Read At the Edge of the World for Free Online

Great Wexly?” he asked when I returned to his side.
    “We had already walked some time when the arrow struck you. Even then we went on. Bear,” I whispered into his ear, “I don’t know what these people are. They have been kind … But they’re strange. Not like anyone I’ve known. I don’t know if we should trust them. Perhaps we should go on.”
    “Where?”
    “Anyplace.”
    He shook his head. “John Ball’s brotherhood is everywhere. They’ve marked me as a traitor and—”
    “What?”
    “As long as we’re not discovered, we should be fine. Besides, I can’t travel.”
    “But—”
    “Patience, Crispin. Patience.” He lay back, closed his eyes. Then he said, “I wish a priest was near.”
    “Why?”
    He sighed, swallowed hard then said, “Crispin, like most men, I’ve done things that … need God’s mercy and forgiveness.”
    I gazed at him. It was what he had suggested before. And as before, if there was something he needed to confess, I was uncertain I wanted to hear. “Shall … shall I try to find a priest?” I asked.
    “No,” he whispered. “I’m not ready.” He was silent for a while. Then he said, “Once I knew a man who owned a great bear. This man kept this bear cruelly with a chain, so as to make him dance at will. For years he kept that beast, bragging he’d tamed him, though he never turned his back. Then one day, he did turn his back and the bear smote him dead. But the bear let me—who had been kind to him—cut that chain. When I did, the bear lumbered off”
    “What am I to learn from that?”
    “I took my name from that bear.”
    “Why?”
    “That bear knew when it was time to free himself.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Because,” he whispered, “that bear was held back from his natural state, as if … as if the links of the chain were his sins. My sins bind me—just so.”
    I felt increasingly uncomfortable. “Bear,” I blurted out, “I don’t want to know your sins!”
    He closed his eyes. “To love a man,” he whispered, “you must know his failings.”
    That said, he closed his eyes and slept.
    I withdrew, greatly troubled. But then, I trusted myself—a gift from Bear—to know right from wrong. I would not, could not allow myself to think of Bear in any way but as goodness itself. How could he have done bad things? No, I didn’t want to know.
    How hard it was for me to discern when evil clothed itself in goodness, or when there might be a kernel of goodness within the chaff of evil. Then I recalled what Aude had said: Ignorance made fear. But my thought was—as I looked at Bear and pondered what he’d said—if ignorance gave comfort, I would rather cleave to that.

11
    B EAR CONTINUED to mend. Now and again he sat up, but it was a struggle for him to move. His arm still ailed. Now and again he laughed, always a measure of his health. Best of all, I could see that each passing day brought him strength.
    Though he tried to talk to Troth, she kept apart. As for Aude, she paid Bear little mind but went about her mumbling motions.
    Occasionally, Troth tried to teach me some hand signs, gestures that seemed to mean go, or come, or more. It seemed to please her when we communicated that way.
    Thus did our days pass. I felt as if I were being held in some formless time and place, tottering between worlds I could neither see nor grasp nor fully understand.
    I kept thinking that, though Bear was far from recovered, we should leave. Surely it was wrong to stay with such folk. Perhaps it was a sin. Every day we did not go, my tension grew: Would Bear never get fully well? Had they put him under a spell? Were they—in fact—holding us?
    One day Troth was gone from morning till night, but when she returned she had some rough cloth. As I was to learn much later, she had purchased it (I knew not where) with the pennies I had given Aude. Under the tutelage of the old woman, the girl fashioned the cloth into rough breeches and a kirtle for Bear.
    He was