The Expected One

by Kathleen McGowan

  Maureen could not mask her disappointment. She wasn’t ready to leave all of this yet. “But I haven’t seen the third branch of the garden.”

  Sinclair’s face seemed to darken. It was hardly perceptible, but it was there.

  “Perhaps that’s for the best,” he said. “It’s such a beautiful day. And that,” he indicated with a nod of his head, “is the garden of the Magdalene’s eldest son.”

  He answered Maureen’s unspoken question in the enigmatic and vague way of which the natives of this region seemed infuriatingly fond.

  “And while it is beautiful in its own way, that garden is too filled with shadows for a day such as this.”

  As Sinclair led Maureen back out of the garden, he stopped at the gilded gates.

  “The day you arrived here, you asked why I was so partial to the fleur-de-lis. This is why. Fleur-de-lis means ‘flower of the lily,’ and as you now know, the lily is symbolic of Mary Magdalene. The ‘flower of the lily’ represents her offspring. There are three of them, therefore the three petals on the flower.”

  He demostrated by tracing the three branches with his finger.

  “The first branch, her eldest son John-Joseph, is a very complex character about whom I will tell you more when the time is right. But suffice it to say that his heirs flourished in Italy. The central petal represents the daughter, Sarah-Tamar, and this third leaf is the youngest child, the boy Yeshua-David.

  “That’s the well-kept secret of the fleur-de-lis. The reason it represents both Italian and French nobility. The reason you see it in British heraldry. It was first used by those who were descended of Mary Magdalene through her trinity of children. It was once a very protected, arcane symbol, so that only those initiated into these truths could recognize each other as they traveled across Europe.”

  Maureen marveled at this revelation. “And now it’s one of the most common symbols in the world. It’s on jewelry, clothing, furniture. Hiding in plain sight all this time. And people have no idea what it symbolizes.”

  The Languedoc

  June 25, 2005

  MAUREEN SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT of Jean-Claude’s Renault sports car as they waited for the electronic gates of the château to open out onto the main road. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man moving strangely along the perimeter fence.

  “What’s wrong?” Jean-Claude asked as he observed Maureen’s facial expression.

  “There’s a man over there by the fence. You can’t see him now, but he was there just a moment ago.”

  Jean-Claude shrugged in his classically Gallic, unconcerned way. “A gardener, perhaps? Or one of Bérenger’s security guards. Who knows? His staff is extensive.”

  “Are there security guards on duty all the time here?” Maureen was curious about the château and its extraordinary contents, including the owner.

  “Ah, oui. You rarely see them because it is their job to not be seen. Perhaps that was one of them.”

  But Maureen wasn’t given an opportunity to consider the mundane aspects of running the château. Jean-Claude was launching into the legend of the Paschal family as he knew it.

  “Your English is flawless,” Maureen noted as he related some of the more complicated historical elements.

  “Thank you. I spent two years at Oxford perfecting it.”

  Maureen was fascinated, hanging on every word while the esteemed French historian drove through the dramatic red foothills. Their destination was Montsegur, the majestic and tragic emblem of the Cathars’ last stand.

  There are locations on earth that exude a powerful aura of both mystery and tragedy. Steeped in rivers of blood and centuries of history, these rare places can haunt the spirit for many years, long after the visitor has returned to his or her place of security in the modern world. Maureen had seen some of these places in her travels. During her years in Ireland she had experienced this feeling in historical towns like that of Drogheda, where Oliver Cromwell had once slaughtered the entire population, as well as in villages that had been ravaged by the Great Famine in the 1840s. While in Israel, Maureen had climbed the mountain at Masada to watch the sun rise over the Dead Sea. She had been moved beyond both words and tears as she walked through the ruins of the palace where several hundred Jews in the first century had taken their own lives rather than submit to Roman oppressors and certain slavery.

