The Treasure of Montsegur

by Sophy Burnham

  Guilhabert de Castres said the first burnings took place two hundred and fifty years ago, in 1002. Three men burnt here, ten there. They hunted witches too—and still are doing it.

  They would burn me for apostasy, poor crazy Jeanne. Someday I may be burnt, as my beautiful Baiona was, or William, or my beloved Bertrand Marty, two hundred of them weeping, holding one another as they hobbled down the hill.

  No. No! Don’t think of that.

  How strange is memory. All jumbled up together in my head, just behind my eyes, and some things I see as clearly as if they happened yesterday, and yet I was a child, and other things I forget—closed doors, dark rooms. It’s like the castle storeroom, wandering among the trunks and dusty boxes, cobwebs, musty smell, and every now and then a shaft of sunlight illuminates a moment, or a person, or a word. One of the Ancients says you can’t step in the same river twice, but I step in the rivers of my memory again and again. And also in some where I never was.

  Hoofbeats. I lift my head. Hide! I pull to my feet and hurry back from the road, pretending to stoop to do my business behind a bush. I remember when the Inquisitors didn’t ride at a gallop, surrounded by their guards. They are magpies, flapping in their black and white garb. I remember when there were no prosecutors poking their noses into every life. I can’t remember, though, a time without war—war inside, war outside, war in the heart of that black-haired girl I was, poor ignorant little child, so proud and defiant, and look where it got her.

  It seems another life, so long ago, another person, nothing to do with me or with anyone I know. Foolish girl, rebelling against life, against the very ones who tried to teach her happiness. First fighting the marriage. Then just fighting. But maybe that’s how God intended it, for each new generation starts from scratch, learning the lessons all over again, and we older ones can’t teach or tell the children anything, poor tots; each one starts at scratch, so that hardly any progress is made at all. Her war was always with herself. She didn’t even know how rich she was, how happy in her friends.

  TWO

  She was sewing in the window-seat overlooking the racefields at the castle near Foix, and had the women come in ten minutes earlier, they would have seen the young girl twisted on the stone bench, her head and shoulders outside the open window, looking up at the ivy that covered the exterior stone and down at the course below, the fields, les champs, where the champions raced their horses, jousted, fought, and practiced military moves. The war was still on, though the demon Simon de Montfort had been killed the year before when he laid siege to Toulouse. But now the exercises were over, and the horses clip-clopped over the cobbles back to the stables, and the laughter and shouting of the young squires was fading, muffled by the back of the castle, and Jeanne was left to finish the hemstitching in her lap.

  She stole another glance out the window, then flopped back onto the window-seat and picked up her needle, sullenly stitching an open fret-work design with almost none of her attention on the needle and most of it on Rogert and the siege that had been laid against Toulouse. People said the women had fought on the walls beside the men, shooting arrows and stones at the French siege engines. They said it was the women who had killed de Montfort with a missile from a stone-gun.

  Already the minstrels were singing about that day:

  A stone flew straight to its mark

  And smote Count Simon upon his helm of steel.

  He had just come from his prayers, and rushed into battle, to be killed.

  With a sigh Jeanne forced her attention back to her handiwork. She was not good at sewing, like Baiona. Her fingers seemed too big. Her thumbs got in the way, and even now, when she was age thirteen, her stitching sometimes came out careless and coarse. But it was not only her fingers that wouldn’t work: it was her dreamy mind. Baiona, on the other hand, only a year older, worked stitches tiny as fairy footprints, and the way she fell into a perfect rhythm and meditation made her sewing a delight to behold, as from her needle—and likewise from her brush and paints—would grow flowers and insects, imaginary and visionary, a whole bestiary of wild creatures climbing and clawing their way up castle walls or across a landscape of trees and fields. From her needle came peasants and nobles so real that Jeanne thought they might jump out of the cloth and walk about, telling of their hopes and dreams.

  Baiona had gifted hands. Everyone said so. Jeanne dropped her napkin in despair, onto the pile of its unstitched mates, and let her eyes rove about the room. It was a beautiful, airy space into which the sunlight streamed through arched windows. In it were several carved chairs, high and heavy, and on the wall two tapestries: one showed the meeting of Christ with the woman at the well, when he offered her the water of eternal life; the other (her favorite) depicted the sacrifice of Isaac, and there was Abraham’s beige hand lifted as always, his head just turning toward the angel who reached down to stay his knife, and over to the side stood the horn-trapped ram hidden in the greenery. It was lovely.

