Stigmata (11 page)

‘I really scared you two, eh?’

‘You have to rest today,’ Fabricia said, and he let her ease him back on to the bench; but later that morning as the two women slept, exhausted, he gathered together some bread and
cheese and a new tunic and slipped out of the door and went down the hill to the church, to make sure those lazy good-for-nothings he employed to carry his stone were not idling on the job.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
as Fabricia made her way down the lane to the
portal
there were no hands raised in greeting and no
familiar smiles, just fearful looks and neighbours scuttling into doorways to whisper. Perhaps it is these gloves, she thought. Has anyone seen the blood dripping? No, I have bound them as well as
I am able, but I cannot disguise how I walk, the pain I am in. Perhaps it’s that.

Then she saw Father Marty. He grinned at her. Well, there was no point in running away, so she stopped and let him come to her. Let us be done with it; he would have his revenge somehow, for the
bruises to his pride, inside and out.

He stopped, his hands on his hips. ‘Last time you took me by surprise,’ he said. ‘The next time I shall not be so careless.’

Her feet were agony and she had to take the weight off them. She leaned against the wall of a house, trying not to let her distress show on her face.

‘What did you do to your hands?’

‘Nothing. I am cold this morning.’

‘And the rest of the village sweating!’ He grabbed her hand and peeled back her glove. ‘Bandages! I saw them the other night when I gave your father the rites for the dying.
What did you do to yourself?’

She snatched back her hand.

‘What are we poor villagers to make of the Bérenger family? You bandaged for no reason, your father dead and now living. I saw him this morning up a scaffold, repairing the nave to
my church instead of lying under it. How can this be?’

‘A miracle,
paire
.’

‘But how?’

‘
Deus lo volt.
’

‘God wanted it, yes, perhaps. Others think it was the Devil’s craft and that you had a hand in it.’

‘Who says so?’

Father Marty just smiled and she thought: So this is how he is going to take his revenge. He is going to make me into a witch.

‘There are rumours about you and Bernart.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They say some children knocked him down with stones, that he was dead before you laid your hands on him and brought him back to life. The way you did to your father.’

‘I had nothing to do with it. My mother is a healer. She gave him opium and belladonna.’

He smiled but his eyes were hard. ‘There is not a soul in the village who does not think you had a hand in it. A bandaged hand!’ He laughed at his little jest. ‘What is your
secret, Fabricia Bérenger?’

She picked up her pannier and limped past him. This time he did not try to stop her. ‘You walk like Bernart,’ he said.

She winced with each step. Soon everyone would know her secret; she could not hide it much longer. Blessed Mary, why have you done this? she thought. My heart is overcome with gratitude that my
blessed Papa is still alive when we should this day be putting him in the ground. And yet, now Father Marty wants everyone to think I am a witch and I can bring the dead back to life.

Why can’t they all just leave me alone? Why did this happen to me?

M
OSTARDA BURNED HIS
feet on the hearth trying to reach the ham hanging from the rafter. Now he sat mewling and licking his
paws in the corner. ‘You don’t eat the ham, you eat the mice,’ Fabricia scolded him.

She sat alone at the bench chopping vegetables for the pot; Anselm was at work in the church, her mother had gone to the market. Fabricia was better at bartering than her mother, knew how to
smile and when to wink and when to toss her hair at the butcher’s boy and the widowed farmer from the next village, but today was a bad day, she could hardly walk with her feet in such a
state, and so Elionor had gone in her stead. She heard another shower of rain whip against the oilskins on the window and she didn’t mind being here by the warm hearth.

It was the pig snuffling in the mud in the yard that warned her; better than a dog he was, his high-pitched squeal letting her know a stranger was in the yard. She heard someone come in through
the back door. She caught her breath and her fingers tightened around the bone-handled knife in her fist. Not that it would help her, a knife wasn’t much use unless you were prepared to use
it.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, smiling.

She remembered the last time a churchman appeared unannounced at her
domus
. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she lied.

