The Leper of Saint Giles Read Free Page B

bestir herself to hear the prayers of a poor, afflicted man.
    His eyes followed the tall, erect figure. In the shrouded anonymity of dark cloak and hood, and the cloth veil that hid even the faces of those worst disfigured, men and women, old and young, seemed to go secretly and alone through the remnant of life left to them. No gender, no age, no coloring, no country, no creed: all living ghosts, known only to their maker. But no, it was not so. By gait, by voice, by stature, by a thousand infinitesimal foibles of character and kind that pierced through the disguise, they emerged every one unique. This one in his silence had a dominating presence, and in his stillness even under threat a rare and daunting dignity.
    “You have talked with him?”
    “Yes, but he says little. From his manner of speaking,” said Mark, “I think lips or tongue must be corrupted. Words come slowly, a little mangled, and he tires soon. But his voice is quiet and deep.”
    “What remedies are you using on him?”
    “None, for he says he needs none, he carries his own balm. No one here has seen his face. That is why I think he must be sadly maimed. You’ll have noticed one foot is crippled? He has lost all toes on that one, but for the stump of the great toe. He has a special shoe built to give him support, a stable sole to walk on. I think the other foot may also be affected, but not so badly.”
    “I saw his left hand,” said Cadfael. Such hands he had seen before, the fingers rotted away until they fell like dead leaves, the corrosion of the flesh gnawing slowly until even the wrist shed its bones. Yet it seemed to him that this devouring demon had died of its own greed. There was no ulcerous crust remaining; the seamed white flesh where the lost fingers had once been was dry and healed, however ugly to the view. Firm muscles had moved in the back of the hand when he gestured.
    “Has he given you a name?”
    “He says his name is Lazarus.” Brother Mark smiled. “I think it is a name he gave himself at a late christening—perhaps when he cut himself off from family and home, according to law. It is a second birth, lamentable though it may be. He was godfather at his own second baptism. I don’t enquire. But I wish he would use our help, and not rely only on his own tending. He must surely have some sores or ulcers that could benefit by your ointments, before he leaves us as he came.”
    Cadfael mused, watching the withdrawn figure, motionless at the head of the slope of grass. “Yet he is not numbed! He has his powers of body still, in all such members as are left to him? He feels heat and cold? And pain? If he strikes his hand against a nail, or a splinter in the fence, he knows it?”
    Mark was at a loss; he knew the disease only as he had encountered it, unsightly, ulcerated, full of sores. “He felt the sting of the whip, I know, even through the armour of his cloak. Yes, surely he feels, like other men.”
    But those who have the true leprosy, thought Cadfael, recalling many he had seen in his crusading days, very long ago, those who whiten like ash, those whose skin powders away in gray patches, in the extreme of their disease do not feel, like other men. They injure themselves, bleed, and are unaware of the injury. They let a foot stray into the fire, sleeping, and only awake to the stench of their own flesh burning. They touch and cannot be sure they touch, hold and cannot lift what they would take up. Without sensation, without purpose, fingers, toes, hands, feet, drop away and rot. As Lazarus had lost fingers and toes. But such victims do not walk, however lamely, as Lazarus walked, do not prise themselves up from the ground with active, effective energy, or grasp a support as Lazarus had grasped the arm Mark offered in his aid, and that with the maimed hand. Not unless, not until, the devil that devoured them has died of his own corruption.
    “Are you thinking,” asked Mark hopefully, “that this may not be leprosy,