Watermark
Vanitha Sankaran
For my sister, Suja,
Who always believed this day would come.
With the Lord’s help, the Inquisitor can, with an obstetrician’s hand bring the twisting snake out of the sink and abyss of error.
—Bernardo Gui,
Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis
Contents
Epigraph
Maps
Introduction
Chapter One
Elena clutched her distended belly and tried not to cry…
Chapter Two
The lady Elena was dead.
Part I
Spring 1320
Chapter Three
A clap of thunder startled Auda awake. Bolting upright on…
Chapter Four
Auda blinked, trying to understand. Someone from the palace wanted…
Chapter Five
Martin didn’t linger when the bells rang for Terce, signaling…
Chapter Six
Auda stared at her sister in confusion.
Chapter Seven
Auda climbed the ladder to the loft where her father…
Chapter Eight
The inquisitor reached with a gloved hand for the woman…
Chapter Nine
The sisters entered the supper hall hand in hand. Auda…
Chapter Ten
Auda sat by the hearth in her sister’s solar. Rain…
Chapter Eleven
Martin arrived at the stall just after the bells sounded…
Chapter Twelve
Two days later, Martin loaded a rented donkey cart with…
Part II
Summer 1320
Chapter Thirteen
In Narbonne, summer came on with a vengeance.
Chapter Fourteen
Martin escorted Auda to the palace the next day.
Chapter Fifteen
Each day at the palace started well before dawn. The…
Chapter Sixteen
Auda barely made it back to the gate of the…
Chapter Seventeen
Auda returned to the palace the next morning, pausing at…
Chapter Eighteen
The next morning, Auda left early to meet her sister…
Chapter Nineteen
Auda left Poncia deep in prayer and headed outside. As…
Chapter Twenty
Jaime escorted her home after the wedding. They walked in…
Chapter Twenty-One
The next week, the vicomtesse surprised Auda and decided to…
Chapter Twenty-Two
The following week, Auda made a startling discovery: verses written…
Chapter Twenty-Three
That Friday, the lady allowed Auda to leave early to…
Chapter Twenty-Four
Auda sat before the hearth, eyes reddened and swollen with…
Chapter Twenty-Five
Auda sat against the wall in Jaime’s room with a…
Chapter Twenty-Six
Auda returned home that afternoon straight after court. The vicomtesse,…
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Auda knew she should consign the tract to the flames.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Later that day, Martin prepared to go back to the…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Martin arrived home minutes later.
Chapter Thirty
Auda huddled into herself, limbs folded and cramped, and cried.
Part III
Midsummer 1320
Chapter Thirty-One
Auda returned to Jaime’s room, telling him only that she…
Chapter Thirty-Two
The next day, Auda asked Jaime to go to her…
Chapter Thirty-Three
In the darkness, René and Ucs shepherded her along an…
Chapter Thirty-Four
Auda stared at René in confusion. Her father had been…
Part IV
Fall 1320
Chapter Thirty-Five
When Auda regained consciousness, she found herself slung over the…
Chapter Thirty-Six
A week passed. Unsure what to believe, the archbishop imprisoned…
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Regaining strength from her resolve, Auda hobbled around her filthy…
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The guards ushered René and Auda out of the room,…
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Auda spotted Poncia through tear-stained eyes just as the older…
Chapter Forty
Sometime in the middle of the night, the bolt on…
Part V
Winter 1322
Chapter Forty-One
They settled in a small town inhabited mostly by simple…
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Glossary
Chronology
Selected Bibliography
A+ Author Insights, Extras & More…
About the Author
Praise
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Maps
Narbonne, France
Introduction—Winter 1300
Chapter One
Elena clutched her distended belly and tried not to cry out. A cold winter draft blew through crevices in the cottage’s half-timbered walls. Yet rivulets of sweat still ran down the sides of her face. Propped in a corner, straddling a hay bale, she crossed her arms over the life growing inside her.
“Not y-yet,” she hiccupped amid the fierce pain cramping her belly. She tilted her head back to stop her tears from falling and the salty moisture dripped into her throat. Her gaze rested on the wildflowers drying upside down in the corner. An old tune flitted through her head, a folksong her own mother had taught her, the lyrics long forgotten. In a broken voice, she hummed the melody.
Another sharp pang shot through her and she doubled over with a low cry. Warm liquid surged between her legs. She reached to feel the sticky wetness: thick dark blood. She looked across the room, over the floor of withered rushes and past the hearth to the single plank of wood that served as supper table, kitchen lath, and her husband Martin’s workbench. A near-empty flagon of wine rested beside his paper vat.
Knocking her head back against the wall, she cried out for him. He had left hours earlier with their daughter, Poncia, to find the midwife. Why hadn’t they returned?
