Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  As Cardinal Bonaventura turned to pass these orders on to a deacon, the Pope snapped his fingers and added, “We must tell Pierre Amelii, the Archbishop of Narbonne, to follow suit. I believe he excommunicated the Count independently of us. That should not be allowed, it leads to abuses of power among the higher churchmen. The Pope should be the only one with the power to excommunicate.” Turning to Cardinal da Capua on his right, he said tiredly, “Make a note of that. We’ll need to call a council soon to address such issues.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness,” said da Capua.

  “I also want to allow the Inquisitors to use torture to extract confessions, but it might take a few years to get all the bishops’ spines stiff enough for that.”

  Sinibaldo di Fieschi, Pope Innocent for less than two seasons of a year, was a man who seldom yawned or expressed the slightest bit of tiredness. But now he was exhausted. He rubbed his elegant fingers across his hawk-like, chiseled face. “That is enough for tonight.” Around him, the exhausted servants of the throne of St. Peter almost sagged with relief. He kept them working far into the darkness after supper. After a year and a half without a leader, the Church of Rome had much housekeeping to catch up on.

  “Your Holiness,” said an ostiarius from the entrance behind the throne. “You have evening visitors.” This was the unsubtle code-phrase for announcing the arrival of a spy with news.

  “I will receive them. Everyone else is dismissed.”

  Sighs of relief were barely muted as most of the men and youths in the hall bowed toward Innocent’s chair and shuffled as quickly as they could away to the far entrance, toward their beds.

  The papal spymaster, Rufus, entered from the small postern door. Innocent admired this man although he did not know him well. He had the bearing and costume of minor nobility, and a pallor to him that should have attracted shocked attention and yet allowed him to disappear into a crowd of any size or temperament. He had been a spy, when young, for the earlier Pope Innocent, then for Honorius, then for Gregory. He was now the groom in a stable full of young men, and a few women, who served as agents for the Church.

  “Rufus, please tell me you have news that I will want to hear.”

  “Very little this evening, Your Holiness. Arnault has arrived with news that a knight he identifies as belonging to the order of the Shield-Brethren is traveling south in what might be the direction of Rome, but could just as easily be…”

  “Cremona,” Innocent finished for him. “Perhaps going to speak with Frederick. Send somebody to Cremona to be our eyes and ears there. Fredrick and I are pretending to work out a truce but if it falls apart, I do not want him to have the help of the Shield-Brethren. What else? Please tell me there is something else.”

  The tall, gaunt man clasped his hands together and shook his head with a regretful smile. “There is nothing else tonight, Your Holiness, I am sorry to inform you. I will report to you again after mass tomorrow.”

  “Dammit,” His Holiness muttered to himself. “Where is she?”

  CHAPTER 8:

  PARZIVAL

  The dinner was not a feast, but merely dinner, with no more than one hundred of Frederick’s retainers on benches along either side of the trestle tables. The white tiles everywhere gave brightness, but there was no firepit in this hall, which was in a smaller stone building, like the adolescent offspring of the main palace.

  Feast or no, dining at the emperor’s table was nothing Raphael was recently accustomed to, and he knew it must be even stranger for Vera. They had been told to leave their weapons with Frederick’s squire—except of course their knives, for eating—and that felt alien enough. Besides the sumptuous and hearty portions of several kinds of meat and bread, there were vegetables that Vera eyed and poked at suspiciously. “We do not eat these things in Rus,” she said to Léna, who was to her right. It sounded, Raphael feared, almost like a condemnation.

  “It is a Sicilian cuisine His Majesty was raised on, and he maintains that diet whenever possible in all his palaces,” Léna replied indulgently. “If it does not agree with you, I will ask the kitchens to prepare something else.”

  Vera looked taken aback. “I would not put anyone out,” she said, and picked up a small handful of wilted greens with her fingers.

  Raphael was not sure what to make of Léna. He’d heard of her over the years; he knew exactly who she was. Tall, graceful, in an undecorated blue gown and with uncovered head, she had been standoffish when they first arrived, but grew increasingly relaxed as she settled in, toward Vera in particular. To be honest, Vera had been the more standoffish.

  As well as the rich food, and the rich texture, hue, and warmth of the hanging tapestries, the visitors were also distracted by the entertainment. That there was entertainment at all was unusual, although Raphael had fond memories of Sicilian and Ladino singers, from his days by Frederick’s side. Unfortunately, this performer sat in the corner nearest to them and droned on in maudlin and uninteresting tones in German; it was all Raphael could do to mentally drown it out.

  Following Frederick’s example, Raphael focused on very little but eating through the several courses. As dishes were taken away and the pages were bringing out warm water for hand-washing (another long-forgotten marvel), Raphael finally asked, “Why you have sent for me? Truly? It cannot be a casual visit you are after.”

  “We’ll discuss it in a bit,” said Frederick, his pink complexion even pinker and his smile made jovial by the wine. “Tell me first, what do you think of this entertainment?”

  Raphael leaned back on the bench so that he could see both Frederick to his left and Vera to his right. He exchanged glances with Vera. He knew the poem, could even pluck out the melody of it on a gittern. She gave him a look of undisguised bemusement at the music.

