The slam of the wooden door, and I am in the dark again, rubbing my wrists, easing my shoulder joints. Hesitantly, I grope for the pitcher and it clatters against the stones. I reach for it with shaking hands, trying in the dark to find it again before the water runs out. There. My palsied hands around it. I right it. Too late. Most of the water spilled. My teeth chatter against the jug as I drink the rest. Moist water.
The dry bread hurts my teeth. I feel sick. I doze, wishing to see that light again, but now my thoughts twist and turn along dark avenues, shadows of my former friends.
I have diarrhea. I scramble to the drain, and think I missed, though it is too dark to see. I feel nauseous, and at one point vomit at the same time that I befoul my legs and skirts.
Soon I cannot stand or sit up straight. I lie on the straw, sleeping, feverish and dull.
I am traveling into Light. I am captured once again by Light. I have left my body down in the prison cell, and what is strange is to see it crumpled there on the floor. Why did I care so much for it? The Light, the Love, pours over me, inside and outside of me, like the waves of the ocean rolling over me, like the petals of a flower, and I am the bee that drops dazed into the center of the sensuous blossom, made faint by dizzying scents and by the whiteness of the flowering light.
I am in a white rose, or else I am the rose. It climbs to the farthest reaches of the universe, and out of the rose (like small flames flaring upward in a fire) comes the even whiter light of yet another rose: out of which comes music—angels, pouring out a praise to God. Their voices blend in a choir so magnificent it makes my senses reel. It does not stop but builds from rose to rose, the inner whiteness growing ever whiter in the music of the praise. My tongue is filled with sweetness beyond nectar; it is the taste of this pure Light, and my soul is borne still higher, until I think I shall be extinguished by the Light. There is nothing but steep love, the love that moves the sun and stars, and creates springtime, autumn, winter too. This love is a lake of fire, and from its dancing flames (rising, falling back) comes every living thing, sparks drenching every living thing.
In my dream I cry out with a silent wordless shout of jubilance, for my heart is pierced with a love so sharp it hurts. I have had this dream before, but cannot remember when, for now I am flying upward into Light, and on the other side of the meadow I see Baiona running toward me, and behind her comes William. William! I cry. Baiona! They know me. They are calling my name. I race toward their joy. As I approach the stream that divides me from them, I see my Esclarmonde, and she too is waving. All about are other spirits clad in many colors. Far in the background is my beloved Guilhabert de Castres and beside him his young socius, Bertrand Marty. They’re both so young!
The next moment I am whirling back. I’m not allowed across the stream. Suddenly I am slammed back into my pain, my body, and hear the cries that are as weak as tiny fairy moans and that are coming to my surprise from my own throat. I want to go back there.
I lie on the hard stones, but my mind is still back in that meadow of Light, when I knew…everything, and everything was perfect—all birth, death, joy, pain, evil, good, all of it intended and perfect. Every moment of my life has been moving toward this perfect point. I know things. On that meadow I understood there is no evil. No Satan, devils, demons. Only Love. And what seems bad appears so only as the result of ignorance. What seems good carries no more weight than the bad, for in the eyes of God there is only Yes! I AM! How can this be? I remember knowing, as the Light swelled up around me, that evil is made by us, by our acting without the aid of love.
Slowly words return, coherent thoughts. But most of what I know cannot be said in words. I am humbled, for this was the treasure of the Friends of God. I’d thought the Cathar treasure lay in gold and jewels, in ivory boxes carved and clasped with silver locks. Or in the chalice of the Holy Grail. Or in the Good Book. Or (later, after my talk with Bishop Marty) in the perfecti. When all the time it lay hidden in my heart, waiting for me to turn the key, to discover who and what I am, what we all are—made of love.
The pearl beyond price.
I lie on the stones, blinking against the darkness, which is no longer threatening but seems to cover me now in an embrace as safe as the dark and fluid womb, as warm as my nurse’s arms. I drift on a sea of love, remembering the rose-white visions, the music of the spheres.
