The Leper's Companions by Julia Blackburn Page A

washing the pig’s entrails in a tub of water. They laughed contentedly as they squeezed excrement out of the long tube of the intestine and one of them managed to throw a length of it around a man’s neck as he walked past. It dangled from him as fresh as an umbilical cord and that made everyone roar with laughter.
    People were selling things from little stalls set up on the paving stones. Chickens tied by their feet and suspended from hooks, stared at me with amazement. Tethered goats shifted and bleated uneasily. There was dark bread, a few vegetables, and lots of fish.
    A stone cross marked the center of the square, and wooden stocks and a metal cage had been erected just beside it. I blundered against the side of the cage and thought at first that it contained an animal, but then I saw it was a man, shivering and naked, his body blotched with vivid colors from the cold, the dirt and the bruises which covered him. He was cowering on all fours in a corner.
    â€œWhat did you do?” I asked him.
    â€œI don’t remember,” he replied.
    The stocks held a woman by her wrists and ankles. She was slumped forward, her face concealed by her hair. A few young children who must have been her own, snuffled close to her, as piglets do when their sow is trapped in the farrowing pen.
    The leper kept on striding ahead, while the four of us scuttled after him. I still held Sally’s hand in mine. Without it I might have tried to run away, even though there was nowhere to run to.
    We crossed to the other side of the market and reached the church of Saint Nicholas. The saint was standing by the door to welcome us. His cloak was bright blue, his cheeks were bright red, his hair was bright yellow. In his hands he was holding the severed heads of three children. Behind him was the painted barrel in which the children’s truncated corpses were soaking in salty water. The saint was poised right on the edge of the miracle that would restore the heads to their bodies and bring the children back to life. I saw that everyone who went into the church knelt to kiss him, congratulating him for what he was about to do. His wooden cheeks and the hem of his wooden cloak were shiny from the touch of so many lips.
    We were not inside the church for long, but I did see the big ship which dangled from chains fixed to the dome of the ceiling and the spiderweb of wires which I was told were used every year when the Star of Bethlehem was made to whiz across the vaulted space until it hung, shaking with the effort, above the altar.
    Then we were threading our way through more streets until again there was a sudden opening into space and light. But this time we had reached the limits of the land, with a view of a wide estuary and a river racing to meet the sea.
    A pair of gallows stood on a wooden platform overlookingthe water. Between them these two awkward structures were carrying the weight of twelve dead men. They hung together in an exhausted clump. There was something vaguely convivial about their companionship and something terrible about their isolation. They were so close to each other, and yet so utterly distant from each other. They all had their heads facing the sea, staring with empty eyes into a far distance. The image hooked itself into my mind and often came back to me later.

20
    T he sun was already setting as we approached a three-masted ship in the harbor. The leper spoke to some sailors and within moments we were ushered up the gangplank and onto the deck. I went to sit on my own because of the shock of the town and the dead men.
    A pile of gutted herrings had been heaped up on the wooden boards and now that it was dark their bodies began to shine with a natural luminosity. I stroked one with my finger which took on the same pale gleam.
    That night I slept alongside the others under a canvas awning and among bales of oily wool with a stink so strong it rasped at the back of my throat. While the ship rocked and