III
We had arrived during the day and I climbed a hill in order to contemplate, in its full extent, the immense camp of the crusaders.
It was tumultuous, multiform and innumerable. It extended as far as the eye could see, gleaming with reflected light, resounding with clamors, bristling with pikes, crosses and banners. The entire left bank of the Rhône was occupied by German mercenaries commanded by the Comte de Bar. They had conical black tents reminiscent of the dwellings of monstrous termites. At that hour, a great number of them were drinking or washing in the river, side by side with their horses. The majority were on all fours, dipping their russet heads, whose dimensions far surpassed the human norm, into the water. I saw their long beards, soaked, and the idiotic rictus of their laughter. They were amusing themselves jostling one another and throwing sand at one another, and they resembled quadrupeds barded with iron, with a vaguely human appearance.
Bretons, Burgundians, Swiss and Italians were staged on the right bank. They formed quarters like those of a city. The setting sun made the backs of their helmets shine like terrestrial stars. In places, circles of light sprang from improvised forges, and I heard the sound of hammers on the steel of arms. The paths between the tents were cluttered with dice players and quarrels broke out, from which insults rose in various languages. Horsemen passed bearing messages. A file of monks in brown robes snaked around an olive grove.
A quadrilateral of fields marked by oriflammes had been reserved for the monks. It surrounded a chapel where the bishops said mass. But the advance guard of the crusaders, unaware of the honor promised to it, had pillaged it on arrival. The battens of the door had been staved in and even the ornaments of the façade had been smashed. And as the bell was cracked, the church had a sinister air and exhaled an atmosphere of malediction even in the ringing of its angelus.
But beyond the place where the Templars and the Knights of Jerusalem were camped, extended a sea of bizarre carriages, dilapidated tents and carts hung with colored fabrics. There resided the parasites of the army, the prostitutes with their go-betweens, the crooks, the gypsies and the beggars. They woke up in the evening and multiplied before my eyes as if they had emerged from a mysterious ant-hill. I heard unfamiliar songs, barbaric music, savage disputes and sometimes the screams of some peasant woman being raped somewhere.
On a pathway, in a matter of minutes, a bazaar had been established. Soldiers were jostling one another around one tent larger than the rest, on the threshold of which stood an enormous woman. Behind ragged draperies, semi-naked women were smiling. Strolling players were doing turns circled by spectators. That moving, howling, multicolored crowd was shifting around a tall gold-painted phallus, like a symbolic hub. It was the emblem of the great Coesre, the King of Truands,12 which, by a privilege of the King of France, he was authorized to transport behind his cart.
From where I was standing, illuminated by the setting sun, that phallus was disproportionate and gigantic; it resembled a monstrous god of a people deprived of reason. Only the metal cross that marked the camp of the legate, a little further on, was as high. It seemed similarly covered, equally rutilant. And I could not take my eyes off those two blind forces, desire and faith, that were rushing upon my homeland in order to enjoy and enslave it.
To the right, the three hundred cavaliers that the Comte de Toulouse had brought with him, under the banner on which a black key on a golden cross was painted, made a little diamond droplet in a heap of ordure. I was heading with a rapid stride for the place where my countrymen were camped when I received a violent blow in the chest and fell in the dust.
I had been knocked over by the horse of a cavalier who was passing, followed by a few men-at-arms. He turned round, but without stopping, and I saw that he was not wearing a helmet and that his head with short-cropped graying hair was astonishingly round, like a block of marble, and had the curious particularity of being deprived of eyes.
A voice said: “It’s a man who belongs to the Comte de Toulouse.”
Then I perceived beneath the knight’s eyebrows a green-tinted line that had the phosphorescence of a cat’s gaze in the darkness, and I heard a scornful snigger. The group disappeared around a bend in the road.
Full of rage, I leapt to my feet. I perceived that I was unarmed. I was clamoring I know not what insults when a soldier passing on foot who must have witnessed the scene approached me.
“Undoubtedly, you don’t know who that knight was who knocked you down,” he said.
