The Passion of Dolssa

by Julie Berry

  “What do we do, Botille?”

  I shook my head. If Plazi didn’t know . . .

  I hurried for a bucket and a cloth, and began wiping Sazia’s face and neck with cool water. I was sure it would rouse her, but she was too far gone.

  We were losing her.

  Then I remembered. “The cat,” I told Plazi. “She said the de Prato’s cat bit her yesterday.”

  “Mon Dieu,” Plazensa wept. “I can’t bear it. A cat? A devilish cat could do this?”

  “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu.” I chanted Plazi’s lament over and over. God in heaven. Hear me. If anyone could help our sister . . .

  Dolssa.

  I ran across the hall and burst into her room. Dolssa sat up and blinked in confusion at the candlelight. I wasted no time on explanations, but dragged her to her aching feet and across the hall to the room where Sazia lay.

  She gazed in sleepy horror at the sight that met her eyes. Then she looked at us. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She backed away from the sickbed. “She looks close to the end.”

  “Then do something!” I hissed. “You’re the holy one who talks to God all day. You’re the maker of miracles. Heal our sister.”

  Dolssa shrank back with each word. She clutched her nightshirt to her throat and shook her head. “Who said I . . . ?”

  I went back to cooling Sazia with my damp cloth. “You are,” I told Dolssa. “The ale in the tavern. The bread and cheese in the bag. I know that was you!”

  Her eyes were wide as moons. She shook her head vehemently. “I’m sorry, Botille,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry. But I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can do no miracles.”

  Plazensa seized fistfuls of her own hair and wailed.

  “You can,” I insisted. “I’ve seen you do them.”

  Dolssa shook her head. “I am nothing,” she insisted. “I have no gifts, no power. I have never done anything like what you ask.”

  I gathered Sazia’s lifeless body in my arms and held her close. “Then start.”

  But my only hope, my holy woman, stood there like a limp and skinny ghost.

  I could not, could not lose Sazia. I could not lose my own srre, my flesh, my little baby child whose food I once spooned into her rosebud mouth. How would I sleep without her? How would I go on?

  Foolish hope, to think this stranger could alter nature!

  “Try, Dolssa,” I pleaded. “Ask. I know you can.”

  Dolssa took a timid step forward. “My beloved could heal your sister,” she whispered. “If he were here, I could ask him.”

  Plazi’s face was frantic. “Your beloved is a medicus?”

  “No, Plazi.” I watched Dolssa’s face. “Her beloved is Senhor Jhesus.”

  Dolssa stared at me. How did you know? Her face demanded an answer. I wasn’t sure how I knew. It came to me. Just as thoughts had done when I first met Dolssa by the Aude.

  “God in heaven, it’s true.” Plazensa’s eyes, watching Dolssa, were wide as moons. She shook herself. “What do you mean, if he were here, then . . . ?”

  Dolssa’s face was full of pain. “Once, he was always with me,” she said. “Since my mother died, and I fled Tolosa, I’ve not seen his face.”

  “You saw Jhesus’s face?”

  Dolssa nodded. “I did, then. I told others of it. It’s why the friars hate me so.” She wiped her eyes. “But I don’t see him anymore.”

  “Why not?” asked Plazensa.

  Dolssa’s fists were full of nightgown cloth. “I don’t know.” Her voice sounded like a young child’s. “Perhaps my fear, my anger, or my grief displeased him. My cowardice.”

  Tears dripped off my face onto Sazia’s burning cheeks and melted away from her heat. Dolssa would do nothing. My anger roiled. Her beloved was nothing. My last hope was nothing.

  “Nonsense.” I wept. “If so, your precious beloved is a monster.”

  Dolssa took a step back. “Am I asleep? Am I in a dream of hell?” Her mouth hardened. “How dare you speak such words to me?”

  “He is!” I said. “What kind of love is so fickle, so cruel as that?”

  “Botille, you blaspheme,” Plazensa said. “At such a time as this, when we need a miracle, must you offend God?”

  “Not God,” I snapped. “Just this princess, who’s never known a day’s suffering, who’s too fond of her maiden weakness to do something to help.”

  “How dare you?”

