Stigmata

by Colin Falconer

She stared at her glove. Some blood had seeped through. ‘It’s from Bernart,’ she said. ‘It must be from where the boys hit him with the stone.’ She stared at him, daring him to challenge her in the lie. But he just shook his head and returned his gaze to the fire. Even her mother did not demand to see the wound and clean it. So: this is what you have come to, Fabricia Bérenger. You shout at your father, make him cross with your mother and then you lie to both of them. If there is a purgatory, then the devils will be warming the forks for you. You deserve it.

  Later that night, after her parents had climbed the ladder to the solier and gone to bed, Fabricia crept to the fire and examined her hands in the dim light of the embers. As if she did not have enough to worry about already without these strange marks on her hands! A girl did not bruise the tender pride of the second most powerful man in Saint-Ybars and not think that tomorrow, when the sun rose again, there would not be trouble for it.

  Help me, My Lady, she whispered into the crumbling ashes. Take these wounds away and save me, again, from one of your priests.

  *

  ‘Why was she so late getting home from the fields?’ Anselm whispered.

  ‘She was in the church again, I dare say. She spends all her time in there praying to the Madonna. After what that priest did to her, you’d think she’d never go in one of those places again.’

  ‘She’s never been the same since the storm. It turned her head a little, I do believe. Do you think she’s all right?’

  ‘If only she’d married Pèire, perhaps none of this would have happened.’

  ‘She knew about it, do you remember? She said it would happen. “He will die soon,” she said. And a few days later he falls from the scaffold.’

  Elionor was silent. Anselm put an arm around her shoulder and felt her settle in. Where to find a good husband for her here? You didn’t give a pearl to a swine. But he would have to do something, and soon.

  XVIII

  THERE WERE GREEN buds on the vines. Some of the vineyards were a thousand years old, Elionor had told her. They had been brought from Palestine by the Jews who fled to the Pays d’Oc when the Caesars were lords of Rome. Gauls and Jews lived side by side then, she said, there were cities and towns in the land of our language long before there was a king in Paris and a Pope in Rome.

  Many different vines have been grafted here, she said. Don’t listen to your father. He’s a good man but he’s from the north, what would he know about the real story of the world? Your blood is rich, you yourself are a grafting of many vines. In the north they marry their sisters and count with their fingers. Here in the Pays d’Oc we have known the whole world: the Jews with their cabbalas, the Moors with their al-jabr and knowledge of the stars, the Templars who brought home muslin cloth and exotic fruits.

  You are a grafted vine. When your father spouts his nonsense about his saints and his Resurrection, don’t forget that.

  *

  ‘Why are you wearing gloves today? Winter is over. You could roast a goose on the cobbles today.’

  ‘I’m cold,’ Fabricia said.

  ‘You can’t be cold, you silly girl.’

  ‘It can’t be summer. We haven’t had the feast for St Mary yet.’

  ‘The sun doesn’t care about feasts. If it’s hot, it’s hot. You’re limping. What’s wrong, girl? You’ve been acting strange since last night. Where are you going?’

  ‘To the market.’

  ‘Show me your hands!’

  Fabricia stared at her. Why do I even try to lie to her? She always knows.

  Fabricia started to take off her gloves. Now there will be trouble. Perhaps they will listen to me now, let me take orders. Someone hammered at the door. Elionor hesitated. ‘Who on earth is that?’

  ‘Madame Bérenger!’ a man’s voice shouted. ‘Quickly!’

  ‘I’ll see who it is but then I want to know what it is you’re hiding!’ she said to Fabricia and threw open the door. She was shoved aside as four of Anselm’s labourers pushed their way in, grunting and sweating, holding Anselm by his legs, his arms, his belt, his shirt. There was blood everywhere. They hefted him on to the bench in the kitchen.

  ‘Paire Sant!’ Elionor shouted and pushed the men aside, wailing in grief. ‘Is he dead?’ Fabricia shouted.

