The Passion of Dolssa (39 page)
Read The Passion of Dolssa Online
Authors: Julie Berry
“Find help,” I called to them across the beach. “They’ll kill him!”
Sazia hitched her skirts and ran up the hill, while Plazensa ran across the sand to me.
She took one look at the friar. “Is he alive?”
“Let’s pray he is.”
I heard wood crack on bone, and a shout of pain. Jacme fell on his
aze
in the sand, but Andrio saw an opening and tackled Symo to the ground. In no time he’d pinned him. Symo’s legs thrashed but found no hold. Andrio looked like a rabid dog ready to bite Symo’s throat out.
Plazensa’s eyes flashed. “Come on, Botille,” she said. “What I’d give now for my rolling pin.”
She seized a sturdy limb of unburnt wood from the rim of the pyre, and I followed her lead. She swung her beam wide and brought it crashing down onto Andrio’s head. He fell limply onto Symo’s neck like a drowsy lover. I saw that Jacme was beginning to rouse, so with a well-aimed blow, I sent him back to sleep.
Running footsteps and shouts came down the slope. Sazia had dragged out Martin de Boroc. Seconds later Gui ran into view. He halted at the sight of his brother, bent double and heaving gasps of air; he took in the sight of three bodies on the beach.
“What’ve you done now, brother?”
“It wasn’t me,” croaked Symo. “It was those crazy
femnas
who finished the business.”
“Carry the friar to the tavern,” ordered Plazensa, “then get these two back home to their mistress. Lock them up and dump cold water on them if they give you any trouble.”
Gui and Plazensa carried the friar back to the Three Pigeons along with Sazia, leaving Symo and me to recuperate and supervise the farmhands with Symo’s rake. Sazia and Plazensa stayed to tend the friar. Gui returned to the beach and heaved Jacme and Andrio into Na Pieret’s cart with Martin’s help, then let her mule carry them home.
Symo and I returned to the tavern in silence.
We’d failed. We’d stopped them from killing him, but we hadn’t kept him safe, and now hell itself would swallow us. I had tried to do right, but once again my best efforts had led to disaster.
Symo limped.
“Are you badly hurt?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer.
“You’ll be bruised in the morning,” I said.
Still nothing.
We were nearly home. Since my conversation was so odious to him, I debated saying anything at all, but even as dejected as I was with the outcome, it had to be done.
“
Grácia
.”
We were at the door. Instead of opening it, he stopped and looked at me so intently that it made my skin crawl. Was he ever anything but angry? Was my
grácia
so trifling as to insult him, after the price he’d paid?
It grew awkward to wait for him to stop glaring, so I pushed past him and opened the door.
I didn’t get far. Plazensa and Sazia stood over a bed they’d formed from two tables, whereon the pale, still form of Lucien de Saint-Honore was spread.
Sazia’s eyes met mine. “He’s fading, Botille.”
Dieu
in heaven, help us
.
I turned to Symo. “You know what I must do.”
Symo dragged a hand down over his face. “I’ll help you bring her.”
ucien was dreaming.
He lay in a dark wilderness, dying of thirst. His body had already lost strength; he could no longer attempt to crawl on in search of water.
The people from the tavern appeared, the sisters and the brother—was he a brother?—but when he asked water or wine of them, they shook their heads.
No, no, none for you.
They mocked his thirst and his need.
Then the heretic appeared.
Now Lucien understood that he was dreaming indeed, for the heretic was dead already. But the thirst, the thirst was real. It sucked him down into a waiting grave.
Was he dead already? Was that why the heretic was there?
He struggled to rise, to fight and crawl on once more for water, but the tavern sisters pushed him down. They laughed at his desperation.
Then the heretic appeared by his side, and the sisters departed. She held in her hands a vessel of water. Lucien tried to ask her for some, but his tongue was swollen. He couldn’t speak. Could he, should he petition a child of error for any favor? Would doing so offend God?
The heretic looked at someone Lucien couldn’t see. “I cannot do it,” she told that someone. “Forgive me, but I cannot plead for him.”
Lucien tried to reach for the vessel, but his fingers were fixed to the ground. His life slipped from him.
God help me,
he tried to say, but his lips refused to move.
The heretic looked down at him. She rested her hands upon his head and his ribs. Her eyes filled with pity. A single tear formed and fell from her cheek and landed upon his face.
Lucien felt the tear soak in. It was water. It filled his lungs with air, and his veins with strength.
She uncorked her vessel and held it at his lips.
“Bless this man,” she said aloud. “Bless this living, breathing child of creation, fearfully and wonderfully fashioned by your own hands.”
