The Leper's Companions

by Julia Blackburn

  “The three of us walked up the steps of the cathedral and knelt to kiss the bare feet of the statue of the saint and the heads of the two lions on whose backs he was standing. We went inside and sat by the tomb where he was buried. I put my hand through a hole in the stone of the tomb so that I could feel the hard flesh of the body of the saint. Then we parted and I made my way here.”

  The leper was silent and there was no sound of breath or movement in the room.

  With my heart beating like heavy wings inside my body and my mouth so dry that I could hardly move my tongue to form the words, I spoke to the leper. My voice wavered and fluttered in the air and I doubted if he would hear it.

  “I would like to see how you have been healed,” I said.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled back the hood which still covered his head and concealed his face.

  “Here I am,” he said.

  I walked through the thick crowd of people and stood in front of him. By the light of the fire I saw that his face was covered with a swirling pattern of scars, but there was no sign of any sickness on it.

  I said, “If you are going on a journey then I would like to go with you. I would like to see Jerusalem and the deserts that lie beyond it. I would like to be one of your companions.”

  18

  As I finished speaking I felt the weight of the anesthetic pulling me down and down until I had lost the leper and the people who were with him and there was nothing left to see or hear or hold on to. Even the dizzy whiteness of walls and sheets had dissolved and disappeared.

  Time passed and there was no way of measuring it. When I finally floated back to the surface of the world, I knew that the threads which had been holding me were cut. I was ready to leave the village.

  Everything I had grown accustomed to would soon be changing. I was going away and once I had gone I could probably never return even if I wanted to. In the silence I could hear the methodical thump of my heartbeat and the gentle inhalation and exhalation of my breath.

  And so, over the days of convalescence while I lay in bed and drifted in and out of sleep and wakefulness, I began to say goodbye to the place which had been like a home to me for over a year. I walked as slow as old age along a road that was imprinted in my mind. I stood and gazed with a lingering tenderness at the line of crooked houses which had offered me shelter when I needed to escape. I peered wistfully through windows and open doors.

  A few of the rooms were occupied by men and women and children, but most of them were already empty, with broken ceilings and rubble on the floor. Nevertheless they were all still redolent of the stories they held and in each contained space I could see the memory of the people who had been here and the lives they had lived.

  This process of valediction was sometimes joyful and sometimes painfully sad, but there was nothing I could do to stop it from following its course. Although the thaw, which had started while the leper was telling his story, had by now melted most of the snow, the weather was cold. The sky was a clear, transparent blue and there was no wind.

  I made my way past the church and the yew tree and down to the rickety hut by the shore where I had sat with my back to the wall on the first day I came here. Once again I felt the crunch of shells breaking under my feet and when I looked out towards the horizon, where the air and water merged together in a shifting haze, I was brought as near as I could ever be to a sense of eternity.

  Farther along the coast I could just distinguish the wavering line of the sand dunes where the shoemaker and his wife had sat together among the whirring of dragonflies. In the other direction there was the flat expanse of muddy sand and a black stone marking the place where the mermaid’s hair was buried. The little boat in which the old fisherman had set out across the North Sea was pulled up on the shingle, tilted to one side, its nets spread out to dry.

  I knew that whales, porpoises, mermaids and sea monsters were to be found in these gray waters that I would soon be crossing. Unicorns, wolves, hermits and wild men covered with hair were in the woods, the mountains, and the uncultivated waste lands. An angel could be recognized from the way it glittered, a devil from its stench and the sound of grinding teeth. Death was out roaming at his leisure through all the three elements and a person must fall down like mown grass as soon as they heard him call them by name.

  A clump of samphire was growing among the pebbles beside the hut and I bent down to break off a stalk that was as tight as a drum, the thin skin tinged pink and orange. I bit into it and the salty liquid it contained tasted like my own tears.

  There was nothing more to be done. I had arranged to meet my companions at the boundary stone and as I approached I saw that they were already there: Sally and the shoemaker’s wife, the priest and the leper, standing in a huddled group and waiting for me.

  We all looked curiously alike, enveloped in gray pilgrim cloaks, the hoods decorated with the red cross of Jerusalem. We each carried a strong walking stick, a purse of money hidden close to the body, a bag for food, a bottle for fresh water, and a sack with a few simple possessions.

  Only a handful of people from the village had come to witness our departure. The red-haired girl was there with Sally’s child perched on her hip, his head almost lost within the mass of her hair. The woman who saw devils was peering at us from behind a tree, her face distorted by a mad smile that kept breaking out into laughter. The shoemaker appeared out of nowhere just in front of me and stared fixedly over my shoulder and towards his wife. I knew they were a throng of ghosts, but I would miss them all.

  No one spoke or waved as we set off, but the dog with pale eyes followed us from a distance, his tail between his legs and his movements furtive from the habit of avoiding sudden blows. A thin rain had begun to fall and I heard the dip dip dip cry of a woodpecker, answered by the fierce shriek of a jay.

