The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  Come to me, Chandelle.

  She instinctively opened her eyes to find the source of that command. The veil of blindness had been torn away. The flames leapt at her like dragons. This is what fire looks like! She turned, and for the first time, saw her mother’s face.

  Withering in the white heat, Corba sensed the miracle.

  Chandelle raised her palm before her own eyes. How strange, this flesh. It melts like snow. Her skin dripped around the white-hot etching stone. She brought Jean’s drawing closer and saw the outlines of his smiling face. God had granted her this last blessing. Her mother’s hand tightened on hers, then released. A storm of embers exploded into sparks and flew toward the one great Sun.

  Come to me, Chandelle.

  Otto watched in stunned disbelief as the three women turned black in the voracious flames. He muttered to himself, “They walk willingly to their deaths for Satan?”

  “For true Christianity,” corrected Bernard, who lay on the ground, his red eyes bathed in grief. “A state of grace you will never know.” With assistance, he struggled to his feet, wincing from the pain in his swollen leg.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” demanded Otto.

  “To a better place, I pray.”

  The lapsed Occitan soldiers braced Bernard by wrapping his arms around their shoulders and walked with him into the stockade.

  On the horizon, Loupe reined up with the two hundred Toulousian knights who had joined her relief force. The sky had turned the strange color of molten gold. In the valley, an eddy of slate smoke swirled up. She cantered her chestnut stallion a few paces closer and saw the flames rising above the clearing at the foot of the pog.

  Bernard was being carried into the inferno.

  She spurred into a gallop. The Toulousian knights, informed that they had arrived too late, turned back north—all but the squire who had come to her defense in Raymond’s court. The boy’s rouncy pawed the frozen ground in protest, but he finally gained its obeisance and lashed to catch up with Loupe.

  Otto walked among the last of the Cathars while perfunctorily hearing their refusals to recant. He glanced toward the far ridge and caught sight of a distant churn of dust. Two riders were charging toward him. He stood frozen, unable to register the improbable sortie, then shouted, “Finish it!”

  The alerted crusaders slammed the stockade gate and threaded a pole through its rungs. Inside the burning palisades, Bernard heard the frenetic shouts of the mustering French. He peered through a crack in the stakes and saw the crusaders scrambling for their stacked weapons. His heart leapt—Loupe had survived! He fought to break out but could not force a breach. Denied, he sank to his knees in the churning smoke, coughing and suffocating. He tried to warn Loupe to go back, but his throat was too seared to make a sound above the clamoring of the French rutters who were mounting to meet Loupe’s suicidal attack.

  “I want her alive!” ordered Otto.

  The French archers formed ranks and fired. Loupe’s fractious stallion revolted at the enfilade. She heard a crying gasp behind her. The squire was bent back against his cantle, his skivered chest drenched in blood. She leaned into her stallion’s mane and circled the engulfed stockade searching for a breach. Bernard’s scorched hands slid from the timbers and disappeared. She drew her sword and spurred into the oncoming phalanx. The French were so astonished by her reckless charge that they ceased forming up and waited for her to turn back. Instead, she pierced their line and scythed any who came within reach. She tried to angle toward the stockade, but her horse shied from the roaring flames. She circled the conflagration and screamed, “Bernard!”

  The firestorm drowned out Bernard’s dying answer. Surrounded, Loupe threw the sword over the palisades in the futile hope that he would hack himself free. The crusaders converged and tried to drag her from the saddle, but she drove them off long enough to lash free and spur west.

  Loupe was awakened by a distant shout. Her head throbbed like a tabor drum. How long had she been asleep? Recouping her wits, she flinched with a jerk and recoiled into the darkness, reminded of where she had dragged herself. Spent with fatigue, she had abandoned her lamed horse earlier that morning and had climbed for hours up the ragged ridge that led to this cave in the Tarascon wilderness where her father had often taken her on buck hunts as a girl. She prayed that the voice she kept hearing was a figment of the disorienting nightmares. She edged near the yawning gape to make certain. A flicker of torches appeared in the wooded ravine below the ridge.

