The drums began to beat, the Bishop gave a signal and four soldiers plunged their burning torches into the piles of brushwood, straw and kindling at each corner. There was a breeze strong enough to fan the flames and very soon the whole palisade was blazing. The chants of the priests were not loud enough to drown the screams of the victims.
We had to move down the hill to escape the heat and the black smoke, although we did not escape the smell of burning human flesh. The fires burned for two days. Francois was in a daze, and neither Etienne nor I could comfort him. We reached the bottom of the hill, while the soldiers remained on the upper slopes. There Francois seemed to come out of his trance and wanted to go back to the Field of the Burned.
‘Sybille’s gone. There’s nothing left. You’d be wasting your time,’ I said to him, then turned to Etienne. ‘Where do we go now?’
‘To Compostela. But first to Carcassonne.’
9
The Price
Blanche
I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT he wanted, exactly what I was doing. I walked over to the bed, pulled my shift over my head, lay back and let him come into me. At that moment I ceased to be a Perfect, or even a believer, but it seemed a price worth paying to see Stephanie and my grandchild.
That first time was painful; Bernard had been dead for several years, and although I had flirted innocently with the young knights at Roqueville, I had become a Perfect and accepted abstinence from sex as part of my new, more ascetic life. And the Inquisitor was not gentle. It did not last long; he rolled off me, adjusted his long robes and left the room without speaking.
For the rest of that day and for many days thereafter I was concerned that now he had obtained what he wanted he might not keep his side of our bargain. He visited me again that night; he did not speak, although he cried out as he came, leaving my room soon afterwards.
It continued like that for the rest of the week; he would come to my room, I would take off my shift, lie back on the bed and raise my knees as he entered me. I managed to withdraw myself from the act, closing my eyes and making no noise, not even of protest. I would look at the shutters, always drawn in the evening, and concentrate on the little crack that ran down one of them, causing the light blue paint to bubble and peel.
Although the act, mechanical and brief as it was, disgusted me, my disgust was as much at myself as at the Inquisitor. To my relief, he bathed regularly and as a result smelled only of the walnut oil soap that, I learned later, was made at his old abbey of Flaran. He did not try to kiss me, although I noticed his breath was sweet.
He spoke to me only once, to ask whether I had enough to eat and drink. I asked him when I could see my daughter.
‘As soon as I can make the necessary arrangements,’ he replied as he left the room.
I discovered his name from the elderly attendant who brought my meals to my room – it could no longer be called a cell, as it had rudimentary furnishings and a close-stool outside the door, which was not locked. Arnaud was the Inquisitor’s given name, although he had changed it to Mathieu when he became a monk. He was a farmer’s son from the north, plucked out of his abbey by the Pope to root out Catharism from the Languedoc.
After that first week his secretary came to see me.
‘Thank God, Lady Blanche,’ he said. ‘I am pleased you have been convinced by my master to return to the True Faith. You are welcome indeed.’
‘Am I free to go?’
‘You are to move from this little room to a house that befits your station. You are free to leave that house, but not Carcassonne. Eventually you must appear before the magistrates, but your penance will not be severe. My master has said to them that your conversion is sincere, your repentance absolute.’
I asked him who was paying the rent for the house.
‘It’s Church property,’ he said, and I left it at that. It seemed he had no knowledge of my bargain with the Inquisitor, although it was unlikely that his visits to my chamber and their purpose would pass unnoticed for long.
The house was in an adjacent square; small, a single bedroom above a ground-floor room for living and cooking. It had been whitewashed inside, and the walls were of the warm stone of the region, with two windows at each level and a blue-painted door. There was a courtyard at the back shaded by a plane tree. The secretary gave me a key and a purse containing a small sum of money. ‘You are free to leave the house, but you must not go outside the walls of Carcassonne,’ he repeated as he left.
I had no wish to stray far from my house, going only to the twice-weekly market to buy food and wine. As I was no longer a Perfect I bought and ate meat and eggs for the first time for many years. I had to admit to myself that the change in my diet was a change for the better; I had endured the monotony of vegetables and the occasional fish for a long time, and I enjoyed the strong red wine of the region, which I had not tasted for twenty years or more. It was better than I remembered from the old days at Roqueville.
On my fifth night in the little house the Inquisitor told me that Stephanie was living in a small community of nuns not far from his old abbey of Flaran. He had heard that morning she had borne a healthy son. He went on to tell me what I had already assumed, that she too had recanted, though Stephanie was always a convinced Cathar and would have found it hard to swear an oath. Suppressing my tears, I asked him what had happened to Etienne and the other Roqueville knights.
‘As far as I know they are at Montségur,’ he said, then rose and left the house without leading me upstairs, for which I was grateful.
*
Mathieu
AFTER I FIRST possessed Blanche I thought I would find it easy to return to my celibate ways. This was not the case; the more I had, the more I wanted.
Blanche kept both parts of the bargain. She gave me her body without protest or resistance. She appeared in front of the Bishop, his retainers and many of the nobles of Carcassonne, swearing the necessary oath in a clear, unfaltering voice, and then joined in the celebratory Mass which followed without any outward show of reluctance.
