The Priest's Madonna Read Online Free

habit of rising early and staying up well past midnight reading scripture. He ate with us at dawn, and when Father and Claude left for the factory, he went to church to conduct morning Mass. After Mass, he worked in his office: a table and chair in a cleared corner of the presbytery kitchen. There he updated the parish accounts, which the previous priest had neglected. When he did not have church affairs to tend to or his own devotions to practice, he busied himself with making small repairs and constructing serviceable furniture for his own use (I know this because Michelle and I made it our habit to stop by the presbytery often, under some pretense or another). My mother, who had offered her services as his housekeeper at a modest rate, tackled the formidable job of cleaning up the presbytery and maintaining the church. This doubled her work, of course, so Michelle and I took on more responsibility at home.
    But together we were efficient, and managed to finish our chores by early afternoon most days. It was my mother’s belief that if we were well educated, we might have a better chance of marrying genteel husbands, and, in Espéraza, we’d had a small library of books that we’d taken great pleasure in, reading aloud to each other from Balzac and Hugo as well as the Lives of the Saints (which Mother insisted we read daily). But we had managed to salvage only a few volumes from the fire—a history of the French Revolution, the letters of Abélard and Héloïse, one or two Balzacs—so in Rennes our studies slowed. Rather than bore ourselves with the same old stories, we would stray to the open pastures where the hill began to slope toward the valley. From there we could see the red rooftops of Espéraza and the towers of the new factories, puffing smoke from their mouths like fat industrial dragons. We would chew on sprigs of wild rosemary and thyme and look out over the garrigues, talking of Bérenger and what we imagined he thought of his new home.

    Miryam of Magdala
    Miryam rose at dawn from a restless sleep. The house was quiet, her sisters and parents still asleep. She pulled on her cloak, wound a sash at her waist, tucked a leather purse beneath it, and left the house, sandals in hand. Outside, she slipped them on and walked to the shore to watch the fishermen haul in their nightly catch. Torches bobbed on the lake, marking the location of boats that were still out. As they approached, the men extinguished their lights and prepared to unload their seines full of small silver musht, some still quivering with life.
    Miryam had lately heard tales of a teacher traveling through the Galil, healing the sick. Great throngs of people had gathered near Kfar Nahum to hear him speak and watch him perform his miracles. It was rumored that he and his followers had now camped just outside of Magdala, and that they would be passing by the city that very day. This was why she slipped early from her bed: she intended to seek out this itinerant prophet.
    “These are the stages of the people of Yisrael, when they went forth out of the land of Egypt,” she whispered as she watched the fishermen spread their nets on the shore to dry. A few began to build a fire several feet from the shore, close to where she stood. Some of them looked in her direction, then looked away. They knew she was well beyond the customary age of betrothal and yet unmarried, a woman incoherent in her speech, wild in her actions, possessed, it was said, by seven devils.
    A wind blew off the lake, chilling her. But though the sun had not yet warmed the air, the men were stripped to the waist. Sweat dripped from their hairlines and snaked down their backs as they squatted by the flames, cleaning some of the fish with bright blades. They ate the roasted musht for breakfast, picking the thin bones from their tongues.

Chapter Two
    A T THE TIME of Bérenger’s arrival, I knew little about the political tenor of the country. My father had taught me simply that the