Two sounds, one after another: the smack of the throwing arm into the stopping beam, then the sharp song of our crossbow bolts. I watched the big stone curve, slowly it seemed, over the wall and out of my sight. Then a third sound, a splash, and the cheering stopped.
The fifty-pound stone had taken their captain full in the chest, lifting him out of the saddle and leaving him a bloody heap in the middle of his men. I wished I had seen that. We killed eleven of them with our crossbows and the rest ran away.
‘What did you think would happen if they’d come in through the gates?’ I said to Clergue. ‘They would have rounded up the animals and left quietly?’ He didn’t reply. Beatrice by now had gone to her chamber. He stood there for a few minutes, looking at the bodies in the square, the flies already round them.
Then he said, ‘It was a lucky shot,’ and walked back to his house, saying nothing to our crossbowmen, who found it hard to believe what they had done, especially the Credentes, to whom all human life was meant to be sacred. He was right; it was a lucky shot. It meant I would have Beatrice to myself for several weeks thereafter.
*
Pierre Clergue
IT WAS A few months after my return from Carcassonne that we were attacked by the English band. On Francois’s advice, I had greatly strengthened the village defences. My brother and I had gone away for four days to find crossbows, bolts and the materials for building a mangonel, and on my return I put Francois in charge.
When we were eventually attacked Beatrice lost her nerve. We both believed that the marauders would be satisfied if they took our livestock, and when she gave the order to lower the drawbridge I didn’t countermand her instructions.
Francois knew better; he fired the mangonel, his men, my men, on the ramparts loosed off their crossbows, the English commander was killed and the survivors ran away. They were not used to resistance from a village as small as ours. And it was a lucky first shot from the mangonel that killed their leader. I said so to Francois.
‘I paced out the distance and used the stone we had tried in practice. It was going to kill half a dozen men if it missed the man on horseback. And we’d been training hard with the crossbows.’
The village agreed and gave Francois all the credit, treating me as though I was a coward, even though I had organised the materiel which made our victory possible. And it was Beatrice, not I, who gave the command to lower the drawbridge.
She shared the village view about the attack and took none of the blame herself. Instead, she devoted herself entirely to Francois thereafter and was barely civil to me. When I accused her of abandoning me, she said, ‘Our understanding is at an end. Besides, I know and the whole of Montaillou knows that you are sleeping with Gaillarde Benet. And Grazide Rives. That ought to be enough for any man.’
I was so angry that I tried to force myself upon her, but her resistance wasn’t feigned on this occasion. She scratched my face, kneed me in the groin and cried out for her steward, who came into her chamber and I was forced to leave. That was the unhappy end to our affair; even when Francois took his sheep up into the mountains she was no longer interested in my attentions.
*
Beatrice
IT IS STRANGE how a single incident changed my perception of two men I thought I knew well.
The appearance of the English band in Montaillou was terrifying; we had readied ourselves for the possibility of an attack, but without really believing it would come about. And in the preparation both men, Pierre and Francois, did what I would have expected. Pierre quickly obtained the materials we needed for our defence, and as quickly delegated the responsibility of making a mangonel, and crossbows, and training the young men in their use, to Francois.
‘He may have only one eye and one arm,’ Pierre said, something he never lost an opportunity to point out (a blue eye, and a strong body, and a charming voice, I replied – but only to myself). ‘But he knows about military matters, or so he claims, so let’s put him to the test.’
Francois, somewhat to my surprise, had no difficulty taking orders from Pierre. Although he had worked for Pierre collecting tithes during his first two years in our village, since then he had built up his own flock of sheep thanks to his ability to kill wolves with his crossbow, but he was still an outsider.
Montaillou felt unable to place a knight in its precisely ordered village hierarchy, even one whose heroic deeds after the fall of Roqueville were well known enough to be commemorated in a ballad. When he arrived Francois had no money, no horse, no wife, and no weapons apart from a crossbow borrowed from Pierre Clergue.
