We killed twenty-two boars in three days’ hunting; the boars loved the acorns from the oak trees and they were plentiful that year. There was no place for the faint-hearted, men or hounds. We lost half a dozen dogs, and three of the hunters had severe wounds from charging boars which they had failed to take on the point of their spears.
I was one of the wounded, and it was my own fault. I had seen no boars on the first day, but had taken two on the second, kneeling down to receive the charge and keeping my point straight. They were brave beasts, evenly matched with a man on foot, and I was happy that I had been steady facing the charge.
On the third day a group of a dozen hounds had a heavy boar at bay, a determined beast. He had already gashed two hounds, which had retired whimpering, and he seemed ready to take on the rest. I dropped my spear and drew my sword, thinking he wouldn’t charge me through the mass of snarling, barking hounds. I was wrong. He came for me as I walked forward, tossing two hounds out of the way; my sword caught him on his right side, and he returned the favour as he charged past. A boar’s curved tusks don’t seem very threatening – a large pair would be no more than ten inches long – but they are razor-sharp. I had an eight-inch gash along the top of my thigh that went through to the bone, luckily missing an artery on the way.
Two other hunters, one of them Etienne, had heard the cry of the hounds and arrived within minutes. They bandaged the gash and staunched the bleeding. We were close to Roqueville and they carried me home sitting between them on an improvised chair made from a couple of stout branches. They left me on my bed, Etienne saying he would tell them at the castle, and there I lay, uneasily remembering my father’s fate, the wound throbbing, my head aching, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Blanche arrived in the early evening with her daughter. I was making little sense by then; Blanche ignored my foolish modesty and pulled up my undershirt to reveal the wound.
‘This will hurt,’ she said, ‘but it has to be clean.’ I managed to stifle most of my groans. She had brought strips of clean linen to swab and dress the cut, and when she was happy it was clean her daughter Stephanie smeared the wound with a sweet-smelling yellow ointment.
‘Now for the sewing. This will hurt more, but Stephanie is a skilful seamstress.’ Blanche pulled the edges of the wound together while Stephanie used a sailmaker’s needle and strong thread to sew the gash together. It was painful, so painful that I couldn’t concentrate on the closeness of Blanche’s hair and shoulders and waist as she bent over me.
‘You’ll live,’ said Blanche. ‘It’s no worse than some of the wounds Bernard brought home from the tournaments. You’re lucky the boar didn’t turn and come back for more.’
‘He had my sword in his guts,’ I said. ‘They found him dead a hundred yards further on.’
‘You’re getting better already,’ and she smiled, gathered up her things and left with her daughter.
Stephanie came back two days later without her mother. Etienne was with me, and watched as Stephanie inspected the wound, put her face close, sniffed and pronounced it clean.
‘You’ll be up in two or three days. Make sure you change the dressings every day and keep the wound dry.’
I was grateful, and said so, masking my disappointment that she was not Blanche. Etienne was impressed by her competence.
‘She’ll make someone a good wife,’ he said and blushed when I told him he shouldn’t hold back. Stephanie was her mother’s daughter: the same black hair, the same brown eyes, the same slender figure. But somehow – a horse-breeder would blame the sire’s bloodline, and Bernard had not been a good-looking man – it all came together in a way that you might at best describe as handsome. But not beautiful, not as Blanche was beautiful.
I sensed that Stephanie was well aware of the long shadow her mother cast, and made up for her lack of beauty with a determined, no-nonsense efficiency. This appealed to Etienne, so I was glad I had refrained from pointing out to him that Stephanie hadn’t inherited her mother’s looks or easy manner.
As predicted, I was up by the end of the week, with a slight limp that soon wore off. A week later Stephanie had arranged to come by to take out the stitches, which was almost as painful as the original sewing. I had told Etienne I needed support, and he was again taken by the way Stephanie dealt with me.
‘You’ll hardly know it happened in a year’s time,’ she said to us both. She looked surprised when Etienne offered to ride with her back to the castle.
I continued to spend time at the dovecote, and Blanche did return, this time with Stephanie and Armand.
‘We were passing,’ she said, not dismounting. ‘I hope you’re fully recovered.’
‘Thanks to your skill and Stephanie’s sewing,’ I said with a little bow.
‘What’s it like inside the dovecote?’ asked Stephanie, looking at her mother.
My heart skipped a beat, then Blanche replied. ‘Messy, I imagine. Ask our pigeon master.’
‘No place for a woman,’ I said. ‘Knee-deep in pigeon droppings.’
I was pleased when Blanche smiled at my reply. It meant something to me that we had a secret between us.
It was a good summer in the valley that year. It rained enough in the spring to provide plenty of grass for hay and for grazing, and the River Baise was high. It was full of trout and the occasional pike. In sunny weather the pike would bask on the surface of the water, and it was then possible to kill them with a crossbow bolt at close range. I attached twelve feet of line to a hole drilled in the end of the bolt after seeing my first transfixed pike disappear down the river.