  Dolssa’s nostrils flared. Her lip curled in noble disdain. No more the fragile, dying bird at my feet, she’d become the lordly maiden once more, and I the peasant at her feet. It was a punch in my gut. And all the while, Sazia wilted in my arms.

  “Watch your mother burn,” Dolssa cried. “Be hunted like a wild pig across the countryside. Then speak to me of suffering.”

  I should’ve been ashamed. I didn’t care. My words had fangs, and I was glad of it.

  “You listen to me, Donzȩlla Dolssa. Fair damsel, crying for her love.” I bit each syllable. “No knight rides in to rescue you. You stand before me today because I found you fading, but I would not let you die. And I will not let my sister die, either.”

  We stared at each other. Plazensa, watching us both, threw up her hands, then fell at Sazia’s feet to pray. I watched her curls sway as she shook with crying.

  Oh Dieu. What was the point? Why terrorize this girl? She couldn’t do anything. No one could. All was lost, and trying was pointless. A weary heaviness fell over me.

  I watched Dolssa. She’s not really so proud, I thought. She’s just afraid. And I’d been a beast.

  “Dolssa,” I said more gently. “Dominus Bernard says Jhesus is everywhere. Whether you see him or not. So ask. Please.”

  Dolssa stood deathly still.

  “Ask!” I shrieked.

  Dolssa’s eyes slid shut. Her lips began to murmur soft words. Sazia’s weight pressed heavily into my arms as we waited, waited, waited.

  Her words unceasing, her eyes still closed, Dolssa reached forward and enveloped Sazia’s puffy hand between her own frail hands. My sister’s swollen flesh seemed taut between her fingertips. Her breathing became more shallow. Her skin went cold. I pressed my face against hers and wept.

  I opened my eyes and saw a man’s shape in the doorway. Dolssa’s beloved.

  Then I realized. It was Jobau, watching his daughter die.

  Plazensa cried out. I looked. A creeping flood of foul discharge burst from Sazia’s hand, from the dark red cat’s bite. Plazi stood back in horror, but Dolssa never moved, though the putrid filth flowed across her fingers as well.

  Sazia shuddered in my arms, then inflated like a bellows as she drew a gulping breath. The last of the blood-tinged fluid left her hand. My baby srre opened her eyes.

  Plazensa shrieked and plastered Sazia’s face with kisses. I held her close and rocked her back and forth.

  “Get off me,” grumbled Sazia. “What are you all going on about? Can’t a body sleep?”

  Plazi and I sobbed, and laughed. We sobbed some more, then beamed at each other, and at Dolssa. She backed away awkwardly. Plazi hurried over and knelt at Dolssa’s feet to bathe her hands.

  “Dolssa de Stigata,” Plazensa whispered. “Never till we die will we forget this gift.”

  It was a moment when words were demanded of me, but I had none to give. Dolssa’s eyes lingered on me, but I couldn’t speak.

  I lay in bed that night, listening to Sazia breathe. My morbid mind still churned through all that could have happened, what might have been. Sazia dying in my arms. Her precious heart gone still. Her fevered skin grown cold. What would I say? What would we do? Who would dig my sister’s grave?

  But non, praise the bon Dieu! She was here. She had not died. Her death was the fevered work of waking terrors. She was well and whole. Rescued by the mercy of my poor little bird’s beloved.

  I thought of Dolssa, across the hall. Did she sleep? What does one do after working a miracle? Go look for something to eat?

  I tho
ught of her wounded feet and her wide, dark eyes.

  How I’d mistreated her. I ought to have been ashamed of myself.

  She was just one girl. Yet the Lord God Almighty was in her fingertips.

  Did I truly believe that?

  God in our tavern, hearing Jobau curse! We’d be struck down for certain. Almighty God, entering our lives by pure happenstance. I, who peddled in ale, and wine, and brides—how could—why would—such holiness cross paths with me?

  LUCIEN DE SAINT-HONORE

  ucien pressed through a dark and clawing wood, fleeing a voice that called his name. Fear filled his veins. His breath, too loud in his throat, would surely betray him.

  She came to him tonight, not as the hunted one but as the hunter. He quickened his steps, yet on she came, finding him by scent and not sight.

  Now she was behind him, in a clearing. Her gaze prickled on his skin while the moon pulsed overhead.

