“This is Jeanne Béziers,” Jerome says, introducing me, and they give their names in return.
First Raymond Domergue, solid and square, ruddy-faced. When he smiles, his eyes disappear into the folds and pockets of his face.
“My wife, Alazaïs,” he says formally. She’s short, tough, a peasant farmer’s wife, worn by weather and work, who looks me up and down openly and unabashed.
“Delighted to meet you. He needs help on that big farm.”
Domergue is introducing his son, Martin, and then another Raymond, his son-in-law (both strapping men) and Raymond’s wife, Bernadette, who is eight months enceinte from the look of her protruding belly, or maybe about to foal at any time; and there are several children including a young girl, Fays, barely more than a child, and a toddling granddaughter, Raymonde. All of them, adults and children alike, are examining me from head to toe, and I’m maybe not coming off too well by comparison with Jerome’s late wife.
“I thank you for the headdress,” I say timidly to Alazaïs. “It was generous of you.”
“A loan. Jerome says you’ll give it back.” She’s staring at it on my head.
“Yes. Yes. You’ll have it back.” I’m blushing—how?
“Next time I’m in town,” Jerome interrupts, “I’ll buy you material for a new one, Alazaïs. I’ll make a special trip this week. But listen, after church why don’t you come by the house?” His eyes are sparkling with pleasure, his lips curled up in that merry smile I like.
I open my mouth to protest.
“Why yes,” said Alazaïs. “We will.”
I haven’t time to say a word because Domergue is hurrying us inside, amidst the bonging of the bells and press of the other parishioners.
“It’s time for the service.”
The bells are pealing, and I am being led to slaughter.
“Why did you ask them over?” I whisper nervously.
“Shoosh now. Come along.” Jerome’s hand locks firmly on my elbow again. The blood rushing to my face, I hesitate to cross the doorway, enter the tiger’s lair, for the thought flashes through me: What if the priest recognizes me for a heretic, a lapsed bad one at that, and a worse Catholic? I am praying for strength and faith, for God lives in this house of prayer, and I remember how Guilhabert de Castres used to tell us to worship in any house of God, of whatever persuasion, for God is always around us, everywhere, and worship is always just. “It is right and meet to give Him praise and thanks, a good and joyful thing, wherever we are.”
We used to worship in the Catholic church (and I remember how once William and his best friend, Peter, rode their horses into the big cathedral in Toulouse, clomping up the aisles amidst the sellers of wax candles and wooden figures of the saints, William laughing as his giant horse let loose a pile of manure on the stones. Then he dismounted to say his prayers. Afterward both men were chastised angrily by the Good Christians for desecrating another’s holy place). Once Guilhabert attended a Moorish worship, though the Moors were not killing his people, of course, or wiping out all memory of the Friends of God. I drag inside after Jerome.
It is a country church, of low vaults and quiet, peaceful stones: you can almost hear them breathe, and a thousand years of prayers have sunk into its soft, round, comforting curves. At the altar hangs a painted cross with Christ bleeding, his head hanging to his shoulder. My heart gives a tug of pity for the man who suffered on the cross (unless, as the Cathars say, he did not die, since spirit cannot die—but even so, he suffered for us here).
The priest mouths his Latin. He has a curious dialect that I find hard to follow. The congregation consists of five families, not much more. I kneel and rise, intoning the comforting responses weakly while I look about. Even in an Arab mosque, said Guilhabert, God can be found, for there is no place God is not; and God is not to be sought inside any structure built by human hands, but only in the stillness of a pure, cleansed heart. I think how impure is my heart, criticizing the young priest, and no wonder I don’t see God. Maybe he can’t read the Latin, or maybe he never wanted to be a celibate and had no other way to eat. Look at him, bony and awkward, not much older than twenty.
The sermon is on sin, and how it is pardoned only by Christ through His appointed priests of the Catholic Church, which is the Bride of Christ, His most beloved.
When we leave the church, Jerome introduces me to the priest. I mumble greetings timidly. I feel Jerome’s hand on my wrist and I hardly speak, for any false move now will only hurt Jerome. But the priest too is cordial.
