The Passion of Dolssa

  I raced blindly down the lanes of the vineyard, not daring to take the traveled path, lest I overtake Jacme and Andrio alone. Tall grasses tugged at my shoes, and the uneven ground made me stumble. Finally my feet found a small footpath, and I flew along it until I’d reached the road that passed by the tavern. I ran inside.

  “Symo?”

  My srres looked at me blankly. He wasn’t there.

  I turned and pressed up the hill toward town. Most of the village was tucked in for the evening, digesting their suppers. I encountered no one, worse luck.

  I knocked at Na Pieret’s house.

  She answered the door herself. “Yes, Botille?”

  “Is Symo here?” I gasped.

  I couldn’t bear the disapproval in my old friend’s eyes.

  “Haven’t you seen plenty of him lately?”

  Now she resented his time with us. Or feared what it might do. Oh, Na Pieret, ma maire, why have you rejected me?

  “I need his help,” I said. “Jacme and Andrio are drunk. They plan to go beat up the inquisitor, Lucien de Saint-Honore. To repay him for the punishments.”

  “Jacme and Andrio often do the things the rest of us wish we could do,” she observed.

  “Na Pieret!” I cried. “Surely, you can see what the outcome would be. They’ll kill him!”

  “Not Jacme,” she said. “He’s all bluster. He’s no murderer.”

  “Whether they kill him or no,” I cried, “if they assault him, the Church will crush Bajas. They’ll bring down armies upon us. The Crusades started over just such an offense. While we stand talking, the chance to stop them dwindles.” I filled my lungs and cried out, in case her nephew was inside the house. “Symo!”

  He appeared beside me. He’d been somewhere on the street. “I’m here, Botille,” he said quietly. “What do you want?”

  His expression was grim, and so was Na Pieret’s, watching us. They’d quarreled over me. Over Dolssa. I could taste the bitterness.

  I quickly told Symo what I’d heard. He turned and ran to the waterfront. Na Pieret called after him. His only reaction was to stop at someone’s shed along the way and commandeer a sturdy rake.

  We reached the row of trees. There was no sign of a struggle anywhere. Perhaps the friar had not chosen to walk tonight. Or perhaps we were too late. I prayed that the two ruffians had not gone to find their victim elsewhere.

  A slim crescent moon shone over the lagoon. It would have been a lovely night, but for this.

  “I should go looking for them,” I whispered.

  “Ssh.” Symo placed a finger over his mouth, then pointed.

  A figure descended the grassy slope toward the water. It was the friar, Lucien. He looked around, apparently to see if he was alone, then knelt and scooped up a handful of ashes. He rose and let them trail through his fingers onto the sea breezes.

  Once more he knelt to scoop the feathery ash. Almost, I thought, like a mourner. What could he be thinking?

  There was no time to wonder. Jacme and Andrio ran out from behind a hillock and struck his bare head with their wine pitchers.

  He toppled face first into the fire pit.

  His assailants were upon him in an instant. Symo burst from his hiding place and cleared the beach. He dealt ferocious blows to Jacme and Andrio’s tailbones with the handle of the rake before they could even turn around to see who was there. They rolled over, cursing and yelping, then staggered to their feet.

  “Time to go home, lads,” said Symo.

  But Jacme and Andrio, rubbing their sore azes and shouting insults at Symo, apparently did not agree.

  I ran to the friar to see what was left of him. Please, Dieu in heaven above, let our enemy live, or we are standing corpses.

  He was alive and breathing, but only just. I rolled him out of the ashes and onto the sand. Then I turned to see what had become of the others, and my own heart nearly stopped.

  Jacme and Andrio weren’t good thinkers at the best of times, but one thought had made its way through their wine-soaked heads. There were two of them, and only one of Symo.

  They each took a step closer.

  “Get back,” Symo yelled. He brandished his rake. “If there’s to be murder tonight, it’ll be by my hands, not yours.”

  And still they came closer.

  “Jacme, you fool!” I screamed. “Go home! You’ll see all Bajas burn for what you’ve done, you stupid swine!”

  “You’re next, Botille,” Jacme called. “After I deal with this son of a jackass who thinks he’s lord over us.”

