The Passion of Dolssa (9 page)

ou want to talk to me? Talking’s not usually what they have in mind when they come here.

Oc
, I’ll talk with you. Come to my place, where we can talk more privately.

Take a seat. Make yourself at home.

You’re young for this, aren’t you? Not too young. Your beard wants to grow faster than you can shave it, and so does the hair on your head. That’s a fine head of hair you’d have, if you’d let it grow. Stay with me a few days, if you like, and let it.

It’s hard work, preaching the word. A man’s got to have some release. Just like he needs food and water and sleep. He needs other things. That’s why I’m here. Isn’t that why you’re here? Oh, now. Don’t fret. There’s no shame. No shame at all. The tales I could tell you—but of course I never tell tales. Let’s just say that men of the cloth are some of my best customers.

Well enough. If we must talk first, we’ll talk. Have some wine. Wine helps with talking.

When was this?

A young girl?

Oh, I see. Too old for you, am I? Just how old do you think I am?

Don’t be fooled by youth. You’re old enough to know what experience is good for.

All right! I hear you. Not that kind of young girl. A young girl just passing through? Traveling alone? Why would she have passed my way?

What would make her wish to avoid the town?

Isn’t that a curious thing? A young girl without a mother, an aunt, or a companion, fleeing through the countryside. Traveling by night? She must be trying to die. What has she done to make you want so badly to find her? Is she your mistress? Your dainty young
enamoratz
?

Never mind. Don’t take on so; it’s a fair question. Many a holy brother like you has a concubine.

Tell me this. When you’ve found her—this person—what will you do with her? Is she to be restored to her family?

Of course it’s none of my affair. I’m curious. You haven’t told me all, that’s plain. But your business is yours to keep. I can’t help you. I have not seen a young gentlewoman come passing through by night and all alone. You’ve wasted my time and cost me tomorrow’s dinner.

You don’t mean that.

You do mean it.

Monster! You knew what I was when you came here.

You would threaten me with this, a poor woman, all weak and alone? I don’t do any harm to anyone. There’s not a judge nor a priest in the city who doesn’t know I’m here.

I have told the truth. Upon my honor, I have.

Please, good sir, forget you met me here. Are you hungry? I have
caçolet
in my pot.

I only meant to help.

Help you. That’s what I mean. Help you. Not help her. How could I help her if I never even saw her?

If all you say is true, she’s probably already long past helping now.

BOTILLE

knocked at the door of the small stone
maisoṇ
. No one answered. I knocked again.

“Wait here,” I called to Sazia, who stood with Garcia and his son, and the mules.

I headed around to the back. Sazia called after me, but I was in no mood to wait.

It was the afternoon of our second day of traveling, and after several wrong stops, we’d reached San Cucufati, and found what several nearby folks assured us was the
maisoṇ
we wanted. Plazensa hadn’t let us depart without first making Sazia swear on our mother’s grave that she wouldn’t leave my side, so Sazia never let me out of her sight. This charge to protect me had turned my baby
s
rre
into a tyrant hovering mother, and I don’t take kindly to mothering. I’m not used to it.

Na Pieret had sent Garcia, her trusted hand, to safeguard us on our journey to San Cucufati. He was old enough to be no threat to two unmarried girls, but not so old that he couldn’t still make a bandit think twice when he wielded his club. His son, young Garcia, was fourteen and scrawny, without a whisker to his chin. The only threat he posed was driving Sazia to distraction with his idiot jokes. Me, I found young Garcia funny, so to pay Sazia back for smothering me, I egged the young jester on.

We’d rattled along over dusty roads in Garcia’s cart, which Na Pieret had provided for hauling her nephews’ belongings. I was surprised to discover, on the road, how much I missed
la mar
. I wasn’t native to the
seacoast, but she had become my own—her colors, her moods, her rolling waves, her breezes, and her quarrelsome birds. Not since we’d first come to Bajas from Carcassona years ago had I traveled this far. I enjoyed seeing the world pass by, but I missed the call of the water. My feet and my bottom were glad to have found our destination at last.

Two days we’d traveled to get here. We began with lauds prayers in the strangers’ chapel of the Abadia at Fontfreda, which made us feel like pilgrims instead of mere messengers. The abbey monks avoided us, but we felt their holiness. I sent up a prayer to ward off whatever worried Sazia, just in case. We spent the night sleeping under stars. By day we strolled along, drinking in the autumn colors of trees reflected in glassy streams and watching blackbirds slice their way through the glorious blue sky.

