Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  Disgusted by them all, Vera spent her final night in Montségur alone. The Good Ones and the Credents crowded all together in the chapel and spent the night in prayer and hymns, with sobs and embraces and comforting gestures. Vera remained below, in the cold, unlit hall, the space strangely large and quiet after so many weeks of overcrowded tension.

  This was her first night without compatriots in more years than she could remember. Percival would probably freeze to death outside, which he deserved. Raphael would almost certainly be taken by the Livonian knights, who sat vigil over Sinibaldo’s bed. Vera had been appalled when Raphael agreed to tend the man. She was now certain that she would be leaving here alone.

  It was cold down here, without the warmth of living bodies. She could have gone upstairs and joined them, if only for the heat, but she could not bring herself to do that. They were fatalists, all of them, even those who would live. Not only had not a single Good One contemplated renouncing his or her beliefs, but more than two dozen Credents, who had the right to walk out the gate tomorrow morning and resume their lives unscathed, had just this afternoon requested the consolamentum from Father Marti. They were committing suicide under the guise of religious defiance. Some of them were battle-hardened knights whom she had fought beside—Brasillac de Calavello, Arnaud Domenc, Pons Narbona. Percival’s duel had failed to save a soul; in fact, it might have egged on some of those stupid fools to throw their lives away on a nameless, formless, useless principle.

  Vera shifted on her cloak, drawing her extra blanket up around her ears. Not a sentimental woman, still she missed the company of the men she knew, Raphael especially. She did not trust solitude and could not relax alone; if there was nobody watching her back, it was impossible to lower her guard.

  She heard the quiet footsteps before she could make out the person, but she recognized them, somehow, as Rixenda’s.

  “You are welcome to join us,” said the older woman in her fragile voice, when she reached the bottom of the steps. “This is a lonely place to be tonight.” She was carrying a lit candle-stump.

  “I do not belong with you,” said Vera. “I do not understand you.”

  “You do not understand dying for a cause that you believe in?”

  “The cause is in no way furthered by your dying for it.”

  Rixenda pursed her lips and took a few steps closer. “If we do not die—if we are not martyred—then our cause is diminished. We do not go out in a blaze of martial glory, but still our actions tomorrow, our very deaths, keep our cause alive.”

  “Not only do I not understand your methods, I do not understand your cause,” said Vera uncomfortably. “But I do not wish to debate with you. Surely on this, your last night on earth, you have better things to do.”

  “I’ve done them,” said Rixenda peaceably, her wide-set blue eyes calm in the candlelight. “My only sorrow is not to say farewell to Ocyrhoe. Please, if you see her again, give her my love and give her this for me.” She reached for the round clasp holding closed her mantle. It was undecorated, made of wood. She disengaged it from the mantle, held the mantle closed with one hand, and with the other offered the clasp to Vera.

  “I am not likely to see her again,” said Vera, taking it.

  “Then keep it for yourself,” said Rixenda. “From one chaste militant sister to another.” She smiled.

  Vera blinked. “Well,” she said gruffly after a moment. “There is that, I suppose. I thank you.”

  A pause.

  “Nearly dawn now,” said Rixenda, and glanced up the dark stairs again. “If you do not wish to join us, I will go up myself, for a final meditation before we meet our maker.”

  “It’s a horrible way to die,” Vera blurted out. “There are few things I am fearful of but death by fire is one of them. It frightens me.”

  Rixenda nodded. “Me, too,” she said. “But fear is no deterrent when faith is strong.”

  By dawn, Sinibaldo was conscious but in terrible pain. He lay in the largest, warmest bed in the village, the small room warmed by fire-heated rocks. Grim-faced, Raphael gave the priest an infusion to numb the worst of it. It would be days before he would be able to sit up without being sick.

  Raphael was morally, ethically, even spiritually obligated to preserve a life when it was asked of him as a healer. But now, perched on the edge of the bed, pushing back the bed curtains, as he watched Sinibaldo’s waking, he resented his oath.

