by Julie Berry
He watched me out of the corner of one eye. “I suppose.”
“And now she feels she must leave her homeland and travel far away to . . . Florença . . .” Yes, why not? . . . “to join a convent, and pass the rest of her days in prayer.”
Guilhem rolled his eyes heavenward, as if this entire tale had been a great disappointment. “What is that to me, then?”
Was he made of wood, to have no curiosity? My best spinning, lavished upon this dunce of a nobleman, and utterly wasted!
Time for desperation. “My younger sister, Sazia, is the best fortuneteller along this entire lagoon.”
Senhor Guilhem smiled at this. “So I’ve heard tell.”
“You have?” I beamed for my little srre. “How nice. When Sazia heard the tale of this poor, sad, beautiful donzȩlla, she was seized by a premonition.” I must remember to tell her about this when I got home.
“And?”
Now was the time for the kill. “And do you want to know what it was?”
Senhor Guilhem’s nostrils flared. “Damn you! You lead me this far to ask me, do I want to know what it was?”
I bowed my head modestly.
He huffed out a breath. “What was it?”
I mustn’t smile. “The premonition,” I whispered, “was written in the stars. You were to be her true love, and she was to become your adoring wife.”
It took Senhor Guilhem several swallows to work up the spittle he needed for a large, contemptuous laugh.
“True love,” said he.
“True love.” I nodded.
“Pah.”
I waited.
“Old trobador nonsense,” he said. “Died with the war. Not even a fool thinks of such things now.” He was working hard to convince me of something. I decided to let him win.
“Undoubtedly,” I said.
“Exactly.”
We both nodded.
I sniffed. “I’m only repeating what Sazia said.”
We were allies now. “Maidens’ tales,” said my new friend.
“Just so.”
“I have no time for such things.”
“Of course not.” I examined my knuckles. “Even though, they say, Sazia is almost never wrong.”
“Almost never.”
“There you have it,” I said. “There’s quite a distance between ‘almost never’ and ‘never never.’”
“I see why you’re a matchmaker, Botille,” said my generous lord knight. “For a wench, you have an uncommonly good brain.”
I bowed. “Senhor does me great onor with such a compliment.”
He patted me paternally upon the shoulder. “Who is the lady?”
Aha.
“Well,” I began, “Senhor will forgive me if, just at present, I do not reveal her name. Her plans are secret, for if her family learns of her intentions, they will disown her.”
Senhor Guilhem was deeply affected by this revelation, but not in the way I’d hoped.
“No family? No dowry, then, either?”
Sympathy. That was what I’d been hoping for. Not money lust. But what should I expect? Even we peasants married sometimes for pillows and pots. But poor as we were, we could afford to think about affection. These greedy nobles only wanted gold, jewels, weapons, and land.
The lord of Bajas snapped his fingers. “But if they approved of me”—he colored deeply—“if they approved of whomever she did marry, there would, of course, be a dowry.”
I shook my head sadly. “None, I fear, but her great beauty and goodness. Her family lost everything when the crusaders came.”
He blew out his breath in great disappointment. Lop poked his head in the door just then and examined us with one curious eye. “Pardon me, Senhor. Are you finished with the wench?”
“When I’m finished with a wench, you’ll know it, and so will the wench,” Senhor Guilhem said. Lop squiggled away like a bitten eel.
“I’ve taken your time.” I bowed yet again and slipped toward the door. “For that I beg pardon. There are so many problems with this theory of my srre’s, I never should have troubled you with it. I only thought”—another bow—“that you might be curious to behold—”
“Behold what?”
“That is to say, if your grace would condescend to a glimpse, just a glimpse—”
“A glimpse of what?”
“Such as might be arranged in the woods not far from the village, over against Na Pieret di Fabri’s western vineyards, by moonlight.”
“You’re raving. Of what do you speak?”
“It could seem like a chance meeting. No need to take any special care or ceremony in your dress. Just a chance to behold for yourself whether the maiden lives up to the reports that are made of her. You could play the part of an absolute stranger, and she’d be no wiser.”
