A voice sounded from within. "Ah, young Henri." Hughes emerged. "I hear you have some trouble with the men. Perhaps we could provide some women or other entertainment for them?"
Henri forced his muscles to relax. "There are minstrels in the village." He looked out over the camp. "I can have them come out to play for the men."
Hughes merely nodded. "What of you, Henri?" His eyes did not shift when Henri flinched. "Will you never be still? Why not find a woman to warm your bed?"
Henri forced a smile. "You would recommend this? You, a man of the Church?"
Hughes shrugged. "As you wish, Bauçais, but get some minstrels for the men."
Henri ducked his head to acknowledge his dismissal and moved off toward the village, lengthening his stride. He averted his eyes from the cage, from the Basque Antoine who was stolidly raising bars and pounding them into place.
Tomorrow. The sixteenth of March. It would be over tomorrow.
THE SUN rose and slid behind a pall of heavy clouds. Antoine stood at one corner of the cage he had helped build and watched soldiers heap sticks of wood, straw, and pitch, all in several piles inside. At each of the four corners, extra straw was piled. Pierre came up behind him. "Is everything ready?" he asked, barely moving his lips.
Antoine felt the bulge inside his mantle. The cup the Cathar had given him rested in a sling next to his heart. He had avoided the guard, gone down to the burial site and dug it up just last night. "Are you sure you want to leave without the gold they promised?" he asked.
"I would like to leave right now," Pierre said, "but we cannot slip away until there are more people around. The soldiers watch us."
He lowered his voice even further. "Wait for the signal. As soon as you see me pull my ear, you must run for the forest."
Antoine looked back at the cage. "Maybe this is just to hold them."
Pierre grimaced. "If you believe that, you are a bigger fool than Bauçais." He moved away from Antoine with deliberate steps, looking for all the world as if he and Antoine had merely discussed the possibility of rain.
HENRI WAITED outside the gates of Montsegur. It was time. He sat there next to Hughes in the Pope's own wagon and watched row upon row of people walking out of the fortress. A procession of men and women dressed in dark blue robes marched down toward them, their voices rising and falling in the still air.
"What are they singing?" He leaned forward.
Hughes shook his head. "A Cathar hymn, I suppose."
Several other inhabitants of the fortress marched to the left: knights, merchants, some women and children. The Bishop's priests were everywhere, praying and approaching the people of Montsegur for their recantation of the Cathar heresy. Soon the area was filled with people. Soldiers pushed the blue robed folk toward the cage, but no priests followed them. The people from the fortress were milling around, mixing with the pope's soldiers, the priests. Henri stood up in his seat on the wagon. He could see women from the village now, and camp followers. They were still on the edges of the crowd, but would soon be among the prisoners.
He sank back into his seat and looked around in dismay. It was total chaos. There was no order to it, no way to tell who would recant and who would not. Swearing under his breath, he leaped out of the ornate wagon he occupied with Hughes and marched straight into the crowd. Someone had to bring some semblance of order and organization to the surrender. He would start with the blue robed people near the cage. "Form a line!" he barked out his order and watched in satisfaction as the group jostled around until a rough line was formed. He folded his arms across his chest. "Now," he said, "who will be first?"
THIS WAS going nowhere. Henri shook his head and moved to the next person in line, an elderly man with cloudy blue eyes. "Do you accept the teachings of Christ?" he asked this man, as he had asked all who stood silently in the line. So far, no one had responded to any of his questions. "Do you revere His Holiness, the Pope?" The man's eyes were mild. He met Henri's stare, but did not speak. None of them had. But this one was thin, so thin that a stiff wind might blow him away. Henri stepped back and allowed his gaze to travel over the man. Hughes had told him that the priests of the Cathars were often very thin. "Are you a parfait?" he asked.
The man's expression did not change. He still regarded Henri with patient endurance. All of them had looked back into Henri's eyes with the same maddening serenity. But this one spoke. "Yes," he said. "I am a parfait."
