enhor Guilhem watched the glistening stranger at the party dance with the newcomer, one of the nephews of the widow Pieret. Snubbed! By some fairy femna, whose dress and bearing bespoke rank and position, yet he’d never seen her before. He would never have forgotten a creature such as she. And now she danced with that showy upstart from out of town, that nephew of Na Pieret di Fabri’s. He’d better watch whom he offended, new as he was to Bajas. But where had this bewitching creature come from?
Plazensa Flasucra had something to do with it. Now there was a face and figure to leave even this fairy creature in the pale, but there was no marrying a public tavern keeper.
Was this the woman Botille Flasucra had spoken of? The mysterious and beautiful stranger? Or had she played a trick, a prank designed to make a fool out of him with that wretched crone in the woods? He wouldn’t have thought it of her.
“Senhor.”
He turned to see his young page standing at his side, holding a letter.
“What now?” He rubbed his eyes. It was late. Many of the older folks had already gone home to bed. A letter at this hour?
“Pardon, Senhor,” said the page. “The letter just arrived. The messenger said ‘urgent.’”
Guilhem sent the boy home. He tucked the letter into his belt and resumed brooding over the dancing femnas, then thought the better of it, went inside the house, and opened the letter.
Lop, the bayle, detached himself from a conversation and approached the young lord.
“Trouble, Senhor?”
Senhor Guilhem roused himself to answer Lop. “Why should there be trouble?”
Lop bobbed his head in acceptable contrition. “You looked concerned, Senhor. And there is the late hour of the letter.”
Guilhem tucked the letter back into his belt. “It’s from the bishop of Tolosa,” he said, “warning us of a fugitive heretic roaming abroad. One who somehow escaped her burning. If we hear of her, we are to let them know.”
He thought of the woman in the woods. But there was no reason to suppose she was the heretic they sought. These last few bonas femnas and bons omes, they were everywhere throughout Provensa. An open secret no one wanted to think about. Like lepers. He would say nothing about her. There wasn’t a chestnut’s chance it was she.
“That is a curious thing,” said the bayle. “I just spoke with Giacomo Arbrissi.”
“The Italian merchant?”
Lop nodded. “Oc. He tells me he stopped in port tonight with a passenger bound for Bajas. A friar. An inquisitor. One who came, he said, looking for a heretical woman believed to be in Bajas.”
Senhor Guilhem’s eyelids fell shut. In Bajas? The noose was pulling tighter. That woman in the woods—she was no prank. She would prove his downfall. If they hunted for her, and found her, the inquisitors could say he, Guilhem, harbored heretics, and strip him of his lands and name. And if they ever knew he’d spoken with her—and she’d tell them—that would damn him even more. Until now, with lax Dominus Bernard at Sant-Martin, and no one making noise about bons omes and bonas femnas, Guilhem had figured heresy was a problem for other, larger landowning lords—not him. But if the war had taught Provensa nothing else, it had finally, and brutally, taught its nobles this lesson: keep heresy far from your borders, far from the souls of your subjects, or pay the price on earth and in hell.
Life had gone from tranquil to deadly practically overnight. And all because he’d listened to some petty matchmaker’s tales.
Senhor Guilhem opened his eyes. Lop was watching him strangely. That wouldn’t do.
“Dieu, I’m tired.” Guilhem affected a casual pose. “Too much wine. I’m going to bed.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
Outside, the whipping wind cleared the young lord’s head somewhat.
“Tell me, Lop,” he asked, “did Giacomo tell you the name of the heretic they’re seeking?”
The shaggy-whiskered bayle shook his head. “Why, did the letter name the woman?”
Guilhem climbed the dark streets toward his castrum. “Dolssa,” he said. “Unusual name.”
Lop stopped in his tracks.
“What’s the matter?”
“Dolssa,” Lop said, “is the name of the medica, the healer woman all the village speaks of.”
“Blood of Christ.” Senhor Guilhem rubbed his hand over his face. “Here, in Bajas. It would have to be here. Of all the forgotten corners in Christendom . . .”
I shall tell no one I saw you. That is all the protection I can give you.
“You say this inquisitor is here now?”
Lop nodded. “According to what the merchant told me, oc.”
“Where is he?”
Lop shook his head. “I don’t know.”
They resumed their climb. Wind blasted through their clothes.
“Do you want me to arrest her, Senhor?”
Guilhem hesitated.
“Quickly,” he said, “gather wood. We will execute her ourselves, before morning. Then when the friar begins his questioning, we can show our hands clean before the Church. They cannot fault us for exterminating heresy on our own, when first we find it. They must praise us for it. They cannot strip my lands from me for that.”
He’d said too much. Exposed his fear to the older man. He might be young, but he was a lord, and he must never betray weakness. He hated Lop for catching him so exposed.
“Execute her,” Lop repeated slowly. “On the Sabbath. With all the people venerating her as a holy woman.”
“That is what we must stamp out,” Guilhem said, “before the friar observes it. Do it tonight, before dawn.”
Lop held out a hand. “There’s rain coming.”
“I don’t care about rain.”
Lop’s silence irked Guilhem more than any response he might have made.
“So, I will build the fire . . . ?” The bayle’s unspoken question dangled in the night air.
“Oc.” Senhor Guilhem tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. “I myself will bring you the heretic.”