Saint Gilles was a personal fief of the Comte de Toulouse and he had a château there with soldiers, but for a long time the abbey, in revolt against him, had only recognized the authority of the Pope.
“And what if I profit from that,” the Comte said to us, “in order not to leave a stone of that accursed dwelling on top of another?” He designated the walls backed up against the hill, as high as those of a fortress.
But the following morning, at sunrise, he presented himself alone, bare-headed and barefoot, at the door of the abbey and asked humbly to see the legate. The legate replied to him that the foot of an excommunicate could not tread the stone of an abbey. He intimated to the Comte the order to wait for him in the château, where he would come to see him.”
“I’ll receive him with my helmet on, sword in hand,” he told us. “We shall see!”
And he did indeed arm himself, and he placed his naked sword in front of him. But the hours passed and the legate did not come to the château. The Comte had only eaten a few mouthfuls in haste. He was still exhausted by the long journey on horseback. He summoned Thibaut and me in order for us to unlace his breastplate and bring him something to drink.
“Fetch goblets for yourself,” he added.
Scarcely had we served the Ales wine that he had demanded when a bell rang, doors banged, and without anyone hearing the friction of his sandals, the legate was standing before the Comte.
The papal legate had the right to enter anywhere without being announced, but out of courtesy, he normally did not use it. He was clad in his monk’s robe, which he only wore very rarely, using the authorization that legates had to wear lay garments, for the Pope’s envoy had to surpass in magnificence that ostentation of the greatest lords. We were accustomed to see Pierre de Castelnau in his scarlet hood and his crimson dalmatic. He appeared to us to be very small and almost insignificant. He remained silent, looking at the naked sword on the table, the bottle and the three goblets that betrayed the familiarity of the Comte with common people. There was a crushing scorn in his immobility and the fixity of his gaze.
The Comte gave us an imperious signal to leave.
Neither Thibaut nor I ever knew exactly what the two men said. According to what the Comte told his intimates later, he talked to the legate arrogantly, and it was that attitude that caused the conversation to break off. It is more probable that he threatened him and implored him by turns, without result.
After quite a long time, we saw the silent silhouette of the monk descending the steps of the château and heading in the direction of the abbey. I followed him with my eyes. He drew himself up to the full height of his petty stature, and I understood by the fashion in which he turned his head involuntarily that he expected to receive a crossbow bolt between his shoulder-blades.
No sound came from the room where the Comte remained. When night fell, Thibaut and I decided to light a candle and go in. The bottle was overturned and the wine had run over the stone. The Comte’s head was leaning forward and his forehead was touching the blade of the sword, perhaps to draw wellbeing from its coldness. When he raised it, we saw that he was weeping. Immediately, however, he blew out the candle in the hope that we would not distinguish those tears. Then he asked us in a low voice to leave him until the next day.
As we closed the door we heard him murmur: “I’m a doomed man! Doomed forever!”
Thibaut and I emerged from the château and went as far as the balustrade constructed above the Rhône, which overlooked the port. The wind was making the rigging and sails of the galleys groan slightly. I distinguished the river beyond and, beyond the ramparts, the bleak extent of the lagoons of Hermitane, where the evening light struck reflections from the masses of salt, and created mists and mirages. Pilgrims, recognizable by the crosses they bore on their breasts, were heading toward the city, and looked at us as they went by. It seemed to me that I had seen everything that struck my eyes before, and that the events that were about to happen were already traced somewhere, even in their smallest details.
Suddenly, I said to Thibaut: “I understood just now, when the legate looked at the wine and the goblets on the table, that Marie the draper had prophesied accurately. We’ve just seen a living incarnation of the spirit of evil.
Thibaut contented himself with lowering his head.
I went on: “I’ve often asked myself how men can support the evils of injustice without revolting.”
“It’s because they’re afraid,” he replied. “They’re all cowards. They’re all afraid for their precious lives.”
