Cathar

by Christopher Bland

  Two days later I sent for Blanche again. On this occasion I told her guard to unlock her fetters, provided her with a chair and invited her to sit.

  ‘I prefer to stand.’

  ‘We can cure such stubbornness,’ despising myself for uttering such a crude threat.

  ‘I am not afraid of torture, or the stake.’

  ‘There is no need for either if you will only listen. Do you not wish to see your daughter?’

  These were the first of my words that made any impression. Blanche looked at me for the first time and began to weep soundlessly, then said, ‘One of my guards told me she was dead, that she and her unborn child had been burned.’

  ‘Stephanie is not dead. She has been condemned as a heretic, but she has not been sentenced. I can arrange for you to see her again if you agree to listen to me.’

  Blanche thought for a moment, brushed away her tears with her sleeve, then said, ‘I agree.’

  As she was taken away I felt overjoyed, not because I thought Blanche could be convinced, but at the prospect of a series of conversations with this woman. Beyond that I did not allow my thoughts to travel.

  The next day I went to Flaran where I had some business to complete at the abbey, hoping that a return to my old surroundings might free my mind from thoughts of Blanche. I found no such freedom there. Walking round the gentle arches of the cloisters failed to produce the comfort I looked for. The reverse; I thought of Blanche by day as well as by night, and even at the holiest of moments, when I was giving the Host to those who had been my monks, the image of her face appeared.

  It was as if a spell had been cast on me. Although most accusations against witches are nonsense and informed by malice or ignorance, yet witches do exist and have strange powers. Was Blanche a witch? I did not think so. After all, she had done everything she could to put distance between us. And I had to admit that if I was bewitched I had no desire to exorcise the spell.

  Three days later I returned from Flaran and ordered my clerk to prepare the disused storeroom on the ground floor of my house as a makeshift cell.

  ‘She is a noblewoman,’ I explained. ‘She has agreed to receive instruction from me. I have high hopes of a conversion as notable as that of Baruch the Jew.’

  ‘Lord, it will be hard to make that room secure. Where will her guards sleep?’

  ‘She will not try to escape. She wants to see her daughter.’

  Moving Blanche into my house sealed my fate. I knew what I was doing. The interrogations were occasions of sin, and dangerous, but circumscribed by the presence of my clerk and a guard. The moment Blanche was living two floors below me, in a room to which I had the key, I was lost. I remembered, and ignored, the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, To be always with a woman and not to have intercourse with her is more difficult than to raise the dead.

  I convinced myself that I wanted Blanche to abjure her heresy. So I went down to her cell – her chamber, as it had a proper bed, two chairs, a high window and rush matting on the floor – to begin the dialogue that had worked with Baruch.

  Blanche still refused to sit, so I had to look up to see her eyes. She kept her distant expression as I spoke, and my weighty arguments were neither accepted nor countered. Occasionally she would nod her head, not in agreement, but simply to signal that she had heard what I had to say.

  I thought I had broken through when I asked her if she believed in transubstantiation, in the miracle of the blood and the wine.

  ‘I can believe in that if I must,’ she said, the first words she had spoken during this session. ‘But I cannot swear an oath. Cannot I say that I believe? Will that not do?’

  ‘Not swearing means you are still Cathar.’

  ‘Perhaps I will always be Cathar, oath or no oath. Give me time to think about all you have told me,’ and she gave a little smile.

  I left the room more troubled than ever, clutching her words and her smile to myself, uncertain whether I was on the brink of achieving a conversion that I did not really seek. Or on the brink of something I had wanted since I first set eyes on Blanche in the cathedral.

  I allowed a day to pass before visiting her again. On this occasion she sat facing me and her distant look had gone.

  ‘I will swear an oath if that will allow me to see my daughter.’

  I did not reply. Minutes passed that seemed like days. Blanche said, ‘Tell me what I have to do to save Stephanie.’

