The Passion of Dolssa (40 page)

A serving wench, and a comely one at that, appeared with a tray of cups of wine.

“Refreshment, my lords?”

Prior Pons finally spoke. “How came he to be in this place?”

Bernard, the priest, spoke up. “He was assaulted on the beach,” he said. “Near where the heretic was burned. These three sisters came to his aid and brought him in to tend him.”

Bishop Raimon considered the three sisters. “God bless you for your kindness.”

They bowed. Then the middle one pointed toward young Lucien.

“He wakes,” said Pons. “Fetch him wine! Bring water!”

The sisters hurried to comply, while Prior Pons bent closer to his young friar’s face.

“No need to speak,” he told Lucien. “Rest.”

“Do not let the bishop bless them,” was Lucien’s thin reply.

Prior Pons let this pass. The poor fellow must still be disoriented from his injury.

It did not stop Lucien from speaking again. “I will come to the whipping.”

Prior Pons straightened up. “By no means!”

In answer, the friar struggled to sit. He rose before other hands could prevent him.

“I am well enough,” he said. “I must be there. Seeing them punished will help me to forgive them. Jhesus has healed me to bring this moment to pass.”

Prior Pons watched a dazed look pass over the young friar’s face.

“Jhesus has healed me,” he repeated. “Jhesus has done it. It could only have been he . . .”

BOTILLE

enhor Guilhem read out the charges late that afternoon.

“For most violently and with premeditated and murderous intent assaulting a man of God, the friar Lucien de Saint-Honore of the Order of Preachers, in a vile and cowardly manner, lying in wait, attacking him unawares, entirely unprovoked, I sentence you to forty lashes.” He swallowed and glanced at the bishop and prior from Tolosa. “And, to teach you to remember to honor the Savior’s church, I sentence you to branding by hot irons on the forehead with the mark of the cross.”

The people of Bajas gaped in horror. We expected the flogging. Never this.

A fire crackled between the accused and their accusers. Small, but hot, and hungry, fed from a pile of wood and a bellows by one of the bishop’s servants. Now I understood its purpose.

Waves rocked soothingly at the sand, making gentle music to accompany the torturing of Jacme and Andrio. Both stood, with bound wrists tied high to a pole, on the very same beach where they had thought to teach the inquisitor a lesson. They were a sight less menacing-looking now, and sadly sober. Stripped all but naked, and terrified. Still, after what they’d done, I found it hard to pity them. A cleric’s murder could have cost us all our lives.

But now, the clergy believed our Dolssa had already been executed. After today, they’d all go home. We could get on with our lives. We would find her a new hiding place to live out her life in peace. I reached out and
took my sisters by the hand. The image swam unbidden into my mind of each of them with cross-scarred foreheads.

Poor Jacme and Andrio. Poor, poor, stupid creatures.

We all stood to behold the pageantry of justice. Lop had led the accused down the hill and into the public ring. The nobles, the friars, the bishop and his priests, and their retinue of soldiers formed a wall of righteousness to withstand the teeming threat of our drunken, heretical, rural peasant vice.

In the midst of the clergy, seated in a chair and sheltered on either side by other tonsured friars, was a frail Lucien de Saint-Honore. Even from afar, the red wound on his scalp cried out for retribution.

Lop practiced a few strokes with the whip upon the sand. On the second test it cracked. The third made Lop confident. The fourth caught Andrio across his left shoulder.

The lash’s bite left a mark, and soon a thin line of blood.

Jacme was next to cry out.

The whip cracked and stung, cracked and stung, and before long they were sobbing, broken, their feet scrabbling in the sand as they tried to fall, pleading for an end, cringing before the lash. Drops of blood sprayed off their skin at each stroke.

Jacme and Andrio had been prepared to kill a man in cold blood. Or so they’d said. And they nearly did. They were lucky to walk away with their lives. But it was a pitiable thing to watch a human soul treated worse than one would ever treat a donkey. It always was. No matter how many times I’d seen it before.

Lop left them there, drooping, crying, no longer caring who saw them so. He knelt and winced before the fire’s heat. With both hands he wrapped a hot iron handle in leather and thick cloth, then raised a red-hot poker high. Its thick cross glowed bright as poppies.

It happened so fast. Two knights in the bishop’s retinue wrapped broad leather straps around Jacme, and pinioned his limbs to the pole whereon he was tied. A third clamped his hands on either side of Jacme’s head to hold it still. Lop brought the poker to Jacme, and Jacme spat at him. Lop pressed the hot brand onto his victim’s forehead. Crookedly.

His searing skin hissed. Jacme screamed. Smoke billowed, floated away on the breeze. Lop pulled the brand away, then carefully pressed it back again, to cauterize the mark.