  “Surrender, cousin, and you will be dealt with mercifully.”

  She muttered a curse. Otto was with the French rutters who had been chasing her. She shouted, “I’ve seen enough of your mercy!”

  Otto’s unctuous inflection became more distinct. He was moving toward her. “Tell me what your aunt kept within the confines of Montsegur and I will see to it that you are safely delivered to Toulouse.”

  She could not see his face to assess the sincerity of the offer. Could information about the Cathar religion truly be all he wanted? She was so tired and hungry from the chase that she could barely force her legs to move. What did it matter now if she revealed the little she knew of these hermits and their superstitions? Bernard and all of her family were dead. Nothing could be done for—

  “Loupe! Don’t—” That call was throttled in mid-shout.

  Startled, she rushed to the entrance for a better vantage. Under the murky light of the torches, Otto held a blade against Bernard’s throat. The monk had dragged him from the pyre to use as bait. He forced Bernard a few steps deeper into the cavity to coax her closer.

  “Deliver what I want,” said Otto, “and he is yours.”

  On his knees, Bernard tried to warn her away. “Say nothing—”

  Otto stifled the warning by pressing the dagger into the seared flesh under Bernard’s chin. “You and I are kindred souls. You are not like the others. You once spared my life. Allow me to return the favor.”

  Loupe tried to marshal her racing thoughts. Montsegur had capitulated. Count Raymond had given up all resistance to the invasion. Her country’s cause was lost. Without Bernard, she had no reason to live. She dropped her weapon and came forward to give herself up.

  Bernard thrust his windpipe into the knife’s edge.

  “No!” screamed Loupe.

  Bernard fell face first to the ground with his throat gushing blood. Otto stood frozen, avoiding any sudden movement that might spook Loupe. She trembled with despair as she watched the life slowly drain from Bernard. She lifted her vengeful eyes to Otto’s expectant face and drew her dagger. She took a threatening step toward him—and retreated into the protection of the cave.

  Otto kicked the ground in anger at the lost opportunity. He signaled for his men to give chase.

  Minutes later, the soldiers returned empty-handed. “There must be a dozen tunnels in there,” reported an officer. “Should we divide up?”

  Otto stared at Bernard’s lifeless body and curled a scheming half-grin.

  Loupe groped her way through the oppressive darkness, her calculation of time skewed by the many hours she had endured without light. The damnable roar in her ears was so loud that she could barely hear her own thoughts. She crumpled to her haunches, too exhausted to take another step. She rested against the wall and vowed to take respite for only a few minutes, lest she pass out.

  Some time later—how much she could not be certain—the stale air moved around her with a sudden swish. She thought she heard the sounds of rustling, perhaps footsteps. She reached for her dagger, as she had a hundred times in this black subterranean maze. A flint struck a stone near her ear—a small flame was brought to life on the wick of a candle. A dozen gaunt Cathars crawled into its penumbra. She shook her head to chase the hallucination, but the pallid faces remained hovering over her.

  An old man in ragged black robes caressed her forehead to confirm his astonishing discovery. “The Templar said you made it past the French ... but we gave his report little c
redence.”

  “What Templar?”

  “The one with the iron arm. By God’s mercy, he escaped from Montsegur and came to us at Usson with the sacred possessions.”

  Loupe struggled to her knees. If Guilhelm had reached Montsegur, he would never have left the mount without Esclarmonde. But what did this Cathar hermit mean by sacred possessions? She swayed from the enervation and nearly collapsed, blurred with faintness. “Do you have food?”

  The old Cathar cast his scooped eyes down. “We have come here to follow the example of the Mother.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We are taking the rite of starvation.”

  “Esclarmonde ... starved herself?”

  The hermit’s silence confirmed the incomprehensible act.