  “It is not my usual entertainment,” Raphael said diplomatically.

  “Mine neither,” Frederick said. “It’s awful. Do you know what it’s called?”

  Raphael smiled wryly. “I do, actually. Parzival. I had a friend whose parents named him for this poem, and he seemed to have inherited the protagonist’s personality. Sometimes it was a dreadful burden.”

  “Not for him, but for the rest of us,” Vera contributed.

  Frederick grinned at her and raised his cup approvingly. “Ha! I like your sentiment.” Léna rose from her spot beside Vera and moved around to the other side of the table, facing them, to be a part of the conversation. Watching her as she moved, Frederick told Raphael, “The lovely Léna has some interesting thoughts about this friend of yours. She thinks this song was written in prophecy of him.”

  “I most certainly do not,” said Léna, as she settled onto the stool. “I wish you would pay attention when I explain things to you, Your Majesty.” Her elbow on the tablecloth, she rested her chin on her elegant hand and looked meaningfully at Raphael. “It is true, however, that I am interested in your friend. Some of my Binder sisters have been following him over the past years.”

  “You know where he is?” Raphael demanded, one palm landing hard on the table, leaning forward with a jerk toward her before he caught himself.

  “I believe I do,” Léna calmly, and gestured to him to relax. Embarrassed, he leaned back and slowly slid his hand from the table to a small leather bag he wore on a chain around his neck. Léna continued. “I am sure it is coincidence, that he is named after this particular romantic hero. However, I think he shares more than a few traits with Parzival. Perhaps he believes himself to be in search of something? And yet he may lack the sense to survive on his own?”

  “Absolutely,” Vera said heartily.

  “How do you know that?” Raphael demanded. “How can you know something so personal about a man you’ve never met?”

  “If there was ever a Binder who knew your friend, it is almost as if all of us knew him.”

  Raphael grimaced. “Is he alone, then?” he asked Léna wit
h some concern. “He left us in the company of two traveling companions, an alchemist and a…I’m not quite sure how to describe Bruno, but two burly fellows I hoped would look out for him.”

  “They parted company a while back,” Léna informed him. “As I have heard from my sisters. The others are fine, but your Parzival is now someplace he should not be.”

  “And where is that?”

  “He is near Provence, in the county of Toulouse.”

  “The land where they speak Occitan,” said Raphael. To Vera he added, almost sheepishly, “That is the language of the troubadours.”

  “What, this?” Vera said dismissively, with a gesture to the singer in the corner. “This is German.”

  “Something like this, but prettier.”

  “Spare me,” muttered Vera, and reached with her knife for another chunk of roasted goat.

  “He is headed toward the siege of Montségur,” Léna cut in sharply. “We thought you should know.” She softened. “So you can go and get him. If you wish.”

  There was a pause as, in the background, the minnesinger moaned about the Fisher King.

  Raphael thought about this a moment, grimacing. “If he is on his vision quest, he won’t heed me. He believes he answers to a higher calling.”

  “You’ve the best hope of getting through to him,” Léna said. She took Raphael’s goblet, brought it to her side of the table, and began to refill it with wine from a clay jar. “You are a brother in arms,” she said, her attention focused on pouring. “Consider it a battle between the obsessive madness of his vision quest and your influence on him as a man of reason.”

  “Vision quests are dangerous,” Raphael said. “Especially Percival’s.” Again his fingers strayed to the object around his neck.

  “Then you’d best put an end to it,” said Léna. The goblet full, she offered it to him with a friendly expression. He accepted it, and nodded his head curtly in thanks. Léna reached for Vera’s cup as well, but the Shield-Maiden put her hand over the top: no more.

  “And while you’re there,” added Frederick, with patently false off-handedness, “just look around and take the pulse of the place, would you? As my Saracen physicians would say.”

  Raphael nodded, understanding. “You want me to spy for you. I am a knight of a holy order, and you are asking me to spy.”

  “Scout is a nicer term, isn’t it?” Frederick smiled, as Léna began to fill his cup. “His Holiness, I am sure, has a few fellows there himself. It would be such an embarrassment if there was something worth knowing, and he knew it before I did.”

  “Anything in particular you wish me to scout for?” asked Raphael, sounding resigned.

  Frederick shook his head and received his cup from Léna. “No. Truly. But the situation is a smoldering volcano that could erupt at any moment. Do not let it erupt into my empire.”

  Raphael heaved a sigh, leaned farther back from the table, and glanced at Vera. She gave him a knowing look. She would go with him, of course, wherever he was bound.

  “Very well,” said Raphael. “Toulouse. The Occitan. Let’s see if I am up to date.” He tapped his chin. “That’s been a turbulent region for decades. Why would Percival be drawn there? Last I heard, the fortress of Montségur had been designated the official refuge of the Cathar faith.”

  “The Cathar heresy, you mean,” Frederick snorted. “That fucking Cathar heresy.”

  Raphael frowned. “I am surprised to hear you say that, Frederick.”

  The emperor laughed. “Are you? Why?”