  They fell into crouch positions. Symo was strong, I knew, and brave enough, but the other two passed their time, when they weren’t lazing or singing, by wrestling each other and all challengers. They could slaughter him. And they’d found the deadly shards of their broken pitchers.

  Andrio circled around behind his prey, and now they had him surrounded.

  “Symo!” I cried. “Watch out!”

  I heard voices from the direction of the vila, so I cried out for help. The friar’s eyes were fluttering. But I didn’t dare take my eyes off the men.

  It might have been a dance. They circled around Symo, while he twisted and turned to keep them both in his sights. Jacme would feint for his front, then skip back while Andrio lunged for the backs of Symo’s knees. Jacme’s pains were rewarded with the butt of the rake handle punched into his gut, and Andrio got a rake head crashing over his skull.

  But these blows didn’t stop the pair. They only made them angrier. Their broken weapons forgotten, both charged Symo, but he shoved the rake handle under Andrio’s armpit and used it to swing him around bodily, levering him straight at his friend. They collided like battering goats, their force striking each other instead of Symo.

  “Go home,” Symo said, “or I’ll feed your feet to the sharks.”

  Behind me, the friar moaned. A trickle of blood from his sooty scalp dribbled down into his eye. Before me, Jacme and Andrio rose to their feet, snarling like wounded bears.

  Two women appeared from up the road. Praise the bon Dieu. It was my srres.

  “Find help,” I called to them across the beach. “They’ll kill him!”

  Sazia hitched her skirts and ran up the hill, while Plazensa ran across the sand to me.

  She took one look at the friar. “Is he alive?”

  “Let’s pray he is.”

  I heard wood crack on bone, and a shout of pain. Jacme fell on his aze in the sand, but Andrio saw an opening and tackled Symo to the ground. In no time he’d pinned him. Symo’s legs thrashed but found no hold. Andrio looked like a rabid dog ready to bite Symo’s throat out.

  Plazensa’s eyes flashed. “Come on, Botille,” she said. “What I’d give now for my rolling pin.”

  She seized a sturdy limb of unburnt wood from the rim of the pyre, and I followed her lead. She swung her beam wide and brought it crashing down onto Andrio’s head. He fell limply onto Symo’s neck like a drowsy lover. I saw that Jacme was beginning to rouse, so with a well-aimed blow, I sent him back to sleep.

  Running footsteps and shouts came down the slope. Sazia had dragged out Martin de Boroc. Seconds later Gui ran into view. He halted at the sight of his brother, bent double and heaving gasps of air; he took in the sight of three bodies on the beach.

  “What’ve you done now, brother?”

  “It wasn’t me,” croaked Symo. “It was those crazy femnas who finished the business.”

  “Carry the friar to the tavern,” ordered Plazensa, “then get these two back home to their mistress. Lock them up and dump cold water on them if they give you any trouble.”

  Gui and Plazensa carried the friar back to the Three Pigeons along with Sazia, leaving Symo and me to recuperate and supervise the farmhands with Symo’s rake. Sazia and Plazensa stayed to tend the friar. Gui returned to the beach and heaved Jacme and Andrio into Na Pieret’s cart with Martin’s help, then let her mule carry them home.

  Symo and I returned to the tavern in silence.

/>   We’d failed. We’d stopped them from killing him, but we hadn’t kept him safe, and now hell itself would swallow us. I had tried to do right, but once again my best efforts had led to disaster.

  Symo limped.

  “Are you badly hurt?” I asked him.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You’ll be bruised in the morning,” I said.

  Still nothing.

  We were nearly home. Since my conversation was so odious to him, I debated saying anything at all, but even as dejected as I was with the outcome, it had to be done.

  “Grácia.”

  We were at the door. Instead of opening it, he stopped and looked at me so intently that it made my skin crawl. Was he ever anything but angry? Was my grácia so trifling as to insult him, after the price he’d paid?

  It grew awkward to wait for him to stop glaring, so I pushed past him and opened the door.

  I didn’t get far. Plazensa and Sazia stood over a bed they’d formed from two tables, whereon the pale, still form of Lucien de Saint-Honore was spread.

  Sazia’s eyes met mine. “He’s fading, Botille.”

