Cathar

by Christopher Bland

  *

  The Bishop

  HUGUES D’ARCIS HAD a reputation as a brave commander, a man who had led half a dozen successful campaigns and sieges. I could see no evidence that this reputation was deserved, and when he announced his plan for a frontal assault up the slope I expressed my disbelief.

  ‘It’s suicide up that slope. Completely exposed, and no chance of surprise.’

  He was angry and said so.

  ‘What do you know about such things? You’re a man of the cross, not the sword. We’ve been building stout pavises for the last two months that will give us cover. And a two-storey tower which we will use once we get close to the walls.’

  I reminded him that I had been sent to advise him because I had ten years as a soldier before I became a priest.

  ‘I designed one of the first trebuchets for the great Simon de Montfort,’ I said. ‘I know what damage they can do, and the Cathars have the high ground.’

  He didn’t change his plan, with calamitous results, sulked for a week, then asked my advice. It was clear to me that our only chance of success lay in the possibility of getting men up the northeast side of the mountain.

  ‘It’s a series of precipices, almost vertical,’ Hugues said.

  ‘They are managing to climb down them and back up again with supplies. That approach appears to be very lightly guarded. If we can get a foothold on the plateau and capture the barbican we have a chance of success. Otherwise we might as well go home.’

  He was persuaded that it was worth trying, especially since I was able to recruit a dozen Basque mountaineers who were afraid of nothing and ready, for the appropriate reward, to try and find a way up.

  ‘They are like mountain goats,’ I told Hugues, who grunted when he first saw them, squat, swarthy men who paid him no deference and spoke no French.

  The Basque goats spent several nights reconnoitring possible routes, watching men arriving and leaving by the cliff, always by the same route. They were clever enough not to kill or detain these men. They made little sketch maps of the path, if path it could be called; it zigzagged up the limestone, and a missed footstep or handhold would have been fatal. Looking up at the route gave me vertigo.

  My Basques waited until there was a full moon and led the way up the mountain, hammering iron pegs into the rock which they then linked with ropes to help the less experienced climbers who came later. We were only able to persuade twenty men-at-arms to make the ascent, money again being more important than glory or God’s cause.

  It was enough. Our little band had the advantage of surprise, took the lightly guarded barbican, killed the dozen Cathars who were inside, and beat off the counter-attack in the morning. We were now only sixty yards from the main fortress, linked to it by a razor-sharp ridge along which it was only possible to travel two abreast. This meant that a counter-attack was difficult; it also meant that an assault on the castle was equally hard.

  It took us a further two weeks to haul a trebuchet, one of my own designing, up the cliff. We dismantled it at the bottom and used ropes and pulleys to bring it into the barbican. It took another week to bring enough stones for the trebuchet and begin firing. During this part of the siege we lost only two men, neither of them Basques. We began to batter at their walls every day, but the walls were twelve feet thick, more in places, and it was slow work. However, it put an end to patronising remarks from Hugues d’Arcis.

  *

  Francois

  IT IS ALWAYS the unexpected that leads to defeat in a siege. In our case we did not believe the crusaders could attack the barbican by the cliff to the northeast, so it was lightly guarded; we kept most of our men in the castle and patrolling the slopes to the northwest. We were wrong.

  Once they had captured the barbican the odds shifted in their favour, decisively so when they succeeded in bringing a trebuchet and ammunition up the side of the mountain. We had to admire their bravery and determination, which matched ours.

  For two weeks we exchanged stone for stone, neither side making much impression on the thick walls. Each side sustained perhaps a half a dozen killed or wounded every day, but they had the advantage of numbers. More importantly, we were beginning to run short of food, as our main supply route was cut off. The castle and forecourt were impossibly crowded, as the huts below our walls had been abandoned. Wounded and healthy, men and women, and the few children that had survived, crowded into a space designed for a fifth of that number.

