Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

‘There are rumours that … all sorts of rumours, you know,’ says Arnaud Teuly, the air whistling through the gap in his teeth. The loss looks recent, and I wonder what he has endured to deliver his pointless message. ‘The community in Cremona is convinced that Emperor Frederick is coming to your aid.’ He flicks his eyes ceilingward to show that he does not believe this for a moment.

  ‘We have heard that as well,’ the castellan tells him. ‘Also that Count Raymond will have the Crusaders gone by Easter. And indeed that Prester John is on his way from India to rescue us. Each as likely as the other, to my way of thinking.’

  ‘We sent our good brother Matheus back down the pog to hire as many mercenaries as he could find. He returned last morning with two – two – crossbowmen, all he could persuade to come with him, and he scoured the countryside and the towns.’ Pierre-Roger is tapping the pommel of his sword as he speaks.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ says Arnaud. ‘The Bishop of Cremona asked me – entreated me, in fact – to bring Bishop Marty back to Italy. You would put great heart in our people there, brother,’ he goes on, turning to the bishop. ‘Exiles are crossing the mountains every day, it seems, and now that Raymond has made peace with Pope Innocent, there is no safety in Languedoc. Strange that our safe haven might be in the very garden of Rome itself … Bishop, will you come?’

  ‘I cannot, my brother,’ says Bishop Marty, sadly. ‘The gold of our Church, such as it was, has already left here, and my desire was that it should be sent to Cremona. I trust brother Pierre – he is a stout-hearted and clever man, and he will do his utmost to make sure my wishes are carried out. But the real treasure, my friend, is nothing less than the brothers and sisters who have taken refuge here. They cannot leave, all ten score of them! And I will not abandon them, do you see. I have known, since I came here, what my fate would be, and I welcome it. Tell your bishop that he has treasures of his own to guard.’

  ‘My bishop, I am not leaving again,’ says Arnaud. ‘If I cannot bring you or my brothers and sisters into exile, I will go with you, gladly, to the light that awaits.’

  ‘So be it,’ says the bishop, and takes Arnaud’s hand. ‘It is almost upon us, never fear.’

  ‘And the matter we have been discussing, Bertrand?’ says the Captain. He sits up straighter and it makes him wince, but his voice is strong.

  ‘On that, Michel, I do agree. Our crucifix must be saved, so that the faithful in Italy may put it to good use. It seems you must go back after all, brother Arnaud.’

  ‘He does not need to leave if he does not wish to,’ says the Captain. ‘In his stead I would like to recommend Sir Petroc.’ He waggles his fingers in my direction. ‘He is experienced in such matters, and has spent several years in Italy. And as I also have a bequest that I wish to put into the hands of the brothers in Cremona, which Sir Petroc can take care of as my proxy, I would very much like him to be our man.’

  ‘We cannot really spare any fighting men,’ Pierre-Roger says, frowning at me. I stand there, embarrassed. I have almost forgotten my old life. For the past months I have thought mainly about warmth and sleep. I am a soldier, after all. I study the Captain. He is bone-white around the edges of his nostrils and his mouth, and the skin under his eyes is papery, blue. His hair, I notice suddenly, is almost silver.

  ‘Michel,’ I find myself saying, ‘it is you who should take the crucifix. There is no one alive who can be of more help to the Good Christians – do they have a diplomat? Someone who has the friendship of the Emperor? They do not. Your wealth will be of more use if you direct how it is spent.’ Seeing his eyebrows lift and his mouth tense, I turn to the bishop. ‘Sir, Michel de Montalhac would best serve his people as a living man and not a martyr. If you wish to keep your church alive, send him away.’

  The bishop opens his mouth, but Pierre-Roger’s voice cuts through the room.

  ‘So be it,’ he says. ‘Michel will carry your crucifix to safety, wherever that might be, and the rest of your gold. You, Sir Petroc, will go with him. It is a long way to Cremona, and he will need an escort who can use a sword. Michel,’ he continues, silencing whatever the Captain is about to say with a glare, ‘you are hurt, and will not be mended, no doubt, for a while yet. Petroc, I recommend that you take him as far as Montpellier and put him on a ship. Then you can be of use to us again. Go to Toulouse, and find out from my lord Count Raymond exactly what these fucking affairs of his are, and what in the name of God’s boils they have to do with us!’