Suddenly, the door flung open and an elderly woman stumbled through on thick legs and swollen knees. Not the midwife but someone else. Biatris, the healer. Had Martin brought her? She’d lost track of everything but the pain.
The woman directed her assistant, Onors, to build up the dwindled fire, then hovered over Elena. The healer looked like a leathery vegetable, weathered and withered, with a head of white wiry curls.
Elena whimpered and searched for her husband. She found him standing in the shadows, holding their daughter. Fear shone in his dark eyes. She tried to smile. He shook his head only once. Onors trundled him outside.
Elena keened a low cry after him. Another wave of birthing blood coursed onto the linen blanket tucked between her legs. The bleeding had to stop, but how? She curled her head over her stomach.
“Rest easy,” Biatris said. She reached out to steady Elena, then glanced at her apprentice. “We need a compress of cinque-foil root to slow the bleeding. Look in the kitchen garden.”
The young girl cast Biatris a grateful look and slipped outside. A cold winter gust blew through the rickety cottage and the door slammed shut. Elena gasped again, arms encircling her belly. Her body pushed out globs of half-clotted blood.
The healer shoved a cup of wine at Elena. She c
hoked on the bitter poppy-laced drink.
Its warmth slid down her throat and seeped into her veins, limbs, belly, and head. Soon a slow drowse tugged at her mind. The upsurge of pain receded into a dull ache and then into nothing. Her fingers relaxed and dropped the cup. She blinked, her vision murky, her eyelids weighted down.
Biatris stumbled among the stools and barrels cluttering the dim one-room home. Elena tossed her head back and forth. Oh, Martin would be angry, the way the woman pushed aside his tools, quills, and ink that lay scattered on the supper board.
Another jolt of pain knifed through her belly. Elena stifled a gasp and breathed in and out to calm herself.
“That’s it, loosen the muscles,” the healer said, picking up Elena’s cup. She waddled to the table and washed her hands in the basin of river water, then dried each finger.
A low moan escaped Elena’s lips. Pangs of homesickness and pain mingled together. “Mare,” she sobbed. But her mother wasn’t there. Elena was alone, without mother, aunts, or cousins who could see her through this birth. Surely there would have been work enough for Martin in the family paper mill back home. Why had they ever left? A forlorn sadness gurgled through her lips. Her limbs slackened.
Biatris passed a full cup of the drugged wine back to her, then lowered herself beside the makeshift seat of hay.
Elena blinked back tears and swallowed the draught. She felt cold, too cold, her only remaining warmth focused in the lump of her belly. The metallic stench of blood gagged in her throat. She wheezed. Why was it so hard to breathe?
“My child. My babe,” she said in a fading whisper. She dropped the cup. Dry tongue licked dry lips. Would her babe survive? How, motherless in this world? She focused on the healer, who reached to touch her clammy forehead and smooth her sweat-soaked hair. “Please.”
Biatris gripped her hand and leaned in. “The Church permits us only to cut babes from dead wombs.” Her gaze darted to the door through which the young assistant had disappeared. “By then it may be too late.” She stared into Elena’s eyes.
What had she said—dead wombs, dead babes? Elena stared back, comprehension dawning. She placed her hands on either side of her belly and felt the receding warmth.
“Cut my babe free,” she said in a whisper. Her breath burbled into a sob. Who would look out for her children, both of them? She struggled to remember what her daughter looked like.
The healer looked at her. “No time to call for a priest, but I bless you in God’s name. He will understand.”
Struggling to her feet, the healer reached for her bag and uncorked a clay bottle. She poured a thick white salve on Elena’s belly and rubbed the numbing balm in circles into her cold skin.
“Prepare yourself,” she said and shoved a wooden stick between Elena’s teeth. Her hand curved around the haft of her large knife. She placed the tip of the blade on Elena’s pregnant bulge and drew in her breath. Exhaling, she pushed the knife in hard.
Elena screamed, a shrill cry that split the bare room. The stick slipped from her mouth and fell onto the straw. The woman was killing her—the babe too? The healer pulled the blade through her thick flesh. Elena screamed again. Her stomach tore apart like a split gourd. She kicked, trying to escape the agony.
The healer broke through her belly and reached into her womb. Elena thrashed, shrieking. Biatris pressed on her abdomen and drew the child out, guiding its head and shoulders into the cold air. The infant’s scream rang out.
Elena sobbed. Her babe lived.
In the background, the healer fussed over the child, cleaning the mucous from its eyes, nose, and mouth. Elena closed her eyes and drew in ragged breaths.
But then Biatris gasped. “My God.”
Elena turned her pain-swollen gaze to her babe. Another girl? A boy? “Alive?”
“Your babe has will to live,” the healer said, though Elena heard reluctance in her voice.
