by Julie Berry
Na Pieret had sent Garcia, her trusted hand, to safeguard us on our journey to San Cucufati. He was old enough to be no threat to two unmarried girls, but not so old that he couldn’t still make a bandit think twice when he wielded his club. His son, young Garcia, was fourteen and scrawny, without a whisker to his chin. The only threat he posed was driving Sazia to distraction with his idiot jokes. Me, I found young Garcia funny, so to pay Sazia back for smothering me, I egged the young jester on.
We’d rattled along over dusty roads in Garcia’s cart, which Na Pieret had provided for hauling her nephews’ belongings. I was surprised to discover, on the road, how much I missed la mar. I wasn’t native to the seacoast, but she had become my own—her colors, her moods, her rolling waves, her breezes, and her quarrelsome birds. Not since we’d first come to Bajas from Carcassona years ago had I traveled this far. I enjoyed seeing the world pass by, but I missed the call of the water. My feet and my bottom were glad to have found our destination at last.
Two days we’d traveled to get here. We began with lauds prayers in the strangers’ chapel of the Abadia at Fontfreda, which made us feel like pilgrims instead of mere messengers. The abbey monks avoided us, but we felt their holiness. I sent up a prayer to ward off whatever worried Sazia, just in case. We spent the night sleeping under stars. By day we strolled along, drinking in the autumn colors of trees reflected in glassy streams and watching blackbirds slice their way through the glorious blue sky.
Two days we’d watched travelers wend their way—some in cleric’s robes, some toiling under packs of wool or vegetables. Merchants in the larger villages, with curious shingles advertising their wares, wondered if we’d come to buy. I saw strong lads I could easily find brides for in Bajas. It set me wondering whether I couldn’t expand my trade a bit beyond our village.
Now nothing but a few well-chosen words barred me from procuring two new husbands for my maidens back home. With luck, one for Astruga, the other for Sapdalina. All this fretting of Sazia’s! Sunshine and success. That was what I smelled in the pastures of Na Pieret di Fabri’s dead sister’s farm.
There was no one in sight. A stand of grapevines grew behind the house, neatly tied and trimmed. Na Pieret would approve. A small field of ripening vegetables—including plenty of onions—spread over the rough, rocky soil, and beyond that a thatch-roof shelter serving as a barn overlooked a plot where a pair of goats foraged. I headed for the shelter.
“Oo-ooh,” I sang out while I was still some distance away. You never want to catch farming peasants by surprise. They might be butchering, with knives in their hands.
A loud sound escaped the makeshift barn, followed by a burst of swearing and shouts of raucous laughter. I hitched up my skirts and hurried forward.
“Bonjọrn!” I cried.
A head popped out from between the beams supporting the thatch roof. The thick body to which the head was attached seemed scooped out of clay rather than grown in the usual fashion. Man? Tozẹt? Monster? I couldn’t be sure. His hair, which hung low and thick over his protruding forehead, was filled like a hen’s nest with dozens of chicken feathers, sticking every which way. Even out his ears.
His smock was smeared shoulder to belly with ripe green chicken dung. More of it clung to the stubble on his chin and cheeks, which he attempted to wipe with a greasy rag.
Blame it on my mother, who was never around to raise me better: I shrieked with laughter. Cackled, straight to his face.
His bushy eyebrows lowered. He looked at me as if I were the feathered stranger reeking of chicken mẹrda, and not he. Pray God this was not the stalwart nephew on which poor Na Pieret must place her trust!
“Aren’t you a feast for the eyes? And the nose,” I said by way of greeting.
He turned and stomped back inside.
I followed. Odd cases like his intrigued me. Perhaps he was the village idiot, just wandering by.
Inside the shelter, the feathered troll and another young man sat around a makeshift enclosure for poultry. The other young man, unfeathered and unsmeared by chicken mess, wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. At the sight of me, he doubled over, clutching his guts lest they spill out. I liked the set of teeth I saw on him, strong and wide and white. His laughing displayed them well. Without even trying, I could think of three girls who’d marry him for those teeth alone.