“No, but if I did...”
The man made me a sign to shut up, and murmured: “It’s Simon de Montfort.”
I had always believed that a liking for theft and the desire for wealth were the origin of wars. I perceived that it was not so. The possession of women is the motive force that drives men to fight. The soldiers talked about nothing but the beauty of the women they were going to take in the vanquished cities, and as we descended the Rhône and advanced toward Occitanian territory, there was a kind of sexual hallucination of which one could see the phantom in the depths of every gaze.
The Comte de Toulouse did not address a word to anyone, and mine was the only presence that he could support. He seemed to hold it against his knights that they had obeyed him and were following him in the crusade against their brothers. In any case, several of them quit us along the road.
It was near Montpellier that we learned that Trencavel, Vicomte de Carcassonne and Béziers, had resolved to close the gates of his cities and defend them against the crusaders.
The Comte de Toulouse did not like his nephew, whose excessive courage dazzled him. When he learned of his decision he took his head in his hands and wept. I could not tell whether it was because of the woes that he glimpsed or whether he regretted not having done likewise.
And army composed by the barons of Périgord and Limousin, led by the Bishop of Bordeaux had joined the army formed at Lyon. Another had descended from the Tarn and the Black Mountain. That great ocean of armor, crosses and horses unfurled around the walls of Béziers.
The city was bristling with fortresses and dominated a steep hill. We knew that before going to enclose himself in Carcassonne, Trencavel had introduced numerous and well-disciplined troops into it. The bourgeoisie of Béziers was known for the good organization of its militias. The nobles of many châteaux in the environs had taken refuge there.
“The siege will last at least a year,” I said to Thibaut, as we were sitting in front of our tent on the evening of our arrival. “The inhabitants of Béziers will show the men of the North what virtue there is in Occitan blood.”
Thibaut was content to shake his head, as was his habit. I heard a burst of laughter beside me and I perceived Laurent Guillaume. We were obliged to share our tent with him, and, in spite of our efforts to keep away from him, he was almost always by our side.
“I believe that tomorrow, at sunset, the city will be in the crusaders’ possession,” he said.
It was my turn to laugh at such a ludicrous assertion. But he added with a tranquil certitude that since the army was commanded by the pious Simon de Montfort and the papal legate Arnaud, Abbot of Cîteaux, the walls would fall and the combatants would be dispersed.
I asked him then to pick up his sword and leave the camp with me; we would see whether a servant of the Pope would reckon so easily with a man of Toulouse.
He refused, with an amiable smile, raising the objection of the severe orders that forbade crusaders to fight one another.
“For you bear the cross,” he added.
A large red cross was, indeed, sown on to the body-stocking that I wore over my coat of mail.
“Thank God, who will protect you thereby from death.”
I was woken up the next morning by Thibaut, who was shaking me.
“Something’s happening,” he told me.
I heard a great rumor that as coming from all directions at once. Laurent Guillaume was on his feet and armed, but he did not spare us a glance and departed at
a run I knew not where. We armed ourselves in our turn and went out.
The sun had scarcely risen.
It was July and the heat was oppressive. Cavaliers went past us, accompanied by foot soldiers, who were following them at a trot, panting. Some still had straps attached to their breastplates. It was evident that they had equipped themselves abruptly. They were all heading in the same direction, toward the Narbonnais Gate, the one that had been identified as the widest and the most accessible for future attacks. Coming from that direction was the confusion of furious cries, the whinnying of horses and the sound of clashing arms that comes from distant battles.
“If it had been decided to attack the city, all the crusaders would have been warned,” Thibaut told me, vey judiciously.
We headed toward the Comte de Toulouse’s tent in order to take his orders. It was on the other side of a small wheat-field. As we traversed it, I spotted a sergeant-at-arms who had the ruddy face common among the men of the North. He could not run because a fat belly that he carried before him with a kind of pride, and he was advancing full of dignity, parting the wheat with his pike. I asked him what was happening. He was glad to have the opportunity to draw breath.
