The Road to Damietta (28 page)

Beyond Valecchi, the dreadful village that furnished Assisi with all its executioners, at the crossing of two narrow roads, Francis asked that his bed be set down. There, though he was blind, he raised his eyes and blessed the place of his birth.

Word raced through the city that he was dead. But other news came: Francis was alive and had asked the brothers who were with him to remove his clothes and his bandages and place him upon the earth. Weeping when they saw his ruined face and body, they dressed him again in cloak and hood.

Days went by. Then word came that Francis was dead and that at the moment of his death an exaltation of larks had been seen above the hut where he lay. There was an exaltation in Assisi, too. People wept but also raised their voices, joyful that Francis had been released from his earthly ills. There were those, however, who were secretly glad to be rid of him, among them my father and Rinaldo. My mother remained in her rooms until the day of the burial.

It was a sparkling day with a breath of winter in the October air. Leagues long, the cortege moved away from the hut at Porziuncola to the sound of bells and trumpets, up the winding road to Assisi, and through the big gate to the church of San Giorgio.

After the service, while my mother lay weeping on the stones before the altar, I sought out Clare di Scifi. I found her on the church steps waiting for me. She was dressed in the white and black garments of the Poor Clares, which, severe though they were, did nothing to dim her beauty; indeed, they seemed to enhance it.

I smiled and kissed her because we were rivals no longer, and we talked for a while about how well behaved were those who had come from other places, even the people from the jealous town of Perugia. When we ran out of chatter, in the midst of the silence that fell between us, Clare said:

"You've loved Francis Bernardone for years."

"How do you know so much?" I asked.

"It's not a secret. It's a scandal. Everyone knows that you have been in love with him since the day you disrobed on the cathedral steps."

"Long before that," I said. "I was born in love with him."

Clare started to smile.

"It is possible," I said.

She shook her head. "I can imagine you loving Christ when you were born because He is divine and divine love is everlasting. It exists always, from the beginning to the end."

"Human love is divine also," I said. "I heard Francis say so, once in Porziuncola. I remember the hour and the day and the month."

"And the year, of course."

"I remember him saying, 'O Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. Love is...'"

Trumpets drowned out my words and a chorus of bells rang forth. As Francis was borne away, we followed him.

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.