  I looked away, my heart pounding, my throat dry. I told her what she had to do. Then she stood up, pulled her smock over her head, walked over to the bed and we did what she had to do.

  6

  Montségur

  Sybille

  I WAS THE FIRST to see it. I have the best eyes in the castle, better than any of our sentries. It looked like a small brown worm moving slowly across the valley road, stopping now and then, curving round the last sharp bend, once breaking in half and re-forming. I ran to tell my mother what I had seen, and together we climbed the tower to get a better view.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a worm,’ I said, remembering how it had broken and come together again.

  My mother said nothing until the worm had reached the bottom of the steep path up to Montségur.

  ‘They are men, probably pilgrims. Take some water down to them.’

  I and one of the men took two large leather buckets of water halfway down the path to meet the pilgrims. The path is rocky as well as steep and takes an erratic course through the scrub oak and bushes, so they made very slow progress. Several times two or three of the men stumbled and fell, and their leader went back and helped them to their feet; he made sure that the hand of each man was on the shoulder of the man in front, which seemed strange. Only the leader carried a staff. They were all dressed in rags.

  We waited for them where the path broadens into a small, flat clearing. When they got close I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop crying out; I could see they were all blind save their leader, and he had only one eye. All of them had lost their right arms. Several of them were old, older than my father, although they were so battered and dirty that it was hard to tell. They smelled of their journey and their wounds.

  Their leader was a young man, perhaps two or three years older than me. His single eye was bright blue, and there was a bloody mess where the other had been. His right arm had been cut off above the elbow, and ended in a bandaged stump. I burst into tears when I saw him close.

  He and our sentry took the water and gave a cup to each sightless man; drinking wasn’t easy. Their leader made sure they all had water before he drank.

  ‘Who has done this?’ I asked.

  One of the men near the front answered, ‘So-called crusaders after they had captured Roqueville. We were betrayed and they were too many. They took my wife and her mother to the Inquisition at Carcassonne.’

  ‘You are safe here. We’re all good Cathars,’ I answered, and I ran up to tell my mother and father what I had learned.

  My father looked worried.

  ‘Claire,’ he said to my mother, ‘we need warriors, not fourteen more hungry mouths to feed. I suppose we have to take them in?’

  ‘We do,’ my mother and I said together.

  The new arrivals were housed in the little settlement just below the main outer wall of Montségur. My old nurse, Guillemette, was charged by my mother with looking after the newcomers, helped by me and two of the Cathar widows who lived in the settlement. Guillemette knew about healing and herbs and, according to my mother, much more – potions and remedies that hovered on the edge of witchcraft.

  We tended their wounds as best we could, but three of them soon died through a combination of exhaustion and despair. I nursed several of them, including their leader, the youngest of them all. I rebandaged his arm every three or four days and cleaned up his eye socket, packing it with herbs that Guillemette recommended.

  His name, he told me, was Francois de Beaufort. In those early weeks I got to know him and his history well – and his body, or
at least the top half of it, as he had a deep wound in his back that required regular attention. I didn’t neglect the other knights, and the one whose wife had been taken to Carcassonne told me what Francois had done for them all.

  ‘Without him we’d all be dead. He kept us together, making sure that each man held the shoulder of the man in front. If anyone stumbled and fell Francois would go down the line, pick him up, replace the hand on the shoulder, and off we would go again. It took us ten days to get here.’

  ‘How did you survive?’

  ‘Water was easy to come by, but the countryside around Roqueville had been ransacked by the crusaders and there was little food to be had. What there was Francois found for us. We must have been a frightening sight stumbling along the road, although we were incapable of doing any harm, incapable of doing anything other than begging. Two of the older knights died on the way.’

  He stopped, swallowed, covered his face with his hand, and said, ‘We weren’t able to bury them, and we had no Perfect with us to ease their passage into the next world.’

  A few days later, when I was putting ointment on his back, Francois asked me if I was Cathar.

