The Passion of Dolssa (33 page)

“This cannot work,” Sazia spoke through chattering teeth. Her hair hung in wet ropes down her face.

We stood before the
maisoṇ
of Lop, the
bayle
. Guilhem’s official, the sword of the law in Bajas. What to do? Ask him not to tell
himself
about our Dolssa? Of course he would know of her. No one in town could fail to. His position exposed our folly to us. All our trudging about and rousing the villagers had been for nothing.

We went home.

The rain relaxed its fury and settled in as a steady drizzle. The storm moved south, and left off lashing through the tree branches. We were nearly home, when Sazia noticed it. A light in the woods. No, through the trees, down toward the beach, not far from the tavern, on the patchy knoll that separated the waterfront from the useful soil of Bajas.

We crept closer and hid behind the tall trees.

“
Mon Dieu
.” I leaned against a tree.

It was Lop, building a pyre.

Sazia ran home to tell Plazensa, and to check on Dolssa. I stayed to keep watch.

A dark shape approached the tavern. They were coming for Dolssa. Should I scream to warn my sisters?

Then the shape veered off course and picked its way down through the trees.

I sagged in relief. “Thank God,” I whispered. “It’s only you, Symo.”

“What’s happening?”

I pointed to where Lop moved about before his smoldering, hissing fire. “He’s building a pyre.”

Symo watched the
bayle
work. “He’s having a deuce of a time in all this wet.”

“But the fire still grows.”

Symo fingered my dripping sleeve. “Have you been out all night?”

“Begging.” I shivered.

Lop paused and looked toward us. We hid ourselves behind two trees. Finally the
bayle
went back to work.

“They’re going to kill her,” I said, “then kill us.”

He said nothing.

“Symo,” I said, “stay away from this. Disappear. The friar will forget about you. If he wonders where my brother is, the villagers will tell him I have no brother. But if you get involved, you’ll die for no reason.”

The glint of firelight reflecting off his eyes was all of him that I could see.

“Go home,” I said. “I can’t bear to think of how Na Pieret would grieve for you.”

Footsteps from up the road made us both freeze. Footsteps, and a struggle. And the muffled cries of a woman’s voice.

“Dolssa,” I said. “They’ve got her.”

“Hush!”

I couldn’t. “I have to do something!”

“Don’t!”

Symo clamped his hand over my mouth. I struggled against him, but he wouldn’t budge. I tried to bite his fingers.

“Be still,” he hissed into my ear, “or they’ll have you.”

The tavern still sat quietly. A little light peeped through the shutters. Shadows passed before the light but never paused to go inside.

Lop’s flames mounted higher. They cast enough light now that I could glimpse the man and his captive as they drew nearer where I stood.

It was Senhor Guilhem, pulling a woman with him. A woman in dark dress, with gray hair streaked with white. A once-proud woman, hunched with age, gagged and shaking.

Not Dolssa.

The
bona femna
from the woods.

Oh no. No, no, no.

Yet she was not Dolssa. Was my gladness sin?

It wasn’t gladness.

My knees gave way. Symo caught me and kept me from falling. The wine and hearth-fire scent of him filled my lungs, while Lop threw another log.

Guilhem dragged the struggling woman toward the fire. She fought, but the frail thing was no match for a hearty man. A dirty cloth was wound around her mouth. Lop spoke to the lord of Bajas, and the woman got in the way, so he threw her down upon the ground.

She lay there like wet washing. They conferred, like men debating how best to plow a field. Dawn began to peer over the horizon.

Finally Lop drove four stakes into the ground, two on either side of the fire, barely a body’s width between the two poles on either side. So she couldn’t roll away.

“Who is she?” Symo’s grip on me relaxed.

“An old
bona femna
who hides in the woods,” I whispered. “We should do something.”

“You can’t.”

“We have to.”

His lips pushed his murmured words straight into my ear. “Botille,” he said, “if you try, they’ll kill you next. And your sisters. And Dolssa.”

Leaping, dancing flames. Would all I loved be next to burn?

“There’s nothing you can do for her,” he said. “There is a chance, though, that this woman’s death could save Dolssa, and you.”

They hoisted the woman’s limp form into the air, and awkwardly, straddling the fire, they laid her down between the stakes. The posts, they’d become, of her final bed. She struggled and fought. A pitiable sight. Her dress was so wet that for a moment I thought she had put the fire out.

Lop fanned the flames and loaded more wood.

Then her hair flamed bright. Her clothing next caught fire. Even the gag burned at last, leaving her free to scream. And they, her murderers, dared demand that she be still.

The stench of burnt hair and cloth reached my nose, and I vomited.

Then scorching meat.

Sizzling blood.

And still the heretic screamed.

