Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  Behind him, he heard Percival explaining in low, urgent tones to Peire-Roger what Raphael had just said. Peire-Roger, his bull’s voice louder than anyone else, repeated Raphael’s orders in a bellow. Instantly a sense of order overtook the courtyard.

  What had been the French advantage—the vulnerability of the Montségur forces stuck on the wall-walk—turned to their disadvantage. Hunched down behind the low wall, the soldiers simply waited for the French to appear at the top of the ladders and easily dispatched each as he came.

  Within an hour it was clear there would be no conquest this way. But the French had thousands of expendable, local troops, so they continued this tactic, to encumber as many of the Montségur soldiers as they could. Meanwhile, the French archers in the barbican now lacked visible targets—the Montségurians were crouching out of view—but this did not stop them from sending lethal flocks of arrows into the courtyard. Only flush against the eastern wall was there any safety from these; the most dangerous stretch in the fortress was now the stone’s-throw sprint between the donjon door and the safety of the eastern wall. Peire-Roger ordered seven men-at-arms to set up a canopy of wooden boards along this path to allow messengers and soldiers some safety as they moved in and out of the donjon. Two men were wounded in the course of attempting this; Raphael attended to them, but one of them had been struck in the ear by an arrow and had only a few moments of life left in him. Percival carried him up to the Good Ones in the chapel to receive the consolamentum.

  “These hypocrites,” said Vera with disgust, under her breath. They were standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for Percival to return. “These Perfect Ones. They call themselves pacifists and yet they’re content to let good soldiers die defending them.”

  “The soldiers are not only defending the Good Ones,” Raphael corrected her. “They are also protecting the civilians who have come here seeking refuge.”

  Vera huffed. “They are only forced to seek refuge here because of their sense of obligation to the Good Ones! If the Good Ones left, the rest of them would not be in danger.”

  “Yes, they would,” said Raphael patiently. “The religious elements of this fight are only a thin patina over the French king’s desire to control the region. He’d be attacking regardless.”

  “But he wouldn’t have the backing of the archbishop,” Vera retorted quickly. “The archbishop’s only excuse for being here is that this is a religious issue. Take away the religious aspect and he’d have to pack up and go back to Narbonne. Along with all the troops who are here out of obligation to him. That must be a good third of the army.”

  Raphael considered this. “That’s true. If you know of any way to get the Good Ones out of Montségur, tell Peire-Roger and Bishop Marti.”

  “They don’t really need to leave,” said Vera smartly. “The French only must think they’ve left.”

  Raphael nodded. “Work on that,” he suggested. “Meanwhile, let’s try not to be sacked.”

  For most of the day, the predictable unpredictability was wearying. There was nothing any of them could do but take their turn, in hour-long stretches, of waiting along the wall-walk for the French soldiers to stubbornly make their way up the ladders for quick dispatching. The courtyard was littered revoltingly with French heads, and carpeted in arrows, the majority bouncing off the limestone rocks to lie flat on the ground, fletches and tips bundled up together. Not knowing whether or not they were killing anyone within—but encountering no resistance—the French continued to shoot into the courtyard as the morning stretched to midday and then to late afternoon. Meanwhile, the soldiers on the wall-walk continued to dispatch the French as each man topped the ladders. The squires had the sickening job of carrying the heads up the ladders and hurling them back to the French. There was a strange monotony to the danger.

  Worst of all, the boulders continued to slam against the side of the keep, with the deadly precision Raphael had feared from the beginning. The damage was not visible from where they were, but if they continued unabated like that even for a few days, so frequently and at such close range, they would bring the wall down.

  In the late afternoon, as Vera, Percival, and Raphael each descended from their turn on the walls, Peire-Roger summoned them to meet at the porthouse. “Come with me out there to fight them off,” he proposed. “If we are a well-armed, well-protected corps, we can push them back to the barbican and find a way to keep them back.”

