The Treasure of Montsegur

by Sophy Burnham

  She looked up then with eyes so anguished I could not tear mine away. “I wanted you to know. I know you love him, have always loved him, you were one of many women, though maybe more special, I don’t know; and I thought you ought to know it’s not been good for me; and maybe—” She stopped.

  “Why did you come?” I asked stiffly.

  “To show my support. Because finally it was time for me to take a stand, to fight. I don’t mean fight you, or the other women; I mean fight for the Way, our way of life, parage. For William’s cause, which ought to be mine—ought to have been mine all the time, except I’m such a coward.” She hardly paused for breath: twenty years of pent-up emotion pouring out.

  “You fight, Jeanne. I hear about you working for the Cause, while I’m too scared to even ride a horse.”

  “You didn’t come to be with William?”

  “Of course to be with William. And with you. I’ve been so envious of you, living as you pleased, doing what you wanted, independent, unafraid, while I’ve stayed at home—not even my own home; we’re always staying in one knight’s castle or another’s—not even a chateau of my own—always living at someone’s expense; and just once I wanted to take a stand with you all. Oh, Jeanne—”

  She glanced up at me, the quickest flicker of her eyes, and I realized she was afraid of me. My thoughts were in turmoil.

  “It’s brave of you to climb up here.” I was posing, too proud to display my distress, and grasping at the first thought that tumbled from the turmoil. “It’s brave. We may lose.”

  “I want us to be friends again,” she said. “I miss my sister. Will you forgive me?”

  Forgive her! “Forgive you for what?” I struggled to collect myself, responding numbly to this flood of information—I, the adulterer, who’d betrayed my former friend.

  “For marrying William when he should have married you.”

  I gasped.

  “You were right,” she went on quickly. “You two belonged together. Forgive me for having been so jealous that I couldn’t come to you before. I want our friendship back. It will take time, I know, I’m not romantic, but we have time now, nothing but time, as we wait here, wait out the siege, and you can have William, I don’t care,” she continued breathlessly, her words running together without pause. “My love for him is all worn out. I just want peace. Tranquillity.”

  “You’d give me William?” As if he were hers to give.

  “He’s a free agent,” Baiona said. “I can’t control him. Our marriage is a shell.”

  I hardly knew what to say, and then I heard the words fall from my lips, unbidden. They surprised me, and yet they resonated with an interior and unexpected truth.

  “Then we’ll be friends,” I said decisively. “I’ve missed you too.” We rose from our respective rocks, twins in our movements, both hesitant, awkward with each other and with ourselves, looking in each other’s eyes—gauging, cautious—before attempting our first embrace; but as we held each other, my former childhood love flared up: her scent in my nostrils, her soft breasts pressing against mine, and now we were old women. Tears pricked my eyes. I’d missed our friendship. I’d missed Baiona.

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “No, but we can do it.”

  “It will take time.” We reassured each other.

  “It’s a strange situation, isn’t it? A triangle, you, me, William, all three loving one another. Because,” Baiona continued seriously, “of course you can love two people at the same time. Justice and fairness are all about laws. But Love doesn’t know any laws. William loves both of us, and I suppose that we love him.”

  “Or he loves many women. Forgive me, Baiona, you, who are so good. I wish that I were good too, that I had your goodness in me. It’s I who ask forgiveness of you.”

  “I don’t want any more dishonesty, Jeanne. I don’t want—” She paused, searching for the right words. “You must tell me, Jeanne,” she continued urgently, “if you want me to go away.”

  I searched her face. “You’re asking my permission to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  What did I want? A skein of confusion. “Yes,” I heard myself answer. “Then stay.”