He took off his cloak and set it on a chair by the hearth and sat down, toasting his toes as if this were his own
ostal
. He twisted the large amber ring on his finger. ‘You should
be afraid. Most people in this village are afraid of me.’

‘No, they despise you. There’s a difference.’

His smile fell away. Why can’t I keep my thoughts to myself? she thought. Mocking him will only make it worse. I am here alone and I know he has come here for only one purpose, two if he
intends to hurt me as well. Bite your lip, girl, get this over with.

He leaned forward. ‘Who do you think you are, talking to me that way? Put the knife down.’

‘Why, do you think I might stick you with it? Maybe I would.’

‘Put it down,’ he repeated.

She put the knife on the table.

‘I could destroy you. You and all your family.’

‘In God’s name?’

‘In any name I choose.’

‘What do you want?’

‘You know what I want,’ he said.

‘And then? If you get it, will you leave me in peace?’

‘It depends.’ He stood up and walked around the bench, trapping her in the corner. His cassock was wet and the wool stank. He raised the hem of his robe, all the time keeping his
eyes on her face. Fabricia flinched.

‘Look,’ he said. The tumour on his thigh was gross, a great swollen piece of flesh, livid in its centre like a bruise. Fabricia felt her gorge rise. She looked away.

‘Heal me,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Put your hands on me like you did to Bernart.’

‘I didn’t do anything to Bernart. There was nothing wrong with him. I just helped him get up.’

‘Everyone knows what you did. Your father too. His men swear he was near dead when they brought him here. What did you do? Is it some prayer you have? Do you see devils?’

‘I don’t do anything,’ she said again. She dared another glance at his diseased leg. It was so grotesque, she almost felt sorry for him. ‘Does it hurt you?’

‘Not yet,’ he said but she could tell that he feared it soon would.

She held out her hand, hesitated. Even when she was wearing woollen mittens she shrank from touching such a thing.

‘What, am I too filthy for you to touch? Do for me what you did for Bernart! Well? You touched a cripple and you won’t touch me?’

Fabricia encircled the extrusion of flesh with her palm. His skin was pale with coarse hairs, and the mass growing out of it reminded her of the jelly on pork fat after it had been boiled.
‘How long have you had this?’ she asked him.

‘I saw it first just before the Feast of the Epiphany. It was then a lump the size of a walnut, no more. But every day it grows more, right in front of my eyes.’ There was a tremor
in his voice. ‘I have tried salves and a wise woman in Carcassonne gave me a poultice of herbs but it has done no good.’

She placed her hand on it, closed her eyes and said a prayer to the lady.

‘I can feel something,’ he said. ‘What do you have under those gloves? Show me.’ He grabbed her wrist.

‘Do you want me to heal you or not? Then let me go.’
Why did I say that to him? Have I started to believe these stories too?

He let go of her arm and then looked around the room, as if he was searching for something. ‘Do you smell that?’ he said. ‘It’s like lavender. Have you been chopping
herbs?’

Fabricia had noticed it also, at the very moment she put her hand on the priest. She looked into the corner to see if the lady in blue was there.

‘What are you looking at?’ he said.

‘Nothing. You should go now.’

‘You thought you saw something!’ he said, as if he had caught her out in a lie.

‘No.’ He lowered his cassock. What was the expression on his face, was it fear, loathing or hope? Perhaps all three of them, mixed together. With one snake-like movement he snatched
up the knife and buried the point of the blade into the wooden bench between her hands. ‘If this doesn’t work, I’ll be back. Don’t make a fool of me a second time. The
Martys never forget an insult.’

‘Just don’t tell anyone about this,’ she said.

‘Just our little secret,
òc
?’ He picked up his cloak from the fire and pulled it on. ‘Pray that I get well. For your sake, if not for mine.’

T
HE
BONS ÒMES
made their way up the hill through the narrow lanes of Saint-Ybars. People came out of their
houses to kneel down as they passed. Everyone knew days ago that they were coming. The
bayle
’s mother and old Gaston were dying and both had asked to be baptized with the
consolamentum
so that they would pass to the next world better prepared. The two priests would stay that night at the house of Pons the weaver, an honour he had keenly contested with three
other villagers.

