The Road to Damietta Read Free Page A

much as spoken a word to him and yet you claim to be in love. What nonsense!"
    "Must I speak to him? Isn't it enough that I have seen him in
the streets, on the roads, here in our courtyard, and now below us singing in Piazza San Rufino? I have two eyes and two ears. I can see and hear."
    Yet as I spoke these bold words, I was aware that eyes and ears had little to do with my love for Francis Bernardone. If I were without sight and hearing, still would I love him.
    The bonfire blazed high and in the light I caught a glimpse of Raul's face. He was deciding that such an impossible thing was possible.
    "Feeling as you do," he said, "I must bring you twain together. We can't invite him here because your father, to state it modestly, would not approve. But an idea hovers in my head. Bernardone is a clerk at his father's cloth shop, not far from here. I require a length of wool for a cloak and serge for a pair of breeches. So we'll visit the shop one of these days, and while I make a purchase you can observe him close at hand."
    "I don't wish to observe him," I said testily. "I've observed him many times before and I have observed him tonight."
    "Yes, but you haven't met him. He isn't what you judge him to be from the glimpses. A plain countenance, somewhat severe, for one thing. An unusual pair of ears—not ugly, mind you, not big, very small in fact, yet they do stand out. Not up like a rabbit's ears but straight out like those of some woodland creature. Quite charming!"
    "It isn't necessary that I meet him at all. Tomorrow or ever."
    "Now Princess Ricca is being wildly romantic. To her this Bernardone is a gallant knight astride a snow-white horse cantering through fields of asphodel on an April morn. Princess Ricca is afraid to meet him. She would rather dream. Which is very wise of Ricca."
    Worn out with talking, we were silent for a while. Then in the silence the apparition appeared. It was a burst of blue and silver light that lasted only a breath, so brief that Raul didn't see it and no one opened a window on San Rufino Square.
    "An omen," prayerfully I said to myself. "An omen of wonderful luck to come."
    But nine days later the fiery omen brought heartbreak instead.
    In June every year Assisi celebrated the feast of Saint Victorinus. From balconies and windows hung tapestries and pennons. Laurel wreaths adorned the doors, and everyone, save children and young girls, watched the solemn festivities and afterward frolicked through the streets to the songs and antics of the
tripudianti,
a company of dancers.
    This year the leader of the
tripudianti,
as for two years past, was Francis Bernardone. The day came misty and cold, but when the church bells rang for midday he was in Piazza San Rufino with his companions, rousing the city with the call of trumpets, summoning all those who were not too old or too young to come and join him at the feast.
    From my balcony, scarcely breathing, I saw him stride forth with a jaunty swing, dressed in a tunic of the finest silk and a
yellow-feathered cap, holding the hand of the youth who had been chosen to play the part of Saint Victorinus. I watched as he led Victorinus to the center of the square and then disappeared in the crowd. I looked everywhere through the chanting throng for the red tunic and yellow-feathered cap.
    I had seen the miracle of Saint Viotorinus four times before, since I was nine years old, so I kept looking for Francis all during the play, which was no different from the other times. First, the bishop by reason of his miraculous powers causes a mute boy to speak and also brings sight to a man who is blind. Then he is brought before a magistrate, just as in the days of ancient Rome, and asked to make a sacrifice to Vulcan, the pagan god, which he calmly refuses to do.
    The mob—played by those now assembled in the square—turns violently against him and demands his death, whereupon the angry magistrate commands him to place his head upon a block. The