the wind threw bits of sleet at her that cut her face. Perhaps Spain was beautiful in springtime, the only season she had not witnessed. Would she live that long?
She hunched herself against the weather, wondering at the growing ache in her shoulders that began to spread down her back. She hoped she was walking north, and not traveling in a circle that would take her back to Rincón and the stoning ground.
She had only one fear. She saw no place to hide in this wide and open land. What if she topped a rise and found herself staring at Baltazar or Amador? What if she turned around to see Felipe ready to snatch her back to Las Claves for his own purposes? She knew she was being winnowed out like Santiago. It was only a matter of time.
Prayer seemed a useless tease, but it cost her nothing to pray for Antonio, to pray that he was alive. She prayed he had not taken whatever soldiers he could gather back to Las Claves and into Felipe’s dangerous orbit. She prayed he had headed to Valladolid, where Santiago had told her King Alfonso resided most often and was gathering his own troops for war in summer.
Even worse than hunger was the fear that Antonio had not been alerted to Felipe’s misdeeds. Perhaps he thought she was still safe at Las Claves, Carlos protecting her. Yussef el Ghalib had told her he dared not stay in Christian lands to assist her, not with the danger of betrayal hanging over him, a most loyal Almohad. Maybe Yussef had never planned to warn Antonio at all, even though he said he had. Her thoughts made awful companions for a journey.