  Dieu in heaven, help us.

  I turned to Symo. “You know what I must do.”

  Symo dragged a hand down over his face. “I’ll help you bring her.”

  LUCIEN DE SAINT-HONORE

  ucien was dreaming.

  He lay in a dark wilderness, dying of thirst. His body had already lost strength; he could no longer attempt to crawl on in search of water.

  The people from the tavern appeared, the sisters and the brother—was he a brother?—but when he asked water or wine of them, they shook their heads. No, no, none for you. They mocked his thirst and his need.

  Then the heretic appeared.

  Now Lucien understood that he was dreaming indeed, for the heretic was dead already. But the thirst, the thirst was real. It sucked him down into a waiting grave.

  Was he dead already? Was that why the heretic was there?

  He struggled to rise, to fight and crawl on once more for water, but the tavern sisters pushed him down. They laughed at his desperation.

  Then the heretic appeared by his side, and the sisters departed. She held in her hands a vessel of water. Lucien tried to ask her for some, but his tongue was swollen. He couldn’t speak. Could he, should he petition a child of error for any favor? Would doing so offend God?

  The heretic looked at someone Lucien couldn’t see. “I cannot do it,” she told that someone. “Forgive me, but I cannot plead for him.”

  Lucien tried to reach for the vessel, but his fingers were fixed to the ground. His life slipped from him. God help me, he tried to say, but his lips refused to move.

  The heretic looked down at him. She rested her hands upon his head and his ribs. Her eyes filled with pity. A single tear formed and fell from her cheek and landed upon his face.

  Lucien felt the tear soak in. It was water. It filled his lungs with air, and his veins with strength.

  She uncorked her vessel and held it at his lips.

  “Bless this man,” she said aloud. “Bless this living, breathing child of creation, fearfully and wonderfully fashioned by your own hands.”

  Lucien de Saint-Honore slid into blackness.

  BOTILLE

  ymo and I hurried Dolssa back to her hiding place long after midnight. Symo led the way, while Dolssa held my hand. She did not know the path as well as I.

  We were close to the end, to Symo’s cave, when a nightingale’s cry rang out through the darkness.

  “Hear how the rossinhol bids me good-bye,” she said. “Of all the things to miss underneath the ground, I think oftenest of his song.”

  Sweet Dolssa. What cheer could I give her now? “Your handsome knight has not forgotten you,” I told her.

  I felt, more than saw, her smile. “No indeed. A heart ever faithful. He has followed me here.” Her smile passed. “Could he follow me, I wonder, to where I’m going next?”

  We reached the cave, but neither of us could bear to enter just yet.

  “I must thank you, good Symo,” said Dolssa, “for the parchment and candles. Writing has been a tremendous comfort.”

  Symo nodded, then faded into the darkness. I knew he wasn’t far.

  I held both of Dolssa’s hands in mine. “I don’t know how you did what you did tonight,” I told her. “To bless that friar!”

  She hung her head. “Not I, Botille. I did nothing.”

  Not true, but I let her denial pass. “You’re the bravest person I’ll ever know.”

  “As are you.” She stroked my cheek with her fingertips. “And the most loyal friend.”

  I couldn’t help crying then. I embraced her and wept upon her shoulder.

  “Botille,” she whispered. “Pray for me. I still don’t want to die.”

  “You shall not die,” I vowed. “We’ll find a way.”

  She wiped her eyes. “If anyone can, dear friend, it is you.”

  I embraced Dolssa one more time.

  “After Mamà died, Botille, I swore I would not love another living soul, only to lose them again. I was certain my beloved was more than enough for me,” she whispered into my ear. “But you, Botille, have been my medica. You’ve mended my wounded feet and heart.” She squeezed me tightly. I knew my heart would burst. “I will not lose you now.”

  I couldn’t speak. I kissed her cheek.

  “Botille.” Symo’s low voice reached me in the darkness. “We need to go.”

  PRIOR PONS DE SAINT-GILLES

  t was midmorning when Prior Pons and Bishop Raimon, and their retinue of friars, clergy, soldiers, and servants, ascended Bajas’s hill and reached the church of Sant Martin. They had left at dawn from the Abadia de Fontfreda, and made good time.