  He turned and saw her slowly approach him, step after step.

  She had come to him in a soft robe of black and red. It fell open, and he gazed unwillingly, then willingly, into the whiteness of her breast. Her hair slipped from its confinements and blossomed over her shoulders, her hips, sliding over her face like clouds obscuring the moon.

  As her face drew nearer to his, her hair parted, and her red lips opened and reached for his.

  She stripped him of whatever possession he could once claim over his own flesh. She robbed him of his vows, his very will. She compelled him to reach forward and kiss and touch.

  And in the taste of her kiss was a sweet liqueur. The wine of desire, the elixir of falsehood. This was the spreading of untruth, from lip to loins to heart. A warning.

  The devil laughed, but Lucien—the flesh—succumbed.

  Lucien woke in the dark on his mat of straw in the monks’ dormitory at the Convent of the Brotherhood of Sant Esteve, drowning. He feared for his soul. He felt he might vomit. What he’d done could never be undone. Once lost, his innocence was lost forever. The shame, the stain—how could he ever look Prior Pons in the face? And what of his holy calling? He’d betrayed Christ’s love for him—Christ, whose all-seeing eye penetrated the heart.

  Around him the brothers of the convent of St. Stephen slumbered, some noisily.

  Sleep. Oh, praise the bon Dieu. He’d been asleep. None of it had happened.

  It was only a dream.

  Sweet relief flooded his limbs. He was as pure as ever. No stain could be affixed to him by the phantasms of sleep. He clutched his innocence about him as a cloak.

  But that girl, that unholy femna, that cursed heretic who kept slipping through his clutches! Even now, wide awake, he felt her slim, carnal fingers unbutton his cloak of innocence and worm their way inside to the unruly flesh beneath. Their touch burned his skin.

  Stop it, he told himself. The dream is only metaphor.

  She symbolized all that would ruin Christendom. Ruin him. Consume him. Devour him with her blood-red mouth of lies and lusts and burnings.

  He would be clean, even if the struggle killed him. So she must be the one to die.

  He breathed deeply to calm his mind. He would remain with the Brotherhood of Sant Esteve until Prior Pons’s letter arrived. Though the trail had all but gone cold—though he’d lost days when that lying Jew had sent him south along the Aude, instead of east—though Satan’s servants thwarted him at every turn—the sea, he felt sure, would lead him to the heretic. But he’d been gone so long, perhaps too long, chasing a bird on the wing, and he needed approval from his prior to continue his search for Dolssa de Stigata. He would wait for it more vigilantly now.

  More awake to danger.

  PRIOR PONS DE SAINT-GILLES

  ishop Raimon de Fauga waited in the empty vestibule of the magnificent Romanesque basilica of Sant Sarnin in Tolosa after vespers. During the ending processional, he had seen Prior Pons de Saint-Gilles seated like a mere parishioner in a bench at the rear of the sanctuary. The bishop waited for him to exit, but he remained in his seat, so finally the bishop joined him.

  “Pons?”

  “Raimon.”

  The bishop waited for some further revelation, but none came.

  “What brings you here tonight?”

  “The choir.”

  Bishop Raimon’s back troubled him, and these benches weren’t helping at all. He watched as minor canons snuffed candles, one by one, throughout the nave.

  “Count Raimon’s knight,” said the prior. “Hugo de Miramont. Do you know if he’s returned yet from his search for the runaway heretic?”

  The bishop turned toward his friend, which sent a popping pain running up his spine. He gasped, then, to his surprise, felt some improvement.

  “I haven’t heard of him returning,” he answered. “If there was news of her, Count Raimon would have let us know.” The bishop twisted the other way in hopes of the same loud miracle, without luck. “You’re sending out another band of inquisitors soon, aren’t you? Perhaps they’ll do better in the countryside.”

  Pons nodded. “Yes, I am. But they’re not the reason I came.” He reached inside his habit and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “I’ve just had a letter from Lucien.”

  “From whom?”

  “Lucien de Saint-Honore.” The prior searched for recognition on the bishop’s face. “My young friar? The one who prosecuted the Stigata women?”

  “Oh yes.” The bishop looked to see if anyone was watching, then stretched his arms high over his head. “That was weeks ago now. Has he found her?”