Francois told me later that he had never built a mangonel, but I wouldn’t have guessed that. Pierre had managed to obtain all the necessary materials, or almost all, and our village carpenter and blacksmith were well able to follow Francois’s rough drawings scratched out with a stick in the mud of the courtyard. They only tried two practice shots. After the first took a piece out of my castle wall I was tempted to tell them to stop. The second practice shot, after some adjustment to the throwing arm and the bucket, was better, clearing the wall without damaging it. The third, when it was later fired in anger, saved our lives.
Francois trained the young men of the village, a dozen or so, to use the crossbow in our old tilt-yard. At first they were reluctant to pay much attention to a one-armed man, but he quickly showed them how he had managed to kill so many wolves. I used to watch them from the window of my parlour.
We were well prepared when the English band came to our village. Nevertheless we were all terrified. We knew their reputation. And I, who should outwardly have appeared fearless, was as frightened as anyone. I wanted to believe they were only after our cattle and sheep and told Pierre to lower the drawbridge. He should have known better, he should not have paid any attention to me, but he was as frightened as I was.
Only Francois was sensible enough to ignore my order. I will never forget that moment when the stone from the mangonel sailed over the wall a few feet away from where I was standing and struck the English captain out of his saddle, leaving him a bloody mess on the ground. And our young men, apart from one or two, held their fire for just long enough to make their shots count, getting in a second shot as the mercenaries ran away. I stood there rigid with fear, scarcely believing we had won with such apparent ease, until my steward came up and led me to my chamber.
The events of that day made me reassess my opinion of Pierre, Francois and myself. My loss of confidence in my own judgement and, perhaps unfairly, that of Pierre Clergue, was counterbalanced by a new and profound admiration for Francois. I was wise enough not to let the latter show too obviously, although I made it clear to Pierre that he was no longer welcome – in my bed, I said, but our coupling had only rarely taken place in my chamber. Still, he understood that it was over between us, although he protested and tried to take me there and then until I shouted for my steward.
*
Francois
THE ATTACK BY the English band changed two things. First, and perhaps unfairly, I received all the credit for our victory. I had trained our crossbowmen, built the mangonel and given the order to fire just as Beatrice, and an acquiescent Pierre, had lowered the drawbridge. It was clear in that moment that the English band would take more than our livestock, but then the mangonel killed the English commander and the weeks of crossbow training paid off.
Pierre immediately arranged and presided over a service of thanksgiving in the church. He made it clear in his sermon, while he didn’t mention himself by name, that it was his vision and preparation, using Church money, that made victory possible.
All perfectly true. But I released the mangonel, the slow arc of the stone that struck the English commander was etched on the minds of all the men on the ramparts, and later on every man, woman and child in Montaillou believed they had seen it themselves. Within a month the troubadour composed a ballad about our triumph, a ballad that made no mention of Pierre but sang the praises of the one-eyed, one-armed warrior
who had come to save the village from a fate the ballad described in enjoyable, gruesome detail.
Beatrice was also changed. She was a strong, independent woman, but that moment of misjudgement had undermined her confidence. And she blamed Pierre Clergue for failing to countermand the order to lower the drawbridge
‘It was down before he could say the word. It’s your castle, your drawbridge.’
‘He could have stopped me. We’d all be dead but for you.’
I soon gave up defending Pierre. It was plainly useless, hardly in my interest, and from that moment on I no longer had to share Beatrice. I moved into the castle, lending my house to the young Belot boy, Andre, who brought provisions regularly up to the mountain during the summer. My relationship with Beatrice’s steward, an old Planissoles retainer who regarded his primary duty as the protection of his mistress, was uneasy at first. But I was careful never to give him an order, made only occasional requests, and he began to accept I was no threat and a comfort to Beatrice. I became more than her lover: I became her confidant, her counsellor, almost her husband.
‘I buried my first husband,’ she said, ‘I see no need to marry a second.’