  But Anselm was not dead. He coughed, spitting blood on the table and down his shirt. Alive, then; but just. Elionor cradled his head in her hands. ‘What have you done to yourself, husband?’ She looked round at the men. ‘Did he fall?’

  ‘The carter’s dray,’ one of the men said, wiping the blood off his hands on to his smock. ‘We’d just finished unloading some stone and it took fright and bolted. He missed the hooves but not the wheels.’

  ‘Was it laden?’

  ‘We’d taken off most of the stone but I saw the wheel go over his chest. I heard his ribs break.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ the youngest said. ‘There’s not one doctor in the village knows physick.’

  ‘We don’t need a quack, just a priest,’ another said, and the others glared at him and he fell silent.

  Fabricia touched her mother’s shoulder. Elionor put her fist in her mouth to stifle a scream. Fabricia could hardly bear to look; there was blood bubbling from his mouth in a pink froth. It sounded like he was drowning.

  The men crowded back against the wall, terrified. ‘They’re right,’ Elionor whispered. ‘We need Father Marty.’

  ‘You hate the priest.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s his religion. I won’t let him die without it. It’s the one thing that ever scared him, dying without the unction.’

  ‘He’s not going to die.’

  ‘Of course he is, look at him!’ She picked up his hand, held it to her lips. ‘Didn’t I tell you to be careful?’ She wailed at him and put her head on the bench and sobbed. ‘Why didn’t one of you help him!’ she shouted, and the men shrank further back against the wall, and for all their size they looked like little children hiding from their father’s belt.

  Fabricia felt sorry for them. It wasn’t their fault. ‘One of you fetch the priest,’ she said. They almost fought each other to be first out of the door. They had to push their way through the crowd that had gathered there. News of the accident had travelled through the village already.

  Anselm tried to raise his arm. His eyelids flickered. ‘Eli . . . onor . . .’

  ‘Don’t talk, husband. Save your strength.’

  ‘. . . t’aime . . . mon co . . . eur . . .’ I love you, my darling.

  ‘I told you to be careful!’ Elionor wailed again.

  Fabricia fetched a pail of water and a cloth and washed the blood out of Anselm’s beard. His forehead was cold and damp and his breath rattled in his chest. What are we going to do without you? she thought. We’ve taken you for granted for so long.

  The carter’s wheel had left an imprint on his chest. There was a bloody weal on his skin, and an ugly purple bruise had spread over the whole left side of his chest. Instinctively she put out a gloved hand and laid it there, where he had been hurt. Her mother stared at the blood that had seeped through the wool, staining it the colours of rust.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she whispered.

  ‘It is just comfort,’ Fabricia said.

  ‘What is wrong with your hands?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  Anselm gave a great sigh, as if the cart had been sitting on his chest and they had just hefted it off. Elionor dropped her head on to her arms in despair and waited for Father Marty. She knew her husband would not die until his damned priest had given him the rites.

  ‘Do you smell that?’ she said, dreamily. ‘How curious. Lavender.’

  *

  ‘They told me he was dying,’ Father Marty said.

  ‘You sound disappointed,’ Elionor said.

  ‘The fee is the same whether he lives or dies.’ His eyes followed Fabricia. Anselm murmured a few words of confession and Father Marty put his ears to her father’s lips to listen. He repeated the wor
ds of the holy rite. ‘Two sols. How will you pay me?’

  ‘Get your eyes off her, you dog! I have the money right here. Get out.’

  Father Marty took the coins and with a final leer at Fabricia he left. Elionor stared after him. ‘Devils. The lot of them.’

  Anselm was too heavy to move to the bed so they surrounded him with blankets and bolsters on the bench to make him comfortable. His colour was better and it did not seem to hurt him so much to breathe. Fabricia allowed herself a prayer that he might yet live, but dared not say the words aloud. They said that if the Devil heard you hope, he would come and make it his business to put an end to it.

  They stood either side of the bench and watched him breathe. Elionor stroked his hair. ‘Don’t you stop fighting, my big man. You won’t leave me in this world alone.’ She looked across him, at Fabricia. ‘Show me your hands. You thought I had forgotten? Come on, show me.’