“One of the gates of Béziers has just been forced,” he told me, with an expression of pride, as if it were to himself that the crusaders owed that exploit. “And do you know who forced it? It was the Truands, with their King at their head. To vanquish the southerners there’s no need of soldiers. Thieves are sufficient. I believe that it’s necessary to hurry in order to arrive in time to grab some booty.”
And he drew away slowly.
The knights of Toulouse were flooding around the Comte’s tent. He suddenly appeared in their midst. He was half-dressed, and a livid man covered with sweat was extending his hands to him, imploring him. The Comte took his knights as witnesses
“It’s too late now! This is a bourgeois from Béziers who is begging me in the name of his fellows to go find the Abbot of Cîteaux and Simon de Montfort to save the city. Have you ever seen anyone beg wolves for mercy at the moment when they’re about to hurl themselves on their prey?”
Increasingly numerous men-at-arms were going past, jostling us. The inhabitant of Béziers had fallen to his knees. He raised his arms and his face was bathed in tears. The Comte kicked him.
“Well, it was necessary to do as I did! It’s because I foresaw what was going to happen that I’m here. He tells me that he has a daughter of twenty lying ill in bed. But why haven’t you fled? Bishop Réginald de Montpeyroux came yesterday to adjure you to leave the city. Haven’t the Jews left already? What didn’t you do as they did? Men are so attached to their property that they prefer to die rather than abandon it.”
In the meantime, Thibaut had gone to fetch the Comte’s horse and had brought it to him. Then his perplexity caused him to raise his voice to the point of shouting: “But they both defy me. They do the opposite of what I ask. Montfort would accuse me of treason and summon me to go and fight by his side. And anyway, where are they? The Abbot of Cîteaux’s tent is on the far side of the camp.”
However, he mounted the horse. The Toulousan knights demanded their horses in order to form an escort for him. But at that moment a deafening noise drowned out all the voices. An immense quantity of pilgrims belonging to the same religious fraternity advanced toward Béziers singing a canticle. Its rhythm was vast and slow; it expressed the power of a redoubtable God, and the obscure fatality of death. Like a tidal wave abruptly surging forth, rising very high and rolling very far, an innumerable, blind and singing crowd unfurled over us and dispersed us. I saw the Comte de Toulouse resisting with difficulty, in the midst of his men. I thought at first of joining him by fraying a passage with the pommel of my sword, but the desire to see suddenly took possession of me and I let myself go with the torrent that was carrying me toward Béziers.
Either because there was still fighting at the Narbonnais Gate or because the bridge had been broken, it was through the Catalans Gate that I entered the city with the pilgrims. On the way, several of them questioned me in a barbaric and incomprehensible language. I was content to point in turn to the huge red cross on my breast and the blade of my naked sword. They replied with bizarre cries; one of them showed me a huge pocket under his jacket, the other a sack on his back. I saw by the expression on their faces that they were rejoicing in pillage and counting on coming back laden with booty. They must have belonged to very distant countries. Almost all of them were frightfully red-haired.
Alongside me, a thin man of immeasurable height was marching with his eyes raised toward the heavens, repeating a woman’s name: “Gunnur!” with an intonation so passionate that I thought it must be the name of his fiancée. He had a coarse face full of benevolence and carried a short, broad cutlass of an unusual form. Another, a sort of dwarf, naked to the waist and hairy, with an ax on his shoulder, was reminiscent of one of the kobolds of the mountains mentioned in the tales of Northern poets. They formed little troops of twenty, quite disciplined, obedient to a man redder than the rest, whose pike had a blue pennant with which to rally them.
There was no trace of conflict at the Catalans Gate, which was already guarded by a group of the Comte de Nevers’ soldiers. They shouted to us as we passed that they had opened the gate by surprise and without resistance. They advised us to have our arms ready, for there was fighting in all the quarters of the city.
