The Passion of Dolssa (31 page)

“Too bad,” I said, “because I don’t want to either.”

He watched me. I wondered if maybe my withering snub hadn’t landed quite where I thought it would. I decided it was time to go home.

“Botille . . .” he began, but I needed no more of his sneering. I left Symo simmering in his own sauce, and wandered outside. Where the music was, Sazia wouldn’t be far away. A pair of farmwives had coerced her into reading their palms. She rose immediately when I told her I wanted to leave. She threaded her arm through my elbow tightly.

“Come on, Botille,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

“No need,” I protested, then tripped on my skirt.

Past the shelter of the houses on Na Pieret’s street, we felt the gusting wind whip our faces, stronger now by far than when we’d arrived. The air was heavy and thick with dampness from the sea. Giacomo Arbrissi had said there was a storm brewing.

“We’d better hurry,” I told Sazia.

She shook her head and kept my footsteps even. “Not in your state, we won’t.” We carefully picked our way downhill, hitching up our skirts
in one hand and holding on tightly to each other with the other, until we reached the welcoming shuttered light of the tavern windows.

We found Plazensa seated behind the bar. Something was wrong. She was still and white. She didn’t turn to look at us. For a horrid, drunken instant I thought she was a bled corpse.

“What’s the matter?” Sazia cried. “Plazensa, what’s wrong?”

Slowly, my older sister placed a warning finger over her lips. “It’s the friar,” she whispered. “He’s come. Tonight, to rent a room. He said his name was Lucien de Saint-Honore.”

ESCLARMONDA DE MONSOS, SECOND TESTIMONY

Witness Testimony recorded by Lucien

C
ITY OF
N
ARBONA

riar!
Grácia
for coming. I see that young oaf Pascaut
did
find you at the convent.
Bon
.

I’ll tell you why I’ve summoned you. I didn’t bring you all this way
not
to tell you.

Friar, God is kind to you. Here you were, days ago, so despondent, searching for your runaway. Is she the daughter of a pious nobleman?

But hear this! My sister, my own sister, Friar, has sent me a message. She sent a nephew all this way to bring me word. She lives in Bajas. South, along the coast of the lagoon. She’s a widow, my sister is, but her son, the fisherman, is good to her. They had a baby, the fisherman and his wife, and it wouldn’t thrive. It happens, God knows, and watching young mothers pine will break your heart. How many times I’ve seen it!

Oc
, I’m telling you. The baby was healed by a woman who appeared in the night. Be she flesh or be she spirit, they could not say. But her name was Dolssa. A name you don’t often hear. My sister knows how crippled I am, and my poor husband, how weak in his wits. She sent her messenger to say,
Come to Bajas and be healed
. I thought,
That young friar was looking for a Dolssa
. This one clearly belongs to God. Could be they’re the same. So I sent for you.

I can’t make the journey. I’m far too weak. But I can rejoice in God’s miracles, and pray this Dolssa might send a healing my way. Would you ask her, for my sake?

Go to her there, Friar, in Bajas. Go, and may God’s will be done in her, and in you.

DOLSSA

woke in my beloved’s arms to the sound of that voice, naming his dreaded name. I told myself I lay caught in the snares of a hideous dream. I was sure I could nestle back down into the warmth of sleep, but I looked into my beloved’s eyes and saw his tears.

Tears for me.

Tears for Mamà.

Tears—how could I bear it?—for Lucien de Saint-Honore.

The rescues, the miracles. My beloved’s return. His promise never to leave me. I had hoped they meant the dawn of a new day for me. A new life in my own new promised land.

I know better now.

GUILHEM DE BAJAS

enhor Guilhem watched the glistening stranger at the party dance with the newcomer, one of the nephews of the widow Pieret. Snubbed! By some fairy
femna
, whose dress and bearing bespoke rank and position, yet he’d never seen her before. He would never have forgotten a creature such as she. And now she danced with that showy upstart from out of town, that nephew of Na Pieret di Fabri’s. He’d better watch whom he offended, new as he was to Bajas. But where had this bewitching creature come from?

Plazensa Flasucra had something to do with it. Now
there
was a face and figure to leave even this fairy creature in the pale, but there was no marrying a public tavern keeper.

Was this the woman Botille Flasucra had spoken of? The mysterious and beautiful stranger? Or had she played a trick, a prank designed to make a fool out of him with that wretched crone in the woods? He wouldn’t have thought it of her.

“Senhor.”

He turned to see his young page standing at his side, holding a letter.

