The Treasure of Montsegur

by Sophy Burnham

  “Do you wish to be shriven while we wait?” asks the first monk. His expression has softened, his lips turning up into a quivering smile. Suddenly I see that he is only a boy, young enough to be my son, and he seems sweet to me, his shaven neck exposed and his beard hardly more than fuzz.

  “Oh, yes!” cries Jerome. “Confess me, Father.” He falls to his knees right there in the middle of the grassy mountain road. The pony instantly drops its white-muzzled head again, canny and practical, unpolitical animal, to yank the short-stemmed grass.

  The monk slips off his horse and hands the reins to his brother. Jerome and I both kneel before him.

  “I have lied, Father,” says Jerome. “I have sworn foul words and taken the name of God in vain. In fact, only a few moments ago, as you came up to us, I was cursing my fate and poverty. I missed Mass last Sunday….”

  And so he went on, while I made up my own confession. We confess in the Cathar faith, but it is done before the entire congregation, first asking the indulgence of the collected gathering and then in painful detail describing the mistake or sin. Confession is not complete until we’ve named the flaw in our character that led to the sin, and also the lesson learned from it and how we intend in future to benefit from this lesson and handle such a matter differently. It’s not complete until we’ve asked for forgiveness from all those who have been harmed by our action.

  Esclarmonde used to say that if we truly understood the repercussions of our actions, no one would ever do a harmful thing or say a hurtful word. For always what we do turns back on us. It takes a week or a month or year. Or later lifetimes. Do unto others what you would have them do, said Christ. Treat your neighbor as yourself. The scripture passage omits to explain the reason—that it’s a spiritual law: whatever you do or say will swing back onto you. Good actions draw blessings to you, and bad actions bring down trouble on your head, lifetime after lifetime, inexorable justice rewarding our right and wrongful deeds.

  Now Jerome is on his feet, with his Hail Marys and Pater Nosters prescribed, and it’s my turn, kneeling before the Dominican, right in the dirt of the road, my hands clasped. Suddenly I burst into tears! “Oh, Father, I have done so many wrongs! I have not loved my enemies. I’ve shouted at my neighbors. But mostly I lose faith. Again and again I give way to doubt. I wonder if my Lord Jesus Christ or the Blessed Mother do indeed watch over me, noticing each feather that falls from a sparrow’s wings—and now you are here to counsel and teach me, and it must be by the grace of Christ Himself. I’m so prideful that I rebel against surrendering all things to God, who must know better than the likes of me how things are supposed to be! But why is there such misery? People killing one another? People starving? Righteous and heretics? I get angry with God. ‘Why are You permitting disease and pain?’ I shout. That’s how little faith I have, Father.

  “I don’t even remember all my sins. Greed. I have greed, to be sure, and yes, jealousy. Envy. Hatred. Lots of fear and hatred even of my friends, and only today I lied. My tongue is a terrible liar, and then this day it answered my man back sharply in my mind when he was hurrying me along. I didn’t say it out loud in words, but in my mind, which is just as—”

  “That’s not a sin,” the monk corrected. He was impatient with me.

  “Yet it’s said a woman must obey her husband. It’s just that I get so impatient with him,” I say, warming to the task. “Two days ago, when he tried to beat me, I lifted my hand to him! And then, Father, I feel compassion for the…”—I was about to say the Friends of God when I remembered that sympathy for the heretics is the same as heresy—“for the dumb animals in our yard, that God hasn’t given them a soul, and that they die without the glory of heaven before them; and such thoughts are only further sins against the word of Christ! I shouldn’t question the way God made the world in only six days, to finish His creation. But I think if He’d taken more time—. I think how nice it would be to have my little pony in heaven with me, if I’m going there at all, which perhaps I won’t, and Father, I want to cry—”

  “For heaven’s sake!” mutters the older monk. My confession is cut short by the two returning soldiers clattering down the road.

