‘Are you sure he was your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know, Adela? Have you his eyes, his hair colouring? You told me your mother was a runaway of gentle birth.’
‘So I guessed, but does it make me more worthy of your affection to find someone with a Norman nose among my forebears?’
He ignored that thrust and sat up. ‘You see, it puzzles me why your father should abandon you and become a monk unless he had committed some great sin.’
‘Like swelling the belly of a nobleman’s daughter? No, my lord, he took holy orders for the same reason that Seguinus believes himself right about everything. Aren’t men always right?’
He looked round at her. ‘You know why I ask.’
‘Yes, and, your pardon for this upstart servant’s impertinence, but it makes me wonder if you have learned anything since leaving Mirascon. Ah, but you had money from your friend Mira, so starvation was not a possibility.’
‘His name is Miró,’ he corrected, ‘and you forget I could have been robbed.’
‘A combat-trained man like you? I do not want to cry “poor me”, but why was I given learning? To make me feel even more frustrated that I have no charge over my life but must starve or live on someone’s charity? So, do tell me why is it that you are born rich, my noble lord, and I poor?’
He ignored that outburst. ‘I think it was because you are not just a ploughman’s get.’
‘Then you haven’t met many ploughmen because a lot of them may not be lettered but they are not stup—’
His kiss stifled that argument. ‘Or I could accept that it is God’s will you were tempted to play the lady.’
She pushed him away playfully. ‘No, it was because you were both more handsome and kinder than your peers.’
He lay back, his voice lazy. ‘Ah, so it was my good looks and nice manners that tempted you, priest’s daughter, and not my wealth.’
‘I can swear on a stack of Bibles I fell in love with you at Corfe.’ She leaned upon his chest. ‘I should not have deceived you later, but being with you was like living a dream.’
‘So it’s my fault.’
‘Mmm. And you are a good lover, too.’
‘And before me?’ She could hear a frown in his voice.
‘A steward’s son. No vows. He was eighteen when he was killed in Normandy, God rest—’ His fingers froze her words.
She heard it. Not the gentle cropping or sigh of movement as their horses shifted; different hooves picking a path towards them. Catlike, Richart was instantly on his feet, blade ready, while his other hand sought hers, clasped and drew her to her feet.
Derwent was back with them, his eyes glittering with apprehension, knives in either hand.
‘Hide, both of you!’ Richart said fiercely. Adela watched him edge closer to the concerned horses. He sought to soothe the nearest, but they were restless, jerking on their tethers, scenting the danger. Then unbelievably, a ghostly, riderless beast came cheerfully through the trees. It inspected its own kind with a snort and then (with what might pass for delight in a horse) made another sound, thrust its head forward and huffed kisses into Richart’s ear.
Pilgrim.
Chapter Twenty-seven
I will still love you with all the tenderness of my
soul till the last moment of my life.
Héloïse to Abelard
Mirascon
Richart just missed being whacked into celibacy by Miró’s wife as he lowered himself through the open casement of the conjugal bedchamber of his friend’s house outside the city. Miró, open-mouthed beneath his nightcap and still trying to tie his braies before he challenged an intruder, crossed himself in relief. ‘How did you get past the dogs?’
‘They hadn’t forgotten me.’ It was good to receive a back-thumping embrace from his friend.
‘Oh, mon brave, I feared …’ A poke in the ribs from his wife and Miró stepped back, knuckling his eyes.
‘Hungry, my lord? Leaner, isn’t he, Miró?’ The wry twist of her lips might be saying ‘older’ as she fetched her bed candle to light several more, but Richart did not challenge her. ‘I could eat an oxen, horns and all, good Genevieve, but while Miró tells me tidings of Mirascon, may I entreat you to bundle something up for me? I’ve the fool Derwent with me and … another. They are waiting at the old cot on the hill.’
‘And do so softly, my dear,’ warned Miró, quietly unbarring the door for her. ‘Aye, sit down, my lord. We should have some wine in here.’ He picked up a flagon from the hearth. ‘Maybe you have returned at the right time, Richart,’ he murmured cryptically. ‘There’s to be a burning at noon tomorrow, Seguinus’s decree. I assume it’s so the rest of us can bleat what good sheep we are if the crusade should come our way.’
