Stigmata (13 page)

Fabricia heard Anselm descend the ladder from the
solier,
put on his boots and a heavy leather cloak to keep off the worst of the rain. He pulled open the door and she waited for the slam
as he shut it behind him, for on these wet mornings the wood swelled and made it difficult to close.

Time for her to get up and light the fire. A flurry of wind flapped at the oilcloth across the window and moaned under the door. She huddled under the furs, delaying just a little longer under
the warm bearskins.

Anselm walked back into the house, stamped across the floor and drew aside the heavy curtain that separated her bed from the kitchen.

It was still dark and hard to see his face, but she knew from his voice that something was very wrong. ‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘You had better come and see this.’

Fabricia dressed quickly. Anselm lit an oil lamp and went to the door. Elionor was awake now, too; she heard her moving about in the
solier.

‘What is it, Papa?’

‘See for yourself,’ he said.

He swung open the door.

It seemed as if half the village was out there in the lane. Some carried oil lamps, and these ones she recognized: the tailor’s mother, the one who was blind, leaning on her son’s
arm; a man from the next village she knew only as Pèire, with his family on the back of a donkey cart; Pons’s son, with his wasted leg; a shoemaker called Simon, the one with the
mulberry birthmark that covered half his face.

When they saw her, there was a murmur of anticipation. Several of them called out to her. They started to surge forward and Anselm slammed the door.

‘What are you going to do?’ he said.

Elionor came down the ladder and gripped Anselm’s arm. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Our daughter is famous.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Every invalid and unfortunate in the whole of Foix is camped outside our door. They think Fabricia here can do miracles.’

The oil lamp threw crazy shadows on the walls.

‘What should I do?’ Fabricia said.

Anselm made the sign of the cross. He looked at his wife. ‘Well?’

‘Please, Mama
,
I can’t help them. Look, I can’t even heal my own sores!’ She held out her hands.

‘You have started something here,’ he said, ‘and I do not know where it will end.’

‘Lay hands on them if that is what they wish,’ Elionor said, more gently. ‘What else can you do? If we send them away they will only follow you around the village.’

‘Just tell me one thing,’ Anselm said. ‘What happened between you and Father Marty?’

‘He came here one morning, to our
domus
while Mama was at the market. I thought he wanted – you know what I am going to say. Instead he showed me the canker on his leg and
told me I must heal him.’

‘Now the devil has told everyone in the county,’ Elionor said. ‘There’s gratitude.’

‘I do not pretend to know how that bastard’s mind works,’ Anselm said. He turned back to his daughter. ‘What magic have you learned here?’

‘There is no magic. I prayed for him, but silently, that is all. Just the words of the Our Father. I did not feel anything for his condition, not as I did for poor Bernart, and I did not
plead with God as I did when you were there on the bench, and I thought you would die. I did not heal the hunchback and I did not heal you. And I do not believe I healed Father Marty
either.’

‘Maybe you did heal him, maybe you didn’t,’ Elionor said. ‘The secrets of his groin are vouchsafed only to Mengarda. For now, anyway.’

Anselm peered through a crack in the door. ‘I don’t know what we should do. Look at them! The sick, the lame, the bald – they will all be outside our door soon. Then the Bishop
of Toulouse will hear of it and who knows where it will end. Here, child, don’t look so miserable!’ He dragged her into his arms and held her. She buried her face in the rough wet
leather of his cloak. She wished she could stay there for ever.

‘Let me take orders, Papa. It is the only thing for it now.’

He nodded. All the fight had gone out of him. ‘You remember that day in Toulouse, the thunderstorm? That was when this all started. Something happened. What is it that God wants with my
daughter? Why you?’ But it was a question he did not expect an answer to. ‘Shall I fetch them inside?’

In they came, all through the morning. She did not believe it would make any difference to any of them. Her mother sat by the fire watching, her face pale with dread, as
Fabricia laid her gloved hands on filmy eyes, on withered arms, on swollen and crippled knees, on thin, wheezing children. One old man complained he could no longer satisfy his wife, but she would
not put her hand
there.
She made him kneel and placed her hands on his head instead.