  Fabricia took off her gloves. Elionor drew in a breath. ‘Paire Sant! What is that?’

  ‘I burned it on the fire, taking the pot from the hearth. It is nothing.’

  ‘This is like no burn I ever saw! Did someone do this to you?’

  ‘No one did it to me.’

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  She shook her head.

  Elionor dared to touch the edge of the wound, but quickly snatched her hand away, as if she had been scalded. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mama.’

  Elionor walked around the bench and stood behind her. She put her arms around her waist and held her.

  She watched the laboured rise and fall of her father’s chest; he coughed again and another froth of blood trickled down his cheek. She felt suddenly faint and started to fall, but Elionor held her in her strong arms. ‘Be strong, filha,’ she whispered. ‘We will get through this.’

  XIX

  ANSELM’S EYES BLINKED open. A log jumped in the grate. Fabricia had kept the fire stoked through the night. Elionor, dozing on a chair next to the bench, sat up as soon as she heard him stir.

  ‘Anselm, don’t get up! You’re hurt.’

  ‘I did not mean to sleep so long,’ he said. ‘What hour is it? Is the sun risen?’ He swung his legs over the side of the bench. Elionor tried to stop him getting up but he pushed her hand away. ‘What are you doing? I must be up and to work.’

  ‘No, you can’t, not today. You were hurt yesterday. By the carter’s dray. Look.’ She showed him the bruises. ‘The priest has been here, he gave you the blessed sacrament. We all thought you were dead.’

  Anselm seemed confused. He looked at the bloodstains on his tunic, gouts of it dried black into the gaps of wood on the bench. He put a hand to his ribs and winced. ‘They are a little sore.’

  ‘Paire Sant!’ Elionor breathed and sat down. ‘This cannot be. Thanks be to Jesus, but it cannot be.’

  Anselm stood up, rocking on the balls of his feet, and steadied himself against the bench. ‘How long have I been asleep?’

  ‘Since yesterday morning when the men carried you in,’ she said.

  ‘Look, it’s a scratch, nothing more,’ he said. ‘I must have bumped my head a little, that’s all. I feel like I’ve been drinking all night.’ Elionor started to weep. He ruffled her hair. ‘Don’t take on so, mon coeur. I’m all right.’

  ‘I thought you were dead!’

  ‘Not me,’ he said, as if he were indestructible.

  Fabricia had been watching from the other side of the room. She ran over, put her arms around her papa’s neck and breathed in the smell of him; the sweat and stale blood stank, but it was sweet as life to her. He patted her shoulders, embarrassed by the fuss.

  ‘I really scared you two, eh?’

  ‘You have to rest today,’ Fabricia said, and he let her ease him back on to the bench; but later that morning as the two women slept, exhausted, he gathered together some bread and cheese and a new tunic and slipped out of the door and went down the hill to the church, to make sure those lazy good-for-nothings he employed to carry his stone were not idling on the job.

  XX

  THE NEXT MORNING as Fabricia made her way down the lane to the portal there were no hands raised in greeting and no familiar smiles, just fearful looks and neighbours scuttling into doorways to whisper. Perhaps it is these gloves, she thought. Has anyone seen the blood dripping? No, I have bound them as well as I am able, but I cannot disguise how I walk, the pain I am in. Perhaps it’s that.

  Then she saw Father Marty. He grinned at her. Well, there was no point in running away, so she stopped and let him come to her. Let us be done with it; he would have his revenge somehow, for the bruises to his pride, inside and out.

  He stopped, his hands on his hips. ‘Last time you took me by surprise,’ he said. ‘The next time I shall not be so careless.’

  Her feet were agony and she had to take the weight off them. She leaned against the wall of a house, trying not to let her distress show on her face.

  ‘What did you do to your hands?’

  ‘Nothing. I am cold this morning.’

  ‘And the rest of the village sweating!’ He grabbed her hand and peeled back her glove. ‘Bandages! I saw them the other night when I gave your father the rites for the dying. What did you do to yourself?’

