Stigmata

by Colin Falconer

  In front of her, in a burned hollow at the base of a tree, was the tiny black effigy of a woman. Fresh candle grease was smeared down her makeshift altar and the flowers at her shrine were fresh. She reached out to touch her and felt a familiar prickling of her skin, a cold, sticky tide that made her retch. She dropped on to all fours, her vision swimming, her body chill with a cold sweat.

  *

  Philip could not credit that he had allowed himself to fall asleep in the open. It had never happened before. When he woke Fabricia was gone, though the impression she had left in the grass was still warm. He panicked for a moment, but then heard the sound of her voice, close by. Who was she talking to? He jumped to his feet, his hand on his sword.

  He found her kneeling among the bracken. She looked up at him, a dreamy look on her face.

  ‘Who is here?’ he said. ‘Who were you talking to?’

  Someone had carved a small opening at the base of a beech tree. There was a mess of candle wax and flowers around it and inside was a statue, black and squat and ugly. It was clearly female, with flat dugs and an outlandishly fertile belly.

  ‘I saw you dead,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We were riding together, in the mountains. It was winter. You were hit in the chest with an arrow. I have dreamed it before.’

  She was looking at him but her eyes were fixed on something else, behind him and very far away. Her skin was grey as a corpse. He lifted her to her feet and carried her away from the demon in the tree, afraid.

  LXVIII

  AN ABANDONED SHEPHERD’S hut, a waning three-quarter moon. Fabricia straddling him, kissing his mouth.

  ‘What happened today?’ he whispered.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’ She worked the tunic off her shoulders and let it slide to her waist. Her eyes were like moons, her body valleys and shadows. She found a scar on his thigh, tracing the jagged march of it with her fingers.

  ‘That is from Outremer,’ he said. ‘We were escorting some pilgrims to Akko and we were ambushed by Saracens.’

  ‘Have you killed many men?’

  ‘Until the other day in the forest – only Saracens.’

  ‘Saracens are men.’

  ‘Not as Christians are.’

  Her hair tickled his face. ‘Their wives and children would tell you different, Philip. Men may be different but widows are the same. I feel like I am about to couple with the Devil.’

  ‘Is that what you think? I have always thought myself a good man.’

  She took his hands and put them on her breasts. He brushed his thumbs across her nipples and they stiffened at his touch. She closed her eyes, threw back her head and murmured something he did not hear.

  ‘What is this?’ he said fingering the crucifix at her throat.

  ‘Father Marty gave it to me.’

  ‘Is it valuable?’

  ‘I don’t know. He says he has a brother across the mountains who will help me if I show this to him.’

  ‘It looks old.’

  She bent over him and licked his neck. ‘Make me forget about all this.’

  He wanted to make her forget; he wanted to forget, too. She took his face in her hands and kissed him again, then she drew back. ‘Do my hands disgust you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. Part truth, part lie; the wounds themselves did not bother him, he had seen much worse. But wounds they were; the Devil’s marks perhaps. He had heard stories about demons taking on female form to ensnare men with their beauty and their sex, and once they had a man in their thrall they would change back into snarling beasts and carry their prize off to hell.

  Hadn’t he seen her praying to a devil today?

  Well then, let her turn into a devil and damn me, for to stop now would be like turning back the sea. Her fingers were around him, teasing. All the ways he had denied himself over these last years came spilling out of him now. ‘It’s been so long,’ he whispered in apology as he felt himself pulsing in her hand. ‘Don’t stop. I don’t want to stop. I never want to stop.’

  ‘I don’t want your seed in me, seigneur,’ she said. ‘I just want your touch, the warmth of you.’

  ‘You do not have to call me seigneur. My name is Philip.’

  ‘I do not know if I could call you that. I would feel I was being too familiar.’

  He laughed at that. He rolled her on to her back, delighted in how she sighed and moaned at every little thing he did. Her body exhaled a scent of sweat and violets; her skin tasted of salt.

  ‘This is not my first time,’ she whispered.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’

  ‘I want to tell you. I’m not wanton. It was a priest. He forced himself on me.’

  ‘Even so, I think you would have made a very poor nun.’

  ‘They said I had a very good voice to sing the psalms.’ Then she gasped as he entered her. ‘Gently,’ she murmured.

  *

  He thought about what she had said; about dying with an arrow in his chest in the snow. At least a little more of life then, for it was not yet autumn. The prospect of his own death had suddenly become fearsome. When did that happen? Somehow everything was easier when he had not cared to live; for a short time all seemed so simple. Now this rebel longing for more life was in him again, and with it came all the old anxieties and uncertainties, as well as that traitor – hope.

  He had seen the crosatz today, or thought he had, the glint of sunlight on a lance, the flash of colour through the trees. They did not have much time to reach Montaillet.

  He kissed the valley between her breasts, ran his hand over her thighs, her belly, her hips. ‘You are so lovely,’ he said. ‘Why are you not married?’

  ‘My father wanted my dowry to go to another mason who might take over his work. But the man he wished me to marry died before he could make the match.’

  ‘There must have been other suitors?’