  As for William, he was delighted by our truce. He moved between us like a stallion among his mares, superior in our admiration. At first he remained on his best behavior, attending to Baiona’s needs, but gradually he relaxed. He’d grin at me across the crowd or brush against me in a doorway; his hand would slide down my flank or slap my rump affectionately before he went on to confer with the officers or with Baiona, who (head bent over her embroidery) must have seen the interaction anyway. Later still, as the siege locked in, he’d throw an arm around each of us, kissing us sequentially, left and right, her cheek, mine; so that we settled into a curious marriage à trois, except that Baiona and I grew daily thick as thieves. In the end we were all too tired for adultery. Overcrowded. Starved. In the end it was William who in jealousy tried to separate us; and so the seasons passed.

  I go on at length about this relationship, because for months nothing happened with the siege. The French could not attack, and we could not run away.

  The days grew cooler, and the nights longer, and the stars sharper. September passed into October, and then came the early snows of November. Still the siege continued. We were surprised. The French should have gone home by then, back to their winter castles to take care of their own estates. We fretted restlessly. We waited for Toulouse to send his army to save us. Instead, he sent messages of hope. He was negotiating with the Pope in order to lift his excommunication, he said. He was concerned with his immortal soul. He said he’d raise an army soon.

  We waited for relief.

  Winter fell in earnest then. It snowed and snowed. We huddled together against the cold.

  Christmas approached. One night we awoke to the sound of a horn and shouts for help. Succor! We leaped up, all of us, in confusion. The soldiers pushed through the milling crowd, strapping on their swords and grabbing at pikes and staves, as they ran for the barbican. This tower stood just east of the fortress and separated from it by a hundred yards. It protected the promontory, and from it came cries and screams, the clash of swords.

  It turned out that by moonlight in the dead of night, by some ungodly chance, a band of French led by a traitor Basque had scaled the sheer cliff face, hand over hand. Who would have thought they could do it, clambering up those horrible precipices? And surely it would have been impossible by day, when they would have been able to see the terrifying drop below them. They took the barbican by surprise. Only a token force guarded it—three or four men at most, and they were probably asleep, though none lived to tell.

  The path to the barbican ran along the cliff. At one point it is so narrow that two men cannot stand side by side. That meant one French soldier could hold the path. One of our men slipped on the ice and fell over the cliff. To his death. Inside the fort, we stood by helplessly. We could hear the fighting and our soldiers calling for help…and then nothing. Silence. And then the scurry and shouts of further fighting, this time closer, ferocious steel on steel, while the Good Christians lifted their voices in prayer.

  The French beat our men back into the fortress. We could not believe it: we’d lost the barbican! It shook us to the core. Some of our soldiers were left wounded or dead outside the walls, to be mutilated or finished off or cast over the cliff—who knows? Others only barely made it back inside the gates. William was one of those wounded in that encounter. He limped along on a crutch, each step a stabbing pain.

  That was at Christmastime, when we were celebrating the birth of our Lord. And for the first time the menacing grin leered at us: short of a miracle, we were doomed. What if God wanted us to lose? What if losing were the will of God? Deus vult. At dawn the perfecti walked among the wounded, laying healing hands on the injured and dying or praying over them.

  After that assault we were trapped inside the fort. Where before we had been able to roam the en
tire mountaintop and even sleep outside the walls, we were now confined to the interior or to the far western slope, and even this was dangerous. Earlier we had been able to descend the steep hillside to spy by starlight on the French encampment or slip through the lines to carry a message to our friends; now we were crowded together inside. The French mounted stone-guns at the barbican and bombarded us night and day.

  “I heard there was a treasure.” Jerome’s voice is disembodied in the darkness of the hut. The oil lamp gives off a bead of light the size of a thumbnail; the dying fire glows red on the hearth, casting shadows across Jerome’s face. “I heard the treasure was removed.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  It was mid-winter then, and supplies getting low, and the ice thick. Not quite starvation yet, but all of us cold and shivering, hungry, sick. We were too cold then to flirt or even to care who loved whom anymore. Our situation was grave.

  In January, Bishop Bertrand Marty called me to him. I had first known Bertrand when he was the socius, or companion, of Guilhabert de Castres. Now, thirty years later, at the siege of 1244, he was extremely old.