The lake of love. I can swim in it, for what I understand, coming out of reverie yet still in that sublime sweet state of timelessness (the music fading in my ears, my mouth rich with honeyed light)—what I remember is this: that living things are all composed of Light, the Light of love; our souls are soaked in love; and the soul is not found in any single part of the body but permeates it utterly, as water permeates a sponge, so that there is nothing in us not composed of love and nothing real but soul. The French crusaders too were formed of love, the Preaching Friars, perfecti, peasants, Pope.
Perhaps I am delirious. Perhaps it was a dream.
I had prayed for light, and light was given me—not as I had imagined in the poverty of my imagination, for all I’d wanted was a window, and instead I was given light greater than anything I could have conceived. (I am so thirsty. I reach for the empty water jug and take a few drops on my lips. My tongue is thick and sore.)
Suddenly I know that I’ve always been protected. Every moment of my life—how can I say it?—has been, not of no importance, exactly, but more lighthearted than I’d understood. Each evil that I named has led to good, or taught a lesson, or changed the ground of its being to disclose in its dark silk lining the beneficence of God. Even the violence is an aspect of the loving hand of God.
(And so is water: water, please.)
The guards find me raving when next they come. I’m so sick they send a surgeon to examine me. And now they have moved me to a larger cell. It has a window. Thanks be to God, for this pleases me, and didn’t I pray for a window earlier? I stare at my blue hopeful patch of sky. They brought me soup. I hold the bowl in trembling hands. I lift the spoon. Must eat.
Days pass. Where is Jerome?
They came for me today. The door opened with a squeal, the soldiers grabbed me under the armpits and hauled me outside. Hands bound again behind my back. I can hardly stand. Blink against the torches. I am dragged up steps and down long corridors until, shaking, all I want is to stop, to rest. But on we go, higher. I ask, “Where are we going?” But my thin voice is no more than a scent on the air, an idea inside my head.
Into a large chamber. A fire in the chimney. High carved mantelpiece. A black-and-white is standing, his back to the room, to me, staring into the flames. I am dizzy and it takes a moment to sort out the shifting shapes: the room holds a long table, at which stands another friar, and seated are two scribes, with quills and papers ready, and they too are wobbly, and sometimes make themselves into three or four and then go back to two. There are various guards and soldiers, some leather books, but these may be shadows only, I don’t know.
The man at the fireplace turns to face the room, and slips his hands inside his sleeves. He has a mournful, angry, haunted face.
“Jeanne Béziers,” says the guard in a loud voice. Announcing me.
“Sit.”
“Stand.”
Contradictory directions. I am weaving on my feet, aware in this sumptuous room of the filth on my skin and clothes, my hair loose and uncombed, wild around my head. I smell of cold stones and worse.
They begin the questioning: Name. Age. Where are you from?
My tongue is swollen. It stumbles over words: “Praise be to Jesus Christ,” I whisper.
“Are you a heretic? Have you ever known a heretic? What’s your association with Béziers? Did you know the Lady Esclarmonde of Foix and Pamiers, known perfecta? Were you acquainted with any of her sons?”
“Praise be to our Lord Jesus Christ,” I whisper again.
“Answer the questions!”
“Answer on pain of death.”
I say nothing, for
at that moment I see behind him in the vision of my eyes the face of my Lord Christ and with him is Our Lady, both looking at me so compassionately that my knees buckle. It is she—it is the luminous Lady who, smiling, took my hand in the meadow at Béziers, when I was but a child, and here she is again all draped in light. My Lord Christ moves toward me, into me. The monk gives a nod. The soldiers grab me, strip me to the waist: my breasts exposed. They beat me with their leather whips, but oh, my Lady! Each blow brings only exquisite joy. I am transported, for I am filled with Christ and yet I gaze into the glowing eyes of Christ. It’s one more treasure of Montségur.
“Do you confess your heresy?”
“She does not cry aloud.”
“Beat harder. Use your arms.”
“O Christ!” I exclaim.
“Take her back to the cell,” says the monk at the fire. He turns away. He has a heavy heart, unhappy man. Does he not see our Lord shining in the room?