  Usually Jeanne could look at the stories for hours, but today she turned restlessly once more and caught the slender column that divided the window space, scanning the outdoor view of woods and meadow-land. She should have been a boy down on the riding fields. She was not made for napkins and tale-telling tapestries. She would rather the stories were made about herself! She imagined herself as Ovid’s Diana, goddess of the hunt, a boy-girl, shooting a bow and running down a stag with her own hounds. She wished she were one of the women defending their city from the French devil Simon de Montfort. No needlework.

  She leaned out the window, the soft air on her cheek, and she wanted to cry aloud, to sing and swing her body out to scale the castle walls. She wanted to pitch herself out into that sweet heavy air and…fly. Perhaps she would return as a bird in another incarnation, although they said you never go back to lesser forms once the human form has been achieved. But surely, in that case, she had once been a bird, for she remembered flying, and sometimes in the night she dreamed of swooping on the mountain winds, a hawk unhooded, free. She swung back inside and picked up her linen with a sigh.

  Just at that moment the Lady Esclarmonde came in, followed by her cousin Giulietta, a young widow. Jeanne rose and bobbed a curtsey, and she felt the blush rising in her cheeks as she thought about what they would have seen had they come upon her a few moments earlier, sprawling out the window.

  The Lady Esclarmonde, now sixty-two, had taken the habit thirteen years earlier, at the age of forty-nine. She’d borne six children to her husband and then left him to take the robe and become a Good Woman. They had remained friends, she and her husband—no animosity. She always wore a long black dress, very plain, tied at the waist with the cord that bound her vows to Christ. She carried her spindle from room to room, spinning as she walked. Her eyes moved quietly here and there, mindful of what was happening around her, even as her hands wound the thread and her thoughts spun out her prayers. Each drop of the spindle represented a full round of the Lord’s Prayer.

  Now she paused in the doorway to finish, because a Good Christian did not pass through a door without saying the Lord’s Prayer, did not lift her spoon at dinner without first saying the Lord’s Prayer, did not breathe without remembering our Lord.

  Giulietta, on the other hand, was a fashionable young woman, still in her twenties, and dressed in rose-colored skirts. Her light step, as she entered the room, was too exuberant for the Good Christian’s stately pace. Giulietta lived at the castle and was a believer of sorts, but she had no intention of taking the robe. Her fine eyes darted everywhere. She liked to flirt. If Jeanne had any ambitions, it was to Giulietta she looked, not the Cathars, though Esclarmonde, her adopted mother, had raised her, and though she loved the perfected woman with all her heart.

  “It’s the path to happiness,” Esclarmonde would say quietly, dropping her spindle against the Devil’s idle hands.

  “To become a Good Woman?”

  “Yes, if you choose. A Friend of God.”

  But Jeanne want
ed to dance, to eat, to sing songs, to ride fast horses. She wanted to hunt, wear bright colors—live as a Catholic, actually! She laughed. That was a celebratory church, it seemed.

  She made a face, but Esclarmonde smiled into her eyes and straightened her cap with an affectionate tug. “Later,” she said with a laugh, “when you’ve finished with the worldly life. We don’t want young girls.”

  Giulietta took from Jeanne the napkin she was working on.

  “See, Esclarmonde,” she said, “how fine her work is. You’re getting better, Jeanne.”

  The Lady Esclarmonde examined it approvingly, then said gently, “Stand up, child. Turn around.”

  “She’s getting tall,” said Giulietta. Jeanne was annoyed at being spoken of as if she were not present, could not hear. She turned slowly, however, under the inspection. She felt her hands hanging like hams at the ends of her arms. If she were a beauty—if she were Baiona, with slate-gray eyes and gleaming honey-colored hair—she wouldn’t mind such an inspection, but being raven-haired and strong, she felt a flush of shame spreading down her chest.

  When Jeanne was eleven, Esclarmonde had collared her neck with a prickly wicker neckband, to make her stand up straight and hold her neck in the high and graceful pose of a true lady. Apparently it did some good, for it was removed after six months. The collar did not always help, however, for another orphan girl, Raymonde Narbonne, wore one for three years without success. Her back grew ever more twisted, and one leg developed shorter than the other, until they gave it up.