  I entered his room and made adoratio, touching my forehead to the floor. “May God make a Good Christian of me and bring me to a good end,” I mumbled.

  “May God make a Good Christian of you and bring you to a good end,” he answered mechanically. Then: “I need your help.”

  “Anything.”

  “Jeanne, William tells me that years ago you and he discovered a cave in this region.”

  “We did, and so hidden that no one could find it who did not know where it was.”

  “That’s what William said, although he could not give directions for how to get there.”

  “It’s hard to describe. This area is pocked with caves, but that one is bigger than most, and safe.”

  “Tonight the perfectus Matheus and Peter Bonnet are taking our treasure out.”

  “Out of Montségur?” I was stunned.

  He nodded.

  “It’s that bad, then.” I let the information sink in. “No reinforcements? What of Count Raymond’s promise?”

  “Hush. The question is, How far is the cave? Can they find it?”

  “It’s no farther than Sabartès. They can go and return in one night. Unless they can’t pass through the lines.”

  “Could they find it without a guide?” he asked.

  “Not easily. It would be foolish. And waste time.”

  “Who knows about it?”

  “The cave? Only William and I.”

  “And William is wounded, and you cannot go.”

  “Why not?” My temper flared. “Haven’t I roamed the mountain all these months? Haven’t I spied for you and brought in basketloads of goods?”

  “I’m only thinking that you are a woman, and this is the entire fortune of our church.”

  I said nothing, but I’m sure that my face revealed my hurt.

  After a moment he nodded. “You will guide them, then.”

  Again I said nothing—this time from fear. What had I gotten myself into?

  “I have arranged,” he continued, “that two sympathizers will be posted tonight as sentries on the last road open to us.”

  “Can you trust them?”

  “They’re from Mirepoix,” he answered simply. “They’re our best hope. The astrologers say our effort will be successful if done tonight, so we haven’t much time. Be ready when I call.”

  “What did the treasure consist of?” asks Jerome from the darkness of the hut, and now the fire is so low that I cannot see his face. “How was it packed?”

  “In sacks: great quantities of gold and silver bullion, and sacks of money, as well as sacred books and manuscripts, some of great antiquity, and deeds of property, and silver objects, including one priceless relic, the Holy Grail.”

  “What’s that?” Jerome asks.

  “The cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper.”

  A gasp from Jerome. Then a whistle. “Did you ever see it?”

  “Yes. It was a tall, heavy silver chalice with ornate handles curling out like ears on either side, and scenes from the Bible chased and carved into its base. One scene portrayed the creation of Adam, and another the expulsion from the Garden, and yet another the crucifixion, with three women grieving for our Lord. But I think this cup must have come from modern times, despite what the Good Christians said, for I think that Jesus would have drunk from an earthen vessel or from an ox horn like ordinary people, or a pewter cup, and not a silver goblet chased and graven with biblical scenes including His very crucifixion. Nonetheless, it was a holy object, and it was wrapped in purple silk.”

  “Go on,” Jerome urges, clearly intrigued. “What happened then?” He tosses more moss and kindling on the fire. A single tongue licks up, blue and yellow, then another, a spark, and the fire tastes the wood, licks and eats at the dry, dead branch.

  Night fell. Five of us gathered at the western gates: the two Good Men and I; Bishop Marty, who was there to send us off; and Baiona. A fine sleet was falling. We talked in whispers, wary of the French even before we left the fortress. Baiona, wrapped in a shawl, hugged her arms. “Be careful.” She kissed me on the cheek. The Good Men prayed, standing in the cold. I shivered and pulled up the hood of my woolen cloak, and then Bishop Marty blessed us and kissed my companions on the lips, the kiss of peace for the Good Men.

  “Go with God,” he said to each one in turn. He touched my elbow in the fashion that a man gives the peace to a woman, and we turned each one and set out, walking in each other’s footsteps single-file. I led them to my cave, and there we left the treasure.

