The Passion of Dolssa (44 page)

The soldiers surrounding us stepped away.

Symo was at my side in an instant. “Run,” he said. “We’ll all run together—”

But before he could finish his thought, Dolssa spoke.

“Botille.”

I ran to her.

“Oh, Dolssa,” I cried, “what have you done?”

She smiled. “Remember me.”

“Can’t we fly from here?” I begged.

“Remember me,” she said.

I kissed her face and hands. “Always.”

I gazed into her eyes until hands pushed me away, until Lop seized my fragile friend, picked her up tenderly, like a daughter, and set her on her feet upon a wide stone slab next to the fire that lifted her head and shoulders just above the flames.

“People of Bajas,” the bishop cried, “in fear for your immortal souls, do you consent to this?”

No one spoke. One by one they bowed themselves down, lowering their faces toward the dust.

It is a mercy, they say, to kill quickly those souls bound for the pyre. A mercy that also ensures the job gets done. Sometimes the marksman’s arrow finishes the task. Sometimes it’s done by strangling.

A soldier braced himself and loaded his crossbow. He cranked back the lever and aligned the bolt, then squinted along the length of the shaft, finding the line that led straight to Dolssa’s beating heart.

His fingers flexed.

Lucien de Saint-Honore stretched forth his hand, almost as if to stop him.

Dolssa stood and waited. If she felt fear, it didn’t show. She turned to where, I knew, she saw her beloved, and kept her gaze fixed on him.

I could barely watch for tears.

The crossbow thumped.

A figure leaped.

The bolt twanged.

A gray cloak snapped.

The bolt spun straight and true and buried itself in Senhor Hugo’s back.

Dolssa’s mouth hung open.

The knight slumped, and she caught him in her arms.

Lucien de Saint-Honore’s scream rang across the beach.

“Run with me,” Symo pleaded.

Dolssa staggered under the weight of her prize. Hugo mustered strength to stand upon his feet, then buckled once more.

Dolssa encircled his neck with her arm, then gently kissed his lips. A look passed across the dying man’s face that human words cannot describe. Dolssa held him tightly to her, then fell with him into the flames.

Friar Lucien de Saint-Honore gaped at the sight. “
Non!
” he cried.
“Non, non, non!”

Prior Pons and other clerics struggled to push the raving friar back into his seat. He relented at last, but still strained to turn his gaze toward the fire. He watched, forlorn, like a lost soul, as his heretic and her knight were consumed together in the hellfire he had lit.

He toppled from his chair and vomited into the ashen sand.

Again and again I saw them both. Like two butterflies. Their capes, like fluttering wings.

So gently did they fall, like feathers gliding on a breeze. They disappeared, like foxes slipping into their holes. There, and then not there. My nose smelled the stench of burning cloth and hair, but my soul breathed in a sweetness, as if a heavenly perfume had been released into the sky.

Dolssa’s beloved had taken her straight to him.

“Seize the conspirators,” cried the bishop.

A roar broke from Symo’s throat. “You promised to release us!”

“All contracts with the dead are broken,” said His Excellence. “Throw them in together.”

Soldiers picked their way across the sand toward us. I took my sisters’ hands. But Jobau, that reprobate, whispered under his breath.

“I can only give you seconds, my daughters,” he said. “Use them well.” He chucked his finger under Sazia’s chin. Then, without any pause, he plowed into the line of soldiers, taking two of them down in a jumble of arms and legs.

Symo snatched my hand in his, and Sazia’s in his other. Plazi missed nothing. She took Sazia’s other hand, and we bolted for the shallows, splashing through them, then up behind the tavern into the swallowing dark of scrub pines and tall grasses.

BOTILLE

e ran.

That is all I can remember.

We ran, stumbling over murderous ground, blind, tripping on roots, sinking in bogs. Climbing the hillside, sucking air into our burning lungs. Racing for dear life, and trying to stay together.

Branches and weeds whipped our faces. We were coneys fleeing from the wolf. Coneys, though, had holes to hide in.