  The priest’s eyes finally focused on the man beside him. “You are…” he let it trail off, looking confused.

  “Raphael of Acre, Your Holiness,” said Raphael, dryly. “Of the order of the Shield-Brethren. Close friend of His Majesty Frederick Hohenstaufen. I saved your life.”

  “The more fool you,” said His Holiness.

  “I am headed back to Frederick’s court,” said Raphael, studying Innocent’s face. “Waiting there for my return is a small sprig of some sort that seems to mean a great deal to the Binder, Léna. She is expecting that I will return there with the grail. And Percival.”

  He saw a look of alarmed anger, almost despair, flash across Sinibaldo’s face. Raphael nodded. “Thank you for that enlightening response,” the Levantine said miserably. “You need not speak. You’ve revealed enough already.”

  “You should have let me die,” said His Holiness warningly. “You will regret not doing so.”

  “Probably,” said Raphael, standing. “I already regret not doing so many things in this poor life of mine. But it is never too late to start afresh. And you’ve a scalp wound that may yet do us the favor of putrefying and killing you. In the meanwhile, forewarned is forearmed, and so now I am armed indeed.” He nodded his head curtly to the Livonian knights around the bed, then turned and walked out of the hut.

  He walked through the occupied village, then out of it, and headed up the snowy foothill slope to the pen that would, in less than an hour, be ablaze with souls ascending to their idea of heaven. He looked up the western face of the pog. The dour procession had begun.

  Guards, Credents, Good Ones, more guards, all moving down the mountainside. Nobody, as of yesterday, had recanted; in fact a score of people who would otherwise go free had thrown their lot in with the Good Ones and asked to take those final vows that spelled their death this morning. They included old Raimon de Perelha’s wife, Corba, and several other noblewomen; the local farmers Ferrer and Artal; several knights and their wives; men-at-arms; and even the two crossbowmen Isarn had sent recently as military assistance. They could have walked away as freely as the Shield-Brethren were about to, returning undiminished to lives of valor, adventure, and status. Instead, after two weeks of meditation, they and a dozen other warriors were choosing to be burned as heretics in defiance of France and Rome’s viciousness.

  Raphael could almost understand that. He knew that Vera never could.

  He looked over at the pen that would be set alight. One lone figure, heavily armed, lurked by it. Vera. Of course she would not join in the procession. He was glad to see her. Percival had disappeared again, tormented by his need to find the grail, but Vera, at least, had not deserted Raphael.

  He walked up the slope to her, the dry snow crunching under his feet like wood chips. She greeted him with a solemn smile.

  “Mornings like this make me appreciate what it is to be among the like-minded,” she said. She surprised him by giving him a brief but fiercely tight embrace. “Let’s get out of here before this immolation starts. It rubs me so intensely the wrong way I don’t trust myself to just stand here and let it happen.”

  He nodded sadly. “No need to stay. Although not sure where to go instead. We’ve lost the grail—and Percival—again.”

  She shook her head and pointed to the wall of the pen. “We have not lost Percival. Although perhaps Percival has lost himself.”

  The Frankish knight squatted by the ladder that would lead the Good Ones up over
the palisade to their deaths. His knees were bent up and his elbows rested on them, but his outstretched hands hung limp.

  “I’ve failed in everything,” he said when they approached him. His voice was heavy and dull with self-loathing.

  “I’ve not done much better,” said Raphael. “But there is no escaping destiny.”

  In the bleak light of a damp, March sunrise, they struck out toward Toulouse. The notorious Count never had sent reinforcements; in fact, upon receiving word that the fortress had surrendered, he never even sent a message to either side acknowledging the ending of hostilities. What sort of leader was that? wondered Raphael with disgust.

