by Glen Craney
“And thus is he responsible for the conduct of your domain?”
“I am answerable to him in vassalage. As I was to the King of Aragon before you gutted him.”
“If I give proof that heretics have been protected within the Count’s borders, will you concede his dereliction of spiritual duty?”
Roger suspected sophistry. “To my knowledge, he harbors no heretics.”
“No?” Folques tarried for effect. “Was your wife not a Cathar?”
Apoplectic, Roger had to be restrained. “Had you not murdered her, she could answer for herself!”
Folques beseeched the Council with arms outstretched in protest. “I have never shed a drop of blood, let Christ be my witness!”
Roger rushed the platform like a snorting bull. “More than a hundred thousand souls, old and young, have been destroyed by this faux Bishop!”
The Council members gasped in disbelief, uninformed by the Cistercians, who had concealed the true number of casualties in the decade-long war.
Folques dissembled the slumped pose of a man assailed by slander. To divert the Council’s attention, he resorted to his old troubadour flair for performance by striding down the length of the chamber, bobbing his head slightly as if entranced in a prayer of forgiveness for his accuser. Suddenly, drawn back from the rapture of unjust persecution, he turned on Roger with becalmed calculation. “Do you deny that your own sister is a heretic sorceress?”
Roger’s indignation lost its edge. “I am not my sister’s keeper.”
“I can produce witnesses who will attest that she took refuge in your chateau at Foix during de Montfort’s siege.”
“When did hospitality to one’s own family become a crime?”
Folques moved a step closer with each interrogatory. “The stronghold of Montsegur is part of your domain?”
“I have never set foot on that rock.”
Folques swiveled sideways to confront Loupe. “And your daughter?”
“Leave her be!” demanded Roger.
Only then did Innocent notice that a young woman was present. His brows knitted into a frown on seeing Loupe’s masculine attire, a trait deemed evidence of heretical perversity in a female. He motioned her forward, so close that she could see the broken capillaries in his flaccid cheeks. Their eyes locked and exchanged messages that words alone could never adequately convey. Her eyes said that if not for the guards stationed at the ends of the rostrum, she would pounce on him like the animal of her name and tear at his throat with her teeth. His eyes were those of Yahweh chastising Job, asking who was she to question him so defiantly, he who wielded God’s power on earth. When she refused to back down, the pontiff broke off their battle of glares and ordered, “If she is of majority age, she shall answer the question.”
Folques hovered over her. “You are the niece of Esclarmonde de Foix?”
“I am.”
“Has that woman ever taken you to the place called Montsegur?”
Loupe glanced at her father, but he was powerless to intervene. “Yes.”
“Is your aunt a priestess in the Cathar sect?”
“She is, but—”
“From the mouths of babes shall come the truth!” roared Folques.
“I have nothing to do with my sister’s sins!” said Roger. “She was bequeathed the fief of Montsegur by my father. By law, I could not divest her of it. I swear by the crucified Christ that no pilgrim was ever mistreated in my county.”
“The souls of those monks gutted at Fanjeaux would swear otherwise!”
“This Bishop is the Antichrist!” cried Roger.
Innocent gripped his armrests, unnerved by the hurling of charges. “Baron, you have set forth your right, but you have sorely diminished ours.”
“He milks vengeance against my family!” said Roger. “When he was a paid singer of lewd songs, his advances were rebuked by the woman he condemns!”
The assembly surged forward shouting objections.
Innocent swooned from the clamor. His attendants rushed to his side with weak tea, but he brushed them away and closed his eyes in meditation. After a delay so lengthy that the deacons feared he had slipped into a coma, the pontiff lifted his lids and pronounced in a less-than-convincing voice, “I find no evidence that these Occitan barons are other than good Catholics.”