  As Jean-Claude maneuvered the Renault into the parking lot at the foot of the hill where Montsegur rests, Maureen had an overwhelming feeling that this was another of those extraordinary locations. Even on this bright summer day, the area seemed shrouded in the mists of time. She stared up at the mountain ahead of them as Jean-Claude guided her toward the hiking trail.

  “A long way up, oui? This is why I told you to wear comfortable shoes.”

  Maureen was thankful that she always traveled with solid athletic shoes, as walking and hiking were her favorite forms of exercise. They began the long, circuitous climb up the mountain, Maureen reflecting that her recent schedule hadn’t left much time for working out and cursing that she wasn’t in her usual good shape. But Jean-Claude wasn’t in a hurry, and they walked at a leisurely pace as he talked more about the mysterious Cathars and answered Maureen’s questions.

  “How much do we know about their practices? I mean, accurately. Lord Sinclair says that so much of what has been written about them is speculation.”

  “That is true. Their enemies wrote many of the details that have been ascribed to them, to make them look more heretical and outrageous. You see, the world does not mind if you slaughter outcasts. But if you massacre fellow Christians who are arguably closer to Christ than you are yourself, you may have a problem. So, many stories were invented about Cathar practices by the historians of their time, and after. But you know what we are certain is true? The cornerstone of the Cathar faith was the Lord’s Prayer.”

  Maureen stopped at this, to catch her breath and ask more questions. “Really? The same Lord’s Prayer that we say today?”

  He nodded. “Oui, the same, but recited in Occitan, of course. When you went to Jerusalem, did you go to the Pater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives?”

  “Yes!” Maureen knew exactly the location. There was a church on the eastern side of Jerusalem built over a cave that was reputed to be the location where Jesus first taught the Lord’s Prayer. A beautiful exterior cloister displayed the prayer in mosaic-tiled panels representing more than sixty languages. Maureen had photographed the panel that showed the prayer in an ancient form of Irish Gaelic to give to Peter.

  “The prayer is displayed there in Occitan,” Jean-Claude explained. “Every Cathar recited it upon rising in the morning. Not by rote, as many say it today, but as an act of meditation and true prayer. Each line was a sacred law for them.”

  Maureen thought about this as they walked, and Jean-Claude continued. “So you see, here were people who lived in peace and taught what they called The Way, a life centered on teachings of love. They were a culture that recognized the Lord’s Prayer as their most holy scripture.”

  Maureen saw where he was leading. “So if you’re the Church and you want to eliminate these people, you can’t very well let it be known that they’re good Christians.”

  “Exactly. Bizarre rituals and accusations were made against the Cathars to make it acceptable to butcher them.”

  Jean-Claude stopped now as they reached a monument in the middle of the trail. It was a large granite slab topped with a version of the equal-armed cross of the Languedoc.

  “This is the martyr’s monument,” he explained. “It is placed here because this is where the pyre stood.”

  Maureen shivered. That same haunting, yet strangely exhilarating feeling overtook her, a sense of standing in a terrible place of history. She listened as Jean-Claude recited the story of the Cathars’ last stand here on the mountain.

  By the end of 1243 the Cathars had suffered almost half a century of persecution by the armies of the Pope. Entire cities had been put to the
sword, and the streets of towns like Béziers had literally run with the blood of innocents. The Church was determined to eradicate this “heresy” at any cost, and the king of France was happy to assist with his own troops as each victory over the once-wealthy Cathar nobles added land to French territories. The counts of Toulouse had threatened one too many times to create their own independent state. If using the wrath of the Church was convenient for stopping them, the king was all for that solution, which he hoped would take away some of the blame from his legacy in history.