  “Turn again,” commanded Esclarmonde.

  “What is it?” Jeanne asked, anxiously.

  “It’s nothing, darling,” said Giulietta. She pushed up her soft rose sleeve so that the blue-gray lining shimmered and shot out at Jeanne, “We’re admiring you, that’s all.”

  She glanced up. Were they teasing?

  “What do you think about marriage, Jeanne? Would you like to be a bride?”

  “Now, now,” said Esclarmonde. But a smile quivered at the edges of her lips.

  What did she think about marriage? It depended. For herself or someone else?

  “What do you mean?” she answered cautiously.

  “Rich black hair,” said Giulietta. “Fine eyes. She’ll be a beauty.”

  “Esclarmonde—?” Jeanne turned to the older woman, who dropped her spindle at that moment, the carded wool spinning into one long thread. Jeanne watched it, mesmerized, waiting for the prayer to end.

  “It’s true,” said Esclarmonde finally. “It’s time to find a husband for you, Jeanne.”

  The Lady Esclarmonde never acted in haste. Her movements, like her thoughts, were contained and grave, exuding an aura of peaceful happiness and reserve. No one acted familiarly with the Lady Esclarmonde. But Jeanne wanted to fling herself into the older woman’s arms, to tell her, No, she didn’t want to marry yet.

  Esclarmonde must have seen her face. “Don’t you want to marry?”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” Jeanne said passionately. “And anyway, who would marry me? I have no money, no fortune. Don’t send me away.” She stood bereft, the napkins having fallen at her feet. “Couldn’t I marry one of the squires here?” Her face flared red. “I don’t want an old man.” She could imagine the battle-scarred husband who would be chosen for her, a knight twenty years older than herself. Or more. He might even be forty, like the husband chosen for Blanche de Pepieux. His skin was leather, his mouth set grimly under a grizzled moustache.

  “Every girl needs a husband, Jeanne, someone to protect her. As for your dowry, it’s true that without any money we can’t find you a suitable husband, but you have the pearls on your natal dress, and I will add a suitable sum.”

  “Ah, you see how generous she is!” cried Giulietta, clapping her hands to make Jeanne pleased. “You should be happy!”

  Jeanne felt her anger rise—the silly woman! How had she ever admired her? Her thoughts wheeled like birds, circling—her friends Baiona, Rogert—and then if she were married she’d never fly! Because she knew that the moment she turned from the ceremony, she would be an old woman, a wimple on her head, expected to walk with stately majesty, never again to run. She would grow fat with childbirth, if she didn’t die of it first.

  “I don’t want to go away,” she whispered miserably.

  “Jeanne, some girls are married much younger than you,” protested Giulietta.

  But Esclarmonde, with a sharp, appraising glance, spoke quietly: “Don’t be afraid. It won’t happen tomorrow or next week; but it’s not too soon to think of what will happen in your life. I have your well-being in mind, and that includes settling you in responsible hands. This is a good time for such concerns. There’s a lull in the fighting.”

  The war was still going on. Sometimes a messenger would clatter into the courtyard on his lathered horse, throw himself off, and dash into the palace. Then Esclarmonde, brows furrowed and eyes downcast, would join the men to confer in low voices with him, and sometimes she would come to her feet to pace the floor as they spoke. Now and again it was news of a death the messenger brought, and then a hand would reach out to touch another, the touch of consolation. Sometimes the news was of the progress of the war, of battles and losses and secret operations or the movement of troops, for the Lady Esclarmonde, although perfected, kept up to date. Sometimes a peasant woman might leave the palace hurriedly, to disappear across country with memorized dispatches, or a man on horseback would gallop off in haste. But what exactly the news was, the children were never told.

  “The men are coming home soon,” said Esclarmonde. “They’ll be tired of fighting; they’ll be thinking of replenishing their fortunes, planting fields—”

  “And planting other seeds,” said Giulietta with a merry laugh.

  “The war has drained us,” continued Esclarmonde with a glance at the younger woman that could have felled an ox. “I want to find someone special for my special girl, my angel-orphan.”