  Raphael looked at him wearily. “And what will that accomplish,” he asked, “when they can continue to sling projectiles that will tear the donjon wall down within days?”

  “We can’t not fight,” Vera upbraided the Levantine. And to Peire-Roger: “Of course we’ll go with you.”

  Late that night, Ocyhroe sat wide-eyed listening to Vera describe the battle outside the gate. A good part of her amazement was at how steadily Vera spoke, even as Raphael was cleaning, splinting, and bandaging a wound on Vera’s calf that looked to Ocyrhoe as if surely it would cost her her leg.

  In short, the defenders had successfully repelled the French attackers, in large part by shoving many of them off the ridge. The Montségur contingent was very small, but the French could only come at them in small groups. The archers in the barbican soon realized their arrows would find no purchase against the heavily armored defenders, and so Hugue de Arcis had ordered his men to focus on the trebuchet attacks. There were some vicious skirmishes outside the walls—Vera had been wounded in the last of these—but by far the worst danger came from the wall being hacked away with each successful catapulted boulder. From out on the ridge they could look back at the fortress, and the damage to the donjon wall was alarming.

  As darkness came, the French fell back completely. Peire-Roger had ordered the door to the barbican destroyed and sent his own troops swarming up into it. With the door off, it could not be secured, and after two hours of fierce fighting it was a no-man’s land. But the French were repelled from the walls and the ridge, and so despite the thundering attacks on the donjon wall, the news that reached the ears of those inside was positive: The most dangerous attack had come and gone, and they had all survived it. Surely the French would pack up soon and go home to the Isle de France and their accursed king.

  Those who knew better gathered in a corner of the chapel that night. Most of the wounded had died by now, making the place largely a morgue. Several were still in their final throes of suffering. These were all attended to by the Goodwomen, including Rixenda. Vidal had already passed. Ocyrhoe took his death very hard, knowing herself responsible for his having come here in the first place.

  Ocyrhoe had been summoned to the leadership council. She assumed it would be a strategic discussion to determine how best to bring in new supplies. She was the last to arrive, however, and the discussion had begun without her. It was not going as she had assumed it would.

  Raphael shook his head. “We have been in battle beside you,” said Raphael to Peire-Roger, “and we have failed to protect you from the enemy. It would be appalling of us to leave you before we know the terms, and that the women and children at least are safe.”

  Ocyrhoe cringed. In her cowardice she’d wanted nothing but a cessation to hostilities, but were they talking of surrendering?

  At that moment, a boulder was hurled against the wall, hitting precisely the same location that it always had, near the ceiling of the downstairs hall. Only this time, it was different.

  The rock broke through the wall. Two things happened at once beyond the usual shudder of masonry: People downstairs screamed in fear, and the floor on which they stood—the ceiling of the room below—trembled as it never had before and fell away beneath them a good hand-span from where they sat. The Goodwomen gasped in shock, and the men still on the floor groaned. The penetrated wall had dislodged a broad, wooden beam supporting the floor—but only one beam, so that now, when things settled, the floor tilted slightly to the east as if in
a heeling ship.

  “Go and calm them,” Peire-Roger said to one of his men-at-arms, and all three of them went downstairs. He turned back to the group. “Anyone hurt?”

  “My leg could have done without the jolt,” said Vera, who was white-faced from pain she would never fully admit to.

  “Well, that is it, then,” said Bishop Marti in a voice of defeat. “If any of us wondered if we were surrendering too soon, we know we aren’t.”

  “They know it, too,” said Raphael, trying to offer comfort. “There will be no more stones tonight. They can see their handiwork. They know the effect it will have.”

  “Well then,” said Peire-Roger grimly. “We surrender at dawn.” He turned to Raphael. “I do think it is in your interest to be gone before then.”

  “We’re going nowhere until we are sure we can be of no further service to you,” said Raphael. “Were Frederick on his deathbed and sending giant eagles to carry us to him, we would not leave a people so in need of help.”

