Stigmata (3 page)

Panicked, she lowered her head again, concentrated on her hands, still bunched in prayer.

Be calm, Fabricia. When she looked up again, Our Lady was returned to her imperious vigil above her and the saint’s eyes were sightless once more, mere artifice carved and polished from
stone. She must tell no one about this, she decided. It was a moment’s madness; she would pretend it had never happened. Miracles and visions were for saints; not for the daughters of
stonemasons. She stayed on her knees there a long time; not from piety, but because her knees were shaking so badly she could not stand. All that was real was slipping from her. The world and
everything in it was as solid as mist.

When Pèire finally came in to look for her, she was still there on his knees, trembling, and as he told her father, ‘she looked like she had seen a ghost’.

‘T
HERE WAS TROUBLE
today, just down the street,’ Elionor said. ‘Old Reynard and his wife. Some of the
Bishop’s toughs brok down his door and went through his house tipping over kettles and threw everything the poor man has into the mud. All because he let two
bons òmes
stay at
his house this last St John’s Day.’

‘Well, they should not harbour heretic priests!’ Anselm said, but then added: ‘They didn’t hurt him, did they?’

‘By grace of God, no. Rabble!’ Elionor brought the pot of beans and mutton to the table. ‘Here, eat.’

‘There was almost a brawl today in the square, right outside the cathedral. Some of the people were mocking a friar.’

‘These clerics deserve all they get. All they ever talk about is hell and saints’ days and that we should all pay our tithes on time.’

‘They threw muck at the poor man for preaching God’s holy word! If Jesus himself came to Toulouse I swear they would jostle him and turn him out of the gates.’

‘The good Lord would not come here if he saw how his priests behave! Fornicators and thieves, the lot of them.’

Fabricia saw the colour rise in her father’s cheeks. What made her mother bait him like this? These days they argued over religion all the time. ‘There are some who do not bring
shame upon their calling.’

‘Name two!’ Elionor said, through a mouthful of food.

‘The good preacher who was so badly used by the crowd in the market today. By all reports all he lives a chaste life and all he has are the clothes on his back.’

‘That’s only one.’

‘Well then, the monk who is coming to see me tomorrow. Father Simon. His reputation is blameless. A good man and a faithful servant of the Church.’

Elionor smiled and her tone became gentler. ‘Well, that’s two, sure enough, husband. But two in one of Christendom’s greatest cities is not overmuch. What business do you have
with this priest?’

‘He is the prior’s secretary. He has commissioned me to make certain repairs to the cloister at Saint-Sernin. He has offered most generous payment for our services.’

‘As he should.’

‘The Church has many benefactors.’

‘Indeed. The whole of Christendom, plus a percentage!’

Anselm ignored the jibe. ‘Enough work for another two summers at least. By then perhaps Pèire will be ready to take over from me.’

They both looked at Fabricia, who felt her cheeks blush hot. She looked down at her bowl and tried to concentrate on her food. ‘Did you tell her what you decided?’ Elionor asked
him.

‘What we
both
decided.’

‘I said only that I would not object. The
bons òmes
say that all procreation is a sin and that therefore marriage will lead to sinning. If marry she must then I will not
stand in the way of it.’

‘You would not welcome a stout son-in-law with skilful hands who can give us grandchildren and look after us when we are old? A man who will take good care of our daughter when we are
gone?’

‘I know you want only what is best for us all,’ Elionor said, more gently. ‘But as I get older, I worry more for my soul than this worn-out body.’

Fabricia thought her father would burst. ‘These heretic priests have turned your head!’ he said. He turned to Fabricia, looking for her to support him in his case. She knew he wanted
only to do the best thing by her. How could she tell him she did not wish to marry Pèire when she had no good reason?

‘Perhaps you do not see the stares you attract in the market,’ he said to her. ‘I will sleep easier knowing that you are wedded and churched, so that every young buck in
Toulouse does not watch you like a wolf after his dinner.’

‘Anselm!’

