Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  There were no messages from the east, from the lands where the Mongols still claimed control. Despite his cutting comment to Frederick’s men, Innocent was painfully aware that the flamboyant upheaval between Church and Emperor had distracted both from protecting the eastern flank of the Catholic world, and too many true believers had lost their lives to the heathen marauders. He had not been pope during the worst of that, but he had been the most powerful man in the College of Cardinals, and in retrospect he recognized a missed opportunity: The feud over Lombardy could have been played out hundreds of miles to the east and north, with both Frederick’s troops and those of the Vatican defending the undefended of Catholicism. It had not occurred to either man to turn his attention there. And now thousands of Catholic souls were lost to purgatory, the unrest in Lombardy remained completely unresolved, and both Church and Crown were condemned by much of Christendom as indifferent patriarchs to their suffering children.

  All in all, he was glad there were no messages from the east. That front was exhausting.

  Toward the other end of the Catholic world were different heathens to attend to. He was waiting to hear how things went in Toulouse. The King of France was using the Archbishop of Narbonne as an excuse to take over Occitania, symbolized by the tiny mountain fortress, Montségur. Dietrich of the Livonian Order was Innocent’s agent there, but had reported little beyond what a waste of human energy and resources the whole thing seemed to him. Privately, Innocent agreed with that assessment. But it was not convenient to upset the King of France by demanding he call off his attack, and so Innocent remained silent on it.

  When all the messengers had left, he nodded again toward the darkness behind the curtain. The spymaster stepped forward into the room. He paused, and a strained look passed between the two men.

  The spymaster shook his head once, grim. Innocent cursed under his breath. He resented receiving Rufus when Rufus had no news.

  The week he was enthroned, Innocent had taken three men out of the general circulation of intrigue and given them the full-time assignment of finding the girl with the cup. One shadowed the emperor’s court in Cremona; one moved south toward Sicily; one was working his way northward in the unlikely case Frederick had sent her to his German dominions. He had carefully separated them from the spies who were watching Frederick for other reasons. Now, months later, they had all sent first reports that happened to arrive in a single week. None of them had any leads at all. She was a better Binder than he’d given her credit for. She had completely vanished.

  After a miserable week on board, they landed at last in a seaport near Narbonne, and had the almost-as-miserable experience of learning to walk again.

  Ferenc wobbled about the wooden docks of the port like a newborn foal, as the ship’s freight was transferred to canal-barges to move up the Aude River. Vera and Raphael wobbled as well, although Raphael collected himself within moments and Vera, having survived the gangplank, simply chose not to walk while anyone could see her. Ferenc, however, lurched gamely about in front of everyone, ignoring the sneers and smirks of the sailors, who had been looking forward to this moment—a landlubber’s first return to land was always good for a laugh.

  Raphael still had Frederick’s seal, which was not as powerful a tool here in Toulouse as it was within the Empire. But he also had Frederick’s gold, and that worked everywhere. While Ferenc was still recovering his land-legs, Raphael had found local agents of His Majesty’s and gotten three fresh horses and a day’s supplies. He decided, due to the shortness of the day and to the nearness of sunset, that they would ride into the city, take a room in Narbonne, and then depart first thing in the morning. A day’s brisk ride along the Aude would get them to Carcassonne. His Majesty had no agents there, but the Narbonne agent had reliable contacts for them, where they could rest safely and exchange horses for the final leg of the trip, a direct track to the southwest.

  The days were very short now. The solstice was almost upon them; Ferenc could feel it in his blood without knowing the exact date. It was a relief to be back on solid ground.

  Still there was nothing from Rufus’s sources, but today at least brought a first message from Dietrich in Montségur. It was written in Dietrich’s own hand and sealed with his personal signet, not the papal signet of his clerk. That made it mildly intriguing.

