The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  The moon’s light through the embrasure revealed Guilhelm’s abandoned sword several feet away. While Jourdaine rained blows on the Templar, Esclarmonde crawled for the weapon. She raised the blade with all of her waning strength and aimed its quivering point at Jourdaine’s back. “Get off him!”

  Jourdaine ignored her—until his spine was pricked.

  She struggled to keep the heavy blade aloft. “So help me God, I’ll do it!”

  “Don’t your grass-eating heretic friends forbid murder?” Jourdaine turned and backed her against the wall. “You’ve prayed every night for this chance. But I don’t think you have it in you!”

  She gripped the hilt so tightly that her knuckles turned white. If she could not dredge the courage to impale him, he’d wrest the weapon away.

  “You’ve finally found a use for that fallow pit.” He pressed the hilt knob into her stomach. “What are you waiting for?” He laughed at her reluctance to drive home the weapon. “I’m going to count to three. Then I’m going to take it from you and dispatch your monk’s head from his neck.”

  She had no doubt he would carry out the threat. No court in Gascony would convict him for killing an intruder.

  “One.”

  It would mean the hangman’s noose for her, even with the marks on her face. The tribunal would ask why the Templar had been in her bedchamber. Adultery, the judges would find. Even if she only maimed Jourdaine, he would still obtain his divorce and she would forfeit Montsegur.

  “Two.”

  She was barren, already half-dead. To have it all over would be a blessing. If Guilhelm had to die, she would go with him. She released her grip on the sword to surrender it and—

  “Three!”

  Jourdaine lurched for her with eyes distended. His quivering mouth gaped inches from her face—but it had not uttered that final count. A trickle of blood bubbled over his teeth and trailed down her chemise. She shrieked as the knob continued to press against her, pulsing with his death spasms. He grasped at the handle and fell face-first, driving the hilt to its limit.

  Guilhelm stood on the spot vacated by the Gascon.

  The Templar collapsed. Esclarmonde dragged him to the bed and lay next to him convulsing in shock and clutching his face. She stared at Jourdaine’s blood channeling down the floor’s mortise joints. “What have we done?”

  “It was my deed alone,” muttered Guilhelm.

  “I brought this on you!” she protested.

  Guilhelm winced as he lifted to his elbows. “You must leave before the body is discovered.” He tore off a portion of the parchment that Jourdaine had left on the table and scribbled a message. “Take my horse to Saverdun and deliver this to the preceptor there. He’ll arrange to have you taken to Foix.”

  “It was self-defense!”

  “No one will believe that,” he insisted.

  Several moments passed in fragile silence before Esclarmonde comprehended that he did not intend to go with her. Despondent, she cursed Jourdaine’s corpse. Even in death, he had conspired to keep her from the man she loved. When Guilhelm tried to pull up from the bed, she eased his head back to the pillow. She tore a strip from the sheet and wrapped his shoulder to stanch his wound. “We have a few hours before daylight. The washwoman who comes in the mornings has orders not to intrude. Grant me this night. If we are doomed to count our time together in hours, let us make the most of it.”

  Guilhelm was too weak to deny her request. She stroked the crosshatched lines of his sunburnt forehead and wondered if she had altered as much in appearance. He had grown a beard, streaked with gray and closely cropped, and his once-taut muscles now sagged a bit with age. Alarmed to find him so thin, she slipped from the room and returned with a plate of cold victuals.

  He studied her closely while she fed him. “What happened to the brash maid I left behind?”

  She turned aside to avoid his inspection. “I tried to banish you from my thoughts.”

  “And I you ... in my hopes, if not my thoughts.”

  “You doubted my love?”

  “De Montfort said you were content with the Gascon. I’d have understood if you made the best of your lot.”

  “You believed that pernicious man?”

  “I assumed even he would not utter a falsehood on holy crusade.”

  “But you came back.”

  “I do not make promises lightly.”

