The Passion of Dolssa (18 page)

“Poor child,” Plazensa murmured. “Poor little bird.”

We propped her up with pillows while Plazi sponged her sore skin. I dunked Dolssa’s hair in my other bucket and rubbed soap and water through her long, draggled locks.

“We’ll need more hot water,” I told Sazia, and she went to refill the pans.

While Plazensa whistled and splashed, Dolssa’s eyes met mine, though upside down, as I cradled her head over a bucket. “Why are you doing this?” she murmured. “You don’t even know me.”

Her sopping hair hung from her face, leaving her looking weak and pitiable. She reminded me of a bedraggled Mimi one time when she grew too adventurous, playing in the surf. I wanted to laugh, but it would be cruel. The poor girl was bewildered and terrified.

I remembered something my mamà used to say. “God knows you,” I said. “God knows just what you need.”

Dolssa’s eyes filled with tears. Poor tired thing—even the least kindness was too much for her.

“What are you two saying?” demanded Plazensa.

I smiled at my sister. “We’re discussing your beauty. I say you’re the prettiest
femna
in all Bajas, but Dolssa here says all of Europe.”

“Oh, pah.” Plazensa busied herself with scrubbing and worked hard not to smile. Dolssa’s face betrayed a rising sense of panic.

Plazensa removed one of Dolssa’s feet from the water and rubbed soap into her skin. When it reached her wounded toes, she hissed through her teeth. Plazi carefully wiped away the suds and rubbed the poor foot with a rag. She worked her lovely fingers carefully around the mangled toes, then, with her knife, deftly pared away the offending nails.

Dolssa vacillated between flinching with pain, cringing in embarrassment, and sinking into the comfort of our ministrations. But
every time she caught herself reposing in our care, she would jolt herself back to alertness and fear.

“Are you cleaning me up,” she whispered, “for some particular use?”

“We don’t plan to fry you and eat you,” I said, “if that’s what you mean.”

Sazia returned and resumed force-feeding our charge, then helped me wash her body with wet cloths until it was time to refill our buckets with fresh water. There was no sound but the soft splashing and the sibilant shush of our breathing. Slowly, gently, we washed away the residue of her ordeal fleeing Tolosa. It reminded me of when Plazensa and I would bathe little Sazia after Mamà first took sick.

Sazia worked a comb patiently through Dolssa’s long, wet tangles. Finally we both joined Plazensa in rubbing her chafed and harassed skin with oil, anointing her hair and neck with lavender. Plazensa wrapped Dolssa’s cleaned and oiled toes in soft, dry cloths, then pulled some knitted slippers of her own over the bandaged feet.

Dolssa finally seemed to have settled into a sleepy peace. She had ceased resisting our attentions, and gone limp. I was glad to see it.

“It’s important that you know,” she told us, “that I am a virgin for Christ.”

Plazensa’s lips twitched. “Good for you. Are you bound for a convent, then?”

The girl shook her head. “No. I . . . I just wanted to make sure you knew, in case . . .”

“Good.” Plazensa nodded firmly. “Remain a virgin, then, until you marry. Men like to imagine that’s how every girl—”

“Oh, but I won’t marry,” Dolssa said breathlessly. “I couldn’t ever.”

Sazia chimed in. “I don’t blame you. Watch out, though. My sister Botille could persuade a eunuch to take a wife. No one’s safe around her.” She pulled a nightshirt over Dolssa’s head and shoulders while Plazensa and I stripped her bed and spread fresh sheets for her.

My thoughts returned to Senhor Guilhem and the mystery lady I’d concocted. Dolssa’s virgin pledge was an unwelcome twist. If she wouldn’t marry, what safety was left for her?

“Finish your broth, and back to bed with you,” ordered Plazensa. “You need sleep if you’re ever going to return to strength.”

Dolssa submitted to Plazensa, as most people do, and lay down upon the clean bedding. Plazi and I spread a blanket over her.

“I’m curious,” I said, “why you’re so concerned that we know about your pledge. It’s scarcely our affair.”

Dolssa pulled the blanket up to her chin and nestled down under the blanket like a child. Mimi claimed a space next to Dolssa’s knees, prodded it with her claws, then cozied up beside her.

Dolssa’s eyes were wide as she peered up at me. “I assumed you were . . .” She yawned. “Aren’t you grooming me to be one of you?”

“Grooming you?” Plazensa laughed. “To be one of us, sisters! Why, you dear child . . .”

Dolssa’s heavy eyelids closed. “Not a sister,” she murmured. “A prostitute.”

Plazensa carried Dolssa’s clothes into the front tavern room at arm’s length, pinched between her thumb and forefinger, as though she held a dead rat by its tail.

“To be a
prostitute
, like one of you,” she fumed. “Of all the outrageous insults . . .”

Sazia coughed and glanced at me. I wouldn’t meet her gaze for all the gold in Roma. If I laughed now, Plazensa would make me sleep on the muddy beach for a week.

“Ungrateful little wretch!”

She dropped the dirty clothes into a wash water bucket, and commenced pounding the clothes with a paddle.

“Oh, let be, Plazi,” I said. “You know it’s what everyone thinks about women who work in public houses.” I took over her laundry pounding for fear she’d smash right through the pail. “Remember, she’s not like us. She’s from a wealthy family in Tolosa. One that can afford to keep their daughters pious and holy.”

“Unlike the rest of us,” said Sazia with a toss of her frizzy hair, “whose daughters must grovel in the gutter to earn their daily bread.”

