She untied the cord from about her waist and made it into a sling in which to rest her arm. Then, wrapping her cloak around her against the cold, she shuffled to find a comfortable position on the boards of the floor, and lay down, using Boggart’s now-ample rump as a pillow…
She was in a classroom back in the Salerno medical school and a high, pedantic voice from someone she couldn’t see was lecturing on the subject of burning at the stake.
“Better for the victim if the wood is piled high up to his or her armpits, thus providing a quick death from the inhalation of smoke…”
It was a relief to be woken up by the grind of a turning key in the lock of the door. The only light in the room was from the star-sprinkled sky outside the window. Two of the men who’d dragged them over the mountains came in. One had a spear at the ready; the other-he was the one who’d been kind to Boggart and given them water-carried a tray on which were five bowls, some stale rye bread, and a container of surprisingly good lamb stew.
“Ask ’em when they’re going to let us go, the bastards,” Ulf told Adelia.
She repeated the question, without its embellishment.
“Only way you’re getting out is in flames,” the spear carrier said.
But the kindly one said: “When we gets word.”
“What’s your name?” Adelia asked him.
“Don’t tell’em, Raymond,” the spear carrier said. “Ah, shit.”
After the guards were gone, there was discussion in the darkness about what Raymond’s “when we gets word” meant.
“It means they’ve sent to get confirmation of who we are,” Adelia said firmly. “Or they’re contacting Rowley We’ll be out of here in no time.”
Appetite satisfied, still tired, the prisoners settled down to sleep again.
“If, on the other hand,” the dream lecturer persisted, “the faggots are merely laid at the victim’s feet, he or she will suffer maximum pain until he or she dies of shock and blood loss…”
“No.” Adelia sat up. The lecturer’s voice had been her own. Digging her nails into her palms so that she shouldn’t hear it again, she stayed awake for the rest of the night.
IN THE MORNING, their hands were tied and their feet put into irons before they were led down the turret’s winding staircase and into the open air, where gray clouds were being blown fast across the sky.
Men-at-arms stood at each entrance to the square; townspeople were being ushered into it by others who made sure that dogs and goats did not wander in with them. Some of them had baskets on their arms as if they’d been interrupted in their marketing.
The prisoners were led to the dais and made to clamber up on it so that they could both see and be seen, though the men and women funneling in only glanced at them briefly, then looked away, almost without interest, almost as if tied and manacled beings were the usual people in the usual place.
Boggart was on one side of Mansur, Adelia on the other with Rankin next to her and Ulf next to him. Behind them was scaffolding where the frontage of an ancient church was being rebuilt with stonework that was already a marvel of carving.
Ahead and higher than the church stood the bishop’s palace, modern and pristine, with glazed windows in rounded arches, and the sculptures of its portal telling the story of Jesus’s life.
It was a beautiful square. With a stake at its center.
Adelia thought she could hear Ward barking somewhere and wondered where he could get food and if he would find water.
She wondered whether Allie was being allowed to fly her kestrel; she wondered if little Sister Aelith had got away; she wondered where Rowley was now.
Her mind kept to these things, away from the here and now, which was a charade that would end with the stake and its woodpile remaining untouched and everybody being sent home. Human beings did not burn one another, not in these times; it was a threat from another age always held over the heads of heretics, Jews, witches, and other nonconformers but never actually performed now, not now, dear Lord, not now.
The abnormality of everything rushed at her, causing panic. Beyond these roofs and turrets was a pitiless landscape that was too high and too jagged. This square was full of people who were nothing to her, as she was less than nothing to them.
No, she told herself it won’t happen. Those churchmen over there on the bedraped dais opposite were commanded not to shed blood. Ergo, they wouldn’t, couldn’t let it shrivel in burning flesh. And the stake with its platform of bundled wood was there, there, in the center, and she wouldn’t witness it because it wasn’t happening… and she could hear Ward’s bark again and she would die if somebody didn’t help him and keep him and Allie from being lonely which, of course, somebody would because there was kindness in this world, there had to be kindness or there was neither health nor purpose in it…
The press of townspeople was now so large that the prisoners could look down on the caps of the men and the intricate weave of the women’s wide, straw hats just below them. There was none of the excitement with which crowds so often attended an execution; these people were sullen. Cathars or not, they didn’t want this.