Piss darkened the cloth tied around Jacme’s middle and ran down his legs.

I couldn’t bear to watch Andrio’s turn. Sazia hid in my arms. “Poor fools,” Plazi whispered to herself. “So young.”

It ended. Lop stopped. The poor maimed ones’ pitiable cries keened on the wind off the sea.

We exhaled, and waited. Please,
Dieu
, put a stop to this.

Let someone speak. Let something release us all from this horror. Let lightning from heaven strike these churchmen who even now triumph over such mad cruelty.

There was a stir. We all watched as Lucien de Saint-Honore rose, guided by his helpers, and approached the blubbering, bleeding men. They stopped their whimpering and waited. I imagine they wondered what more he could do to them.

He stood over them, beholding their faces with grave and sober concern.

“I forgive you,” he told them.

“You’re a fool,” was Jacme’s answer.

The clerics looked aghast at this irreverence. Lucien de Saint-Honore’s hand fluttered to his wounded head.

A burnt cross leered at the friar from above Jacme’s swollen-shut eye. The other eye found Symo in the crowd. He spoke, though, to the friar. “You think you’ve burnt your heretic,” he said, “but you’ve been duped. If you want to know where your Dolssa is, follow the tavern cat.”

BOTILLE

y sisters and I clutched one another’s hands.

Jacme. How could you?

God in heaven, show me what I must do.
Was there time? Could I run and warn Dolssa?

Shocked murmurs ran through the assembled villagers. Among them were many sounds of joy. Lisette de Boroc. Saura Garcia. Discovering their angel was not dead.

A figure slipped away from the clergy. I watched in horror as the tall form of Senhor Hugo strode up the hill toward the village and Na Pieret’s fields beyond. My heart sank. That man was deadly. He’d surely find her.

Senhor Guilhem hurried toward Jacme and Andrio. “Get them away from here,” he told Lop. “Drag these beggars out.”

Lop untied Jacme from the post and began pulling him up the hill.

“The ruffian thinks to surprise me with this revelation about Dolssa, the heretic,” cried Lucien. “But it was already plain to see that this town is steeped in a conspiracy of silence. They’ve sworn a pact not to reveal the heretic’s whereabouts. She lives, I’ll swear it, concealed away by the tavern sisters.”

“My
s
rres
,” I told them in tears. “I—”

“No, Botille.” Plazi stopped my apologies with a kiss. “No need.”

The older Dominican friar, the one who seemed to be Lucien de Saint-Honore’s superior, hurried to his side and tried to persuade him to come back to his seat.

“And the woman you burned,” the friar told Senhor Guilhem, “was never Dolssa de Stigata. Isn’t that right, Senhor Hugo?”

But the knight was gone. The churchmen looked about for him in confusion, but it didn’t matter. Now they all knew.

“I swear to you, my lords of the Church . . .” began Senhor Guilhem, but I had no ears for his feeble protest.

“We’ve failed.” I could barely speak. “I couldn’t save Dolssa, my sisters, and now I’ve killed you.”

From somewhere, Symo appeared beside us. The young friar fixed his eagle eye on us.

“Those two.” Lucien pointed to Symo and me. “
They
did it. I met them on the road. They pretended to be sister and brother, but they aren’t. Fornicators! Secret lovers. Sinners, heretical conspirators, posing as kindred and thinking to fool the Lord by it!”

The Dominican prior, the bishop, and Senhor Guilhem eyed one another.

Symo’s eyes met mine. Fornicators, lovers? Any other day I would have laughed. The look in Symo’s eyes, though, made me want to weep.

“Of course they’re not siblings,” said Senhor Guilhem. “I told you that.”

“They brought her here,” Lucien said, “and hid her in the tavern. Then they taught the village to adore her as a holy woman, by tricking them into thinking she had healed their false ailments.”

“Symo,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He made me look into his eyes.

Lop returned from hauling Jacme, and deputized others to take Andrio away.

“Lucien,” said the older Dominican, “what do you
mean
, Dolssa de Stigata has not been executed?” He looked about him. “Everyone told us she’d been burnt days ago.”

“I don’t know who that was. Some vagabond, perhaps. But it wasn’t she.” Lucien’s expression was triumphant. “I’m certain of it. Even without the brute’s admission. Else, why so many lies?”

I had underestimated Friar Lucien’s cunning. We all had.

“Why burn the woman all the
vila
adored? Everything smells wrong here. Like the stench of rotting fish.” A high flush colored Friar Lucien’s cheeks. “It wasn’t Dolssa de Stigata. She’s still alive.”

“If that’s true,” said Bishop Raimon, “then it will soon be remedied. And this time, the entire village will witness her execution.”