Free The Leper's Companions by Julia Blackburn

bright it looked as though stars were shining through them. His skin was as dark as a chestnut and it was hard and scaly and wrinkled, like the skin of a lizard.
    â€œPerhaps he is an Ethiopian,” thought Mary, who had never seen anyone with a skin of this color before. “Or one of the Three Kings. The black one who brought gold.”
    The old man’s head was tilted to one side like a thrush listening for the movement of worms under the ground. Then with a sudden ferocity that didn’t belong to his extreme age, one of his hands shot out and grabbed Michael by the shoulders. This hand was a small and compact thing which seemed independent of the body that owned it. It swooped down hard and tight with the energy of a waterbird diving for fish.
    Mary felt the hold on her throat softening and she knewwith a vague sense of surprise that she was going to live. She lost consciousness and tumbled into a quiet darkness that welcomed her but did not threaten to keep her for too long.
    She woke to find that she was back in the family bed with the priest sitting beside her. At first she thought he was the angel Ezekiel or perhaps the angel Zacharias, the two of them could be so easily confused. But angels always wore white and had the golden dish of a halo above their heads. This man was dressed in a black robe and she recognized the priest.
    â€œAre you in much pain?” he asked.
    Mary put her hands to her throat, which was bruised and swollen. She ran the tips of her fingers around the sockets of her eyes and they felt hot and soft. “No,” she said. “There is nothing wrong with me. But where is Michael, my husband? He was here.”
    The priest told her that as he walked into the village he had seen Michael with his legs in the stocks. They were new stocks and they had been made in such a way that a person’s legs were hoisted quite high so that it was difficult to move and impossible to sit up. It would be very uncomfortable in the rain, but the weather was dry.
    Michael was left there for several days. People made sure that he had water to drink and they gave him a little food. They had seen the bruises on Mary’s throat and the dark rings around her eyes and so they guessed what must have happened.
    The priest looked after Mary until he was sure she wasstrong again. He told her about his visit to the hermit and showed her Saint Anthony’s hand, which he kept safe in his pocket. She noticed how hard and dark the skin was and how it was covered with a patina of thin lines like a spider’s web.
    She thanked the priest for what he had done, but he said he had not really done anything, he had come after it was all over. He gave her the hand as a present and she was glad to have it. She used to place it on her lap and stroke it as if it were a cat. She felt sure it would protect her from any further harm.

15
    O nce the shoemaker’s madness had passed, a different level of closeness developed between him and his wife. He would stare at the intimacy of her face and in the lines around her mouth and eyes and across her forehead he could understand and accept that he was growing old. The whiteness that was creeping over her soft hair delighted him for its unexpected beauty. The pleasure he took from the sexual act was quieter and yet more profound, it was like dying, but without the fear.
    The two of them went walking hand in hand. They followed the raised path that separated the land from the sea farther up the coast. They climbed among the high sand dunes that were gathered there in great rolling waves, breaking and falling in silence and immobility.
    They settled themselves in a sheltered hollow on the side of a steep bank from where they could look out over the North Sea. Striped dragonflies were whirring sleepily in the air. The water was a uniform and almost transparent gray with the shadows of clouds shifting across it. They saw the dark back of a whale emerging briefly in the