‘It is true. She is comely and she needs a husband like Pèire to protect her from such insolence.’ He reached across the table and took her wrist. ‘He’s a good
man, as good as any in Toulouse. He’ll look after you and though he’s big, he’s gentle. Won’t even swat at a fly that lands on his cheese at lunch.’

When she did not answer he added: ‘I am making you a fine match, Fabricia. You will be churched in the proper way.’

It was true she was old enough to be wed, but she wondered why her father was suddenly so fervent about it. Perhaps it was seeing her struck down during the storm. Bad enough for him that he had
no son; without a daughter he would have not even grandchildren to comfort him in his old age.

‘Pèire will carry on the work one day, when I can no longer hold a hammer or climb so high. It is God’s work and he is well suited to it. He has a carter’s brawn and an
angel’s temperament. I should rest easy knowing that one day a grandson of mine would leave his mark on the cathedrals of Toulouse, and take my seat in the guild.’

Still she said nothing.

‘What is it? Don’t you like Pèire? Has he offended you in some way?’

‘I want to take orders,’ she said, but her throat closed and the words came out as barely a whisper. He did not say anything for a long time and she wondered if he had heard her.

When she looked up, he was staring at her, aghast. ‘A pretty girl like you? You want to spend the rest of your life in a convent? Why would you wish such a thing?’ When Fabricia did
not answer, he turned to Elionor. ‘Did you hear what she said?’

‘I had no knowledge of this.’

‘This is not your doing then?’

‘Why would I wish more of
Rome
on her?’

Fabricia had expected his anger; this look of pain and profound disappointment was much worse. ‘Those places are for widows and shamed women,’ he said.

What could she tell him?
I have never felt I am a part of this world, Papa. All my life I have been afflicted with strange dreams and premonitions. Now I see statues move and talk like living
people. I think I have a kind of madness. I don’t want to infect anyone else.
‘I want to give my life to God,’ she mumbled.

Anselm pushed his food away and slammed his hands on to the table. ‘This is madness,’ he said, and although it was not his exact meaning, the words still jarred with her.

‘I cannot marry Pèire. He will die soon.’

‘Pèire? But he’s perfectly healthy. I have never known such a robust young man. He has never been a day sick in his life.’

‘What your father says is true. What do you mean? Why do you think he will die?’ Now Elionor was staring at her too, her face betraying bewilderment as well as fear.

‘Forget this nonsense,’ Anselm said softly. ‘You will do as I say.’ He got up and went to sit by the hearth, grumbling to himself. He stared into the embers of the cook
fire until they grew cold and he was still there when his wife and his daughter took themselves to bed.

Fabricia could not sleep.

What was the matter with her? She thought about what had happened to her that day in the Saint-Étienne cathedral, when the statue of Our Lady had moved from her pedestal. She could see
her in her memory as clearly as she could picture her own mother and father at dinner. That did not mean it was real. Did she really believe the Madonna had spoken to her?

Ever since she was a child she had seen things that no one else could see, heard sounds no one else could hear: half-glimpsed wraiths; the sudden beat of a crow’s wings in a darkened
chamber; the rustle of a cloak in an empty room; the sound of voices whispering from the shades when she was quite alone.

She was barely able to walk when she first laughed at the fairies in the garden and pointed; her animated conversations with the invisible at first made her father smile, then frown, then scold.
By the time she was old enough to walk unaccompanied to the market she had learned to pretend she did not hear the wails from the deserted cottage by the eastern wall, or the dark spirits of the
hanged under the walls of the Garonne.

It felt to her as if she had not slithered completely from the womb. A part of her still sensed the world from which she had come and longed to return to it.

To hide her secret, she clung desperately to what was hard and real; to the stone of her father’s church, the hearth of her mother’s kitchen. With practice, she might pass months
when the only people she saw were those who were really there; no stars twinkled in the hearth light, no spectres moved in the corners. The world was solid and smelled of earth and damp and
stone.

