I found William on the ramparts.
“Baiona says you’re taking the robe, that you’ll both be burnt.”
“Yes,” he said. Then he threw his arm around my shoulder and said, “Ah, Jeanne, don’t look like that.”
“But why?”
“Look at me, Jeanne. I’m tired. I have wounds all over my body. My back hurts. I’ll never be able to lift a sword again. My leg will never rightly heal. What am I? An old, beaten penniless faidit. Landless. Childless. My wife is taking the vows. She wants me to come with her. And you know what? I can’t imagine living without her, Jeanne. It’s that simple. I want to be with her.”
I stared at him, aghast. All this time I’d held to the dream that if Baiona ever died, William would come to me.
“Silly, isn’t it? But what is left for me? I’m an old, worn-out knight. Baiona says you’ll come too. Will you? Shall we fight together one more time?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know anything. He reached out and pulled me to him for a kiss, but I twisted away, confused.
“Come with us,” he urged. “I love you, Jeanne. We can be together always.”
I could hardly breathe. I unclasped my hands and found that my nails had driven red half-moons into each palm.
“All right. Why not? If you both are doing it, then I will too. But I tell you, if I don’t pass over, if I am reincarnated and return to this earth, I swear that I will fight for my country, I, Jeanne, and I will drive the foreigners out of my land, wait and see. Everyone will know the name of Jeanne. I’ll drive them out, you’ll see. The next time I will not submit to foreign domination. I won’t surrender.” Tears of passion running down my face.
“But if you take the consolamentum with us,” he said, “we none of us will come again. In death we’re transmuted to pure spirit, I’m told, and then we travel on beyond the stars. We won’t come back.
“Do you remember,” he continued, kissing my hair. “Do you remember asking me once if I believed in God? You were just a child and I not much of a man.”
“I remember.”
“Remember that I said I didn’t believe, and you said you’d pray for me. Well, I believe now, Jeanne. Baiona has taught me. Now I’m concerned for my soul. I want God. This has been an important time, here at Montségur, the three of us together—and me with leisure and finally with the wit and will to examine my soul and sins. Because I’ve sinned. But this way, I can make my reparations.”
“While I instead—I love this earth, this life. Look how beautiful it is.”
He nodded. “Well, dying will only take a few minutes, and then we’ll be in another place that I’m told is pretty too.
“Chin up,” he added with a lighthearted punch to my jaw. “We’re warriors, you and I. We’ll fight in other places yet.”
It was all too much, too fast, and here was William acting as if we were youngsters again, kissing me and loving Baiona and choosing to die. And why not, after all, when we’d gone down in defeat? Why shouldn’t I join them?
I went to my room and lay on my mat with my face to the wall. I threw a blanket over my head and cried to my forlorn soul. I didn’t want to die. But neither did I want to live anymore. What had William been doing with me all these years, just playing? Frightened, confused, I felt betrayed once more by William or by Baiona, or by the French, or everyone. Or maybe not betrayed, for didn’t they want me to go with them?—except I didn’t want to die. Yet I could not imagine being alive without William, without either of them, near at hand. I didn’t know what to do. Nothing made sense anymore.
Little Michel came and jumped on me. “Boo! Why are you hiding, Jeanne?” He pulled the covers off my face.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, hugging him hard. He squirmed away and began to tickle me.
“The siege is over. Let’s play, Jeanne.”
I smiled and let him lead me out by his innocent little hand. But I had no heart to play.
In the days that followed, a kind of calm descended on the fort. We sat at the doorways to the hermits’ huts, looking out over the valleys that flowed out to the horizon. We talked quietly. We prayed. We watched the changing season. (Another irony: with our surrender, spring came rushing in.)
The snow melted under a warm south wind. The sun burned. Flowers sprouted, overnight it seemed, clinging to the rocks, and the trees were greening in the yellow light, while down in the valley the almond trees bloomed pink and white, and the forsythia shot out of the snow ferocious and yellow in the sunlight. You could hear the snowmelt trickling down the rocks in rivulets, singing of spring; and the sun shone hot enough to make us shed our heavy clothes.
