Return to Your Skin

by Luz Gabás

  She opened her eyes wide, unable to hide her surprise. She wondered how he knew, even if the feat had passed by word of mouth through the servants of the houses.

  “Look at her face!” shouted Jayme feverishly. “How could an apparently weak woman kill a beast with her bare hands if not aided by a greater one?” He seized Brianda by the arm and dragged her to the end of the church. “Come, Father Guillem, and hear her confession!” He forced her to kneel before the confessional. “After what we have heard and the proof we have offered, do you still dare to say you are not one of them?”

  Father Guillem entered the confessional, his face crestfallen.

  “I have done nothing, as you are well aware,” Brianda said to the priest in a pleading whisper. “I have always acted as expected of someone in my position.”

  “It is often the just who most suffer and are more insistently hounded by the devil until they eventually fall. By the same token, our enemies are never easily discovered where they are welcome. Confess your sins and all this will end,” said Father Guillem.

  “You started this. We lived in peace before you arrived with your sermons and parchments. You dictated the questions in this interrogation.”

  Father Guillem shuffled in his seat.

  “I warned you that you were not fulfilling your religious obligations properly.”

  “I take you for an intelligent man, Father Guillem. From your mouth come the words that your eyes question. We have known each other for years. This matter has gotten out of control. It is one thing to terrorize sinners and a very different one to rob us of the life given to us by Our Lord. You will pay for your cowardice.”

  Brianda stood up and returned, walking slowly, to her place beside the altar, opposite Corso, who was being held by two men. Jayme and Father Guillem followed her and took their places at the table.

  “The interrogation has ended,” said Jayme in a loud and clear voice. “Does anyone wish to say anything in the accused’s defense?” A deep silence spread through the church. “Is there or has there been news of any legal impediment preventing our deliberations?” The lawyer shook his head. “Has the accused confessed, Father Guillem?”

  With her head held high and her gaze melting in Corso’s, Brianda answered for him. “I know that I have been condemned by you from the start, whether I confess to what you want to hear or if I tell the truth. And that certainty makes me free to speak the truth. I am innocent of all your accusations. As innocent as all the other women you have unjustly tried.”

  She then looked at the members of the tribunal one by one: Arpayon, Jayme, Marquo, Pere, Remon, Domingo, and Father Guillem. They were people like her, neighbors from the same valley, members of the same community, who had become vile murderers in the name of the Almighty and the king. “May God have mercy on you, even though you do not deserve it.”

  40.

  So many people had attended the trial that the members of the council decided that no one could move from the church while they went outside to deliberate. Brianda went to Corso and sheltered in his arms under the watchful gaze of the guards and the people of Tiles, who, between whispers and silences, made the sign of the cross or shook their heads in exaggerated and false dismay.

  “I know they will not be long, Corso,” she whispered to him, digging her nails into his chest. “Promise me that you will take my hand and look at me when my hour comes. Promise me that you will be by my side at the final moment.”

  Corso’s breathing became a grunt in his throat. He looked at the guards out of the corner of his eye. Brianda caressed his cheek.

  “Yes, you could take his sword and easily kill them. And then what? They would kill you. You must live. For me and for Johan.”

  Corso pressed her hand against his cheek, partly closed his eyes, and obstinately muttered, “I’ve always done as you’ve asked. I will take your hand and I will be by your side and I will look after our child. But do not ask me to live without you, because that is impossible, Brianda. I can’t. I wouldn’t know how to do it.” His damp eyes glistened. “What kind of life can I hope for if you—”

  A stir interrupted him. The council members entered the church and walked determinedly toward the altar. Marquo took his position to announce the verdict. In a faint voice, he said, “I, Marquo of Besalduch, gentleman, citizen, county justice, and district judge of the valley of Tiles in the territory and jurisdiction of Aiscle, heard and considered the merits of the trial and the declarations made in it by Brianda of Anels, prisoner and accused, and having Our Lord as witness, from whom all just trials proceed, we declare sentence and by this, our final sentence, condemn said Brianda of Anels to bodily death, so that her natural days cease with death by hanging.”

  “You cannot hang her!” shouted Corso. “She is pregnant!”

  His words swept through the whispering church.

  “You would say and do anything to save her, wouldn’t you?” said Jayme.

  “It is the truth,” responded Corso. “If you hang her, the child in her womb will be killed.”

  Jayme pointed to a balding, shrunken woman.

  “You, from Darquas. Weren’t you a midwife? Come and feel this woman.”

  The old woman approached with difficulty. She placed her bony hands over Brianda’s belly and then squeezed her breasts.

  “She is very thin,” she said. “I can’t tell.”

  “This is nothing more than a scheme to delay her death. We shall not continue to suffer the wiles of this witch.” Jayme signaled the guards to take her outside.

  “Wait!” shouted Corso. “The tribunal has not had its say! Do you all truly agree? Pere? Marquo?” One by one, they dropped their heads as he said their names. “Damn you all!”

  Several voices in the crowd rebuked his curses. Jayme threw him a grim look.

  “We will overlook your attitude because we know it is the evil influence of your demonic wife,” Jayme said. “One day, when all this has passed, you will thank us for having saved you from her.”