"Well!" Henri raised his arms. "Finally someone will speak to me." He leaned forward. "I wrote the surrender agreement," he said, pitching his voice so the others in line could hear. "And you must know what this is for." He pointed at the cage and saw the tremor that shivered through the man's frame. A quiver rippled through the people in line.
But the man's eyes remained calm. "Yes," he said. "We know." All motion stopped. The people now stood there as they had since they had come down from the fortress, hands clasped before them, faces serene and eyes bearing the same mild look as the man in front of Henri.
Henri leaned toward him again. "Then how can you let your people go into there? You are their priest." He allowed his voice to drop. "It is your duty to protect them." He glanced over at the cage, then back to the man. "We both of us believe in the Christ. Why let these people die for a small matter of doctrine?" The man's eyes grew alert, boring into Henri's. "Come now," Henri continued. "They follow you." He stepped back. "Tell them to recant and we can all of us go home in peace."
The man reached forward, his eyes still searching Henri's face. Henri felt his hands taken and held. The man's hands were dry and cool to the touch. One corner of the man's mouth lifted and he said, "For you, this is just beginning."
Henri felt the blood drain from his face. "What?" He backed away and looked down at his hands. The man no longer held them, but Henri could still feel his grasp. A touch on his arm brought his head around.
"My lord." One of the bishop's soldier's stood there; his red tunic and white cross made a garish splash among the deep blue robes of the Cathars. "It has already been decided." His words were courteous, but firm. "These people are to burn."
Henri jerked his arm away. "Nonsense!" he growled. "I wrote the surrender agreement. They are to be given the chance to recant." He turned back to the blue robed line. "I have barely begun my questioning." He opened his mouth to continue his interrogation, but a flash of red and white on either side stopped his words. Three other soldiers surrounded him. Two grabbed his arms, one removed his sword. Henri sputtered. "What is this?"
"Hughes des Arcis has ordered us to take you," the first soldier said. "We do not like this any more than you, my lord, but we must do des Arcis' bidding."
They dragged Henri back away from the line and held him fifteen paces from the cage. Henri glanced at their faces. Struggling would be no use. He knew these men. They would travel to hell and back again if their commander bid it. He could not countermand an order given by Hughes.
"Then take me to Hughes," Henri said, watching their eyes. They would not look at him.
"We cannot." The first spoke again. "We are to keep you here until it is over." His jaw set in a rigid line.
The gates to the cage were opened by the two Basques from his aunt's territory. Henri tried to break free, but he was held fast. He saw the people he had been questioning march inside. The old man glanced back at him before he entered. His mouth moved, but Henri could not hear what he said. The sound of voices raised in anguish tore at him. Women, now. They were dragging women to the cage. Some were walking toward it, but soldiers carried others. One woman's hair had come down from her cap, streaming in a black and silver blanket around her hips. She held her arms stiffly at her side and her eyes were so wide Henri feared they would bulge out of her head. His own arms strained against the men holding him. The soldiers herded children toward the cage. Children!
"This was not part of the surrender!" Henri shouted. "We do not kill children!" To the devil with des Arcis! This must end.
He relaxed in a compliant sag, then when he felt the answering slack in the soldiers' hold, jammed his arms forward and dropped to the ground in a roll, breaking free of their grasp. Shouts echoed in his ears, but he leaped to his feet and ran toward the cage. One child. If he could save just one.
Six more soldiers caught and held him before he could reach the cage. "What are you doing?" Henri saw other soldiers carrying the wounded from the fortress into the cage. "You are killing the wounded, too?" The pulse pounded in his temple. "This is madness!"
He sought the Basques from his aunt's town and saw the white face of one; it was Antoine, he thought. "Antoine!" he shouted. "Open the gate. For God's sake, man! Let the children out, at least." His voice failed. Now he could see tiny hands gripping the bars, tear-streaked faces pressing against the iron.
He froze when he saw the four men at each of the corners of the pyre, then screamed "No!" when they dropped their torches into the straw.