The other one, the village idiot, glowered at us both, rose to his feet, and peeled his smock off over his head, then turned it inside out and scrubbed his face with it. He was a strong one, from the bare looks of things, and not just in his odors.
“Bonjrn,” I said, seizing an opening. “My name is Botille, and I have traveled here from Bajas at the request of Na Pieret di Fabri. Your tanta on your mother’s side.”
The chicken-dirt idiot stopped his scrubbing, then flung his dirty smock at the other one.
“Dead?” he barked at me.
So he knew of her. Not the village idiot, but the nephew after all? Or, saints forbid, both nephew and imbecile? Poor Na Pieret! Poor grapes!
“No, Dieu keep her,” I said. “How did you get . . . your feathers?”
His face, when he scowled, which was apparently always, bunched up into surly thickness—thick lips mashed between a jutting chin and a wide nose with furious, flaring nostrils, all presided over by bushy eyebrows and black menacing eyes.
“Feathers,” I repeated, and pointed toward my own hair. Then he understood. He attacked his hair with his hands, savaging his scalp until the feathers fled in terror, leaving his hair looking like an ill-kept shrub.
This set the other one off laughing again. With someone less handsome I might have grown annoyed, but attractive people are easier to forgive.
“Which of you is Na Pieret’s nephew?” I still clung to the hope that Senhor Chicken Stink was not included in the pair of brothers I’d come to find.
“Which one of us is not?” said Laughing Tooth.
“Shut your mouth, Gui,” said the idiot. To me: “Who are you?”
I bowed. “I am called Botille, as I already said, if you’d been listening.” I opened my mouth to begin my little speech, the one I’d spent two days rehearsing in my head. Instead I said, “What happened to you? Why are you covered in mẹrda?”
“None of your business,” said the first.
“He slid on a pile of chicken shite,” supplied the other. “Landed face first. It was beautiful, oc! Never till I die will I forget the sight.”
“You’ll die now if you don’t hold your tongue.” Village Idiot shifted his glower in my direction. “What do you want?”
“I’ve come here from Bajas, on the seashore,” I said, “as a favor to your tanta Pieret, to ask you to dispose of your property here immediately and go live with her. She asks you to share with her the management of her extensive vineyards and farmlands, as her heirs.”
They looked at each other for a stunned moment.
Laughing Tooth knocked over his stool and left it there. He looped a length of rope over the neck of a placid heifer that stood watching them both with a bored expression.
Village Idiot dumped a bucket of water over his head. With water still streaming over his chest and back, he began chucking tools into a canvas sack. Then he paused.
“The harvest,” he moaned. “All our work, all year. My aching back, all so someone else can eat our chickpeas and carrots and onions?”
“Symo, who cares?” whooped the one called Gui. “Maire always said Tanta Pieret was rich, rich, rich. Leave the harvest for the next poor fools.” He tethered the cow to a post, then began to tie up their mule. “Oc! I have it. Old Maynart’s son. He’s marrying Fabrissa the Fat. We can tell them the cottage is empty, and they can move right in.”
Symo still frowned.
“If it makes you feel better,” said Gui, “have her fill up some baskets with whatever’s ripe now.” He gestured toward me.
“Always room for onions,” I said. “But I’m not your farm wench.”
&
nbsp; Both turned to look at me. “What kind of wench are you, then?” demanded Symo.
“It’s not that I’m too good to pick vegetables.” I felt a bit sheepish. “But if you want my help, ask me right.”
Gui grinned. Those teeth. “What kind of help are you offering?”
Symo boffed him on the ear. “Leave off, idiot.” He turned to study me. “What are you to Tanta Pieret? Daughter? Daughter-in-law?” I smelled sweat mingled with chicken shite wafting from his skin. “We should abandon our farm on the word of some strange toza from nowhere?”
It’s just as well that old Garcia and Sazia chose that moment to venture under the shade of the thatch enclosure, for I was about to tell Symo the Stupid precisely what I thought of him.
“Bonjọrn.” Garcia wiped the sweat off his brow and smiled amiably at the two brothers. “Has Botille straightened it all out, then? You’ll come with us?”
“Oc, we’re coming!” sang Gui.
