Stigmata (12 page)

Guilhèm frowned. ‘You must be in great pain.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘But these wounds, they have pierced the palms almost through. How long have they been like this?’

When Fabricia did not answer he turned to Elionor.

‘When the weather grew warmer and she would not take off her gloves I was suspicious. That’s when I first knew. I don’t know how long before that.’

He brought her hand to his nose and breathed in. He seemed deeply puzzled. ‘But there is no rotting, no foul humours or excretions.’ He looked up at Fabricia. ‘How have you
kept this wound so clean?’

Fabricia tried to draw her hand away from him but he gripped her tight. For such a thin man he was very strong. ‘I don’t. I just keep some cloth bound on them to stop the blood
seeping.’

Guilhèm shook his head. ‘Your mother says you have an injury to both your feet as well. Show me.’

Fabricia sat on the bench and removed her boots. One of the cloths was bloodied. ‘This is impossible,’ the
socius
said.

Guilhèm seemed less perturbed. He placed one of her feet on to his lap and peered closely at it. ‘How do you walk?’

‘Sometimes it is difficult.’

‘Difficult? You should be crippled. How did you come by such injuries? Has someone abused you? Your father perhaps?’

‘Papa would never hurt me!’

‘Then who has done this?’

‘No one did it.’

‘Was it you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

Guilhèm looked at Elionor. ‘She has made these wounds herself.’

Fabricia twisted away and quickly rebound her feet. She felt her mother’s eyes burning into her.

‘This is what I believe also,’ Elionor said.

‘Believe what you want.’

‘There is no other explanation,’ Guilhèm said.

‘But why does she not have the rot and the fever?’

‘You are a healer?’ he said to Elionor, pointing to the herbs drying in bunches above the hearth and on the windows.

‘I make potions and restoratives when I am asked. I learned it from my mother and she learned from her mother before her.’

‘You have taught Fabricia?’

Elionor shook her head.

‘Then she must have watched you. She uses potions to clean the wounds. Yet I confess she must be very skilled, for they are deep. Her will is extraordinary for she must suffer a great deal
every day.’

‘My husband says these are the wounds of Jesus on the cross,’ Elionor said.

Guilhèm looked sad at this suggestion. ‘The cross. This terrible torture that the Whore of Babylon seeks to glorify. Your daughter has taken their lies too much to heart.’
Fabricia blanched. She had never grown accustomed to hearing these gentle men refer to the Pope as a whore.

He turned back to her. ‘The cross is not something you should revere.’

‘You think I want this, that I would do this to myself? Do you think I want everyone staring at me like I am a devil? Our Lady wanted this, not me!’

‘What lady?’ Guilhèm asked her. Such a gentle voice, such compelling eyes, it would be easy to confess everything to him, have him tell her it was all a young girl’s
fantasy. But she was almost nineteen years old now and she was not a girl any more.

Anyway, how could he possibly understand? For all their gentleness and piety the
bons òmes
were as convinced of their opinions as the priests.

She put on her boots and ran out of the house, down to the fields, to be alone.

E
LIONOR SHOVED THE
door to get it open; the rain had made the wood swell. Fabricia heard her climb the ladder to the
solier.
Earlier, she had gone to Pons’s
ostal
to hear Guilhèm preach.

She heard her father’s voice: ‘How many were there?’

‘Half the village.’

The fire was down to just embers, and it was the only light. The darkness seemed somehow to magnify every sound. She heard mice scuttle in the corners, and then her father whispered: ‘I
fear for your soul.’

‘They are good men, husband. You should listen to them.’

‘I have never doubted that they are good men.’

‘Good men and good priests. You could never say that about these other devils in cassocks. They don’t bleed us dry in tithes, they don’t keep prostitutes. In his own church
Guilhèm is like a bishop and he doesn’t live in a palace like that dog in Toulouse.’

‘Because they live good lives does not mean I must agree with all they say.’

‘They live as they preach. How else would you judge a man’s religion other than by what he does? Have you seen how that Father Marty makes eyes at Fabricia? He bleeds everyone dry,
him and his family. And you still want to call yourself a Catholic?’