“Is that what you think?” Plazensa’s eyes flashed. “That we
grovel
for our bread? Is
that
what others think?” Her voice rose a notch with each question.

“Well, we used to steal it . . .” Sazia wrenched open the door to the cavity in the stone fireplace that served as our baking oven. The hot smell of Plazensa’s black bread tantalized us.

“I’ll grovel for a chunk of your bread right now, Plazi, if it’ll make you feel better,” I told her.

Sazia slid a board under the loaf to pull it out. Plazi shooed her away. “Get you gone,” she said. “That bread’s for customers. Who does she think she is? A nun without her habit? A virgin bride of Christ?”

We were distracted then by a tapping at the window shutters. I poked through the honeysuckle vines to see Astruga peering in at me.

“Oh,
bon
, Botille,” she said. “It’s you.”

“So you see,” I said. “I live here, after all. What is it, Astruga?”

“Have you found me a husband yet?”

I sighed. “Obviously not.”

She thrust out her lower lip. “Well, get on about it.”

“Give me time, Astruga,” I whispered, for out of the corner of my eye I saw Plazensa growing inquisitive.

“I haven’t got time, as you well know.” Her hand went protectively to her belly.

“Astruga,” I said, “be reasonable. I haven’t forgotten you. But these things don’t happen overnight.”

Again, the pout. “Yes, they do.”

She was beginning to annoy me. “And that’s why,” I said through smiling teeth, “people usually seek for my services
beforehand
.”

She shrugged. No contrition from this quarter, not that I had expected any.

“How soon can you find me a man?” she asked again. “I need one fast.”

I shook my head. “Astruga, you are going about this all wrong. Tell me. Help me do my work. Why should someone want to marry you?”

She took an affronted step back and held out both her arms, displaying her figure. When I said nothing, she favored me with a flourish of both hands, outlining the contours of her more than adequate womanly curves.

“So what?” I said. “You have bosoms. You haven’t answered me. Why should someone want to marry you?”

Her nose poked the clouds, she was so indignant. “For this!” Again, her physique.

“What’s going on over there?” Plazensa called. “In or out, but leave off with the window talk!”

“Never mind my sister,” I said. “Astruga. When it comes to marriage, the men of Bajas are more sensible than you suppose.”

She was having no part of this outlandish notion.

“Yes, you’re pretty enough,” I said, “but what else can you offer? In a wife, a man wants a sound choice. Have you a dowry?”

“A bit,” she said. “More than some girls from Bajas.”

That would help. “Can you do anything?”

Her mouth hung open at the question.

“Cook?” I supplied.

Again with the nose. “Course I can.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I hear otherwise. Sew?”

She shook her head. “A little.”

“Make wine?”

She looked away. “Papà does that.”

“Tan leather?” I said. “Make soap? Keep bees? Spin wool?”

She thrust out her lip so far, I wanted to snatch it with my finger and thumb and give it a good twist. “I can make babies,” she hissed. “And that’s what matters most.”

“Oh,
oc
,” I said, “men like that in a wife. But a fair number like to think they discovered their wife’s skill in that area themselves.”

Astruga’s face screwed up in fury. “You’d best find me someone quick, Botille, or so help me, I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Astruga?”

Her nostrils flared while she searched for just the right revenge. “I’ll scream!” She turned and marched up the hill to her papà’s house.

ESCLARMONDA DE MONSOS

Witness Testimony recorded by Lucien

C
ITY OF
N
ARBONA

Esclarmonda: fifty-two; married wife; living

with her invalid husband outside the city

rom Tolosa? You’ve come a long way.

There was a time when I liked to roam about too. I used to visit my sister, south of here, along the lagoon. Her husband fished it, before he died. I haven’t seen her in years. These aged feet of mine won’t let me travel. She’s still there, last I knew, eating what her son drags up from the sea.

You are looking for a girl?

I have seen no one of that description, Friar. Dolssa is a curious name.

Oc
, yes, there are
tozas
aplenty, but local ones, all of them running about chasing the
tozẹts
, priding themselves on their hair and their round, red cheeks. Their turn will come. A man will woo them, babies will delight them and break their hearts in turn. Like my son, Niot. What good is he to me now, dead in the wars? Such a curly-headed babe he was!

I have seen no one like the
donzȩlla
you describe.

You want to ask my husband? Ask him if you like, but his wits are no longer his own. He keeps to his chair. He will have seen nothing, nor could he tell you if he had seen your
donzȩlla
.

Oc
, I might have missed her, but I watch the road and the river. Ever since the aching took hold of my feet. I sit here and watch the world pass by, since I can’t go greet it myself anymore. I can’t swear she hasn’t been here, but I can say I’m fairly certain she has not. Are you sure she came this way? Might the angels already have taken her?

What will you do now? Keep looking?

There is a convent just up the road, in Narbona, Friar . . . Lucien? Friar Lucien. Listen! Those are their bells ringing, even now, for prayers. If you follow the river, you will come to it eventually. The Brotherhood of Sant Esteve. Perhaps they could help you there with your search. If nothing more, they would welcome and feed you.

Try the village, then, if you want to ask others.

Oc, oc
. If I see any sign of a girl such as the one you seek, I will send you word at the convent.

God speed you on your errand, and may you find the girl you seek. God protects and keeps his own, does he not?

HUGO

enhor Hugo’s horse picked its tired way up the winding, wooded lanes of the mountain where the Abadia de Fontfreda lay hidden from view. On either side of the path, peasant harvesters and lay brothers shouldered wooden crates of grapes through leafy vineyards. Hugo already knew he could count on a bed for the night, and information. Perhaps there would also be good wine.