by Mary Hoffman
All the shepherds and goatherds were dependent on the Lady of the castle, as were the farmers, cheese-makers, bakers, carpenters, weavers and poultry men. And then there were the household knights, the squires, the burghers and the many servants of the castle. They all looked to the Lady to manage their affairs, feed and house them.
Iseut had never had much time to spend on her poetry and music and now she had less for sitting around wondering what was going on west of the Rhône. She involved Elinor in more and more of the daily decisions and tasks. Nicolas the senescal was her right-hand man but, as time went by, Iseut came to rely on Elinor’s opinion too.
This was specially useful since a certain coolness seemed to have sprung up on Lord Berenger’s part. Iseut was sure that he had taken a dislike to her new companion. It made her smile at first because he had not been at all jealous of Azalais; if anything, it had been the other way round.
But it really hurt that he was now holding himself aloof from her, at a time when he himself had said she might be in danger. The Lady did not spend much time looking in her hand glass but if she had, she would have seen a permanent line between her brows that used not to be there. It came from frowning over her accounts and trying not to think of the war. Or about Lord Berenger.
When Viscount Trencavel heard that his uncle had taken the Cross, he knew the game was up. Bertran’s message brought the worst news he had heard for some time.
‘I must do the same as the Count,’ he told Bertran, who had gained entry to the château only by saying that he came hotfoot from Count Raimon and the French army. The gatekeepers didn’t recognise him as the troubadour that had so often visited the Viscount.
‘I must go to the Abbot at Montpellier and offer to surrender on the same terms as Toulouse,’ said Trencavel. ‘Only I shall stop short of giving him my son as hostage.’
Bertran bowed. He did not think that the Abbot would accept the Viscount’s offer, not now he was marching at the head of an army that could find such rich pickings in the south. But he understood why the Viscount needed to try.
‘May I come with you, my lord?’ he asked.
‘Thank you,’ said young Trencavel. ‘You have always been a good friend.’
They set out straight away and arrived two days later. The sight of the French army camped at Montpellier struck fear into both men. It was unnatural; no company of men and weapons so great had ever assembled in the south in their lifetimes. They found their way to the Abbot’s tent, passing by one with the red and gold banner of Raimon of Toulouse. The Viscount said he couldn’t face his uncle yet.
When they were shown into the Legate’s presence, Trencavel introduced his companion just as ‘Jules’. Bertran was not confident that he would not be recognised with his new beard and he pulled his hat down over his eyes as soon as it was polite to put it back on.
In fact the Abbot scarcely looked even at the Viscount, let alone his companion.
‘It is far too late for such gestures,’ he said haughtily, waving aside the Viscount’s offer. ‘You have seen the forces ranged against you. I suggest you go back to your little castle and prepare to defend yourself.’
‘Ranged against me, my lord Abbot?’ asked the Viscount, trying hard to control his temper. ‘Why, what am I supposed to have done? I thought it was my uncle you had a grievance against.’
‘Your uncle has seen the error of his ways,’ said another man, coming forward. He was big with a shock of dark hair and a fanatical gleam in his eye. Both Trencavel and Bertran were surprised that the Legate let this unknown speak.
‘Might I know who addresses me?’ asked the Viscount.
‘This is the Earl of Leicester in England,’ said the Legate, in a bored voice. ‘He is Simon de Montfort, from the Île de France, and one of our most distinguished soldiers.’
‘You, like the Count of Toulouse, have encouraged heretics and Jews in your lands,’ said de Montfort. ‘My lord Abbot is correct. You should prepare for war.’
‘But I came here to offer surrender,’ said the Viscount. ‘On the same terms as the Count of Toulouse.’
But it was no good. Neither the Abbot nor de Montfort would listen. The two visitors were firmly shown out of the leaders’ presence.
Trencavel and Bertran stood together outside the tent, stunned by what they had heard.
‘It is hard to stop a thrown stone,’ said Bertran. ‘They were never going to turn the army back.’
‘I must assemble my vassals,’ said the young Viscount. ‘Carcassonne is the best mustering point – it is well stocked and prepared for siege. But I must now ride back to Béziers. After what they said about the Jews I must get them to Carcassonne too.’ He ran both hands through his hair. ‘These are dark days, Bertran.’
‘What can I do?’ asked Bertran.
‘Come back to Béziers with me,’ he said. ‘And help me save the Jews.’
‘Surely, sire. And what about the Believers?’ asked Bertran.
‘I think they will be safe enough there,’ said Trencavel. ‘Béziers itself is well provisioned; but I want the Jews under my protection. We must pray that this storm will pass over us all and blow itself out in the west without too much bloodshed.’
Bertran went with him to organise messengers throughout the region to rouse the vassals. But meeting Simon de Montfort had unsettled him. The Count of Toulouse had said that the Abbot of Cîteaux was a wolf; it seemed he was not the only one in the French army.
At Sévignan, Elinor had not been forgotten. But the news from the north had made all other considerations secondary. Her brother, Aimeric, had returned with no news after scouring the countryside for miles around. No one had seen a young girl of Elinor’s description and she was in none of the sister houses, whether of the Church or the Believers.
