My father and I rode back together; he had acquitted himself well in the final series of mêlées which ended the tournament, and from which the Roqueville band had emerged victorious, although with several wounded men to carry home. My father was unhurt; his strength with sword and shield was legendary, and, as a young man – he told me as we rode along – he had earned a living from tournaments.
‘It was possible in those days, if you were determined and lucky. Geoffrey de Goncourt and I fought in twenty tournaments in nine months, and between us unhorsed and ransomed thirty knights. We went as far as the River Loire in search of glory and treasure. In those days you were what you got. I began with poor equipment, and a slow horse. Only my sword was fit for a knight.’
‘Did you ever fight in a battle?’
‘The only real battle, more of a skirmish, was in Flanders where I fought for the Normans against the Flemings, and had my horse killed under me. I fought in my next tournament on a borrowed, sorry nag but came up against a weak opponent on a strong horse that became mine. I came away from that day with two warhorses, a palfrey and harnesses. Later at Lagny I captured ten knights and twelve horses in a single day. I couldn’t do that now. Fewer tournaments, better organised. And I relied on my strength; you’re a better swordsman than I am. I battered my opponents into submission. Anyhow, that’s what built Beaufort.’
It was the longest speech I heard my father make, and would have sounded boastful coming from anyone else. I asked him about my vigil.
‘It’s no sin for a Cathar to pray in a Catholic church; it’s your prayers that matter, and there’s no need to pay any attention to the priests and their mumblings.’
We were both Cathar, Credentes, believers, as were all our men, as was Bernard de Roqueville, as was my mother, who died giving birth to me. According to my father she received the Consolamentum on her deathbed and died a Perfect, making him swear to bring me up as Cathar, a Bon Chrétien. Which he did his best to do.
Our beliefs are not set down in detail in any book. Most important, to me at least, was the recognition of the equal and opposite forces of Good and Evil. I had seen enough of the latter in the Languedoc to be a convinced dualist, as the Catholic Church called us. Beyond that, Cathars held that the material world was in a sense unreal, that final salvation could only be achieved by becoming a Perfect, and that as many as nine lives were available to achieve that state.
We hated the Catholic Church, its Pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and monks. As they hated and sought to exterminate us. They tortured anyone they suspected, burned at the stake any Perfect they caught and gave currency to a tissue of lies – orgies, child sacrifice, sodomy – about the Cathars. They would even dig up corpses if they had been denounced as Cathar and burn them at the stake, as if to show that the long arm of the Church could reach beyond the grave. All this made them easy to hate.
The Perfect Guillaume Authie once told me, ‘You can choose between the Cathar church, which flees and forgives, and the other, which fetters and flays; the former holds to the straight path of the Apostles, and does not lie or deceive, the latter is the Church of Rome.’
Not too much was expected of us as Credentes. To tell the truth, to confess our sins to a Perfect at reasonable intervals, and to take the Consolamentum, the last rites of the Cathars, on our deathbed if we could find a Perfect in time, was all that was asked. If you were determined to become a Perfect in this incarnation, you were expected after the Consolamentum to go through the Endura – that is, to eat and drink nothing until you died. This had little appeal for me. I always planned to take my chance on eight more incarnations.
The Perfects were different. They too were expected to tell the truth, and they did, which made them wonderfully forthcoming witnesses for the Inquisition, although they were tortured first anyway. They could not make love, eat meat or eggs, although fish was permitted, they had to pray many times a day and fast three days a week. Several times a year they had to fast for forty days and forty nights.
These were good men, risking their lives to look after us, normally travelling in pairs, and wearing dark blue or dark green cloaks when it was safe to do so. I always felt a better man after spending a few days, or even hours, in their company, although this was a feeling that was not easy to maintain once they had departed.
For a number of years when my father was young there was a tacit acceptance of the Cathars in our part of the Languedoc. There was no attempt to seek us out, no burnings, a policy of live and let live, although that couldn’t last forever given the passionate Cathar denunciation of all that the Catholic Church stood for. In the end it turned out not to be about dogma or belief but about money and power. The growing refusal of Cathars to pay tithes hit the Church where it hurt most, in its money bags.
When the Papal Legate Peter of Castelnau was killed on his way back to Rome by the men of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, Pope Innocent declared a crusade, a crusade accompanied by the full panoply of indulgences – forgiveness of sins, cancellation of debts, and, most important of all, the promise of land and treasure confiscated from the Cathars. All this for forty days of service on the mainland, without crossing the Mediterranean to the much less hospitable Near East.
It took time for the long arm of the Church to reach our backwater in the valley of the Baise, but reach us it did. It began with a demand from Toulouse that Bernard de Roqueville pay the ten years of tithes he owed – we all owed – to the Bishop of Pamiers. When Bernard sent the messenger packing there was an uneasy calm for three months, and then the Church returned with a well-armed force of a hundred men, commanded by one of de Montfort’s nephews.