  She sighed in bitter resignation. A trail of misbegotten vows had led them to yet another crossroads. She resolved never again to undertake an oath. What use were such commitments if they brought only sorrow? She wondered what judgment Jourdaine was now confronting. If there were two gods, as Phillipa and the Cathars insisted, to which divinity was he now answering for his depravity? Would his malformed soul be reborn into this world? She sank with despair at the thought that their paths might merge again in another lifetime.

  “If Hell has a toll gate, he’ll stand in a long line,” said Guilhelm. “I saw thousands of his kind commit every atrocity imaginable.”

  “Against the infidels?” she asked.

  “Nay, fellow Christians. A man who becomes a cannibal first eats the flesh of a stranger. But soon he turns on his own children.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I fear this madness in the East may soon be unleashed on our own land.” He found her staring at the relics that he had brought back from Blachernae. Set on the mantel above the flickering hearth, the Mandylion shroud seemed enlivened by the shadows that swept over it. “The emperor’s widow in Byzantium told me to bring them to you.”

  “To me? Why?”

  “She said the woman in my heart would protect them.”

  Esclarmonde closely examined the unsettling facial features that had been burned into the aged cloth. The Holy Countenance appeared to be an inversion that exhibited darkness where light would normally be found. There was an unsettling depth to its pile, as if the creases formed in its creation had been preserved. What had caused this unnatural transformation? She was certain no illuminator could have fashioned such a lifelike icon; the deep nap of the linen had been darkened, but there was no evidence of dye or pigment. The shroud seemed to represent a reversal of all that was tangible and real. “Do you ever question what we’ve been told by the Church?”

  Guilhelm shrugged. “I’ve heard all manner of claims. I once encountered an old Jew in Aragon who spent nights rearranging the letters of the Scriptures.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “He told me that every person, every physical object even, had its converse in the spiritual realm. If you could find its ephemeral antipode, you would hold the secret of its essence.”

  Esclarmonde recalled that day in the church when the Light had visited her. “Are not the white borders of a written letter the contra of the letter itself?”

  The example she posed took Guilhelm by surprise. “One night in Rhodes, I was awakened by a vision of blazing letters. The white surrounding the word transformed into a heavenly cathedral that seemed built of crystal.”

  “What were the letters?”

  “AMOR.”

  She laughed in sudden discovery. “The cathedral must have represented the Church of Love!”

  Guilhelm was astonished by her insight. “Like you, I was compelled by some inclination to rearrange the letters. But I could make no sense of it.”

  She performed the mental operation by reversing the letters: ROMA. “If your Jewish sage spoke true, then the Church of Love must be the opposite of the Church of Rome. But what then is the Church of Love?” Before she could solve that mystery, she was doubled over by a sharp pain in her stomach. The nausea that she had suffered during the past weeks had returned.

  Guilhelm braced her forehead and soothed her with a sip of wine. “You must rest to gain strength for the ride in the morning.”

  She sank into his arms. “Where will you go?”

  “The Temple’s gendarmes will expect me to flee west across the mountains. I’l
l make for Aquitaine and the north.”

  Esclarmonde retrieved her mother’s Cathar medallion from under the mattress and placed its cord around Guilhelm’s neck for a keepsake of her. As he fell asleep in her arms, she begged the sun to delay its rebirth.

  Watch and pray that you may not be born in the flesh, but that you may leave the bitter bondage of this life.

  - The Secret Sayings of the Savior

  XV

  Foix

  August 1205

  The wizened midwife stopped at the threshold of the lying-in room to search for evil shadows. Satisfied with the thoroughness of the lime wash, she traced a pentagram on the floor stones. “The moon is waning. A baneful hour, it is. She’d best give up the litter before midnight.”

  “I did not bring you here to cast horoscopes,” scolded the Marquessa.

  “A hen crowed this morn below my window.”

  “You heard no such thing!”

  The midwife traced her finger along the window battens to find cracks that might allow the insipid demons to enter and foul the birthing. “A hen turned rooster is an evil omen.”

  “Cease your inane prattle before she hears you. It’s her first.”

