The Passion of Dolssa (21 page)

“How many?”

“Hm?”

“How many girls has he . . .”

Santa Sara! “You’re hopeless, Astruga.”

She twisted away from where I could see her face. “He . . . he told me that I . . .”

I took her face between my hands and made her look at me. “Of course he did,” I said. “He’s a scoundrel, and that’s what they all say.”

Her eyes grew red.

“Oh no,” I said. “You’re not still fond of him, are you?”

She broke away and rubbed her eyes angrily with her sleeve.

“Astruga,” I said. “I don’t care a nut for what you did. I will find you a groom. But you act like I’m not to eat another bite of bread until you’ve picked your wedding flowers.”

She watched a handful of wet sand fall in indifferent lumps through her fingers.

“I’m driven mad by the fretting, Botille,” she said softly. “I need something to do besides wait for the secret to get out. Anything.”

Church bells tolled midday prayers. They reminded me of Felipa.

“Then get yourself to the de Prato home,” I said, “and look after those poor motherless children. Their father can barely see straight, much less tend to their needs.”

Her eyes grew wide with horror. Out came the lower lip. The old Astruga was back.

“I meant, what do I do to find a husband?”

I hitched up my skirts and headed up the slope. “I know what you meant,” I said. “Leave that to me, and go help those children.”

She ran after me. “But what do I
do
with them?”

“Feed them,” I said. “Clean them. Scold them. Don’t let them hit each other.”

“I know nothing about tending children!” she cried.

I stopped so suddenly, she collided with me, then glared at her belly.

“I . . . Oh,” she said. “
Oc
. I see.”

“Have you noticed,” Plazensa asked me that evening, one of the dozen times we collided behind the bar, serving supper guests, “how busy the tavern has been ever since—”

“My journey?” I supplied.

“
Oc
,” she said. “Your journey.”

It was true. We cooked three times the dinner and supper to feed the customers who now showed up regularly. Before, we often had days when no one joined us at all. True, the weather brought more ships into port, and harvest labor kindled appetites, but we’d never seen this.

“It’s her,” I whispered. “I saw this on the road. Blessings follow wherever she goes.”

“Ow!” Plazi burnt her hand on a hot turnip. “Listen to this, Botille. At noon we ran out of ale. All I had were batches fermenting. The soonest any would be ready was a week from now.”

I watched as she poured a foaming glassful from the jug in her hand. “So . . . ?”

“So, if you’re patient, I’ll tell you. Ordinarily, I would never do this, because ale needs its time. But something told me to try this jug. So I pulled the stopper. It was perfect.”

I sniffed the jug. It certainly seemed as ripe as any ale Plazensa had ever brewed.

“And,”
she whispered, “I’ve been pouring from this jug all day.”

We stared at each other. Plazensa nodded solemnly. All day. No jug held that much. It was a miracle.

She placed another log on the fire and poked at the ashes. A second batch of turnips was already roasting in a pan buried in the coals, and she fretted over whether they would cook in time to feed her customers. “Oh, Botille, I need you to run to Na Pieret’s and buy more wine off old Garcia.” She grinned. “Too bad I don’t have wine aging in the cellar, but I suppose even miracles have their limits.”

If Plazensa was pleased about the increase in traffic at the tavern, Jobau was not. A full tavern disturbed his drunken reverie up in the loft over the great room. He slid down the ladder at dinner, to the wonderment of the guests, and limped down the hall to an extra room. Plazensa only just managed to steer him away from Dolssa’s.

The door opened then, and Sazia appeared. Astruga had kept her word and released my sister from her self-inflicted penance. She sat down on the one empty stool at the bar.

“I,” she said, “will never, ever, ever have children.”

Plazensa watched her with an amused expression. “Here,
s
rre
,” she said, “have some salmon.” She flaked off a generous portion onto a dish, added a turnip and a dollop of oil. “Tell us all about it as you eat.”

Sazia looked around at the floor for her usual welcome, but didn’t find it. She looked pale and worn tonight, and her face fell when she couldn’t find her cat. “Where’s Mimi?”

I nodded toward the back. “With her.”

Though Sazia would die before admitting it, I’d have sworn she envied Dolssa her place as our cat’s new favorite.