  “Compassion is not a sin, my child,” says the young boy, my shriving monk. But he is smiling at me kindly. “Jesus Christ was filled with forgiveness for all us sinners. We are told to love all living things—including the pony, I’m sure. But you must obey your husband, and obey the tenets of the Mother Church. And watch out for the evils of the heretics.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  He gives me ten Hail Marys for a penance, together with his hurried blessing, and he is already mounting his palfrey, one foot in the stirrup as he signs the cross over me, his mind already on the hunt.

  I do not rise from my knees until they’ve turned the corner and ridden out of sight.

  Stiffly, I come to my feet. Fretting. Irritable now that the danger has passed.

  “Hurry,” says Jerome, as if reading my thoughts. Already he is pressing the little pony forward.

  “Wait then, let me get my foot up,” I say angrily. Again I feel the urge to burst into tears, and only as I settle in on the cart do I realize how frightened I have been. I can feel a tingling down the middle of my back, running off my fingertips, weakening my thighs.

  “A fine lot,” I huff. “And you! Whatever were you thinking of to say we’re married? Your woman, indeed!”

  He shrugs and spits. “It may have saved your life, and that’s the thanks I get.” He laughs then. “You’re the one claimed me as a husband who beat you! I’ve never beat you in your life.”

  I’m embarrassed. I’m not going to take up that one.

  “Saved my life!” I say. “What about your own?”

  “Mine too. Since if they caught me with a heretic, it’s as good as the Wall for me as well. It was a woman they were looking for. Did you want to be dragged to prison?”

  “Let them try!” I claim courageously, now that danger has passed and the friars are out of sight.

  “They’ll be back tomorrow, and then you’d better be prepared. And I too,” he spat onto the path to send away the Devil. “The neighbors know I’m not a married man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think they won’t be back? Tomorrow, next week, next year—sometime they’ll come snooping up to the farm, to make sure that you and I live there together. Do you wear a cord around your waist?”

  It was such a jump of subject that I blush.

  “No.” Then, with a gush of tears, I want to confess everything. “Yes, I tied one round in memory, but it’s not a real cord. I made a little ceremony. I laid out the sacred cord and blessed it and said the prayers, invoking the sainted martyrs of Montségur, and especially the name of my teacher—”

  “Who was that?”

  “No one,” I answer impulsively. “And before that the Lady Esclarmonde.” I want to tell. I want to confess to this stranger who might turn me over to the Preaching Friars. And here comes the story pouring out like cream from a jug, spilling over the pony’s back.

  “I was in the forest. They had all been killed, and the stench still clung in the air, and the smoke was rising thick and black. But I had been saved—or punished, if you will—not going with the others. And so I tied the cord around my own waist and blessed myself in the name of our good Lord.

  “You won’t believe me, you think I’ve made it up, but it was so, and she said that this wasn’t a sin but a good thing I was doing, in secret in this way. No one was there to give the consolamentum, the consolation. For a feast I boiled a handful of groats, and for company I spread some on the forest floor for my friends, the mice and voles.”

  The tears are running down my cheeks, my burning eyes. Hands wringing. Agitated.

  “You think I’m crazy,” I continue. “Everyone was gone. And it took hours and hours for them to—two hundred of them—you were there. Did you see it?”

  “I wasn’t there. I’ve only heard abo
ut it.”

  “Afterward I tied a twist of wool round my waist, but I am not a perfected heretic.”

  “Hey, hey,” he murmurs, slapping the pony with the reins.

  “I want to be a daughter of Christ.”

  “From the looks of you,” he says, “you need food instead.” I look away, sniffling. I know when to keep my mouth shut.

  “Well,” he says after a moment, “I don’t know why I didn’t let them drag you off. Now it turns out I’m harboring an imaginary true believer. But we’re in this together. We’re bound to each other by a lie. Can I count on you to keep me safe?”

  “I haven’t thanked you,” I say humbly. “And yes, I’ll keep you safe.” But I’m thinking the best way to do that will be to go away. I like this man. I like the quiet way he walks beside his pony, one hand on its withers, in silent communication, man and horse. He ignores my tears but gives such a soft and satisfying pat to the pony’s neck that my heart twists, as if it’s me he’s comforting.