A woman below Adelia spoke to the one next to her. “Ermengarde.” It was as if the word said everything that was to be said.
“I know,” her neighbor said.
“How’ll she bear the pain?”
“Let us pray God will take it on Himself.”
There was a clash of spears; men-at-arms were saluting the Bishop of Aveyron as he came out of his palace, wonderful in cope and miter. He had a dais of his own and was assisted onto it.
Adelia closed her eyes as he began speaking. It was a fine voice, rich in tone and sorrow, and the moment Adelia heard it she knew Ermengarde was going to die today
“My dear friends, you are assembled here as good people and good Christians to witness what must be done for the sake of all our souls…”
There was a sudden yell of “Persecution”-a man’s shout, brave and clear. Immediately, there was a tramp of boots as men-at-arms parted the crowd to try and find its owner. God bless him, Adelia thought, whoever he is. We are never quite alone.
“Persecution?” queried the lovely voice. “But not every persecution is blameworthy; rather it is reasonable for us to persecute heretics, just as Christ physically persecuted those whom He drove out of the Temple. To kill wicked men and women in order to save their souls for the sake of correction and justice is to serve God. And so we must do today.”
More tramping boots; they were bringing Ermengarde into the square. A phalanx of monks began chanting.
Adelia opened her eyes. The Cathar looked so small. She was bareheaded and the wind whipped her gray hair around her face. She was uttering her own battle cry, bless her, oh, bless her. It rose above the wind and the chanting monks: “‘Beware the false prophets who come to you in the guise of lambs wherein lurk voracious wolves.’ So says the gospel of Matthew. Their God is of the Old Testament, ignorant, cruel, bloodthirsty, and unjust…”
There was a crack, and she was silenced.
A murmur like a breeze ruffling corn ran through the crowd, and the bishop shouted over it: “You hear, good people? This woman’s blasphemy is proved out of her own throat.”
Adelia forced herself to keep looking; to hide one’s face from courage like this was to betray it; she was a witness.
Tiny and dowdy against the tapestry of the clergy, surrounded by men-at-arms, Ermengarde strode on bare feet toward the stake like a bride on her wedding day. She was led by a priest walking backward and holding a jeweled cross in front of her. There was blood on her mouth.
Boggart began to pant. Ulf and Rankin were swearing.
Adelia looked across at the churchmen, amazed. Are you blind? Don’t you see the bare feet, the simplicity, the loneliness? This is the Via Dolorosa.
Ermengarde was lifted onto her platform and tied to its stake. They were standing her on the pyre, not within it. One of her feet dislodged a faggot and a man-at-ar
ms took time to replace it neatly
The chanting came louder. A bible was offered but Ermengarde turned her face away from it, one side of her damaged mouth moving in prayer.
A man in a hood that covered his face came forward holding a lit torch. He looked at the bishop, who nodded and dipped his plump, steepled hands.
There was a whoomph; they’d poured oil on the wood.
Adelia pushed her face into Mansur’s sleeve. She heard the crackle of flames and spitting wood that she’d heard a thousand times in comfortable kitchens where fire cooked meat on a spit. Her remorseless anatomist’s brain followed the sequence of burning feet, calves, thighs, hands, torso, and no death, no death until the conflagration reached the breath of the mouth and extinguished it.
Nor did God take the pain upon Himself. Long before the end, Ermengarde was screaming.
Ten
PERHAPS, HAVING SHOWN his five prisoners the end that awaited them, the Bishop of Aveyron was now concerned in case they dislodged the mullions on their turret windows and threw themselves out. Perhaps he felt the morality of a bishop demanded that he should not keep men and women confined together. Whatever the reason, a few hours after Ermengarde’s ashes were chucked onto a midden, Adelia, Boggart, Rankin, Mansur, and Ulf were transferred from the palace’s highest point to its lowest and then separated, male from female.