  ‘Who wants a faitilhièr – a witch – with holes in her hands? And a witch who is no longer a maiden, either?’

  A wash of moonlight, slight as mercury, slipped on the clouds; dark, then light, then dark again. He explored her with his hands and it seemed to her that he knew her body better than she did. She gasped, her stomach muscles quivering like the fluttering of a small bird. She cried out once, her head thrown back. For the longest time she could not catch her breath.

  Finally she gave a boisterous laugh, not like a saint at all. ‘Oh, seigneur,’ she said. ‘You have made a poor stonemason’s daughter very happy.’

  *

  When she woke it was cold and he wasn’t there. ‘Seigneur?’ Then she heard his voice and went outside. She found him on his knees, his hands interlocked in an attitude of prayer.‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  He got to his feet, abashed. ‘I was praying.’

  ‘What were you praying for?’

  He hesitated. ‘I was asking for a hundred times a hundred more dawns like this one. And that on each one I might find you asleep beside me.’

  She smiled and kissed his cheek. Suddenly she thought: so this is what joy feels like? I wonder if I might hold on to this for a while.

  LXIX

  PHILIP CLIMBED UP through feathered pines, leading Leyla by her bridle. Fabricia swayed in the saddle. Her feet were bleeding again and she could barely stand. He could see Montaillet in the distance, its barbicans rising from the cliffs, silhouetted against a white sky. The heat of the afternoon was draining.

  He stopped suddenly and put his finger to his lips. He pointed down the valley. There were a dozen riders, in full armour, their visors up, the red cross emblazoned on their surcoats. The knight at their head had a cross of gold on his right shoulder and his armour looked expensive.

  He recognized the three pale blue eagles on their pennants and shields. They were the Normans he had tangled with at Saint-Ybars. Philip swore under his breath. The crusaders were following the path of the river. The rushing of the stream drowned out their voices, though he co
uld see them calling to each other as their horses picked their way through the shallows. Philip held his breath and prayed that they would pass and not see them.

  But then one of the chevaliers happened to glance up and he stopped and pointed at them, shouting a warning to his fellows.

  ‘Our luck has run out,’ Philip said to Fabricia. He jumped into the saddle behind her and spurred Leyla up the slope. Perhaps they could outride them, for the Normans were yet a hundred paces further down the slope. He looked over his shoulder. The Norman horses were stumbling and sliding on the loose stones of the river-banks, they were not bred for pursuit. One shrieked in panic as it lost its footing.

  Two of the chevaliers loosed arrows at them but they fell far short.

  He thought they were safe. But the best of men make mistakes; and with horses it was no different. Leyla lurched sideways and he immediately knew something was very wrong. She fought the bridle and shrieked in pain. He leaped down from the saddle, pulling Fabricia after him.

  ‘Leyla!’ he shouted, ‘what is it, girl, what’s wrong?’

  She was holding her right foreleg clear of the ground. Philip damned God’s eyes. Broken! He could see splintered white bone protruding through her fetlock and there was blood everywhere. He clutched at the bridle to hold her still, whispered to her, his hand at the softest part of her throat. She calmed a little but her eyes were wild with agony. ‘Oh, Leyla,’ Philip moaned, ‘what have you done?’ But he knew the answer to that. She had found a rabbit hole while he rode her at full tilt.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Fabricia said.

  Philip knelt down. ‘Help me get out of this armour! I can’t run in this.’

  Fabricia fumbled with the ties that held the laces at the back of the hauberk. While she was doing that, he threw off his gauntlets and helmet. A small fortune lying there in the grass; it couldn’t be helped. He would keep his sword though.

  One of the ties was knotted and she couldn’t untangle it. He twisted around and cut it with the edge of his sword.

  ‘Will you kill me now?’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what you promised?’

  ‘For what reason?’

  ‘The captain said you should not let them take me alive.’

  ‘We are not taken yet.’

  ‘I cannot run! I can barely walk.’

  ‘I asked God for a hundred times a hundred mornings. This time he is not going to defy me!’ He shrugged off the hauberk and stood up. ‘If you cannot run then crawl up to the top of the hill. Go!’

  ‘What about the horse?’

  ‘Just go! I will follow.’

  Fabricia did what she thought she could not do; she half-stumbled, half-crawled almost to the crest of the wooded ridge, ignoring the agony in her feet. What good will it do? she thought. They have horses. They will overrun us. Without Leyla, it’s hopeless.

  She fell to her knees. Mother Mary, blessed of women, help me now. She turned and looked back through the trees. She could not see him, but she heard the death shriek of his horse.

  She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled on and when she reached the ridgeline she fell again, rolling over and over down the slope on the far side. Finally she lay on her back, staring up at the sky.

  Where was Philip?

  She pushed herself to her knees and gasped. She was just two paces from a dizzying drop. She realized she must be on the overhang of a cliff, for the water was directly beneath her, roaring through a narrow defile.

  God’s breath. It would be like dropping from the top of a cathedral to fall into that.

  Something flashed past her face; she felt the draught of it as it passed. She turned around. There was a bowman perhaps two hundred paces further along the cliff, calmly reaching behind his back for another arrow.