“Welcome to our church,” he says, smiling and a little forlorn. “I hope to see you often, then.”
I mumble yes or no or sounds unknown.
“And remember confession,” he adds kindly. “I’m here all Sundays and Wednesdays and all holy days.”
The Domergues walk home with us. They will stay to dinner, so my mind is on what we have on the storeroom shelves and whether the place is tidy. The conversation around me is mostly about the passage of time and when the last market-day was, everyone counting how long I’ve been with Jerome. And then the men—Martin, Domergue, Raymond, and Jerome—go off on crops and rain. With each step farther from the church, I feel myself relax: the service is over, and I am still alive, and now I don’t need to go again until Christmas at least. My spirits perk up. It wasn’t so bad, after all, and wouldn’t Bishop de Castres have been proud of me! Alazaïs takes my arm. “It will be nice to have a woman neighbor close.” The smile I turn on her is genuine.
We sit on the benches by the jolly fire, the men along one side, the women and the knee-baby, Raymonde, on the other; the older girl, Fays, sits at our feet. Alazaïs lifts her skirts to warm her ankles and knees, and soon we’re laughing together, she and I, as she waves her skirts to draw the warmth to the tender parts higher up. And then the men—the two without hose—catching our drift, lift their own long, belted shirts to bring the heat right up to their bare balls.
The Domergues’ daughter, Bernadette, is laughing at them and hits her husband playfully to pull down his shirt, stop that, what does he think he is doing in front of the young ones. Fays glances up in surprise because she wasn’t paying attention and wants to know why we’re laughing, what she’s missed.
Looking at Bernadette, I feel in my own body how the baby catches right up at her ribcage so that she can hardly breathe. The sensation kicks me in the throat. It’s her third child, though, an easy labor being expected. She has Raymonde, named after the grandfather; and she has a boy, Gaillard, who isn’t with us this afternoon. Nor was he at church this morning. Alazaïs and Domergue have another daughter, Sybille, married now and living over near Narbonne.
I offer bread and honey, wine, apples, and walnuts to crack before the fire, and we are all jocund this night. God loves us when we sing and laugh, says Esclarmonde, since He laughs through us, and He likes to laugh and love.
I don’t tell the Domergues this, lest they ask who was Esclarmonde, but I’m caught up in their high spirits and laughing too, and all the while I peek under my lashes at this man who lets me stay in his house. He has a bald spot the size of a penny on the back of his brown head, though his cap covers it usually. He has a merry smile, and even at rest the left-hand corner of his mouth tilts upward elfishly. He wipes his laughing mouth with the back of his left hand, and the raw scar flashes red in the firelight where he mashed his fingers in a millstone when he was young. I like his looks.
But my attention is drawn back to the pregnant Bernadette. She is telling me of her son, Gaillard. He is sickly. I feel my hands tingle as she talks. The gentleness falls over me.
“I’d like to see him,” I murmur. “I know some herbs.”
“We had the surgeon come.” Her voice is strident, rising with emotion. “He bled him, but it did no good. We paid him well too. What they think to charge! Do you know what he costs now? Don’t get sick, I say, because whether the surgeon makes you well or no, you can’t afford it.”
“Foolish to have th
e surgeon,” says Domergue, the child’s grandfather, and when he narrows his eyes they disappear entirely in his cheeks. “I’ve killed or nursed as many donkeys back to health as he has men. I told you it would be a waste of money.”
“I’d like to see the lad,” I murmur again.
“Come tomorrow,” says the grandmother, Alazaïs. “He’ll be home. Don’t be afraid you’ll miss him. He doesn’t move. He can’t catch his breath anymore.”
His mother looks away.
“White as his shroud,” says Domergue, cracking another walnut. “He’ll not be long with us.” His voice is as rough as a raven’s caw. He’s already prepared. He’ll waste no time in grief. Too many Domergues gone; too many still to go. Crack, go the walnut tongs. Protect yourself from pain and just don’t think.
“Tomorrow I’ll come down,” I say, for I like Alazaïs and her family, and it’s nice to be in company. “Maybe I can help.”