Then I started laughing, without being able to stop myself, and I was conscious that my bursts of laughter were too loud, and an echo, in reverberating them, gave them a bizarre and immense inflection.
“What’s the matter?” asked Thibaut.
“I’m not afraid for my life.”
At that moment, the action that I was about to accomplish emerged from myself and stood between myself and my companion like a living phantom. Thibaut saw it with as much clarity as one sees a man standing in front of you. When I headed at a rapid stride toward the château Thibaut followed me, asking me what I was going to do. I did not reply, but he knew. I was acting as if in a dream.
I went into the squires’ room, which was deserted at that hour, and I armed myself rapidly. Thibaut did the same, although I told him several times that he would do better to go to the refectory, for it was time for the meal and he would not be served if he arrived late. He did not listen to me and followed me to the stables. He mounted his horse and galloped behind me.
I headed for the abbey with the confused intention of knocking on the door, knocking down the porter and penetrating by force or otherwise. I was only a hundred meters from the threshold when Thibaut seized my arm and stopped me. We had just seen, by the light of the stars, that the door was wide open.
A lantern illuminated armories, and a group of cavaliers emerged slowly. They were not speaking to one another, their weapons were not clinking and it was visible that they had been instructed to be silent.
“It’s him,” said Thibaut, pointing to the last of them.
Apart from a few valets, the legate’s escort consisted of twenty men-at-arms, all Romans belonging to the Pope’s personal guard, but they did not head in our direction. They took a small road to the left that went along the Rhône, and we followed them. We did not have to wonder where they might be going for long. A few hundred meters away there was a ferry that served the people of Beaucaire and a wretched inn. The group stopped there and we saw everyone dismount. Fearful of some nocturnal enterprise on the part of the Comte, the legate had doubtless decided to pass over the Rhône upstream of Saint Gilles.
“The night brings counsel,” Thibaut said, looking at me fixedly.
We presented ourselves at the inn an hour later when we saw the lights go out. It was necessary to negotiate first. We did not want to make use of our title as the Comte’s squires, but Thibaut was from Beaucaire and was recognized by the landlord.
“The whole inn has been rented this afternoon by the prior of the abbey of Saint Gilles,” the man explained to us. “There are Italians everywhere, even in the stables with the horses. My valets have gone to sleep in the pig sty.”
Nevertheless, he had not been able to send away pilgrims who had been waiting for the opportunity to embark for Jerusalem for a week. They were occupying the grain loft and, strictly speaking, we could join them in order to spend the night.
There was a stifling heat, and a human odor poisoned the atmosphere. Thibaut was very preoccupied with knowing where they had been able to hide the prostitutes who were found in all the inns in Provence, and made the renown of that one.
“They must have gone to ground in some nearby barn,” he told me several times, with regret in his voice.
We had kept our leg-guards and our chain-mail tunics. We lay down in silence for a long time. In the end, as we could not sleep, the idea occurred to us to light the candle that the innkeeper
had given us, but the heat had softened the tallow and it only gave off a vague light. We saw our livid faces without joy, and snuffed it out. From time to time a sleeping pilgrim uttered an exclamation or a grunt as he scratched the vermin on his body. It seemed to me that there were muffled footfalls below us marching back and forth. Late in the night the moon rose, gilded the straw and illumined the sleepers like cadavers.
And with the rhythm of silent footfalls, thoughts came to me. What was there is the soul of that man who did not know sleep? He was a monk who had dedicated himself in his youth to spiritual matters. In the abbey of Fontfroide he was the most studious and the most pious. He had read and meditated on all the manuscripts, discussed Plato and perhaps Maimonides. It was because of his great intelligence that the Pope had chosen him—because of his intelligence, but not because of his love. He had lived in Rome and it was there that the spirit of evil had taken possession of him in the form of pride. Mild previously, he had become violent to the point of sometimes losing his reason. He loved jewels and dressed magnificently. Condemnations caused him a visible joy. He did not hide, in repeating with Bishop Foulque that half the inhabitants of Toulouse ought to be burned as heretics.