She decided she would forget about what happened today in the church and do what her father said. Marriage to Pèire would not be so bad. He was a good, strong boy and he would put bread
on the table. So why did she see him sprawled on the floor of the church with his brains sprayed across the flagstones?

The next morning she asked Elionor about Pèire. Did she think he was the right choice for her?

‘He’s strong and he works hard and and you’ll never go hungry.’

It was the answer she should have expected. What more should a woman want from a marriage, after all? ‘What is it like to . . . lie with a man?’

‘So that’s what worrying you? Look child, your father’s the only man I’ve ever known. For all his size, he’s a gentle man and I’ve never shrunk from his
embraces. You know that.’

‘Did you love him from the first then?’

‘From the first? The first for me was just like it is for you. My father arranged things and I am grateful for his wisdom. It was never like one of the minstrels’ songs, I suppose,
but we grew to like each other and I suppose now I love him as much as anything in the world, except for you.’ She put her arms around her. ‘Everything will be all right, you’ll
see. Now get yourself dressed, child, and be off to the market or the best of everything will be gone.’

S
HE COULD HAVE
found her way blindfold through the streets to the Saint-Étienne gate, for every day for two years
she had gone by the same way to bring her father his dinner. She recognized the tincture of roses from the apothecary; and she knew the inn by the smell of sour wine and fish, for the innkeeper
made salted herring to feed his customers and they habitually spat the bones on to the reeds that covered the earthen floor; next came the tapping of a smithy at his furnace, and she felt the blast
of heat as she hurried past the smoke-blackened shop.

She flattened herself against the wall as a Templar knight came along the lane on his great warhorse, the stench of him enough to fell an ox, never a by-your-leave to anyone, a bearded giant
with a broadsword on his belt that was bigger than her. She tried to dodge the mud thrown up by its hooves. The size of them! They could pound a bone to splinters and dust.

Another storm overnight had left the square a sea of mud and rubbish. The fug of the city was made worse by a sticky mist of rain and tempers were short. A troupe of travelling tumblers who had
performed every day in the square had moved on, and now there were just a few housewives haggling for eggs and salt with the shivering stallholders. A fight broke out at one: two women come to
blows over a short measure.

Just nearby a spice monger, already convicted of tampering with his weights, stood miserably in the pillory. There were not even any youths out to toss stones at him.

She ducked aside from an ox and cart, the mud from the wheels spraying up her dress, and ran across the square towards the church. Some men-at-arms, standing by their master’s horse,
called out to her with lewd remarks and she hurried away.

Anselm called out to his daughter, and Father Simon Jorda looked up from where he and the stonemason were mapping out the walls of the priory in the mud. Fabricia Bérenger made her way
through the market crowds, a wicker basket on her arm. He saw a blaze of red hair, like a torch carried among the drab and jostling humanity below the cathedral steps.

For a few heartbeats of time he was not aware of the din of the hawkers inside the Saint-Étienne gate, or the bargaining and the quarrelling in the markets, the barking of dogs, the stink
of people. His eyes were drawn only towards the possessor of this mane; a young woman, slim as a reed, with startling green eyes. He realized, with a feeling of something close to dread, that she
was heading straight for them.

‘There is the question of cost,’ he said, trying to once again concentrate his mind on the problem at hand. But by then the young woman with the red hair had reached them and her
father enveloped her in a bear-like embrace. She wore a long tight-sleeved tunic of fine woollen cloth, over a high-necked linen chemise. There were soft calf’s leather shoes on her feet.

Her startling hair was wild and untamed, and its highlights caught the sun. He detected the scent of lavender on her clothes; she was a delight for all the senses. He stared at her for longer
than he should. When she saw the direction of his stare, she did not lower her eyes, but stared back at him in a way that was as inflammatory as it was immodest.

He tore his eyes from her as eagerly as a starving man might push away a heaped dinner. From that moment he pretended – though with little success – to ignore her. It was as if there
were rocks piled on his chest. He was as surprised as he was dismayed. Lust – or love, as the Minnesingers called it – was an old enemy to a monk and Simon thought he had defeated it
long ago..