  It took longer than I had thought to carry the heavy sacks to the cave, and all next day we stayed in hiding. The following night, under cover of darkness, Peter and I slipped back through the enemy lines, staying as far away as possible from tents and horses. We moved carefully into neutral territory between the enemy lines and the relative safety of the mountain woods, moonlit shadows fading into shadows, and climbed the steep mountain. We arrived exhausted. Our companion, Matheus, had set out for Toulouse to beg Count Raymond one more time for reinforcements. The fortress was in sore need; we couldn’t hold out much longer.

  Afterward I was tired and depressed. It had been a hard journey, and I didn’t find it easy to be back, tormented by the thunder of the stone-guns and the constant thud of stones against our walls; and though almost no one knew what we had done—the secret kept from the garrison—I knew we would not have hid the treasure if our leaders did not expect the worst. For days I did not want to talk.

  That happened in January, after we’d lost the eastern barbican.

  It is human nature that when you think you cannot go another day, something happens to make you lose what you had; and then you look back on what had earlier seemed intolerable, and, in light of your now-worsened fate, you wish for that bad time—which in retrospect looks to have been a paradise. That’s what happened in February. The stone-guns thudded against the walls, shaking them, and we remembered summer and autumn as an idyll, though at the time we’d thought them near intolerable.

  We waited. We did nothing. Waited for Matheus to return with reinforcements. Some days we sat in the pale, weak warmth of the winter sun; the icicles dripped. The enemy stones battered and bashed against our walls. We didn’t have any mangonels with which to send stones back.

  Some days it turned too cold to sit outdoors. We walked, heads down against the bitter wind. We moved like automatons, lost in melancholy. Paralyzed with fear and grief.

  We picked lice off each other, grooming one another, and sometimes to keep our spirits up we told each other stories. William especially. He would describe the fresh reinforcements who at that very moment (he would say) were riding toward us on horseback into the mountains—an army of ten or twenty thousand men. They would bring supplies as well. Fresh meat. Oranges. They would encircle the French. There might be forty thousand men in all! No telling how many Co
unt Raymond of Toulouse would arm! In addition he predicted that the mercenary captain Corbario would come up from Aragon, drawn by the thought of plunder when the French dispersed and fled. In the siege of Jerusalem, the angel of the Lord had killed a hundred thousand Assyrians. Who knows what spiritual help might not come to us?

  But William’s stories didn’t change our lives. One man suffered a stroke. His right side was paralyzed, his mouth twisted, and his tongue became a loose lump in his throat. His wife fed him with a spoon and watched as the gruel dribbled out of his lips. He died of starvation, though food was there.

  Many of the perfecti gave away their food. They would slip a spoonful of porridge or half their bread to a soldier or a sick person. But everyone was discouraged. In one aparelhamentum—the weekly confession—Bishop Marty admitted he felt personally guilty at having put so many civilians in danger to protect the Good Christians.

  And then Matheus returned. We heard a shout and ran to meet him as he climbed up the dangerous shoot behind the fort. Two crossbowmen clambered up behind him. We stared at them in disbelief. No army of ten thousand! Only two simple bowmen, loyal followers of the Cathar faith who had volunteered to accompany Matheus back; to climb the secret mountain path and join us there, besieged—and they must have known they’d die with us. Suddenly we knew with certainty: we’d die at Montségur. The Count had sent courteous word with Matheus asking us to hold out until Easter: he was still negotiating with the Pope. Clearly we couldn’t last that long.

  Matheus was not, however, without hope: he told us that the Aragonese mercenary Corbario—the man whom William had spoken of—might come to our aid even without the Count, and his archers could put out the eye of a gnat at a hundred yards. Two local knights, supporters of the Cause, had offered him fifty livres if he would bring twenty-five of his men to Montségur. But later we heard that Corbario couldn’t break through the French lines. After that we lost heart. The siege went on, with everyone shivering with cold and afflicted by doubt that the walls would hold against the barrage. It seemed endless. We all had bad dreams, and one person or another would wake up screaming almost every night, waking the room with her dreams.