More arrived through the morning, as word spread of what was happening, and it was dinner before she was done. Afterwards, she felt utterly exhausted, as if she had spent the whole day working
in the fields in the hot sun. Finally alone, Fabricia lay down on her bed and slept. It was dark when she woke and her father was standing over her, staring at her hands. Her gloves were soaked in
blood.

Cathédrale de Saint-Gilles
Toulouse, 18 June 1209

T
O THE GREATER
glory of God: the saints in the tympana and the portals of the great cathedral, vivid in polychrome, watched
the humiliation of their prince and were vindicated in their unwavering belief.

Simon could not see him through the crowd but he knew that at this moment he knelt on the steps between the two gilt lions, where the reliquaries had been laid. Those old bones now had more
power than him.

To the greater glory of God: he passed beneath the frescoes in the nave, painted the colours of dark blood and bright blue, under silk banners threaded with jade and ochre and royal gold.

This was how he imagined heaven on the Day of Judgement. Incense hung in the air like a fog, mingled with the taint of the mildewed vestments and the press of people. The cathedral was lit by a
thousand candles, each one reflected a thousand times in the gilt of the grails on the altar and the saints in the transepts. But there was no choir, not today; Raymond entered in silence, save for
murmurs of astonishment or satisfaction.

To the greater glory of God: nothing will be the same after this.

Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, once brother in law to the King of England himself, entered by the western portal. He wore no jewels, and there were no knights to guard his person; he was stripped
to the waist like a penitent, just a frightened old man with a beard carrying a candle. All of Toulouse had seen it now; they said almost the entire city had tried to pack into the square
outside.

A tepid sun was refracted through the high windows of the clerestory, touching fire to the gold of the vestments and mitres of the three archbishops who had come to accept his obeisance. Simon
took his place at the shoulder of the Bishop of Toulouse, himself just one of a score of bishops crowded on to the altar to witness this moment.

The crowd parted and he caught his first glimpse of the most powerful man in Toulouse, in all of the Albigeois: he was scrawny, with pale flesh and a nest of grey hair on his breastbone. He wore
a cord around his neck to signify his contrition.

The crowd spilled into the church behind him like a human tide, craning their heads and pushing for a view of this astonishing moment. The Archbishop himself followed him up the aisle, wielding
a scourge made from birch twigs. There were livid red weals on the old man’s back. It was not merely a ritual flogging; he had made the blood run.

The punishment was completed there on the altar. So much for the worldly power of a prince when confronted with the infinite majesty of God, Simon thought. Through the mitres and tonsured heads
he glimpsed Lord Raymond’s silver hair hanging lank around his face. His eyes were empty, his skin grey. He felt sorry for him. The press of people inside the church made it impossible for
Raymond to return the way he had come. The Archbishop hastily conferred with his attendants and Raymond was ushered down into the crypt, to make a shabby departure through the underground vaults.
He would have to pass the tomb of the papal legate whose murder had brought him to this pass. As soon as he was gone everyone started to whisper at once; a murmur of astonishment spread out, from
altar to nave, nave to narthex, then like a wave through the great west doors to the square, from the centre of Toulouse to the whole of Christendom.

Raymond had been protector and champion to heretics, and because of it the Pope had brought this once proud prince to his knees. There was no doubting the primacy of Jesus Christ now. Innocent
had put God’s enemies on notice, Simon thought. We will not tolerate heresy any longer, we have been patient long enough.

From the moment some hothead skewered the legate Peter of Castelnau this was inevitable. Raymond might think tolerance a virtue, but this Pope did not, God be praised. The sheep must be brought
back to the fold.

He felt a thrill of anticipation. He was on the razor’s edge of history, at the vanguard of God’s legions. The angels were watching him. He would yet prove himself to heaven and
obliterate his past sins. He was sure of that.