With their feet free but hands still tied, they were led down the circular stairs of the turret, across the great hall and the stares of its people, to where another staircase skewered itself deep into the earth, past an underground guardroom and down again, to a blind tunnel of a dungeon and the row of cells lining its walls.
Every push, every jerk on Adelia’s arms stabbed at her damaged shoulder-the cord she’d made into a sling had been tossed away by the guard who’d tied her hands. She hardly noticed it; the pain was inconsequential compared to the agony she’d witnessed.
Their hands finally released, she and Boggart were pushed into one cell, Rankin, Ulf, and Mansur into that next door, and the keys turned on them.
If they’d wanted to, they could have conversed by putting their faces to the small barred apertures in the doors and shouting to one another, but they didn’t. None of them had spoken since they’d been taken from the square.
Slumped on the stone floor, holding tightly to Boggart’s hand, Adelia knew that she should break the silence, say something to put heart into them all, but was incapable of doing it. She was unraveled; the only thread holding to sanity was the thought that Rowley would come for them. But even when he did, none of them would ever be free of a scar that flames and screams had branded on their memory-we have seen a human being burned alive. Like the others, she was past anger, past prayer; she was reduced to an enervating astonishment at the hideousness Man was capable of-and even that flickered only occasionally in a stupor ending in helpless sleep.
Rowley didn’t come for them that day Nor the next.
FATHER GERHARDT RODE to Figères, taking with him greetings, perfume, wine, foie gras wrapped in fig leaves, and cheeses of the region from the Bishop of Aveyron to the King of England’s illustrious daughter.
Since the hour was too late to disturb the princess up at the château, the Bishop of Winchester, Father Guy, Father Adalburt, and Dr. Arnulf received him-with embarrassment-in the priory’s little refectory, where they had been sitting late at supper. (The prior had gone to bed; he had weeds to hoe in the morning.)
“I fear you find us benighted, Father,” the bishop told him. “As you see, we have been dogged by misfortune on this leg of our journey. I am ashamed that we cannot receive you with better state.”
“Not at all, not at all.” Father Gerhardt pretended not to notice the spade somebody had left standing in a corner, nor the remains of a plain, bucolic meal still on the table, nor that the man standing behind the Bishop of Winchester’s chair was the only servant in a room lit not by good beeswax candles but tapers made of rushes.
Nevertheless, notice them he did; Scarry’s information was proving exact so far.
Accepting a glass of wine, Father Gerhardt studied faces.
He looked briefly into the eyes of Father Adalburt, who smiled foolishly back at him; he saw that Winchester’s bishop was a tired old man; and that the two who would be his allies were Father Guy and Dr. Arnulf Yes, just as he’d been told.
“My lord, I bring a letter from my lord of Aveyron.” He bowed and handed it over. “And now, with your permission, I would be grateful for a night’s bed-it has been a long ride.”
(“Give them the letter, then leave them alone to read it,” his bishop had told him. “They will betray more easily if they are not watched by an outsider.”)
That set the cat among the pigeons. A bed? Oh, Lord, a bed. The good bishop was already doubling up in his with the prior, while the two chaplains and Dr. Arnulf were sharing the only other.
“Perhaps Captain Bolt can provide one,” Father Guy suggested. He addressed the servant sharply: “Peter, escort the good Father up to the château. And then come back and clear this table of its detritus, it is a disgrace.”
When the door had closed, he picked up the letter. “Shall I read this to you, my lord?”
“Read away My old eyes fail me in this light.”
“From the Bishop of Aveyron to his brother in the Lord, Bishop of Winchester, a heartfelt and respectful welcome. This poor region is honored by the presence of a noble princess and her religious advisers whose reputation for holiness and wisdom has come before them…”
“How kind,” said the Bishop of Winchester, wiping his eyes, “Isn’t that kind of Aveyron.”
