The Passion of Dolssa (22 page)

Foolish hope, to think this stranger could alter nature!

“Try, Dolssa,” I pleaded. “Ask. I know you can.”

Dolssa took a timid step forward. “My beloved could heal your sister,” she whispered. “If he were here, I could ask him.”

Plazi’s face was frantic. “Your beloved is a
medicus
?”

“No, Plazi.” I watched Dolssa’s face. “Her beloved is Senhor Jhesus.”

Dolssa stared at me.
How did you know?
Her face demanded an answer. I wasn’t sure how I knew. It came to me. Just as thoughts had done when I first met Dolssa by the Aude.

“God in heaven, it’s true.” Plazensa’s eyes, watching Dolssa, were wide as moons. She shook herself. “What do you mean, if he were
here
, then . . . ?”

Dolssa’s face was full of pain. “Once, he was always with me,” she said. “Since my mother died, and I fled Tolosa, I’ve not seen his face.”

“You saw Jhesus’s
face
?”

Dolssa nodded. “I did, then. I told others of it. It’s why the friars hate me so.” She wiped her eyes. “But I don’t see him anymore.”

“Why not?” asked Plazensa.

Dolssa’s fists were full of nightgown cloth. “I don’t know.” Her voice sounded like a young child’s. “Perhaps my fear, my anger, or my grief displeased him. My cowardice.”

Tears dripped off my face onto Sazia’s burning cheeks and melted away from her heat. Dolssa would do nothing. My anger roiled. Her beloved was nothing. My last hope was nothing.

“Nonsense.” I wept. “If so, your precious beloved is a monster.”

Dolssa took a step back. “Am I asleep? Am I in a dream of hell?” Her mouth hardened. “How dare you speak such words to me?”

“He is!” I said. “What kind of love is so fickle, so cruel as that?”

“Botille, you blaspheme,” Plazensa said. “At such a time as this, when we need a miracle, must you offend God?”

“Not God,” I snapped. “Just this princess, who’s never known a day’s suffering, who’s too fond of her maiden weakness to do something to help.”

“How dare you?”

Dolssa’s nostrils flared. Her lip curled in noble disdain. No more the fragile, dying bird at my feet, she’d become the lordly maiden once more, and I the peasant at
her
feet. It was a punch in my gut. And all the while, Sazia wilted in my arms.

“Watch your mother burn,” Dolssa cried. “Be hunted like a wild pig across the countryside. Then speak to me of suffering.”

I should’ve been ashamed. I didn’t care. My words had fangs, and I was glad of it.

“You listen to me, Donzȩlla Dolssa. Fair damsel, crying for her love.” I bit each syllable. “No knight rides in to rescue you. You stand before me today because
I
found you fading, but I would not let you die. And I will not let my sister die, either.”

We stared at each other. Plazensa, watching us both, threw up her hands, then fell at Sazia’s feet to pray. I watched her curls sway as she shook with crying.

Oh
Dieu
. What was the point? Why terrorize this girl? She couldn’t do anything. No one could. All was lost, and trying was pointless. A weary heaviness fell over me.

I watched Dolssa.
She’s not really so proud,
I thought.
She’s just afraid.
And I’d been a beast.

“Dolssa,” I said more gently. “Dominus Bernard says Jhesus is everywhere. Whether you see him or not. So ask. Please.”

Dolssa stood deathly still.

“Ask!” I shrieked.

Dolssa’s eyes slid shut. Her lips began to murmur soft words. Sazia’s weight pressed heavily into my arms as we waited, waited, waited.

Her words unceasing, her eyes still closed, Dolssa reached forward and enveloped Sazia’s puffy hand between her own frail hands. My sister’s swollen flesh seemed taut between her fingertips. Her breathing became more shallow. Her skin went cold. I pressed my face against hers and wept.

I opened my eyes and saw a man’s shape in the doorway.
Dolssa’s beloved.

Then I realized. It was Jobau, watching his daughter die.

Plazensa cried out. I looked. A creeping flood of foul discharge burst from Sazia’s hand, from the dark red cat’s bite. Plazi stood back in horror,
but Dolssa never moved, though the putrid filth flowed across her fingers as well.

Sazia shuddered in my arms, then inflated like a bellows as she drew a gulping breath. The last of the blood-tinged fluid left her hand. My baby
s
rre
opened her eyes.

Plazensa shrieked and plastered Sazia’s face with kisses. I held her close and rocked her back and forth.

“Get off me,” grumbled Sazia. “What are you all going on about? Can’t a body sleep?”

Plazi and I sobbed, and laughed. We sobbed some more, then beamed at each other, and at Dolssa. She backed away awkwardly. Plazi hurried over and knelt at Dolssa’s feet to bathe her hands.