  The midwife nudged the door to the hall and found Roger waiting alone, evidence for the village gossip that the father may not have been Esclarmonde’s husband. “The succubi flock in droves to a bastard. My fee is doubled.”

  “You delivered my daughter for a third of that!”

  “A fatherless babe fights the world. Twice the trouble, twice the pay.”

  Extorted by the ever-present sword of death that hung over a birthing room, the Marquessa had no choice but to wave the wily crone to the task.

  The midwife commenced her preparations by spreading straw around the birthing stool and sprinkling it with wax, snakeskins, and herbs. In the center of this menagerie she set a miniature carving of St. Margaret, the patron saint of laboring women. She opened the cupboards, tightened the oiled linen curtains, and tossed pinecones into the hearth to sweat away any lingering spirits. The chamber soon became a stinking, oppressive oven. She clapped her hands to chase the flies and clucked, “In with the heifer.”

  Phillipa led Esclarmonde to the stool at the foot of the bed. Loupe and Chandelle, both four years old, followed them a few steps behind. Esclarmonde’s stomach was distended and her turgid eyes were rimmed pink with pain.

  The midwife wrapped Esclarmonde in the frayed birthing girdle that had been kept for generations in St. Volusien’s sacristy. She dropped a pebble and ordered her to pick it up in a test. “How close are the grippings?”

  “I’ve lost count!” gasped Esclarmonde. “My God, I ache!”

  “Her water is pallid,” warned the Marquessa.

  The midwife measured the womb’s descent and shook her head woefully. “The belly rides high. The child should have lowered by now.”

  “I’m suffocating!” cried Esclarmonde.

  Phillipa pressed a wet compress to Esclarmonde’s blistering forehead. “Won’t you allow her to rest?”

  The midwife thrust three magical stones into Esclarmonde’s palms and pulled her up from the stool. “She must stay on her feet. To the stairs. Avoid moving her in circles.”

  Esclarmonde was marched up and down the tower staircase until she became so enervated that she could not stand without assistance. When that torment produced no results, she was placed over a heated cauldron to steam the birth opening. Throughout this torturous ordeal, she cursed Jourdaine for having found a way to continue his violence on her from the grave. Soon after leaving Gascony, her moon flux had stopped. She arrived days later in Foix racked by morning sickness. In the intervening seven months, she had grown increasingly despondent over the lack of news about Guilhelm and the prospect of giving birth to a child sired by the man she had detested.

  When dawn arrived with no progress, the midwife resorted to more drastic measures. She allowed Esclarmonde to lay on the bed and required her to swallow scraps of cloth inscribed with the names of saints. Esclarmonde struggled to force the imitation hosts down her throat while the midwife chanted charms to speed the magic:

  This be my remedy for hateful slow birth,

  this be my remedy for heavy difficult birth,

  this be my remedy for hateful imperfect birth.

  Up I go, step over ye,

  with living child, not a dead one,

  with full-born one, not a—

  The door flew open. Folques, draped in his red sacramental stole, invaded the room. “What pagan abomination of the Eucharist is this?”

  Outraged by the trespass, the Marquessa covered Esclarmonde with a sheet for modesty. “You have no warrant here!”

  “The Almighty has warrant against infanticide!”

  “You believe I’d harm my own child?” cried Esclarmonde.

  “You absconded before testifying at the murder inquest.”

  Esclarmonde gasped, breathless from the piercing pangs in her lower back. “Give proof of my complicity!”

  “The crime has already been solved,” said Folques. “The heinous deed was committed by the Templar Montanhagol.”

  Bathed in sweat, Esclarmonde bolted up from the bed. “That’s a lie! You banished him to the Holy Land!”

  Folques produced a confession signed in the Templar’s hand. Esclarmonde tried to focus her fractured thoughts. Guilhelm must have planted the evidence to exonerate her after she had fallen asleep that night in Gascony.

  Folques enjoyed her discomfited reaction. “He will be apprehended in due time. And your assistance in the crime will be demonstrated.”

  “Call my brother!”

