The Road to Damietta Read Online Free

blankets.
    The cathedral square was flooded with citizenry. The flood spilled over into courtyards and arcades, ran off toward other piazzas. It seemed that everyone in Assisi and the whole countryside had come to celebrate the feast of San Niccolo. Those who attended Mass were there to watch Bishop Guido squirm in his velvet chair, uncomfortable at the sight of Bishop Bernardone gaily mocking him. The thousands who remained outside were interested not in this topsy-turvy scene, but only in celebrating what was called the December Liberties, a saturnalia that had come down to us over the centuries.
    Our band of five and the five watchful servants were huddled on the cathedral steps, trying to decide how best to find our way back to San Rufino, when Francis with a leap was suddenly in our midst.
    "Come, young ladies," he shouted above the sounds of the swarming crowd, "and let us dance the rites of our wild forefathers—a goaty crew, I must say."
    With that he seized upon fragile Amata di Renaro, flung her
into the air, and caught her as she was about to strike her head on the steps. Next came crippled little Benedetta, countess of Spoleto, for whom he did a squatting dance step and whom he kissed upon the brow. Then Damiella di Malispini, whose hair he clasped in both hands and gently shook until it hung to her shoulders. He paused to glance at the crowd that had pressed around to gawk at him. With a cry he grasped Giacoma, one of the servants, and twirled her about. Then he did the same to Leonarda, Consolata, Patrizia, and blind Lucia Barbrero.
    Only Clare and I were left. It was she whom he chose. Taking her hands and gazing mournfully, like a rejected lover, into her beautiful eyes, he moved her about in a circle, muttering words I didn't catch.
    The crowd pressed in, leaving him little room to dance. He was out of breath. He looked at me, the very last, and with outstretched hands he silently begged me to let him rest. I smiled and turned away with a sinking heart, only to feel his hands grasp mine.
    There was no place to dance. He begged the crowd for a yard of room, no more. Laughing, it took no heed. But to my delight I was suddenly moving down the step, dragged by the hand, to be gathered up by a swirl of revelers and swept round and round in dizzy circles, while I clung tight, like someone who, drowning, is about to be saved.
    The piazza was a stormy sea breaking against a rocky shore.
Above the roar I thought I heard Francis say words I had heard before. Yes, the ballad he had sung in San Rufino. The last words of the ballad that had drifted up to me in the night.
"
In my heart

You are locked forever

And the golden key is lost.
"
    I tried to think of a word to say in reply. If a word had come to me, I could not have said it, yet I did not faint. I held my breath and clung with both my hands to his, moving lightly in a dream I had dreamed before.
    At last the flood swept us ashore on the cathedral steps, at the feet of my four companions and the five watchful servants. I turned to thank Francis for the dance. He had disappeared, borne away by the tide of revelers.
    Our little band, desperately clinging together, got back to San Rufino before the bells tolled the hour of midnight, but in a frenzy of excitement the revels went on, with only a brief pause at dawn, though the pope had issued an edict against reveling—on and on for days and ending in a pagan rout.
    Drunken men, tipsy priests, women in flimsy dresses, the rich and the poor, artisans and nobles, the curds and the cream, joined hands with disorderly youth and danced in the cathedral, ate food and drank wine from its altar, which served them as a
table. To the sound of castanets, horns, and cymbals, carts rumbled about the city streets, filled with half-naked women bound with leather thongs who were sold by an auctioneer.
    Francis's role as the mock bishop lasted for days and ended with his riding on horseback to the bishop's palace. There he