  “Greetings to His Holiness Innocent IV from your humble servant, Dietrich of the Livonian Order,” it began. “Your Holiness, I write merely to alert you of an interesting and unexpected development in the army camp below Montségur. It has been brought to my attention that at least one member of the order of the Shield-Brethren has appeared in camp recently. He announced himself, spoke to the leader, Hugue de Arcis, and then immediately vanished. Nobody has been able to find him since. Given the heretical leanings of his entire order, I consider it possible that the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae have sent men here to protect the heretics on the mountain. I am familiar with their tactics and will, at your demand, readily take on the burden of uncovering them, if they are hidden among us, or leading a charge against them if God grants us a way up the mountain.”

  Dietrich, thought His Holiness with grim appreciation, had a tendency to look for trouble. His Holiness did not require any more trouble than was already brewing in other corners of Christendom.

  His response was terse and simple:

  “Thank you, my son, for alerting us to the possible presence of such insidious heretics within the ranks of our otherwise devout and Catholic troops. We are grateful for the presence of such wise and rational counsel as yours is, that will keep us informed of any suspicious developments. There is of course no need to alarm His Eminence Pierre Amelii, nor any of the secular leaders of the army of this danger. Keep eyes alert and lips closed, but keep ink and parchment at hand to write to us if the need arises.”

  They knew Montségur would be surrounded by an army. As they drew nearer, they chose an oxcart path and trotted along as if they were travelers bound elsewhere. Because they were approaching the area from the northeast and the village was to the southwest of the mountain, they first encountered only the outlying dregs, in a sense, of the army: clusters of shabbily dressed local farmers and hunters using weapons loaned to them by the French stewards and bailiffs who acted as lieutenants. They were probably intended to form a loose ring all the way around the mountain, but from a distance they looked like a large gypsy caravan. If the point was to barricade the fortress from the world, that wasn’t happening.

  As the sun settled between higher peaks beyond Montségur, they reined in, contemplating the mountain and the men loitering around the foot of it. It would be dark soon, but the moon was nearly full. On the other hand, it would damn cold. “Let’s head north toward Toulouse,” Raphael said. “We’ll need to camp tonight, but tomorrow we will find a village, and I am certain, sympathizers. They can smuggle us up to the top whenever they next bring supplies.”

  “I doubt there are many villages between here and Toulouse,” said Ferenc. “And it’s too cold to camp.”

  “It is not,” said Vera. “You do not know what cold is.”

  “I think we should go up to the fortress, ourselves, tonight,” Ferenc insisted.

  “We cannot do that without assistance,” said Raphael, patient and a little patronizing.

  Ferenc offered his hand out over his horse’s withers. “I wager you that I can find a way up there on my own.”

  “Ferenc, it is a wondrous thing to see how much Frederick has imprinted himself onto you. It is unfortunate that one of those qualities is his desire to bet on things. It is unbecoming in him and frankly ludicrous in you, as you have no wealth to wager with.”

  “I’ll wager my dagger.” Ferenc draped the reins over his horse’s neck and clapped his left hand to his belt, reaching for the hilt.

  “I don’t need your dagger, and you do. Nothing is accomplished if I end up with your dagger because
you fail to get us up the mountain before nightfall.”

  “I didn’t say before nightfall,” Ferenc retorted. “But if it offends your sensibilities, no need to wager.” He lowered his extended hand. “I’ll still do it.”

  “I do not think so,” Vera added to the conversation. Her tone was almost apologetic.

  Ferenc gave her a look of mock dismay. “After all we suffered through together on the boat, how can you lose your faith in me now, good lady?”

  “Sentimentality will get you nowhere with the good lady,” said Raphael.

  “And Raphael would know,” Vera said, not unsympathetically.

  “Consider,” said Ferenc. “Look around.” They did so. They were still on the oxcart path, with the mountain’s northern face exploding out of the hills a couple of bow-shots ahead to the left.

