Read A Mercy for Free Online

mind as well as his face. Will and Scully are gone and when we women each holding a corner of a blanket carry him into the house he is sleeping with his mouth wide open and never wakes. Neither Mistress nor we know if he is alive for even one minute to smell the new cherrywood floors he lies on. We are alone. No one to shroud or mourn Sir but us. Will and Scully must sneak to dig the grave. They are warn to stay away. I don’t think they wish to. I think their master makes them, because of the sickness. The deacon does not come even though he is a friend who likes Sorrow. Neither do any of the congregation. Still, we do not say the word aloud until we bury him next to his children and Mistress notices two in her mouth. That is the one time we whisper it. Pox. After we say it the next morning, the two on her tongue are joined by twenty-three on her face. Twenty-five in all. She wants you here as much as I do. For her it is to save her life. For me it is to have one.
    You probably don’t know anything at all about what your back looks like whatever the sky holds: sunlight, moonrise. I rest there. My hand, my eyes, my mouth. The first time I see it you are shaping fire with bellows. The shine of water runs down your spine and I have shock at myself for wanting to lick there. I run away into the cowshed to stop this thing from happening inside me. Nothing stops it. There is only you. Nothing outside of you. My eyes not my stomach are the hungry parts of me. There will never be enough time to look how you move. Your arm goes up to strike iron. Youdrop to one knee. You bend. You stop to pour water first on the iron then down your throat. Before you know I am in the world I am already kill by you. My mouth is open, my legs go softly and the heart is stretching to break.
    Night comes and I steal a candle. I carry an ember in a pot to light it. To see more of you. When it is lit I shield the flame with my hand. I watch you sleeping. I watch too long. Am careless. The flame burns my palm. I think if you wake and see me seeing you I will die. I run away not knowing then you are seeing me seeing you. And when at last our eyes hit I am not dead. For the first time I am live.
    Lina twitchy as fresh-hook salmon waits with me in the village. The wagon of the Ney brothers does not come. Hours we stand then sit roadside. A boy and a dog drive goats past us. He raises his hat. That is the first time any male does it to me. I like it. A good sign I am thinking but Lina is warning me of many things, saying if you are not in your place I must not tarry. I must return at once. I cannot handle a horse so I must seek return on the next day’s horse cart, the one that hauls fresh milk and eggs to market. Some people go by and look but do not speak. We are female so they have no fright. They know who is Lina yet look as if we are strange to them. We wait more and so long that I do not save my bread and codfish. I eat all the cod. Lina holds her forehead in her hand, her elbow on her knee. She gives off a bad feeling so I keep my thoughts on the goatherd’s hat.
    The wind is chill and smells of snow. At last thewagon is here. I climb up. The driver helps me, stays his hand hard and long on my back parts. I feel shame. We are seven, apart from the brothers Ney, and the horses are not the only ones made nervous by snowflakes in springtime. Their haunches tremble, they shake their manes. We are nervous also but we sit still as the flakes come down and stick to our shawls and hats, sugaring our eyelashes and flouring the men’s woolly beards. Two women face into the wind that whips their hair like corn tassel, their eyes slits of shine. The other one covers her mouth with her cloak and leans against a man. A boy with a yellow pigtail sits on the wagon floor, his hands tied to his ankles. He and I are the only ones without rugs or blankets covering our feet.
    Sudden snowfall on tender leaves is pretty. Perhaps it will last long enough on the ground to