‘It might be unlucky,’ I agreed, and didn’t point out I had never suggested marriage. I was happy enough with what we had.
For some time after the abortive raid by the English band the Clergues continued to rule Montaillou. But that power was no longer absolute. It had been undermined when Pierre Clergue was arrested, and although he boasted on his return that his detention was an administrative oversight ‘by those penny-pinchers in the Bishop’s office’ tithes became harder to collect. One or two of the bolder villagers made an automatic deduction of 5 per cent, ‘because that was what the Clergues have been skimming off the top. They will have to do without their cream’, and then boasted about their boldness in a way that would have been unthinkable in earlier years.
Bernard’s authority as magistrate was also challenged. When he summoned Pierre Lizier for allowing his sheep to graze on Clergue pastures, Lizier first failed to appear and then refused to pay the fine of a hundred sous, although that was modest enough.
‘I appeal to the Comte de Foix, from whom I understand you derive your authority,’ Lizier said when he was manhandled into the court. ‘That was always our land until you and your brother stole it.’ This was an extraordinary defiance, and soon became widely known throughout Montaillou.
Nevertheless Bernard continued to defend and encourage Catharism in the village. His faith appeared to be genuine. At considerable risk to himself he arranged for Guillaume Authie to visit Montaillou and sheltered him in his house for several days while Authie administered the Consolamentum to the dying Alamande Guilabert.
Until that moment visiting Perfects had been sheltered in other friendly houses; the stream of visitors that followed Authie’s arrival in the village was a risk even for a Clergue. This was a defiant gesture by Bernard, and perhaps an attempt to recover some of the ground he and his brother had lost.
Beatrice and I watched this slow decline in the powers of the Clergue family first with a detached curiosity and then with alarm. Montaillou appeared to be exchanging the certainty of despotism, and its protection, for a freedom that seemed unlikely to last very long, and would not include the freedom to practise Catharism.
The Inquisition had a long reach, and Montaillou had survived partly through distance, partly through the ruthless suppression of gossip and rumour by the Clergues, and partly through the repeated assurances by Pierre Clergue that his flock were good Catholics, attended his church regularly and received absolution for their sins.
‘There are no heretics in Montaillou,’ he claimed have told the Bishop in Carcassonne, ‘only good Christians.’ As the Cathars often referred to themselves as Good Christians, in contrast to the follies and venality of the Catholic Church, this was a comment that could reassure both the Bishop and the Cathars in Montaillou. It is uncertain whether even Pierre Clergue would have dared to use these words to the Bishop, but the village took considerable comfort from his repeated claim to have defended his flock, whatever words he may have used in Carcassonne.
In spite of Pierre’s claim, and in spite of the fact that he had returned from Carcassonne apparently unscathed, the boldness of those who had been damaged by the Clergue family – and there were all too many in Montaillou – increased. It was rumoured that Raymond and Jean Maurs had sworn a ritual oath over bread and wine to kill Pierre Clergue and had gone as far as hiring two assassins to carry out the task. Pierre heard the rumours soon enough and thereafter never went far from his house or the church without two of his men-at-arms to guard him. And he abandoned his usual trip to the market at Ax, where the would-be killers waited for him in vain.
Pierre made his displeasure known to Beatrice and me on the way back from Mass a few Sundays later.
‘The Maurs family are my eternal enemies,’ he said, ‘and I will do what I can to destroy them. They hired some ruffians to kill me in the marketplace in Ax. We should have cut off Mengarde’s head, not her tongue, and walled up her son, or burned him when we had the power.’
‘He’s gone to Catalonia,’ said Beatrice. ‘He can’t harm you or your brother now.’
‘He’s not gone far enough. We’ll see if we can’t reach him once we know exactly where he is.’
‘Why bother?’ I said.
Pierre Clergue looked astonished and didn’t reply
Later over supper in the castle Beatrice and I discussed the feud.