  Not long after, we turn into the gate of his little stone house, nestled in the dip of the hill. The sheepfold leans up against the house; the pony stable is a shed dug into the hillside. The house has a thatched roof and a door that latches with a stick and a coil of line. We look inside and I see hard dirt floors spread with straw. Two rooms, one big and the other a storeroom. Each with a window.

  “I sleep in the main room,” says Jerome. “You can have the storeroom.” I go in to check it out. It smells of earth and roots. In one corner is a jumble of sacks and broken tools, and from the rafters hang a smoked ham and chains of onions and garlic.

  Jerome ducks to enter the room too, then sweeps some sacking off a wooden platform. “I’ll bring in some straw,” he says, “and there’s a hempen cover for your mattress. You’ll have your cloak as a blanket.”

  It’s so inviting that I’m pleased to stay the night. Tomorrow I’ll move on to Montségur.

  TWELVE

  Jerome may have been, as his friend Bernard said, the last person on the face of the earth to hear about the treasure of Montségur or the woman the French were looking for. Jerome did not go frequently into town. He had his animals to tend, and crops—a hard job for one working alone. Even going into town on market-day required making special arrangements with the neighbors to feed his animals.

  It was the end of the summer, therefore, before he made the trip on which he would encounter Jeanne. He had risen that morning in the pitch dark and lit the tiny oil lamp that hung on a nail by the door: a bead of light. He had quickly pulled on his shirt and rough trousers, dug his feet into clogs, and carried the earthen lamp (cupping it against the thin, chill wind) into the hay-sweet stable, where he’d set it on a rough plank shelf and woken the sleepy pony. The barn smelled deliciously of horse and rich manure, leather and hay. “Gee-up.” He had slapped the little horse to its feet and tossed a handful of feed in the manger. The pony licked and lapped the grain as he threw the harness over its back and buckled and knotted the ropes. By the time he had backed the shaggy pony into the cart shafts and tied the cords, the sky was opening with pale, hopeful streaks of gold and Jerome had long since blown out the lamp, watered his pony, and finished loading his produce onto the cart. The birds were twittering and the trees rustling their tiny fingers at him like men at prayer.

  He had packed his goods the night before so that he had only to lift the baskets onto the two-wheeled cart: onions and turnips, eggs, wood mushrooms, apples, pears and some grapes, one bale of wool, and two roosters, their legs tied helplessly with twine. The fowl twisted their necks in nervous, clucking concern as they peered from their wooden cage. Jerome hoped to exchange the roosters for nails and perhaps a useful leather hide.

  It took half a day to walk to town, so Jerome didn’t arrive until mid-morning. As he pulled his cart into the central square, it was already bustling with the early crowds of buyers and sellers. It smelled, as cities did, of urine and rotting vegetables and of bodies packed too tightly. The kerchiefed women with their baskets over their arms roamed the stalls. The farmers—men and women both—shouted out their wares. Jerome unhitched the pony and lowered the back of the cart, tilting it aslant to make a display for his goods, all the while greeting old friends, joking, shaking hands. He found Pons Peter, his regular boy, and handed over the care of the stall (as he liked to call his cartload) to the lad, with careful directions about prices and bargaining. Then he moved off on his regular rounds. Jerome was a man of habit: he liked the steady ways.

  His first stop was the church. He entered the shadowy dark structure, with its cool stones underfoot. It had small round windows set high up, and one, made of beautiful colored glass, spilled red and blue diamonds to the pavement. Jerome knelt at his favorite side-altar to the Virgin and made his solitary devotions, then lit a candle for the soul of his departed wife. It was quiet in the empty church, and he rested there a moment, his broad hands splayed on his thighs, to regard the lovely wooden statue of the gentle Virgin. He liked the way the folds of her skirt fell, so lifelike, and the tender tilt of her head, as if she not only knew his every thought but quietly approved.

  Behind him he heard the slurry of the priest’s skirts.

  “Jerome?”

  “It’s I. Yes.”

  “How are you, my good friend?” Their low voices echoed in the little church, with its high, vaulted roof and thick pillars.

  “Been better. No complaint.”