Symo ignored his brother and addressed Garcia. “You know my tanta Pieret?”
Garcia nodded. “Been attached to her twenty-five years now.”
“She wants us to run her vineyards?”
“I already told you that,” I said. “Why should you believe Garcia more than me?”
Symo frowned and stuck a thumb in my direction. “Who is she to Tanta Pieret?”
Garcia looked nonplussed. “Nothing.”
“We’re friends,” I said. “La Domna di Fabri sent me because she trusts me.”
The chicken man, still shirtless, ignored this. “And my tanta’s vineyards, they prosper?”
The greedy dog.
Garcia’s eyes narrowed, and Symo realized his blunder. “You appear, strangers, and tell us to leave all we have and go.” He appealed to Garcia. “If my aunt has four sickly grapevines, we are lost.”
“Four sickly grapevines!” I fumed. “You think your tanta could afford to send all four of us here to collect you, baggage and all, from the fruit of four sickly grapevines?”
Sazia flopped down onto a pile of straw and closed her eyes. “Leave off, Botille,” she said. “They’ll come. You might as well take some rest while they pack.”
Gui took notice of Sazia then. He brandished his smile and a basket at her. “Are you the wench who’ll pick our vegetables so we can go sooner?”
Sazia regarded him coolly. She was a girl on whom toothy smiles had little effect.
“Young Garcia,” Sazia called to her comical tormentor. “Come here. The men have some legums for you to pick. Don’t eat them all as you go.”
Na Pieret had packed us plenty of fogasa, dried fish, pomas, viṇ, and cheese—and for all this, I still heeded Sazia’s warning and brought my own supply of cheese—so we had no shortage of food, but to humor the brothers, we built up a fire and stewed a pot of chickpeas with onions. Big fat beauties they were, too. Symo himself picked and ate much of the produce on the spot, shucking and gobbling chickpeas as if they were to be his last meal.
That was it, then. The gallant and the imbecile would both be coming back with me. I’d hoped for two worthwhile bachelors. I could settle for one plus a spare. No matter; I’d find someone for the idiot. Marrying him off would be interesting. I smiled to myself. A test of my abilities. Not even pregnant Astruga, I’d wager, would welcome the thought of a chicken-stinking curmudgeon like this one sharing her hearth and her bed. Whom did I have in my arsenal who was truly desperate? Besides Sapdalina, for I was fond of her. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing I’d saddled her with this lout.
ABRAHE IUDIO
Witness Testimony recorded by Lucien
THE RIVER PORT AT CARCASSONA
Abrahe Iudio: a Jew; age thirty-three;
wine merchant from Aragón; trading
at the port on the Aude River
ood evening. I take it you are not here to trade in wine, but in souls, yes? I will listen, if you like, though I am not from Carcassona, nor France. Sí, sí, Carcassona is the French king’s now. I’ve traded here since I was a boy with my father, and he, since he was a boy with his father. What he’d say to see the mighty towers of Carcassona fall from the hands of the Counts of Trencavel!
Sí, I am a Jew, but I can listen to your preaching. Any learned man is worth hearing, and who needs enemies? Aragón, she is becoming a place where no Jew can afford to annoy his neighbors. You are one of the Dominicans, sí? And Dominic, he was a Castilian. That makes us all neighbors.
It is only a joke. Of course no inquisitor could be neighbor to a Jew.
You come from Tolosa? Can I offer you a pitcher to quench your thirst? You must be weary after your travels. No, put your money away.
I? I have been here four days now, this trip. Two more, and I depart for home.
Certainly, I have my licenses and papers. The port master knows me. I pay my tariffs.
Have I seen a young lady?
Good Sir Monk? Preacher, then. Good Sir Preacher, hundreds pass by every day. Young ladies in great state, and poor girls in rags. Carcassona’s towers beckon to them all.
I am a newly married man, Sir Preacher Monk. My young wife is la niña de mis ojos.
A girl alone, of gentle birth? A runaway? Poor creature. Her family must be very much afraid. She has no more family? May the good God keep special watch over the poor frightened stranger, and may those she meets be kind, and think of their own sisters.
