The Passion of Dolssa (3 page)

Dominus Bernard, Bajas’s priest at the church of Sant Martin.

“
Acabansa
! Finished!”

Focho de Capa, self-proclaimed lord of the revels, scooped a ladle of syrupy juice from the vat and drank it with great flourish.
“Bon an!”
A good year, good for the grapes.

We climbed out of the vat. Itier pulled us each out by the wrist onto the platform next to the press and planted wine-stained kisses on our cheeks. We climbed down the ladder. Astruga let herself be seized about the waist by frizzle-headed Itier and led off to the table that had been set up, spread with bread, cheese, salmon, and roasted vegetables. I lingered behind to wipe a bit of the juice off my arms with a rag Na Pieret di Fabri handed me.

Widow Pieret’s eyes were still as blue as
la mar
, though her face was brown as carved chestnut and creased with as many deep grooves. Her husband, related to the lords of Bajas, had been a vintner, but his death, five years back, left Na Pieret to manage his great vineyards alone. It had been a terrible blow. Still, Na Pieret, who had never been weakened by childbearing, had borne up under the burden admirably. But today, though she smiled, she seemed tired.

“What is it,
ma maire
?” I genuflected, a courtesy owed to a great lady of advanced years, then I rose and kissed her cheek. All old women were “my mother,” but Na Pieret was someone I could almost wish were my mother.

“Ack! You are covered in
viṇ
.” She patted my cheek. “Smart Botille. Not a thing happens in this village but what you have a hand in it, is there?”

“Oh, pah.” I unraveled the damp rags from around my hair. “I won’t take the blame for everything.”

Na Pieret leaned against the handle of her cane. I noticed her head quiver slightly. “I need your help, Botille.” She spoke quietly. “I can’t run the vineyards anymore.”

I saw how much it hurt her to speak these words, though she said them simply and without self-pity.

“But your hired help, surely. They do the work for you,
non
?” I looked over to the feast table, where half a dozen of her hands lounged, stuffing their faces. “Are they lazy? Do they steal from you? Sazia and Plazensa and I can put a stop to that. We’ll teach them a lesson—”

“No, no.” Na Pieret squinted her eyes against the rays of the setting sun. “They are only as lazy as any other laborers ever were. No, they are kind to me.”

“Then what is it?”

“I need a strong back, and eyes I can trust. I need someone who cares about the grapes like they are his own. But you know I have no children to entrust them to.”

The wine on my skin had dried to a slimy, sticky sheen, and I began to itch. Hot breezes from the south did nothing to help.

“My mother had two daughters,” Na Pieret went on. “My younger sister died last winter, leaving her two sons orphans, seven leagues from here, in San Cucufati.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “I want you to bring them to me. I will give them the farm, and they shall become my sons.”

Seven leagues? I pictured myself traveling seven long leagues with two quarrelsome little
eṇfans
in tow. What did she think I was, a nursemaid?

“How old are they?”

Na Pieret pursed her lips. “They were sturdy, useful children when I met them last,” she said, “thirteen years ago.”

I smiled, and looked over at Astruga, busy stuffing a piece of bread into Itier’s mouth. “Is either of them married?”

“Botille!” Na Pieret laughed. “You haven’t become one of the desperate
tozas
yourself, have you?”

“
Non
, Na Pieret.” I took her by the elbow and steered her toward the table. “But there are always plenty of them about, and now I have two more husbands to offer them.”

Na Pieret tapped my forehead with her swollen knuckles. “Only see to it you don’t marry off my new sons to any of the silly
tozas
.”

I shoved a half-drunk Andrio aside to make room on the bench for Widow Pieret to sit. “That,
ma maire
,” I said, “is a promise I doubt I can keep.”

DOLSSA

was a young girl when my beloved first appeared to me. Just a girl of no consequence, the child of pious parents who were much older than most. Mamà used to say I was her miracle
eṇfan
, the fruit of prayer, just as the prophet Samuel had been. I was happy in my home, and much loved.

Mamà dreamed for me the heaven of the cloister. Nothing would have made her happier than to see me take a nun’s vows. Papà, however, envisioned the joy of family. He wanted grandchildren, and a legacy for his home and name. Poor, gentle Papà would not live long enough to see such a dream. He died not long after my visions first began. I don’t know how I would have endured the loss, were it not for my beloved’s secret visits.

