In other moments, her mind turned toward her father. Daydreams showed Poncia and Jehan taking him to safety; Jaime waiting for her to return so they too could steal away.
“Do the Good Men wait for you?” the archbishop demanded in another interrogation. “Do they keep vigil?”
No, no, no.
Auda gave up her tally of days imprisoned and instead counted the number of times she’d been taken for interrogation.
Visit One: the archbishop questioned her with gentle words.
“You poor wretched child.”
Visit Two: he had asked after her, then said, “The dungeon chill must be ill for your health.” He started again with the questions.
No, was all she could say.
Visit Three: this time, he began without preamble.
“What are the words of the Bonhommes? The Parfaits? Do you know them? Do you swear by them?”
She shook her head against him without pause. The stories were hers, the songs were hers. She said nothing more. Who could she name anyway? Who could she give up? René? The Gypsy? Her brother-in-law? Where would it lead, except back to her? Where would it end?
Visit Four: they led her to a lower chamber in the tower, where the scent of fresh air was replaced by the murderous stench of a charnel house. The guards herded her into a small, barren room and shackled her to the wall. One set of heavy chains clamped her hands together; another imprisoned her feet. She could not move but to rest the burden of her manacles on another aching muscle or bone.
“Mamaaaaaaan!” the scream came from the next room.
Auda trembled, a deep shake that rattled her bones. Would she die here, chained to the wall? Would her body decay without a proper burial, a warning to others?
Fettered to the wall so that she could not move, she spent hours hearing curdling cries and screams. Most were men, though sometimes she thought she heard a woman’s wail.
Her father had likely borne this same torture, on account of her. If he could survive it, so could she.
When they released her from her chains, many hours later, Auda collapsed in the corridor. Her flesh was pulled taut over her bones and ached even to touch. Through a feverish haze, she remembered being pulled to her feet by her injured arms. She didn’t know if she cried out then, but later she sobbed in the cell as a woman dabbed at her wounds with a moistened cloth.
Visit Five: she quivered before the archbishop, but her answers were still the same.
“Where did you meet the devil-worshipers you made paper for? Did they teach you to write those words? Do you believe their heresies that Jesus never lived on this earth?”
No, no, no!
The archbishop shook his head with a sad look.
“I don’t want to send you underground again. I am trying to help you. I’ve no wish to lose your soul. But I can only help you if you confess and repent. I don’t know how else to make you see.”
Yet still she would not say the lies he wanted to hear. She no longer even knew what she wanted, only that she would not sacrifice someone else to save herself. Her eyes traveled to the paper tract he held in front of him. Was it hers? She could see flashes of color on the inside. Which one was it? It didn’t matter.
She wrote with a shaky hand on the parchment he’d provided.
Who gave you this?
His blue eyes narrowed. “If you answer my questions, I will tell you. Only three questions, you have my word.”
She nodded without pause.
“Have you seen this tract before?”
Her eyes roved over The Priest’s Vice. Yes, it was hers. She gave a quick nod.
“Do you know what’s written upon it?”
Another nod.
“Will you tell me who commanded you to write such ugly tales? You say your tales carry the message—who then taught you thus?”
She looked him full in the face. Frowning, she placed her hand to her own chest.
He stood abruptly, snatching the tract from the table, and walked toward the door. Auda cried out and he turned around.
“This was given to me by someone who is concerned for you. If you want to know more, you must stop lying. You won’t have many more chances. Even now the inquisitor demands you for himself!”
Someone concerned. Who else could it be but her sister? The revelation should have shaken her to the bone. But Auda thought of her father and felt nothing but sadness. Had her sister thought, as Auda did, that the verses would bring him freedom? It was a good trade, her life for his.
Visit Six: the guards took her to the underground prison. Her contusions, only partially healed, stung with pain as she was shackled to the wall again.
“She’ll not survive this,” one guard said, fastening a metal collar around her neck.
Auda lifted her head and girded herself. Maybe today would be the day she died. At least she would die without succumbing, without betraying herself or anyone else further.
The other guard shrugged. “The Devil’s Fork won’t pierce her heart or her core.” The device looked like a double-ended fork fastened under a metal collar that held her head straight. One end poked against her upper chest, the other against her chin. The guard put his hand on her head and pushed down hard. The fork rammed into her flesh at both ends.
Auda screamed. Beyond the guards, beyond the pain, Elena danced across her vision. She reached toward her mother with shackled hands.
Warm blood dripped onto her dress. Clamping her lips together, she screwed her eyes near shut. A black haze encroached her eyesight. The poppy scent of Elena’s hair tickled her nose.
The guard gouged the fork in deeper. Auda sobbed, a wave of pain and nausea overtaking her. She struggled to open her eyes, to see her mother’s ghostly face smiling upon her.
“Thumb up to say you recant,” the guard said.
“Recant and give us names,” the second whispered, “and we can release you.”
Elena’s voice was also a whisper.
Smile, daughter, and their pain will never touch you.
She kept her fists clenched, her body rigid.