More than half the scroll was taken up with compliments, an invitation to grace Aveyron palace, more compliments.
The Bishop of Winchester’s head began to nod. Father Adalburt started chalking notes for a sermon on his slate.
Not until the end did the letter reach its nub…
“My lord, you will know, in your wisdom, that the foul heresy of Catharism has been spreading throughout this country, and that some of us fight its contagion that it may not infect all Christendom. Accordingly, I must bring to your lordship’s attention that, in this great struggle, the Lord has allowed to fall into my hand five such heretics found wandering the hills…”
Father Guy’s voice paused for a moment, then he read on.
“Normally, it would be the work of a moment to mete the punishment inflicted on all who preach false doctrine on these wretches-two women in Cathar dress and three men-were it not that they make some claim to be connected with Princess Joanna’s court. I assume this to be the impudence expected of those who spread evil falsehood, yet I feel obliged to bring the matter to your lordship’s attention. Should you, my dear brother, as I expect, refute this claim, I shall act as I act against all who threaten blessed Mother Church. I await your word to be returned by the hand of my good and faithful chaplain, Father Gerhardt.
“In the meantime, that God pour His blessing on you is the dearest wish of your servant, Philippe of Aveyron.”
(“They will know, as I know, that these are their people,” Aveyron had said. “But if I am to satisfy our informant, while at the same time avoid bringing the Plantagenet’s wrath on my head, it is they who, like Pontius Pilate, must wash their hands and permit the execution. And I want it in writing.”)
Father Guy’s hands took care in rolling up the scroll, his eyes avoiding those of Dr. Arnulf sitting very upright in his chair
Something, some thing, a fetid eagerness, came into the little room, deepening its shadows; it hung in the dusty rafters out of sight, watchful, timorous, obscene.
THE CELLS STANK and were dark, containing only a bucket. There were no windows; the faintest gleam touched the tunnel outside where it filtered thinly round the circular stair from the torches in the guardroom above.
They were beetles in blackness; they crouched beneath the weight of the palace’s mountainous boot in case it descended and crushed
them. What if there was a fire? Who would care if insects locked in at the bottom of the pile couldn’t get out?
The only thing that stopped Adelia becoming a whirling, screaming ball of panic was Boggart, who, she knew, had to be in the same state yet was fighting it because she was. They were like two playing cards propping each other up; if one went so would the other. Presumably to judge from their silence, the three other prisoners were doing the same.
Yet there were noises; the tunnel had its own creaks and whimpers. Ulf broke the silence: “Anybody else down here?” But the shout sent up diminishing, skipping reverberations of “anybody else… anybody else…” like answers from the dead, and he didn’t do it again. Certainly no living voice replied.
Food was presaged by the sound of clanking. Each of the two guards who came to feed them had a chatelaine chained to his belt such as were usually worn by ladies to attach useful feminine things like scissors, thimble and needle cases, keys to store cupboards, etc. The guards had only keys, massive keys.
The women’s door was unlocked first. One of the guards shoved in a tray while the other stood back, spear at the ready to repel any rushed escape. The door was locked again. Adelia and Boggart heard the procedure repeated next door, then listened to the rattle of keys as the guards climbed the stairs to their post.
Darkness.
“CATHARS? WHY WOULD Cathars be connected with the princess?” The Bishop of Winchester was having trouble catching up.
“They are not, of course,” said Father Guy, soothingly “It is their ploy to escape punishment. As my lord Aveyron says, all heretics are liars. These are nothing to do with us.”
“It is strange, though,” the bishop continued. “Is it possible… could it be that… how many of our people stayed behind in that nuns’ hospital at the last?”
“Oooh,” Dr. Arnulf said casually “Seven? Eight?”
“Not five, then?”
“And remember, my lord,” pointed out Father Guy, “the Bishop of Saint Albans said before he left for Carcassonne that he would be sending the Saracen and his female back to England. It is safe to assume that they have already gone.”
A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin Page 18