  The remaining heads of Cathar society made a last stand at the fortress of Montsegur in March of 1244. Like the Jews at Masada more than a thousand years earlier, they came together to pray as a community for their salvation from the oppressor, and they vowed never to surrender their faith. Indeed, there was some speculation that the Cathars had taken strength from the legacy of the Masada martyrs during their final confinement. And like the Roman armies who were their own ancestors, the papal forces attempted to starve their quarry out by cutting off their access to water and food. This proved as difficult at Montsegur as it had been at Masada, as both were perched precariously on hilltops that were almost impossible to secure from all angles. The rebels from both cultures found ways to thwart and confound their oppressors.

  After several months of siege, the papal forces determined that they were finished with the standoff. They delivered an ultimatum to the Cathar leadership. If they would confess and repent as heretics in surrender to the Inquisition, they would be spared. But if they did not, they would all be burned at the stake for their insult to the Holy Roman Church. They were given two weeks to make a decision.

  On the final day, the leaders of the Pope’s army lit the funeral pyre and called for an answer. They were met with a reply that has never been forgotten in the Languedoc. Two hundred Cathars emerged from the keep of Montsegur, dressed in their simple robes and holding hands. In perfect unison, they sang the Lord’s Prayer in Occitan as they walked into the funeral pyre en masse. They died as they had lived, in perfect harmony with their faith in God.

  The legends surrounding the final days of the Cathars were abundant, and each was more dramatic than the next. The most memorable was of the French envoys who were sent to speak with the Cathars on behalf of the king’s troops. The envoys, hardened mercenaries, were invited to stay within the walls of Montsegur and witness the Cathar teachings for themselves. What they saw in those final days was reportedly so miraculous, so stunning, that the French soldiers asked to be admitted to the faith of these Pure Ones. Knowing that only death could await them, the Frenchmen took the ultimate Cathar sacrament known as the consolamentum and marched into the flames with their newfound brothers and sisters.

  Maureen pushed a tear from her face as she gazed up at the mountain and then back at the cross. “What do you think it was? What did the Frenchmen see that was enough for them to pledge to die with these people? Does anyone know?”

  “No.” Jean-Claude shook his head. “There is only speculation. Some say that the Holy Ghost appeared during Cathar rituals and showed that the kingdom of heaven awaited them. Others say it was something else, the infamous Cathar treasure that they possessed.”

  The legend of Montsegur continued to unfold before Maureen as they resumed their climb up the arduous trail. On the penultimate day of the Cathars’ last stand, four members of their group were lowered down the most precarious wall of the castle and escaped to safety. It was believed that they were aided by intelligence from the French envoys who converted to Catharism and died with the rest a day later.

  “They carried with them the legendary treasure of the Cathars. But what that actually was is still a matter of speculation. It had to be portable as two of those chosen to escape were young women and presumably small. Also, they would have all been frail after months of captivity and rationed food and water. Some say they carried the Holy Grail, or the crown of thorns, or even the most valuable treasure on earth, the Book of Love.”

  “That’s the gospel written by Jesus Himself?”

  Jean-Claude nodded. “All legends of it certainly disappeared from history around that time.”

  The historian and journalist in Maureen was on overload. “Are there books you can recommend? Documents I can research while I’m here in France that provide more information about this?”

  The Frenchman laughed a little and shrugged. “Madamoiselle Paschal, they are folklorists here in the Languedoc. They protect their secrets and their legends by not committing them to paper. I know that is hard for many to understand. But look around you, cherie. Who needs books when you have all of this to tell the story?”

  They had reached the rise of the hill, and the ruins of the once-great fortress lay ahead of them. In the presence of these massive stone walls that seemed to radiate the history of their surroundings, Maureen understood Jean-Claude’s point perfectly. Still, she was torn between her senses and her journalist’s need to authenticate all of her findings. “That’s a strange sentiment for a man who calls himself a historian,” she observed.

  Now he laughed outright, a sound that echoed through the green valley below them. “I consider myself a historian, but not an academic. There’s a difference, particularly in a place like this. The academic approach doesn’t apply everywhere, Mademoiselle Paschal.”

  Maureen’s expression must have given away that she wasn’t following him completely. He elaborated.