  Folques thwarted Phillipa’s attempt to leave the room. “The Count has been served with the decree ordering the child’s baptism.”

  Esclarmonde was about to protest the illegality of that injunction when she was seized by another spasm. The midwife placed a sponge soaked in henbane under her nostrils, which were already inflamed by the pepper applied to induce sneezing. Her vital signs were so weak that the midwife dared not raise her to the birthing stool.

  Unnerved by the shrieks and curses, Folques retreated a step, having been warned by his Cistercian brothers that a birthing chamber was particularly susceptible to attaching fiends. “Has she been bled?”

  “I’m not running a plague charnel!” snapped the midwife.

  Folques circled the bed with his crucifix hoisted for protection. “Heaven requires a predetermined number of souls be saved on Judgment Day. If she denies the child the salvation of the Church, she must be cut open.”

  Esclarmonde lurched and convulsed. The midwife tried to assuage her throes with the palliative sponge, but Folques captured her hand.

  “Desist from the medicinals!” commanded Folques. “Scripture forbids relief from the sorrows wrought by Eve’s sin!”

  “The child is trying to come by the feet first!” said the midwife.

  “What does that mean?” asked Folques.

  The midwife spat a black wad of root chew at the monk’s sandals to curse the stupidity of men. “In most cases, a body follows!” While being sermonized on the travails required of woman, she escaped under the sheet to examine the womb. The fetus was unnaturally reversed and the cervix would not dilate. The harder Esclarmonde struggled to push it out, the more the infant resisted.

  “Unleash it!” said Folques. “Holy Church commands it!”

  Rattled by his threats, the midwife worked desperately to shift the breach. “I can’t deliver the babe without risking injury to the lady!”

  Folques fumbled for the chalice in his traveling bag. He hurriedly performed the miracle of transformation and held the Body of Christ to Esclarmonde’s exerting face. “Surrender it! Or I’ll force the Eucharist down your throat!”

  Esclarmonde turned purple from the exertions. “You darkened me with one of your damnable sacraments! You’ll not curse me with another!”

  “It comes!” shouted the midwife. “Heat the
canal with screams!”

  The women elbowed Folques aside and wailed over the bed to raise the vibrations. Esclarmonde feared the infant was going to leave her dead. A roll of linen was forced into her mouth to protect her tongue. A piercing cry shook the room—the women suddenly ceased their shrieking.

  “A boy!” announced the midwife.

  Folques rushed up to pronounce the sacrament over the newborn and was stopped short by a horrific discovery. Denied a view by the arched sheet over her knees, Esclarmonde could not understand why the pain had not subsided. Why was the midwife still splitting her if the child was freed?

  “Lord Christ protect us.” Ashen-faced, the midwife brought out a second fetus—a blue-faced girl whose neck was wrapped by the birth cord. “The lad has strangled his sister.”

  Esclarmonde heard those words only vaguely. As if trapped in a distant dream, she could make no sense of the commotion swirling around her.

  Phillipa took the infant girl from the midwife and frantically dug mucus from its clogged mouth. The tiny body hung limp. She swigged a mouthful of wine and sprayed the liquid into its throat, but the babe’s caked eyes remained closed. She placed a feather under its nose and prayed for movement, to no avail. With a crazed look, she forced the stillborn girl on Folques. “Will you baptize her? Where is your god for her?”

  Folques recoiled from the mucous-slathered clump. “Take it away!”

  Phillipa kissed the stillborn’s head and prayed for her return to the Light.

  The midwife mumbled lamentations while measuring off four finger lengths on the birth cord. She doubled the ligature and powered it with crushed chervil, then lifted the bloodied Armor of Fortune to inspect the blackened caul for signs. When the surviving boy wailed in a demand not to be ignored, she looked down and saw a blue vein striating his temple—the infamous Artery of Death. She glanced ominously at Esclarmonde and muttered, “This one will kick at you for the rest of your days.”

  Folques crossed his breast as an antidote against the malignancy. “The fouled birth is the result of illicit coitus!”

  “Enough!” cried Phillipa.