  Loupe’s eyes flooded with tears. She kicked at the wall in impotent anger. Esclarmonde had promised to hold out. Her aunt had taught these people to give up on this world too easily. Otto no doubt believed that he had massacred all of the Cathars of significance in Occitania. If he captured her, the daughter of the Wolf, he could trumpet to Rome that he had eradicated the last heretic noble in Foix. That milksop of the Devil’s bastard! She would have revenge on her treacherous cousin yet. She braced the old Cathar man by his frail shoulders and insisted, “You cannot die here. You must keep your faith alive.” She shook her head to chase the clodding cobwebs of fatigue. “Follow me.”

  The Cathars were too weak from fasting to protest. She took the lead and retraced her steps toward the mouth of the cave, reversing in her memory’s eye every turn she had taken. After what seemed an hour of crawling, they came upon an expansive grotte with a large stalagmite growing up from its floor. She rubbed her hand across graffiti that had been carved into the stalagmite’s triangular formation. She brought the candle closer to the inscription and read:

  On this day of our Lord, the 6th of May 1192,

  Esclarmonde de Foix professed her love for the Templar.

  They were in Lombrives.

  Esclarmonde had once brought her here as a girl to visit the throne of Pyrene. She remembered from her childhood explorations that the entrance was not far off. She hurried with the Cathars toward the direction of the mouth that she had entered decades ago. Soon the tunnel widened and the floor eased its incline. They were near the end, she was certain of it. She took a few more paces and became disoriented. They should have found daylight by now. She took another step and stumbled over something soft and bloated. The stench of burnt flesh attacked her nostrils. She reached down and felt a viscous wetness.

  Bernard’s corpse.

  She bent to all fours and dry-retched. Why had Otto dragged his body into the cave? She ran her hands across the wall. The stones were creased at intervals. She slid her fingers along the interstices and brought the taste of fresh mortar to her lips. Her mind went blank for a fractured moment. She looked at the Cathars and saw in their blanched faces the reflection of her own fear. She pounded her fists against the stones, but they would not move.

  Otto had walled them in.

  She sank to her haunches, undone. During the many battles of her life, she had never broken. But now she lay senseless, unable to link coherent thoughts. She watched in detached numbness as the old Cathar calmly prepared his flock for the cruel fate that awaited them. He directed them to lie in a circle with their feet splayed like rays from a sun. Sobbing, she pulled Bernard’s corpse to her side, praying against all hope for the miracle of a pulse.

  “Do you wish the Consolamentum, my child?” asked the Cathar hermit.

  She was stunned by his offer. Her hatred of his faith was well known. Yet this man was willing to share the gift for which he and his people had toiled and suffered their entire lives to gain. A reflection of subdued light crossed her line of sight. She looked down and found a medallion hanging at Bernard’s breastbone. She brought it closer and caressed its raised face—a triple cross. It was a merel, just like the one her mother and Esclarmonde had worn.

  He took the vow.

  Bernard had often confided his growing admiration for Esclarmonde’s faith, but she had never thought him serious about conversion. He must have made the decision in the throes of despair. She had let him down. She had let them all down. Her fighting had brought them only more suffering and death. With a cry of anguish, she turned to the old man and, though fearing his answer, asked, “Will I ever see him again?”

  “All sparks must return to the Sun,” he assured her.

  She brushed a finger across Bernard’s cold hand. Was his soul confronting the torments of the Catholic Hell or the Cathar Realm of Light? An unbearable sadness plunged her into despair. He had promised never to leave her. But if Esclarmonde’s teachings were true, they would never again be together. He had gained release from the cycle of incarnations and she would be returned to this miserable world to pay for her transgressions. In a deadened voice, she heard herself ask, “Must I believe to be saved?”

  The old Cathar soothed her with a smile of compassion. “Sheep believe that the shepherd will care for them, even on the day they are led to the slaughterhouse. No beneficent god would condition His salvation on a blind belief in the dogmas of man. The Mother said that the God of Light wishes only that we seek Him with all our hearts.”

