get away from my skin. “And be quick about it!”
She clomped from the room, muttering beneath her breath, though she was back a few minutes later, lugging a bucket. Water sloshed onto her skirts with every step.
I took the bucket back to my chamber and stripped off my shirt, breeches, and hose. I took up a brush and squatted on the floor. Examined my arms, my legs. Scooped up a handful of water and cupped it to my chest. Once. Twice. Took up the brush and scrubbed myself nearly raw, trying to exorcise all the terrible memories.
“You’ll catch your death.”
I looked up to find the maid staring at me from the door. “ Dégage! ” I might have shut the door on her, blocking her view, but my task was too important. And, more than that, it was almost complete. I turned my back toward her, took up the brush, and began to scrub once more. I closed my eyes as I scoured my cheeks and forehead, and I could see him reflected in my memories.
My father.
I saw him once more sitting in his cave beside the River Saleys in Béarn, wrapped in rags. I saw myself there, as a boy, cringing at the horror of seeing my father’s skin melt from his bones. Watching the leprosy consume his fingers and toes, his nose and his ears. The disease stole both his voice and his sight. I hadn’t come within ten feet of him all those years of my childhood, though I slept each night just outside the entrance to that cave. And each morning, after I had begged bread for our day’s meals, I ran down to the stream and scrubbed at my skin with a stick. Sloughed off even the possibility of that wasting disease, shedding it into the river. Letting the water carry it away.
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Before the disease could corrupt me. Before it could take root and spread forth its destructive tendrils.
I scrubbed behind my ears, beneath my fingernails, between my toes. I had done so each morning for years, examining my skin for lesions and then scrubbing at my flesh. Sometimes…sometimes I was too zealous. It could take days for the wounds to heal. And when I smelled a particularly ripe chèvre cheese or passed a herd of goats, it could take days for my nostrils to rid themselves of the scent. Of the odor that smelled like rotting flesh.
I was marked—I was tormented—by memories.
•••
My father had wasted away over the years, in both mind and body, and then one morning, he simply failed to stir at all. It was the summer of my twelfth year.
“Papa?”
I poked him with a stick. Poked him again. Harder and harder, until the sharp tip broke right through his disease-eaten skin. I pulled it out and then flung it away.
“Papa!”
I found another stick and used it to draw the cowl off his face. I hadn’t seen him, not clearly, in over a year. He’d taken the habit of keeping his face shadowed beneath the folds of black cloth. Had I seen him before that morning, I might have believed him already dead. Worms could not have corrupted his flesh as thoroughly as the disease had done. Surely they would not have devoured it with such complete ruthlessness.
His eyes were not closed. The lids had been eaten away long before, consigning him to blindness soon thereafter. But there was dullness to them that morning I could credit to nothing but death.
Where could I bury a man who had already, long ago, been declared dead by the village priest?
And how could a boy inter a man he was not supposed to touch?
I solved the problem by using a fallen branch to roll him farther back into the cave, and then I walled him in behind a fortress of stones. It took me the whole day to haul them up from the river. But by the time I was done, no man or beast would ever be able to reach him. Yet the goatlike odor of his decaying flesh haunted me. It seeped out of the cave in the spaces between the rocks. I spent the next day fortifying the walls I had constructed the day before. Someone must have spied me at my work, from the far side of the river. Before the sun had
She clomped from the room, muttering beneath her breath, though she was back a few minutes later, lugging a bucket. Water sloshed onto her skirts with every step.
I took the bucket back to my chamber and stripped off my shirt, breeches, and hose. I took up a brush and squatted on the floor. Examined my arms, my legs. Scooped up a handful of water and cupped it to my chest. Once. Twice. Took up the brush and scrubbed myself nearly raw, trying to exorcise all the terrible memories.
“You’ll catch your death.”
I looked up to find the maid staring at me from the door. “ Dégage! ” I might have shut the door on her, blocking her view, but my task was too important. And, more than that, it was almost complete. I turned my back toward her, took up the brush, and began to scrub once more. I closed my eyes as I scoured my cheeks and forehead, and I could see him reflected in my memories.
My father.
I saw him once more sitting in his cave beside the River Saleys in Béarn, wrapped in rags. I saw myself there, as a boy, cringing at the horror of seeing my father’s skin melt from his bones. Watching the leprosy consume his fingers and toes, his nose and his ears. The disease stole both his voice and his sight. I hadn’t come within ten feet of him all those years of my childhood, though I slept each night just outside the entrance to that cave. And each morning, after I had begged bread for our day’s meals, I ran down to the stream and scrubbed at my skin with a stick. Sloughed off even the possibility of that wasting disease, shedding it into the river. Letting the water carry it away.
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Before the disease could corrupt me. Before it could take root and spread forth its destructive tendrils.
I scrubbed behind my ears, beneath my fingernails, between my toes. I had done so each morning for years, examining my skin for lesions and then scrubbing at my flesh. Sometimes…sometimes I was too zealous. It could take days for the wounds to heal. And when I smelled a particularly ripe chèvre cheese or passed a herd of goats, it could take days for my nostrils to rid themselves of the scent. Of the odor that smelled like rotting flesh.
I was marked—I was tormented—by memories.
•••
My father had wasted away over the years, in both mind and body, and then one morning, he simply failed to stir at all. It was the summer of my twelfth year.
“Papa?”
I poked him with a stick. Poked him again. Harder and harder, until the sharp tip broke right through his disease-eaten skin. I pulled it out and then flung it away.
“Papa!”
I found another stick and used it to draw the cowl off his face. I hadn’t seen him, not clearly, in over a year. He’d taken the habit of keeping his face shadowed beneath the folds of black cloth. Had I seen him before that morning, I might have believed him already dead. Worms could not have corrupted his flesh as thoroughly as the disease had done. Surely they would not have devoured it with such complete ruthlessness.
His eyes were not closed. The lids had been eaten away long before, consigning him to blindness soon thereafter. But there was dullness to them that morning I could credit to nothing but death.
Where could I bury a man who had already, long ago, been declared dead by the village priest?
And how could a boy inter a man he was not supposed to touch?
I solved the problem by using a fallen branch to roll him farther back into the cave, and then I walled him in behind a fortress of stones. It took me the whole day to haul them up from the river. But by the time I was done, no man or beast would ever be able to reach him. Yet the goatlike odor of his decaying flesh haunted me. It seeped out of the cave in the spaces between the rocks. I spent the next day fortifying the walls I had constructed the day before. Someone must have spied me at my work, from the far side of the river. Before the sun had
Similar Books