  “You see, in order to hold the most prestigious titles in the academic world, you simply have to read all the right books and write the proper papers. When I was on a lecture tour in Boston, I met an American woman who had a doctorate in French history with an emphasis on the medieval heresies. She is now considered one of the great experts in the subject and has even written a university textbook or two. And do you know something funny? She has never been to France, not once. Not even to Paris, much less the Languedoc. Worse, she doesn’t feel it is necessary. In true academic form, she believes everything she needs is in books or documents available on university databases. The woman’s understanding of Catharism is about as realistic as reading a comic book, and twice as laughable. Yet she would be recognized publicly as a greater authority than any of us here because of the degrees she holds and the initials after her name.”

  Maureen was listening as they stepped through the rocks and moved among the magnificent ruins. Jean-Claude’s point hit her hard. She had always thought of herself as an academic, yet her reporter’s experience had also driven her to seek out stories in their native environment. She couldn’t imagine writing about Mary Magdalene without visiting the Holy Land, and had insisted on touring Versailles and the revolutionary prison of the Conciergerie while researching Marie Antoinette. Now, even in the few days that she had spent surrounded by the living history of the Languedoc, she recognized that this was a culture that required experiential understanding.

  Jean-Claude wasn’t finished. “Let me give you an example. You can read one of fifty versions of the tragedy here at Montsegur as written by historians. But look around. If you have never climbed this mountain or seen the place where the fire burned or observed how impenetrable these walls are, how would you ever understand it? Come, let me show you something.”

  Maureen followed the Frenchman to the edge of a cliff, where the walls of the once-impenetrable fortress had crumbled. He pointed to a sheer and excruciatingly steep drop thousands of feet down the mountainside. The warm winds were rising, blowing her hair as Maureen tried to put herself in the position of a young Cathar girl in the thirteenth century.

  “This spot is where the four escaped,” he explained. “Imagine it now as you stand here. In the dead of night, carrying the most precious relics of your people strapped to your body, weak after months of stress and starvation. You are young and terrified and know that while you may survive, every person you love in the world will be burned alive. With all of this on your mind, you are lowered down a wall into the bitter cold and nothin
gness of midnight, and there’s a strong possibility you will fall to your death.”

  Maureen sighed heavily. It was a heady experience to stand here where the legends were alive and very real all around her.

  Jean-Claude interrupted her thoughts. “Now imagine only reading about this account in a library in New Haven. It is a different experience, no?”

  Nodding in agreement, Maureen answered, “Most definitely.”

  “Oh, and one thing I forgot to mention. The youngest girl who escaped that night? She was quite possibly your ancestor. The one who later took the name of Paschal. In fact, they referred to her as La Paschalina until she died.”

  Maureen was numb with the knowledge of yet another phenomenal Paschal ancestor. “How much do you know about her?”

  “Just a little. She died at the monastery of Montserrat on the Spanish border as a very old woman, and some records of her life remain there. We know she married another Cathar refugee in Spain and had a number of children. It is written that she brought with her a priceless gift to the monastery, but the nature of that gift has never been revealed publicly.”

  Maureen reached down and picked one of the wildflowers that grew in the crevices of the ruined walls. She walked to the edge of the cliff where the Cathar girl who would later take the name of La Paschalina had courageously descended the mountain as the last hope of her people. Tossing the tiny purple flower over the edge of the cliff, Maureen said a small prayer for the woman who may or may not have been her ancestor. It almost didn’t matter. With the story of these beautiful people and the gift of the land itself, this day had already changed her irrevocably.

  “Thank you,” she said to Jean-Claude in little more than a whisper. He left her alone then, to contemplate how her past and her future were intertwined with this most ancient and enigmatic place.

  Maureen and Jean-Claude had lunch in the tiny village at the base of Montsegur. As he had promised, the restaurant served food in the Cathar style. The menu was simple fare consisting primarily of fish and fresh vegetables.