Folques stood petrified in disbelief. The conniving Italian was attempting to rewrite the annals of his pontificate to remove all stain of controversy. Armed with this imprimatur, the Occitan barons would wage a clandestine war of attrition while proclaiming a disingenuous obedience to the Church. The de Montforts would be defanged and his Cistercians would be left to cower defenseless in their abbeys. He had to force Innocent to admit his role in front of the Council, or all was lost. Walking across the rows of canons and bishops, he spoke with dripping piety, “Holy Father, none will ever forget your stirring words to those who took the Cross in the Languedoc. ‘Let them march as ones who had seen the Light bearing fire! Let them carry the Cross and the sword!’ If you give back these lands to the heretics, good Christians will have died for naught, deceived in the sanctity of their cause.”
Innocent’s jaw tightened in anger at the public reminder of his complicity. He looked to Almaric for a countering argument, but his old classmate refused to come to his aid. Desperate for a moment’s reprieve, the pontiff fixed upon one of the mosaics on the far wall, a depiction of St. Callistus trampling the schismatics under his foot. After contemplating the scene at length, he roused as if having been visited with a divine epiphany. “You must forgive the lapses of an aged mind. I have not been well, as you know. The Bishop of Toulouse has raised points that I had not fully considered. My ruling was incomplete.”
Roger stood to protest a codicil to the judgment, but he was too late.
“Simon de Montfort shall keep all lands freed from the heretical plague except those inhabited by widows and orphans.” The pontiff glanced at the elder Raymond with a faltering look of deflected culpability. “The Count de Toulouse has allowed this disease of the soul to flourish in his land. In punishment, he shall be disenfranchised and banished from the Languedoc for the remainder of his life.”
A confused silence hovered in the stagnant Roman air. In the span of minutes, Occitania had been saved, only to be condemned. Folques eased into his chair and shot a lipless smile at the elder Count Raymond.
Stunned by the volte-face, Roger tried to salvage compensation for the younger Raymond. “The son has committed no crime! Why is he disinherited?”
Innocent studied the youthful Raymond, who had stood to hear his fate. “Do not despair, my boy. You walk in darkness now, but you must seek the sustenance of our Lord, and He will offer you light.”
Young Raymond held a protective pose over his prostrate father. “So dark is the shadow cast by these Cistercian usurpers that there is no light left in my homeland! They have broken my father! But they have yet to deal with me!”
Incensed by that threat, the assembly’s mood turned turbulent. Before the Pope could issue more punitive rulings, Roger rushed Loupe through the nave amid hissed promises of Hell’s damnation. They fought their way through the doors and down the portico steps past the crush of beggars and pilgrims.
“May you yet find Christ,” said a youthful voice.
Loupe spun toward the direction of those Occitan words, the first she had heard uttered by a stranger in Rome. She broke from her father’s grasp and threaded back into the crowd to find their source.
The presumptuous blessing had been spoken by a Cistercian acolyte who looked about her own age and stared at her with the steely, deep-set eyes of a Caliph’s assassin. He possessed a slightly stunted body and an elfish head, closely shaved except for an archipelago of hemp-colored tufts that ran above his ears. His truculent mouth was liver-lipped and his skin was so bloodless that it appeared to be marbled in variegated shades of gray.
“Traitor!” she said. “Keep your preaching to yourself!”
&
nbsp; “You don’t believe in praying for the salvation of others?” he asked.
The acolyte’s self-possessed air of rectitude only inflamed Loupe’s wrath. She shouted at him, “Your priests murdered my mother!”
“You are not the only one who has suffered such a loss.”
“Was your mother taken away?” she demanded.
“Worse. She abandoned me for a pagan god.”
Loupe noticed that the boy had a queer habit of angling his head to one side. Only when he was jostled by a passerby did she see the reason for his effort to maintain a profile to her inspection—his right temple was branched with a repugnant blue vein that throbbed with each beat of his heart. “Who are you?”
The acolyte shunted her behind a portico column. Assured that no one had seen them together, he revealed, “Your cousin.”
“Otto?”
