quite shapeless; she appeared to be either fat or with child. True, others often
scarf-muffled their lower faces against the cold, but the point was that the
veiled woman never, never showed her face above the eyebrows and below her large
medium-hued eyes.
Naturally the caravanseers and her fellow pilgrims wondered, and speculated, and
opined and discussed. An innocent child and a rude adult-or-nearly were actually
so crude as to ask her why she was hiding behind a veil and all that loose robe.
“Oh my cute little dear,” the veiled lady told the child, cupping its plump dark
cheek with a nice and quite pretty hand, “it’s the sun. It makes me break out
all in green warts. Wouldn’t that be awful to have to look at?”
No such touch accompanied the veiled lady’s response to the rude almost-woman
who breached the bounds of gentility and mannered decency by asking the same
question.
“Pox,” the veiled lady said tersely. The questioner, while bereft of the
sensitivity to blush or even apologize, said no more. Eyes widening, she
abruptly remembered that her presence was required elsewhere.
(The first “explanation” was pooh-poohed, though not directly to the veiled one;
if that were so, a fellow pilgrim wisely observed, then why were her hands not
gloved, and why were they so pretty-a lady’s hands? The second explanation was
considerably more troubling. It was suspect, but who wanted to take a chance on
catching some pox or other? People began to keep their distance, just in case.)
The big good-looking guard from Mrsevada was rude, too, but in a different way.