The French sent food.
Wine. Ale.
For the first time in months, we ate. We felt warm.
I watched spring come, my heart aching under the beneficent sun. The birds twittered and chattered in the treetops and flitted past our huts, a straw in their beaks as they built their optimistic nests. The years would go on and on, and the birds would remain unconcerned with what Christ said or which church they ought to worship in. But we humans—we would burn up, leaving souls as pure as Christ Himself, pure spirits, no longer captives of the wicked and material world.
Others did not share my despair. The lady Corba, wife of de Perella and long a credens, decided that she would take the robe on the last night, in order to stay with her husband and family as long as possible. A few days before the ceremony, she gave her rings to her daughter, Philippa, then reached up and removed the glittering baubles in her ears, the gift of her husband. These too she placed in Philippa’s hand, closing her daughter’s fingers around the jewels.
“I came with nothing,” she said, tilting her daughter’s chin, smiling into her eyes. “I go with nothing to meet my Lord Jesus Christ. I’ll have only this dress to cover my nakedness, not even underclothes.”
“Oh, Mother!” Philippa cried.
“But I leave behind my most precious jewel: you, my darling. And my grandson, your little boy.”
Again, “Oh, Mother!”
“Hush. I’ll be watching from the other side.”
“Mother! Mother!” Philippa threw herself into Corba’s arms, weeping. “I lose you and my baby sister too. Oh, Esclarmonde.”
Then she turned to the little girl. “Oh, Esclarmonde. I love you so.”
“Don’t be unhappy,” said the little cripple Esclarmonde, her face opening in a radiant smile. Esclarmonde had taken the vows some years before. “We’re going to a much, much better place. Don’t be sorry for us. If anything, envy our good fortune, for soon, so soon, we shall stand before our Lord. We shall look into His most beautiful face, and into that of our Lady, and we shall be no more than sparks of the divine, absorbed into the divine. It will be wonderful, Philippa—like Robert’s Future-time, with no discord and no hatred. Just wait: you’ll see.”
I vacillated, struggling with myself—to take the vows and walk to my death with my friends and have eternal life, or cravenly to recant, a civilian, worshiping this pretty earth.
“But you didn’t die,” whispers Jerome. We have been talking in the dark of our warm bed. “You didn’t take the consolamentum.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was asked not to.”
My pause extends so long that he nudges me. “Are you awake? Who asked you?”
“Bishop Bertrand Marty, the bishop of Toulouse.”
“Why?”
“He knew I was afraid.”
“No, that’s not why,” says Jerome with sudden insight. “He wanted something.”
Everyone was in a state of heightened emotion those last days, of sudden bursts of tears, or tempers lost and snappish like two dogs that, circling each other, suddenly attack for no reason and for no reason stop, to stalk apart stiff-legged, maintaining dignity.
One evening I sat with Baiona on the western rocks. High above us, a hawk wheeled in flight, and I remembered the hawk that heralded my first sum
mer in this place: but how to fly up with that hawk and soar to freedom through the air?
Baiona’s next words took my breath away.
“I’m looking forward to the sixteenth, aren’t you? Soon it will be over.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m scared.” She leaned against me. “I won’t deny it. I’m afraid of the pain. I think about it, walking barefoot, and do you know what I’m most afraid of? It’s so stupid. I’m afraid of the sticks pricking my bare feet. I should be afraid of the fire. You know how sensitive the soles of my feet are. I can’t bear to have anyone touch the soles of my feet, and I’ll have to walk barefoot down the mountain to the meadow and climb up the pyre on the faggots, and it will hurt my feet.”
“Wear shoes,” I said in a harsh voice.