And so I go next day to meet the poor, white, sickly child. He is feverish, as they said. I lift him onto my lap. My hands rest on his chest, where I can hear the bubbling in his lungs. They pause on the back of his neck, on his spine, the joints of his hips and legs.
“I hurt,” he whimpers.
“Hush now, darling,” I murmur in his ear. “You’ll be fine.”
“My legs hurt,” he says, and then, “Your hands are so hot. They feel like fire.”
“You like this? Sitting in my lap?”
“It feels good,” he says, relaxing into me. Soon he falls asleep. And my hands are tingling, burning, as they touch his heart, his throat.
“What do you think is wrong?” asks Bernadette, easing her great belly as she sits. The knee-baby, Raymonde, one thumb in her mouth, holds to her skirt, peeking at me with round, suspicious eyes. “We had him bled,” she repeats helplessly.
“I’ll fix him some tea,” says I, already trying to remember where I saw that yellow plant I like to brew. And my hands, like living animals, brush back his hot hair from his sweating brow and cling to his neck and chest. “Let him sleep for now. I’ll come by this evening with the tea.”
But I do not move for a long time. My hands won’t let me leave off touching him.
TWENTY
Night. Jerome is sharpening his scythe, honing it on a stone, and all I can hear in the room is the long, stripping screech of blade on stone as he strokes the iron, wets the stone, strokes the iron, wets the stone.
“Stop it.” I come to my feet.
He looks up in dumb surprise.
“What?”
“That. That noise. I can’t bear it.”
He gives a grunt and continues as if I haven’t said a word. Squeal of blade on stone, as if I haven’t heard the blades, the stones, and sometimes the stroke is a crunch of bones and screams and screams. “I mean it. Stop.”
He looks at me a long and puzzled time, rubs his mouth thoughtfully, and then puts down the tools. “All right. Time for bed anyway.”
That night I wake up screaming at the sound of the squealing blade.
“Woman, what’s the matter?”
Something is grappling for my hands, holding me down, as I flail my arms. “Jeanne. Wake up.” His face is buried in my neck; my mouth is covered, muffling my scream, until I break out of the terror of my dream and suck in a startled breath.
“What is it?” asks Jerome. “Come on, old girl.”
He turns my face to him and wipes my cheeks with the end of his nightshirt. “There, there, now. You’re all right. Just a dream you had, a nightmare, right?”
I nod.
“See? Everything’s all right.” He is rocking me in his arms. I am a child being rocked in his strong arms, and my arms creep around his neck to hide my face in the pungent scent of his sleepy shoulder. I nuzzle the soft beard at his throat.
“What is it?” he repeats. But how do I describe the thunder of the hooves? The bloody sword?
I yelp and push away.
“Where are you going?” He calls, following me. “Don’t go outside. It’s night. Use the chamberpot.” And then, “Damn!” as he stubs his toe on the rake, which falls with a clatter.
Outside, the cold stars wink down. I throw back my head, breathing in the cold black pain and loneliness. I’d like to howl my rage at the unfeeling stars, but behind me I feel Jerome watching.
Suddenly it’s decided: I leave tomorrow; at first light I’ll be off. I whimper. Like a dog. I’m being followed. They will find me. I’m afraid.
Jerome’s hand touches my elbow. “Come on, old girl.” His voice is the murmur of a river, bubbling over stones. “Time for bed, come on home.” He lifts me in his arms, and I’m clinging to him as he carries me inside, lays me on his bed. My arms creep round him again. I know he’ll keep me safe.
In the morning I awaken slowly, his arm heavy across my waist. The light is just creeping into the room, enough to make out his dim features, relaxed in sleep, his mouth ajar, his stubbly chin just at the level of my eyes. He is breathing sweetly. He looks innocent as a little boy, and my stomach twists. I want to do something good for him. I lie under his arm, careful not to move or wake him up and taking in his distinctive male scent, the heavy smell of sleep. Happiness floods me. I want to do for him, but what can I do but rise, start a fire, cook a meal? Then I remember that last night I promised myself I’d leave, and now I don’t want to go. Will one day matter? I want to go see the Domergue boy today, who seems to be on the mend, imagine, for his breathing has quieted now and his fever has gone; and after that I’ll leave.
