The Passion of Dolssa (5 page)

Prior Pons’s languid gaze upon him made Lucien squirm inwardly. This was a test, and he was failing it, beaten by this maddening young woman before he’d even had a chance to ask her his first question.

If she could ignore his requests, he could ignore her defiance. He shuffled through his papers.

“Dolssa de Stigata,” he began, “we hear reports that you’ve disobeyed our orders.”

Her long dark hair flowed out from underneath her white cap. It caught the muted light coming through the panes in the dusty chamber.

“Is it true, Donzȩlla Dolssa”—Lucien winced at a catch in his voice—“that you still claim to speak with our Lord, and to receive replies from him? That you persist in claiming a special intimacy with him, such as between a bridegroom and a bride, and that, despite our express orders, you continue to teach a group of followers these unsanctioned and unholy falsehoods?”

A small smile moved the heretic
femna
’s wide mouth. Lucien found his gaze drawn to the small mark over her upper lip. The devil’s mark, he had more than once thought of it. Which would explain its dark fascination.

Lucien retreated to his papers. “We warned you,” he said. “We attempted to correct you through merciful instruction. And yet you persist. Why such rebellion?”

The priest, Dominus Roger, mopped his brow. The damned girl—for she was surely that—only blinked lazily at Lucien. Brazen. Insufferable.

“Donzȩlla,” came Prior Pons’s crackling voice. “It would fare better for you if you answered.”

“Would it, then?”

He spread his hands upon the table. “Naturally.”

She seemed mildly amused. “I have never spoken anything other than the truth. And I speak the truth now when I say that whether I answer you
oc
or
non
, you will burn me either way. So I see no reason to speak to you any more words than I wish to.”

“And yet you have plenty of words to use elsewhere,” said Lucien. It was peevish of him, and realizing so infuriated him.

“I speak more elsewhere,” she said, “when I have the ears of people capable of listening.”

All the while this damnable heretic’s lips smiled inwardly, as though she alone were in possession of a delightful joke. As if she and someone else behind where Lucien sat conspired together in some droll jest.

Lucien rose. “It rests with the Holy Church to obtain audience with the Most High, and with him who holds Sant Peter’s keys, to receive divine
revelation for the Church. It is not and has never been the province of childish, silly
femnas
to speak in the name of the Lord.”

“I will notify him, when next we speak, that he is in violation of your rules.”

“Insolent creature!” Lucien turned to the prior to seek his outrage. But his spiritual superior’s eyes were full of silent warning.
Control yourself.

Lucien regulated his breathing and turned back to the heretic.

“We have shown you mercy,” said he. “We spared you with a warning. I pleaded for you myself, in consideration of your youth. And this is how you reward our charity?”

“Donzȩlla,” said Prior Pons, “I beg of you not to force our hands. We have fought a painful war over just such threats to the faithful as you. You are a poisonous flower in the Lord’s vineyard. Some find your youthful bloom attractive. Protecting the innocent and the gullible from such venom is our mission. We find no pleasure in your destruction, but we will do what we must.”

A strange light burned in Dolssa de Stigata’s eyes. “You must do what you must,” she told him, “and I must speak the words my beloved bids me speak. He is more than recompense for whatever you may do to me.”

“Your defiance,” answered Prior Pons, “by its very nature, is sin. It is heresy.”

“If you choose to, you may label me a heretic,” said Dolssa. “But God in heaven is the judge of such things, and to him I plead my case.”

“You will be excommunicated.” Lucien’s voice rose. “Your soul will burn in hell, and your body will burn in a heretic’s pyre.”

But still the infuriating, devilish girl only watched him. She was well practiced at prying her fingernails into the cracks in his composure.

He’d lost. But so had she. “You cannot win,” he told her.

“I have already won,” she said. “I dwell with my beloved, and when you slay me, I will dwell in his arms forever.”

“Then before they spread your influence further,” said Lucien, “we will make sure that those already infected with your poison will also be cut off.”

Dolssa pulled in an anxious breath. At last. Lucien could almost feel the rise of her chest as her heartbeat registered his meaning.