Biatris brought the infant close but Elena couldn’t see, could only feel its slimy skin stick to hers. She tried to smile, but her lips felt heavy and curved downward.
“My babe,” she said. Her fingers swiped at the air and fell. The room grew dimmer. A tune—her babe needed a tune. Again her mother’s song ran through her head; with cracked sobs, Elena tried to hum along. A few words surfaced in her hazy memory.
Love, my love, how can a mortal be
So pure, and innocent as is she.
Dressed in beauty, will and God's grace
What wonders will she see?
Such wonders you will see, she thought to her child, and closed her eyes.
Chapter Two
The lady Elena was dead.
Onors, the healer’s apprentice, dropped her muddy clump of roots and leaves and rushed to Elena’s side. Seeing a child kick beside its mother’s eviscerated body, she crossed herself. Had the old healer butchered the poor mother and cut the child from the dead corpse? She looked more closely at the infant and gasped. This thing was no child at all but a sickly creature, ivory-colored in skin and hair, white as bone. Even its eyes were so light, the translucent pink of a worm.
It had come too soon, undercooked, with no color yet baked into its skin and hair, so silent that she wondered for a moment if it still lived. But then it blinked.
“Demon,” she said in a whisper and crossed herself again. The healer swaddled it in a rough woolen blanket and thrust it toward her. Onors jumped back, warding the white creature away. Biatris stepped closer and shoved it into her arms.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Take the babe to her father.” Her gaze lingered on the mother’s peaceful face, then dropped to the bloody tear that gaped from Elena’s deflated stomach. “I have work yet.”
Onors mouthed a quick prayer. She held the creature at arm’s length and shuddered in revulsion. What a small thing, weak, like an animal that had been born in a barn, doomed to be crushed under its mother’s feet—as this witch-child ought to have been. The healer turned her back on them. Onors shifted the babe’s weight onto one hip and grabbed the bloodied knife.
She tucked the blade into her sash and pushed open the door. Father and daughter rushed to her with fearful questions writ large in their eyes.
“She’s dead,” Onors said, turning as their faces crumpled. They stumbled past her into the house. The door shut behind them and she bolted with the babe.
She ran blindly, sliding between brush and garigue all the way downhill until she ended at the river Aude. Fed by glacial runoff from the Pyrenees, the water ran black save for white eddies laced with shards of floating ice. She placed the witch-child on the rocky ground and stared at its too-white flesh and watery eyes, and the blood-specked white fuzz that covered its head. What kind of child could be born without color?
No, not a child, but a creature cut from dead flesh and born bedeviled. She’d heard about wretched abominations like this before, born in other towns. Cursed omens, they heralded ill fortune and despair. Maybe this one would bring bad crops, drought, even the dying sickness.
“Roumèque,” she whispered at it with a tremble. She should dump the creature in the river and watch it drown.
But she couldn’t do it.
An idea was born in her head. Dipping her hand into the river, she crossed herself and traced a cold, wet cross on the child’s forehead. Shouts sounded, not far in the distance. She withdrew the knife. “Born badly. But still I can save you.”
She shoved three fingers into the child’s mouth and pinched its tongue. With her free hand, she brought the knife under the pink flap of flesh. In a single tug she slashed the blade through. Bright red blood spurted from the wound and splattered against Onors’s face. The child opened her mouth into a wide, perfect circle and screamed.
“O Lord,” Onors said, not flinching at the girl’s cries. She raised her eyes to the cloudy sky. “We give this unto You to protect the babe from the devilment.” She flung the piece of flesh into the dark river. It swirled into an eddy and disappeared.
She sta
red at the shrieking child. If the wound healed and the babe lived…No ifs. This babe would live. Determination burned bright in her pink eyes. Yet at least now the curse of her birth would bleed from her soul, and then the babe would be safe.
Just as the child launched into another wail, her father burst through the copse of trees, holding his other daughter. He dropped the girl and rushed toward Onors. Snatching the babe, he slapped Onors hard across the face. She fell to the ground.
Scuttling away from his fury, she gaped at him with unblinking eyes filled with tears. Didn’t he understand?
“What have you done?” he demanded. His eyes darted over the babe’s pale face, then moved down the length of her body. His fingers rested on her lips and came away crimson with blood. He wrenched loose a corner of the child’s blanket and held the bunched up cloth against her mouth. A vibrant red seeped across the brown material. He let out a low cry.
“Nothing wrong, I’ve not done anything wrong,” Onors insisted. The words tumbled from her lips.
The man pried his older daughter off of his leg and placed the infant on the dirt beside her.
“Papa?” the girl cried.
“Just sit.” He advanced toward Onors.
“I’ve not done anything wrong,” she said again. “I’ve saved her.” She backed up on her hands and rear. “The babe won’t never speak, won’t never have the chance to spread the devil’s lies.”
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