  The Lord of Montségur smiled grimly. “A generous and noble statement, and it is not lost on us. But this is over now. The three of you cannot make a difference as to what happens next. And I know you have pressing reasons to quit this place.”

  “We will not leave you,” Percival insisted.

  “Ocyrhoe can get you safely away from here,” said Peire-Roger. At this, Percival turned pleading eyes upon her.

  “I will take them when they’re ready to go,” she said. And added, heavily, but knowing it was the right thing to say: “And I’ll give then what they need.” Looking directly at Percival. “Whatever they need. If they believe they absolutely need it.”

  Percival smiled at her. She almost thought he teared up. “You are a goodwoman,” he said quietly.

  CHAPTER 35:

  SURRENDER

  The next morning, as the sun rose on a blood-smeared, frozen mountaintop, Peire-Roger dressed in the only other robes he had in the fortress, which were marginally cleaner and crisper than what he had been wearing since the siege began in May. He ordered the fortress’s one trumpet to be sounded. At the gate to the fortress, he kissed his wife and children, embraced his father-in-law, and warmly thanked for their faithful assistance the assembled lords, knights, and men-at-arms who could still stand. The captain of the garrison guard somberly handed him a large, white banner. With his unarmed trio of guards behind him, he left through the gate as Ferrer opened it and raised the banner high to be seen by those in the French encampment at the trebuchet.

  Ocyrhoe was on the wall-walk, watching with an uncomfortable mix of emotions. A heavyset man in opulent military dress, whom she assumed must be the widely loathed Hugue de Arcis, stepped forward, likewise with bodyguards, and received him in the no-man’s land near the barbican doorway. They saluted each other with fists to chests, and then Peire-Roger lowered the white banner and handed it to Hugue. Within the courtyard Credents were weeping openly. The Good Ones were grim but silent.

  After a few moments of quiet conversation, too soft for Ocyrhoe to hear, Peire-Roger’s three men saluted him, saluted the enemy leader, then turned on their heels and marched back toward the fortress.

  Ocyrhoe scrambled back down the ladder so she could hear their report: Peire-Roger was being taken down to the army camp to discuss terms. The fat man had not, in fact, been Hugue de Arcis; Hugue de Arcis had not been back up on the mountain since the first battle for the barbican. That seemed to Ocyrhoe a shameful way to lead an army.

  They waited for anxious hours. Ocyrhoe wrapped extra blankets around herself and went up onto the wall-walk to look down the southwestern slope toward the army camp. Smoke rose complacently from the chimneys of the village houses. Their bellicose leader was down there, chastened, begging for their lives. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he was making a deal with the French that would protect his own affairs while destroying the lives of everyone else up here?

  Terrible what fear can do, she chastised herself. He is a difficult man but he is not dishonorable.

  Outside the walls to the east, hundreds of French soldiers on the mountain were relaxing as much as one can in frigid weather without shelter. They looked tired, and relieved. They did not exude any triumphal joy. This siege had been good for nobody; the end of it improved nobody’s lot. Except for King Louis of France, who had never come near it.

  Feeling she was being stared at, she turned and saw Percival in the middle of the courtyard, trying not to be obvious about staring at her. Oh, for the sake of the gods, she thought with some exasperation. She gestured him to join her on the wall-walk. After a hesitation, he crossed to the nearest wooden ladder, climbed it, and then strolled along the battlement to join her.

  “Are you wondering when you’ll get the cup?” she asked, sardonically.

  “Among many other things,” he said peaceably. “Assuming this surrender goes decently.”

  “I have been catechized in local history, and I assure you there has never been a ‘decent surrender’ in the history of Occitanian persecution,” said Ocyrhoe crossly. “Peire-Roger has just gone to his death. They will spare him long enough to make him watch every person in this fortress burned at the stake, and then they’ll torture him. And then they’ll kill him. You need only look at history, at the record of Simon de Montfort, to see how this will all play out.”

