Stigmata by Colin Falconer Page A

and when to wink and when to toss her hair at the butcher’s boy and the widowed farmer from the next village, but today was a bad day, she could hardly walk with her feet in such a
state, and so Elionor had gone in her stead. She heard another shower of rain whip against the oilskins on the window and she didn’t mind being here by the warm hearth.
    It was the pig snuffling in the mud in the yard that warned her; better than a dog he was, his high-pitched squeal letting her know a stranger was in the yard. She heard someone come in through
the back door. She caught her breath and her fingers tightened around the bone-handled knife in her fist. Not that it would help her, a knife wasn’t much use unless you were prepared to use
it.
    ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, smiling.
    She remembered the last time a churchman appeared unannounced at her domus . ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ she lied.
    He took off his cloak and set it on a chair by the hearth and sat down, toasting his toes as if this were his own ostal . He twisted the large amber ring on his finger. ‘You should
be afraid. Most people in this village are afraid of me.’
    ‘No, they despise you. There’s a difference.’
    His smile fell away. Why can’t I keep my thoughts to myself? she thought. Mocking him will only make it worse. I am here alone and I know he has come here for only one purpose, two if he
intends to hurt me as well. Bite your lip, girl, get this over with.
    He leaned forward. ‘Who do you think you are, talking to me that way? Put the knife down.’
    ‘Why, do you think I might stick you with it? Maybe I would.’
    ‘Put it down,’ he repeated.
    She put the knife on the table.
    ‘I could destroy you. You and all your family.’
    ‘In God’s name?’
    ‘In any name I choose.’
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘You know what I want,’ he said.
    ‘And then? If you get it, will you leave me in peace?’
    ‘It depends.’ He stood up and walked around the bench, trapping her in the corner. His cassock was wet and the wool stank. He raised the hem of his robe, all the time keeping his
eyes on her face. Fabricia flinched.
    ‘Look,’ he said. The tumour on his thigh was gross, a great swollen piece of flesh, livid in its centre like a bruise. Fabricia felt her gorge rise. She looked away.
    ‘Heal me,’ he said.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Put your hands on me like you did to Bernart.’
    ‘I didn’t do anything to Bernart. There was nothing wrong with him. I just helped him get up.’
    ‘Everyone knows what you did. Your father too. His men swear he was near dead when they brought him here. What did you do? Is it some prayer you have? Do you see devils?’
    ‘I don’t do anything,’ she said again. She dared another glance at his diseased leg. It was so grotesque, she almost felt sorry for him. ‘Does it hurt you?’
    ‘Not yet,’ he said but she could tell that he feared it soon would.
    She held out her hand, hesitated. Even when she was wearing woollen mittens she shrank from touching such a thing.
    ‘What, am I too filthy for you to touch? Do for me what you did for Bernart! Well? You touched a cripple and you won’t touch me?’
    Fabricia encircled the extrusion of flesh with her palm. His skin was pale with coarse hairs, and the mass growing out of it reminded her of the jelly on pork fat after it had been boiled.
‘How long have you had this?’ she asked him.
    ‘I saw it first just before the Feast of the Epiphany. It was then a lump the size of a walnut, no more. But every day it grows more, right in front of my eyes.’ There was a tremor
in his voice. ‘I have tried salves and a wise woman in Carcassonne gave me a poultice of herbs but it has done no good.’
    She placed her hand on it, closed her eyes and said a prayer to the lady.
    ‘I can feel something,’ he said. ‘What do you have under those gloves? Show me.’ He grabbed her wrist.
    ‘Do you want me to heal you or not? Then let me go.’ Why did I say that