“She who would be no wiser?”
“Tuesday,” I said. “I have a feeling Tuesday is when she will arrive. Half an hour after dark.” I reached for the door. “But only if you’re curious. Bonjọrn.”
“You’re a slippery fish.”
I bowed. “Others have said so.”
I was halfway out when his voice reached me. “I suppose you think, Botille, that you’ll get a fee from me for your services.”
I allowed myself the smallest of smiles. “Only if you’re satisfied, Senhor.”
From the waterfront, I toiled up the hill toward Bajas proper, with sea breezes pushing at my back. The bells of Sant Martin’s rang. Time for prayers. On such a busy workday, I didn’t expect many people at church, and that suited me. I wanted a word with Dominus Bernard.
I passed by the street where Na Pieret lived, and met Symo coming around the corner, with Gui beside him. Sapdalina, I saw, came up the street behind the brothers, and watched them both with an expression of pathetic longing.
“Bonjọrn, Symo, Gui.” I bowed in a friendly way. “What a difference a bath makes, no?”
“Bonjọrn, Botille.” Gui grinned, then elbowed his brother. “What ails you, Symo? No bonjọrn for our only friend in Bajas?”
Symo’s beetle brows bristled. “What do you mean, ‘our only friend’?”
Late morning sun glinted off Gui’s supernal teeth. Sapdalina, who had parked herself invisibly nearby, as only she could do, nearly fainted at the sight of his smile.
“I don’t want to be your only friend,” I told them. “So let me introduce you to some more friends. This is Sapdalina, the best seamstress in all Bajas.”
Poor Sapdalina flushed salmon pink. “Botille!”
Gui gave her a good-natured bow, and Symo jerked his head stiffly in her direction.
“Sapdalina could stitch you some clothes better fitting your new position,” I told Symo. “You’re heirs to the vineyards now. You shouldn’t dress like the lowest farmhand.”
I was rewarded by a stare that would intimidate a rampaging boar. But Gui let out a loud laugh. “She’s right, you great slob,” he said. “It’s time we dressed better.” He glanced at Sapdalina. “You’ll come by, then, and measure us?”
If Sapdalina could have bowed till her nose touched the ground, she’d have done it. “I shall come every hour,” she said, “until I catch you at a convenient moment for the fitting.”
Symo groaned. Gui had the grace to keep silent, but I saw his wish to unsay his request.
“Well, then,” I told the merry group, “it sounds as though you have your amusements spread out before you for some time to come. Bonjọrn.” I hurried off.
“Botille.”
I turned back to see what Symo wanted.
He scrubbed his dark scalp with his fingernails. “How fares your, er, sister?”
“Which one?” asked Sapdalina.
“He means, of course, the sister who traveled with us,” I told her. But he wasn’t asking about Sazia. I understood him. “The journey has fatigued her,” I said, “but she’s resting well.”
He nodded once and then strode off elsewhere. An odd fish was Symo.
/> I finished the climb to Sant Martin’s, pushed open the old oak door, and stepped inside the sacred darkness.
A little light entered through the glass windows near the ceiling, beyond the reach of thieves. They were the only glass windows in all Bajas, and the way light rippled and fanned through them fascinated me. Like rays of glory from heaven, piercing the dusty gloom of the church, making each airborne mote shine like a star.
Dominus Bernard was nowhere in sight, so I knelt near a shrine to Johan the Evangelist. I fingered Mamà’s crucifix, still hanging about my neck. It was a small bit of silver, very precious, worth more than its price, because it had been Mamà’s. I wondered which lover had given it to her. When I was younger, I liked to imagine it was a great and wealthy senhor, and that he had been my father. Now I didn’t bother with such fancies. I just thought of Mamà.
We, her daughters, weren’t very holy, heaven knew, but that didn’t mean we held no reverence for holiness. We were Christians, like anyone. With a savage like Jobau to care for, and our livings to make, piety was a luxury.