Afterwards the Bishop congratulated me.
‘Blanche de Roqueville is an even more important conversion than Baruch, and achieved in far less time. Your powers of persuasion have not diminished.’
I looked at him closely as he spoke these words, wondered if he knew of my bargain with Blanche, and then realised that I did not care. I knew his own life was far from blameless. He was rumoured to be a regular visitor to the brothels of the city. I was safe so long as I was discreet, so long as word of my conduct did not reach Rome. The Bishop was in no position to act against me. I accepted his compliment at face value.
‘Now that she has converted she will be able to petition the Church for the return of her lands. It will be difficult to refuse her.’
The Bishop looked thoughtful for a moment.
‘Well, it is a price worth paying. The tithes are flowing more freely now that Béziers and Bram and Puylaurens have fallen.’
The Bishop was my confessor, and until now I had little to tell him, which he had found disappointing. I was unable to reveal my relationship with Blanche even in the confessional, and I continued to celebrate Mass and take Communion in a state of mortal sin. This perhaps accounted for my increasing leniency towards those heretics that came before the Inquisition. As the Bishop had pointed out, these were diminishing in number, and the need for exemplary punishments seemed to be a thing of the past. This made me more comfortable with Blanche, although we avoided talking about such things.
She pressed me after two weeks about Stephanie. I hesitated, then said, ‘I am afraid that once you have seen her you will not return here. You will have to go under escort.’
‘Where would I go? You have made me – I have made me – whatever I have become. I did not choose the path that brought me here,’ and she gave a slight smile, ‘but here I am.’
These words and the smile brought me a little guilty happiness which I found hard to conceal.
‘I�
�ll make the arrangements for you to visit the convent next week. It’s a day’s journey at most.’
*
Stephanie
AFTER I SWORE the oath and became no longer Cathar I went before the magistrate for sentencing. I was to go to a small convent of Carmelite nuns, and there my son was born. At that point I did not know whether Etienne was alive or dead, and my mother and I had been separated the moment we arrived in Carcassonne.
She had been a Perfect for many years, was steadfast in her faith, and would, I was sure, find it impossible to swear an oath and recant. I had found it hard enough. So she would be tried, convicted and burned, a fate which she could accept in the confidence that eternal and glorious life awaited her. No such prospect awaited me. I had sworn, I had converted, I was no longer Cathar. I had abandoned the faith into which I had been born. Holding my baby son was my consolation.
News was hard to come by at the convent. It was not a closed order, and the nuns were friendly enough, but we had few visitors. Then came word, via the abbey, that Blanche, my mother, would visit us in a few days’ time. I was overjoyed, and surprised, at the news that she was still alive.
As soon as she arrived she was shown into my small chamber; Bertrand was sleeping in his cot. We hugged each other for a long time, cried, found words hard to utter. She held Bertrand as soon as he had finished feeding at my breast. My son seemed instantly at home in her arms.
‘He looks like my father,’ she said, able to discern a resemblance to her father that had escaped me. I was desperate for news of Etienne.
‘I am told he and the other knights were led by Francois to Montségur, and have found shelter there. Etienne was strong, he will have survived the journey.’
‘Are you sure he is still alive?’
She paused. ‘I cannot be sure.’
Hearing those words I broke down, and it was hard for her to give me much comfort. Then I asked her how she had managed to escape the full weight of the Inquisition. She told me everything, sparing no details.
I was shocked, and showed it. My mother, the Perfect, who had taught me and many others the Cathar faith, had sworn an oath and recanted. Far worse, she had allowed herself to be violated by the monster who had ordered the blinding and maiming of Etienne.
‘Better to have burned,’ I said. ‘You have become the Inquisitor’s whore.’
These were unforgiving, unforgiveable words. Behind them lay my jealousy of her beauty ever since I had reached womanhood, jealousy of the way in which she allowed the younger knights at Roqueville to make courtly love to her. Including my Etienne.
Blanche was silent for a moment, then replied, ‘How else could I see you, see Bertrand? You recanted. Were your reasons any better than mine?’
I could not reply. She handed Bertrand back to me, gave me a kiss which I was unable to return and left the room. In the morning she was gone.
*
Blanche
I WAS IN DESPAIR after seeing Bertrand and Stephanie. I found her unkindness to me shocking. Her rejection was cruel and unwarranted; we had both recanted, and for good reasons. She had saved her unborn child, and if I had not given myself to the Inquisitor I would never have seen her or my grandson again. I would have been handed over to the secular authorities for sentencing, and could well have spent the rest of my life in jail. As it turned out, I was in a prison of a sort, and it seemed my sacrifice had been in vain.
On the evening of my return to the little house in Carcassonne the Inquisitor came to see me. He asked about my visit to Stephanie and my grandson, and I broke down in tears, unable to answer for several minutes. I had never before shown such frailty of spirit in front of him.