Richart smacked his palms wretchedly against his brow. ‘Per Crist!’
‘And some of the idiot consuls are saying your uncle is right: better a few perish than the whole suffer.’
‘How many have been taken?’
Miró puffed out his cheeks. ‘Twelve, so far. The demoiselle Arsendis, the wife and two daughters of Consul Bartolomé.’ He passed Richart a goblet. ‘Then there are five of the weavers from Rue Sainte-Catherine and the widow Marguerite’s son. They’re holding Lady Marie, your castellan’s wife. Sir Henri’s a prisoner.’
‘And your daughter, Miró?’ Richart asked with concern, remembering that she was a Cathar.
‘I sent her to friends in Toulouse the instant I heard your uncle had seized power.’
‘Thank God for that.’ Richart took a gulp of wine. ‘I dropped my guard, Miró. I should have known better.’
‘My lord?’
He shook himself back to the present. ‘What about my cousin, Tibaut? Is he still supporting Jaufré?’
‘No, he’s gone off in search of you. Ah, and Lady Yolande’s been sent to a nunnery. Where have you been, by the way? Your kinsmen have been trying to keep the lid on your disappearance, but they’ve had soldiers searching for you.’
‘I’ve come from Béziers. Per Crist, Miró! The entire city is looted, razed to the ground, thousands of people burned or slaughtered, good Christians cut down in the cathedrals and churches where they took refuge. The pope’s man, that whoreson abbot, didn’t ask who were heretics and who were not. “Let God decide,” he said.’
Miró groaned. ‘So the news yesterday was true. You know, I didn’t believe it, Richart. God’s mercy! Béziers’ walls are as stout as ours. What happened?’
‘The vicomte left for Carcassonne, they had no good military commander in charge and the fools on the battlements got lured down by a bunch of jeering ribauds. It was the riff-raff who took Béziers, not the siege weapons.’ He grimaced, rising to pace. ‘My dear friend, it feels like the end of the world. This army is so massive, its passing takes hours. I could not believe how equipped … the mangonels, the trebuchets and siege towers. If they do not batter the walls down, they could very well undermine us.’
‘Mirascon won’t fall.’
‘How can you say that?’
‘Béziers may not have had a good military commander but we have.’ He put his large hands on Richart’s shoulders. ‘You’re back, my lord, and I thank God for it.’
The Feast of Saint-Lazarus, Mirascon
Doleful and slow, as though tongued by sorrow, the bells of the city summoned the people to the square outside the cathedral. Adela was not afraid of dying, but after surviving Béziers, the sight that met her eyes as she rode pillion behind Miró up Rue de Saint-Lazarus made her soul tremble. Six stakes, surrounded by a vast circle of firewood, had been hammered into the centre of the common space. Plentiful dried kindling fringed the pile’s outer edges; anyone who tried to cut the victims free would have to walk on fire.
‘Dieu nos gard!’ muttered Miró. ‘Shall I take you back, domna?’
Adela shook her head grimly. She would help Richart somehow, despite him forbidding her.
Before first light, he ha
d been as solemn as a funeral monument, in a state of grace beyond her reach. It would have been useless to resume her argument of last night, that she would not be left behind like a pair of discarded boots. They had some special way into the castle; that much he told her. All she could do was to wrap her arms about his neck and assure him of her love, but after he had departed with Derwent and the most trusted and able-bodied of Miró’s servants, she had put her own request to Miró. The merchant had taken some persuading to let her ride with him. Clothed in his wife’s Sunday kirtle, with a veil that reached to the tip of her nose, Adela prayed to the saints she could pass as Mistress Barthé and that no one, especially not Richart, would recognise her. Not yet.
God willing, he must be here. Somewhere. If she could not espy him, that must mean he and his fellow conspirators were well disguised or else—God forbid—they had already failed.
‘Surprise and ridicule,’ Richart had promised, though as Miró urged their horse through the waiting crowd, it was hard to believe in anything but the appalling brutality of mankind.
Smoke from two braziers, placed at east and west of the bonfire, was coiling lazily upwards into the windless sky. Beside these, sinister and faceless like tethered hawks, two hooded executioners stood ready. Leather aprons girded their naked waists, and each man held a flambeau ready for thrusting into the coals when the order was given.
