“Broken in an illness.” That was hard to imagine. Richard was from Ireland. A scab grew in the middle of his forehead. He was twisted over; gray hair poked through the holes in his hood; his shoes were thickly cobbled though his grimy toes appeared when he walked.

“Richard, guide me to Rome.”

Panic yanked him backwards. “Your countrymen abandoned you. They have bows and arrows to defend themselves—I have nothing but patches. My enemies will rob me and rape you.”

“I will pay you two nobles and Jesus will provide.”

Richard wrapped himself in a winnowing sheet to keep out the weather. They rode south to Pesaro, then turned inland into the Apennines. A waterfall fell white on brown rocks below; they couldn’t hear it thunder till they passed by. In Richard, Margery met her match at nonstop talking. She pissed in silence behind an oleander, a puddle frothing on the hard dirt. At night a steady wind pushed the campfire’s flame and the shifting branches above looked like snowflakes rising. The travelers saw their shadows by moonlight and Margery could read the inscription on the ring Jesus had given her, JESUS IS MY LOVER.

Margery pretended to sleep, listening in horror while Richard talked to their fire. The flame conveyed a sense of continuous beginning; he told it that his platoon fucked a whore in France with sweet and sour tattooed on her breasts—the whore fainted and he tucked her in.

He told his hand that once he had talked to a tree, that a tree is a bush with a hard-on. Margery couldn’t figure out where he got the bottles of wine but she could see from his drunken gestures that he thought he was in tune with the universe. He raised his arms and face above his crooked frame, fingers high in the air, and shrugged with good-natured exasperation. He asked them all—fire, hand, tree—what Margery was going to put him through next day.

Before dawn Richard vomited on his hands and knees, shouting with each burst, “Look out, she’s ready to blow!”

•

Richard led Margery to Assisi, a walled city perched on a little mountain, and to the church where Mary’s kerchief was exhibited. Lamas Day, August 1, was the date of the Portiuncula indulgence, an important pardon with plenary remission.