The pike were delicious to eat, and much appreciated by Blanche and by Guillaume Authie when he visited us. I never understood why fish was acceptable to a Perfect while meat and eggs were ruled out. Guillaume explained to me once that it was because fish mated without contact, which seemed an odd and unconvincing reason.
Etienne and I rode regularly through the valley, and sometimes I would stay the night with him and his mother at Barraigne. We were cantering along a ride in the woods when he pulled up and signalled me to stop.
‘I need your advice, your help,’ he said. ‘I want to marry Stephanie.’
‘I thought Blanche was the woman you admired. Above all others, I remember you declaring.’
Etienne blushed.
‘Only as her knight, her faithful servant. You feel the same.’
‘I do,’ I lied. ‘So ask Blanche, ask Armand for Stephanie’s hand.’
‘She’s the daughter of a great lord. I’m a poor knight.’
‘Nonsense. You’re young, vigorous, handsome.’
Etienne looked pleased.
‘And you hold Barraigne and the land around it,’ I continued. ‘You’re well born. I remember you had six quarterings on your shield at Chauvency. It took an age for the herald to describe them all.’
‘Four of them are from my mother.’
‘What difference does that make? Stephanie rides with you often, likes you well enough. Who are her other admirers?’
I knew the answer to my question. In our valley visitors were rare; Etienne and I were the only suitable young men around.
‘Be brave. Ask for her.’
I prodded Etienne gently for the next ten days, and eventually he managed to take Armand aside in the tilt-yard and put the question to him.
Armand looked surprised.
‘I’ll have to ask my mother,’ he said. ‘And Stephanie, of course.’
The next time I saw Etienne he was beaming.
‘They’ve said yes, they’ve said yes. We’re to be married in a month. You’re a good friend and gave me good advice.’
The wedding celebrations lasted a week. The stew pond was emptied, the dovecote’s squabs taken for an enormous pigeon pie, and the week before we had killed a dozen roe-deer for the table. There were archery contests and a little tournament with blunted lances and wooden swords. The armorial banners of the guests fluttered from new flagpoles in the co
urtyard. In the evening there were songs from the visiting troubadours, on this occasion paying tribute not to Blanche but to her daughter. Etienne looked happy all week.
It was hard for me to see much of Blanche, surrounded as she was by wedding guests. One evening I succeeded in dancing opposite her and revelled in her smile and her touch. When the dance was over I bowed, knelt, kissed her hand and looked down at her feet, encased in golden slippers under a long white gown. When I looked up she blushed, something I had never seen her do before, smiled and pulled me to my feet.
Our lives returned to normal once all the guests had departed, although my riding days with Etienne were over, as he spent all his time transforming Barraigne into a place fit for his bride. He and Stephanie were both Credentes, and when I stayed with them a month later we had a long discussion about our faith.
‘Not all of us believe everything we’re taught,’ said Etienne.
‘I do,’ said Stephanie firmly.
‘Even the Endura?’ I asked.
‘Even the Endura.’
‘You know what happened to our armourer’s wife? When she became very ill a Perfect was sent for, she was blessed and persuaded to undergo the Endura. Then she rallied and the armourer insisted on giving her bread and water, even though he was threatened with hellfire.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Authie. Did she recover?’
‘She did recover, no thanks to Cathars. And it wasn’t Authie; he’d have had more sense. The whole valley knows about it.’
The story, and others like it, spread beyond our valley, and the convenient fiction that we were all good Catholics became harder to maintain. In Rome there was a new Pope, in Pamiers a new Bishop, in Toulouse new Inquisitors. Stories of torture and burnings were widespread. There was a rumour that Minerve was under siege, and later Authie brought the news that the town had been captured. He told us that the eighty knights defending the town were hanged, as was Count Aimery; the victors threw Aimery’s sister Geralda down a well and stoned her to death. All the Cathars in the town were burned at the stake.
It was clear that our valley would not be spared. The Bishop of Pamiers sent for our priest; he was not replaced and did not return. Later we heard that he had been tortured.
‘He was a good man,’ said Armand over dinner. He had asked all his knights to a council of war. ‘But he won’t have been able to stand up to torture – how many of us could? He will have told the Inquisitors that none of us took his Communion bread, or went to him for Confession.’
The table was silent until Etienne asked, ‘What do you think they will do next?’
‘They will send for me and my mother,’ said Armand. ‘We won’t answer that summons, and sooner or later they will attack Roqueville.’
He showed an unexpected determination that impressed us all.
‘There’s no point in negotiating. Look what happened at Minerve. We need to prepare for a long siege. Prepare now.’
3
The Inquisitor
The Inquisitor
AFTER AN ARDUOUS and unproductive morning my clerk Jean and I were sitting in my small library. The room had bookcases on three walls and a generous window on the fourth that overlooked one of Carcassonne’s many squares. The square was deserted. No one willingly passed the doors of the Inquisition unless there was no alternative. We needed to be feared, and I had succeeded in that part of my mission through relentless questioning and condign punishments. It had been my idea to dig up the corpses of dead Cathars and burn them; if we could reach beyond the grave we would have less difficulty with the living.
