The Passion of Dolssa

by Julie Berry

  I bowed. “That is right. Do you want to see your daughter married?”

  Paul Crestian made the sign of the cross, then glared at me. “Why are you asking?” His brows lowered. “If your old paire thinks he can wed Lisette, he can think again.”

  I worked hard not to laugh. “No,” I said. “Jobau doesn’t want to marry your daughter. But Martin de Boroc does. Do you have a dowry for Lisette?”

  “What kind of a father do you think I . . .” His eyes bulged at me. “Why am I telling a little toza my affairs? Off with you!”

  “Martin de Boroc will make a fine living now that he has his father’s boat,” I said.

  “Fish,” growled the shopkeeper. “They’re a slippery business.”

  “I will negotiate the marriage,” I said, “for ten silver shillings, and a leg of moton.”

  “Ten silver shillings!” roared Paul Crestian. “I don’t need help from a little—”

  “Don’t forget the moton.” I ran to the waterfront.

  The tide had come in, and Martin de Boroc had just finished mooring his boat. He carried a net of fish slung over his shoulder. Most had given up the struggle, but one still flopped desperately against the cords.

  “Martin,” I said, “do you want a wife?”

  His mouth hung open. “Not one your age!” He tried to push past me.

  I planted my palm against his chest. “What would you think,” I said, “of Lisette, the goat-cheese man’s daughter?”

  He went limp. So did the fish.

  “What would I think of Lisette?” he whispered. His eyes grew cloudy, like a fish’s once it’s been dead a few days. “Maire Maria!”

  I wondered what he saw in that sticky face, but it was no concern of mine. “For ten shillings, and a pair of fat red mujọl fish, I will speak to Paul Crestian for you, and tell him he should be thankful to you if you were to ask for his daughter’s hand.”

  He gulped. “Ten silver shillings?”

  I held out my hand. “Payable in advance. If Lisette has a dowry, you owe me ten more.”

  He shifted his dead fish to his other shoulder. “I haven’t got ten shillings on me.”

  “I’ll follow you home.”

  I instructed Martin to present himself at Paul Crestian’s home the following evening, bathed and brushed, then went home with his ten shillings jingling in my pocket, and a gleaming red mujọl clutched in each hand. The first fish, I gave to Plazensa, who eyed it hungrily and ordered Sazia to find more fallen wood for the fire. The second, I took next door to the shopkeeper. Mimi, my housecat, followed me, mewling at my dangling prize.

  “Martin de Boroc sends his regards, and your dinner,” I told Paul Crestian. “He plans to come visit tomorrow evening to discuss Lisette’s dowry. Make it a generous one, for a handsome, promising bachelor like Martin de Boroc can have his pick of wives.”

  “To discuss Lisette’s dowry!” sputtered that girl’s father. “I’ve not given my consent. Why should I give my only daughter to a bony fish man?”

  Mimi lunged toward the fish. The goat-cheese man snatched it high out of reach. “Daughter,” he cried, “can you cook well enough to get married? Prepare me this mujọl.”

  Lisette wandered into view, sucking on a plum. She wrinkled her nose at the fish but took it away dutifully. That night I smelled roast fish coming from both of our ovens, though Lisette’s house had a slightly different aroma. I think she stuffed her fish with plums.

  The next afternoon, I snuck a jug of Plazensa’s special ale out of our cool cistern and carried it over to Paul Crestian. “A present,” I said, “from our cellars, bought specially for you by Martin de Boroc. He’s a generous soul, isn’t he?”

  The shopkeeper uncorked the jug and sniffed it. Its rich, malty scent filled the room. He took a foamy sip and tried to protest, then took another sip. Bajas was strictly a wine town, but Plazensa and her ale would soon change all that.

  That evening I spied Martin de Boroc walking stiffly toward Lisette’s house. He’d attempted to smarten up his appearance. Lisette’s papà, I knew, would have finished Plazensa’s ale by now, and if it could lift Jobau out of the doldrums, it could soften up the cheese man.

  Half an hour later we heard loud laughter from the Crestians’ maisoṇ. Plazensa looked up from caning the twine seat of a broken chair. “What’s going on over there?”