There was a long silence, then: ‘Did you hear what happened in Toulouse? Someone murdered Peter of Castelnau.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘The Pope’s man, sent here from Rome. Someone stopped him on the road and butchered him.’

‘As if that would be a loss!’

‘Except that it is, for now the Pope blames Count Raymond for it. They say he will send a crusade against him, to punish him for harbouring men like Guilhèm. This is not a good time
to pronounce yourself a heretic,
mon coeur.
’

‘A crusade against Christians!’

‘Guilhèm may call himself a Christian but that is not what they say in Rome.’

‘Those whores!’

‘
Basta!
I won’t have you talk like this in my own house!’

‘Who’s going to harm us here in the mountains? Perhaps in Toulouse or Carcassonne. No one worries about those things up here. If they killed every heretic in Foix there would be no
one left.’

They fell silent. The wind whistled through the cracks in the door. Fabricia huddled deeper under the furs. She thought they had left off their arguing to sleep, but then a little while later it
started again.

‘Why did you have them here today? I told you I did not want those men in my house.’

‘I wanted them to look at Fabricia’s hands. He’s a healer, isn’t he, the best in the whole of Foix.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He thinks she made the wounds herself.’

‘What? Why would she do such a thing?’

‘How else do you explain it?’

‘He thinks she would torture herself? Your holy man is mad.’

‘He made her uncover her hands and feet. I almost fainted. It’s getting worse. I swear one of the wounds goes right through the flesh of her hand.’

‘You don’t think she is possessed? Mengarda was possessed. She had the falling sickness, frothed at the mouth when the Devil was in her.’

‘There is all this talk about Bernart in the village. He says he saw great bolts of lightning shoot out of her hands when she touched him.’

Lightning? Fabricia thought. Had he really said that or had people made it up? All she did was help the old man to his feet. She pulled the furs over her head, opened her mouth and screamed
silently into the dark. She didn’t want to hear any more.

‘. . . they say I would have died too if she had not laid her hands on me. Is it true? Did you see her do something to me?’

‘She prayed for you and held you, just like I did. That was all.’

‘You know, these wounds she has, they are the same as the wounds Our Lord bore on the cross.’

There was a long silence and Fabricia held her breath. Then her mother’s voice: ‘Guilhèm says that God cannot die and that Jesus was just a good man come to help us. He says
the cross is the Devil’s sign because it is about the power of Rome, not the power of God and –’

‘I don’t want to hear any more of your blasphemy in this house!’

The wind sent the linen curtain flapping and a full moon swept from behind the clouds. Fabricia held her hands towards the light. She wore gloves now, even to bed. ‘Let this pass,’
she murmured. ‘If I truly have the power to heal wounds, let me heal my own. Oh Lady, Saint of Sinners, have some pity.’

‘What are we going to do?’ she heard her mother say.

‘I don’t know,
mon coeur
. When we were in Toulouse she said that she wanted to take orders. I was against it then, but perhaps it is the only answer. It is the only place she
might be safe.’

You see? Fabricia thought. There only ever was one choice. I don’t know why I was chosen for this, but when God points his finger at you, you cannot slink away into a corner and hide.
Perhaps he died on the cross, perhaps he didn’t; all I know is he sent the lady in blue to set me apart, and now all I can do is try and bear it.

A
LL THOSE WHO
had gone to Pons’s house to listen to Guilhèm Vital preach now huddled into the little church
outside the
portal
to attend the mass, alongside all of those who had not. On Sunday everyone was a Christian. Some of them, she heard her father say, fished from both banks; they bowed to
the
bons òmes
and asked for their blessing but confessed to the priest as well in case there was a Judgement and Jesus really did drag their mouldy bones from the grave to answer for
themselves.

It was raining for the third day in succession and freedmen and the poor were all crowded in, shivering in their thin woollen cloaks and wooden clogs. The stink of bodies and wet wool was
overpowering. The fog of incense only made it worse, making a sweet church stink that made Fabricia’s head ache and her eyes smart.