When she awoke, she found herself back in the upper room of the tower, curled on a coarse bed of hay. Blood clotted where the fork had pierced her chin and chest. The wounds, packed with herbs and coated in a balm, still burned. The drafts of bitter wind from the window were her only distraction.
Someone came each day, with food, which she did not crave, and water, which she did. A nun, garbed from head to feet in white linen, inspected her wounds, cleaning them and packing more herbs into them. She came several times, speaking only to say prayers.
Days or weeks later, a guard entered with a bucket of water. Auda opened her parched mouth to drink in the cool liquid as he dumped it over her body. Someone else had brought dried bread and moldy cheese, but she could not see through her swollen eyes who pushed the food into her mouth.
Eventually she regained some of her strength, could sit up on the floor, even look around. Her next visitor, when he came, was the tall blond man who had arrested her father. Dressed in a dark black robe and matching skullcap, he crouched beside her.
“Do you know who I am?” He did not wait for a reply. “I am an inquisitor, your inquisitor. It was by my decree that you were sent to the Chamber. It was not my intent that the torture go this far. Only that you should use the pain to clarify your thoughts.”
Auda couldn’t see his face through her dim vision, but she imagined a skeletal frame, haunted eyes deep in their sockets, an eerie paleness to his skin. A devil, sent to frighten the children.
His voice was deep and somber. “So you are the White Witch. I have heard much about you, have sought those like you. I should tell you that the last prisoner under the fork was your father. His blood is mingled with yours. As it should be.”
A sob bubbled within her throat. Was this the man who wrote a book on witches and demons? It had to be. Good. It would end with her.
The inquisitor nodded. “We will talk now. I wil
l learn some things from you.” Opening a roll of parchment, he began, “You are accused as a heretic, that you have been taught, and teach others, beliefs against those of the Holy Church. Are you guilty of this?”
She shook her head once, crying out against the pain in her neck.
He looked again at the parchment. “Have you heard of faiths other than those of our Mother Church?”
She paused, then nodded, careful to keep her head rigid.
“Have you listened to their words?”
She swayed.
“Do you believe as they teach?”
She shook her head under a wave of pain. Straightening, she shook it again. She’d burn if that’s what was in store for her, but never would she condemn anyone else to this terror.
His voice rose as he let the parchment roll up. “Your archbishop believes you, he says in his notes. He says you are a fool, a bête, but innocent.”
Auda nodded with emphasis, crying out again. The pain stabbed into her like a knife.
“Perhaps.” The inquisitor sat back with a puzzled frown. “But then where did these words come from? That you can read and write, you’ve already admitted to. That your soul is in peril,” he gestured at her hair and her eyes, “it is plain to see. Admit who taught you to write this and we will cleanse the heresy you have wrought!”
She closed her eyes, tears staining her dirty cheeks, and reached out. The words were hers alone. Why would no one believe her?
“Answer me this,” the inquisitor demanded. “Do you believe in the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost? Do you believe Jesus came to us in body and spirit, to save us from our sins? Do you believe in His Church, your Holy Mother?”
She nodded, collapsing into a fit of tears.
“Why then do your words speak of heresy? Why do you write your lies that malign the Church and demonize the Lord?”
She closed her eyes and let him speak.
“Even if the archbishop does not see the heresy in your words, I do. You speak against physical love, lusty and carnal, and for love of the spirit. Is this not what the heretics have taught you? Love God, hate the world.” His lips twisted into a sneer.
Faced with a world like this, it was easy to love God. And her family, and Jaime—anyone who had thought to love her. Love, be it carnal or spiritual, earthly or heavenly, was a far better answer than the fear and hate this man brought.
Peace washed over her as Jaime’s words ran through her head—God only expected them to live their lives the best they could. And so she was.
The inquisitor bent to cup her chin and pull her face upward. “Your own words condemn you. It is your script, your mark on the page. All that remains is for you to name your accomplices, your teachers in this madness.”
Her, only her. She looked back at him defiantly.
He turned back to the guards. “Block the window. I won’t have her sending messages to her cohorts.”
They covered the small window slit with two layers of oilcloth until the room was shrouded in shadows.
The inquisitor glared at her. “You’ll never leave this cell to spread your heresies anymore. I’ll burn you in front of the very town that protected you. And then your father and your sister too!”
She forced herself to stare at him without buckling. They couldn’t think Poncia had anything to do with her verse, nor her father. It had to end with her.
She made the motion of writing.
The inquisitor narrowed his eyes at her. He snapped his fingers and the guards brought an inked quill and parchment. Sitting at the table, she fumbled with the nib. Her fingers moved in stiff awkwardness.
“If you have something to say, be quick with it.”
Auda firmed her back and scratched her words out, letter by letter, line by line. The effort left a thin film of sweat on her forehead. Finally, she laid the quill down, and the inquisitor snatched the parchment and read aloud.
It is no truth I was taught, but learned on my own.
Women are no less than men. Men no less than God.
We are all things of beauty.
And we all make our own choices.
If that didn’t convince him of her heresy, nothing else would.