What was a human life, in sum? Was it worth so much reflection? He, the legate, all the great lords, all the bishops and the Pope made men die without remorse und the pretext of justice. At the time of the first crusade, when they had taken Jerusalem, the crusaders, although commanded by a saint, Godefroy de Bouillon, had deliberated for three days as to whether or not to exterminate the seventy thousand inhabitants of the city, and after three days of reflection, they had decided to exterminate them. Raymond Saint-Gilles, Comte de Toulouse, was the only one to protest, and he saved as many as he could, aided by my brother Toulousans. So? So human life has no value and there are other invisible stakes above it.
I could recover from my memory every second of that night. There was no hatred in my heart. I was an instrument of God, a cog in an immense machine. To evil as to good, God gave the same power of expansion, permission to create and to destroy. For the just and the unjust he had the same love, there seemed to be no difference. The unjust man was fatally the stronger, since he was not limited by any interior law. What would happen if the just man lacked courage, thinking of his life, when the equilibrium ought to be reestablished by action?
Yes, God wanted evil, he protected the wicked, gave them material power, went so far as to place on their heads, incomprehensibly, the crown of intelligence. But at the moment that he had chosen, he thwarted them by provoking an unexpected action in an obscure man. And he proceeded in the spiritual as in the material. First he planted a seed. That seed, whether fecundated by the juices of the earth or the essences of thought, always expanded slowly.
I rediscovered the proof of that in the substance of my memories. The action had germinated in me like a plant. I was the depository of a divine seed that was now about to be realized in the physical world. It was very little to pay for it with my life. I was consumed by a desire for sacrifice, as if a brand had been placed on my breast.
Even so, I ended up going to sleep. I woke up with a start and it seemed to me that a century had gone by. It was not yet daylight. Thibaut was standing up and trying to look outside through a skylight. I perceived the whinny of a horse.
“Are they leaving?” I asked him, in a low voice, and he nodded his head.
I bounded to my feet. At the same time, we saw a large spider moving along the crack of the window, trying to get out. Thibaut made a movement to crush it. I grabbed his arm swiftly. He looked at me in surprise.
“Have you changed opinion?” he asked me.
I shook my head and took off my chain mail tunic silently. He considered me again without comprehension. I explained to him that I was not expecting to escape and that those who struck me would kill me more rapidly. Then he picked up my helmet and held it out to me, insisting that I lower the visor over my face.
“One never knows what will happen. If you do escape, it’s better that you’re not recognized as one of the Comte’s squires.”
As we left the grain-loft, I saw a red-headed man sitting up and smoothing his beard, looking at me with wide eyes. With my helmet closed and my cotton shirt poorly retained by my baldric, I realized that I must resemble a nightmarish caricature.
A valet was opening the stable door when we arrived there. Thibaut remarked to me that we had a chance to recover our horses. I replied, shrugging my shoulders, that I would get to Heaven or Hell as easily on foot as on horseback. With meticulous care, he removed the pennants from our pikes, which were attached to our saddles.
A sloping path descended to the place where the boats were. It was bordered by rushes and tamarinds. The river was calmer than usual. Dogs were barking in the distance. The nascent light was so delightful that it made one want to weep.
The majority of the cavaliers had dismounted, and one of them called out in Italian to a bare-legged boatman who was calmly pulling his boat on to the bank. A few paces away, solitary, I recognized the silhouette of Pierre de Castelnau. He was upright on his horse, his head forward, and he suddenly seemed to me so paltry that if my heart had been accessible to pity, it would have been engendered on seeing him.
Tucking my lance under my arm I drove my horse toward him. Human life is much less than one might believe. Almost without resistance, the weapon sunk into the soft substance of the body and penetrated it. I had often heard it said that to be sure of striking a mortal blow it is necessary to twist the iron while withdrawing it, and I had resolved to do that. But the face of the man I had just struck changed suddenly into the mask of a frightened child, and I heard him say: “Mother!” as he tottered in the saddle. I let go of the weapon and I gazed at the scarlet patch of blood that appeared between his lips.