Then I said I had been rejected by Stephanie, not for recanting, but for sleeping with him.
‘You had no need to tell her,’ he said.
‘I am still enough of a Cathar to tell the truth. She hates me now. I’ll never see her again.’
He put his hand on my shoulder and stroked my hair for a moment, and this show of sympathy made me cry even harder. Then he said, ‘She’ll change her mind in time. I’ll leave now, and come and see you later in the week.’
I had not believed him capable of possessing, never mind displaying, the gentler human emotions, but his sympathy was genuine and I had no one else to turn to. In the weeks that followed our relationship began, very gradually, to change to something more than one-sided sex. I would give him supper – fish, bread, wine – two or three times a week. And on these evenings we would talk, eat and then go upstairs. Sometimes he would stay until dawn.
Our conversations were circumscribed. I would ask him about his early life on the farm and in Paris, and he in turn would listen to me talk about my childhood at Villeneuve-Comtal before I came to Roqueville. We were careful to avoid theology, or talk about the siege and the events that had preceded the fall of our castle.
From time to time I would fall silent, reminded in spite of myself that Mathieu had ordered the burning of my dead son’s body and the blinding of Etienne. Stephanie and my grandchild were his hostages. Our first sexual encounters were as part of a bargain. I could not easily forget what he had done to my family and my fellow Cathars. I had done my best to withdraw myself from anything but passive participation in the act.
I could not help noticing he was tall, striking rather than handsome, with beautiful, expressive hands, surprising in a farmer’s son. He had the lean, ascetic body of a man who fasted regularly. He approached the act of love as though he was making up for years of celibacy; at the beginning he was as brief, and as powerful, as the stallions I had seen shuddering into our mares at Roqueville.
I for my part, after separating myself from the act in those early nights, was increasingly unable to avoid being caught up and taking pleasure from our coming together. I used oil on myself and on him and raised my knees to make the act easier. And he began to notice my body, to caress me, to take enough time, at my whispered requests, to give me pleasure too.
I rarely regretted the changed nature of the bargain nor the changed response of my body – the latter at least did not seem to be within my control. We had a saying in the Languedoc: ‘As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb.’ And I was no longer a Perfect, no longer Cathar.
I understood that this was the ultimate betrayal, not just of my faith but of my dead husband and son. Yet I could not, in the end, ignore my body and I no longer pretended I was an unwilling victim. I stopped thinking of him as the Inquisitor and began to call him Mathieu.
10
To Carcassonne and Barraigne
Guillemette
I BECAME BY DEFAULT the leader of our little band. Etienne was blind and Francois might as well have been for all the use he was in those early days. I was struck by how helpless knights were without a horse, a sword or a crossbow. Without me Etienne and Francois would have starved.
Etienne wanted to find his wife and child, although secretly I doubted that they were still alive. Carcassonne, where they had been taken after the fall of Roqueville, seemed as good a destination as any, and it was one of the many starting points for the pilgrimage to Compostela.
‘Remember, we are pilgrims now. Devout, humble and penitent. Warriors no longer,’ I told them both on that first evening. We were only three miles away from Montségur and could still see the smoke from the fire that had destroyed two hundred Cathars. Francois kept looking back; I looked once and never a second time.
We had sheltered in a small copse as night fell; we had no food and no means of making a fire. We had detached ourselves from the other converts; there was no safety in unarmed numbers and we would travel faster without our former friends. To mark our pilgrim’s status I spent the evening sewing scallop shells on the cloaks we had taken as we left Montségur.
At dawn we were stiff, cold and slow to get moving. We walked all morning and just before noon we had our first stroke of luck. We came across the corpse of a soldier lying in a ditch. He had been dead for some
time judging by the smell, and his face had been partially eaten away, probably by foxes. I searched his body, gagging at the smell, and found a tinder box and some flints.
Francois wanted to take his sword. I would have none of it.
‘We are peaceful pilgrims on a holy journey. Downcast eyes and silence are the best weapons.’
He reluctantly agreed, although I found out later that he had taken the dead man’s dagger and hidden it in the lining of his coat.
We were retracing the journey that Francois and his fifteen companions had taken after Roqueville had fallen. ‘We should avoid Roqueville. We’ll find no friends there,’ said Etienne. ‘Better to go via Barraigne. My mother may still be alive.’
The rolling countryside along our journey was uncultivated and empty, the farmers having been killed or driven out, their crops taken and their animals slaughtered. Many of the buildings had been burned, though we were usually able to find some kind of shelter and build a fire. We lived off what little was left of the land. I was the provider; we saw the occasional roe-deer, hare or partridge but had no means of bringing them down. I set snares every evening once we had halted, but they were always empty in the morning. What saved us were the mushrooms in the woods. The crusaders had stripped the land bare, but if you knew where to look there were plenty of ceps, girolles and trompettes de mort to be had.
‘We’re living like kings,’ I told Francois, who was incapable of telling a mushroom from a toadstool. The mushrooms were delicious, although after a week a diet even of ceps became monotonous. But we did not starve.
Cathar Page 12