No heretic priest might go unnoticed anywhere, least of all Guilhèm Vital. He was tall and angular, and the way he strode along, it suggested a man marching fearlessly to his doom. He was
clean-shaven and his long black hair hung about his shoulders. She imagined it might be how Jesus would have looked if he had Spanish blood in him. His companion – his
socius
–
was a head shorter and hurried to keep up with his long loping strides.

They both wore long black hooded robes, the colour of mourning, to display their grief at finding themselves in the Devil’s world. They carried with them on a roll of cord about their
necks, the Gospel of John, the only text sacred to them. They leaned on long staffs as they made their way up the hill.

They were priests, as Father Marty was a priest, but there she supposed the resemblance ended. The
bons òmes
never threatened any who did not believe in their teaching, and they
did not charge a fee for naming children or burying the dead. Nor did they live by tax or by tithe, only by the goodwill of the
crezens
– even the Catholics – who held them to be
good men.

The heretics believed in Jesus and the Gospel of John but not the cross; the mass, they said, was a sacrilege; the entire Roman Church was the work of Satan and the seat of all damnation. In
their preaching they pointed out that there was nothing in the testaments that allowed bishops to live more sumptuously than princes and wear furs and jewels. They themselves lived as itinerant
preachers, owned nothing and were paid nothing, refused even to carry a weapon in case they harmed someone by accident.

Their creed was this: all that was not spirit was doomed to destruction and merited no respect. Yet though they were hard with themselves, they were gentle with others; they allowed that not
everyone could live lives of such harsh discipline, and so all that was necessary to save the soul was to believe in their preaching – to be a
crezen
– to offer them respect, and
take the final right of baptism into the faith just before death.

Which was why so many villagers came out of their houses to prostrate themselves at their feet and ask their blessing as they passed. It was the first time heretics had come here since they had
lived in Saint-Ybars and Fabricia had not realized how many
crezens
there were, just in her village alone.

She watched, curious about them, and it was only at the last that she realized they were headed for her own
ostal
. Elionor, standing beside her, did not seem at all surprised at this
honour. Fabricia realized rather that her mother was expecting it and when she understood the reason her cheeks burned with humiliation.

Guilhèm Vital stopped at their door. Elionor sank to her knees. ‘Bless me, Father, and pray that I come to a good end.’

Guilhèm gave her his blessing and then looked at Fabricia, offering her the opportunity for the same. Fabricia pulled back her hood and lowered her head but did not ask for his
benediction. Like Anselm, she still thought of herself as a good Catholic, no matter what anyone said.

Elionor led the two priests inside and sat them down by the fire. She brought them water and a little bread. They ate little else, Fabricia had been told, never meat or wine, and they did not
fast just at Lent but all year round. You could tell that by the look of them.

It was strange to her to see someone break bread without first making the sign of the cross. Afterwards they knelt to pray the Our Father and when Elionor joined in, Fabricia fell to her knees
also. No harm in that, she thought, even though Papa wouldn’t like to see her do it.

‘So, you are the famous Fabricia?’ Guilhèm said at last. He held out his hand for her to come closer. His bony wrists were covered in a mat of dark hair. She had heard a lot
about him since they came to the mountains: his preaching, his prodigious energy, his skill as a healer. Physically, he was no more than a pale skeleton with piercing black eyes, though his
demeanour was at odds with his appearance for he had the manner of a kindly uncle. ‘Show me these wounds.’

Fabricia looked at her mother. ‘You have told people about this?’

‘Why do I need to tell anyone? They all talk enough already.’

‘Is this why they have come here?’

‘What was I to do? You won’t talk to me about it. Paire Guilhèm is the best doctor in the mountains. Everyone knows it.’

‘Give me your hands,’ Guilhèm said. ‘Come on, I won’t hurt you.’

Fabricia peeled off her gloves. Guilhèm unwound the scraps of cloth that Fabricia had used to bind them, taking great care. As he peeled back the bandage she heard his
socius
take
a sharp breath and look away.