The men who had built the pyre had done their work well. No more Cathar hymns. Flames spread instantly and soon engulfed the entire cage; women screamed. The children ran to the blue robed priests, who stood in the center of the cage. The old man he had questioned put his arms around a boy. The boy could not have been more than ten.
Suddenly, Henri's arms were free. The men who had held him ran from the heat that blasted at him like a furnace. He remained where they had left him, arms hanging limply at his sides, eyes and ears filled with the sight and sound of over two hundred people. Burning.
He watched the flames, the bodies jumping, the hands clutching the edges of the cage, then fingers snatched away as the bars heated. And the children, my God! Smoke overcame them first and they lay huddled in pitiful little mounds. He tried to close his eyes, but his lids would not obey him. A powerful arm thrust hard against the bars, almost a blacksmith's arm it was, and still free of the fire, but the fingers curled and uncurled as the flesh started to crisp. A woman's silver hair floated up above her blackened face before it, too, burst into flames. A man crawled, his skin streaked with red and black, bleeding, desperately creeping away from the flames that threatened to engulf him. Fire ran over another man's body, burning his clothing off and bubbling the fat in his skin with an obscene sizzling. Henri turned, looked for the parfait again. Where was the old man? He could not see him at first. But the old man was there in the center, his arms still wrapped around the boy. Flames climbed his robes now. The boy was limp in his arms. The old man fell to his knees; fire leaped from his robes into a living torch.
Henri threw his head back and howled; a long, desperate cry of grief. He shouted his despair until he could barely make a sound. He did not stop when the bishop's men braved the heat to rescue him. He did not stop when they tried to pull him away, but sought instead to break free of their grip.
A bright flash of pain exploded behind his ears. And darkness fell.
HENRI'S EYES blinked open. He raised his head and saw the walls of his tent. "What?" His lungs clutched. Surely he had been somewhere with Hughes, hadn't he? But it was dark, night must have fallen. The last thing he remembered was sitting in the wagon with Hughes. His legs trembled. He sat, holding his head, forcing air in and out of his rebelling lungs. "What is that stench?" He swallowed. What were they cooking tonight? Staggering to his feet, he stumbled out of the tent.
It was not nighttime, as he had thought. The edges of the sky were still light gray with the low-hanging clouds of that morning. The darkness came from a pillar of thick black smoke rising from a huge fire. Even from where he stood at the lower camp he could see flames peeking through smoke and red-hot embers glowing angrily at the heart. Bodies. That was what burned there. Henri sank to his knees and threw back his head, but no sound would come out of his open mouth. He covered his face with his hands, but no tears would flow. In the end he simply sat there on the ground in the doorway of his tent, his eyes focused upon nothing.
THE SOLDIER'S voice sounded hoarse from the smoke and his eyes darted around the encampment. "He just sits there, my lord, and does not move."
Hughes des Arcis frowned. "How long has he been this way?" He had been occupied with administering the other conditions of the surrender and had not thought about his young friend for some time now.
"Since yesterday, about an hour after they knocked him out."
"Knocked him out?" Hughes asked in surprise. "What happened?"
"He wouldn't leave the fire, my lord. Just wouldn't go. We were afraid he would die there, the heat was so bad." The soldier wiped the sweat off his face with hands that trembled. "So we went back to get him, had to drag him back, but he fought us, and, you see, the air from the fire -- it was burning our lungs." He coughed. "So we had to hit him over the head. But we carried him back."
"Thank you, commander," Hughes said, rising. "I would like you to take me to him now, please."
HUGHES HELD a pomander in front of his nose as he walked the short distance to the bishop's quarters. Although the burning had taken place three days before, there was still an ungodly stench hanging in the air. They all prayed for rain, but, although the clouds still hung heavily over the area, no rain had fallen.
For the past three days his second-in-command, Henri de Bauçais, had sat in his tent where they had placed him, neither eating, drinking, nor sleeping in all that time. Hughes drew in a deep breath in spite of the stench and knocked politely on the door of the bishop's chambers.