The fear was, of course, accompanied by hatred, and I am sorry to say that it was not only the heretics who hated us, but also those otherwise good Catholics who for too long had been used to a quiet life. I was in the process of changing that.
I asked my clerk to read out the testimony of the morning’s witness. Robert Duvernoy had been accused of communicating with the dead, and he himself had denounced several as heretics, including some members of his close family. He had not been tortured; there was nothing he would not say or do in order to escape punishment. So he was useless as a witness, and I dozed as the clerk read his notes slowly back to me, paying closer attention when I heard his sharp intake of breath.
‘My lord, this section is truly frightening,’ and he read on:
‘I have often seen dead Jews, some of them walking backwards. I have never seen them go into a church. They wander through the roads, not among Christians, walking bent like pigs. I could tell they were Jews, because they smelled and stayed apart from the others. They practised their cult on the mountains; we Christians laughed at them and called them dogs.
Nevertheless, many of them were saved, as Mary would intercede on their behalf with the Lord. He would spare them, because they belonged to Mary’s race.’
When he had finished the passage he looked at me, clearly expecting a comment.
‘Jews will not be saved unless they abjure their faith and become good Catholics. But where did he get the notion about dead Jews walking backwards?’
‘Many people have seen this,’ said Jean.
‘Including you?’
He looked frightened and uncertain for a moment.
‘No. But I have talked to many who have seen what Robert Duvernoy has seen.’
I got up, left the room without replying, went downstairs and called for my guards. Ignorance and superstition are not the exclusive preserve of heretics, I thought as I walked round the square.
I was a reluctant Inquisitor. I had been a contented member of my Order, and happy when I became Abbot of Flaran, a post I had held for eight years. Then the call came from the Bishop.
‘We need a good theologian who can argue with the heretics,’ he told me. ‘And you have the reputation of a man not easily deceived.’
I was contented among my manuscripts, my treatise on ‘The Destiny of the Souls of the Departed’ was only half finished, and I was in the middle of a long debate with William of Ockham. I was well aware that two groups of Inquisitors had been murdered – Peter of Castelnau many years ago when crossing the Rhône, and most recently Stephen of St-Thibery and William Arnald at Avignonet. I might have withstood the Bishop’s pressure, but when he produced a letter from the Pope himself asking me ‘to pick out the tares of heresy from the wheat of religion’ I felt unable to refuse.
It was a good analogy. As a farmer’s son I knew how difficult it was to pick out tares from healthy wheat, and I had been long enough in the Languedoc to know how Cathars had infiltrated our Church and perverted our doctrine. They had been allowed to flourish for too long. This was, I had to admit at the risk of the sin of pride, a task for which I was well equipped.
Four times round the square, flanked by my silent guards, did me good and cleared my head of all that ‘dead Jews walking backwards’ nonsense. Some stories I was prepared to tolerate, not because I believed them, but because they deterred good Catholics from the Cathar heresy. So I did what I could to encourage the rumours that Cathars were sodomites, sacrificed small children and fornicated on Christian altars. As, for all I knew, they may have done.
When I returned to my library I began the final chapter of my Inquisitor’s Manual. My success is directly related to the techniques of questioning that I have developed during the last five years, and I wish my knowledge and experience to be preserved and disseminated. Many of my colleagues think it is a matter of asking simple, direct questions that need only to be answered yes or no. They are unwilling to devote the time to the argument which a genuine conversion requires, preferring to rely on the threat of further torture and the stake. Then they are surprised when, two years later, the same suspect reappears.
I have developed a little dialogue that demonstrates how persistent questioning can force a heretic into a corner from which he cannot escape. It goes as follows:
Q. You are accused as a heretic, that you do not believe and teach that which the Holy Church believes.
Lord, I am innocent. I have never held any faith other than that of true Christianity.
Q. You call your faith Christian, for you consider ours as false and heretical. But have you ever believed in a faith other than that which the Roman Church holds to be true?
I believe the True Faith which the Roman Church believes, which you preach to us.
Q. Let us test the accusation. Do you believe in God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost?
I believe.
Q. Do you believe in Christ born of the Virgin, suffered, risen, and ascended to heaven?
I believe.
Q. Do you believe the bread and wine in the Mass is changed into the body and blood of Christ?
I believe whatever you order me to believe.
Q. Will you swear that you have never learned anything contrary to the faith which the Roman Church holds to be true?
If I ought to swear, I will willingly swear.
Q. I don’t wish to force you to swear, as you believe oaths to be unlawful, and thus you will transfer the sin to me who forced you.
Why should I swear if you do not order me to?
Q. So that you may remove the suspicion of being a heretic.
Then he will stumble along as if he cannot repeat the words, avoiding an absolute oath. If the words are there, they are turned around so that he does not swear, and yet appears to have sworn. A vigorous Inquisitor must not allow himself to be deceived in this way, but proceed until he makes the heretic publicly abjure heresy. If he is subsequently found to have sworn falsely, he may be abandoned to the secular arm.
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