The Passion of Dolssa (2 page)

My mother turned pale. She pulled me into her chamber under pretense of wrapping a scarf around me.

“Daughter, hear me quickly,” she said. “Answer as little as possible. Don’t upset them. Say nothing about your preaching, and certainly nothing about your beloved.”

I would have none of this. Who were they, that I should fear them?

“Speak only as you are,” was her warning. “A modest and true Christian maiden. Be humble. Be still.”

“But Mamà,” I said, “why would I be otherwise?”

“My darling,” she pleaded. “You don’t fear them, but you should. Inquisitors have made Count Raimon send hundreds of heretics to the fires. Their verdicts—not even he dares resist them. Not anymore.” She rested her forehead against mine. “You were too young to know all that happened during the war years, and even since. Your papà and I shielded you from it as best we could.”

I was aghast. “What has that to do with me, Mamà? I’m no heretic! Is that what you believe of me?”

“Hush!” Mamà glanced at the door. “Of course you’re not. You know how I feel. But you
are
different. You are . . .” She hesitated. “Your words
give you authority. You have believers. This is something the inquisitors can’t ignore.”

“My beloved does not fear them, nor keep silence,” I told her.

The waiting priest tapped at the door. We both felt caught. Mamà’s whisper became an urgent breath in my ear. “Youth makes you bold. Love makes you trusting. But it is madness to provoke these inquisitors. They will not like what you say about your love. Not when you’re so young, and a girl.”

I waited for her to finish. There was no point in vexing her. But she knew she had lost.

“God knows I will stand by you, come what may.” Her grip upon my arms was tight. “For my sake, guard your tongue to guard your life, my daughter.”

DOLSSA DE STIGATA, THE ACCUSED

Testimony recorded by Lucien

T
HE
C
LOISTER OF THE
A
BBEY
C
HURCH OF
S
ANT
S
ARNIN
, T
OLOSA

ou wish to speak with me, Friar Lucien? Prior Pons? My priest said you wished to ask me questions.

I have seen you, Friar, in the street. You pass by our house often.

Tell me, what is it like to live in a convent? To take holy vows along with others? I’ve often wondered.

My mother prayed and planned for me to enter the cloister. The thought was sweet, in a way. But my beloved told me my path was different. Silence does not serve his purpose for my life. He asks me to tell others about our love.

All right. You shall ask the questions, and I will answer.

Oc,
I reject all heresy and false belief, and cling to the true Catholic faith.

Oc
, I swear to tell the full and exact truth about myself and others, living or dead.

Non,
I have never seen a heretic. I do not know any of the
bons omes
nor
bonas femnas
that are called heretics. I have lived a very sheltered life in my parents’ home.
Non
, I have never listened to their preaching, nor helped them, nor fed them, nor carried gifts for them. How could I? I rarely even leave my house, Friar.

I am eighteen years old.

My name, as you well know, is Dolssa de Stigata. My father was Senhor Gerald de Stigata. He was a knight. He died five years ago last spring. My mother is Na Pitrella Braida de Stigata. I live with her and our few servants in my father’s ancestral home here in Tolosa.

I, preach?

In my home,
oc
. I have shared my thoughts with relatives and friends on a few occasions.

That is where you heard me? Through a window. You saw me.

I preach that my beloved Christ is the ardent lover of all souls. That he stands beckoning to all God’s children, to come taste of his goodness. To be one with him, as he is one with me.

Why
do I preach this? Good friar-preacher, you who wear the mantle of Blessed Dominic the Preacher, I could ask the same of you!

Oc
. In this room, questions are yours to ask.

I preach because my beloved calls me to. My one desire is to shine his love into the world.

What?

Oh!

Oc
, since you ask, I’m laughing. How can I not? You wondered, how do I know the devil hasn’t tricked me? I can only answer, if it is the devil who teaches people to trust in the love of Jhesus, then what, I wonder, should we call men of the cloth like you?

Far less impertinent, good friar, than you calling my beloved a devil. Remember who my beloved is.

Plainly, friar, I am a
femna
, and yet I speak. I do as my beloved urges me to do. Who shall forbid what my beloved commands?

Oc
, Sant Paul said it was a shame for women to speak in church, but I do not speak in church. I worship in church, and I speak in my own home, as a Christian woman is free to do.

But
oc
, you guess rightly. If my beloved bid me to speak in church, I would do it. My beloved is greater than Sant Paul. Surely, you would not argue that an apostle’s words are greater than the Lord’s? The apostles didn’t listen to Santa Maria Magdalena, either, though she was right when she told them she had seen her Lord risen from the tomb.

You accuse me of heresy.

Oc
, I am listening. I’ll give you my answer.

I can no more retract or deny what I have said about my beloved than I could choose to stop breathing. Against my will, breath would flow into my lungs; against your will, speech will flow from them also. If you seek to silence me, I will only cry more urgently. My beloved’s praise will not go unsung, not so long as I have breath.

Oc
, I know who you are. I know what you claim you can do to me.

How can I fear you with my beloved beside me? His arm is mightier than all flesh, and I know he will protect me.

BOTILLE

struga picked, of course, the worst time possible to tell me.