A
FEW DAYS
later, Simon was summoned to the scriptorium. He expected to be confronted by the prior, and wondered what
infraction of the Rule he might have committed that would bring reprimand. But when he went in, the man sitting in the prior’s chair was a complete stranger. He wore the white woollen robes
of a canon and the black travelling capes of a Spanish priest. It identified him as a friar preacher, a follower of Guzmán. He was tonsured and around his neck he wore a large silver cross.
His neat beard was flecked with silver. The prior himself stood by the window, looking down into the garden. When Simon entered he said: ‘I shall leave you to your conversations,’ and
went out.

Simon was taken aback. The preacher did not rush to explain himself; he had the air of a man rather careworn and tired, a bookkeeper overwhelmed with figures in a ledger. Simon was not fooled by
his mild demeanour. He had seen him at work.

‘My name is Father Diego Ortiz. I am a brother at the Cistercian monastery at Fontfroide,’ the friar said.

‘I know, I have seen you before.’

The friar raised an eyebrow.

‘Here in Toulouse. You were preaching outside the church of Saint-Étienne.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Four years.’

A suspicion of a smile. ‘You remember?’

How could I forget? he thought. It was the summer I met Fabricia Bérenger. ‘It left an impression on me.’

‘Good,’ the friar said. ‘Come and sit.’

There was a single wooden chair opposite the simple trestle table where the friar sat. Simon settled himself.

‘I know a little about you, also,’ the friar said. ‘Your father is a wool merchant in Carcassonne. You have four brothers, older, and they are all merchants like your father,
and they attend mass regularly. Your father showed his gratitude to God for his bounty by offering his youngest son and his services to the Church. Are you sorry for that?’

‘Never,’ Simon said, and hoped he sounded convincing.

‘A man can do worse than dedicate his life to the salvation of men’s souls.’

‘Of all my brothers I consider myself the most fortunate.’

‘You have been satisfied with the education the Church has afforded you?’

‘I mastered the trivium of grammar, rhetoric and logic and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. I have studied Ovid and Horace, Euclid and Cicero, and the
Organon
of Aristotle. At twenty-one I was invited to teach philosophy at the University of Toulouse. I am now the Master of Students. I am also personal assistant to the prior, overseeing
the administration of all buildings and finances here in Toulouse.’

‘I see you occasionally allow yourself the sin of pride.’

Simon lowered his eyes. He should be more careful of his tongue with this one in future.

‘What do you know of Dominic Guzmán?’

‘I know that he enjoys a very great reputation for sanctity. I understand he has spent the last four years living off alms and preaching the Word of God with nothing but a Book of Hours
and his own considerable faith to sustain him. I also believe that at times he has slept by the roadside and been forced to endure the taunts and abuse of the godless.’

‘I see you have followed his ministry closely. What else do you know?’

‘That he has entered into countless public debates with the heretic priests called Cathars to try and bring them back to the true faith. I heard that he once called the Abbot of
Cîteaux a wolf in sheep’s clothing and told him, to his face, that if he wanted to win converts he would not do it from the back of his horse with his jewels and his women following in
the carriage behind. I understand that he wishes for us priests to lead by example, and lead lives of chastity and obedience once more.’

The preacher nodded. ‘You admire his work?’

‘Very much. If I were in his place, I should allow myself the sin of pride.’

A flicker of a smile. ‘There are a number of us who share your good opinion of him, who have, in fact, become his disciples, if you like. I myself met him six years ago, in Montpellier. I
have been devoted to his cause ever since.’ He stood up and went to the window. ‘Before you came in, the prior was sharing this view with me. He told me that the garden down there is a
perfect symbol of God’s perfection. The rectangle of paving around it represents the created world; the cross formed by the paving stones that dissect it are the four branches of the cross;
the fountain at its centre, the water reflecting the sky, is how the earth should reflect the peace of heaven.’ Simon saw the fire return to his eyes, that same passion he had witnessed in
the marketplace four years before. ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. This is the task we are charged with, Brother Simon Jorda.’