First, they took the newly- identified Leper to the burial ground and laid them in an empty grave, a Priest performed a Requiem Mass and earth was thrown onto the Leper’s head.

Then the whole Parish processed the Leper to her new home, where this Mass of Separation, spoken by a priest, was performed at the site of the leper’s hut.

 “I forbid you to ever enter a church, a monastery, a fair, a mill, a market or an assembly of people.

I forbid you ever to leave your house without your leper’s dress, and also shod.

I forbid you to wash your hands or to launder anything or to drink at any stream or fountain, unless using your own barrel or dipper.

I forbid you to touch anything you buy or barter for, until it becomes your own.

I forbid you to enter any tavern; and if you wish for wine, whether you buy it or it is given to you, have it funneled into your keg.

I forbid you to share house with any woman but your wife.

I command you, if accosted by anyone while travelling on a road, to set yourself down-wind of them before you answer.

I forbid you to enter any narrow passage, lest a passerby might catch the affliction from you.

I forbid you, wherever you go, to touch the rim or the rope of a well without donning your gloves.

I forbid you to touch any child or give them anything.

I forbid you to eat or drink from any dishes but your own.

I forbid you to eat or drink in company, unless with lepers.”

*****

I look out the open door of my hut at the grey morning rise. There is no sunrise, just grey.

I look out the door of my hut, open doors are good for dispelling miasma. Though I am charged to close my door if anyone comes near, and I must stay downwind, on account of the movement of miasma. I must ring my bell.

I am alone here, and that’s fine. It is hard to be alone, but easier than shuffling downwind or giving them leprosy. Giving them leprosy is the worst, even if it’s only the fear of leprosy.

I am alone here, Alice in her leper hut. Do I have a cat? Yes, I have a cat. Greymalkin, I call her.

And she isn’t afraid of lepers, no cats are. Lepers have rats and scraps, just like anyone. Why would a wise cat fear a leper.

I did not join the lepers in the Lazar House, I do not live in company in the Spital. I prefer it out here, beyond the fields of the Leper Hospital. Alone I watch from my leper hut, as the lepers work the strips of the Spital Fields.

There is a Leper Chapel at the side of the Spital, where the good lepers hear the mass. And there is a Lychnoscope, a Hagioscope, a Squint in the wall, where guilt-ridden towns people, leaving alms for the allieviation of the suffering of lepers, cross themselves and cross back into town.

I too have a squint, by the side of my door, I take alms in exchange for visions. I am a leper, and so closer to death, for me the veil is thin, I can see those who will die within a year, and those who are already dead.

In the autumn when the lepers have brought in the leper harvest, and the fields are bare, the town set up a fair on the Spital Fields, trading and gaming and whoring, late into the nights.

And they queue at my closed door, when the fair is in the Spital Field, Parish people wait in turn at my Squint. They pay me alms for visions, to spy out the dead and soon to die, I see them all with my leper eye.

In those autumnal nights when the raucous crowds are thronging, out there I see you, Dodie Disease-Monger and Lizzie Leper-Maker, drunk on sack, skirts hitched high, dancing in the stubble. I see you, I know you and your works. You eyed me, now I eyeball you.

Return the evil to the evil-doer.

You are in the leper’s vision, now I see you with my leper eye.

There is a chapel hardby the Spital where the good lepers hear mass. But I stay away, I am a leper and worse, for I am a leper with visions. I see my own demon gods in the dark of my leper hut.

I am an outcast, even among Lepers.