  She snatched back her hand.

  ‘What are we poor villagers to make of the Bérenger family? You bandaged for no reason, your father dead and now living. I saw him this morning up a scaffold, repairing the nave to my church instead of lying under it. How can this be?’

  ‘A miracle, paire.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Deus lo volt.’

  ‘God wanted it, yes, perhaps. Others think it was the Devil’s craft and that you had a hand in it.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  Father Marty just smiled and she thought: So this is how he is going to take his revenge. He is going to make me into a witch.

  ‘There are rumours about you and Bernart.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘They say some children knocked him down with stones, that he was dead before you laid your hands on him and brought him back to life. The way you did to your father.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with it. My mother is a healer. She gave him opium and belladonna.’

  He smiled but his eyes were hard. ‘There is not a soul in the village who does not think you had a hand in it. A bandaged hand!’ He laughed at his little jest. ‘What is your secret, Fabricia Bérenger?’

  She picked up her pannier and limped past him. This time he did not try to stop her. ‘You walk like Bernart,’ he said.

  She winced with each step. Soon everyone would know her secret; she could not hide it much longer. Blessed Mary, why have you done this? she thought. My heart is overcome with gratitude that my blessed Papa is still alive when we should this day be putting him in the ground. And yet, now Father Marty wants everyone to think I am a witch and I can bring the dead back to life.

  Why can’t they all just leave me alone? Why did this happen to me?

  XXI

  MOSTARDA BURNED HIS feet on the hearth trying to reach the ham hanging from the rafter. Now he sat mewling and licking his paws in the corner. ‘You don’t eat the ham, you eat the mice,’ Fabricia scolded him.

  She sat alone at the bench chopping vegetables for the pot; Anselm was at work in the church, her mother had gone to the market. Fabricia was better at bartering than her mother, knew how to smile and when to wink and when to toss her hair at the butcher’s boy and the widowed farmer from the next village, but today was a bad day, she could hardly walk with her feet in such a state, and so Elionor had gone in her stead. She heard another shower of rain whip against the oilskins on the window and she didn’t mind being here by the warm hearth.

  It was the pig snuffling in the mud in the yard that warned her; better than a dog he was, his high-pitched squeal letting her know a stranger w
as in the yard. She heard someone come in through the back door. She caught her breath and her fingers tightened around the bone-handled knife in her fist. Not that it would help her, a knife wasn’t much use unless you were prepared to use it.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, smiling.

  She remembered the last time a churchman appeared unannounced at her domus. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she lied.

  He took off his cloak and set it on a chair by the hearth and sat down, toasting his toes as if this were his own ostal. He twisted the large amber ring on his finger. ‘You should be afraid. Most people in this village are afraid of me.’

  ‘No, they despise you. There’s a difference.’

  His smile fell away. Why can’t I keep my thoughts to myself? she thought. Mocking him will only make it worse. I am here alone and I know he has come here for only one purpose, two if he intends to hurt me as well. Bite your lip, girl, get this over with.

  He leaned forward. ‘Who do you think you are, talking to me that way? Put the knife down.’

  ‘Why, do you think I might stick you with it? Maybe I would.’

  ‘Put it down,’ he repeated.

  She put the knife on the table.

  ‘I could destroy you. You and all your family.’

  ‘In God’s name?’

  ‘In any name I choose.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You know what I want,’ he said.

  ‘And then? If you get it, will you leave me in peace?’

  ‘It depends.’ He stood up and walked around the bench, trapping her in the corner. His cassock was wet and the wool stank. He raised the hem of his robe, all the time keeping his eyes on her face. Fabricia flinched.

  ‘Look,’ he said. The tumour on his thigh was gross, a great swollen piece of flesh, livid in its centre like a bruise. Fabricia felt her gorge rise. She looked away.

  ‘Heal me,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put your hands on me like you did to Bernart.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything to Bernart. There was nothing wrong with him. I just helped him get up.’