Mamà had been a courtesan. A beauty about the court of the counts of Carcassona. Moving from man to man is never an upward path. The last man was Jobau. It never bothered me to discover, as I grew older, that Mamà had been a fancy whore, an adulteress, and a sinner. Mamà loved us. She loved her lovers. She loved miserable Jobau. I remember her loving strangers and neighbors and even poor, starving lepers. She loved Jhesus, too. Wasn’t it the Evangelist who told of the many times when Jhesus forgave sinful women? And our own Santa Maria Magdalena, of whom the Lord said that her sins were forgiven, for she loved much, the same who sailed across la mar to Provensa with Santa Sara?
I only knew one prayer. Mamà had taught me the Paternoster. The “Our Father.”
Le nostre Paire que es els cèls
sanctificatz sia lo teus nom
avenga lo teus regnes
e sia faita la tua voluntatz sicò el cèl et e la tèrra.
E dona nos a nos oi le nostre pan qui es sobre tota causa.
E perdona a nos les nostres deutes,
aissí co nos perdonam als nostres deutors.
E no nos amenes en temptacion
Mas deliura-nos de mal.
Our Father who is in heaven,
May your name be sanctified.
May your kingdom prevail,
And your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
And give us our bread, as we have true need,
And pardon our debts
Just as we pardon others’ debts.
And lead us not toward temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
I felt my Mamà’s peace as I spoke the words. Smelled her lavender-scented hair. Like the starry, sunlit dust, her love beamed down on me from heaven.
“What do my eyes behold?” A laughing voice from behind me sent Mamà’s sweetness tinkling down like shards of broken glass.
I stood. “Bonjọrn, Dominus Bernard.”
“Botille, at prayer?” The priest’s smile was almost as dazzling as his windows. “I’ll make a good Christian out of you yet.”
I smiled. “Do you make good Christians with sermons, or with kisses?”
The rogue didn’t even have the grace to blush. “The kiss of peace, my daughter. I am generous with the kiss of peace.”
He needed punishment for this. “Generous you are, indeed,” I said. “I hear congratulations are in order. A new addition to your growing family.”
His composure fell somewhat. “Astruga?”
“Bravo for your honesty.”
He clucked his tongue sympathetically. “You’ll help her, won’t you, Botille?” he asked me. “See to it that she’s safely situated?”
“What will you do to help her?” I inquired. “By rights, you should be the one offering help. At the very least, you should pay my fee.”
“I,” said our village priest, with an air of great injury, “will give her the sweetest wedding mass a pretty young toza could wish for. At my lowest possible price.”
I shook my head and leaned against the wall. “Why did they send you to Bajas, Dominus Bernard?” I said. “A face like yours could have gone to Tolosa. Or París.”
He laughed. “Who says it didn’t?”
This was news to me. “Oh?”
“They sent me here,” he said, “after a few unfortunate misunderstandings.”
“With noblemen’s wives?”
He winked. “A bishop’s concubine, among others.”
“For shame!” I wagged a finger in his face. “You tell me too much, Dominus,” I said. “You ought not to trust me so.”
“Why, Botille,” he said, “you are the one femna I know I can trust.”
Because I was smart, and because I was not beautiful. A man’s good female friend, that was me. No matter. I was certainly not standing in line for Bernard’s kisses.
I patted his hand. “Why did you ever become a priest?”
He looked affronted. “It’s my calling,” he said. “I was always marked for the clergy. Do I not minister to the fold? To the sick, to the dying? Am I miserly at dispensing comfort?”
It was true. In every respect except continence, Bernard was a model priest.
“Plus, I like to sing,” he teased. “But what brings you here, Botille?”
I wondered whether I could trust him as much as he claimed to trust me. I decided to make a beginning at it. “You saw me return last night from my journey.”
“Oc. Na Pieret’s nephews. She is overjoyed,” he said. “Go on.”
I hesitated. “On my travels, I heard of friar inquisitors traveling in search of heretics.”