They took us by surprise at Beaufort, passing us at first light and on towards Roqueville before we could warn them. They discovered our sentry, one of the older herdsmen, fast asleep and didn’t bother to kill him, but took most of our beasts on their way through. The gates at Roqueville had been closed, but they were not able to bring in their cattle, and half the herd was collected by the crusaders and driven back down the valley to Carcassonne. All this in a single day, without any killing, although two of the Roqueville herdsmen were badly beaten when they tried to prevent the round-up. We had spent the day ingloriously behind the walls of Beaufort, guarding what was left of our herd, aware that we had failed in our duty.
Bernard de Roqueville was a choleric man at the best of times and stealing his cattle was not to be tolerated. A few days later he arrived at Beaufort escorted by four of his men and asked to see my father on his own.
Bernard had rarely visited Beaufort, never in my lifetime that I could remember, and would always send for my father if there was anything to discuss. We would both go to Roqueville for the great feast on New Year’s Day; other than that, six months or a year could easily pass by without meeting Bernard.
It was the day our lives began to change. Bernard sat at the table in the big room upstairs, his back to the fire, picking at the bread and cheese that Michel had put in front of him. There was red wine in our only silver goblet, untouched until the end of the meeting. He was wearing a leather jerkin over a brown linen shirt, linen trousers tucked into high leather boots, and before he spoke he took off his gloves and laid them on the table, straightening the fingers as he did so.
‘I’ve learned that the Inquisitors, Stephen of St-Thibery and William Arnald, will be crossing the big river at Avignonet in four days’ time. I want you and your son,’ and here he looked at me for the first time, ‘with three men that you can trust, to kill them.’
‘Kill unarmed Dominicans…?’ My father’s question trailed off.
‘They both carry weapons, they’d be long dead otherwise, and they’re never without an armed guard of four or five men, Italians, loyal to them and to the Pope. These two are bad men; they’ve tortured and burned Cathars in this part of the Languedoc for two years now, and it’s time it ended.’
‘Why us?’
‘You and your son for two reasons. You failed to
warn us when they came for our cattle.’
My father tried to protest.
‘I know, I know. Nevertheless they came past you. More important, I trust you to do this and to keep quiet about it afterwards. I don’t want it traced back to Roqueville.’
So it’s all right if it’s traced back to Beaufort, I thought, but said nothing.
Bernard stood up, as did my father. He took a long drink from the goblet of wine and offered it to my father, who finished what was left. This seemed to seal what had been discussed. Then Bernard clasped my father’s shoulder for a moment and left the room.
We stayed where we were, silent until we heard the clatter of hooves as Bernard and his escort trotted out under the dovecote and back to Roqueville.
‘We don’t have a choice,’ said my father. ‘It will be your first taste of real fighting.’
I was excited. Bernard had made it clear that these were not unarmed innocents. The excitement lasted while we prepared; my father selected Michel and two of our strongest men, all sworn to secrecy, although the fact that we would be away for a week was bound to cause gossip and speculation.
‘Lances?’ I asked.
‘Useless for what we’re going to do. Sword, crossbow and twenty bolts will be enough. No shields.’
I noticed he had brought his crested helm.
‘We will kill them all,’ he said, seeing my surprised look. We got our horses ready, packed enough food and wine for three days and set off for Avignonet at dawn the next day. We trotted through country that was new to me, drier and less fertile than the Roqueville valley. We passed several hamlets, and in each of them streets emptied and doors were bolted on our arrival. We looked threatening, five men in chain mail carrying crossbows and swords, clearly bent on a mission which each hamlet hoped would not involve them. We were spoken to by no one, even in those places which my father knew to be Cathar.
We arrived a day before the Inquisitors were due, in good time to see the lie of the land and plan our tactics. The big river was fordable in only one place, a mile outside the little village of Avignonet, and the track either side of the ford led through oak woods, providing good cover at that time of year.
‘They should be here around midday tomorrow,’ said my father. ‘We’ll watch the crossing from first light.’
We made a camp in the woods on the south side of the ford, lit a fire and ate the dried beef, bread and cheese that we had brought with us from Beaufort.
‘No wine,’ my father said. ‘We’ll need clear heads tomorrow.’
We slept next to the fire on blankets over pine branches; the smell was clean and resinous, but I found it difficult to sleep, although my father next to me was gently snoring within minutes of resting his head on his saddlebag. We took it in turn to guard the horses, which we had tethered at the edge of our small clearing. In the morning we had a breakfast of bread, water and dried apples, mounted and listened carefully while my father told us what to do.
‘We’ll take them in the middle of the river, where the water comes up to a horse’s belly, where they will be at their slowest. We won’t charge, the river’s too deep, and we want them to think we’re peaceful travellers. Michel will watch the ford from the edge of the wood, the rest of us will stay back until the signal. Leave the Inquisitors to my son and to me – that way you’ll avoid excommunication.’ I laughed at my father’s little joke; the others all looked too stern to smile.
It went much as my father had planned. Michel gave a long whistle when he saw them on the far side approaching the ford, and the five of us trotted down to meet them. There was a narrow band of mist along the river, and by the time the Inquisitors and their escort reached the river only their heads and shoulders were visible.
