The Passion of Dolssa (47 page)

Sometimes, in the night, I thought of all the ways life could have been different. What if I’d heeded Sazia’s warnings and avoided the trip to San Cucufati? What if I’d passed by Dolssa’s spot on the riverbank a moment before, or after, and heard no sound at all? What if I hadn’t told our group to separate when hunted by the soldiers?

I’d be dead, in the latter case, along with my sisters and Symo. For Dolssa’s and Jobau’s sake, I tried not to wish that it were the case.

These thoughts were blades, and there was no point reopening cuts.

If I’d never met Dolssa, who would I be today? What if I’d never known the girl in love with God?

And Symo. I had all the time in the world to wonder what might have been possible there. He was the most infuriating
tozẹt
ever to make me want to twist his ears. I hoped he’d survived. Even if he slept in another
femna
’s arms and counted his blessings at being rid of that dangerous Botille. I hope he lived long and fat and contentedly, growing his own chickpeas and tying his own grapes in some safe, hidden corner of the world.

I went through the quiet motions of my days. I carried water from the spring to water my vegetables. I came in time to be fond of my neighbors. But life was muffled. Muted. Even my lightest moments were wrapped in relentless grief and loss, pressed down by the anxious taste of waiting for hopeful news that would never come.

BOTILLE

pringtime came, and Mima pined for a pilgrimage to Barçalona. There was a monastery there, Sant Pau del Camp, where an uncle of hers had been a monk, and she longed to see it before she died. Not that death was anywhere near her, as robust and cheery as she was now. But she was determined, and her cobbler would not leave his trade, so she begged me to accompany her.

I resisted. I wanted no part of monks or friars or churchmen. Barçalona worried me, that seaport town. Sant Dominic’s Order of Preachers was sure to have a foothold in such a busy place, even if not at the abbey at Saint Paul of the Countryside.

But Mima pressed me. She didn’t dare travel alone. A trip would be good for me, she said. I’d been too melancholy for too long, she said. Who knows, I might find a little romance on a journey such as this, she said.

I wanted romance as much as I wanted Lucien de Saint-Honore to knock at my door. But after all she had done for me, I didn’t have the heart to keep saying no to Mima.
Go,
said the familiar voice.

Perhaps a journey would do me some good. I was Maria now, and nobody knew my face. I could keep to myself and attract no danger.

So I journeyed with Mima to Barçalona from our tiny settlement on the outskirts of Balbastro. Outside Barçalona, we sought shelter from rain at a women’s convent and passed the night in the dormitories. I hesitated at first, but Dolssa’s voice said,
Go without fear.

I listened to the sisters chant their nighttime prayers. How lucky they were to have each other.

In the morning, I rose before Mima, and couldn’t return to sleep, so I went outside to look at the rose gardens. I knelt to admire the showy yellow blossoms. Beyond them were pinks and whites, all swaying together in the dim morning haze.

I noticed a movement farther off in my line of sight. Two young sisters of the convent—novices, I supposed—sat talking in secret behind taller shrubs. I watched as they whispered back and forth. Soft sounds of laughter met my ears. Were they breaking rules? Was there a vow of silence? Their covert friendship among the roses made me smile.

I lost track of time, soaking in the blossoms while the sun climbed in the sky. What a thing, to tend and grow not food, but splendor. I quickly cut a small branch with a swollen bud from the yellow shrub. I would see if by chance I could keep it moist and alive this whole journey home, and plant myself a rosebush.

The secret friends arose and parted from each other with kisses on their cheeks. The shorter one ran inside, while the other headed my way, toward the garden. I tucked my guilty rosebud under my dress and felt a thorn prick tender skin. The girl saw me then and froze. She made to turn back toward the convent and escape my prying gaze. But I saw her eyes before she recognized mine.

“Sazia.”

She turned back, and we ran into each other’s arms.

My Sazia. Alive and whole and warm in my grasp. My baby
s
rre
.

She was taller than I was now. Leaner. Her hair, hidden behind her wimple. Her eyes, her teeth, her very own nose and cheeks, like no one else’s could ever be. They were hers, and she was mine. I wouldn’t have believed that after so much pain, my heart could still hold this kind of joy.