  Raimond Roger sent for reinforcements from Aragon, and we learned that Corbario, a famous mercenary, was on his way with twenty men. They never arrived; they were intercepted and persuaded to change sides. This failure encouraged one of our commanders, Imbert de Salis, to leave the castle and try to negotiate with the crusaders. He returned empty-handed.

  Raimond Roger was furious.

  ‘It is pointless trying to negotiate. The only messages to send to those people are stones from our trebuchet or bolts from our crossbows.’

  We stamped the floor and hammered the table when he gave this defiant message, but we all realised our situation was desperate. And that night two of our Perfects left Montségur with our Cathar treasure, which did nothing to boost the confidence of those who knew they had gone.

  Two days later Raimond Roger asked for volunteers to try to retake the barbican. I offered to go and was rejected. Raimond Roger told me I didn’t have enough arms for the sortie; he made a joke of it, but I knew he was right and it probably saved my life. The plan was to crawl along the mountain just below the ridge at night, and hope to surprise them as they had surprised us.

  From the castle we could hear the shouts and screams of the fighting, which lasted perhaps an hour; then all was silent apart from cheering from the barbican. For a moment we thought it was our men. It was not. Of the forty men that set out, only five returned, two of them badly wounded. Two days later the crusaders stormed our outer wall, and we had to retreat into the main keep, leaving our wounded and stragglers behind.

  8

  The Burning

  Francois

  THE NEXT MORNING Raimond Roger called us into the Great Hall. There were only a dozen commanders left standing, and I was one of the few who had not been wounded, though I was as dirty, tired and hungry as the rest. We sat at the long table, on which there was no bread, no water, and listened to Raimond Roger standing on the dais at the end of the chamber. He spoke slowly and carefully, making no attempt to conceal the emotion he felt. Throughout we could hear the crash of the crusaders’ stones against our walls.

  ‘We can no longer defend Montségur. We have fewer than sixty fighting men, and some of you can barely lift a sword or aim a crossbow. We have two choices. A final sally, not in the hope of victory against three hundred men, but to show only death can defeat us. Or to surrender on the best terms I can negotiate. Which is it to be?’

  It was clear Raimond Roger wanted to die fighting – it was equally clear that there was no general appetite for a last defiant stand. Most of us were too tired to speak coherently, never mind fight. I said nothing, but my silence made it apparent, to my father-in-law at least, that I wanted to live. The thought of leaving Sybille was impossible to contemplate, even in exchange for a noble death, and I had seen enough to realise that death in battle was rarely noble and little better than dying of hunger or disease or old age. I also made up my mind at that moment to do what was necessary to escape the stake.

  ‘Very well,’ said Raimond Roger after listening to those who were able to speak. ‘I was ready to lead you in a final sortie, but not at the head of only six or seven men.’

  He managed to smile as he made a jest of his disappointment, looking at me as he spoke, then continued, ‘I’ll negotiate the best terms I can, in spite of the weakness of our position. And I know, you all know, that any Cathar who does not convert will be burned.’

  Normally we would have pounded the table and stamped our feet after a speech from our leader, but we were too tired, and some of us were
too ashamed, to respond. We left the chamber and returned to our posts; as we went into the courtyard we heard the crash as the crusaders’ stone-gun continued to batter our outside wall.

  As it turned out, Raimond Roger was able to negotiate generous terms; our opponents were as anxious to end the siege as we were. The main headings, as far as I can remember them, were:

  Hostages would be exchanged, and we were to remain in the castle for two weeks.

  We would be pardoned for all our past sins, including, to my surprise, Avignonet.

  Anyone prepared to abjure the Cathar faith and confess before the Inquisitors would receive only a light penance and remain at liberty. We would have two weeks to make up our minds.

  Anyone who remained a Cathar would be burned at the stake.

  It seemed strange that we would be left in a kind of limbo for fourteen days, although as it turned out some of that time was used by the Bishop and the Inquisitors to persuade as many as possible to recant. At the same time our Bishop, Bertrand Marty, was equally active in encouraging his Cathar flock to remain faithful.