They drew their swords as soon as they saw us; the Italians were slow to get out their crossbows. The two Inquisitors both wore white tunics with the crusader’s red cross, which made them easy to identify. I shot one of the Inquisitors from close range with my crossbow and my father cut down the other. The bolt didn’t kill my man, although blood stained his white tunic so I could no longer see the red cross; he plucked at the bolt with his left hand, tried to draw his sword with his right, then groaned and toppled into the water, disappearing under the surface as my horse trampled him down. The skirmish turned into a wild mêlée of shouting, hacking men, in which it was hard to distinguish friend from foe in the mist that shrouded us all from the waist down. It was not like the tournament at Chauvency.
Two of our men were soon on foot, one because his horse had thrown him and bolted, the other to deal with one of the Italians who was trying to remount. The splashing of the river as we milled around, the neighing of the terrified horses, the cries, grunts and groans, the clanging of sword against sword, seemed to last an age, followed by a strange silence when it was all over. At the end I was shaking, not with fear but with relief, exhausted by a fight that had lasted no more than ten minutes in all.
Our men killed three of the five-man escort, but two of them managed to turn back towards Avignonet; I brought down one of their horses with two crossbow bolts in quick succession as they were leaving the river, and Michel finished off the rider, but the other got clean away.
‘We’ll not catch him,’ said my father. ‘The river will take care of the bodies, and we’ll have their horses and the pack mule. They owe them to us for the cattle they stole.’
He was holding his shoulder as he spoke; he’d been caught from behind by one of the Italians with a heavy sword that had gone through his chain mail, inflicting a deep cut. Michel killed the man before he had a chance at a second blow.
‘It’s bleeding, but not badly. It didn’t break the bone. I’ve had many worse.’ My father had taken the tunic from one of the Inquisitors; I tore this into strips and used them to bandage the cut.
One of the men had lost two fingers, but these were our only casualties. We trotted back to Beaufort, our men pleased with themselves; I was unable to share in their pleasure. I had killed for the first time, but it had been a less than chivalrous contest in which I’d shot a man before he had a chance to fight. The image of the Inquisitor drowning under my horse’s feet took a long time to disappear from my dreams.
We were all uneasy about the man who had got away.
‘I don’t think it makes much difference,’ said my father. ‘Even if we had killed them all it would have been clear this was a Cathar attack. Bernard would always get the blame.’
Back at Beaufort I dressed my father’s wound, which seemed clean enough, although I had to pick many strands of his shirt out of the cut before bandaging it again. Then he sent me off to Roqueville to tell them what had happened at Avignonet.
Bernard seemed pleased.
‘That was a good day’s work – a pity you didn’t kill them all, but this will bring the Inquisition up short. You’ll stay the night, dine with us?’
It wasn’t really a question. That evening I sat at his right hand and was waited on by his wife, Blanche, whom I had not seen since the tournament at Chauvency. She seemed pleased to see me, asked after my father, and plainly knew where we had been and what we had done. She looked beautiful in an embroidered crimson gown, her hair held close to her head by a gold clasp, then flowing down her back almost to her waist. It was said she was a Perfect, and I noticed she ate no meat at dinner. Although we did not speak of the ambush, it would have been clear to most of the assembled company (there were perhaps forty men in all sitting in the Great Hall) that something momentous had happened.
When I got back to Beaufort the following evening my father’s wound was giving him a great deal of pain; although he tried to pretend all was well, the cut seemed to have widened. It was black and purple round the edges and oozing yellow pus. He couldn’t raise his right arm.
‘It will clear up in a couple of days,’ he said, but he was wrong. Two days later the whole of his shoulder was black and he lay on his bed groaning and delirious with a high fever. I watched by his be
d day and night, bathed his forehead with cold water and watched while Michel’s wife applied a poultice of herbs twice a day to the wound, which by now was smelling of decay. Towards the end he was unable to relieve himself, and I had to help him while he pissed into a bowl. In a moment of lucidity while I was holding him he said, ‘I used to do this for you when you were little,’ and managed a smile.
We sent for a Perfect from Montaillou, where we had heard Authie was living, but he didn’t arrive in time to administer the Consolamentum. We buried my father in a field above the Baise and marked the place with a massive stone. I felt abandoned and desolate, a desolation that persisted even after Authie heard the Confessions of the four of us left from Avignonet and then blessed us.
Bernard sent his son down to Beaufort when he heard the news.
‘Beaufort belongs to you now,’ said Armand de Roqueville. ‘You’ll have to swear fealty to my father, then it’s yours.’
It was mine, but not for long. We had all of us underestimated the shock caused by the ‘Massacre at Avignonet’, which reached all the way to Rome. We had killed not just Inquisitors, but Papal Legates, the embodiment, it was believed, of the Pope himself in the Languedoc.
Six weeks later a proper army, again commanded by de Montfort’s nephew, arrived in our valley. We were able to warn them at Roqueville, as rumours had reached us three days before that five hundred men were on the way. We had time to move out of Beaufort and into the big castle, all of us together with our few remaining cattle. Roqueville was ready for a long siege.
The siege didn’t last long. It was clear it could only have one outcome, and Bernard was persuaded by his wife and sons to negotiate. After a day and a night of bargaining both sides reached an agreement which led to the army’s withdrawal.
Cathar Page 2