  They walked in silence north and then a little east. The pog remained just back of their right shoulders. After they had traveled about half a mile, the smell of smoke reached them, with a distant, dull roar, punctuated by human screams. Less than half a mile after that, the smell turned bitterly to something else, and the screams faded, but the roaring sound remained the same. Little bits of grey ash, like dirty snow, speckled the air around them. Percival, without changing stride, began to weep.

  They continued with heavy hearts and heavy feet, until they reached a spot that looked vaguely familiar to Raphael and Vera. They halted.

  “This is where Ferenc told us to take shelter when we first arrived,” said Vera. “Where the Montségur men came and collected us. And took our horses.”

  “It was a tunnel entrance,” said Raphael, a flicker of hope igniting in his chest. He grabbed the frozen underbrush and with a high-kneed stomp cleared a spot that opened onto a limestone boulder, with a ridge of wet ice edging its northern face. “Wasn’t the entrance around the back of this rock?” He took another labored, high-kneed step, ready to clear thick brush away with his own hands.

  “You needn’t do that. There’s a path over to your left,” said a female voice directly overhead.

  He looked up. Standing on the top of the boulder was Ocyrhoe. Her face and sleeve were bloody, and her eyes were bloodshot. She had no mantle or blanket. She stood in her muddy tunic and leggings, the grail between her hands.

  Raphael backed onto the road. “Ocyrhoe,” he said.

  “Raphael.”

  A pause.

  “Are you going to join us?” Vera demanded, impatient.

  Ocyrhoe shrugged and held out the chalice. “This kept me alive last night,” she said. “The warmth of it. If I give it up, you better damn well at least offer me a blanket.”

  She disappeared behind the boulder and then in a moment emerged from the dormant gorse on the road ahead of them. She walked straight to Percival, who was staring at the cup as if it were floating magically in air.

  “Kneel,” she ordered.

  Instantly he dropped to both knees.

  “Hold out your hands,” she said. Percival, his eyes never leaving the cup, obeyed her. Raphael took Vera’s arm, and they both stepped back one pace.

  Ocyrhoe held the grail up over her head and improvised an incantation. “In the name of all the lost and wandering children of the earth,” she intoned. “For the sake of those yearning for safety and gentle days, I, Ocyrhoe, steward of this chalice, yield it up into the hands of Percival the Seeker, that he may use it in ways as yet untried to bring goodness and light into the world.”

  Slowly she lowered her arms until the grail rested a finger’s breadth above Percival’s outstretched hands.

  “Do you accept this instrument of peace with the terms whereby I surrender it?”

  Percival looked too awestruck to speak. “I do,” he stammered. “But know that I am its instrument, not the other way around.”

  Ocyrhoe released the warm weight of the cup into his hands. Her eyes welled and she felt her throat constrict, but she willingly moved her hands away.

  Her palms went immediately ice-cold.

  Nothing discernable happened, but she felt lighter. And Percival, kneeling before her on the muddy snow, radiated the same light that the cup sometimes did. The rapt wonder of his face reminded her of something beautiful and holy she could not specifically identify.

  She turned to Raphael and Vera, and bowed her head. “My duty is fulfilled,” she said. “We must get to Frederick’s court, so that Percival may fulfill his.”

  1244

  MAY DAY

  EPILOGUE:

  THE BINDING

  In the cool foothills of Südtirol stood a grove of enormous, ancient trees. Ocyrhoe was certain Ferenc could have identified them, but city girl that she was, she could not. The six of them had traveled here with the smallest entourage of armed guards Frederick deemed safe.

  Percival had held the grail the entire journey—a rushed, uncomfortable journey on horseback from the sun-kissed plains near Cremona into these shadowy, high valleys from whence winter had just recently departed. Ocyrhoe wondered what it was like for him to be united at last with that which had summoned him so long.

  And what it would be like to relinquish it, as he would have to do in just moments.

