The Passion of Dolssa (28 page)

We told them she was our friend from far away, come to visit. That they must not speak of her as an angel. We wished they would not speak of her at all, but allow her to live a quiet life of prayer, here in Bajas, and bless us with her silent presence.

But Bajas, I feared, would not be so easily fooled. She was an angel in blue, halo and all.

At the top of the hill appeared a face I knew well. Saura, wife of Garcia the elder, and mother to his namesake. She had heard of the holy woman, and she came running.

The crowd was a barrier now, but the look on her face told everything. She was about to lose her husband and her son, to become a childless widow in one fell day. Na Pieret reached Saura, and linked her arm through her elbow. The concern on their faces smote my heart.

What else could I do? I leaned in to Dolssa and whispered in her ear. She nodded, and together we pushed a path through the crowd toward the grieving women.

We climbed the hill with all Bajas following, speaking to one another in hushed tones. It was Felipa’s burial in reverse: uphill, not down; raising the dead, God willing, not lowering them into the ground. Through it all, I watched Dolssa. She who was so afraid of being seen by the friar had no fear now, though all the world watched her.

We reached Garcia’s small
maisoṇ
. Saura’s neighbor woman came out, shaking her head.

My heart sank, but Dolssa did not pause. She entered the
maisoṇ
with me at her heels. I asked Na Pieret, whose trip up the hill had tired her badly, to keep the others out and let Dolssa have peace. Na Pieret nodded and planted herself in the doorway.

In the dark of the sickroom, I could not see at first. Garcia and his son lay stretched out on two cots. They were still and pale. I couldn’t bear to look. Just last week, they’d been our protectors, our cheery traveling
companions. Young Garcia was far too young to die, with all his brainless jokes, vexing Sazia.

Saura slumped in a corner. I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat and cried with her.

Dolssa laid a hand on the elder Garcia’s chest, then rested her other on his forehead.

“He is not dead,” she said.

Saura stiffened. She looked up, but Garcia lay as still as ever.

Dolssa moved over to young Garcia and rubbed his chest and belly. “He lives as well.”

“If you can do anything,” came Saura’s strangled voice, “in God’s name, help us quickly, before their spirits have fled this world.”

Dolssa pulled a short stool in between the two cots, and sat. She took each of the Garcias by the hand and held both hands in hers, then closed her eyes.

I wished I could know what words she sent up to her beloved, if she was indeed praying. I could no more count on God to hear and bless me than I could count on the winds off
la mar
to consider my wishes and grant me my needs. Some days the wind was a friendly breeze at my back. It might just as likely blow the roof off the tavern.

Saura’s prayers, on the other hand, I could hear. She rocked back and forth on her hips on the ground, with her bowed head resting upon her hands. As she rocked, she murmured her prayer.

“
Mon Dieu
,
mon Dieu
, oh God, blessed Jhesus, mother Maria, save my husband, my only son. Oh, God, if it is not too late, if I have not angered you too much with my sins, please God, save the child and his father, or I will go with them to the grave. How can I live? Why spare me? Has this holy woman come to mock me? Why does she do nothing? You can heal them, whether or not she can. Hear my prayer, holy Paire, my prayer for all these long days and nights, for I can pray no longer, nor even stand upon my feet. Grant me my son. Take me in his place. I’ll go gladly. But spare me my boy, and if you will it, his father to watch over him.”

I looked up.

Dolssa no longer held the two Garcias’ hands. She had joined them together. She slid the cots closer until they made one bed, and father and son lay alongside each other, their fingers entwined. She crouched down at the head of their cots, her chin resting between the two. She talked
with laughing eyes and a smile on her face, as though she were telling a charming story or a wonderful joke. She talked as if to someone beside her whom I couldn’t see, so naturally that I began to imagine I could see the face that held her gaze.

Saura ran out of words to pray. She wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up through bleary eyes. Dolssa beckoned her over. She rose and took one uncertain step, and then another. Another still, and then she froze.

Garcia’s eyes opened and searched for his wife’s face. In a moment she was at his side, weeping into his neck. And Garcia the son, the reed-thin youth whose hand was still clutched tightly in his father’s, stirred in his sleep.

All my heart magnified the joy of the miracle. The looks in Saura’s eyes, and in Na Pieret’s, were everything to me. To see those two feeble hands, the father’s and the son’s, grasp each other and pull each other back to strength—I will never forget it if I live to be seventy. For one sweet chiming moment, heaven was all around us. All things were possible, and kindness and love could conquer any sorrows, any fears.