“May Christ have mercy on you,” I bless him, “and all the angels of heaven be with you, in the name of the Father—”
An impatient wave of his hand. “Next time the torture.”
Then we are staggering back down the corridors, down steps, down, down, along corridors, into the darkness again, to my prison cell. The wooden door slams.
My Lord Christ has left. My Lady has left. My back is on fire. Now I scream in pain.
THIRTY-ONE
I think of Baiona and William happy together in the next world. In my little cell, I pray for them both to forgive me, and I pray also to forgive, for otherwise how can my own misdeeds be overlooked? Forgive us our offenses as we forgive those who offend us. Forgive me, Baiona, I pray. Forgive me, Esclarmonde, for my defiance, for not loving. Forgive me, Jerome.
Sometimes I pray for the animals, and it occurs to me that, being here in prison, I am unable to slaughter another pig next fall. So God has worked His will so elegantly, thus saving me from yet another sin.
Sometimes, though, the pain is such that I cannot pray. Doubt and fear assault me. Shakily, hardly able to stand, I force myself to pace my stone cell, to and fro, ridden with anxiety and trying to think of…what? My mind whirls frantically, unable to harbor anything but doubt. And who turned us in? The Domergues? Raymond? I can’t believe it. The priest? The stableboy? Jerome himself?
Where now is the Light? But after the life I’ve lived, I deserve my punishments. I take off my underskirts, which are soaked with filth. The smell is intolerable. I tremble at the solitude, mad with loneliness and guilt.
Then I pull my thoughts under control again: God does not punish, I tell myself, but only my inner conscience. “Try to know exactly what you’re feeling,” Esclarmonde used to say. (I’m feeling angry, hurt, afraid; thirsty, hungry, wet.) Sitting in that gloomy cell, the silence broken only by the occasional scurrying of a rat in the straw, or by my breathing or by my fingers scratching my own molting skin, by the muffled shouts or even screams from the other side of the door, I scrape beneath the surface of my thoughts to name my feelings as Esclarmonde had taught: not placing my ruthless anger and hatred onto the Inquisitors, who are only doing their job as they see it, but examining my heart, myself, who can no longer see the Light (that too coming only as a grace, however, unable to be willed).
My feelings shift from fear to loneliness to sorrow, to guilt (which is another form of fear), then anger (which also comes from fear), jealousy (fear), revenge, shame, pity, remorse; until it becomes clear as I sit in the prison cell that none of these emotions is true. Each of them acts as a shield for fear. I am afraid I’ll die in prison, never see Jerome again, for no one leaves the Wall. I’m afraid of being tortured. I’m afraid of being burnt.
My back is on fire where I was whipped.
Sometimes I lose control. I scream. The echoes bounce off the walls. Sometimes I pace my cell—three steps forward, three back—like a leopard in his cage. Sometimes I feel utterly alone. Then I force myself again (how quickly I forget!) to pray, and again I struggle to my knees, hands clasped, and once—but only for a moment—I am enfolded in the Light.
Again they take me for questioning. Always the same two friars. Each time they ask the same questions over and over.
“Your name,” they ask, although they know it well. “Where are you from?” At first they ask simple questions. They know nothing about me: my name never appeared on the lists at Montségur.
“Name the heretics you know.”
“Have you ever praised the heretics for their saintliness?”
“Do you know anyone who has ever been in the presence of the perfected heretics?”
I answer nothing. “The blessings of Jesus Christ our Lord,” I repeat, or else I say the Hail Mary or the Pater Noster, trembling lest they put me to torture, but no other words fall from my mouth. They ask about Jerome. They ask about Montségur. They ask and ask.
“Were you at Montségur during the siege? What do you know of the Cathar treasure?” (Yes, I know it all: it’s found in prayer!) “What do you know of the perfecti who escaped? How many were there? What are their names? Where is the treasure? Who knows where it is hid?”
I answer with my prayers, only prayers.
The soldiers lash me to the rack. I faint. They waken me to try again, but at the first pain I am gone—hovering above my body and watching with detached disinterest as they discuss the body on the rack: “Take her down. We don’t want to kill her.”