“They’re building a huge pyre—have you seen it? Surrounded by a palisade so we can’t escape. They will burn us all at once. To save time. They will herd us into the palisade, and we will climb up onto the sticks and straw and faggots. They’ll probably use pitch to make the fire burn, because there are so many of us, and then they’ll light it.”
“Stop it,” I said.
“Corba is taking the consolamentum on the last possible moment, so she can spend as long as possible with her husband.” Her voice was hysterical. “And so will I, and then in the morning we’ll walk down to be burnt. I don’t think the fires will hurt for long, do you, Jeanne? The flames will be very hot. There will be a few minutes of pain, of course, as we catch fire, our clothes catch fire, and our hair, but we’ll be suffocated by the smoke, then we’ll be in the arms of God—”
“Stop it.”
“You will see—it will be glorious.”
“Glorious!”
“And we shall walk into His kingdom in the Light—”
“Oh, Baiona, it’s the teaching that’s important, not what happens afterward! It’s loving one another right here, right now. The Kingdom of God is within, remember? It’s about following Christ’s teachings and learning to forgive, and going on with courage even in the dark times. About loving right here—not in paradise, but here on this earth. Look at the hawk. How beautiful it is.”
“Well, I shall take the consolamentum like Corba on the last day, and then I’ll live for a few moments in chastity and celibacy. If you do it with me, you can be my socia. Please, Jeanne. We shall be together for all time, you and I and William. Don’t you want to be with God?”
“Yes, I do.”
But my heart was torn out of my body. I think I went crazy, for I started to laugh nervously as Baiona covered me with kisses, and I was returning her kisses, as we did as children, pawing each other, laughing, crying.
“You will see. It will be fine. A few minutes of pain, and then we’re free.”
Arpaïs came to me with a soft mantle of white wool, embroidered by her hand. “This is for you, Jeanne. I want you to have it, from me.”
I turned it in my hands. “But I’m going to take the habit too,” I said. “You must give it to someone else.”
“Ah, I didn’t know. I’m sorr—” She stopped herself. “No, I’m happy for you, Jeanne. And for me. We’ll be on the journey together then.”
Thus I agreed reluctantly to take the sacred vows that would make me a Good Woman. I would make a sad ascetic, I thought, but then I didn’t have to be one for very long. One night and part of the next short day. I figured I could manage one day.
Before we were burnt.
All the Friends of God were making gifts. The perfecta Raymonde de Cuq gave a wagonload of wheat to one of the sergeants-at-arms and his wife. The old Marquésia de Lantar, mother of the lady Corba, gave all her belongings to her granddaughter, Philippa. Others gave the soldiers a purse, a felt hat, a pair of shoes, a lock of hair, a spoon or stone, whatever these ascetics possessed, as a memento of their love. Bishop Marty gave a present to Pierre-Roger of oil, salt, pepper, wax, and a piece of green cloth. And a group of perfecti presented Pierre-Roger with corn and fifty jerkins for his men.
I too gave away my things, though mine wouldn’t be treasured as either valuable or saintly relics.
And so the days passed quickly. Later in the week I took the convenensa with five others. This was a preliminary step—the initiation to become a credens, or believer—in which is granted the right to repeat the sacred Lord’s Prayer. It is a simple ceremony, led by two Good Men.
Three times we bowed before them, each time requesting their blessing, and each time hearing their response: “I shall pray for you.”
Then Bishop Marty gave a little homily on the spiritual Kingdom, the precious pearl that is worth more than all other belongings. Turning to each of us in turn, he recited the Lord’s Prayer, and one by one each of us repeated it, following his voice. Then it came my turn:
“We entrust this holy prayer into your keeping, Jeanne,” he said. “Receive it, then, from God and us, the whole church. May you have strength to say it all the days of your life, night and day, without ceasing, alone or in company. May you never eat or drink without first saying it. May you never enter or leave a room without first saying it. And if you fail of this, you must do penance.”