Save for the loutish laughter of blustering apprentices ranged behind the line of soldiers—men Adela recognised from the castle garrison—the common people stood hushed as though at worship. In a closed rank, the consuls and their wives clustered in the cleared area in front of the cathedral and Adela hoped the fumes of the fire would choke them for condoning this horror. Pale and sombre, Richart’s chamberlain, steward, some of the young esquires and the maidens, Fabrisse and València, were in a pale huddle of their own.
‘I’ll have to greet the other consuls, else they’ll remark upon it,’ murmured Miró, dismounting, and lifting her down so she would be less conspicuous. ‘I’ll tell them my wife has a summer ague, so give the odd cough or sneeze. My groom will stay with you and help you leave if things go wrong. Can you manage the horse?’
‘I think so. Someone’s wife is waving at us. Do I wave back?’
‘With little enthusiasm, I suggest.’ He kissed her cheek as a husband might. ‘Take care, domna. We are dealing with a many-headed beast today.’ Trumpets and horns proclaiming someone’s arrival made further talk impossible. Miró’s grim hunch of shoulders as he left told her there was little hope.
Jaufré came into her sight, approaching the square in military splendour. Clad in chainmail, he sat astride a white horse, with his fair hair uncovered. A bodyguard of soldiers, whom Adela suspected were mercenaries, accompanied him, and a half-dozen esquires bearing the familiar shining gonfalcons and pennons walked at his stirrups. No cheers, no garlands came from the upper windows as the usurper neared the square, but suddenly a pail shot forth, a very full pail! The startled stallion jerked at its bridle, and Jaufré, cursing, dispatched three of his soldiers to break down the door and punish the perpetrator. Possibly stinking and definitely ruffled, he dismounted at the cathedral steps from his spattered mount. His twisted lips promised retribution for the sniggers. With an intimidating rattle of harness, his remaining escort gathered behind him. Their fellows had not re-emerged from the offending house. Had Jaufré noticed?
Adela watched him glare suspiciously up at the cathedral roof as though he anticipated enemy archers or more flying pots of excrement. The roofs opposite, the faces of the consuls and the subdued crowd received the same slow scrutiny. She could see his father in him now. Swiftly, she made pretence of rubbing her brow to shield her face. Her mouth felt dry. Her heart was frantic. How could Richart prevail, stoke courage into his anxious people? Fear and certainty stood behind the line of soldiers—the knowing that if any man protested, he would be thrown in the fire and his family with him.
Now came the funeral drums, the heavy clank of men-at-arms and the barking—unleashed strays from the marketplace bounding and snarling as the Cathar prisoners were escorted to their punishment. Barefooted and clad in penitents’ shifts, the poor wretches, some of them just young girls, were roped in a line. In horror, Adela recognised Lady Marie at the front, her grey hair loose, her shoulders defiant, even though her neck and hands were fettered with iron chains. Like the rest, the good woman’s lips were moving in a prayer or hymn, but the drumming drowned out their words.
Angry indignation almost overwhelmed Adela. If she had been a knight she would have thundered in like Sir Lancelot rescuing Queen Guinevere from the stake. This was horrific injustice. Hands fisted in her skirts, she hurled unspoken words at the relentless sun. Where are you, Almighty? Who is in charge here?
Once the heretics reached the square, the drumming ceased. A line of solemn, chanting priests and canons processioned from the cathedral. While the men-at-arms were binding two prisoners to each stake, half of the clergy drew near to the bonfire. The rest remained to flank their bishop on the cathedral steps. Wake up, you saints! Let Heaven strike Seguinus down for wanting this!
The bishop’s tall frame was clad in cloth of violet, the liturgical colour of penance and mourning. The silver hair beneath his white mitre had been clipped short, costly orphreys decorated his cappa magna and a large pectoral cross hung about his neck. His gloved hand was firm around the crozier and he looked as satisfied as a shepherd who had finally herded his straying flock into a fold with no escape. Adela had no choice but to kneel with the rest of the people as he blessed them; no choice but to listen.