  Brianda took Corso’s hand and squeezed it hard. She began to walk outside with her eyes clouded with tears. She needed to leave that asphyxiating building, remove herself from those miserable men she now saw as deformed monsters. She wanted, no matter how briefly, to walk with Corso hand in hand for the last time in that frozen land where their hearts had burned; to slide her gaze over the valley where she had been born, raised, loved, and hated, and where she would die at the age of twenty-two, the victim of the worst of sicknesses. Not even the plague was as destructive as the vengeance, madness, and fear that had spread like a pestilence in the minds and hearts of the people of Tiles. If witchcraft really existed, she was witnessing the greatest of spells. Despite that horror, she saw before her the same fresh landscape and the same imperturbable Beles Peak that she knew from childhood, when she had lived with her father and mother in her adored Lubich.

  The members of the council came out of the church and walked toward the entrance to the graveyard. The guards motioned Brianda and Corso to follow them. They went through the small gate, turned to the right, walked past the graveyard and the church along a rocky path, and came out in a small field where a simple scaffold had been built. Near it, she could see several holes in the ground and some rectangular mounds of earth. She immediately realized that the others had been buried there, including her beloved Cecilia. What terrible beings had they become in their neighbors’ eyes that they could not even be buried in holy ground?

  The people who had attended the trial and others who had not been able to get into the church joined the cortege and began taking up positions to watch the execution. Brianda noticed that there were many children, some as young as Johan, and she felt a stab of desperation realizing she’d never see her child again.

  “It has been well worth the hangman’s time to come from Jaca,” she heard someone say. “This one makes fourteen!”

  She went weak at the knees and held on to Corso’s arm to stop herself from falling. He he
ld her by the waist and brought her to him. He did not let go until they got to the scaffold, where the hangman, a hefty stranger with a wrinkled and expressionless face, waited with his arms crossed and his legs apart. Two beams had been thrust into the ground, and they were joined by another horizontal beam at the top. Some boards acted as improvised steps to get up on a small and rudimentary wooden platform. When it was removed, the bodies would be suspended in the air.

  Father Guillem came over to Brianda carrying a small box and opened it. He took out a consecrated Host, offered it to her, and said, “May the body and blood of Christ keep you in eternal life.”

  She took the blessed bread on the tip of her tongue and felt it burn her. She wanted to spit it out because of the injustice committed in its name, but if she rejected the Host, her gesture would become a public confession of her guilt. She allowed it to dissolve in her mouth and swallowed. She looked at Corso and whispered, “You will keep me in eternal life …”

  Jayme asked the hangman to proceed with the execution. Brianda looked at Jayme and saw that he was playing with something in his hands: her emerald ring. The blood boiled in her veins and hate ran like a whiplash through her body. She looked him in the eye, and, as if she had rehearsed the words beforehand, she said, “You have named me a witch, and, as such, you end my life, believing that Lubich will be yours forever as a result. Well, listen to my words, Jayme of Cuyls. What you do to me is nothing compared to what I wish for you. You will not be free of me. The Cuyls will procreate to die and only one of each generation will survive to keep your lineage until the day of your complete extinction, when the blood of your house will burn and vanish into hell. And the last will know, as certain as death does not placate the thirst for revenge, that it was me, Brianda of Lubich, who returned to recover what was mine.”

  The silence was deafening. Impatient, Jayme signaled to the hangman, who took Brianda’s arm to lead her up to the platform. Corso pushed him away.

  “I’ll do it!” he howled. He took her hand, caressed it, and held it as if she were a queen ascending the throne.

  The hangman put the rough rope over Brianda’s head and adjusted the noose around her neck.

  Brianda felt a sudden fear grip her body. In a few moments, her heart would stop beating, and the blood would stagnate in her veins. Her senses would be snuffed out in an instant, not like the languid embers of a fire, but like the flame of a candle in a gust of wind. At breathtaking speed, her mind went over the most important moments in her life, all written down and hidden away in the writing desk her father had given her, and she suddenly remembered the small key that hung on the Virgin of Tiles statue. She had forgotten to tell Corso about it.

  She lowered her gaze toward him. His breathing was a convulsive pant. She knew that Corso was making a terrible effort not to break down and give in to desperation. He had promised to be with her when she made the transition from life to death, and he would keep his promise even if he were bleeding from every pore.

  “When I close my eyes for eternity, I will only see you,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to explain it, my love, but I feel this is not our end. Don’t put ‘rest in peace’ on my gravestone because I won’t. I promise I’ll defy the precepts of the hereafter to be with you. I will return to you—”

  The ground opened beneath her and Brianda simultaneously felt her stomach churn, a painful snap in her neck, and a dizziness in which she still heard a deafening noise.

  Like a savage and crazed giant, Corso swung at the wooden beams of the scaffold, bellowing, and began to hit them with his shoulders. At the third attempt, the top beam came loose and fell on him, slashing open his cheek, and letting Brianda’s body fall to the ground. Corso knelt on the ground and took her in his arms. Her face and lips were pale.