  Bishop Marty clears his throat, but he is smiling doggedly. ‘So be it. Michel, I entrust our crucifix to you. There could be no better custodian. I have not authority over Sir Petroc …’

  ‘… Therefore I command him to escort Michel,’ says Pierre-Roger. ‘You will need a guide. We will have to wait …’

  The Captain sighs so deeply that Pierre-Roger shuts his mouth abruptly.

  ‘I will find us a guide,’ says Captain de Montalhac. ‘If you will permit me, that is. I thank you for the great responsibility that you have entrusted to me, but … it was never my intention to abandon my friends, and brothers, and sisters.’

  ‘You are a good man, Michel,’ the bishop replies. He uses the French, bon homme. ‘And yet you are not yet a bon homme, if you will forgive my pun. You have given over your life and all the fruits of your toil to your church. And yet you have not taken the Consolamentum. Don’t fear – I am not doubting your faith, far from it. But the fact that you have not, even now, chosen to become perfect seems to tell me that you have not finished serving the faith from your place in this world. Go back to Italy. Tell the faithful what has become of us, and shore them up against the storm that will be coming to them. Then you will have fulfilled your destiny, perhaps.’

  ‘Bertrand, would you give me the Consolamentum now, immediately?’

  ‘I would, and I will. Nothing could give me greater pleasure. Shall I, then?’ The space between the two men seems to shiver as they stare into one another’s faces. The Captain grits his teeth and shakes his head.

  ‘Ach, you are right. I wish it were not so, but … Very well. I will take Petroc, and a guide, and anyone else who wishes to come, or whoever else you think should go to Cremona. We should leave tomorrow, as there will be very little moon.’

  I listen, slightly dazed by it all. Who is the guide? I wonder. Could it be Gilles? The Captain would want to save his friend as he is saving me. But Gilles will never leave, I know it. I look around the solar at the faces before me. It has been a year and three months since I first stood here. How time has savaged us. Castellan Raymond’s hair is almost gone. Pierre-Roger’s beard is grey and his face is weathered and etched from days and nights spent out in the slashing winds. The Captain is thin and hollowed-out. Bishop Marty’s skin has the ivory transparency of death, and yet his eyes are bright and flicker with strength and purpose. I wonder what I look like. I feel ancient, and the only purpose I have left is to keep myself alive – and why do I do that? To help my comrades, as they help me. The comrades I am leaving behind tomorrow.

  Pierre-Roger sticks his head out of the room and calls for his wife. Lady Corba comes in with another perfecta and two serving girls. They bring rough bread and pitchers of water and the sour beer that we brew in the castle. The perfecta tends to the Captain’s thigh. I give him a nod and he furrows his brow at me and smiles vaguely, mirroring my own uncertainty over what has been decided for us. I make my excuses and leave, for I have to explain matters to the garrison. Outside it is pitch black and silent save for the exhausted weeping of a baby, and the thud, thud of stones against the walls.

  I went out to the huts beneath the west wall and said goodbye to Gilles. We were two old friends parting before a long journey, as we had been many times before. And as before, we knew where our paths would lead us.

  ‘I won’t see you again, will I?’ I said. We were sitting in his hut, and the wind was whimpering under the edges of the roof.

  ‘Not for a very long time,’ he said. ‘We are going to dif
ferent places, you and I. My dear friend, you are staying and I am leaving – though it seems to be the other way round.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. Gilles’ pronouncements, delivered as they always were with a wry smile, had ceased to alarm me. But then I saw that his face was solemn. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That I am leaving the world and going to God’s light, while you, without the Consolamentum, are doomed to return, and return …’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Until you become perfect. Only then does the soul leave its prison.’

  ‘Oh. I come back, then? As me?’ I was pretending the whole thing was a joke, but I was beginning to feel unbearably sad.

  ‘No, Patch. One of you will be quite enough.’ He was smiling again. ‘The soul enters another body at the moment of birth, with no memory of its former lives. And so it goes, until the soul is released by the Consolamentum.’