  Jeanne felt her heart go out to Esclarmonde, yet she resisted stubbornly.

  “Baiona’s a year older than me, and she’s not yet betrothed.”

  Esclarmonde touched Jeanne’s cheek with the back of her fingers, so delicately, so gently that the child wanted to kiss her fingertips. “Don’t worry, Jeanne,” she said reassuringly. “We will do nothing without your consent.”

  When Esclarmonde had left, Giulietta put her arm around Jeanne’s shoulders and drew her back to the window-seat. She whipped out a white linen kerchief and wiped the young girl’s eyes. Then she handed Jeanne her sewing and took a napkin for herself.

  “So, whisper in my ear. What’s wrong? Here, take your sewing, and I’ll take a napkin for myself and help you as we talk. Come on now, aren’t we friends? Haven’t I known you since you first came to the orphanage at Pamiers? You threw yourself at the Lady Esclarmonde and would not loose your grip. Do you remember? Maybe not, you were so small. The two perfectae had brought you in from Béziers, where they’d found you—little foundling—in a meadow in the grass.”

  “The peasant woman found me,” Jeanne corrected her. “The mushroom woman.”

  Giulietta laughed. “So you’re talking to me again? Yes, it was the mushroom woman who found you in the meadow just outside the walls of Béziers, the smoke still rising from the burning city and the cries of the dying inside; and you playing all alone in the grass, babbling to yourself in your little white dress with seedpearls sewn on it.”

  “She took me to the two perfectae hiding in the woods,” said Jeanne, who loved the story of how she’d been found.

  “And they in turn walked for days to bring you to the orphanage that the Lady Esclarmonde had founded at Pamiers. No one could get you to speak. You wouldn’t say a word, but you flung yourself at her knees and held tight her skirts, and somehow you drove an arrow into the heart of the Lady Esclarmonde, and she took you with her from the orphanage to raise in her own house, as her own child. Her special angel-child she always called you, come from no
where, falling from the sky.”

  Jeanne ducked her head over her sewing. It was true. The Lady Esclarmonde—sister of the Count of Foix, and thus a wealthy woman in her own right—had founded several orphanages, and a hospital too, and she fed the homeless tirelessly; yet for all her prayers and busyness, she’d found time to favor Jeanne.

  “Now why so glum? Really, this is a time of celebration, not of despair—and you with your long looks. You’d think we were sending you out into the forest by yourself to live as a hermit instead of telling you it’s time to take a man! You’ll have your own name and a chateau and children of your own to raise. You’ll have a position of your own. What’s wrong with that? You’d want to stay a spinster all your life? Or take the robe, perhaps?”

  Jeanne wiped her nose with her sleeve.

  “No, no, with a kerchief.” Giulietta laughed. “By Saint Anne, why do you think we’re hemming these things?”

  Jeanne, heavy-hearted and submissive, took the linen.

  “There’s someone you like, isn’t there?” asked the wily Giulietta. “Go away, now.” She nudged Jeanne, laughing. “I’m not so old I haven’t been in your shoes, sitting here overlooking the field where you can watch the boys. Come, give me a smile. That’s a girl. Now stab it with your needle, like a good girl, and we’ll talk about girlhood and womanhood and love and marriage, and we shall have your napkins done in no time, because I’ve been where you are. So have we all. All women.”

  Giulietta looked pensive. “You know I was married at fourteen to a noble lord,” she confided. “He was thirty at the time.” She had thought him as old as the moon back then, but she had borne him four beautiful children before he was killed in battle, and as she stitched, she told how a man of that age might seem wrinkled and worn out to a tender girl, but her husband had shown himself all gentleness and had given her much pleasure too, before he died, for a man that age is experienced in the ways of love. Then she told how, after her husband’s death, she had married a second time and again been widowed, and now she had several lovers (“though that’s not to speak of to a young girl, except to say that a woman’s life is by no means over just because a marriage is arranged”). And what did Jeanne think she would do if she didn’t marry? And how would she live? And who would give her children? Because the philosophers have proven that the happiness of all of society rests on good marriages. Moreover, she added, love, despite the cynical songs of troubadours, often coincides with union (“Don’t forget it, Jeanne”); and she named three couples—husbands and wives—who were deeply in love, two having fallen in love after marriage.