The Leper's Companions

The Leper's Companions Read Free Page B

Book: The Leper's Companions Read Free
Author: Julia Blackburn
Tags: General Fiction
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them!”
    Even though there was no wind the door was swinging backwards and forwards on its hinges and the creaking sound it made was like a warning. Only a few of the people gathered outside were brave enough to cross the threshold into the kitchen, which smelled of wood smoke and through into the bedroom, where the air was sour and oppressive.
    A piece of leather had been hung across the window. It flapped like the wings of Satan himself, sitting there hunched and terrible, watching what was going on.
    The shoemaker’s wife stepped forward and unhooked the leather from the nails holding it in place. At once a stream of pale light spread out over the walls and ceiling and over the rushes on the floor.
    The woman’s two youngest children were huddled silent in a corner of the room with their arms wrapped tightly around each other and their eyes wide. Her husband was beside the door, four red scratches running down his cheek and a thin trickle of blood dripping from his ear where he had been bitten. The baby was in a cradle and appeared to be asleep.
    The woman was lying on the big four-poster bed, but the moment the covering was removed from the window she hid herself under the blanket so that she was reduced to nothing more than the heaving of the breath in her body. You could hear her breathing too, a rasping hissing sound like the blacksmith’s bellows.
    Everyone stared at the bed with its mound of hidden life.It was a very old bed that had been in the family for generations. The four carved oak posts were polished by the many hands that had grasped them. A jumble of names, dates and initials had been carved into the slab of wood that was the headboard, and you could also distinguish the shape of a heart pierced by an arrow and a curious prancing creature with a spike growing out of its head that must have represented a unicorn. The woman’s mother had kept a record of the arrival of her numerous babies with a little line for each one and the line crossed out with a slash of the knife if that baby died. Her daughter had considered marking the birth of her babies in the same way but she couldn’t bear the idea of crossing through the lines. Instead she had simply carved her own intial, M for Mary, and next to it another M for her husband Michael.
    She remained quite still under the scratching weight of the blanket that covered her. Her naked body felt huge and hollow. Her breasts tingled with the milk she was carrying and she could smell the cloying sweetness leaking from her swollen nipples. She remembered again how sad and lonely she had suddenly felt when this last baby slipped out of her womb and into the world.
    It must be like that when you die, she thought, and the soul has to take its leave of the body. For three days it hovers close and then it must go and never return. That is when your body begins to change and turns into nothing more than a corpse needing to be buried under the ground. Thatwas when the devils had come to her, three days after the baby’s birth, while she was feeling like an empty and abandoned shell.
    It was her husband Michael who had seen the devils first. He told her how they were crawling all over her, their mouths filled with flames, their teeth stained with blood, their goat-penises as sharp as spears. She could hear him explaining what he had seen to the people who were gathered in the room now. His voice was clear and authoritative and she could imagine the horror on everyone’s face.
    From within the hot darkness, she began to tremble and cry out as if in pain.
    â€œLook, she is fighting with the devils!” said Michael, and then he began to shout, “We must save her! We must tie her down!”
    She wanted to escape but it was not possible. Someone grabbed her by the shoulders and it felt as if someone else was sitting on her head. Her hands were extracted from under the blanket and tied together at the wrists before being attached by another cord

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