I edge closer to Jerome, and in his sleep he shifts and pulls me to him. “Treasure,” he mumbles, and my body softens; I lie smiling in his embrace.
I shell beans into the tin pot, and they ring against the metal like the silver echo of the horse’s hooves. The sunlight is warm here on the stone threshold. Jerome has gone to market; it’s not so major an undertaking, with me here to tend to the place, and he promised Alazaïs a new headdress. I’m back from the Domergues, alone here on the farm, and singing to myself as I bask in the blessed, healing silence. The wind whispers in the swaying branches of bare trees, and an occasional stray bird whistles in the autumn light. The chickens scratch and chuckle in the grass.
All morning I’ve been trying to claw up an image from the mud of memory. Why do I remember one white hoof?
Then it comes back: the ring of the horseshoes on the stones of the courtyard. The jostling horses. Men’s loud voices and one man’s deep laugh as another shouted to get out of the way.
The horses’ hooves are as big as dinner plates, and above them hang the huge bellies of the horses, towering over me, a little child, and on top of those the metal-plated, terrifying knights.
“Out of the way, little maid,” Count Raymond bellowed as his black horse reared back, one white hoof looming above me. I scurried to one side. The horse came back to earth with a clatter of hooves on stones, then like the other horses pranced and jiggled in excitement. And then on Count Raymond’s cry, “Avaunt!” they charged out of the courtyard with a deafening noise through the arched stone gate. My hands to my ears. They have no faces, no eyes behind their metal masks.
The hot bodies of the horses were running past me, and the thunder of hooves was like water falling down a cliff.
Then they were gone.
Silence.
Only then did I realize Count Raymond might have hurt me.
I was in the way.
I put the beans down on the floor. Suddenly nervous. A confusion cloaking me: Am I in the way? Does Jerome want me here? How long have I been here? Thoughts scurrying again, squirrels scrabbling in my head: I’m in danger; he’s in danger. They’ll take him. He’ll be coming back soon, and I have to leave before he returns. Where’s my mantle? I need to root out my precious book. But I must put the beans to soak. He’ll need his dinner. Leave…stay…leave…
I pour water on the beans to soak, and pick up a trowel to dig up my Good Book, and then I hang it back on its peg. Je
rome is a good man. I want to leave and I want to stay, and I’m paralyzed, not knowing what to do; for I don’t hear my voices anymore, or else so faintly I can’t distinguish them from my own thoughts.
Winter is coming on, and near Christmas Jerome will need help slaughtering the pig (it’s owned half with the Domergues). He went to market for salt. And maybe he will buy some fine white powdered peat salt from the Low Countries, as we used to have at Esclarmonde’s, or perhaps he will find salt from Bourgneuf Bay in Brittany, which is almost as good, and then he will need help in grinding it and with the butchering, and with packing the meat in salt. I count on my fingers: for twenty pounds of fresh meat, we need two pounds of salt, and that will cost eight-tenths a pence. I don’t know how much he took with him. If the meat is to be any good, we’ll also need peppercorns and cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, raisins of Corinth, almonds for the almond milk, and flour of rice…. Ah, the meals we used to have! I could make Jerome a blamanger, one day when we kill a chicken. I would take a little of the inferior meat and shred it, then blend it with whole rice that has been boiled in almond milk, seasoning the whole with sugar, sautéed almonds, and anise seeds.
If we had sugar.
Or almonds.
Or anise seeds.
I begin to scour the pots with sand, and count the peppercorns preparatory to his coming home, and after a time I realize I’ve been saying “we” in my mind, to myself, so apparently it’s not yet time to leave. To my surprise I find myself singing once again, as I lay the fire, singing a song of happiness. And then I remember that that is one of the ways God speaks to us: in harmony and peace, and I am peaceful here. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help? How is it that I have forgotten my Lord God in these last weeks? I’ve forgotten that all things are possible for God, even forgiving me for what I’ve done; and suddenly I burst into tears at such grace. Forgiveness, yes. For perhaps I did nothing so very wrong, leaving them—William, Baiona, and the others; perhaps it was God’s will, and He has brought me here for reasons I will never understand.
The Treasure of Montsegur Page 19