We wore our hair dandled up in rags to keep it off our hot necks, allowing the sun to burn our sweaty skin. Our oldest, flimsiest skirts we had pulled snug between our legs and pinned to our backs. There we were, thigh-deep in juice, stomping, squashing, mashing the cool, slimy grapes under our heels and deliciously through our toes, while the harvesters clapped and laughed and sang to Focho de Capa’s
fidel
. It was a party. A frolic. And a bit of an exhibition. Astruga’s thighs—purple, even—were nothing to be ashamed of, and as for mine, skin was skin, wasn’t it? The sky was blue, the air was hot, the sea breeze stirring our little
vila
of Bajas was playful, and the splashing new wine was sweet on my lips, its perfume rich enough to knock me over and drown me happily in the old winepress.

And that was when Astruga told me she was pregnant.

Not in so many words, of course.

“Look at the buffoons.” Sweat rolled in rivers off her wine-red cheeks. Jacme and Andrio had linked their beefy, sun-tanned arms and were now swinging each other in idiotic loops, bawling out their song, while the other men slapped themselves and howled, and the married women shrieked with laughter. Jacme and Andrio were great laughers, those two.

“They’re a pair, all right,” I said. My thighs ached from all the stomping, but the music compelled us onward. I’d waited ages for my turn in the press. I wasn’t about to flag now.

Astruga showed no signs of slowing. She leaped like a salmon through her sea of sticky wine. Always a restless one, Astruga. “I need one.”

Maire Maria! She needed a man. Today, not tomorrow. I sighed. Harvest frolics were known for this. All those
tozẹts
with their lusty eyes upon her, her buoyant chest bouncing practically into her eyeballs, and her skirts tucked up and pinned over her bottom . . . Of course she would feel herself in a mood to pick one of these young men, like a grape off the vine, and crush him against the roof of her mouth.

Across Na Pieret di Fabri’s neat vineyards, chestnut trees blazed with fall color, while dark, narrow cypress pines stood sentinel. Past the trees was the village proper, Bajas, crowning its round hilltop like a bald man’s hat, and beyond it, the brilliant blue lagoon of the sea, my sea, that cradled and fed tiny Bajas, and connected her to the entire world.

Paradise had stiff competition in our corner of Creation.

Jacme chose that moment to scoop a handful of pulpy juice out of the vat and pour it down his throat. Purple dribbles bled into his stubbly beard. He winked at us, and old Na Pieret de Fabri, whose vineyards these were, whacked him harmlessly with her hat.

I looked at all our sweaty purple
tozẹts
. Great overgrown boys they were, though I supposed I must call them men. “After we’re done, you can take your pick of
omes
.”

“Botille,” Astruga said, her smile still as bright, “I need to speak with you.”

I lowered my weary leg and caught my breath. I knew what those words meant.

Astruga capered like a baby goat, kicking up her heels and splashing wine into the open, leering mouths of the
tozẹts
dancing around the vat. And now I knew why, why she’d bribed Ramunda, whose turn in the winepress it ought to have been, to give her this chance to bounce and spin in her purple skin for all Bajas to see. She needed a husband, and fast. Perhaps, she had reasoned, if she played today well, she could find herself one.

Or I could. For that was my job in Bajas. Most
tozas
helped the family business of catching fish or harvesting salt. Some spun wool or silk; others wove baskets, or helped their papàs and mamàs fashion clay pots. Countless others grew vegetables and tied and trimmed grapevines.

But I, I caught suitors, harvested bridegrooms, wove dowries, fashioned courtships, grew families, and tied and trimmed the unruly passions of our
hot-blooded young people into acceptable marriages. I brought them all to Dominus Bernard’s altar in the end. Only sometimes, as now, with a baby on the way, I did not have the luxury of time to plot and plan.

I watched Astruga’s eyes linger on Jacme’s broad face.

“Jacme?” I whispered.

She shrugged. “He’ll do.”

I danced a little closer to her. “Is it he?”

She looked away, and shook her head.

I danced in a circle around her. If she wanted my help, she’d best not turn her eyes away from me. “Who is the father?”

She turned the other way, like a naughty little
toza
who won’t confess to stealing the honey.

“Tell me,” I pressed. “I have ways of making the father marry you.” And I did. My sisters and I—we had ways all our own.

The high flush in Astruga’s cheeks cooled. “Not this time, Botille.”

Ah. He was married already, then. Well, no matter; Astruga was young and fresh. Weren’t all the
tozẹts
adoring her even now? This would be easy for me.

“Are you working on another match right now?”

“Maybe.”

“If you marry off that cow Sapdalina before me, I swear, I’ll claw her eyes out.”

It
was
Sapdalina’s troth I was working on, and while I wouldn’t call her a cow, per se, she was a challenging case. At least she wasn’t pregnant.

“That would hardly be fair to Sapdalina,” I observed.

Her angry face fell. “Oh, please, Botille. I’ll do anything. You’ve got to help me.”

Astruga’s skirt came unpinned and sank into the wine. She squealed and snatched it up, then thrust the soiled cloth into her mouth to suck out the blood-dark juice. Just then the church bells rang, and she let the skirt fall once more.

I looked toward the village, with its white stone walls, its rising houses ready to teeter and topple one another, and the brown square bell tower of the church of Sant Martin.

She’d shown me what, if I hadn’t had a head full of wine and
fidel
tunes, my instincts should have smelled before Astruga had even spoken a word. The fruit growing in her vineyard was planted by a handsome rake, a
delightful talker, a charmer if ever there was one, and the source of all my best clients. I owed him, really. Already a growing list of roly-poly babies had him as the
papà
they would never know.