“I do accept the gift,” I said, “from God and you.” Then I performed three more genuflections before asking, “May I be blessed?”
All the perfecti together then said a double—the Lord’s Prayer repeated twice through. They made obeisance, and I too made adoratio with the others, both before Bishop Marty and before his socius. The Lady Esclarmonde would have been pleased, I thought, that her wild orphan was finally taking vows.
So we prepared our souls for March 14, when the French would take possession, and for the pyre on which we would be burnt.
I was watching the sunset spread orange and flaming pink across the sky when Bonnet approached.
“The Bishop asks to see you,” he said. He led me back to Bishop Marty’s hut and left.
I ducked under the low wooden lintel and stepped into his flimsy hut. The bishop, wrapped in a large woolen shawl, was seated against the wall. I prostrated myself. He blessed me with two fingers, then gestured me to sit on a cushion before him on the floor.
“Tonight,” he said, “is our last night free in Montségur. Tomorrow the French take command.” He leaned forward to look at me intently. “I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Anything.”
“I know that you have asked to take the robe tonight and die as a Good Christian. But I need you alive. We have arranged to hide three perfecti. They’ll leave the fortress later in the night.”
“But by the terms of the surrender—”
“Yes,” he interrupted passionately, “but if we abide by that agreement, all our Good Men will die. Then who will be left to give the consolamentum, Jeanne? Who will be left to guide souls to their peace? Raymond de Perella made that promise for us, but sometimes it’s no sin to evade or tell a lie to save another’s life.” He must have seen my look. “Oh, not the lives of these three men,” he added quickly. “I mean the other souls, who need the light of Christ.”
“Oh.”
“Three men. They are Poitevin, Hugon, and his companion, Amiel Aicart. Tonight, after everyone has taken the consolamentum and prepared to die, after everyone has retired for the night, these three will be hidden in the castle keep, and tomorrow night, after the French have finished separating out those who die and those who live, when all is still again, Pierre-Roger will lower them on ropes down the west cliff-face. I want you to go with them. Take them to your cave, collect our treasure, and carry it to Lombardy, where the Way still lives. Later, perhaps, when times are easier, they’ll be able to return to the Occitanie, and three Good Christians will be alive to carry on Christ’s work.”
He held up one hand. “Wait. Don’t answer yet. This is important. Think carefully before you decide. I’m asking you to give up—or postpone, rather—your final vows. Will you do that? Will you lead the men to your cave, then go with them to Lombardy?�
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“To keep the treasure safe.”
“Ah, Jeanne.” He shook his head and smiled in gentle reproof. “They are the treasure. Don’t you understand? The three Good Men. They are the only treasure that we have. Because only the perfected can give the consolamentum, the spiritual baptism that permits a person to find the passageway to Light.”
Still I hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. This has been ordained from the beginning of time.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve known for years that you came to perform a special service. Look at you: found in a meadow, belonging to no one. Dropping from the skies in the midst of war. You spent that summer at Montségur, learning every creek and corner of this countryside, each bush and briar. I used to argue with Guilhabert, I’m ashamed to say. I disapproved of his letting you wander all over with the Englishman.”
“You knew?”
“One day when we were talking, he told me, ‘She’ll need this information later, and we’ll need her. It’s her training.’
“‘For getting pregnant,’ I answered tartly, but I was wrong, for you have spied for us, Jeanne, and smuggled in caravans of food, brought us weapons and reported on the movement of the troops. You helped us hide our treasure. Now I’m asking you to guide three men to your cave and help them shake the dust of Toulouse from their sandals. After that, you’re free to do whatever you wish.”
Still I said nothing.
“Say yes. I need a guide who knows the cave. Moreover, as a woman you provide extra protection. They’ll be attired in ordinary clothes. In the company of a woman, no one will suspect them of being Friends of God. Moreover, they can’t tell a lie, but you can—as long as you haven’t taken the robe.”
The Treasure of Montsegur Page 24