The son that Esclarmonde had lost to the Cistercians placed a finger to his lips for a whisper. “Bishop Folques brought me with him from Grandselve.”
“You must leave that Devil’s handservant and return home,” she pleaded.
“Home to what? To a mother who murdered my father?”
“That is a falsehood fed to you by those monks. My aunt still loves you. The Bishop has kept her away from you all these years for his own evil designs.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Come with me to Foix and I’ll prove it.”
“I will take the novice vows next year,” he said. “Folques is my stepfather. I no longer need a mother.” Seeing Folques emerge on the top step, Otto escaped into the ranks of departing monks to avoid being seen with Loupe.
Loupe tried to go after him, but Roger elbowed his way back through the crowds and captured her arm. “I told you not to leave my side!” He detected her distraction. “What are you looking for?”
In her brief encounter with this cousin, Loupe felt an inexplicable closeness to him, had even understood his anger and feelings of betrayal. Yet she thought it best not to divulge their meeting, fearful that another confrontation could land her father in a Roman prison. She took his hand and ploughed past the leering Italians. As they hurried off, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Otto standing at Folques’s side, still watching her.
The cardinal from Rome too, he comes proclaiming that death and slaughter must lead the way, that in and around Toulouse shall remain no living man, neither noble lady, girl nor pregnant woman, no created thing, no child at the breast, but all must die in fire and flames.
- Chanson de la Croisade Albigeois
XXIX
Toulouse
September, 1216
Folques stood rooted at the embrasure and stared down in disbelief at the thousands of rioting Toulousians who had trapped him inside the Chateau Narbonnaise. The kinetic sky, gray and ominous as his vacillating fortune, was threatening to explode with a torrential rain. Only two weeks earlier, he and Simon had finally subdued this Occitan capital, the last of the heretical cities to hold out. Confident that the defeated remnants of the Black Brotherhood would not risk slinking out from their lairs in the mountains, they had dispatched most of their knights to bastides across the Languedoc to put down the few remaining pockets of resistance. Yet they had failed to plan for the one turn of fate that would revive the war.
Alice de Montfort circled her husband, who sat slouched and impassive, impotent to recall his scattered army. “That Italian snake abandoned us!” she railed. “Just as I knew he would!”
Folques reread the communiqué sent by his liaison in the Curia and tried to fathom how the most powerful man in the world could have been dealt with so basely in death. “The cardinals were in such haste to return to Rome, they didn’t even bury him. Robbers ransacked the Holy Father’s quarters and threw his naked body into a closet.”
“I hope he strangled on his own lies!” shouted Alice. “God rot him in some rat-infested hole!”
Folques had long since become inured to the woman’s vitriol. He offered up a prayer for the soul of Innocent, whose fever-swelled lungs had finally burst while he was convalescing in Perugia. “We must take heart. His successor is said to despise heresy with equal fervor.”
“Honorius is a financier!” shouted Alice. “The Vatican purse strings will now be knotted twice as tight! Our only saving grace is that the fool is older than the Lateran timbers.”
Folques burned the letter to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Black Brotherhood. Innocent’s passing could not have come at a worse hour. Simon had only fifty knights to hold off the uprising and rumors were rampant in the streets that Count Raymond VII, who had succeeded his deceased father as Count of Toulouse, was on the march from Beaucaire with a large force. Dominic had fled north to raise his new order of friars and Almaric remained entrenched in Narbonne, refusing to answer their petitions for troops. More frequently as the years passed, Folques wondered if God was so entertained by this heretic war that when some hard-won advancement was gained, a catastrophe was decreed from Heaven to balance the scales.
“Did you hear me?” demanded Alice.
Folques was rudely jolted from his morose thoughts. “I would have to be deaf not to hear you, madam!”
“How do you intend to extract us from this disaster?”
“Me? Your husband is suzerain of this city!”
“And you are supposed to be the spiritual shepherd of that godless rabble,” she reminded. “Threaten to renew their excommunication.”