Is she one of your Albigensian heretics, as the French call them? No. A Catholic? How, then, a danger to believers? She is young to have offended God. God is patient, and with the young, always patience is needed.
The river? My lodgings are by the riverside. I take my raft along the Aude from Narbona.
If I gave wine to every beggar who couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t last long in trade. Bread? Do I look like a baker? Who said I gave her bread and wine? If it was Pedro Rodrigues, he can stick his head in a barrel. He’s so drunk, he can’t tell waking from dreaming.
Who told you?
My wife told you.
She is quick-witted, my wife. She remembers things I forget. Well, so it is, now that I recall it. A girl did pass by here. I took pity on her. She seemed so hungry, and thin. It was nothing to offer her some food. Any decent soul would. As I remember it now, my wife gave her an apple for her journey.
Which way did she go?
Now let me think. That way.
Sí, it was that way. South, along the river, toward the Pirenèus Mountains. And now, excuse me. Time I gathered up my crates and made my journey back.
Sí, I did say I’d leave in two days’ time, but the weather’s changing. The climate can turn treacherous in conquered Provensa, and when it does, I want to be far from here.
BOTILLE
t was morning by the time we left. Gui would have left immediately, but Symo lingered over every animal, every farm tool, each sack of seed, and each hanging ham. He and young Garcia drove the chickens, ducks, and a pair of geese to a neighbor’s. Then he pored over each pot and scrap in their little stone maisoṇ before deciding whether to pack or leave it. We filled Garcia’s cart full to bursting, and then filled the brothers’ own small barrow.
After supper both brothers disappeared for a while, saying their goodbyes about the vila. I imagined more than one local girl would shed a tear at watching Gui walk away.
We travelers slept under the stars once more. The night was clear, if cold. We were well bundled up together, Sazia and I, and the Garcias on the other side of our little fire. The sky was still fully dark as we rose and readied the mules for our journey.
There would be no riding in the cart now that it bulged with their belongings. The goats and the heifer trailed along behind, attached to the rear of Garcia’s cart, while the brothers’ mule pulled their smaller barrow.
Fabrissa the Fat arrived with her mother, armed with brooms, to take possession. This didn’t cheer Symo any, but Gui laughed and plastered a kiss on the bride-to-be’s round cheek.
We se
t out heading south along a trail that kept its side close to the river. I watched the Aude slither by us, its dark surface beribboned with rippling moonlight.
“How long do we follow the river?” I asked Gui.
“Only a league more,” he replied. “You say we’ll reach Bajas tomorrow?”
“By evening,” said Garcia senior.
La luna hung beautifully bright over the horizon, in a sky still dark. Cold breezes blew over the river and ruffled the tall grasses along the bank, making them rustle and chatter. In their waving fronds I sensed small animals stirring. The pure song of a nightingale, a rossinhol, rang across the water, ending in a trill. It was an hour for sprites and fairies. What magic might lurk among the riverbank grasses? Anything was possible just before dawn.
Up ahead of me, alongside the mules, our traveling party walked in a knot, talking together and blowing upon their hands. I let my footsteps slow just enough for some privacy. A far cry this was from my lagoon by la mar, but still, the riverside was a feast, and I wanted no conversation to disturb my reverie.
We approached a bend in the Aude. Our path forged straight ahead, cutting a swath across the grass and leaving the bulge in the river blossoming out to our right. I hated to leave its shores behind.
I stopped. I heard something. A sough, a sigh. I turned back to the gleaming water. All around it was moving darkness and nothing more.
It must have been the wind. Nothing but the wind could have reached my ears.
But I’d heard it.
An animal, most likely.
But what if not?
If I told the others, they would think me mad.
I would take a moment, just one brief moment, to satisfy my curiosity. It would be nothing, and I’d hurry to catch up, and no one, not even Sazia, could sneer nor brood over my fancies.
For it must be fancy to think I heard anyone at so desolate a place and hour. I slipped into the tall grasses and plied my way through, my feet slipping down the incline toward the water. The tips of grasses and rushes shone in the moonlight. I saw nothing, nor did I hear anything but the wind and the grass and the water.