When he entered the room, he approached the desk and kissed the ring on the bony hand the bishop extended to him. "Your Eminence," he stated, then seated himself after the bishop motioned for him to sit. Bishop Durand was a large, angular man with deeply hooded eyes.
"Ghastly smell," Hughes remarked. "Seems to get into everything."
"It will pass," Durand said mildly. "Have you any word of the two Basques?"
Hughes hesitated. Antoine Jakintza and Pierre Brounnan had disappeared during the burning of the heretics. They had been commandeered by the bishop's men to help build the cage and take the Cathars into the pyre. When everyone had returned to his post from this grisly duty, the soldiers in charge found that the two men were missing. "No, your Eminence, they have not been found. However, I have a plan to find them that will serve a double purpose."
Durand leaned back and signaled for Hughes to continue.
"You remember Henri de Bauçais?"
A spark flared in Durand's eyes. "You mean the man who brought the Basques from Navarre, who took the eastern tower?" He bowed his head. "François de Bauçais's son, now Baron de Bauçais?"
"The very same. His older brother died nearly five years ago and his father died about -- oh, three years ago," Hughes said, waving the pomander in front of his nose. Thank God for oranges and cloves, he thought, then said: "It was Henri who brought the two Basques from Reuilles-la-ville, on de Reuilles land."
Another spark flared in Durand's eyes. "We are familiar with de Reuilles," he said, then continued smoothly, "I had heard that there was some difficulty with the execution. That someone tried to pull heretics away from the pyre."
"That is not entirely true. Henri did try to get the heretics to recant, that is so, but he did not pull anyone out of the pyre." Hughes paused. "Henri believed that most of the heretics would recant. He is a brilliant man, really, but he lacks our experience in these matters."
"Unseasoned." Durand nodded. "This often happens with the first burning. Very well, go on."
"He stayed near the fire even after the others had gone to a safe distance. My men had to go back to get him, and even then he would not leave, so they had to strike him in order to remove him from danger."
"Indeed. Where is he now?"
"He is in his tent." Now Hughes leaned forward. "He has neither eaten nor slept for the past three days. I placed a guard on him. I was not sure what he would do."
Durand drummed his fingers on the table. "What do you propose?"
"Those men you are looking for come from the de Reuilles territory. I
propose sending Henri there to track them down." If Henri ever came to his senses. "His aunt is Johanna de Reuilles, so he will have the confidence of the baron." He pulled a document he had written, ordering Henri to find the two Basques, out of his mantle and placed it on the table before Durand.
"Baron Louis-Philippe de Reuilles," Durand murmured, examining the document, "Yes," then: "Do you think he will be able to travel?"
"I cannot say. But I think it is worth a try and it may help him, give him a purpose, bring him out of himself."
"Let it be done, then." Durand signed the document in front of him. As he handed it back to Hughes, he added, "Now that we have succeeded here, we can turn our attention to other heresies." He leaned back in his red cushioned chair and regarded Hughes.
"Other heresies?" Hughes rolled the parchment into a tube and slipped it in the pouch upon his belt.
Bishop Durand waved his hand. "Oh, you need not be gone from your loved ones for long." His lids dropped and his eyes gleamed out from beneath. "I am not sending you to Jerusalem. Heresy is everywhere. We will have much for you to do here at home. Much to do."
HUGHES APPROACHED the tent where Henri sat unmoving and unresponsive. Holding the pomander by his nose, Hughes nodded to the guard he had posted by the door of the tent and pushed past the man to go inside. It was dark in the tent. He could see the shadow of Henri sitting on the cot, his haunted eyes staring out of his thinning face, the traces of a beard lacing his cheeks and chin. Hughes averted his eyes. It hurt to look at Henri, especially when he remembered the sunny, cheerful boy Henri had been. Hughes sat on a chair by the cot and produced the document the bishop had just signed.
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