The Passion of Dolssa (15 page)

I shook my head. “In Bajas? Who here would want those?”

“Not even your priest?”

“Hah!”

Giacomo wiped the sweat off his shiny pate. “Will no one want my nice parchment and ink?”

I considered. “There’s the notary,” I said. “He’s the only one who could use it.”

Ever the optimist, Giacomo turned to another parcel. “Cloth!” he cried. “Good stiff English wool, beautifully woven in Flanders; and silks from Byzantium. Ever seen such colors?”

“Not since you were last in port.” I smiled.

Giacomo pulled out a little stool and sat upon it. “Botille,” he whispered. “Tell me. Who in Bajas is in love or courting? Betrothed, or soon to be?”

He shook two silver combs, tipped with carved and painted bone, from a velvet pouch.

I took a dainty comb and held it up in the one shaft of sunlight penetrating the hold.

“You know of secret lovers before they know themselves,” said Giacomo. “Tell me. Who needs to see my pretty combs? I have ribbons, too, for the poorer
tozẹts
to buy for their
tozas
.”

I sighed. “I’ve fallen a bit behind in my work,” I told him, “but I’ll soon set things to rights. Then I’ll bring you buyers.”

“A buyer, perhaps,” wheedled Giacomo, “who may buy a pair for you?”

I planted a kiss on his shiny dome. “Don’t bet your silver purse on that, old friend.”

“I’ll carry you away to Florença!” he called after me as I climbed back onto the dock.

“My bag is packed!” I set off once more in search of Senhor Guilhem.

I found him in the counting house, leaning back in a wooden chair, in bored conversation with Lop, the
bayle
. I approached Senhor Guilhem and bowed.

“Botille,” said my lord. “How fares your sister?”

Oh
no
. Not Plazi. I bowed again. “Which one, Senhor?”

“Your older sister. The alewife, and the beauty.”

“My sister is in excellent health.
Grácia
.” I bowed again. “I wonder, Senhor, if you would grant me the opportunity to speak to you?”

He waved his hand at the room as if Lop were not in it. “Speak on, then,” he said. “My time is leisurely today.”

Lop’s eyes tracked my every move. There was something canine about our silent, gray-whiskered
bayle
. He was a man past his prime but not far past it, still able to strike fear into the hearts of drunken lads after a night’s revelry.

“Bon Senhor,” I said. “A
private
word with you?”

The knight’s eyebrows rose. “Off with you, then,” he told Lop. “The wench craves a
private
word.” He made it sound like a joke. The
bayle
looked none too pleased, but he left.

“Well?” said Senhor Guilhem. “What will you have of me? Justice, I’ll guess. Is there someone bothering your family? Stealing from your tavern?”

“No, Senhor. Something else.” I gulped. Normally, I didn’t worry about finding the right words. I just sailed right in and let the right words find me. But I fished in deeper seas this morning.

“Senhor,” I began, “perhaps you are aware that one of the small functions I play in Bajas is that of a matchmaker?” Senhor Guilhem looked taken aback. “For marriages. I help people make good marriages.”

He rocked his chair forward. “You make marriages?” he repeated. “So young as you are, and still a maid yourself?”

I bowed. “You might say I have a talent for it.”

He smirked. “To what do you attribute this talent?”

I hadn’t expected this. “I . . . pay attention,” I said. “To people. I see who is shy, and who is lonely. Who is fussy, and who is patient. And so on. I put them together.”

“And the people of Bajas,” continued Guilhem, “are shy enough and lonely enough to need help from you?”

“Not everyone.” More was the pity, too. “But enough fail to see the person who could please them, because they focus on the wrong things.”

“But you focus on the right things.” He stroked his beard. “Marriage, you think, should please people?”

I didn’t like the sarcasm creeping into his voice. “Senhor,” I said quickly, “have you ever considered marriage?”

His mood grew dark. “To what does this question tend? Marriage to you?”

I laughed. “No, Senhor! Never with me!”

He leaned forward abruptly. “To your sister?”

I swallowed a laugh. “Oh, Senhor,” I said. “Your honor would not long remain satisfied with a wife like Plazensa. She is only a peasant, after all, and what a temper she has! You see her beauty, but I can assure you, she has a tongue like an adder’s bite.”

He rose and paced the counting house. This was not going well. If Guilhem began coming around to plague us at the tavern, Sazia would have a fit.

“Jealous sisters say things like this about each other,” he muttered to himself.

“I’m not jealous!”

He laughed at this. “With a sister like Plazensa, how could you be anything but?”

A pleasant courtesy.

“I love my sister, Senhor,” I said, “but I must speak to you about someone else. I heard”—
yes, this could work
—“of a noble
donzȩlla
. One of exceeding beauty and virtue.”

Guilhem was unimpressed. “To hear their parents tell it, the land teems with such fair
donzȩllas
. Never is one of them described as ugly and dull. But many are.”

I waited.

“Proceed.”

So he
was
curious.

“This lady,” I said, “will soon pass nearby this place. She has suffered a great sorrow.”

Say something, you wretched man, and buy me time!

