Free The Road to Damietta by Scott O’Dell

one balanced on his shoulder.
    "Thank you," he said.
    I thought he was talking to me. Instead he was talking to the donkey.
    "Thank you for all that you have done this day and for what I will ask of you before we reach San Damiano. I swear that I will not burden you further with another stone, large or small. Thank you, dear brother."
    The beast did not answer; at least, I did not hear him answer. Then Bernardone spoke to me. "And thank you, dear friend. God will bless you doubly for these generous gifts."
    "The stones you are taking away are not gifts," I said. "They are stolen."
    He was silent. I seized the torch and angrily shone it in his face, to confound him, to make him aware that I, Ricca di Montanaro, was standing in front of him.
    The light penetrated the cavernous hood. It revealed the same face I had seen on the morning he had knelt on the palace steps. It was the face of Adam, the face that had haunted me every hour of every day since the moment I stood before him among the trees in the Garden of Eden.
    "I am the Lord's thief," he said, "but I'll return the stones, if you wish."
    It was the voice of Adam speaking to me again, the same gentle voice I had heard before, long ago in God's beautiful garden. "No," I said impulsively, "take all the stones you need."
    "The cart is full," he said.
    "Then come tomorrow with an empty cart."
    "I am in need of a thousand stones, but let others give us stones. Thus they too may receive God's blessings. Blessings shared by many are far better than those shared by only one. They are like rain to the desert rose."
    Tilting under the weight of the cumbersome stone balanced on his shoulder, he asked the donkey to leave the courtyard, if possible. Obligingly, with groans and grunts, the beast pulled the cart into the street and I followed, walking at Francis's side as he staggered along, Nicola at my heels.
    He would soon grow sick of gathering stones for a ruined church, of wandering about from house to house holding a begging bowl, starving himself, listening to insults, being pelted with rocks and offal. It was a game he was at, different from the game he played as a troubadour, different and novel and tiring. All I needed to do was wait with patience and quiet understanding.
    We crossed San Rufino Square, which was deserted save for a watchman and a slinking dog.
    "Let's go down the hill," Nicola said, "and help Francis with the stones."
    "Let's," I said, reluctant to leave him.
    "To San Damiano?"
    "Yes."
    But before we reached the far side of the square we heard the clatter of hoofs on the cobbles. I pulled Nicola into the shadows behind the fountain and we waited for the horsemen to pass. There were six men, Rinaldo, my father, and Giuseppe di Luzzaro among them. By this time Francis was on the road that led out of the city. I could barely see him trudging along and hear the creaking of the cart.
    "He has a long way to go," Nicola said.
    I was sorely tempted to run after him, to lift the stone from his shoulders, but the consequences of such rashness held me back. Only my heart followed him down the long road to San Damiano.

11
    We hid in the shadows and watched until father and his
companions reached the square and turned toward home. Then we followed them at a distance.
    Two doors opened into our palace—the big main door that faced the square, and just around the corner near the courtyard gate a second door, an arched break in the wall, called the Door of the Dead. My two baby brothers were carried through this door in their little white coffins covered with flowers. Also my brother Lorenzo, after he was killed on the battlefield in Perugia.
    We slipped by the guard and down the long passageway, no one seeing us. Nicola scurried to the kitchen to finish making her tarts and I to the scriptorium. When my father came in a few minutes later I was seated at the bench, busily at work on the initial for the twenty-third chapter of Genesis.
    He glanced over my shoulder,