  “You’re looking well.”

  “You too. What news?”

  “Ah, these are troubled times.” The old priest shook his head.

  “What’s happened?”

  “More burnings,” said the priest with a shake of his head. “Hunting the heretics.”

  “Well.” Jerome sketched with the toe of his shoe on the stone floor. He didn’t know what to say. “Well, they’re heretics.”

  “I tell you, Jerome,” said the priest, tucking his arm through that of his friend and walking him back toward the sacristy. “I tell you—”

  “What?”

  He sighed. “What have you heard up there on your farm? Anything about the troubles here? About Alzeu?”

  “I? No.”

  “They burnt Alzeu last week, and confiscated his property for the friars. His widow is impoverished. She’s lucky not to have been burnt at the stake herself.”

  “What for?” cried Jerome, horrified. “What did he do?”

  “They say he was a heretic. I don’t like it,” whispered the priest. “He came to church. You must be careful, Jerome. I’m telling everyone: watch your tongue.”

  The old man wrung his hands and glanced around as if afraid of being overheard. “I don’t think this is what our Lord asked of us, Jerome,” he continued. “They’re hunting anyone who has ever seen or heard of a heretic. Heretics by association, as it were. If they find a heretic, he’s burnt. Or she—they’re after the women too. Even someone known to us all, some good, decent burgher, whose family has lived and worked in the town for a hundred years and more—Alzeu.” He shook his head. “I’m getting old. I’m old, Jerome. I don’t have the heart for this. I’m supposed to want to fight for our Lord. But Alzeu. Who would think—?”

  “I remember Alzeu,” said Jerome.

  “He was a good man. I’m not saying I sympathize with the heretics. They’re mistaken. But Alzeu—. Be careful, Jerome. That’s all I have to say.”

  “I don’t even see anyone, up on my farm.”

  “Well, you’re better off that way,” said the priest. Suddenly he burst into tears. “Alzeu. He always came to Mass.”

  Jerome shuffled his feet uncomfortably. The old church smelled of dust balls and candlewax. Golden motes drifted in a ray of light. He didn’t know what to do or say.

  After a moment the old man regained control. “Well, you’re not here for that,” he said. “Do you want prayers for your wife?”

  In the darkness the priest couldn’t see his friend flush.

  Jerome mumbled,
“Not this time. I don’t have money today.”

  “Money! Jerome, you don’t need money. I will pray for the soul of Agnes without pay. Haven’t I known you both long enough to say a prayer?”

  “I would appreciate it,” said Jerome quietly. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Take care of yourself,” said the priest, laying a hand on Jerome’s shoulder.

  “You too.”

  “Troubled times. Watch your mouth and feet, Jerome.”

  Jerome stepped out of the shadowed church and blinked against the blaze of sunlight. He hadn’t expected such a conversation with the priest, and he was still thinking of the woodcarver, Alzeu, who only last week was arrested and burnt. Jerome did not remember his being heretic. He chewed over the news as he set off on his second task: to find his friend Bernard, with whom he generally spent the night.

  Jerome liked market-day. The noise and bustle fell across his shoulders as a kind of shiver of excitement. His senses were assaulted with smells and sights and sounds—the hurry of the crowds, the voices calling out, the horsemen on their mounts, the lords parading with their retinues and women in their fine skirts and handsome headdresses, the young boys playing or flirting with the girls, and the older men sitting at the alehouses or dicing in the shade of the arcade or bowling on the grass at the edge of the square. The toothless aged sat in patches of sunlight, hands folded on their canes. There was always something to look at in the busy town. Not to mention the business of hawking, selling, buying, bartering, carrying, and loading goods. This particular day he noticed large numbers of Preaching Friars too—the black-and-white-robed Dominicans—moving among the crowd: they were everywhere.

  Jerome interrupted Bernard at his counting house. The old friend was a short man with a round bald head and popping eyes. “Jerome! You’re in town—welcome!” He threw one arm around Jerome’s shoulder.

  “Greetings,” said Jerome. “It’s good to see you. Can I stay with you tonight?”