“My words are my own,” said she. “I claim their punishment, also, as my own. Surely, you can’t construct a crime from associating with me.”

Triumph was sweet upon Lucien’s lips. He selected his next words carefully.

“As our inquiries into the faith of your countrymen has demonstrated clearly, association is how the devil impregnates the weak with his damnable fallacies. Association is life, and death—eternal life, and eternal death.”

Her eyes smoldered. But there was fear in them now. Not even
her beloved
could banish it.

“Your mother, your kinsmen, your maid, your cook . . . your devoted followers . . . One can never be too careful, Donzȩlla, in choosing one’s associations. Not in Provensa.”

DOLSSA

hey led us, my mother and me, bound like criminals, past reeking tanneries and slaughterhouses, through La P
rta Narbonesa, and outside the city walls, where shameful deeds belonged. At least they didn’t drag us through the streets by our ankles.

We came to a field near the river at dusk. Torches flickered in the two towers of the Castȩl Narbonesa abutting Tolosa’s wall like disapproving eyes. Wind rushed along the river reeds, sounding a warning of my beloved’s anger.

Count Raimon’s
bayle
.

Soldiers.

Executioners.

Begging lepers who rejoiced at finding a rich audience.

Behind them, singing holy songs, the friars, and Tolosa’s bishop, also Raimon, dressed in state.

A crowd of watchers. Faces I once preached to. Treacherous neighbors and disloyal kin, blurring together in the smoke. The same relations who had called me pious, and praised my virtue. What had I done, that they should abandon me so?

Before us all, the fire raged. An animal, hungry for its prey, it snarled and snapped at me.

My life unwound before me like a spool of thread. Never in my darkest dreams could I have imagined this was how my days would end. That I should die so shamed and so utterly without help.

That my beloved
maire
, pure as linen, should suffer and perish for my sake. For my reckless pride. For her devotion.

Lucien de Saint-Honore read out a little sermon, then Count Raimon’s
bayle
read the charges. Count Raimon! Our lord in Tolosa, who once greeted my father warmly in the streets, now ordering his daughter’s death at the inquisitors’ request!

I blessed the friar’s words for delaying our deaths. Every living moment let me gaze longer into Mamà’s loving eyes.

Preach on, preacher. I have no more pride to wound.

God and righteousness had triumphed over Mamà and me, he said. Heretics. Disobedient, unruly, unnatural women, he called us. The
femnas
de Stigata, mother and daughter.

Ma maire
. How she loved me! Her soft eyes, full of comfort. Beautiful in the firelight. She kissed my lips.

“God could give me no greater token of his love for me than you,” she said. “Remember, my daughter. I go first.”

The Holy Virgin, she’d said, had whispered to her and told her to trust in God’s deliverance. All would be well. She should walk without fear all the way to the pyre. But she must go first.

She walked bravely. I trusted in that promised deliverance. My beloved would rescue us. I stood still to behold our salvation. Then the
bayle
’s foul hands seized my sweet
maire
and thrust her in the flames.

I prayed. I screamed to my beloved.
Come! Come and spare her!

She died choking in the smoke, calling out my name.

Maire Maria, grant me a vision of her soul escaping into your arms, to blot out the sight, the heat, the smell of her burning skin. Her arms, consumed like greenwood, that once caressed me.

My
maire
. My good and gentle
maire
. My truest and only earthly friend.

Was it hours? Was it an eternity in hell? The churchmen watched me watching her.

She sank at last against the pole to which they’d tied her arms. She was gone. My time had come.

Something struck my ankles, then my wrists, bound behind me.

“Run.”

So soft was the word in my ear that I didn’t believe it.

“Run.”

Hands plucked the cords from my wrists and ankles and steadied me.

“Run,” said the voice again. I saw no one. Hands seized my arms and steered my body away from the flames, from the friars and the
bayle
’s constables. Hands pushed me on my way, so to keep from falling, I ran.

Smoke and darkness. Noise and confusion. They were all I had.