“She was betrothed,” I went on, “to a most gentle and manly knight . . .”

Guilhem sat a little straighter and thrust his shoulders outward just a touch.

“But he died.” Maire Maria, I could think of no battles wherein he should have died. “Defending a bishop from assassins.”

Guilhem frowned. A shocking story like this, he would have heard.

“In Lisbona,” I added hastily.

“In Lisbona?”

I nodded solemnly. “All the way in Lisbona. So, this fair and virtuous lady is devastated with grief. Understandable, don’t you think?”

He watched me out of the corner of one eye. “I suppose.”

“And now she feels she must leave her homeland and travel far away to . . . Florença . . .”
Yes, why not?
. . . “to join a convent, and pass the rest of her days in prayer.”

Guilhem rolled his eyes heavenward, as if this entire tale had been a great disappointment. “What is that to me, then?”

Was he made of wood, to have no curiosity? My best spinning, lavished upon this dunce of a nobleman, and utterly wasted!

Time for desperation. “My younger sister, Sazia, is the best fortuneteller along this entire lagoon.”

Senhor Guilhem smiled at this. “So I’ve heard tell.”

“You have?” I beamed for my little
s
rre
. “How nice. When Sazia heard the tale of this poor, sad, beautiful
donzȩlla
, she was seized by a premonition.” I must remember to tell her about this when I got home.

“And?”

Now was the time for the kill. “And do you want to know what it was?”

Senhor Guilhem’s nostrils flared. “Damn you! You lead me this far to ask me, do I want to know what it was?”

I bowed my head modestly.

He huffed out a breath. “What was it?”

I mustn’t smile. “The premonition,” I whispered, “was written in the stars. You were to be her true love, and she was to become your adoring wife.”

It took Senhor Guilhem several swallows to work up the spittle he needed for a large, contemptuous laugh.

“True love,” said he.

“True love.” I nodded.

“Pah.”

I waited.

“Old
trobador
nonsense,” he said. “Died with the war. Not even a fool thinks of such things now.” He was working hard to convince me of something. I decided to let him win.

“Undoubtedly,” I said.

“Exactly.”

We both nodded.

I sniffed. “I’m only repeating what Sazia said.”

We were allies now. “Maidens’ tales,” said my new friend.

“Just so.”

“I have no time for such things.”

“Of course not.” I examined my knuckles. “Even though, they say, Sazia is almost never wrong.”

“Almost never.”

“There you have it,” I said. “There’s quite a distance between ‘almost never’ and ‘never never.’”

“I see why you’re a matchmaker, Botille,” said my generous lord knight. “For a wench, you have an uncommonly good brain.”

I bowed. “Senhor does me great
onor
with such a compliment.”

He patted me paternally upon the shoulder. “Who is the lady?”

Aha.

“Well,” I began, “Senhor will forgive me if, just at present, I do not reveal her name. Her plans are secret, for if her family learns of her intentions, they will disown her.”

Senhor Guilhem was deeply affected by this revelation, but not in the way I’d hoped.

“No family? No dowry, then, either?”

Sympathy. That was what I’d been hoping for. Not money lust. But what should I expect? Even we peasants married sometimes for pillows and pots. But poor as we were, we could afford to think about affection. These greedy nobles only wanted gold, jewels, weapons, and land.

The lord of Bajas snapped his fingers. “But if they approved of me”—he colored deeply—“if they approved of whomever she did marry, there would, of course, be a dowry.”

I shook my head sadly. “None, I fear, but her great beauty and goodness. Her family lost everything when the crusaders came.”

He blew out his breath in great disappointment. Lop poked his head in the door just then and examined us with one curious eye. “Pardon me, Senhor. Are you finished with the wench?”

“When I’m finished with a wench, you’ll know it, and so will the wench,” Senhor Guilhem said. Lop squiggled away like a bitten eel.

“I’ve taken your time.” I bowed yet again and slipped toward the door. “For that I beg pardon. There are so many problems with this theory of my
s
rre
’s, I never should have troubled you with it. I only thought”—another bow—“that you might be curious to behold—”

“Behold what?”

“That is to say, if your grace would condescend to a glimpse, just a glimpse—”

“A glimpse of what?”

“Such as might be arranged in the woods not far from the village, over against Na Pieret di Fabri’s western vineyards, by moonlight.”

“You’re raving. Of what do you speak?”

“It could seem like a chance meeting. No need to take any special care or ceremony in your dress. Just a chance to behold for yourself whether the maiden lives up to the reports that are made of her. You could play the part of an absolute stranger, and she’d be no wiser.”

“She
who
would be no wiser?”

“Tuesday,” I said. “I have a feeling Tuesday is when she will arrive. Half an hour after dark.” I reached for the door. “But only if you’re curious.
Bonjọrn
.”

“You’re a slippery fish.”

I bowed. “Others have said so.”

I was halfway out when his voice reached me. “I suppose you think, Botille, that you’ll get a fee from me for your services.”

I allowed myself the smallest of smiles. “Only if you’re satisfied, Senhor.”