Sazia picked at her food, ate a few bites, and pushed her plate away. “I’m worn out,” she said. “Those children took all my strength. I feel awful. I’m heading to bed.”

Plazensa’s eyes flashed. “And leave my cooking to go to waste?”

Sazia ignored her. I reached for her abandoned dish. “I’ll eat her fish, Plazi.”

“She’s leaving all the cleanup to us tonight,” Plazensa fumed.

“Never mind,” I said. “Leave her alone. I’ll take her share of the work.” Sazia was often gloomy, but this wasn’t like her, to look so blue. She must still feel guilty about Felipa’s death, after the fortune she’d given her. Stubborn girl! We’d told her a dozen times it wasn’t her fault. Whatever troubled her, the last thing she needed was a furious Plazensa vexing her.

Plazensa stayed in a foul mood long after Sazia shuffled off to bed. She made sure to leave two-thirds of the dishes and mess to me. After such a busy day at the tavern, the pile was enormous. Plazensa made a point of heading to bed when her pile was done.

Finally I was free to undress and climb into bed beside Sazia. She slept, but uneasily, moaning and muttering to herself. What dreams, I wondered, could upset her so? She quieted down after I lay next to her, so I soon went to sleep myself.

I woke in the night to find Sazia’s hot arm splayed across my body. In pushing her away, I felt her skin. She burned with fever.

I called to her to wake her up, but she wouldn’t rouse. I called again, and still no answer.

I screamed for Plazi. I fell to my knees next to Sazia and prayed.

Plazi was there in an instant. She felt Sazia’s skin.

“She’s burning up,” she said. “I can’t see anything . . . Get candles. It’s her hand that’s hotter than anything. Sazia! Wake up!”

Her hand? I stumbled down toward the tavern and attacked the banked ashes with a candle from the mantel. The sleepy embers wouldn’t do their work. I puffed at them and watched them scatter.

Finally the lazy candle lit, so I lit another and hurried back down the hall. By their light we saw our little
s
rre
’s pale, damp face and dry, cracking lips. Her hand had swollen like a rising lump of dough. A dark
red splotch appeared in the corner of skin between finger and thumb. She wouldn’t wake up.

“What happened?” Plazi’s voice was barely a whisper.

I stared at the horrifying hand. “I don’t know.”

“What do we do, Botille?”

I shook my head. If Plazi didn’t know . . .

I hurried for a bucket and a cloth, and began wiping Sazia’s face and neck with cool water. I was sure it would rouse her, but she was too far gone.

We were losing her.

Then I remembered. “The cat,” I told Plazi. “She said the de Prato’s cat bit her yesterday.”

“
Mon Dieu
,” Plazensa wept. “I can’t bear it. A cat? A devilish cat could do this?”

“
Mon Dieu
,
mon Dieu
.” I chanted Plazi’s lament over and over. God in heaven. Hear me. If anyone could help our sister . . .

Dolssa.

I ran across the hall and burst into her room. Dolssa sat up and blinked in confusion at the candlelight. I wasted no time on explanations, but dragged her to her aching feet and across the hall to the room where Sazia lay.

She gazed in sleepy horror at the sight that met her eyes. Then she looked at us. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She backed away from the sickbed. “She looks close to the end.”

“Then do something!” I hissed. “You’re the holy one who talks to God all day. You’re the maker of miracles. Heal our sister.”

Dolssa shrank back with each word. She clutched her nightshirt to her throat and shook her head. “Who said I . . . ?”

I went back to cooling Sazia with my damp cloth. “You are,” I told Dolssa. “The ale in the tavern. The bread and cheese in the bag. I
know
that was you!”

Her eyes were wide as moons. She shook her head vehemently. “I’m sorry, Botille,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry. But I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can do no miracles.”

Plazensa seized fistfuls of her own hair and wailed.

“You can,” I insisted. “I’ve seen you do them.”

Dolssa shook her head. “I am nothing,” she insisted. “I have no gifts, no power. I have never done anything like what you ask.”

I gathered Sazia’s lifeless body in my arms and held her close. “Then start.”

But my only hope, my holy woman, stood there like a limp and skinny ghost.

I could not, could not lose Sazia. I could
not
lose my own
s
rre
, my flesh, my little baby child whose food I once spooned into her rosebud mouth. How would I sleep without her? How would I go on?