  She jumped up and cried aloud at the agony in her feet. Her only hope to get away now was to jump, but she couldn’t do it. A hundred ways she would rather die, but not that way.

  The bowman took careful aim. She closed her eyes and prepared to die.

  She felt something slam into her and then she was hurtling forwards, could not stop herself, and she fell shrieking through the air, hitting the water far below.

  LXX

  FABRICIA CAME UP choking and would have drowned but the current carried her swiftly towards the far bank. She stuck out an arm and caught an overhanging branch. There were black spots in front of her eyes. I have to hold on. She felt her grip loosen but she summoned the strength to throw out her other arm and cling on.

  She realized it must have been Philip who had pushed her over the edge. With her first clean breath she called out his name. She could not see him anywhere. She worked her way arm over arm along the tree limb, and dragged herself up the bank, and lay there, coughing water through her mouth and nose.

  ‘Philip!’

  Now she could see what had saved her; a tree had toppled over near the bank, falling half into the water. Perhaps it came down during the same storm that had flooded the cave.

  ‘Seigneur!’ Finally she saw him, clinging to the bank further upriver. The flimsy branch he was holding could not bear his weight and the current picked him up and tossed him downstream towards her.

  Fabricia clambered back along the tree limb on her belly. She wrapped one arm around the fallen trunk, stretched out her other hand and screamed his name.

  He twisted around in the water when he heard her and threw out his hand. She reached him but he was too heavy; she nearly lost him. Somehow she managed to slow him enough so that he could hold on with his other hand. He pulled himself along the fallen tree, just as she had done, until he was free of the current and safe in the shallows.

  He fell face first on the bank, coughing up water. He still held his sword in one hand. How had he done that? she wondered.

  She knelt down beside him. ‘Are you all right, seigneur?’

  ‘Why didn’t you jump?’

  ‘I am afraid of heights.’

  He started to laugh, but his laughter became another spasm of coughing. Finally: ‘You are less afraid of being raped and butchered?’

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘Why did you not leave your sword behind?’ she said.

  ‘In case I have to do away with you, as I promised the captain. Or did you forget?’

  *

  He built a fire to get warm, for it was late in the afternoon and the gorge was already in shadow. There was plenty of tinder for it had been a very hot summer. ‘Won’t the crosatz see the smoke and know where we are?’ she said.

  ‘They already know where we are, but they’ll only be able to get us if they jump off the cliff into the river like we did.’

  He went to the water’s edge, washed the linen bandages wrapped around her hands and feet, and dried them in front of the fire. He examined her wounds. They were small and round but very deep; he imagined they went right through the flesh. Those in her feet looked even worse. The flesh around them was pale and puckered from contact with the water. How could someone do such things to herself?

  ‘What happened to your horse?’ she said.

  ‘She broke her leg. She must have stepped in a rabbit burrow.’

  ‘You killed her?’

  ‘I did what I had to do.’

  ‘Yet you seemed very fond of that horse.’

  ‘I loved her. Do not think that I am so hardened by wars that I can do what I did and sleep easy. But I could not bear to see her in pain and there was nothing I could do to save her. I asked her forgiveness and then I gave her mercy. It was clean and it was quick. Even if God does not know the meaning of mercy, I like to think that I do.’

  ‘Are you not frightened to say such things? Do you not fear God?’

  The bandages were dry. He started to bind her feet. ‘Perhaps the heretics are right and the God of this world is the Devil and I do not know the real God. You see, that makes sense to me. This is a heresy I can understand.’

  ‘And what about th
is,’ she said, holding up her hands. ‘How does this fit what the heretics say?’

  He shook his head. ‘As you say, we cannot know everything. Some things are just meant to remain a mystery.’

  *

  They had no blankets. He fetched as much wood as he could from the forest, and they spooned into each other, using each other’s bodies to keep warm.

  I never imagined this, she thought. When you are born in a stonemason’s house in Toulouse the walls of the city are the world and I thought my life would be like my mother’s, as her mother’s was before her. And it had not seemed such a very bad life: a good and strong husband who did not beat her, a house with a solier, hams hanging above the hearth, good neighbours and a promise of a warm corner in heaven at the end of it.

  What she had never imagined was that one day she might be sleeping wild with a French nobleman, hunted like an animal and cursed with a gift that set her apart from everyone else. ‘You said you saw my mother and father, that they are heading for Montaillet.’

  ‘It is the only refuge from the crosatz in these mountains.’

  ‘So you think they will be there when we arrive?’

  ‘If they survive the journey. I hope it will be less eventful than ours.’

  ‘What did they tell you of me? Do you think they believe me to be a witch or a madwoman, like everyone else?’

  ‘They said that they pray for you every day, and they looked as frantic about you as any mother and father would be. If they knew you were not safe in the monastery tonight they would die of worry. Why did you leave?’

  ‘Because the nuns thought I was a witch, too. They thought I made these wounds myself, either because I am mad, or because I like all the attention. Can you imagine that someone is so needy for the world’s gaze that they drive a knife into their hands and feet every day? But that is what people think. You think so too sometimes, don’t you?’