Grácia
, Dolssa, for bringing me here.
Grácia
for this miracle.

Her story was soon told.

She’d been caught. Not the night of the burnings, but early the morning after. Soldiers brought her back to Bajas. The terror she endured was beyond imagining. Friar Lucien, Prior Pons, and Bishop Raimon had already left
for Tolosa. They were worried about Lucien, whose wounds had healed astonishingly, but who now seemed possessed by a fit of melancholy. They left other friar inquisitors to clean up the mess Dolssa had left in Bajas.

Soldiers brought her to Sant Martin, where the churchmen stayed, and Dominus Bernard bargained for Sazia’s life. If she would join a convent, she would be spared. Sazia agreed, and the presiding friars, who did not share Lucien de Saint-Honore’s animosity for Dolssa and her helpers, rejoiced over her as a lost sheep regained into the fold. So off to a Dominican convent in Narbona, Sazia was sent.

“Did you learn anything of Plazensa?” I asked her, there among the flowers. “Or . . . Symo?”

She shook her head. A painful silence filled the space between us.

“So, you went to the convent.”

“I raged against it at first,” she told me. “I was so sick with grief and anger that I could barely eat. I thought of trying to flee, but if they caught me, my old sentence of execution would return. I spent miserable months in the hospital wing. There I became friends with one of the older women named Sister Margarethe. We were both ill together. She taught me to read.”

As Sazia recovered, she fell into the new rhythms of life. She found a taste for study, especially under Sister Margarethe’s tutelage. She made friends with other sisters. After a year there, Sister Margarethe was offered a position as abbess at the convent outside Barçalona. She invited Sazia, now under the name Sister Clara, to come with her.

“Sister Clara,” I repeated. “It’s so strange to think of you with a new name. But I have one too. I’m Maria.”

Sazia grinned. “An excellent choice.”

I told her about my little home in the country. “You shall come live with me,” I told her. “We’ll be together again. No one will know where or whom you are. We’ll be safe.”

Sazia was slow to reply.

“Do you still fear that if you leave, you’ll be punished?”

She shook her head. “No. Sister Margarethe cares for me. She is not like the friars.”

I squeezed her hand. “Then it’s settled! Come back with us in two days’ time.”

I waited for an answer, until I realized silence
was
her answer.

“It’s so good to see you, Botille,” she said.

“Maria.” My hurt wouldn’t keep silence.

She stroked my cheek. “How I have prayed for you.”

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “And I for you.”

“Praise God for bringing you here to me!”

I’d never heard Sazia speak so before. Who have you become, little
s
rre
? What happened to my teasing, mocking, ungovernable girl?

Bells in the convent began to ring. To find her, and not keep her, pierced my heart.

“I like my life here, Botille,” she said. “I’m learning so much. The sisters . . .”

She was my sister, still, and I knew her thoughts. She was worried I’d be vexed with her. Something new had found a hold on her affections. My Sazia could never return to me.

“It’s all right.”

She took courage. “It’s good to be one of the sisters.” She took a deep breath. “It is good to belong here.”

But you belong with me.

The old Botille would have scolded her mightily and marched her out by the ear.

But I was Maria now, and Sazia—Clara—was grown up.

“May I visit you again?” I asked.

She beamed. “I hope you will.”

I nodded. “I will see what I can do. I don’t much like the thought of spending time at a Dominican convent.”

Her cheeks colored. “They’re not
all
like the inquisitors in Tolosa.”

Hear her, defending them! The order that tried to kill us!

Bells rang again. Sazia began to be anxious to go. “It’s time for prayers.”

“I never would have predicted, oh, soothsayer, that you would one day be a nun,” I told her with a smile. “You never had any use for holiness before.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Oh,
s
rre
,” she said earnestly. “That was before I knew Dolssa.”

BOTILLE

ima and I returned home and fell back into the rhythms of our lives. Summer came in, with heat enough to melt any desire I felt to live. I toiled all day in the garden and in my little brewery. Local farmers had less time for fortune-telling during the dry season of the year, when water must be hauled from streams backbreakingly far away, so I had to work harder to feed myself. The blistering air never moved, and I gasped as Mima and I tilled her plot. If my sweat could have watered my garden before the sun baked it off me, it would have been a mercy to me and to my onions.