  Ferenc pointed to a particular point on the steep slope. “There are ropes hanging down from the side of the mountain,” he said. “Do you see where the shadow catches in a diagonal line? It’s all scree below and sheer limestone above. That is where the ropes are lowered to. They are lowered from…” his middle finger gently traced an imaginary, subtle path in the dimming air, “…lowered from a point just below those terraces, where those little sheds are. I think there must be a natural well or trench or tunnel up on the mountainside. The ropes must be stored in there. And the men who lift the ropes up when they are freighted leverage themselves there somehow.”

  “You can see that?” demanded Vera, staring at the mountain. “Even with the sun in your eyes? Or you are guessing?”

  “I can see enough to know my guess is correct,” said Ferenc. He turned to Raphael. “What do you say I approach?”

  Raphael shook his head. “You may be right, but they won’t lower the ropes for you just because you’ve found the rope-lowering site. We need to demonstrate that we come in peace, that we are not with the French army. In any case, getting from here to there undetected after sunset will be difficult when we are on the outskirts of an army camp.”

  “I can do it,” said Ferenc. “About a quarter-mile back we passed the opening to a cave—“

  “We did?” both of his elders said in identical voices of bemusement.

  Ferenc nodded, but was too discreet to preen. “I assumed you’d noticed. Let’s ride back there and you both wait with the horses while I go up to the fortress. The cave is obvious enough that the soldiers have surely already tried to use it as an entrance up the mountain and they’ve failed, so chances are it does not go directly up. But it will keep you sheltered if you need to be out here all night.”

  Vera turned to Raphael, who shook his head in resignation. “I trust his young eyes,” he said. “Let’s go back to the cave.”

  CHAPTER 16:

  REUNION

  “I am not what you expected,” Peire-Roger declared, almost smugly. “You expected some sort of holy man would be in charge.”

  Raphael looked up at him, still speechless. He could not quite believe Ferenc had accomplished it: here they were, within the fortress, and it was nowhere near dawn.

  He considered the scowling, inebriated nobleman seated across from him in the small, wooden hut. This was a workshop; a large, shallow vat took up most of the center of the room, supported from the roofbeams over still-warm coals. The humans were hunched on low stools between this and the door, their backsides as near to the warmth of the fire as they could manage. The room smelled of honey, and their gathering was lit by a single beeswax candle—an unexpected extravagance in such an austere place.

  Peire-Roger’s features were handsome but unfriendly. He had demanded Raphael and Vera yield up their weapons before they were allowed through the gate. Raphael understood the caution, but wished Peire-Roger did not get such enjoyment out of flouting his own metal now: His sword lay unsheathed across his lap. I could grab that from you and lop your head off, Raphael thought irritably. Especially with you half in your cups. He was also irked about the appropriation of their horses.

  “My name is Raphael of Acre,” he said. “I am of the order of the Shield-Brethren. This is Vera, of the Shield-Maidens, and this is Ferenc.” He considered saying Ferenc was from Frederick’s court, but thought better of it. “My squire. We have come in search of a knight, a friend.”

  “His name is Percival,” said Vera. Raphael frowned at her. “Well, it is,” she said gruffly. “There is no reason to keep that a secret.” She turned back to the lord, her eyes looking as bleary as Raphael’s felt—a combination of cold, travel exhaustion, and being plucked so rudely from sleep. “His name is Percival. He is a member of Raphael’s order. He should not be here and so we have come to take him home.”

  “What do you mean, he shouldn’t be here?” Peire-Roger asked, with a strange expression that resembled a derisive smirk.

  “Percival is gifted and, in some ways, perhaps touched,” Raphael said urgently. He had spent hours today considering the best way to explain Percival to someone in Peire-Roger’s position—although the lord was right: Raphael had assumed he would be explaining himself to a holy sage, not a drunk. “He has a sickness of the soul that sometimes tricks his reason. When he comes to himself, he always regrets having gone away from us.”

  “And has he gone away from you, Raphael of the Shield-Brethren?” asked Peire-Roger, with a knowing look. “Run away, I mean?”