  I wanted to say, But that’s bollocks, Gilles! But I did not. ‘So that is what you really believe?’ I said instead.

  ‘I do. And so do all Good Christians. We are leaving, Patch. You, the castellan, the soldiers, even those who have died here: all are staying.’

  Can I come with you? I did not say it, but what else could I think? Gilles was my friend. No, he was my older brother.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, startling me. ‘You can leave as well – that is what you are thinking, isn’t it? Become a bon homme. Take the Consolamentum. I can give it to you.’ He reached out and took me gently by the shoulders. ‘But you don’t want that, do you? I do not blame you, Patch. You are not ready.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. You are young. Live well – live properly, is what I mean to say; remember what I have taught you and what you have learned here, and if you are ready, you will find your salvation.’

  ‘It … I am sorry, Gilles. You saved me once already. Do you remember?’

  ‘The Swan at Dartmouth? When you walked into that room and pulled a golden hand out of your tunic, I thought, this boy is either a simpleton or a magician. And then I wondered, as you were telling us your story, what will become of him? Now I have my answer.’

  ‘Lord, I dread to hear it,’ I said, trying to jest us out of sorrow, but my words were no match for the stillness that had fallen on the little hovel now that the wind had died down.

  ‘You are here. That is my answer. You had the world to roll in like a great soft bed, and you chose Montségur. I did not: this place chose me, and my faith led me here. Nothing brought you to this place and induced you to stay except love. Perhaps we will not be parted for so very long after all.’

  I could find no words to say, so I took his hands between mine, and he kissed the top of my head, softly. Then I stood and stooped under the lintel. I looked back for the last time, and saw Gilles kneeling in front of his little fire. The faint orange glow lit up his face and his eyes glimmered faintly. He was staring into the heart of the flames, and whether he saw things past or things to come I cannot say. I turned and started off along the narrow path through the other huts. I was not the first man to weep on Montségur, and I would not be the last, and by the time I had reached the gates my tears had frozen on my cheeks and left nothing but briny dust.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I did not see Captain de Montalhac again until nightfall the next day. I had thought to spend what was left of my time saying fond fare-thee-wells to the men I had come to know so well in the past year, but the Crusaders had launched one of their attacks along the ridge and this time had succeeded in digging a trench and bringing up a small mangonel, for we hardly had the strength, or the arrows and quarrels, to keep them back. A sergeant I knew well had his ear sliced off by a quarrel, and three Good Christians were killed when a trebuchet ball landed on their shelter. So I was busy fighting and pulling smashed limbs out of the wrecked hut, which seems enough for a lifetime when spoken of thus, but at the time was as ordinary as going to the market for a bushel of apples. I hurt in my limbs and in my head, for my various wounds were far from healed, and some had festered, though not badly. A few men wished me good luck, and some others clapped me on the back while complaining about my good fortune. But for most it was as if I had already gone, for wartime has its own leaden rules, and because I would not be on the walls tomorrow, I was as good as dead today.

  So I tied up my clothes from times of peace, which I had not worn for a year and more, and rolled them into a blanket. I greased my mail shirt and trews so that they would not rattle as I climbed, slung my shield over my back and said goodbye to the little stable room with its smoking fire. The Captain was waiting inside the hall of the keep, standing next to a man whose face was hidden by a black cowl. Our guide, I supposed, though he looked more like an Inquisitor. The ill and the wounded covered the floor, lying on pallets or on the bare flagstones. The furniture had long since gone for firewood, and the tapestries cut up for blankets, and the walls were sooty from the smoking hearth, in which nothing burned but bundles of furze-twigs. Perfecti were busy everywhere, giving comfort and dressing wounds. I saw Corba the castellan’s wife, and her daughter Esclarmonde, barely able to walk, who had propped herself in a corner and was tearing up linen into bandages. And there was Phillipa, wife of Pierre-Roger, and Arsende, wife of the sergeant who had lost his ear. The Captain saw me and picked his way through the prone bodies to the doorway.

  ‘Are you sure you can do this?’ I asked, for though he had got his colour back and was standing straight and firm, his wound had been ugly, and could not have mended so soon.

  ‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to, mind. My leg is stiff as an oar. But I came to place my life at the disposal of the faith, did I not? I cannot really complain. And we have not had an adventure, you and I, for a while.’

  ‘An adventure, is it?’ I said, laughing. ‘What fun. You have the …’ I saw that the Captain had a small, bulging satchel over his shoulder. ‘Is it in there?’

  ‘It folds up quite neatly,’ he said. ‘Our guide has volunteered to carry my other things.’ The man had come up behind him. He was slight, and under his cowl he wore a thick black tunic and leggings that were tied tight to his legs. I knew most of the mountaineers by sight, and I did not recognise this one. He must be a bon homme, for a few of them, like the tireless and brave Matheus, knew their way about the pog as well as any mountaineer. I was sticking my hand out to introduce myself when the Captain took my shoulders and steered me out into the corridor.

  ‘I am not looking forward to this night’s work,’ he said. ‘So let us get it over with.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ I replied. Out in the courtyard torches flickered by the postern gate. Bishop Marty waited for us there with the castellan. The bishop kissed the Captain on both cheeks and embraced me, and then the castellan held out his hand and bade me God’s speed.

  ‘You have another companion,’ he told me. ‘This is Bertranz de Quidhers, whom the bishop is also sending into Italy.’ I recognised the man, a young-ish bon homme who lived out on the cliff-edge near Gilles.

  ‘Are you in the mood for a climb?’ I asked him, giving him my hand to shake. He took it: his grip was hard.

  ‘If it serves our church,’ he said briskly. A ball from the French trebuchet thumped against the wall nearby, and a sleepy pigeon tumbled into the air behind us. ‘I would rather …’

  ‘Stay here? So would we all, and is that not an odd thing to say?’ I told him. ‘Let us go. They are waiting.’

  Out on the narrow lip of rock the dark outline of the Captain stood leaning into the wind, his head close to the guide. We had left the torches behind, and the only light came from the stars and the flow of the Milky Way. I was fiddling with my sword, which I had lashed to my shield but which seemed to be loose – or perhaps it was only my imagination.

  ‘Ready?’ said the Captain. Bertranz nodded. I gave an errant knot a final tug and grunted a yes.

  ‘Good. Now let us pay attention,’ he said. The guide pushed back the heavy fold of his
cowl. There was just enough light to see by, very faint, like the moon reflected off burnished silver, but in the spider-web glow I made out the face of Iselda de Rosers.

  ‘Where is our guide?’ I asked, loud with surprise.

  ‘This is she,’ said the Captain.

  ‘But …’

  ‘We have to hurry,’ said Iselda tersely. ‘Since you seem to be curious, I know these paths better than any man up here save Matheus. I have been up and down them eight times since the French arrived, but no one gives a thought to the comings and goings of women. Pierre-Roger is sending me to Toulouse to plead with the Count, and good Captain Michel thought to make use of my knowledge. If you are coming, come now.’

  I heard Bertranz’ teeth clack shut, and I swallowed down my own words, whatever they would have been. I knew the singer had climbed the pog at least once, which was more than I had done. I felt uneasy about this whole enterprise, and I realised, as I walked gingerly towards the brink, that if putting myself into the hands of a woman did not make me feel especially happy, it made me no more worried than anything else. Iselda took a step and suddenly only her head and her shoulders were visible above the edge of the cliff. She held out her hand for the Captain, and he sat down and pushed off. Bertranz and I looked at each other. I gave him a tight nod. ‘After you,’ I rasped. He dropped down, and I followed.

  At first it was not so hard, merely a scramble on steep, narrow paths of loose scree. I was not as quick as I would have liked to be, for my injuries were bothering me. They were starting to heal, all but the one under my arm, and as they knit were making me very stiff and sore. Even so, I began to wonder if the mountaineers had not been exaggerating their bravery. But very soon we came to a sheer drop, or so it seemed. Iselda cast about for a minute, stooping and peering out over the edge, then beckoned us over. The cliffs dropped straight down into darkness, but just below us the rock bulged slightly, like dried tallow from a candle or a frozen waterfall, and this cascade of solid rock was riven by a dark crack, a notch of darkness no wider than a man’s body.