And of course he had not asked about young boys.
Her family prayed for Elinor every day.
‘All we can do is hope that she is safe and that we will see her again when these terrible times are over,’ said Lord Lanval.
Then he forced all thoughts of his older daughter under in order to concentrate on the safety of his bastide. He had seriously considered leaving their hill town but the same thoughts came round again and again: where would they go? How much property and valuables could they take with them? And, most importantly, shouldn’t they stay to protect their dependents?
As the news of the French muster filtered down to the family in the castle, Lanval sent out messengers to more and more people nearby to come and take shelter within its strong walls. The town was full of extra people and animals. Grain was stored in warehouses, vegetables harvested and kept in wooden crates or watered in racks. Pigs and sheep were slaughtered and the meat salted, and there were large numbers of chickens scratching round the streets of the bastide.
The knights and armourers were all busy, forging, mending, sharpening and grinding. The mood was high; the young men like Aimeric and Gui had never seen any more action than a few local skirmishes. They had no idea what real siege and warfare would be like but they were, if not looking forward to it, excited and full of energy.
The older men looked grim; they were under no illusions about the force from the north. Lord Lanval took charge of everything about the defences and Lady Clara kept Alys and the women servants busy, preparing bandages and medicines. The herb-women were occupied with grinding, distilling, mixing and bottling cures and remedies.
The water supply was a major problem in any siege and in addition to keeping the wells in good repair, Lord Lanval ordered barrels to be filled from the streams around the castles, to ensure that they did not run out. As the water grew stale it would be drawn off into buckets which were kept constantly filled against outbreaks of fire, and the barrels would be topped up with fresh water.
And the walls were being repaired, great blocks of
stone being hauled in from the countryside around to fill gaps, and smaller pieces brought in by the basket. Soon the walls of Sévignan were as strong and complete as they had ever been.
Beacons were built to be lit when and if the French force came into view, to summon any last dependents from outlying areas to come and shelter in the bastide. Church bells would be rung and drums beaten and trumpets blasted, not only calling in the last stragglers but reminding any fighting men of the Midi who had not already given their allegiance to hasten to the defence of the walls.
Watches were kept in each tower at the corners of the walls, by sharp-eyed sentries during the day and those with the most acute hearing at night. Every night the gates were closed at dusk and this was signalled by the ringing of another bell, in case people had lost track of time and were still labouring in the fields. It also signalled that anyone not authorised to stay overnight should leave, but as time went by, there were fewer visitors.
There were not many who wanted to be caught out in the open away from their own defended towns after dark. Rumour was spreading about the French army: twenty thousand, forty thousand, a hundred thousand. And news filtered through about the burnings at Casseneuil. By the time the force reached Montpellier, everyone was prepared for the worst.
Word of the Count of Toulouse’s defection was brought to Lanval, as it was to many lords over the Midi, and he bowed his head in despair. If the army could not lay siege to Toulouse, there was more likelihood that other, smaller towns would be attacked. All over the Midi, bastides were being repaired and stocked, just as Sévignan was.
‘Well,’ said Lord Lanval, wearily to his wife one evening in late July. ‘We are as ready as we are ever going to be – let the Frenchmen come!’
‘Oh don’t say so, my love,’ said Clara. ‘If only they would pass by us.’
‘Then it would be to go on and sack another town,’ said Lanval.
‘Why can’t they just go back, now that Raimon has surrendered?’ Clara asked bitterly. ‘Their argument is with him, not us.’
Lanval had summoned all his family members and closest advisors together with his knights, to a meeting in the great hall.
‘The French force’s argument with us, since my wife has raised it, is that we are sympathetic to what the Pope calls heretics.’ He looked round at his senior knights. ‘We cannot claim to be guilt-free of that charge, as I think you know, though I would dispute the Pope’s term. It seems that the Church cannot bear to be disagreed with on matters of doctrine. The Pope hates the Believers and the French love our lands and property. So we are caught like an almond in a pair of nutcrackers.’
His use of ‘we’ was as close as he dared come to admitting he was one of the ‘heretics’ the Pope so hated.
‘What I have summoned you here to say is that if we are offered peace on terms of surrendering up any Perfects or Believers in Sévignan to the “mercy” of the French army, I shall not accept those terms. My mind is made up on this. We have heard what French mercy consists of and it is sword and fire. If any man here disagrees with my decision there is still time to take shelter and give aid in another bastide, where the decision might be different.’
He looked round the hall expectantly, but no one stirred or spoke.
‘You understand that if it comes to that, we shall be subjected to the full force of the besiegers?’ Lanval added.
Still no movement.
‘Well, then there is no more to be said. We will stand firm and protect the Believers and our lands. But if we should overcome we will show mercy to the invader. And may the Divine Spirit be with us.’