  ‘Claire, my mother, is a Perfect. My father’s a believer, but less passionate in the faith.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m Cathar. And you?’

  ‘I’m Cathar.’

  He had been holding my hand tightly as I attended to his back, which was still painful, and he didn’t drop it for a minute. I had to pull my hand gently out of his grasp.

  ‘They dug up my parents’ bodies and burned them,’ he continued. ‘I hate the Catholic Church for what they’ve done to us. Look at me. I’m a wreck of a man.’

  ‘You’re getting better, your eye is healing over, the wound on your back is closed, you’ve got one arm, and you’re still alive, still young.’

  ‘You’re right. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself.’

  I didn’t feel sorry for him – but I was beginning to feel more than just admiration for the way he’d led the blinded knights to Montségur. As part of my nursing duties I’d seen and touched Francois’s body, his smooth belly, the strong muscles of his back, the firm grasp of his fingers when he held my hand. I’d never touched a man before. He was – and it seemed a strange word for someone whose body had been so battered and maimed, but I could find no other – beautiful.

  I changed the subject. ‘They’ll come to Montségur next. But look at our castle, perched on top of this sharp little mountain. You’d need an army of crusader goats to attack us.’

  He laughed at the thought of crusader goats.

  ‘They’ll try to starve us out.’

  ‘They can’t encircle the bottom of the mountain unless they bring twenty thousand men.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. We thought we could defend Roqueville…’ and he fell silent.

  It took about three weeks for Francois’s wounds to heal and his eye socket to stop weeping. The other knights were slower to recover, and three more died not long after they arrived at Montségur.

  ‘I can’t say I’m sorry,’ said my father. ‘Three fewer to feed. The rest of them just sit below the walls looking miserable.’

  ‘You’d look miserable if you were one-armed and blind,’ said my mother.

  My father merely grunted.

  A couple of days later I saw Francois talking to our blacksmith. Curious, I walked over to see what was going on.

  ‘I’ve asked him to make an iron tube that I can bolt to the bottom of a crossbow. What’s left of my right arm will fit nicely into it, and I’ll cock and fire it with my left hand. The crusaders cut off the wrong arm. I’m left-handed.’

  ‘Make the tube wider than your stump,’ I said. ‘I’ll sew a padded sleeve to stop it rubbing.’

  Francois looked surprised, then pleased. I took a lot of care over the sleeve, filling a doubled length of linen with cotton and sewing it tight with my best stitches. I made him an eyepatch out of a black silk remnant I found in my mother’s sewing basket. I presented him with my work a few days later, and he put on the sleeve at once.

  ‘It fits perfectly.’

  ‘I’ve dressed your arm often enough to know the measurements.’

  Then he tried on the patch. It gave him an additional ten years and made him look like a brigand.

  ‘I’ll wear it on formal occasions.’

  ‘We don’t have many of those now at Montségur.’

  I watched him from my window practising every morning in the butts. At first he was clumsy, swearing quietly to himself when the crossbow slipped off his ruined arm. After the second day I went down to see him; he didn’t look pleased to see me, as he’d just failed twice in a row to keep his weapon in place.

  ‘You need a leather strap that goes round your shoulder. Then it won’t fall off. Tell the saddler what you need.’

  Francois looked doubtful, but did as I suggested. My idea worked, and he was soon adept at cocking and firing the crossbow single-handed. He went to see my father soon after and asked to be included in the roster of fighting men.

  ‘Minus your right arm? What can you do single-handed?’

  ‘I’m left-handed, good with the sword. Geoffrey de Goncourt taught me. And I’ve adapted a crossbow. Let me show you.’ He made no mention of my contribution; perhaps he was afraid my father would think we had become too close.

  He persuaded my father to come down to the butts, and he put five bolts into the centre of the target in three minutes. My father was impressed.

  ‘You’re as quick as some of my men with two arms. We’ll make good use of you when the time comes.’