Father Marty droned an incomprehensible babble of Latin. No one paid him much attention. Some barrowmen at the back had brought their dogs, and the miller’s wife was gossiping to her
neighbour as if they were in the marketplace. The young men of the village wandered in and out, flirting with Pons’s daughters and making remarks among themselves.

Elionor made the sign of the cross as Father Marty held up the host. ‘Here’s my forehead, here’s my chin, here’s my ear, here’s the other one.’ Her neighbour
snickered. Anselm glared at them both.

After they shared the body of Christ they sang a prayer of thanksgiving, and then filed out of the church, escaping into a bitter morning. The wind blew and water poured down the gullies in the
lanes, turning them into sticky mud that dragged at your boots and sucked them off your feet if you did not take care. Outside the
portal
a dead crow lay drowned in the ditch. A bad
omen.

They joined the rest of the village in the ragged procession back up the hill. They pulled their hoods over their faces to keep out the cold.

A woman trudged after them. It was Mengarda, Father Marty’s latest mistress. Fabricia knew from the look on her face that she meant trouble. She was a sulky creature with swollen,
over-ripe lips. She walks upside down, she had heard her mother say to her father once when she thought she could not hear. She never smiled at anyone, just stared with those hooded eyes as if
everyone was talking about her. Which she supposed they were. The village liked to talk and Father Marty’s latest mistress was as good a subject of conversation as any.

‘
Es vertat?
’ she said, falling into step beside them. Is it true?

‘Is what true?’Anselm growled.

‘Paire Marty says you healed his leg.’

Anselm stopped walking and stared at her, then at Fabricia. ‘What is this?’ he said to Elionor.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

‘He said she put her hand on his thigh,’ Mengarda said. ‘There was a canker there, it had been there for months, growing larger every day. But the next morning it was
gone.’

Fabricia wondered whether to believe her. Was it just another of Father Marty’s rumours, designed to bring her down? What about their pact?
Just our little secret,
òc
?
Could it be true, did she have some special magic? No, this was surely just some game he was playing with her still.

Fabricia looked at Anselm and Elionor. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What is it you’re sorry for exactly? Is it true what she is saying?’ Anselm said.

She did not know how to answer. She had not told them about his visit because she did not want her father to be drawn into a conflict with Marty, to be run out of another town because of her.
And besides, what was there to tell?

‘I didn’t do anything,’ she said.

‘That’s not what he says,’ Mengarda crowed. ‘It’s not what he’s telling everyone!’ It was a vicious thing to say – it was meant to be. Was
Mengarda really that jealous of him, did she really think Fabricia would lay her hand on that devil’s thigh because she wanted it there?

Mengarda turned and ran back down the hill through the mud. Anselm pulled the hood around his face. Another man, she thought, another father, might have beaten her until she was blue. She had
shamed him yet again. Only Jesus made miracles, not a stonemason’s daughter.

Another of the villagers approached. It was Bernart. He fell down on his knees in front of her. Poor simpleton, he really believed what they had told him, that she had brought him back to life.
‘Please don’t,’ she murmured, but he could not hear her and even if he had, it was too late.

‘God bless you,’ he said and laid at her feet two skinned rabbits and three larks.

‘What’s this?’ Anselm said. ‘We need no one’s charity.’

‘It is my thanks to your daughter for bringing me back to life,’ Bernart said, and he, too, hurried away; no boys to chase him now, or to taunt him about his crook-back or his limp.
He was their miracle and they owned him as sacred.

Elionor picked up the basket and trudged back up the hill. Fabricia and Anselm followed. Elionor did not say a word until they reached their
ostal
and then all she said was: ‘Will
you feed the pig for me?’ She went inside. Usually feeding the pig was something they did together. But Fabricia was an exile now, so she had best get used to doing things alone.

A
NOTHER FILTHY MORNING
: the false spring of a few weeks before had given way to drenching rain. The clouds lowered from the
mountains and for days at a time they could not see the sky above or the valley below.

It rained as if the world was about to end and the crowded lanes of Saint-Ybars turned into a brown porridge of mud. The pig huddled miserably under the eaves and rainwater toppled in rivulets
from the walls of the châtelet. Mostarda did not move from the fire.