Then I left the
maisoṇ
and saw the crowd as Na Pieret proclaimed the news. I saw their wonder and amazement. I saw the way they whispered Dolssa’s name in reverent, hushed tones. I saw how their ranks had swelled to include every one of us, young and old, every fisherman and merchant and traveler from the port and from the roads. Plazensa’s eyes, aglow with pride. Dominus Bernard’s face, rapt with awe. Sazia’s face, drawn with worry. Symo’s, inexplicably, looking murderous.

May God forgive me for what I thought then. Almost, I confess, I wished Dolssa had failed.

DOLSSA

y own dear love, gone so long, returned! He found me there in the house where father and son lay dying. He placed his hands upon their hearts and bid them live, in answer to their wife and mother’s prayer.

While the town rejoiced, their attentions elsewhere, he took me in his arms. He had never been far from me, he said. It pained him to see me grieve without him, but it served to grant my prayer to be made worthy to taste the sorrows he had tasted. I was sent here to learn to see him, and to love him, in the faces of those around me.

These weeks were my own wilderness. My forty days to purify my soul. My sufferings, for my sanctification, as so many saints now in heaven have taught.

But he had returned to me at last. Never, he promised, would he leave me again.

A glorious future opened before me, of friendship, belonging, service, and joy. This place would become my home. Botille and her sisters, my new family. This town, Bajas, my new people. Once again, with my beloved near, I could become a window, to shine his love into a darkened world.

BOTILLE

t twilight, two days later, a stranger arrived at the tavern.

If only he had been a stranger.

They had been two long days for Dolssa, but her sweetness never flagged. From morning till night, people brought her their illnesses and woes. She sat and spoke with them all. She was never in a hurry, and strangely, those who waited in line to meet her did not seem to grow impatient. They did grow thirsty, however, which kept Plazensa happy.

“How does she endure it?” Sazia watched Dolssa patiently listen to person after person. “People are nothing but vexation. I avoid them.”

Dolssa had changed. Gone was any trace of fear, any focus upon herself. She shone. Each visitor felt it. They sat as long as they could in the orb of her light.

As each suppliant left her, I followed them to the door and said, “Please, for Donzȩlla Dolssa’s sake, do not tell others outside of Bajas that she lives here.” They all nodded soberly. They remembered the crusades, and knew about inquisitors. I thought I was doing some good, until Sazia pulled me aside and told me that if I wanted to ensure that word of Dolssa reached París, Londres, and Roma by next week, I should keep doing what I’d been doing.

At suppertime, that second night, Plazensa finished a lesson in womanly
graces with Sapdalina, one which left Sazia seized with ill-concealed sniggers. Plazi ordered everyone out, fed us a stew, and sent a grateful Dolssa to bed. Then she opened the door to the tavern once more, and let the usual crowd come in. The great room was full to bursting, but everyone was strangely quiet. A holy woman on the premises must have damped their appetite for carousing and song. Even Jobau, who had returned to his loft the prior day with a torrent of abuse for our noise, poked his head over the edge to see what had happened to the tavern.

One by one our customers left, until only old Plastolf de Condomio sat at the bar, mumbling toothlessly and nursing a cup of wine. Sazia went to bed, and Plazensa disappeared down into her brewery to check on another batch of ale, leaving me to tend the tavern. I wiped the tables and chairs and swept the floor. I spread ashes around and over the coals so the fire couldn’t grow but the embers would still kindle in the morning.

I rose from the ashes, turned, and jumped to see a man standing there. He was dressed in knight’s clothing and armed with a sword, so I bowed. Quickly.

“How can I help you, Senhor?”

Then I looked at his face, and he looked at mine.

He was the man from the road. From our journey back from San Cucufati to Bajas. The one who had stopped to stare me down not long after we’d found Dolssa.

I swallowed. What if he’d been searching, not for a lass to tumble with in the tall grasses, but for one specific
donzȩlla
?

“
Bon sẹr
,” I whispered.

He knew me. There was no doubt. He remembered.

“Do you offer lodging?”

His voice was deep. His accent was like Dolssa’s. Tolosan. His bearing was erect and strong, though trim. He was no brawny man of war, but someone lithe, I thought, and deadly.

“Our rooms are full,” I lied. “But you, Senhor, would prefer a place more fitting than our low quarters. Our lord in Bajas, Senhor Guilhem, would gladly receive you in his home.”

“Our
low
quarters?” Plazensa rose from the wine cellar and turned her most bewitching smile upon our guest. She planted herself close beside me, behind the bar, where she could give my bottom an angry pinch. In reply, I softly ground my heel into the top of her foot.