We mourned Papà many days. Kinsmen and neighbors came to grieve with us, and condole with my widowed mother. Already they began to speak of me, in whispered voices, as a holy maiden, because I went so often to church. They cupped my cheeks in their hands and spoke blessings upon me. Some were faces I knew, but most, I didn’t. It took me by surprise, seeing so many people claiming Papà’s friendship and commemorating his life. Where were they during that life? Why didn’t I know them? Of course, I’d only known him in his later years. He’d lived a full life before I came along.

I knew Papà had gone to God. But I would miss him so.

“See how she does not cry,” a cousin of Mamà’s whispered to her sister. “She’s serene as an angel.”

I was only shy.

“
Oc
, see the pious sweetness of her gaze,” said the sister. “Like one of the blessed saints.”

I watched my mother, wishing she’d stop talking to all these family strangers.

There was a man there, tall and grim. He spoke to my mother in a low voice. I went to her side and slipped my hand in hers.

“Bound for the church,” my mother was saying. “It’s out of the question.”

The man’s eyes examined my face. “She is very young.”

I inched back behind Mamà.

“She will be a nun,” my
maire
said firmly. “It is already settled.”

The tall man tipped his hat to my mother. “My sorrow for your loss.”

I didn’t understand then what he must have been asking. I only knew that I would never be a nun. A bride of Christ,
oc
, but the cloister could never enclose all my love. It was too vast, too deep for such walls, such silence, such seclusion.

I left my
maire’s
side and went and lit a candle for Papà. How I would miss his step in the hall, and his laugh at dinner. I was thirteen, and now Mamà and I were left alone.

Not long after
mon paire
died, the fires began. What once were sweet visions now burned in my soul, in my brain, in my blood. My beloved, pouring his presence over me, consumed me with his love. I couldn’t sleep. I could scarcely eat.

Mamà thought I mourned Papà. It was easy enough to let her think that.

The world grew dull to me. Tolosa, the vibrant pink city, the
trobadors’
own rose of Europe, became dismal, tired, and brown. My will to remain in it grew slack.

My beloved was my great romance, and—impossible miracle!—I was his. He caught me up on wings of light, and showed me the realms of his creation, the glittering gemstones paving his heaven. He left my body weak and spent, my spirit gorged with honey.

There are no words for this. Like the flesh, like a prison cell, so, too, are words confining, narrow, chafing, stupid things, incapable of expressing
one particle of what I felt, what I feel, when I see my beloved’s face, when he takes me in his arms.

There is only music. Only light.

And no one may take it from me.

I told no one what was happening to me. My beloved was the most private secret of my soul.

Mamà began to speak of the abbey for me, and I refused to go. We quarreled bitterly, and grew cold with each other. At length she relented, with a heavy heart, and began to speak cautiously of me marrying. If I would not fulfill her dreams for me, I supposed, she was willing to concede that Papà’s hopes had been honorable. There was a kinsman, she said. A goodly man, well respected. He had asked Papà about me once, and Papà had been pleased. In a panic I told her my heart was already taken. At this she became sick with worry that I had sinned. So, at my beloved’s urging, I told her the truth about us.

She believed me. Relief made it easy for her to believe. Her maternal pride thrilled to think of me as being touched by divine grace. The next evening, she brought a cousin over to hear my tale. I wasn’t happy, but I was glad enough to have the anger between us abated that I told my story anyway.

The next evening, Mamà brought another friend, and her cousin brought two others.

I was troubled, so I went to my love for guidance. He asked me if I would, for his sake, tell many about the loving kindness he’d lavished upon me. Within a week our house was full to overflowing. I found myself, against every instinct—for I would far rather have remained in my room, in the solitude where my beloved could find me—speaking to houses full of listeners, night after night.

I began to venture out of doors more, not to preach, but merely to taste the world, see the city bloom in high summer. I smelled fresh breezes blow across the winding Garona River, and watched larks flit about the porticos of Our Lady de la Daurada.

But I also saw a city still bruised and bleeding from years of crushing war. I saw souls darkened by loss and bitterness in the crusades. I saw faith
destroyed after the brutality we’d endured in its name. Then I understood why my beloved had sent me.

So I opened my mouth to teach the only lesson I knew. Of love everlasting, of mercy reaching beyond the prison walls of death, of the bliss that awaits us when we die.

What a feeling it was, after a lifetime lived in my parents’ house, to be part of the world and make a difference in it. To do something, however small. To speak, and be heard, if only in my own home. I thought I would speak in the city squares, but Mamà forbade it. “You do not dare do such a thing,” she said. “This city is full of inquisitors, combing through the people for hidden heresies. To preach on the street is to arouse their alarm.”