“What now?” He rubbed his eyes. It was late. Many of the older folks had already gone home to bed. A letter at this hour?

“Pardon, Senhor,” said the page. “The letter just arrived. The messenger said ‘urgent.’”

Guilhem sent the boy home. He tucked the letter into his belt and
resumed brooding over the dancing
femnas
, then thought the better of it, went inside the house, and opened the letter.

Lop, the
bayle
, detached himself from a conversation and approached the young lord.

“Trouble, Senhor?”

Senhor Guilhem roused himself to answer Lop. “Why should there be trouble?”

Lop bobbed his head in acceptable contrition. “You looked concerned, Senhor. And there is the late hour of the letter.”

Guilhem tucked the letter back into his belt. “It’s from the bishop of Tolosa,” he said, “warning us of a fugitive heretic roaming abroad. One who somehow escaped her burning. If we hear of her, we are to let them know.”

He thought of the woman in the woods. But there was no reason to suppose she was the heretic they sought. These last few
bonas femnas
and
bons omes
, they were everywhere throughout Provensa. An open secret no one wanted to think about. Like lepers. He would say nothing about her. There wasn’t a chestnut’s chance it was she.

“That is a curious thing,” said the
bayle
. “I just spoke with Giacomo Arbrissi.”

“The Italian merchant?”

Lop nodded. “
Oc
. He tells me he stopped in port tonight with a passenger bound for Bajas. A friar. An inquisitor. One who came, he said, looking for a heretical woman believed to be in Bajas.”

Senhor Guilhem’s eyelids fell shut. In Bajas? The noose was pulling tighter. That woman in the woods—she was no prank. She would prove his downfall. If they hunted for her, and found her, the inquisitors could say he, Guilhem, harbored heretics, and strip him of his lands and name. And if they ever knew he’d spoken with her—and she’d tell them—that would damn him even more. Until now, with lax Dominus Bernard at Sant-Martin, and no one making noise about
bons omes
and
bonas femnas
, Guilhem had figured heresy was a problem for other, larger landowning lords—not him. But if the war had taught Provensa nothing else, it had finally, and brutally, taught its nobles this lesson: keep heresy far from your borders, far from the souls of your subjects, or pay the price on earth and in hell.

Life had gone from tranquil to deadly practically overnight. And all because he’d listened to some petty matchmaker’s tales.

Senhor Guilhem opened his eyes. Lop was watching him strangely. That wouldn’t do.

“
Dieu
, I’m tired.” Guilhem affected a casual pose. “Too much wine. I’m going to bed.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

Outside, the whipping wind cleared the young lord’s head somewhat.

“Tell me, Lop,” he asked, “did Giacomo tell you the name of the heretic they’re seeking?”

The shaggy-whiskered
bayle
shook his head. “Why, did the letter name the woman?”

Guilhem climbed the dark streets toward his
castrum
. “Dolssa,” he said. “Unusual name.”

Lop stopped in his tracks.

“What’s the matter?”

“Dolssa,” Lop said, “is the name of the
medica
, the healer woman all the village speaks of.”

“Blood of Christ.” Senhor Guilhem rubbed his hand over his face. “Here, in Bajas. It would have to be here. Of all the forgotten corners in Christendom . . .”

I shall tell no one I saw you. That is all the protection I can give you.

“You say this inquisitor is here now?”

Lop nodded. “According to what the merchant told me,
oc
.”

“Where is he?”

Lop shook his head. “I don’t know.”

They resumed their climb. Wind blasted through their clothes.

“Do you want me to arrest her, Senhor?”

Guilhem hesitated.

“Quickly,” he said, “gather wood. We will execute her ourselves, before morning. Then when the friar begins his questioning, we can show our hands clean before the Church. They cannot fault us for exterminating heresy on our own, when first we find it. They must praise us for it. They cannot strip my lands from me for that.”

He’d said too much. Exposed his fear to the older man. He might be young, but he was a lord, and he must never betray weakness. He hated Lop for catching him so exposed.

“Execute her,” Lop repeated slowly. “On the Sabbath. With all the people venerating her as a holy woman.”

“That is what we must stamp out,” Guilhem said, “before the friar observes it. Do it tonight, before dawn.”

Lop held out a hand. “There’s rain coming.”

“I don’t care about rain.”

Lop’s silence irked Guilhem more than any response he might have made.

“So, I will build the fire . . . ?” The
bayle
’s unspoken question dangled in the night air.

“
Oc
.” Senhor Guilhem tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. “I myself will bring you the heretic.”

BOTILLE

here is he now?” I cried. “Has he taken her away?”