  Prior Pons shook his head. “He’s been gone much longer than I had wanted. He writes wondering what to do next. He believes that where he has failed to find her by land, he can find her by sea.”

  Raimon shrugged. “The experiment failed. No matter, bring him home.”

  Pons folded the note and tucked it away. “I have already written to him at the convent where he is staying in Narbona to instruct him to return at once.” He paused. “Don’t you find it odd, though, Raimon, that two searchers have hunted in vain, so long, for this young woman? How has she eluded both of them so thoroughly?”

  Bishop Raimon rested a hand on his companion’s shoulder. “She’s probably dead in a ditch. It is time to do what we should have done from the first: send out a raft of circulating letters to the bishops and parishes throughout the river valleys, probably along the Roman road—everywhere she might be. Warn them of her danger to the fold; instruct any with knowledge of her to contact us immediately.”

  Pons considered this suggestion. “Couriers will be costly,” he said, “but not more than sending errant friars and men-at-arms to find her.”

  Bishop Raimon clapped a hand on the prior’s shoulder. “We’ll smoke her out, Pons, dead or alive. Most likely dead. Meanwhile, bring your friar home. And now, come have a drink with me. Are you hungry at all?”

  Pons shook his head. “Non, grácia. I must get back.” He smiled ruefully. “I didn’t even tell anyone I was going out this evening.”

  “Authority,” Bishop Raimon said, rising to his feet, “is a weighty burden. Even our Lord craved solitude at times. As a bishop, well do I understand your pain.”

  In the gloom of the old church at night, Prior Pons glanced heavenward and bit a reply off the tip of his tongue.

  DOLSSA

  otille’s rude words were a revelation. The night my beloved healed Sazia’s hand was the first time I’d truly seen myself.

  I’d been a child. A weak and whining, petulant child, crying out to my beloved that he should fix all my troubles. Spare me any pain, and run at my summons. Deliver me from dark roads and vulgar sinners and crude peasants.

  How could I have been so blind?

  Whose prayer did my beloved answer? Botille’s, not mine. Whose hands did he send to help me? Peasants’. Botille’s. Plazensa’s. Even the whore Jacotina’s.

  To love as my beloved does, I must love all those whom he loves. In heaven, there are neither nobles nor peasants. Only
children of God.

  I saw my pride and vanity stripped bare. With shame I remembered that my bitter cup, though bitter indeed, was nothing to his. It was time to rise up and become a true woman, a worthy and courageous bride. Rise up, o my soul!

  Yet in spite of my resolve, I could only pine for him, only wish him there with me.

  I sat in my room long after the sisters had gone to sleep. Maybe, I thought, tonight he would come to me. Hadn’t he heard my prayer? Wouldn’t he now break his silence, part the curtains that had so recently hidden his heaven from my view? Wasn’t Sazia’s healing a sign that our estrangement was at an end?

  I waited hours to hear his voice. All I heard was the wailing infant across the wall.

  Come back to me, I pleaded. If ever my love pleased you, let me see your face and hear your voice.

  Stillness. Nothing but the baby’s cry.

  Why would you heal her, I pleaded, and not visit me? I who long for none but you!

  And then, this chilling thought: What if I never saw or heard my love again? Could I love him still? Could I prove my heart faithful in endless isolation?

  Hadn’t my beloved done the same, until his lonely, bitter death? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

  All I had ever done was seek gifts from my beloved. It was time to offer them in return.

  My love, for my love you will always be, what, I pray, would you ask of me?

  MARTIN DE BOROC

  artin de Boroc sat in a chair, his daughter draped, asleep, over his long bony legs, looking more like a parcel of washing than like a human child.

  His filha was hungry, and so was Martin, but they neither of them even thought of food that night, nor had they since yesterday, when Botille Flasucra, one of the sisters from the tavern next door, had brought them a pot of eel stew.

  Martin’s boat had not left port in days. Other fishermen were bringing in legendary catches, but not Martin. He could only sit and stare as his wife, Lisette, held their dying eṇfan.

  Once Martin had thought the baby’s cries would drive him to distraction, but its moans grew feebler. Cry, eṇfan, he told the child silently, without hope. Scream, and yell, and eat!