  Raphael grimaced, glad the candlelight kept much of his face shadowed. “I would prefer to say…”

  “Because if he ran off, and if he is here, then he has come seeking refuge, and we do not yield up our refugees. If he is here, he will remain here as long as he likes. I will not let you take him away. If he is here.”

  A pause.

  “So he is here?” Raphael ventured.

  “I did not say that,” said Peire-Roger quickly. “I only said that if he is here you cannot remove him against his will.”

  “Oh, for the love of heaven, of course he’s here,” said Vera irritably. “The fellow wouldn’t be holding forth like this if Percival weren’t here. He’d tell us we had the wrong mountain and send us packing.”

  Peire-Roger scowled at her. “You are not ladylike of tongue.”

  “I am not ladylike at all,” Vera corrected. “Especially when I’ve been wakened from a deep sleep and dragged through the dark by strangers to the top of a mountain.”

  “Your young friend told us where to find you and said you wished immediate entrance,” Peire-Roger cut her off. “It was an imposition upon us, not upon you, for us to bring you to the safety of this sanctuary in the middle of the longest night of the year. That’s five men-at-arms who will be groggy tomorrow.”

  “We will put in time on watch to make up for it,” Raphael said. “Of course. As long as we are here, we are with you, and as you. But you must tell me if Percival is here.”

  “Must I?” said Peire-Roger, examining his cup. “I am not clear what part of this conversation has led you to think that I must.”

  “The man is drunk,” said Vera with disgust.

  “We are not quite alert ourselves,” said Raphael. “I suggest we all sleep and have this conversation when the sun rises.”

  “You’re going up to the tower on guard-duty before the sun rises,” Peire-Roger said, and then gestured with a flapping hand in Vera’s direction. “She’ll be on breakfast duty.”

  Ferenc, despite himself, giggled. “That’s not a good idea, milord,” he said. “Not unless you want your bread burnt.”

  Peire-Roger looked at Vera with even greater contempt. “You’re ill-kempt, ill-spoken, and you can’t even cook?”

  Raphael very quickly put a hand on Vera’s arm without looking at her, and sat upright to catch Peire-Roger’s attention. “My understanding of your religious doctrine,” he said, “is that it is equitable regarding the sexes. Women are of equal worth to men.”

  “Certainly. Does
that mean nobody cooks breakfast? I highly value whoever cooks my breakfast. In fact, lady, to demonstrate how highly I value you, I will have my breakfast made by nobody but you as long as you are here.” He grinned at her.

  “I am sure there is somebody running the kitchens who can sort that out in the morning,” Raphael said, urgently willing Vera not to rise to the bait. “We will all benefit from sleep tonight, surely. Only please be so good as to tell us if Percival is here safely.”

  “Nobody is here safely. We’re under siege, did you miss that somehow? We’ve been under siege for nearly as long as Toulouse under Raimundo the Sixth was besieged, God bless his glorious defiant name. If only his son were as committed to justice. That man—that glorious, blessed man, the old count—openly defied the Church and King and went to his very grave an excommunicate because he refused to persecute his own subjects at their whim. May his twelve-pointed gold cross shine down from Heaven and kick a little backbone into his son. The young count, the present count, now,” he clicked his tongue disapprovingly and shook his head, “he is feisty enough in his own defense, but he hedges his bets when it comes to the rest of us.”

  “So Percival is here,” said Raphael.

  “Although,” Peire-Roger continued, disregarding him, “he has handled the Inquisition masterfully. For years, the Inquisition tried to set up shop in Toulouse, but as soon as they tortured anyone, Raimundo would run them out of town, so in revenge they’d put the town under Interdict. Raimundo would petition the Pope, saying, ‘Here’s an idea: I’ll fight against Emperor Frederick on your behalf if you’ll just lift this damn Interdict.’ So the Pope would lift it, but then he’d send the Inquisitors back into town, and they’d torture someone, so Raimundo would run them out, and so it went on. Clever fellow. He protected the Good Ones and he never had to fight against Frederick.”