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abandoned the day, a voice hailed me from the forest. “Is he gone, then?”
    I climbed up the wall I had built and shoved a last stone into its place. Slid back down, shredding my hands in the doing of it. “He’s dead.”
    “Come into town.” It was the sheriff standing there holding onto the reins of his horse.
    I considered the invitation. “You mean…I can go back to the house?”
    “ Non. It’s been occupied.”
    “Not by me. Nor my father.”
    “It’s no longer his. He was declared dead, lad. Remember?”
    And me along with him. By the priest. “What would I do there? In town?”
    “Beg. Just the way you’ve been doing.”
    I looked at the cave I had just finished sealing. Looked back at the man who was standing there at the edge of the wood in his fine clothes and handsome hat. Town. There was nothing there for me. Nothing but disapproving wives and their surly husbands. Little girls who screamed in terror whenever they saw me, and boys who spat on me and kicked at me whenever they were given the chance. There was nothing worse than being a leper…but being a leper’s son was close. “I’ll stay here.”
    The man lifted his hat, scratching at his head. “What will you do?”
    Did it matter?
    “Do you have any kin?”
    I shrugged. “My father had a cousin. In Gascogne.”
    “Does he have a name?”
    “The viscount of something or other.” My father had always shaken his head when he said it. Always wondered why the good fortune of his cousin Henri couldn’t have been shared by the rest of the family. “Henri. His name is Henri.”
    “If you decide to come into town, you can sleep by the church, as long as you don’t mind the cemetery. There’s a big, sheltering tree there.”
    I’d already been sleeping beside the dead for seven years. He could offer me nothing more than I already had.
    I stayed outside that cave, continuing to live there for at least another month. That’s where the viscount of Souboscq and his men had found me: living outside a blocked-up cave, dressed in the rags I called my clothes. I heard them coming long before I saw them—horses’ feet battering the earth, the leather of their saddles creaking. He and his retinue rode right up to me. “Are you Nicolas Girard’s son?”
    “I am.”
    “Then I’m your cousin. Of a sort.”
    I looked at him.
    He looked at me.
    “Where’s Nicolas?”
    I gestured behind me to the cave.
    His gaze traveled the distance from me to the cave. Then it traveled back. “We shall leave him there in peace. Now then. You’re to come home with me. We can’t have a cousin of the Leforts living in the forest as if he’s no better than a beggar.”
    No better than a beggar.
    It had never occurred to me that I was better than anything at all. It took six years under the viscount’s tutelage before I considered myself truly a part of his family, even though he never treated me otherwise. And even then, it had seemed as if I was acting. As if, at any moment, someone might come and tear the mask of respectability from my face and recognize me for the leper’s son.
    •••
    The day Lisette’s father led my horse into the courtyard of his château at Souboscq, I slipped from the horse’s back, touching the sand-colored earth of Gascogne for the very first time. Lisette had run into the courtyard. A little bit of a girl of the age of four, all bouncing curls and excited squeals. Her father caught her up in an embrace. He had kissed her and then turned, introducing her to me.
    She grabbed him about the neck, whispering in a voice much too loud not to carry. “Does he have a name?”
    “His name is Alexandre. He’s your cousin.”
    “I’ve never had a cousin before.” She wriggled from his grasp, slid from his arms, and ran toward me.
    I put up my hands, more to keep her from touching me than to catch her. But she ran right through them, threw herself into my arms, and kissed me on the cheek.
    She kissed me.
    I had never been touched