The Passion of Dolssa (43 page)

A voice I knew from a lifetime ago sang out from beyond the darkness.

“Hey ho, hey hum, see the churchmen come. And whom shall they slaughter today?”

My
s
rres
and I stared at one another.

A figure wandered into the firelight. Hobbled right up to the bishop and spat upon him. A servant cuffed his jaw, but the figure only laughed, spraying the clerics with some of the brew in the jug he carried.

It was none other than our Jobau.

“Take the babe, take your wife, and run for your life from the men who love to pray.”

“Who is this offensive creature?” demanded a bristling Bishop Raimon.

“What’s the fire for, boys?” Jobau took a swig. “Hot enough to wake even a damned soul like me. I look out the door, and see everyone gathered around a blaze, and I say to myself, ‘Oho, either it’s a party, or the holy men have come to town.’” He wandered over to Bishop Raimon. “I’m a drunk,” he told him, “since you asked. The vilest sinner in all Provensa. Death to the king of Fransa! And you men”—another drink—“are the murderers who made me this way. What do you think of that?”

The bishop beckoned to Lop. “Get this refuse out of here, and flog him.”

“Not”—Jobau took a swig—“until I tell you a story.”

“Drag him away!” cried the bishop. But Jobau—the bizarre wonderment of this reeking, shriveled man cursing at the bishop—had already hooked the curious ears of the soldiers. They could wait a few minutes.

“I’ll tell you the story”—there was an edge to Jobau’s voice—“of a young man in Fransa who loved the Church and dreamed of adventure. He wanted to take up his cross. Just like Jhesus. He answered the call to go on crusade and drive filthy heretics from the count of Tolosa’s lands. Worse than infidels, the heretics were. More dangerous than Mohammedans.”

“Bayle,” ordered the bishop. “Remove him.” But Lop was held sway under Jobau’s spell.

“So this young man left his mother and father and joined an army marching south. Tens of thousands of us there were, singing songs and dreaming of our mansions in heaven.

“But do you know what happened?”

“No one heeds you, foul creature!” cried Lucien de Saint-Honore.

Everyone did.

“Besièrs happened.” Jobau’s voice lashed like Lop’s whip. “We wiped it off the map. We didn’t leave a rat’s
aze
alive in all Besièrs. Not even a curly-haired baby girl. All gone. Burnt up like bacon that falls in the fire. That’s holy war.”

Never had I heard this tale before. My own Jobau’s life, and I never knew.

“And on from there, and on, throughout the south, for years. Every town that would surrender to Simon de Montfort, ‘God’s own prince,’ we would spare the town and kill the
bons omes
and
bonas femnas
. Sear them with hot irons. Toss them alive into flaming pyres. Chop off their ears and noses. Throw them in wells. Strip them, stone them. That’s what we did in the good
vilas
. In the bad
vilas
, we got to kill everyone.”

“What’s he doing?” Sazia whispered.

Jobau was determined to have his say. “Did you ever trip on the bodies of young boys, with their guts ripped open and gushing out, you men of God? That’s holy war. Did any of you fight it?”

He searched their expressionless faces. He dropped his jug in the sand and cackled. Then he approached Bishop Raimon. All his mirth was gone now.

“You murderers, you killed God for me. You kill everything. And you never need to lift a sword to do it. You just lift your god, and poor souls run to do your killing for you.”

His entire audience listened, as if in a trance.

“One day I just walked away. I could never go back to Fransa as the murderer I’d become. So I wandered around the south, the enemy’s terrain, for years. I saw nobody harming anybody’s faith but you. I drank in search of sleep without dreaming, but the dreams of what I’d done found me all the same.

“I ended up in Carcassona. I lived with a woman and her two daughters. We had a child together. The woman brewed ale to keep me from dying too quickly on wine. But she died first. After some trouble with debts and fights, the
tozas
and I ended up here in Bajas.

“And one day a
donzȩlla
showed up at the tavern with the true God in her fingertips. She healed my baby girl. And you can’t bear it.

“So kill us. Kill us all. Kill my daughters, kill me, kill and kill and kill until all that’s left is to kill each other. And when you do, the
bon Dieu
, if he’s really there, will be your judge.”

The villagers stared at Jobau. A month ago, had Jobau told this tale in the tavern, he’d have met with cheers. Now no one dared to make a sound.

The fire crackled. Bishop Raimon trembled with fury. He leveled a quivering finger at Jobau.

“Seize this blasphemer,” he cried, “and bind him with his wicked daughters.”

Jobau laughed. He laughed as two soldiers seized him by the arms and dragged him away from the clerics, toward us.

The pyre raged in its full heat. It scorched us, but not, I knew, as it soon would.

What would it be like to die? When the torment and the pain were through, would my soul go to God? Or be trapped, doomed, damned in an exile of darkness and pain?

Lord God whom Dolssa loves,
I prayed,
receive our souls unto you.

“The fire is ready,” said Lop.

“Take the beauty first,” said the bishop. “Take them one by one. Leave the lying, talkative one for last, so she may watch them all.”

They dragged Plazi toward the fire.

I opened my mouth to scream, to plead, to bargain one last time for her life. But something made me stop. A voice, a feeling that silenced me.

I turned. We all turned. What made us all turn, there in that inferno of noise and heat?

Standing in our midst was Dolssa.

She came, to help us. Nothing forced her to come. Now we would all die together.

Unless her beloved had one more miracle.

The men clutching Plazensa’s arms let go.

“Release them.” Dolssa faced the bishop and the friars. They stared at her.

She glowed, not from the firelight, but as if lit from within. I wondered if she were already a ghost.

“Let them go,” said she, “and I yield myself to you.”

The churchmen looked at one another.

Friar Lucien’s face had gone gray at the sight of her. He said, “We don’t need you to yield. We have them, and we have you.”

Dolssa’s voice was calm but piercing. “Let them go,” she said once more. “My beloved has protected me thus far, and he will protect me forever. You have no power over me but what he grants you.”

“
Your beloved
,” cried Lucien, “has granted
all
power to us. The keys of the kingdom. The power of Sant Peter, to bind on earth that which shall remain bound in heaven, to loose—”

“
Lucien
.”

The senior friar’s voice rang with warning and alarm. Lucien paused. Only then, it seemed, did he realize the danger—the heresy—in what he’d said, in who he’d admitted Dolssa’s beloved to be.

“Release my friends,” Dolssa said, “with a binding oath that no harm may come to them, that they may live out their lives freely, and I will yield myself to your flames. God in heaven is our witness, and he will be your judge.”

Lucien de Saint-Honore panted in frustration. “My lord Bishop,” he cried, “do not succumb!”

“You fear me,” Dolssa said, “for my beloved is with me, and he will speak for me. Bishop, how fares your back? Friar, how mends your head?”

Bishop Raimon’s hand went to his lower spine. He stood straighter, and a look of relief crossed his jowly face. The friar’s hand went to his scalp. His angry red wound was gone. He stared at the hand as though it were not his own. Then at Dolssa, as if he’d never seen her before.

The bishop consulted with the other churchmen. Dolssa waited calmly, with her head bowed and her hands crossed, for their answer.

Bishop Raimon stepped forward. “These five aren’t important,” he said, gesturing to my sisters, Jobau, Symo, and me. “Let them go.”