Then back to my cell, where I’m left alone again.
One day it dawns on me that I’ve already received the consolamentum, for I have no more anger at these men. My heart overflows with gratitude; it floods my guards, my dingy straw, my food, my life, my dead friends, my enemies, my own pure soul. Surely I am mad. I fall to my knees in humility. I have found the treasure. This is what everyone is looking for: the treasure is our own immortal soul. I am the treasure. I have found the treasure of Montségur. Crazy Jeanne.
THIRTY-TWO
For the second time: they take me to the torture chamber. This is no beautiful room with its finely carved mantle and writing tables; it is small, cramped, dark, and in one corner the fires smoke and in another the black metal torture machines lie in wait grinning at me, and the smell is of fear and hot coals, and as soon as I see the machines I loose a trickle of pee. My weight sags onto the arms of the guards. I am sick with fear.
“Do you confess that you are a heretic?”
They have not even strapped me yet to the plank. I try to answer—Yes, yes, I confess to everything, to anything—anything you want. But when I open my mouth I vomit. The men leap back cursing, and then throw me on the rack. I’ve made them angry. I’m trying to answer—Yes, don’t hurt me, I confess. I am a heretic. But the words are stuck. O God, help me, I’m afraid.
Today they came and released me. As suddenly as they arrested me, the guards have unbolted my prison door.
“You’re free,” they said.
No explanation.
“And Jerome?” It comes out as a croak, so long has it been since I spoke. But they don’t answer. I am led through miles of corridors, up and down staircases and along dark passages; I’m lost in a maze of corridors, and then I’m at a gate. As it swings open, I blink against the startling light.
“Go,” says one of the two men. He shuts the gate behind me, remaining within. The other man pushes me toward an even larger gate. Squinting, disoriented in the painful light, I stumble across the courtyard and through the doorway out into a street. I can’t believe I’m free. The gate clangs shut behind me.
I can hardly walk. I have no food or water or shelter. Where am I to go?
People around me staring. I move slowly, with unbalanced gait, away from town, out into the country, along the dusty road. I look down at myself and have to laugh at Crazy Jeanne. Dirty and unkempt once more. The dispossessed. Exilio. But I’m alive!
As I climb the hillside, my heart expands, grows, widens in wonder at the beauty of the waving grass! At the blue of su
mmer sky and the sweet warm wind that comes to kiss my cheek! It’s full summer. I cannot get enough of it. Walking toward the snowcapped mountains. Going home.
I stop at the river and lean down to drink, then wash the filth from my face and arms and feet. The sun is hot, no one near.
I strip off my soiled dress and slip right into the river. The shock of cold water. I pull my dress into the water and try to wash that too, then put it on the grass to dry in the sun. There’s not a lot that can be done.
I duck under the surface and pull the water through my hair.
Crazy Jeanne.
Later, drying in the sunlight, I try to think out where to go. Caution is required. I need food, shelter. But already I know where I am going and what I’ll do when I get there. Everything is very clear. I am stick-thin, ribs showing. Still sick. My knees are weak. I shake as I pull my dry dress back on.
It is late afternoon when I reach the Domergues. The yellow dog dashes into the yard, barking. Alazaïs sees me first. She rushes outside to greet me, followed by the wet-nurse—and here’s the knee-baby grown so big now, sucking her thumb.
“Jeanne! It’s Jeanne!” Alazaïs calls. “Dear God! Look at you!”
“Don’t you look a sight!” agrees the wet-nurse.
The dog barks and cavorts in the yard, twisting on his tail. Fays is at the door, carrying the baby, Jean.
They bring me inside, laughing, scolding. The men are in the fields.
“How are you?”
“Are you all right?”
“How did you get out?”
Everyone is talking at once.
“Who is she, Mama?” whispers the knee-high, hiding in her mother’s skirts; and I laugh aloud. Who am I, after all?
Alazaïs blows up the fire, sets a kettle on. “You need to wash,” she says. “You look awful.”
The Treasure of Montsegur Page 30