‘People of Mirascon! Over the last years, His Holiness the Pope has shown patience with those misguided men who have disputed the true faith and those others who in their folly have shielded them. O my children, like a loving father, he sent the wisest churchmen in France to guide you, teach you, debate with you but, alas, you did not listen. Then he sent the best of his preachers, worthy men like Brother Dominic and Brother Arnaud Amaury, but them you mocked, and still you did not listen.
‘His patience is now at an end and he has sent crusader-pilgrims to punish all those who show contempt for Holy Church. He has sent his soldiers to destroy all those who give these heretics protection. You heard last evening that the crusaders have burned the city of Béziers to ashes. Tomorrow they will march on Mirascon unless … unless news reaches them that we have done their work for them and destroyed the corruption in our midst. This is what God wants of us, good people, to—’
‘LIAR!’
His expression slightly inconvenienced by this sudden interference, Seguinus peered haughtily in the direction of the angry shout. However, his face became a mask of hate as a lone, familiar horseman, tossing his cloak back, rode up from behind the line of penitents. Richart!
There was an instant hubbub around Adela as his people recognised him. The hero Roland or Sir Lancelot could not have surpassed her beloved lord in princely splendour. It was his own stallion that he rode. The surcote over his chainmail was emblazoned with the arms of Mirascon and upon his brow glittered the circlet of authority (had Gaspard hidden those treasures from Jaufré?). In his left hand he bore the fiefdom’s glittering banner; in his right his unsheathed sword.
‘As Lord of Mirascon, I order this burning to cease!’ he roared, spurring the stallion out in front of the cathedral. He thrust the sword tip towards Heaven. ‘It is for me to administer justice!’ He lowered the blade so it was pointing towards the bishop. ‘Not you, Uncle.’
A waggle of episcopal fingers, a sneer. ‘Clear away this lunatic! Bind him, haul him to the chancel and we’ll try to cleanse out his demons later.’ Marvellously, the cordon of soldiers, those that had served in the castle garrison under Richart’s rule, stood transfixed. ‘You heard me!’ snarled Seguinus, his tone more urgent, and Jaufré bestirred himself, gesturing to his mercenaries to fall in behind him as he strode menacingly towards Richart.
Her lover’s sword
swept a circle. ‘People of Mirascon,’ he shouted, and his horse danced closer to the crowd. ‘Good people of Mirascon! With my own eyes I have seen Béziers burn, its people burn. All of them—heretics, devout Christians, men, women, children, all—all!—thrown on the abbot’s bonfire. “Let God decide,” said the pope’s legate, that so-called man of God.’
His horse was almost alongside where Adela stood and she kept her face lowered, determined not to distract him. Jaufré and his men were approaching slowly, mockingly, like wolves confident of a kill.
‘I ask you, Uncle,’ shouted Richart, ‘what is their crime? Have these people spiked your babies, slain your sons? Because that’s what the crusaders did in Béziers.
‘I believe in human kindness. Not this!’ He flung a hand towards the bonfire. ‘Would Christ approve of this? Did he tell us to slaughter each other? No, he spoke of forgiveness and mercy.’
‘He speaks true!’ Père Arbert broke the arc of priests, but Adela’s heart was in her mouth. Jaufré was almost within a sword’s length of Richart.
‘My dear mad brother!’ he exclaimed loudly, his face as predatory as the Devil’s seizing another soul. ‘Surrender! You have nothing to fear. We will take good care of you. Seize him!’
‘I challenge you to single combat!’ Richart’s gauntlet fell at Jaufré’s feet and lay ignored. ‘What, are you so cowardly, bishop’s son? Pick it up, you bastard!’
‘Kill him!’
‘No!’ Adela exclaimed. ‘You told everyone I was dead,’ she shouted at Jaufré, wrenching off her veil. ‘You had me taken to Béziers and kept against my will, starved and persecuted. You prevented my lord from marrying me and—’
‘Ma domna?’ One of the captains, Matthieu, recognised her with a great shout and turned to the crowd. ‘She’s alive! Lady Alys is alive!’
‘Kill both of them!’
‘You tried that last time,’ Adela declared defiantly, daring Jaufré to find the stomach to strike at her. ‘Who will you have, people of Mirascon, the bishop’s bastard or your rightful lord?’
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