Folques bit off a half-laugh. “You think the prospect of Hell daunts them after what they have endured at your husband’s hand?”
Simon suddenly roused from his slumped hibernation. “Go tell the Ocs that I wish to negotiate a truce.”
Folques could not believe his ears, for Simon had never deigned to discuss terms with the Southerners. “They will take it as a sign of weakness.”
Simon stomped his heels against the boards to loosen the thickening blood that threatened to clot in his arthritic legs. “There’s not a rat in that infestation of black vermin that still does not fear me more than Satan. Promise them safe conduct and a full pardon.”
Folques waited for Alice to countermand her husband’s order, but for once the shrieking harridan remained silent. He had learned from hard experience that there was no reasoning with Simon once he had set upon a course of action. With trepidation, he donned his cassock and red sash in the hope that the clerical trappings might afford some small protection from the mob. He fingered his rosary nervously as he descended the tower stairwell and ordered the gates swung open. His unexpected appearance brought rushing toward him hundreds of armed Toulousians in their black bandanas and cloaks, adopted to mock the white habits of his Cistercians.
“Come get your last rites!” the mob shouted.
“Hear me out, my good flock!” Folques held open his shaking hands in pastoral supplication. “I come to you in Christ’s peace.”
“Any more of your peace and we’ll all be dead!” The rebels cleared a path for their masked leader who had shouted that rebuttal.
“I would speak to you eye to eye,” said Folques.
“These are my vestments. Discard those robes you’ve purchased with our blood, and I’ll accommodate you.”
Folques stole a worried glance at the tower. The de Montforts were watching him from behind the aperture. If he failed to gain the truce, Alice might order the door barred and leave him to the mob’s mercy. He reclaimed silence and announced, “I bring an offer from your Count!”
“Our Count is on his way from St. Gilles,” said the rebel leader.
“De Montfort is your liege! By investiture of King Philip!”
“Who is the King of France to us?”
“Return to your homes,” pleaded Folques. “On the morrow, de Montfort will meet with your consuls to hear your grievances.”
“How do we know that polecat won’t fire our houses?”
Folques held up a Bible as a testament to his good faith. “You have
my word as Christ’s servant! All shall receive clemency!”
The Occitan leader removed his bandana to be heard by all. “Don’t believe him! He shouted the damnations while the Lion slaughtered your kinsmen!”
Folques took a startled step back—he had been negotiating with the Count de Foix’s daughter. If Loupe was left behind to lead the city’s resistance, the Wolf and his ruthless band of guerilla partisans would not be far off. Determined to seize the advantage before her father could return, he shouted over her head, “Is the She-Wolf afraid to meet with de Montfort?”
Loupe was scorched by judging looks. She had heard more than a few grumbles when Roger placed her in temporary command while he led his main force into the Ariege valley to recruit more men and forage for supplies. She would never earn their respect if she waited for her father every time a decision had to be made. It sickened her to parlay with Folques, but she dared not show weakness in the face of his challenge. “All parties shall meet unarmed?”
“On God’s word,” said Folques.
The next morning, Loupe led a delegation of twenty Toulouse burghers and noblemen into the expansive square of the Maison Communale. She and the Occitans took their seats on one side of the long trestle table that held the document bearing the terms of the truce.
Minutes later, Simon rode out from the Narbonnaise at the head of thirty unarmed knights. Raking the perimeter of the square with his blinking eyes, the Norman dismounted and spat in disgust as he commanded the seat across from Loupe. “Where is your feckless whoreson of a father?”
“Avenging my mother’s murder.”
“That heretic bitch that birthed you made two poor choices. The first was betraying God. The second was marrying Satan’s bloodhound.”
“God, it seems,” said Loupe, “has now chosen to betray you.”
Simon dug his grips into the edge of the table, unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a churlish manner, by an Occitan woman no less. “Tell me, does your aunt still bed that Templar coward?”