  The meaning of the grail and the meaning of the sprig—what they were, and the nature of their power—these things she could not wrest from Léna. But as they traveled, Ocyrhoe awkwardly riding pillion behind her, the elder Binder had yielded a little insight into the ritual that was to come.

  In the dappled center of the grove of trees, Raphael had dug a hole in the soft, black-brown earth, as broad and deep as a man’s forearm. He and Percival—in clean and mended Shield-Brethren surcoats—faced each other, kneeling, across it. Percival held the grail received from Ocyrhoe, and Raphael held the sprig, the mysterious piece of living wood that had made a strange journey from a distant land. Ocyrhoe, Léna, and Vera crowded around the northern curve of the hole. Emperor Frederick stood across from the women.

  “We gather here to stem the tides of darkness,” said Léna solemnly. “We acknowledge that in so doing we must also stem the tides of light, sequestering their forces into abeyance until the time is ripe. For this we require a man of power, the Wonder of the World, whose authority is purely temporal and secular, who is not allied to any occult forces, either light or dark.”

  “Damn right,” said Frederick. “So let’s get this over with.”

  “We thank him,” said Léna, in a rebuking voice, glaring at him briefly. “For without his assistance, these objects of power risk falling into the hands of an equally powerful man whose spiritual allegiances are very dark.”

  “Are you insinuating that Sinibaldo is as powerful as I am?” Frederick protested.

  “With all respect, please shut up, Frederick,” said Raphael under his breath.

  Léna ignored the interchange. “Two potent objects have been brought into this world, and now they are to be bound together. They reflect that which is born of nature and that which is created by men. We unite them now, that they may secure the future of the world. They are presented by two Virgin Defenders, and the Virgin herself witnesses the offering,” here she gestured to the women on either side of her, “in her incarnations as both warrior woman and mystic wild child.”

  She gestured to Percival. He brought the grail up to his face, reverentially pressed his lips against the side of it, and then handed it to Frederick. Frederick received it, looking bemused. “It’s warm,” he said. “And glowing.”

  None of them responded to this.

  He lowered himself to his knees, reached into the hole, and set the chalice upright in the bottom. Beside him was the pile of dirt; with both bare hands he tossed dirt into the hole until the grail was covered and the cup full, almost to the top.

  “This,” the emperor said, gazing approvingly at the final handful, “is good dirt.” He raised the fistful to his nose and breathed in the musty fragrance deeply. “How strange it is that we who claim to rule the earth so rarely chance to touch it.” He tossed in this final handful.

  Now
Léna gestured to Raphael. He took the small sprig, without bothering to kiss it, and offered it to the emperor. Frederick received it and placed it gently in the now shallow hole. Handful by handful he tossed in the rest of the dirt. When it began to pile up over ground level, all six of them together tamped the loose earth down with their fists and knuckles.

  “Do we not need to water it?” asked Percival, brushing the soil from his hands.

  Léna shook her head. “It lies dormant for now. When the world wills it, the rain will come and penetrate the soil to wake it.”

  “And then?” asked Ocyrhoe.

  “And then it grows.”

  “And then?” demanded Ocyrhoe again.

  “It grows until long after all of us are gone. It becomes someone else’s story.”

  “So what do we do now?” the orphan girl of Rome demanded.

  “Whatever you wish to,” said Léna gently. “You were born with a destined obligation. Now that you have met it, the rest of your years are yours, not Fate’s, to shape.”

  HERE ENDS SIEGE PERILOUS:

  THE FIFTH VOLUME OF THE MEDIEVAL CYCLE OF THE FOREWORLD SAGA

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Monica Sagasser for the sanity.

  Moira Squier for the timely use of her coffee table.

  Dr. Andrew M. Riggsby for the Latin.

  John Robichau and Chris Roberts for the fight choreography, aided and abetted by information, observations, and queries from Angus Trim, Mark Teppo, Scott Barrow, and Billy Meleady.

  Liz Darhansoff, for being unflappably Darhansoffian.