  We were walking together in silence, busy with the realization of departure. We passed a field where the tiny spikes of young wheat were just breaking through the earth and then a meadow where three brindled cows stood under the shelter of a huge oak. A weasel raced out in front of us and for a few seconds it forgot its size and vulnerability and reared up on its hind legs to threaten us, swaying to and fro like a snake. Then with a flick of energy it was gone into the long grass beside the track.

  I was next to Sally, our steps swinging with the same rhythm. She had never left the confines of the village before and now she walked like a bullock being led to slaughter, her head bowed and her mind closed to anything beyond the thudding contact of her feet with the ground, the swishing of her cloak, the weight of the long staff in her hand.

  When we stopped at midday to share a meal of hard-boiled eggs, hard cheese, hard bread and stale beer, she ate what she was given but refused the beer, preferring to drink from a nearby pool. The water was sweet and brackish and it coated the inside of her mouth with the taste of mud and rotting leaves. The monotonous cry of a bird sounded like someone calling out for help: her child perhaps, or was it her father or her husband? It was only now, that she was leaving the village that she was able to understand how much she had lost during the last year and how sad she had been.

  As evening approached we reached a barn, and we spent the night there with the darkness immense outside and the rustling of rats in the straw. Sally was so restless that it was hard to know if she was awake or asleep. She whimpered like a little child, the noise so close and intimate it sounded like my own voice.

  19

  I want to try to put words to the shock I experienced when we entered the first town on this journey. It was the port of Great Yarmouth, the same place from which the leper had set out when he was bound for Santiago de Compostela. There was nothing extraordinary about it; it was a town like any other, but I had no idea what to expect.

  We had passed through a forest of beech trees, their bark as smooth as skin and moss green. Then we followed a raised track that took us safely across an area of marshland. The colors on that marsh were so sta
rtling: dark reds and grays and purples interspersed with patches of water glistening like liquid mercury. And the birds. I had never imagined such a quantity of birds. They were a thick restless carpet on the land and rushing clouds of movement in the sky. I can still hear the noise of them: burbling songs, harsh screams, the creaking of wings.

  The walls of the town emerged out of the mist like a monstrous face with gates for its many mouths through which people streamed in an endless flow and towers for eyes, the narrow windows staring down to judge those who approached.

  We joined the crowd that was heading for one of the gates and we were swept along with them and into the town. People shouted and pushed around me and there was a savagery in their determination which allowed no time to pause, no room for mercy. I caught hold of Sally’s hand when I stumbled on the uneven cobblestones and I kept it in my grip as if I would drown without it.

  The houses lowered at me and the streets between them were dark and narrow. There was a beggar lying in his own filth, the corpse of a dog, a heap of rags, a jumble of bones, a piece of broken chain and then we were suddenly tipped out into the light and space of the market square.

  All the shops around the square were hung with signs to explain their trade. A surgeon had a wooden arm painted with dripping stripes of blood, a barber had a long sharp knife, a tavern had a bunch of branches tied together like a broom and leaning out so low that it brushed against the top of my head.

  Above the cacophony of sounds I thought I could hear someone screaming in agony, but it was only a pig being slaughtered. I saw it stretched out on a trestle table, its skin pink and human, its throat cut so that the head lolled in a final ecstasy and the belly slit wide open and steaming into the air.

  Two women were busy washing the pig’s entrails in a tub of water. They laughed contentedly as they squeezed excrement out of the long tube of the intestine and one of them managed to throw a length of it around a man’s neck as he walked past. It dangled from him as fresh as an umbilical cord and that made everyone roar with laughter.

  People were selling things from little stalls set up on the paving stones. Chickens tied by their feet and suspended from hooks, stared at me with amazement. Tethered goats shifted and bleated uneasily. There was dark bread, a few vegetables, and lots of fish.

  A stone cross marked the center of the square, and wooden stocks and a metal cage had been erected just beside it. I blundered against the side of the cage and thought at first that it contained an animal, but then I saw it was a man, shivering and naked, his body blotched with vivid colors from the cold, the dirt and the bruises which covered him. He was cowering on all fours in a corner.

  “What did you do?” I asked him.

  “I don’t remember,” he replied.

  The stocks held a woman by her wrists and ankles. She was slumped forward, her face concealed by her hair. A few young children who must have been her own, snuffled close to her, as piglets do when their sow is trapped in the farrowing pen.

  The leper kept on striding ahead, while the four of us scuttled after him. I still held Sally’s hand in mine. Without it I might have tried to run away, even though there was nowhere to run to.

  We crossed to the other side of the market and reached the church of Saint Nicholas. The saint was standing by the door to welcome us. His cloak was bright blue, his cheeks were bright red, his hair was bright yellow. In his hands he was holding the severed heads of three children. Behind him was the painted barrel in which the children’s truncated corpses were soaking in salty water. The saint was poised right on the edge of the miracle that would restore the heads to their bodies and bring the children back to life. I saw that everyone who went into the church knelt to kiss him, congratulating him for what he was about to do. His wooden cheeks and the hem of his wooden cloak were shiny from the touch of so many lips.

