The Leper's Companions Read Online Free PDF

cries.
    The sheet of water pulling in towards me and spreading over the sand was as calm as a lake, without even a ripple of waves. Rising out of it I could see a smooth mound of land which was turned into an island with every high tide. Its surface was covered with a scattering of coarse grass and a few seals were basking there, knowing that they could easily roll back into the safety of the open sea if there was any sudden danger. The people of the village always referred to it as Catherine’s Island because this was where the woman called Catherine came to live, once she had decided to leave her home.
    I have often seen Catherine. She has heavy-lidded eyes and when she walks it is with the jerky mechanical movements of a wading bird. She is more solitary and remote than anyone I have ever known.
    Catherine was married once, but her husband vanished years ago and she never mentioned him after he had gone. She had no children of her own but she was fond of children in the way that someone else might be fond of stray cats. Ahuddled group of them would often come to her door, hoping to be invited in to eat honey cakes. Her house was the largest in the village, set slightly apart from the others and constructed around a framework of strong wooden beams.
    This house was filled with treasures. There was a painted wooden chest on which two knights on horseback charged towards each other with their lances aimed for the heart, while a lady dressed in green waited patiently for the outcome of their fight. There was a rug from the Holy Land, woven in intricate patterns of blue and crimson and a china pot with a blue dragon crawling around it, his whiskers twirling.
    But it was the tapestry that the children loved most. It showed a forest of slender trees surrounding a pretty stone tower. Birds were nesting in the trees and rabbits skittering among the flowers in the grass, but there were no people. It seemed as if they must have been there once, a whole crowd of them talking and laughing together, but then for some reason they had vanished and now all that was left was their absence reverberating among the trees like an echo.
    An area about the size of a chessboard in the center of the tapestry had been cut out and replaced with a piece taken from a different tapestry, presumably because the original had been damaged. The repair was done so well and the colors were so closely matched that you hardly noticed it at first, but when you looked again you saw that instead of the trunks of trees there was a little group of human figures huddled together with their mouths wide open as if they weresurprised by something or were singing together in one voice. There was no way of knowing how many others were there with them or what else was happening in their world.
    The children would sit on the floor eating cake and staring at the tapestry, their gaze returning repeatedly to the patch within it that seemed to contain another layer of existence. Later, when they walked through the forest or along the coastal path, they imagined cutting a hole into the quiet landscape that surrounded them to reveal a fragment of what lay hidden beneath it. Or they would frighten each other by saying they could hear voices singing within the stillness of the day.
    One morning when a group of them were in the house, Catherine suddenly let out a little cry and fell to the ground as if she had been shot. She lay on the rug from the Holy Land, her eyes closed and all the color gone from her cheeks. The children ran out into the road, calling for help.
    People came quickly from the fields, from the boats by the sea, from their houses. They gathered around the prostrate body and wondered whether Catherine was dead or alive.
    When the priest arrived he said there were three signs by which death could be recognized: paleness, coldness and stiffness. He felt the woman’s skin and it was cold. He looked at her and she was pale, but when he raised one of her arms it