  And to be burned alive as a result. I was not interested in the theological arguments of either side. I was, quite simply, prepared to do whatever was necessary to survive, and I was determined to persuade Sybille to do the same. I avoided most of the sessions of prayer that took place, and refused the Consolamentum.

  I discussed this with Etienne soon after the terms had been agreed. He was of the same mind; he still clung to the hope of finding Stephanie and holding his child. If they were still alive, I thought to myself, as I agreed that he and I and Sybille would go to Carcassonne to search for his family once we were allowed to leave Montségur.

  I did not feel a physical coward, as I had been as active as any of the defenders, lucky to escape being wounded again, and I had nothing to prove after Avignonet and Roqueville. Secretly I admitted to myself I had a horror of the stake, to which any end seemed preferable. I felt uneasy about recanting; as Sybille pointed out, in our early days I had stated firmly and proudly that I was Cathar. I contented myself by deciding that swearing an oath and becoming a Catholic was a conversion in name only. My inner beliefs, feeble though they were, would remain the same.

  Towards the end of the truce it became clear that around two hundred of our number would remain Cathar and face the stake rather than recant. I was astonished at this bravery, a courage quite different from that shown in battle. Many of these faithful were men-at-arms, whose faith I had thought simpler than mine; they turned out to be more steadfast. Sixty knights, most of the female Credentes and all the wounded and elderly refused to recant. Sybille’s mother was already a Perfect, and I never doubted that she would die for her beliefs.

  In the final days there was a moving, and for me unsettling, distribution of gifts from those who were about to die to those who wanted to live. Their possessions were pitifully small, but Bishop Bertrand gave me oil, salt, a piece of green cloth and a blessing. Sybille received from her mother some money, an embroidered purse and a pair of shoes with gilt buckles. We both looked on these gifts as relics.

  The crusaders had stripped the castle of anything of value, including the tapestries in the Great Hall. I saw two of their men-at-arms coming to blows over the hangings in Claire’s room. Their disappointment and surprise that there was no silver or gold was evident.

  *

  Sybille

  FROM THE VERY first Francois made it clear he was determined to recant, and that he wanted to live, wanted us both to live. I knew he was no coward, but I was disappointed that he took this decision immediately without listening to the arguments put forward by my mother and by Bishop Bertrand.

  I spent many hours with my mother during the truce.

  ‘I love him. He is my husband and I feel bound by his decision, however speedily it has been taken,’ I said to her. She was gentle in her arguments, but forcible in saying that I should think long and carefully about recanting.

  ‘You are not bound, in the eyes of God, to follow Francois’s lead. Think whether the prospect of eternal life, which beckons me and of which I am assured, is not more attractive than anything this imperfect world can offer. Even to you, young and in love as you are.’

  I told her I was torn apart by her words and the prospect of losing her forever, but that the strongest of my conflicting feelings was my love for Francois. This she seemed to accept.

  My mother had decided to die. She was already a Perfect, and I never thought she would choose any other course. On our last morning together she gave me her embroidered purse and some money, which made me realise that in less than a day I would see her for the last time.

  Images of her being consumed by fire haunted me. As I touched her arm I was unable to stop myself imagining the flames blackening her soft skin.

  ‘How will you bear the pain when you are burning at the stake?’ I asked, hardly able to speak these terrible words through my tears.

  ‘God will take the pain upon himself, of course.’ And she drew me to her and hugged me as I cried.

  *

  Francois

  FOR FOURTEEN DAYS only priests and monks entered the castle on their errand, as they saw it, of mercy. They made no impact on the Perfects and the Credentes, and those of us who had decided to live did not require their attention.

  We, the new Catholics, were brought in batches before two magistrates, were required to swear an oath and profess the abandonment of our heretical ways. The sincerity of our conversion was not questioned; few of us would have responded accurately to a detailed catechism. Cathars and Catholics had the Lord’s Prayer and the Gospels in common, but little else. Then we were all sentenced to make the pilgrimage to Compostela; it seemed unlikely that this journey would be made by many of us or monitored by our judges.