“Dolssa de Stigata,” Plazensa whispered. “Never till we die will we forget this gift.”

It was a moment when words were demanded of me, but I had none to give. Dolssa’s eyes lingered on me, but I couldn’t speak.

I lay in bed that night, listening to Sazia breathe. My morbid mind still churned through all that could have happened, what might have been. Sazia dying in my arms. Her precious heart gone still. Her fevered skin grown cold. What would I say? What would we do? Who would dig my sister’s grave?

But
non
, praise the
bon Dieu
! She was here. She had not died. Her death was the fevered work of waking terrors. She was well and whole. Rescued by the mercy of my poor little bird’s beloved.

I thought of Dolssa, across the hall. Did she sleep? What does one do after working a miracle? Go look for something to eat?

I thought of her wounded feet and her wide, dark eyes.

How I’d mistreated her. I ought to have been ashamed of myself.

She was just one girl. Yet the Lord God Almighty was in her fingertips.

Did I truly believe that?

God in our tavern, hearing Jobau curse! We’d be struck down for certain. Almighty God, entering our lives by pure happenstance. I, who peddled in ale, and wine, and brides—how could—why would—such holiness cross paths with
me
?

LUCIEN DE SAINT-HONORE

ucien pressed through a dark and clawing wood, fleeing a voice that called his name. Fear filled his veins. His breath, too loud in his throat, would surely betray him.

She came to him tonight, not as the hunted one but as the hunter. He quickened his steps, yet on she came, finding him by scent and not sight.

Now she was behind him, in a clearing. Her gaze prickled on his skin while the moon pulsed overhead.

He turned and saw her slowly approach him, step after step.

She had come to him in a soft robe of black and red. It fell open, and he gazed unwillingly, then willingly, into the whiteness of her breast. Her hair slipped from its confinements and blossomed over her shoulders, her hips, sliding over her face like clouds obscuring the moon.

As her face drew nearer to his, her hair parted, and her red lips opened and reached for his.

She stripped him of whatever possession he could once claim over his own flesh. She robbed him of his vows, his very will. She compelled him to reach forward and kiss and touch.

And in the taste of her kiss was a sweet liqueur. The wine of desire, the elixir of falsehood. This was the spreading of untruth, from lip to loins to heart. A warning.

The devil laughed, but Lucien—the flesh—succumbed.

Lucien woke in the dark on his mat of straw in the monks’ dormitory at the Convent of the Brotherhood of Sant Esteve, drowning. He feared for his soul. He felt he might vomit. What he’d done could never be undone. Once lost, his innocence was lost forever. The shame, the stain—how could he ever look Prior Pons in the face? And what of his holy calling? He’d betrayed Christ’s love for him—Christ, whose all-seeing eye penetrated the heart.

Around him the brothers of the convent of St. Stephen slumbered, some noisily.

Sleep. Oh, praise the
bon Dieu
. He’d been asleep. None of it had happened.

It was only a dream.

Sweet relief flooded his limbs. He was as pure as ever. No stain could be affixed to him by the phantasms of sleep. He clutched his innocence about him as a cloak.

But that girl, that unholy
femna
, that cursed heretic who kept slipping through his clutches! Even now, wide awake, he felt her slim, carnal fingers unbutton his cloak of innocence and worm their way inside to the unruly flesh beneath. Their touch burned his skin.

Stop it,
he told himself.
The dream is only metaphor.

She symbolized all that would ruin Christendom. Ruin
him
. Consume
him
. Devour him with her blood-red mouth of lies and lusts and burnings.

He
would
be clean, even if the struggle killed him. So
she
must be the one to die.

He breathed deeply to calm his mind. He would remain with the Brotherhood of Sant Esteve until Prior Pons’s letter arrived. Though the trail had all but gone cold—though he’d lost days when that lying Jew had sent him south along the Aude, instead of east—though Satan’s servants thwarted him at every turn—the sea, he felt sure, would lead him to the heretic. But he’d been gone so long, perhaps too long, chasing a bird on the wing, and he needed approval from his prior to continue his search for Dolssa de Stigata. He would wait for it more vigilantly now.

More awake to danger.

PRIOR PONS DE SAINT-GILLES

ishop Raimon de Fauga waited in the empty vestibule of the magnificent Romanesque basilica of Sant Sarnin in Tolosa after vespers. During the ending processional, he had seen Prior Pons de Saint-Gilles seated like a mere parishioner in a bench at the rear of the sanctuary. The bishop waited for him to exit, but he remained in his seat, so finally the bishop joined him.