I hid my face against Symo’s. He wrapped his arms around me and pressed his bristly cheek into mine.

I thanked God for the comfort of a human presence, any presence, any beating heart.

The tavern door banged open. We turned our heads to see someone hurry out. Too tall for one of my sisters.

The friar Lucien de Saint-Honore. The sight of him drained the last dregs of life in me.

He stood, smelling the air. His gaze went straight to the fire. He hurried down the slope toward the beach.

We separated, Symo and I.

In that moment, the
bona femna
’s screaming stopped. The fire and smoke had overcome her lungs at last.

Men’s voices reached us, but I could not bear to hear. We crept back to the tavern.

LUCIEN DE SAINT-HONORE

ucien de Saint-Honore ran down to the pyre on the beach. When he collided with the full wave of odor from the burning body, he ducked his head to the side.

“What is happening here?”

The two men standing by turned to study him.

“So young,” observed the younger of the two men, more finely dressed.

“Who are you?” Lucien demanded.

The speaker of the pair regarded him. His eyes were wide open, and horrified. As though the dead had been his own beloved. “I should ask that question of you.”

Lucien moved uphill from the smoke. He looked at the scorching remains atop the fire, and grimaced. Unlike some of his older associates in the convent at Tolosa, he was still unused to this sight.

“You laid this person in the fire,” he marveled, “like a roasting animal.”

The other man, with thick whiskers protruding from every side of his face, like a lion’s mane, spoke. “Finishes the job faster,” he said. “Merciful.”

“Who was executed here?”

The younger man folded his arms across his chest. “You still haven’t stated your name.”

Lucien gritted his teeth. “I am Lucien de Saint-Honore, inquisitor, and friar of the Dominican convent at Tolosa. I have traveled here in pursuit of a heretic, Dolssa de Stigata. My authority comes from Pope Gregory himself.” He held himself tall.

The two men looked at each other. Then the younger of them extended his hand to Lucien.

“Well met, inquisitor,” he said. “I am Guilhem de Bajas, and this is Lop, my
bayle
. Bajas is my holding, and you see before you all that remains of the heretic you seek.”

Lucien forgot his companions. He took a step closer to the fire. There they were, the blackened, leering, smoking limbs, the bits of graying bone. How could they be she? He closed his eyes and saw her soft, living flesh, her red lips, the dark mark above them, reaching forward to kiss him . . .

His eyes flew open. “You are certain it was she?”

The wiry man’s eyes went to the younger lord.

“We are a small community,” said Senhor Guilhem.

The bushy man went silently back to the fire. He shifted logs around to speed the burning. Some, he placed over the corpse, obscuring it from view.

Dolssa de Stigata. His heretic, his great mission, was now mere matter, like any other log in the fire.

“Why did you execute her?” Lucien heard his voice ask. “I heard she was reputed a holy woman.”

Senhor Guilhem turned to stare at him. “Was she, then?”

Lucien stepped back from the heat of the fire into the cool dawn air. “No, she was a heretic. A great deceiver. I . . . I had heard, though, that she had grown a large following here.”

“We don’t harbor heretics,” the young lord said too quickly. “Not here in Bajas.”

The gray man watched.

Dolssa de Stigata was gone from his sight now. Now and always. Lucien shivered. A welcome distraction appeared in his thoughts.

“I saw a
toza
just now,” he told the others. “I met her once before. Her name is . . . Botille.”

“The matchmaker,” said the gray man.

“Matchmaker?” asked Lucien.

Senhor Guilhem shot his companion a look. “Most meddlesome, fast-talking, lying little slut you could meet.”

Lucien turned this intelligence over carefully. This sounded nothing like the half-witted girl he’d met.

“And her brother . . . ?”

The young lord looked to the
bayle
and shrugged.

“Botille has no brother, Friar,” he said. “She and her sisters run the tavern. You’re staying there?”

Lucien nodded absently. “That’s right.”
No brother.
Of course. The embrace he’d seen hardly looked brotherly.

The sun was fully risen now, and up the hill villagers began to stir. The smoke from the pyre began to attract curious eyes, but the presence of the
senhor
, the
bayle
, and a holy stranger kept onlookers at a distance.

“Make it known, Lop,” said Guilhem, “that the
heretic
has met her death.”

The
bayle
nodded and left.

“Well, friar,” the lord said, “how can I serve you? Will you need supplies or funds for your return to Tolosa?”

Lucien returned the lord’s gaze. “Not just yet,” he said. “The heretic’s death does not necessarily kill the poisonous flower she has planted here. I have more inquiries to conduct. For now, as it is Sunday, I’ll take myself first to the church.”

BOTILLE

ord of Dolssa’s death and the friar’s coming brought everyone to Mass.