The streets through which we advanced were dead and silent. All the doors were shut. My companions marched at a slow pace, lowering their voices, intimidated. We came out into a little square that had a fountain in the middle shaded by a plane tree. The sound of the water, the shadow of the houses and the freshness of the air evoked memories of peaceful happiness. The place was so calm that a few pilgrims sat down on the rim of the fountain. Others were tempted to retrace their steps.
Then a door opened and a woman came out of a house. I saw that she had the appearance of a prosperous bourgeoise. She took two or three steps, and perceived us. She shouted: “Jésus Marie!” and started to run. No one budged, except the thin man with the benevolent face, who shouted “Gunnur!” and launched himself in pursuit. He caught up with her in three strides and struck her a great blow with his cutlass, which he held exposed. She collapsed, and he fell upon her body, lacerating her robe in order to search her and almost cutting off her fingers in order to tear away her rings. Then he carefully stuffed what he had taken into one of his pockets, shouting something that must have signified that it was really his, and gesticulating proudly.
For a few seconds the pilgrims formed a circle around the woman, whose blood was flowing over the pavement from a large wound in the cranium. They did not say anything. They were surprised. My first impulse was to throw myself on the murderer, but I suppressed it. All those surrounding me had just uttered a savage cry in unison. In their turn, they wanted to kill.
I saw the dwarf attack a door with blows off the ax. Others made a short ladder in order to scale a small wall. Soon, howls were resounding in all the houses. Although silent, they were full of frightened inhabitants. A baby that had been thrown out of a window fell into the fountain with a splash. I collided with a staggering man who was running, trying to pull a dagger out of his breast that had been plunged into it. A little further on, three giants were fighting over a young woman with the face of a Madonna beneath scattered black hair. One of them had put his dagger under her collar in order to cleave her robe, but he must have done so too rudely, for as it split the robe revealed the body, opened from top to bottom by the blade.
The crusaders were arriving more numerously from all directions. The howls of the victims resounded in a heart-rending fashion. Furniture, fabrics and barrels were dragged into the street. A heroic young man perched on a high roof on which he was sitting shot arrows at the crusaders for a long time from a small bow, like a toy, and killed a considerable number around me. He was taking arrows methodically from a quiver that he had placed beside hi
m and shooting as if at a target, without ever missing. As I gazed from a distance at his pale face framed by long black hair he nearly nailed me to the wood of a door, and of all those at whom he took aim, I was the only one who survived. In the end, the street emptied. No one knew how to reach the roof where he was. When his quiver was empty, he darted a glance around him, got up calmly, and disappeared who knows where, doubtless through some skylight. I had a desire to shout my admiration of the marvelous archer, but prudence retained me.
I marched through the streets at random. Everywhere the spectacle was the same. I was knocked over several times by cavaliers. Sometimes, furious men hurled themselves upon me and I was obliged to parry their blows with my sword until they had distinguished the cross on my breast. In the end, I made the decision to smear myself with blood in order to resemble those who were carrying out the massacre and to avoid being killed by them.
In order to do that, I spotted an open door and penetrated into a corridor and then into a room where the odor was frightful. By the light of a small window I perceived mercenaries lying, drunk, alongside a few terrified and half-naked women, whose eyes I saw shining in the gloom. They took me for one of theirs and shouted to me that they had everything in abundance. One of them pushed a bottle in my direction with his foot. As I took a step in the direction where the women were, they recoiled in fear. I bumped into a body covered in blood that did not budge. I distinguished confusedly the shadow of tresses, and the form of a slender torso with a huge hole in the place of the heart. I bent down, steeped my hands in the blood flowing from it and then applied them to my forehead and cheeks.
I heard a savage snigger.
“He prefers blood to wine.”
Other bursts of laughter followed. The mercenaries thought that I had just drunk the blood. But that did not fill me with the disgust that I would have felt a few hours earlier. I was gripped by a kind of intoxication. I had respired a wind that transported corruption. A taste for death had passed into me. I would have liked to destroy and kill.
The Blood of Toulouse Page 10