The Road to Damietta

by Scott O'Dell

  Clare said, "When he took his vows, during all of the days since that time, when you were breathlessly pursuing him, did you ever say to yourself, 'Ricca di Montanaro, you are committing a dreadful sin?"

  "No, why should I?"

  "But now that he is dead, what do you say to yourself?"

  "I say that sometime he will be a saint, though this is the least of all that he would wish for himself. And that you will be a saint also—Saint Clare of Assisi. And that never, never, in this life or afterward, will I become a saint."

  "You feel little."

  "Little and seldom."

  "Not a shred of contrition for all your lustful striving."

  I shook my head and was silent. I had no intention of letting Clare know how I thought or felt.

  We were on foot, trudging along in the mud, hopping over puddles because rain had fallen in the night. We came to the bottom of the hill, to the crossing of the two narrow roads. It was here that Francis had asked those who were carrying him to put him down so that he might look back, though he couldn't see, and bless the city of his birth.

  Suddenly to me he was there again, kneeling in the mud, his arms outstretched, his blind eyes fixed upon the gray walls of Assisi. Myself blinded, I thought of the thousands of outcasts he had taken into his arms and of the multitude yet to come whom he would comfort.

  Clare was in a wheat field, wandering about. She came back with a wildflower called footsteps-of-spring that somehow had bloomed beyond its time, and she gave it to me.

  The trumpets were quiet now. The only sound I heard was the singing of larks. Then from beyond a sharp bend I heard a bell.

  We came upon the man suddenly. He was in the middle of the road, not ten strides away, walking slowly with a leper's bell held in both his hands. He started as he saw us and shambled off toward a clump of trees, the iron bell still ringing.

  I overtook him though he tried to flee. His face was thin and scarred. I held out the four-petaled flower Clare had given to me. He glanced at it for a moment. Then he took the flower and held it to his twisted lips and thanked me with his eyes.