  Early on that last morning the soldiers came in and separated converts from Cathars. We were allowed to make our final farewells. Sybille was distraught, in tears, and had to be pulled gently away from her mother’s embrace. Claire did not weep, or smile, and the look in her eyes told me that she was already on her way to her final destination. I felt incapable of speech. Raimond Roger was not there. He had been taken to Carcassonne the night before, which added to Sybille’s distress.

  I looked among the soldiers for any of the Roqueville torturers, but these men were mainly French, a few English and the Basque mountaineers who had been our undoing. They looked as tired, hungry and dirty as the men they had overcome. As we left the castle they were fettering the arms and legs of those who were about to die.

  We were led down the mountain until we came to the flat field where the burning was to take place, and made to line the path for the final journey of the Cathars. We had heard the sounds of hammering and sawing all week, but the field was not visible from the castle. I had expected to see two hundred stakes and pyres; instead the crusaders had built a palisade from wooden stakes perhaps a hundred feet long and forty feet wide. Inside they had piled brushwood and firewood along the palisade walls and down the centre, creating two separate channels no more than three feet wide into which the Cathars would be herded. As we arrived soldiers were soaking straw in each corner with oil and pitch.

  We stood there for perhaps an hour, the four of us opposite the gate into the palisade. Sybille looked at it once, then shut her eyes. I could feel her whole body trembling, and although she was beside me she clung to Guillemette.

  First came the priests and the monks, led by their Bishop, chanting the Te Deum and then, in supreme irony, the Nunc Dimittis. As they moved past us a little way down the hill I could see that, unlike the fighting men, they were well fed and well clothed.

  Then came the procession of two hundred Cathars, first the men led by Bishop Bertrand, then the women, Claire the last of them. They were walking slowly and awkwardly because of their fetters. Half a dozen wounded or elderly were carried down on stretchers. Their heads were bowed and they prayed as they walked, although their words were drown
ed by the chanting of the monks. When he reached the gate Bishop Bertrand stopped, uncertain what to do, until a soldier pushed him into one of the narrow aisles.

  The women were last. When Claire came almost to the gate she stopped, turned, saw her daughter, opened her arms and gave a smile of great sweetness. And at that moment Sybille raised her head and saw her mother.

  *

  Guillemette

  I WAS ALWAYS A ‘Castle Cathar’; if my mistress Claire had become a Mohammedan overnight I would have followed her. Our Cathar religion seemed no worse than any other, although I never aspired to be a Perfect and the Endura seemed a thoroughly bad way of ensuring a prolonged and painful death. I had always made it clear that I would follow Claire anywhere except to the stake. I was happy enough in this imperfect world and in no hurry to risk the uncertainties of the next.

  Francois, Sybille, Etienne and I were sentenced, as were all the converts, to make the pilgrimage to Compostela. We got off lightly. After Roqueville, after Bram, after Puylaurens, we expected prison. So relief rather than sorrow, I am ashamed to say, was my main emotion as we were led down to the Field of the Burned, as it came to be known. There I marvelled at the cruel ingenuity of the crusaders in their construction of the palisade.

  It all seemed slow and strange, the chanting of the monks, the clumsy walk of the fettered Cathars, the indistinct sound of their prayers. I wanted the grim ritual to be over as soon as possible. Francois, Sybille, Etienne and I were opposite the gate, Sybille quietly crying, her eyes closed.

  Then something happened that I find difficult to understand or to describe. Claire, the last of the women, stopped by the gate, turned, opened her arms and smiled. We were no more than ten feet away. At that moment Sybille looked up, saw her mother, let go of my arm and ran to join her. They were through the gate, which was closed and barred behind them, in less than a minute. Etienne and I instinctively grabbed Francois’s arm, but he made no attempt to follow Sybille, whether out of shock or fear I do not know.