  Blood from Corso’s wound dripped onto her lips, coloring them, giving them a fleeting appearance of health. Corso roared her name and Brianda’s eyes fluttered. Her lips parted slightly, as if wanting to drink that liquid and quench her final thirst. She then opened her eyes, looked at him as if from afar, and allowed her last breath to leave her body, with the same gentle speed at which her eyelids sank and her head searched for its final resting place on his arm.

  Corso remained mute and still, hugging her with brutal avarice, until someone came over to show him which grave she was to be put in. As if they had stuck a lance in his side, he stood up with her in his arms, walked past the members of the council, spewing saliva from his mouth like a rabid dog, and crossed through the crowd who watched with a mixture of shock and distress the aggressive grief of the master of Anels. He called his horse, climbed one of the stone walls to mount the Friesian with Brianda still in his arms, and shot off at a gallop along the roads they had traveled together over the last years.

  For hours he talked to her as if she were alive, reminding her of every corner where they had loved each other, every word spoken by day and by night, every shared gesture. He went through the woods of Lubich with her to that little bridge she loved so much, where she had saved him from the wolf. As night fell, he rode up the path that took them close to the summit of Beles Peak, shining like never before in the moonlight, and he pointed to and named each house, as if nothing had happened, as if he were talking to her of a happy world, as if at any moment her eyes could begin to blink again with the vitality of one of the stars in the heavens.

  He covered her with his cloak so she would not get cold. He pressed her against his chest to whisper in her ear. And he kissed her dozens of times, until her final frosty cold convinced him that she, Brianda, the reason for his existence on earth, was dead.

  He returned to the rear of the church, chose the grave farthest away from the rest they had dug, jumped in, and lay Brianda down with exquisite delicacy. He sobbed over her, kissed her for the last time, placed a blue flower on her bosom, and spread his cloak over the body of his beloved so that nothing could blemish the skin that his hands had so insatiably caressed.

  Finally, he began to cover her with earth, slowly, while swearing that he would wait for her with all the patience that madness would allow, that the opportune moment would come to take revenge on those who had snatched away their lives, and he would breathe only to wait for the day when she would fulfill her promise.

  Until then, he would not rest either.

  41.

  2013

  “Neli, come quickly, please!” Isolina’s voice pleaded at the other end of the phone line. “Brianda! Oh my God!”

  “What’s the matter, Isolina? Try to calm down!”

  “She’s not breathing! I call her name, and she doesn’t react!”

  What? Neli had seen Brianda just a couple days before, and she had seemed fine, maybe a little pensive. She knew her friend had been spending hours going over that diary from the old desk in Corso’s house—

  Suddenly, she had a terrible realization.

  “Leave her!” she shouted at Isolina. “Don’t touch her! I’ll be right there!”

  Neli ran up to the bedroom and into the bathroom, where Jonas was taking a shower. She asked him to look after the children, quickly explaining that Isolina needed her. She snatched the car keys from the table in the hall and ran out. A racket of rain crashing against the stones greeted her. She could not remember the last time it had rained so hard, not even that day when the sudden storm had forced Isolina, Brianda, and her out of the graveyard. By the time she got into the car, she was already soaked. Even going full speed, the windshield wipers couldn’t give her a clear view for more than an instant at a time, and the side windows showed a constant stream of water.

  She knew the way so well that she was still able to make the drive, but she had to concentrate to prevent herself from veering off the narrow road at the fork to Anels. It was ten in the morning, but it seemed like night was approaching. Beles Peak was hidden somewhere behind the dark, low clouds. The rest of the landscape was a blur. The journey took forever.

  She finally passed the old wa
shing area and the fountain. She was almost at Anels when a figure emerged from the torrential rain and stepped in front of the car. Neli screamed and braked hard, narrowly avoiding a collision. She opened her mouth to yell, but then recognized him. Soaked to the skin, Corso leaned heavily on the hood of the car. His long dark hair fell over his shoulders in clumps, and his scarred face revealed a mixture of fear and astonishment.

  “Corso!” exclaimed Neli, opening the window an inch. “What are you doing? I nearly ran you over!”

  He came to her and rested his fingers in the gap in the window.

  “I thought you were the doctor,” he babbled, stunned. “It’s too late!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just saw her! Brianda is dead!”

  “Get in the car!” Neli ordered him.

  Corso did not move. His gaze remained fixed on some point on the ground, letting the water from the sky lash his body, as if in punishment.

  Neli rolled down the window a little more, grabbed his jacket, shook him, and repeated, “Get in the car now!”

  Corso looked at her in puzzlement but obeyed.

  “What do mean you saw her?” she asked, putting the car in gear.

  “That night last week when I found you in my house, she said she would call me, but she didn’t. I went out for a walk today, and I came here to ask about her. Her aunt brought me up to her room and—” He opened his mouth and let his head fall to his chest, as if afraid to say the words again. “I don’t understand. She was so young. Why do things like this happen?”

  Neli drove the last stretch in silence and parked in front of the main door. Corso’s horse was wandering loose there, under close surveillance from Luzer in the shed. Neli got out of the car and ran to the front door to get out of the rain, but Corso did not follow. She ran back to the car and climbed in.