The inquisitor snarled, dropping the parchment. Clutching her with the strength of Colossus, picking her up by the shoulders and dangling her as a doll. She didn’t resist, her head lolling to one side. He’d acted just as she’d predicted, taking her words as a challenge to break her instead of hunting elsewhere.
“No matter. I will get what I want in the end.” He sucked in his breath and strode out the door.
Fever overtook Auda. Her mother came to her in her dreams, black eyes staring from the face of Jaime’s fisherwoman.
Just as dawn broke and the room grew lighter, she sat up and crawled to her bed of hay. Searching through the dried straw, her fingers curled around a thin stick. She pulled it out. It was only a twig, but it would have to do. Careful not to snap the callow branch, she sharpened it against the wall.
She dipped the pen in the water, murky now with blood and dirt. The mark she made was thin and uneven, but it would suffice.
She wrote her words on the reverse side of the parchment the inquisitor had left on the ground. There would be no chance to make corrections. She thought of her verse. Which suitor would the girl choose? Auda no longer cared. This verse was meant for her alone. She squinted, steadying her hand.
It took her an hour to write the simple lines.
Dark hearts masked by strong deeds, words, ‘n’ coin,
Hold no candle to the one I want.
Neither Lion, nor Griffin nor Jackal shall I choose,
But my Own Love, the Beauty in my heart.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Regaining strength from her resolve, Auda hobbled around her filthy cell, still shrouded in darkness. She poked two tiny holes in the layers of cloth covering her window and struggled to line the holes up.
She swore, leaning her head further to the side. The wounds in her neck throbbed in pain. She inched the top layer of the window covering into a bunch until the holes were aligned, and peered through.
She couldn’t discern much in the harsh sunlight. Someone was imprisoned in the main square, probably in stocks or a pillory. It was a woman, from the sound of the screams. Auda imagined the wooden stocks were stained with the woman’s blood; each time a passing boy threw something—a rock or dead rat—at her, the wretch wailed.
“I heard no heresy, I swear!”
Above her, a lone falcon shrieked.
Carts bearing the bones of the dead and the partial bodies of the wounded rolled through the streets. Auda craned her neck to hear. These were the warriors from the Shepherd’s Crusade, the town crier declared, fallen soldiers from a war against France’s own Jews that neither king nor pope had sanctioned. Denied the true targets of their vengeful folly, the warriors had fallen upon each other, the crier in the square said. Blood, it seemed, was the nourishment of the day. As each cart bearing the fallen rolled by, Auda imagined she could see their vacant faces. They all bore the visage of her poor father.
Some time later, the door to the room swung open and the guard kicked in another prisoner, a hunched figure cloaked in dirty brown. The creature collapsed on the ground as the guard slammed the door shut and locked it.
“Help me,” he whispered reedily, clutching at the cloak that was drawn too tight around its neck.
Auda limped to the hooded prisoner. Her fingers fumbling over the thick knots of the cloak’s drawstrings, she unbuttoned it along the front and peeled the tattered cloth from his body.
Her eyes fell to the brown cloak, cast off like dead skin. She moved closer, picked it up and turned it in her hands. A cross of yellow cloth was sewn onto the poor material. Broad and bright, for everyone to see.
The cross of the heretic.
She gasped and moved to the man, ripping off his hood. It was René. A fresh contusion swelled on his right temple. On
e of his eyes had exploded, was flat and crusted in blood. Red scratches ringed the other. His skin was pale gray, hanging in folds around his eyes and the ridges of his head.
Auda pushed away her revulsion. Even after everything she had been through, the sight of her bruised friend sickened her to nausea.
She put a hand to his forehead. It was hot and sweaty.
He jerked back. “Don’t touch me,” he said in a hoarse voice. “It is not meet—”
Auda murmured a muffled sound.
“Auda?” he said, leaning closer. A faint smile managed to cross his lips. “I’d not thought to see you again.”
She propped his head in her lap, despite his protests, wishing she still had water. Even a befouled bucket of piss water such as the last one they’d brought would be welcome now.
René’s lips were parched, but he tried to speak. “I saw you when they found you. I tried to reach you, but I was too late. Someone saw me, I am sure of it. They followed me, but I got away. I went to the market a few days later, to speak to your artist. They grabbed me then. They knew to look for me. I wasn’t brought here right away, but I am glad they brought me so I could see you.”
Her cheeks burned in shame, but she made no sound. Another innocent caught because of her. And René was an innocent. Yes, he believed things the Church decried, but this man had never hurt another, never would. He would not lie or pretend to be something other than who he was.
His voice grew somber. “I think I have little time left on this earth. No, don’t fear for me,” he insisted when she let out a soft cry. “I go to a better place, to be in the arms of God.” A glaze came over his open eye. He blinked, then frowned.
“I must take the consolamentum. Please, Auda, you must help me.”
She shook her head. How could she help him?
“Please. I need an object. Something important. Something I can imbue the Spirit with.”
She cast about the room for something, anything. Her eyes fell upon the plain wooden crucifix on the wall, adorned by a simple carving of Jesus. Shifting René’s weight to the wall, she climbed on the table to retrieve it.
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