I had the sensation of remaining thus for an indefinite duration, in the midst of a universe immobilized by the enchantment of death.
At the same time as the legate tumbled from his horse, a clamor rose up on all sides. I saw the faces of Italians turned toward me with an expression of horror, but it was as if I were detached from the time and the place. I remarked how different they were in the form of the face from the men of my own land, and I regretted not having the time to study the differences of race. Like a runaway machine, my thoughts went at hazard, settling on strange problems.
How is it that there is only one among them wearing a full beard? So many horses could never fit on to such narrow boats!
Events never happen as one has imagined them. The men of the legate’s escort must have believed that they were being attacked by a numerous troop. The majority, seized by panic, remounted their horses to flee. A few formed a circle around the legate. I perceived that Thibaut had come to place himself beside me and that we were suddenly almost alone on the sand, where the rising sun was stretching out our shadows immeasurably, like the shadows of giants.
I had promised myself not to defend myself once I had struck, but when I emerged from the dream that immobilized me, I drew my sword and sensing my bare breast, asked Thibaut precipitately to lend me a round buckler that was suspended from his saddle, in which the globe of the sun was reflected like a red-gold coin in the depths of a mirror.
He held it out to me. No one attacked us. Then he showed me the road to Beaucaire behind a few clumps of tamarinds, and made me a sign to follow him. We reached it, without hurrying, amazed not to have to fight. When we had taken a few steps we departed at a gallop. We turned round frequently, but no one was following us.
“We’ve had a narrow escape,” Thibaut said to me. “I counted about twenty-five of them. We’ll hide in Beaucaire in my parents’ house.”
And he manifested a great satisfaction.
But as he replaced his sword in its scabbard, I stopped him and placed myself in front of him. I gesticulated; I wanted to go back and fight. I was gripped by a folly of extermination.
“We’re cowards to flee. Let’s go p
ut all the Italians to death.”
Thibaut had a great deal of difficulty calming me down and making me set off again.
Shortly before arriving in Beaucaire I descended abruptly from my horse. The morning air had refreshed my blood. I could do no more. I begged my companion to abandon me, to leave me to sleep under a poplar that was extending its shadow by the roadside.
He was obliged to show me a little tower that emerged above the rampart, swearing to me that it was his uncle’s dwelling and that we were almost there. In the end, I decided to go with him.
I have never had any remorse. On certain nights, I have heard a muffled voice crying: “Mother! and seen a frightened face from which blood as flowing between livid lips, but I immediately thought about my comrade Marcayrou, hanged as a heretic from the gallows outside the city. I thought of the great bird of prey that punctured his eyes with its beak, at which I threw stones to no avail on the evening when I went to prowl around the gibbets to see what remained of my friend.
I thought about young Rosamonde Colomiès, the daughter of the armorer who had received from God, like me, the faculty of expressing herself in fine words. I thought that she was twenty years old, was good and very beautiful when it reached the legate’s ears that she had preached among the heretics to glorify chastity. I thought of the subterranean prison of the Château Narbonnais, which enclosed, without distinction of sex, the worst criminals, madmen and even lepers escaped from leprosaria and found within the city walls. They lived there in darkness, in the most abject mixture, struggling cruelly against the rats. There were other prisons in Toulouse less frightful, but I thought that the legate had decided personally that Rosamonde Colomiès should be plunged into that living putrescence, saying that the more beautiful the image of crime is, the greater is the risk to God, and the more exemplary the punishment must be.
I have had remorse for many evil deeds accomplished in the course of my long life against men who defended themselves in combat, against innocent beasts that looked at me sadly as I struck them, but for that action, no, I have never had any remorse.
The Blood of Toulouse Page 7