  “I trust we will not find we have made this trip in vain.” Bishop Raimon wheezed as he dismounted his horse.

  “Lucien’s letter was urgent,” Pons reminded him. “Not only reports of the heretic in this little vila, but of her poison spreading rapidly and taking root. He’s young. He could never prosecute so many on his own.”

  “Certainly not,” answered the bishop. “But my back will never recover from such an insult.”

  “Smell the sea breezes, though!” A young friar from their company flung out his arms and drew in deep breaths. Bishop Raimon only rolled his eyes.

  A priest opened the door to the sanctuary to greet them. A handsome man, though shabby, his face fell at the sight of the senior clergy.

  “My lords,” said he, and bowed. “You come from Tolosa?”

  “Oc, that is right,” said Prior Pons. “And you are?”

  “Bernard, your honor,” said he. “Priest of Sant Martin’s and the vila of Bajas.”

  “I presume, then, that our brother, Friar Lucien de Saint-Honore, has made his abode with you?”

  The parish priest licked his lips.

  “Good sirs,” he said, “I fear you will need to come with me.”

  The local lord, Guilhem, poured a torrent of words upon them, and Bishop Raimon had ears to hear what was said, but Prior Pons could only stand at the bedside of young Lucien, his own charge, in some dismal tavern, and trace the line of the gash in his forehead, back and forth. They were sons to him, his young recruits to the Order of Friars-Preachers. Lucien was not many years past boyhood. Zealous, true, and ambitious, but so were all those destined to be great in the realm of the Lord. Time and experience would temper him. He was keen of mind, yet not so wedded to his studies, as some were, that he would not go and do God’s work in the world. He did not deserve to die—even if, as a true martyr, he would bypass the angels at the gates of heaven.

  Pons placed a hand on Lucien’s heart, and rejoiced to feel it move.

  Bishop Raimon had anger enough for the two of them.

  “Think you,” the bishop snarled to the young lord, “that Christ’s church will stand idly by while unholy men assault the Lord’s servants? Think you that brutality like this will be tole
rated for one instant?”

  The young lord, Guilhem, quailed. “No, my lord,” he said. “Not for one instant. Nor should it. The rogues who did it, they are wastrels and brawling drunks. The bayle has them in custody, and they shall be flogged this afternoon. After that we shall assist you in making of them whatever example you see fit.”

  A serving wench, and a comely one at that, appeared with a tray of cups of wine.

  “Refreshment, my lords?”

  Prior Pons finally spoke. “How came he to be in this place?”

  Bernard, the priest, spoke up. “He was assaulted on the beach,” he said. “Near where the heretic was burned. These three sisters came to his aid and brought him in to tend him.”

  Bishop Raimon considered the three sisters. “God bless you for your kindness.”

  They bowed. Then the middle one pointed toward young Lucien.

  “He wakes,” said Pons. “Fetch him wine! Bring water!”

  The sisters hurried to comply, while Prior Pons bent closer to his young friar’s face.

  “No need to speak,” he told Lucien. “Rest.”

  “Do not let the bishop bless them,” was Lucien’s thin reply.

  Prior Pons let this pass. The poor fellow must still be disoriented from his injury.

  It did not stop Lucien from speaking again. “I will come to the whipping.”

  Prior Pons straightened up. “By no means!”

  In answer, the friar struggled to sit. He rose before other hands could prevent him.

  “I am well enough,” he said. “I must be there. Seeing them punished will help me to forgive them. Jhesus has healed me to bring this moment to pass.”

  Prior Pons watched a dazed look pass over the young friar’s face.

  “Jhesus has healed me,” he repeated. “Jhesus has done it. It could only have been he . . .”

  BOTILLE

  enhor Guilhem read out the charges late that afternoon.

  “For most violently and with premeditated and murderous intent assaulting a man of God, the friar Lucien de Saint-Honore of the Order of Preachers, in a vile and cowardly manner, lying in wait, attacking him unawares, entirely unprovoked, I sentence you to forty lashes.” He swallowed and glanced at the bishop and prior from Tolosa. “And, to teach you to remember to honor the Savior’s church, I sentence you to branding by hot irons on the forehead with the mark of the cross.”