Lucien de Saint-Honore slid into blackness.
ymo and I hurried Dolssa back to her hiding place long after midnight. Symo led the way, while Dolssa held my hand. She did not know the path as well as I.
We were close to the end, to Symo’s cave, when a nightingale’s cry rang out through the darkness.
“Hear how the
rossinhol
bids me good-bye,” she said. “Of all the things to miss underneath the ground, I think oftenest of his song.”
Sweet Dolssa. What cheer could I give her now? “Your handsome knight has not forgotten you,” I told her.
I felt, more than saw, her smile. “No indeed. A heart ever faithful. He has followed me here.” Her smile passed. “Could he follow me, I wonder, to where I’m going next?”
We reached the cave, but neither of us could bear to enter just yet.
“I must thank you, good Symo,” said Dolssa, “for the parchment and candles. Writing has been a tremendous comfort.”
Symo nodded, then faded into the darkness. I knew he wasn’t far.
I held both of Dolssa’s hands in mine. “I don’t know how you did what you did tonight,” I told her. “To bless that friar!”
She hung her head. “Not I, Botille. I did nothing.”
Not true, but I let her denial pass. “You’re the bravest person I’ll ever know.”
“As are you.” She stroked my cheek with her fingertips. “And the most loyal friend.”
I couldn’t help crying then. I embraced her and wept upon her shoulder.
“Botille,” she whispered. “Pray for me. I still don’t want to die.”
“You shall not die,” I vowed. “We’ll find a way.”
She wiped her eyes. “If anyone can, dear friend, it is you.”
I embraced Dolssa one more time.
“After Mamà died, Botille, I swore I would not love another living soul, only to lose them again. I was certain my beloved was more than enough for me,” she whispered into my ear. “But you, Botille, have been my
medica
. You’ve mended my wounded feet and heart.” She squeezed me tightly. I knew my heart would burst. “I will not lose you now.”
I couldn’t speak. I kissed her cheek.
“Botille.” Symo’s low voice reached me in the darkness. “We need to go.”
t was midmorning when Prior Pons and Bishop Raimon, and their retinue of friars, clergy, soldiers, and servants, ascended Bajas’s hill and reached the church of Sant Martin. They had left at dawn from the Abadia de Fontfreda, and made good time.
“I trust we will not find we have made this trip in vain.” Bishop Raimon wheezed as he dismounted his horse.
“Lucien’s letter was urgent,” Pons reminded him. “Not only reports of the heretic in this little
vila
, but of her poison spreading rapidly and taking root. He’s young. He could never prosecute so many on his own.”
“Certainly not,” answered the bishop. “But my back will never recover from such an insult.”
“Smell the sea breezes, though!” A young friar from their company flung out his arms and drew in deep breaths. Bishop Raimon only rolled his eyes.
A priest opened the door to the sanctuary to greet them. A handsome man, though shabby, his face fell at the sight of the senior clergy.
“My lords,” said he, and bowed. “You come from Tolosa?”
“
Oc
, that is right,” said Prior Pons. “And you are?”
“Bernard, your honor,” said he. “Priest of Sant Martin’s and the
vila
of Bajas.”
“I presume, then, that our brother, Friar Lucien de Saint-Honore, has made his abode with you?”
The parish priest licked his lips.
“Good sirs,” he said, “I fear you will need to come with me.”
The local lord, Guilhem, poured a torrent of words upon them, and Bishop Raimon had ears to hear what was said, but Prior Pons could only stand at the bedside of young Lucien, his own charge, in some dismal tavern, and trace the line of the gash in his forehead, back and forth. They were sons to him, his young recruits to the Order of Friars-Preachers. Lucien was not many years past boyhood. Zealous, true, and ambitious, but so were all those destined to be great in the realm of the Lord. Time and experience would temper him. He was keen of mind, yet not so wedded to his studies, as some were, that he would not go and do God’s work in the world. He did not deserve to die—even if, as a true martyr, he would bypass the angels at the gates of heaven.
Pons placed a hand on Lucien’s heart, and rejoiced to feel it move.
Bishop Raimon had anger enough for the two of them.
“Think you,”
the bishop snarled to the young lord, “that Christ’s church will stand idly by while unholy men assault the Lord’s servants? Think you that brutality like this will be tolerated
for one instant
?”
The young lord, Guilhem, quailed. “No, my lord,” he said. “Not for one instant. Nor should it. The rogues who did it, they are wastrels and brawling drunks. The
bayle
has them in custody, and they shall be flogged this afternoon. After that we shall assist you in making of them whatever example you see fit.”