Dominus Bernard’s face darkened.
“Do you know anything about this?”
He shifted his weight. “Yes,” he said slowly. “This Order of Preachers has gone castrum to castrum and vila to vila, interrogating people to see if they believed in and honored the old bons omes and bonas femnas.”
His words echoed throughout the old church. They made my skin prickle.
“Have they come here?” I realized I was whispering.
He shook his head.
This silent, private conversation—even it was dangerous. That made me furious.
“Why should they care,” I asked, “if we honored the friends of God? They’re just quiet, pious old people—why would we not honor them?”
Dominus Bernard sat down upon a bench. “Because it was our way,” he said at length. “Not Roma’s way.”
All our wars, and all our dead, for nothing but this? “We say oc, and they say si,” I said, thinking of Giacomo. “That’s our way too. Shall we die for that?”
“The Church decides, Botille,” said our handsome priest, “what is holy and what is not. We decided the bons omes and bonas femnas were holy without consulting the Church. And look about you.” He gestured to the empty chapel. “No one is here for prayers.”
“What has that to do with anything?” I whispered. “The village is busy at work, fishing and brewing and working the harvest. Does the Church think the bons omes and bonas femnas are what keep good Christians from their prayers?”
“They need someone to blame.” Dominus Bernard’s youthful beauty faded a bit when he looked as pensive as now. “Dominic de Guzmán, the founder of their order, was convinced the Church had grown lax and stagnant from Tolosa to Narbona and beyond. Perhaps it had. But he looked about him, saw the friends of God, and decided they were the reason. That’s where the trouble began.”
“You are a man of the Church,” I said, “and this is your native land. What do you think?”
He raked his hands through his curly hair. “I . . . I think these inquisitors vaunt themselves too much. The Crusaders did their work and leveled these lands. Soaked them in blood. But still a few friends of God remain. So now these inquisitors think to bring the war to each castrum and village in the region. Their inquisition will succeed where we village priests have failed, t
hey say, since the Dominicans are so much smarter than us priests, with all their theology studies. They’re forcing the senhors and nobles to do what they wouldn’t do before the war: execute heretics and brutally punish those who were kind to them.”
I turned over his words in my mind.
“They should abandon this mania,” Bernard said. “The bons omes and bonas femnas are fugitives now. In another generation they will all be in their graves. Why punish people for bowing to them decades ago, when that’s what everyone did?”
“You don’t seem very worried about heresy,” I observed.
He leaned in closer. “Don’t tell the friars,” he said, “but my own uncle was a bon ome. He feared God as much as the pope. Our family bowed to him hundreds of times. Thousands.”
“But surely,” I said, “that all lies in the past.”
Dominus Bernard shook his head. “Not to the inquisitors, it doesn’t. One fear enflames them: falsehoods destroying the faith. So where we see neighbors being neighborly, they see heresy spreading. We see a lad bow to an uncle; they see a sympathy forming that will damn the lad to hell when he’s grown. ‘Little foxes,’ they call the heretics, ‘spoiling the vineyard of the Lord.’ What they don’t understand, they destroy. And they believe they please our blessed Savior by doing so.”
I shivered. How close I’d been to Friar Lucien de Saint-Honore. Thank God, he had believed Symo’s tale about who we were.
Dominus Bernard clapped a warm hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about them, Botille,” he said. “We are small and poor in Bajas. They’ll not trouble themselves with us.”
“Why?” I asked. “Aren’t the poor just as vulnerable to heresy as the rich?”
Dominus Bernard laughed. “Very amusing. The Dominican friars own no property, as other religious houses do. When they conduct an inquisition and convict a heretic, the nobles often confiscate their goods and wealth. They’ll even convict the dead, dig up the bones and burn them, to shame their names, and sometimes to snatch property from their heirs. From this treasure, the inquisitors and their order are paid. They are performing a service, you see, for the counts and lords. Ridding their lands of falsehood.”
I rubbed my arms. The chapel felt cold, but I was beginning to see.