  Loupe brought the expiring taper closer to the old Cathar’s leathery face. There was a strange familiarity to his calming voice. She was struck by how much he resembled Bishop Castres. For a fleeting moment, she entertained the possibility, having been told that the mystical holy man had always appeared at the moment of crisis in an initiate’s life. But she quickly dismissed the thought as the poisoned product of her fracturing mind. The venerable heresiarch had died several years ago. She removed the dagger from her belt and cast it aside. “I chose the path of violence.”

  “In the time it takes to draw a breath,” the Cathar hermit promised, “the flash of gnosis can redeem a lifetime.”

  “How does one find this knowing?”

  He pressed his palsied hands to her forehead to transmit the blessing of the Light. “It seems you already have.”

  He was only trying to ease her terrors, she knew. With the blood of a thousand killings on her hands, she could not be so easily saved. Would this world be as depraved when she returned to it? As the darkness enveloped her, she thought she heard a faint voice coming high from a ledge above Pyrene’s throne.

  You are the Light of the World. You will lead our people to the Kingdom.

  She dismissed the echo as only a hunger hallucination. Then, a distant memory from her first visit to this cave came to mind. Esclarmonde had told her that words of truth spoken inside Lombrives never fade. Hundreds of years in the future, she had promised, those who entered this abode of Pyrene with a pure heart would hear the same words resounding up and echoing from the center of the world.

  It was only a troubadour’s fable. But as Loupe lay waiting for her earthly cares to come to an end, she shouted the name of every brave Occitan who had perished on Montsegur.

  The sign of your having this Light is your vision of the end.

  - Rumi

  XLI

  Zaragoza, Aragon

  November 1250

  The sheave blocks squealed in warning as the strappado ropes tightened again. Arms bound behind his back, Guilhelm was hoisted into the smoky haze that hung below the slanted timbers of the old Mudejar tower. The diabolical contrivance of pain wrenched his elbows overhead and slowly ripped the tendons from his shoulder blades.

  The punishing drop revived him. He awoke in a pool of his own blood with ears throbbing against the wet flagstones. Peppery incense assaulted his nostrils and ignited a spasm of coughing. Through blurred vision he saw what appeared to be a garlanded maiden subduing the jaws of a lion. He blinked the sweat from his swollen eyes, convinced that his mind had finally snapped under the torture. In these last moments before he gave up his spirit, the significant incidents of his life were cascading before him in a menagerie
drained of realism yet somehow suffused with symbolic profundity.

  The first image faded and was replaced by one of a Roman pontiff holding a staff crowned by the Cathar cross. Next came a burning tower with its defenders leaping to their deaths. And then a woman’s hand offered the miraculous Grail with its spiritual waters spouting forth like a nourishing fountain. The visions began floating past him with greater speed: Starving refugees rejected by Mother Church knelt in freezing snow; an armored knight charged into battle at Muret; the Black Harbinger of Death, blessed by the Pope, entered Beziers on a white stallion; a blazing Sun heralded the rebirth of an enlightened soul; a black-robed Cathar hermit stood on a cliff holding aloft the lantern of spiritual gnosis. The litany reached its climax: A wimpled Grail priestess, shrouded in the bluish mist of a silvery moon, sat in a temple bordered by two pillars, one white and one black. In her lap, she held a scroll of incalculable worth.

  “Who is this woman?”

  That question roused Guilhelm from his anguished reverie. He looked up and saw Otto displaying a hand-painted miniature, one of several in a deck, drawn on scraped rectangles of calfskin and stretched around thin boards. The strange icons resembled the gambling cards he had seen crafted by Mameluke slaves in Egypt. He realized that he had been witnessing not the final roll call of his life, but the gaudy creations of some occult illuminator.

  “We found these pagan idolatries in the possession of a bard in Toulouse,” said Otto. “They are being copied in stealth and passed from city to city like holy relics. Do you know what purpose they serve?”

  Guilhelm turned away, refusing to admit his ignorance.

  Otto forced him to examine the card that depicted the seated priestess. “She holds a scroll bearing the letters TORA. Is it a demonic code?”