Two days we’d watched travelers wend their way—some in cleric’s robes, some toiling under packs of wool or vegetables. Merchants in the larger villages, with curious shingles advertising their wares, wondered if we’d come to buy. I saw strong lads I could easily find brides for in Bajas. It set me wondering whether I couldn’t expand my trade a bit beyond our village.

Now nothing but a few well-chosen words barred me from procuring two new husbands for my maidens back home. With luck, one for Astruga, the other for Sapdalina. All this fretting of Sazia’s! Sunshine and success. That was what I smelled in the pastures of Na Pieret di Fabri’s dead sister’s farm.

There was no one in sight. A stand of grapevines grew behind the house, neatly tied and trimmed. Na Pieret would approve. A small field of ripening vegetables—including plenty of onions—spread over the rough, rocky soil, and beyond that a thatch-roof shelter serving as a barn overlooked a plot where a pair of goats foraged. I headed for the shelter.

“Oo-ooh,”
I sang out while I was still some distance away. You never want to catch farming peasants by surprise. They might be butchering, with knives in their hands.

A loud sound escaped the makeshift barn, followed by a burst of swearing and shouts of raucous laughter. I hitched up my skirts and hurried forward.

“Bonjọrn!”
I cried.

A head popped out from between the beams supporting the thatch roof. The thick body to which the head was attached seemed scooped out of clay
rather than grown in the usual fashion. Man?
Tozẹt
? Monster? I couldn’t be sure. His hair, which hung low and thick over his protruding forehead, was filled like a hen’s nest with dozens of chicken feathers, sticking every which way. Even out his ears.

His smock was smeared shoulder to belly with ripe green chicken dung. More of it clung to the stubble on his chin and cheeks, which he attempted to wipe with a greasy rag.

Blame it on my mother, who was never around to raise me better: I shrieked with laughter. Cackled, straight to his face.

His bushy eyebrows lowered. He looked at me as if
I
were the feathered stranger reeking of chicken
mẹrda
, and not he. Pray God this was not the stalwart nephew on which poor Na Pieret must place her trust!

“Aren’t you a feast for the eyes? And the nose,” I said by way of greeting.

He turned and stomped back inside.

I followed. Odd cases like his intrigued me. Perhaps he was the village idiot, just wandering by.

Inside the shelter, the feathered troll and another young man sat around a makeshift enclosure for poultry. The other young man, unfeathered and unsmeared by chicken mess, wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. At the sight of me, he doubled over, clutching his guts lest they spill out. I liked the set of teeth I saw on him, strong and wide and white. His laughing displayed them well. Without even trying, I could think of three girls who’d marry him for those teeth alone.

The other one, the village idiot, glowered at us both, rose to his feet, and peeled his smock off over his head, then turned it inside out and scrubbed his face with it. He was a strong one, from the bare looks of things, and not just in his odors.

“
Bonj
rn
,” I said, seizing an opening. “My name is Botille, and I have traveled here from Bajas at the request of Na Pieret di Fabri. Your
tanta
on your mother’s side.”

The chicken-dirt idiot stopped his scrubbing, then flung his dirty smock at the other one.

“Dead?” he barked at me.

So he knew of her. Not the village idiot, but the nephew after all? Or, saints forbid, both nephew and imbecile? Poor Na Pieret! Poor grapes!

“No,
Dieu
keep her,” I said. “How did you get . . . your feathers?”

His face, when he scowled, which was apparently always, bunched up into surly thickness—thick lips mashed between a jutting chin and a wide nose with furious, flaring nostrils, all presided over by bushy eyebrows and black menacing eyes.

“Feathers,” I repeated, and pointed toward my own hair. Then he understood. He attacked his hair with his hands, savaging his scalp until the feathers fled in terror, leaving his hair looking like an ill-kept shrub.

This set the other one off laughing again. With someone less handsome I might have grown annoyed, but attractive people are easier to forgive.

“Which of you is Na Pieret’s nephew?” I still clung to the hope that Senhor Chicken Stink was not included in the pair of brothers I’d come to find.

“Which one of us is not?” said Laughing Tooth.

“Shut your mouth, Gui,” said the idiot. To me: “Who are you?”

I bowed. “I am called Botille, as I already said, if you’d been listening.” I opened my mouth to begin my little speech, the one I’d spent two days rehearsing in my head. Instead I said, “What happened to you? Why are you covered in
mẹrda
?”

“None of your business,” said the first.

“He slid on a pile of chicken shite,” supplied the other. “Landed face first. It was beautiful,
oc
! Never till I die will I forget the sight.”