Bertran and the Viscount rode back to Béziers through the night and they were there before dawn. But Trencavel did not rest. He called for Samuel, his bailiff, to gather all the Jews in the city together. There were so many Jews in Béziers that the city was known as ‘Petite Jerusalem’. ‘They must come with me to Carcassonne,’ he said. ‘I can protect them even better there.’
‘But are you afraid for the city?’ asked Samuel. ‘I thought we were well garrisoned and well provisioned here?’
‘We are indeed,’ said Trencavel. ‘But I myself must get back to my château – my wife and child are there. And I should like to keep the Jews under my personal protection. The French are even more set against them than against the Believers.’
The Viscount summoned the citizens and asked them to defend the city as best they could.
‘Hold up the crusaders for as long as you can, while I fortify Carcassonne,’ he begged them. ‘You control their access to the bridge across the Orb and the longer you can delay them, the better for us.’ He did not speak of victory.
Bertran himself went to his friend Nahum’s house and found the spice-trader ready, with his portable goods packed up.
‘We have been expecting to leave for some time,’ he told the troubadour. ‘We were just waiting to know when and where. You will find many of my people likewise prepared.’
As they left, Nahum locked his front door and pocketed the big iron key. It pierced Bertran to the heart to think that his old friend had faith that he would one day return to his family’s home. But there was no time to give way to such feelings. The several hundred Jews had to be assembled and got on their way to the bigger town and the stragglers outside Béziers had to be brought within the walls. Just as in Sévignan, the bell tolled out to warn any remaining country people to hasten to safety.
Bertran didn’t know it but there were other friends in the city. The joglars, Perrin and Huguet, had parted company with Lucatz and the rest of the troupe earlier that summer. Lucatz had decided to carry on into Italy but by then the troupe had heard the news about the northern force and they felt drawn back to their old haunts, in spite of the danger.
There was no hard feeling; troupes of performing players were often fluid, changing with the seasons or other vagaries of the wandering life. New joglars could be picked up along the way, before the troupe settled again for the winter. Lucatz said goodbye to them with his blessing. The joglaresas were more uneasy. They had a stronger sense of what their friends were heading back to and were themselves grateful to put as much distance between them and the Rhône as possible.
Perrin and Huguet dug ditches and carried in supplies with the citizens of Béziers, confident in the strength of its walls. It had been a very hot summer and the humid air that hung over the marshes and saltpans to the south had brought swarms of flies and mosquitoes.
On 21st July the vast French army crossed the River Hérault and entered Trencavel lands. The soldiers suffered from the biting insects more than the locals did and were made irritable by the itching and stinging. This open scrubland with its crops of barley or fields lying fallow and yellowed in the sun was so different from their forested lands in the north that it seemed indeed a foreign country.
At Servian, only eight miles from Béziers, the village surrendered without a fight. There were few heretics there and their Lord, Etienne, was anxious for the army to pass through quickly.
The Abbot of Cîteaux sent the new Bishop of Béziers, Renaut de Montpeyroux, who had travelled with the force from Montpellier, to parley with the citizens. Renaut was an old man and he rode in on a mule. He carried with him a list with two hundred and twenty-two names on it. These were the people, men and women, who had been identified as heretics, a small proportion of a city of about twenty thousand inhabitants.
Renaut went to the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire and spoke to the Consuls of the town.
‘If you yield up the people on this list, the army will leave you and your property alone,’ he said. ‘Or if everyone vacates the city, leaving just the names on the list, the soldiers will not harm you. But if you don’t hand the heretics over to the army that has come in God’s name, then your safety cannot be guaranteed.’
The Bishop was booed out of the cathedral
. ‘We would rather drown in the salty sea,’ said the Consuls.
They might have had their disputes with the Trencavel family in the past but they were fiercely independent and would not give up fellow citizens so easily. They had good defences and provisions and they expected reinforcements from Carcassonne before long. Only a handful of them chose to go back to the army with Bishop Renaut, who beat a hasty retreat on his mule.
Perrin and Huguet were among many who watched the Bishop go back to the lines. To the southeast of the city, under the rocky outcrop where the cathedral stood, the French army began to dig in for a long siege.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Nightingale of Carcassonne
At Carcassonne there was furious activity; the bells rang constantly to gather in people and animals from the surrounding countryside. The Viscount was everywhere, overseeing repairs and the building of extra defences, but Viscountess Agnes and her little son Roger kept to the château.
Trencavel ordered the stones torn down from the refectory of the cathedral and the wooden stalls sawn up to build more galleries round the towers, which would hold the archers. Outside the castle, the fields were being burned, animals slaughtered and the water mills destroyed so that the crusaders would have nowhere to grind their grain.
It was a grim countryside that would greet the French army when it arrived from Béziers, as the Viscount knew it surely would. And across this burned and inhospitable land two small figures came limping. One was a boy of about fifteen, who asked to be admitted to the Viscount. The other was a silent child, of no more than six, clutching a wooden dagger.
‘You can’t see the Viscount,’ said the gatekeeper, not unkindly. ‘He’s busy. Can’t you see we’ve got a city to defend? The French are coming.’
‘I know,’ said the boy. ‘I have come from Béziers.’