  We were not inside the church for long, but I did see the big ship which dangled from chains fixed to the dome of the ceiling and the spiderweb of wires which I was told were used every year when the Star of Bethlehem was made to whiz across the vaulted space until it hung, shaking with the effort, above the altar.

  Then we were threading our way through more streets until again there was a sudden opening into space and light. But this time we had reached the limits of the land, with a view of a wide estuary and a river racing to meet the sea.

  A pair of gallows stood on a wooden platform overlooking the water. Between them these two awkward structures were carrying the weight of twelve dead men. They hung together in an exhausted clump. There was something vaguely convivial about their companionship and something terrible about their isolation. They were so close to each other, and yet so utterly distant from each other. They all had their heads facing the sea, staring with empty eyes into a far distance. The image hooked itself into my mind and often came back to me later.

  20

  The sun was already setting as we approached a three-masted ship in the harbor. The leper spoke to some sailors and within moments we were ushered up the gangplank and onto the deck. I went to sit on my own because of the shock of the town and the dead men.

  A pile of gutted herrings had been heaped up on the wooden boards and now that it was dark their bodies began to shine with a natural luminosity. I stroked one with my finger which took on the same pale gleam.

  That night I slept alongside the others under a canvas awning and among bales of oily wool with a stink so strong it rasped at the back of my throat. While the ship rocked and groaned across the waves, I dreamed that I found Sally’s husband washed up naked on the shore. He was wrapped in the mermaid’s arms and she had two tails like soft legs which were snaked tightly around his waist. In the dream I sat beside their fused bodies and stroked the skin that was as rough as a cat’s tongue and the skin that was smooth.

  I was aching all over when I woke and I could not begin to imagine where I was or why the ground beneath me was heaving with so much movement. I thought the sickness must have returned, bringing with it the nausea and the dizziness and the sense of being marooned on a raft, salt on my cracked lips. It was only then that I remembered what was happening, how I was leaving one place and going to another.

  I clambered out from under the shelter of the canvas. It was broad daylight. The leper and the shoemaker’s wife were nowhere to be seen, but Sally was with the priest and he was reading to her from the book of travels to the Holy Land. I wondered about the map which Sally had swallowed and whether we would be able to find our way without it. I could imagine it floating in the darkness of her belly: roads and rivers and oceans, mountains and valleys all jumbled up together and the red line marking the direction we must take, broken into little pieces.

  The priest turned a page of the book and the thin vellum rustled as if it still belonged to a living animal. I could just distinguish the pinprick marks where the hair had once grown and the delicate ridge where the skin had stretched tight across the line of the vertebrae.

  “Where are we?” I asked Sally, but although she looked towards me she didn’t hear me. She was trapped in some quiet labyrinth of the past, searching there for what she had lost. And so it was the priest who answered.

  “We have crossed the North Sea,” he said, “and we will soon be entering the port of Zierikzee in Holland,” and with that he pointed towards the outline of a tower standing guard at the harbor entrance.

  The people who were gathered on the quay to watch us had square-tipped fingers and big-boned faces. Their voices were thick and rough, angry in their strangeness, although there was no anger intended. They led us to an inn and we sat around a table in a low-ceilinged room. A plate of smoked eels was set before us. They writhed together in a motionless heap, their mouths gaping.

  I was next to the priest and I could feel how the rolling of the waves had not left his body. He had a slight fever and that made the eels smile at him, twitching their slippery tails. He felt as exhausted as someone who is recovering from a long illness and wi
thout eating he excused himself and made his way to the sleeping room.

  This room was lit by the embers of a fire glinting in the hearth. It contained twenty or more beds and many of them were already occupied. The priest moved between them, feeling for the outline of bodies with his hand. When he found a bed that was flat and empty he pulled back the rough covers and lay down. Insects bit at his naked legs and his belly but he was too tired to notice them.

  Somewhere quite close to him there was the sound of a man and a woman lying together, the wood of the bed creaking with the rhythm of their bodies. The priest remembered the warning in the leper’s book. “Beware of inns,” it said. “Beware of inns and of women who try to persuade you to enter them. Such women are all common prostitutes and they will rob you or even kill you.”

  The wood stopped creaking, and then it sounded as though the two people were dying, with a single exhalation of breath. The priest had never shared such a sense of intimacy before.

  He wanted to pray, but instead of prayers all that he could remember was the list of strange words he had been learning from the leper’s book. “Offena, kiszones, meela, betzim, daegim, elohim, zatan, eyscha,” he said, surprised by the authority contained in the unfamiliar sounds. And that meant: a ship, a shirt, an egg, a fish, the Lord, the Devil, and a woman, although he was not sure what country the words were from.

  Sleep came to him finally, and as he slept the fever fell away. I was lying beside him. He smelled of wax and honey. His hair was soft against my lips. He did not dream.

  We set out again in the morning, walking through a blanket of mist that merged with the camouflage of our cloaks so that we were hardly visible to each other. We followed the hugeness of the river Rhine: a sweep of turgid water, flooded meadows, windmills grinding their teeth into the wind and willow trees cut back so that they resembled a line of clenched fists.