  Martin de Boroc burst through the tavern door and poured ten shillings into my lap. Plazensa stared at him. Mimi rubbed against his ankles. Even with a bath, he still smelled of fish.

  “What was that for?” my sister cried, when he’d left.

  “Couldn’t say.” I then pulled the first ten pieces Martin had given me from my pocket and presented them to Plazensa.

  “What are you doing?” my sister cried. “Robbing the church? Stealing from merchants?”

  “Such a suspicious nature,” I tutted. “Martin de Boroc paid me of his own free will.”

  A smiling Paul Crestian sailed in and presented me with coins and a leg of moton. He planted a wet kiss on Plazensa’s ruddy cheek, patted my head, and twirled out the door.

  Plazensa leveled a pointing finger at me. “You’ve put a hex on the village men,” she said. “You’ve bewitched them into paying us for no reason. Teach me! Tell me how you did it!”

  “I did nothing of the kind,” I said. “Pass me more twine. If we’re ever going to open this tavern, we can’t sit here gossiping.”

  “Who’s next?” Plazensa wondered aloud, peering out the window. “Any other people coming to fling money or meat at you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But half an hour later the door opened, and in came Azimar de Carlipac, the shipbuilder, jingling a little sack of coins.

  “Which of you is Botille?” he demanded. “I’ve got a daughter who’s due for a husband.”

  And so my career began. Along with Plazensa’s enterprises, it fed my family. It kept me busy and needed by the entire village. To be needed is one way to be safe. The other is to have money. Given time, I’d have both. We’d uprooted and moved enough, we three plus Jobau. We’d found a new town every time he lost his head and his temper, or our petty thefts were found out. No more wandering. I would build a safe home for us, here in Bajas, with reputation and money to spare, one bashful bridegroom and one blushing bride at a time.

  LUCIEN DE SAINT-HONORE

  he balding priest, Dominus Roger, ushered the young heretic a second time into the questioning cell at the cloister of the abbey church of Sant Sarnin, where Lucien sat waiting. The prior of his order, Prior Pons de Saint-Gilles, watched him from behind a table, while a notary waited nearby to copy every word. Lucien hoped his agitation didn’t show. An inquisitor must be calm, with the peaceful composure of Christ himself.

  The priest’s thick hand rested heavily on Dolssa de Stigata’s shoulder. The other hand gripped the heretic’s elbow. Had she needed to be forced to come in? Lucien imagined himself performing that same task. She was slight of build; she wouldn’t weigh much. The priest met Lucien’s gaze, relinquished his captive, and sat by the wall. He looked nervous. A relapse such as this reflected badly on him as a shepherd to the fold.

  The young woman stood and gazed directly at Lucien without any show of shame or embarrassment.

  “Please sit down.” Lucien gestured toward a chair.

  She did not sit.

  Must he now stand?

  “Donzȩlla de Stigata,” he said, “I have asked you to sit.”

  She watched him.

  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 unde
rneath 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 Prta 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 church
men 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.

  The rushing Garona barred my escape to the west. Open fields to the south would offer me no shelter. To the east lay the Roman road. More wall, more gates. Trees. People.

  Darkness, be my cover, I prayed. Jhesus, hide me well. Back past La Prta Narbonesa. Back around the angry bulk of treacherous Count Raimon’s castȩl.

  Past the shouts of the friars, past the outer suburbs, until the countryside swallowed me in oblivion. Along a path joining the road. On and on, though my legs trembled and my belly burned. I walked when I must, to gather strength to run again.

  He had come for me, but not for my mother.

  It is a sin to question his unsearchable ways.

  But I wished he had chosen otherwise. I, who longed to be with him, and Mamà, dearer than all that is dear—why not preserve her and bring me home?

  He came. Just when I could no longer call on him, he came.

  And just in time, if I must live, for the hounds were massing for the hunt.

  LUCIEN DE SAINT-HONORE

  ucien de Saint-Honore paused outside the prior’s door in the night-blackened corridor of the convent. His habit swished around his legs, reminding him that he was truly there, and not a mere specter swallowed by the dark.

  He knocked on the door.

  A canon, the prior’s companion, opened it and stood silent as Lucien passed into the study. Prior Pons de Saint-Gilles stood before the fire with his hands clasped behind his back. He turned to face his visitor.