‘It wouldn’t matter, but Pierre seems to have lost his judgement along with some of his authority. He’d become a full-blown Catholic overnight to strike at the Maurs, or to save his own skin. It won’t be long before someone denounces him to the Inquisition, and they’ll take it seriously now. There are too many cuckolded husbands and discarded mistresses for him to feel safe,’ I said.
‘At least I discarded him. But that doesn’t make me feel safe. Nor you. He’d betray us in a moment if it suited him.’
‘There are easier targets. You never had a Perfect stay overnight in the castle. And you have friends in high places in Carcassonne and Toulouse.’
‘My lands are worth seizing, and they will know or soon find out that almost everyone in Montaillou is Cathar, or complicit. If they send for Pierre they won’t need to torture him for very long.’
‘I go to the mountains with my sheep in three days’ time. Come with me. It’s cooler there in every sense, and perhaps Montaillou and the Clergues will have calmed down when we return.’
Beatrice seemed doubtful, took a sip of wine and looked down on the village for several minutes. The main street was deserted, apart from a couple of stray dogs, and the smoke of the cooking fires rose straight in the still air. Every five minutes a donkey brayed from one of the common pastures.
‘It looks calm enough this evening. Perhaps I will come in a week or two. I do like it in the mountains. I’ve even got used to your latrine.’
20
The Raid
The Bishop
MONTAILLOU HAD LONG been the source of rumours about its selective attitude to doctrine, although earlier we had assurances from their priest that nothing was amiss. The previous Inquisitor had taken these words at face value, but I am sorry to say that he had become lax in his prosecution of heresy. I attributed this to his liaison with a former heretic, the noblewoman Blanche de Roqueville. It was sad to see a great and, on his day, penetrating intellect softened by sexual congress.
In the end it was the priest himself, Pierre Clergue, who informed us that he was unable to check the spread of heresy within his congregation without assistance from Carcassonne. He went as far as naming forty or fifty citizens of Montaillou as potential heretics worthy of thorough investigation. For the moment I was happy to rely on him as an invaluable source, although I made a mental note that, in due course, we would need to enquire how he had allowed his flock to stray so far from the true path.
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br /> I organised the operation in great detail, and accompanied our little force to make sure that everything went according to my plan. Montaillou was the last redoubt of the Cathar heresy in the Languedoc. All the great castles had fallen and their heretical masters burned or converted. Only this little village remained, an insult to Almighty God and a continued challenge to the authority of the Church. If we could extinguish the Cathar heresy in Montaillou our long task, first taken up by the crusaders many years ago, would have been accomplished.
The raid took place in the early morning of the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, a day when the whole village attended Mass. Our men-at-arms, directed by Jacques de Polignac, who was normally in charge of the prison in Carcassonne, blocked up the main tracks out of Montaillou to Camurac, Ax, Prades and Gazel, two men on each track. The rest went from house to house rounding up men, women and children over the age of fourteen and taking them, some of the men protesting vigorously, many of the women and children crying, into the castle courtyard.
Beatrice’s steward watched in the courtyard; he was saved from our attentions only by virtue of his mistress’s rank and her friends in high places. Beatrice herself was, we were told, in the mountains. She had not been accused, although her companion, Francois de Beaufort, had appeared before us some years earlier and had been sentenced to go on a pilgrimage to Compostela.
In the castle yard Bernard Clergue was in charge of the roll call. I heard one of the Maurs shout out when his name was called, ‘It’s the Clergues you want, not me. They’ve turned a blind eye—’ and was knocked to the ground by one of the soldiers before he could continue. It was perhaps a pity that we didn’t hear then what he had to say, but I made a mental note to investigate in greater detail the activities of the Clergue family.
Pierre had recently been found guilty of taking more than his share of the tithes, a frequent offence I am ashamed to admit, and one that was rarely punished with enough severity. But he was the priest, he had instigated the raid and there had only been rumours and gossip about his attitude to the heretics.
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