  “Perhaps this time they will be merciful.”

  She made a disgusted sound. “Why this time would they be more merciful than they’ve ever been before? What is different about this time?”

  “Well,” said Percival. “To begin with, there’s the grail.”

  She froze. Blinked. “We don’t really understand that thing,” she said. “Are you suggesting we try to use it to ensure mercy? It certainly has never done that before.”

  “It has never been with me before,” said Percival. There was a pleading quality in his voice…no, not pleading. Intense yearning overlaid with desperation.

  “You think if I give it to you now, something magical will happen and we’ll all be spared?” she asked, trying not to sound sardonic.

  “It is possible. If you do not give it to me now, then certainly nothing will change from how it has been.”

  She grimaced, pulled the blanket tighter around herself, considered this. “Very well,” she said. “I should rid myself of it in any case. It, and this life I’ve been living, everything. I am so young to be starting from scratch a third time in my life, but that’s the lot that has fallen to me. You know, the worst part was not that he died,” she said suddenly, pushing back a rush of emotion. “It’s that he stays dead. So intractably. In a world where everything changes, that one element alone stays constant.”

  Percival, at a loss for words, put an arm around her shoulders in a stiff hug. She found the good intention coupled with the clumsy execution somehow endearing.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Ocyrhoe said. “Rixenda is still holding it. She is helping with the dying upstairs yet, but when she’s had a chance to recover from her labors, I will retrieve it from her and then give it to you.”

  His squeeze around her shoulders tightened. “Bless you, my friend.” He released her and tensed. “They’re returning,” he said, pointing down the slope.

  Because the hostilities were over and the fortress no longer being defended, the returning party was walking up the primary venue between village and fortress: the main switch-back path going up the western side of the pog. It had not been used since last May when the siege began. The trip up the pog could easily be accomplished in the time it took to walk a mile. “They’re coming!” Percival called down to people in the courtyard.

  Ocyrhoe looked harder. She could see Peire-Roger among the small party of men. He walked with his usual gait, arms swinging to either side of his body. That meant his hands were not bound. He was entirely free. Her heart leaped a little: perhaps this time, it would
be different from all that had come before.

  “They’re on their way!” Ocyrhoe shouted and ran toward the ladder to help spread the news. “Peire-Roger is unharmed!”

  By the time the French party reached the top of the mountain, the hall had been prepared to receive them. In a reversal of the last half-year, the civilians would now be banished to the courtyard, while within the hall the victors would meet with the Bishop, Rixenda, and the highest-ranking knights and lords to give the terms of surrender. The women and children had spent the day tidying themselves in the wan hope of being so sweet-faced it would soften the punishment to come. There would be punishment, they all knew that. Nobody could resist the French king and the Archbishop of Narbonne for so long, so fiercely, with so many opportunities to concede, without being punished for such pertinacity.

  Ocyrhoe saw Vera go into the hall and decided that meant she should be allowed in, too. Perhaps part of the surrender terms would include revealing all the secret tunnels, and that would be her duty. She decided she would not reveal everything. Just enough for appeasement. Her sudden anger and disgust at the men climbing the mountain surprised her. She took all of this personally, although these were not really her people and it was not really her fight. For two years she had had the chance to join their spiritual journey and had never once felt drawn to do so. But she loved them, appreciated their humanity, and was grateful to have been taken in by them. A fierce, protective instinct fired her, and her impotence now to act on it infuriated her. But she could at least keep an eye on what was happening to them.

  So she walked into the hall with a casual insolence, and nobody within questioned her right to be there. The smallest trestle table had been set up in the middle of the room. The room was lit, surprisingly, with beeswax candles—the very final stash that Peire-Roger must have been holding back, for the end. It grieved her. She’d helped to make those candles, and it was an ignoble moment they’d be lighting.