  The knight shrugged. “You have hardly been an ardent supporter for the catholicity of the Catholic Church. You and Gregory nearly killed each other over it. Can a man so often and so blithely excommunicated as you truly be so orthodox as to condemn heresies? After what we saw in the Levant? Given your friendship with the Hebrews and Moslems of Sicily and elsewhere? You give Jews all manner of powers and rights the Pope says you shouldn’t give them. How can you take issue with fellow Christians who also disregard the Pope’s authority?”

  Frederick harrumphed. “You are looking at it through the wrong lens, Raphael. The Jews don’t cause me any grief, and the Patriarch of the east is weak and keeps to himself. But between the Pope and the Caliph I have my hands full. I don’t care one way or the other about anyone’s fucking beliefs, I just want to minimize the number of different religious leaders I have to contend with.”

  Raphael looked into his lap a moment, thoughtfully, and tried to hide a smile. “You actually share some beliefs with the Cathars, Frederick, from what I remember of them.”

  Frederick harrumphed again. “Not the important beliefs. They don’t like fornication, or roasted goat, or hawking. At this point, the tensions there are more political than spiritual. Simon de Montfort.”

  “He led the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars at the beginning of the century,” Raphael explained to Vera, holding up a hand to signal Frederick to pause. “The Pope empowered him to root out not only the actual Cathars, but their sympathizers, and that meant nearly everyone in the Occitan. Simon drove most of the local lords out of their lands, in the name of the Church, and as reward, the Pope let him keep all those lands for himself. He ended up ruling an area far larger than the kingdom of France. Of course all of his subjects loathed him.”

  “And that’s why,” Léna continued, “in the end, his family handed it all over to the King of France, who is still the suzerain. The most powerful lords there now are the king’s own men, from Isle de France. But many of the minor barons are natives, who have been given back their family estates on the condition that they accept King Louis as their feudal lord.”

  “They’re pretty grumpy about that,” said Frederick, with the long-suffering insight of a ruler who knew about these things. “They’d love to throw off the French yoke, so Louis needs an excuse to bully them into submission.”

  “Still?” said Raphael. “I thought that all settled down years ago.”

  Frederick gave him a knowing look. “No conquered people is ever content with staying conquered, Raphael; that should not be news to your ears. Louis is working now with the Archbishop of Narbonne to unite everyone in the Occitan under—quelle surprise—the crusading banner against the heretical Cathars. Montségur has become the symbol of the Cathars, so even though the place is inarguably un-take-able, they’re trying to take it.”

  Raphael winced. “My God, what that land has been through.”

  “The local lords are obliged to send men as their feudal duty, but they’re not happy about it, and neither are the men they send. All of them, soldiers and lords alike, have loved ones who are part of the Cathar cause. It’s so clearly just a means for King Louis to display his power, but if the lords do not send troops, they risk excommunication by the Archbishop of Narbonne. They’re being forced to attack their own people and in many cases their own beliefs. So it’s a messy little army camp they have at the foot of that mountain.”

  “And even if they are successful at taking Montségur,” contributed Léna, “it’s not as if they’ve defeated Catharism itself. It’s prospering in other places. In fact, the Cathar Bishop right here in Cremona.”

  “Oh, Christ, that’s right,” said Frederick, with a comically pained expression. “He wrote to Marti, the Bishop up in Montségur, to say ‘We’re doing so well, with so many converts right under Frederick’s fucking nose, that we could really use another Perfecti or two, if you can spare one from your flock.’”

  “A perfect what?” asked Vera.

  “It’s a term for the Cathar spiritual leaders,” said Raphael.

  “Luckily,” Frederick continued, “one of my spies intercepted the message and informed His Heretical Eminence that the folks up on Montségur are not going anywhere. Now do you see what I mean about the annoyance of heresies? You corral one leader into a corner and another one pops up hundreds of miles away.
It’s exhausting just to keep track. At least the Pope and I are one on one when we grapple.”

  “I assume you mean that figuratively,” said Vera, unimpressed. “But if you meant it literally, I would be interested to watch.”

  Frederick grinned at Raphael. “This one,” he said. “Hold on to her.”

  Raphael reddened slightly and said purposefully, “So you are sending us into a siege.”

  “Of a sort,” said Frederick expansively. The wine was beginning to take its toll on His Majesty’s majesty. “It’s doomed to fail. They’ve been there at least half a year without gaining an inch. I think the winter will freeze them out and they’ll go home by solstice. But I’ve had no reports for weeks, and I want to know what’s going on. So there is a slight chance you will have to do battle with about ten thousand men who mostly don’t want to be there, before you actually are able to get up the mountain to find Percival.”

  “And then do battle with his demons,” said Raphael softly, fingering the chain around his neck again. He took a deep breath and looked up at Frederick. “Well, that’s much more interesting than my original impression. I will gladly take it on.”

  “I go with him,” Vera said, a statement of fact delivered to nobody in particular, as there was nobody in particular she needed to convince or to grant her permission.

  “Well that’s a deal done, then,” said Frederick, grabbing Raphael’s hand and shaking it heartily. “Thank you for that.” He stretched expansively, and yawned. “I’m ready to fall asleep now, but tomorrow please come hawking with young Ferenc and myself. Did you meet Ferenc?”