  The time didn’t come that winter. ‘It’s not the season for a siege,’ said my father. ‘They wouldn’t be able to keep their men warm and fed.’

  It was a particularly cold winter. Every morning we looked out over a white sea of mist, Montségur alone rising above it; only the Pyrenees in the distance, white with snow, were higher. On most mornings a wintry sun would burn off the mist by noon, but sometimes we would remain marooned on our island all day. I had little excuse or opportunity to see and talk to Francois, although he always seemed glad to see me when we did meet. He only wore the eyepatch on the rare occasions when he was invited to dine in our Great Hall, usually eating with his fellow knights from Roqueville in the little encampment below the walls.

  I watched him on a couple of occasions practising in the butts. He was quicker with his crossbow than most of the men. My father organised a competition in the New Year, and my mother and I were part of a little gallery of spectators looking on. Francois came second; he was as accurate as the winner, but loosed off one less bolt in the time allowed.

  Afterwards he came up to me and my mother, bowed and said, ‘I wouldn’t have done nearly as well if Sybille hadn’t created the sleeve,’ and showed her my careful sewing. ‘The leather strap was her idea.’

  ‘You need a replacement,’ I said. ‘It’s worn in several places and the padding has flattened. I’ll make you another.’

  Francois smiled, thanked me and walked away to talk to his fellow competitors.

  ‘He’s very handsome,’ said my mother. ‘In spite of everything.’

  ‘One eye and one arm thanks to the crusaders. Etienne told me without him they all would have died.’

  ‘I knew his mother; she was a good Cathar, died giving birth to, to…’

  ‘Francois,’ I said, too quickly.

  I made him another sleeve, this time with stronger fabric and more padding, and I quilted it in little diamonds. I took a week to make it. When I had done all this I went to my chamber and sat on my bed. I had been told many things by Guillemette, most of which my mother dismissed as superstition. I was less sure; I thought my old nurse was a wise woman. I remembered her advice; when I had finished I turned the sleeve inside out and used it to touch myself between my thighs until I was wet, as Guillemette had suggested. At the end I was shaking with a new and unexpected pleasure, w
hich I hadn’t been told about.

  I hoped this would be a spell that would make Francois love me. I put dried lavender inside the sleeve for two days to make sure that what I had done wasn’t detectable by my mother or by Francois.

  *

  Francois

  I TRIED HARD TO banish the memories of the fall of Roqueville, the maiming that followed and the terrible journey to Montségur. I had nightmares long afterwards, and would wake shouting just as the torturer’s dagger came towards my left eye. I was, of course, the lucky one; the Inquisitor who saved my right eye did so not out of charity but so that I could lead fifteen blinded knights to Montségur. He was clever. He knew the story of our punishment and our journey would spread throughout the Languedoc.

  We reached Montségur after ten days; we lost two of the older men on the way, as much through despair as through loss of blood from their wounds. There was little food from the countryside on our journey, and the two villages we passed through locked their doors against us as though our wounds were somehow contagious. One elderly Cathar farmer allowed us to stay in his barn for a night, although he begged us to move on in the morning in case word got round that he had sheltered heretics.

  We were uncertain of our reception at Montségur, but we need not have worried. Raimond Roger was Cathar, and his wife Claire was even more devout than him; there was room for us in the little settlement below the castle walls, and we were told we could remain there as long as we wished. Which meant forever, as we had nowhere else to go.

  We were all still suffering from our wounds, and Guillemette was put in charge of nursing us back to health. She was a wise woman with something of the witch about her, and talked as though she was a less than convinced Cathar.

  ‘I can’t see there is a huge difference,’ she said. ‘Certainly not enough to risk the stake.’

  I didn’t contradict her, and secretly agreed, although it seemed impolite to say so in front of our hosts. Guillemette knew enough about herbs to help us heal; although we lost three more of our number within two weeks, the rest of us gradually recovered, at least in body.