Breath (9781439132227) Read Online Free PDF

dock. They’ll hitch them to the barge so the horses can pull it up on land for unloading. I leap past them and head straight for the gate that offers admission to the town. The rhododendron bushes are blooming like the maddened—they must love this rain, because I’ve never seen them this big and colored, this deep a purple. A lord’s tasseled mantle is no more purple than these flowers. I pass through the gate and I’m on the main street, so wide that three tall men could lie head to foot across it. It goes straight to the market square, of course, and onward from there to the opposite gateout of town. But I don’t go as far as the market square. I cut left, onto the second side street.
    This street is narrow and crooked. Rats run before me and disappear into a hole. A spasm of revulsion goes through me. I spit after them, to clean my mouth.
    The town houses stand four or five stories high, with the upper ones jutting out beyond the lower ones, like in Hameln town. I’ve never been in a town house, but I wouldn’t want to sleep on one of the lower stories, where no light can get in. And I couldn’t bear hearing my neighbors all the time.
    I wager Bertram couldn’t either.
    Father’s right: Our farmstead is better. Bertram muttered something yesterday about moving to town without the rest of us if Father wouldn’t agree. I’d hate that. We can’t have the six of us go down to five—the family has shrunk too much already. Bertram has to find a way to convince Johannah to leave town life.
    I knock on the fifth door on the right. It opens a crack and a lean, pale, bleary-eyed woman glares out at me. She’s younger than most coven members—at least in Hameln’s coven. After me the next youngest must be three times my age. “Hens,” I say, though she can hear the clucking.
    Her face remains sullen, but she opens the door wide enough for me to squeeze through and set the box on the floor. The instant I put it down, a side falls off and the hens flap, then strut, through the dark room.
    â€œCome back on your way out of town,” she says. “I’ve got something for you to bring back to Hameln.”
    I leave quickly and return to the main street. The passing townsmen make me feel strange, with their earrings and chin piercings. Jewelry doesn’t make sense on a farm, and the sight of it here reminds me that I don’t belong. I can’t imagine Bertram with earrings.
    I run the rest of the way to the abbey. This is a double monastery, with a section for women. A young nun I’ve never met before greets me kindly and leads me to Pater Frederick.
    Soon I’m reading aloud from the big parchment pages. They’re made of cow skin sewn together down the middle. I like how the parchment is folded, how the hair sides face each other and the flesh sides face each other. I hold my hands clasped behind my back so I don’t touch the pages by accident.
    This is a thin book, but some are enormous.Pater Frederick told me it can take hundreds of hides to make a single big book. This book came from the monastery at Würzburg, down south. Usually many scribes work separately on the different pages, then the parchment is bound together later, otherwise it would take too long to make a book. But only one scribe worked on this book. I can tell because the script has certain peculiarities that hold throughout, from page to page. The outer binding is two wood boards covered with leather and engraved with gold.
    It’s a new book. And it’s different from others I’ve read. It’s not Scripture or gospel or theology. Instead, it’s poetry. A young poet named Boppe praises chivalry and the Virgin Mary and all female virtues. I turn the pages carefully, lifting the corner with wooden tongs. The poet talks of charity and generosity and decency. And he laments his own poverty.
    I swivel around on my stool to face Pater Frederick.