Cathar

by Christopher Bland

  There was an immediate hearing of those accused of minor offences. Pierre Clergue made the selection, and they were forthwith sentenced by me – I had the power of summary judgement in such cases – to wear the double yellow cross on their cloaks and tunics for at least three years. Some of the rest were given dates to attend the court, and the most serious offenders were escorted in fetters by de Polignac and his soldiers to Carcassonne, leaving in the early evening.

  *

  Francois

  BEATRICE AND I were in the mountains and received a detailed account of what had happened from her steward on our return. Pierre Clergue had been in charge of the process, occasionally allowing one or two of his friends, although there were few enough of these, to escape arrest. This treachery dismayed the village, although it came as no surprise to us. It seemed like a last, desperate throw of the dice by the Clergue family.

  ‘Mersende Maury managed to bluff her way past the guards on the road to Prades,’ the steward told us. ‘She carried a loaf of bread on her head, with a sickle in her hand, claimed she was only in Montaillou to help with the harvest, and was on her way home.’

  ‘How did Andre Belot get away?’

  ‘He was taken to the castle, but managed to slip away in the crowds and confusion. He avoided the main tracks and crossed the fields to the woods on the mountain side of the village.’

  ‘It was Andre who made his way up to our pastures and told us what had happened,’ I said.

  ‘And one of the Benets was flushed out of the secret passage between the Rives and Benet houses, betrayed by Pierre Clergue. He was taken to the castle and later to Carcassonne.’

  The raid was the ultimate revenge for the Clergues, who immediately began to confiscate the fields of those who had been charged or taken away. By the time we returned from the mountains, it was to see a Montaillou in which almost every citizen was wearing a double yellow cross and tunic, a Montaillou missing forty or fifty of its most prominent men and women.

  They had been taken away to Carcassonne or Pamiers after the round-up. Although they trickled back in the following year, the lucky ones sentenced only to the wearing of the double yellow cross, four of their number had been burned and several more given long sentences of The Wall – bread and water in a tiny cell from which they were unlikely to emerge alive.

  I would have expected the Clergue family to have behaved with greater caution under the circumstances, but the reverse was the case. It was clear that both Pierre and Bernard believed they were now beyond the reach of the law or the Inquisition, and their Cathar sympathies were more in evidence than ever.

  Later in that same year, the year of the raid the year of the roundup, Pierre Clergue’s father Pons died, but not before he had been consoled by Guillaume Authie, who was sheltered for three days by the Clergues. The body was laid out in the kitchen. The dead man’s face was splashed with water, and hairs and nail clippings were taken to ensure the good fortune of the Clergue family. A large number of villagers, mostly wearing their double yellow crosses thanks to Pierre and Bernard, came to pay their respects, more from fear of the Clergue family than from love of the patriarch. And when Mengarde Clergue died not long after, Pierre buried his mother next to the altar in his church.

  ‘As though she were a saint,’ said the Maurs family among themselves, although only when they were confident they were in no danger of being overheard. The power of the Clergue family in Montaillou, which seemed to be on the verge of collapse a year earlier, had been triumphantly, brazenly, reasserted.

  It was not to last much longer. Four of the early victims of the round-up were turned over to the secular arm and burned, long sentences of bread and water were given to several more, and out of fear and revenge the denunciations of Pierre Clergue came thick and fast. Bernard had been right when he suggested his brother’s promiscuity represented an enormous risk, and former mistresses now incarcerated in Carcassonne felt more frightened of the immediate, terrifying power of the Inquisition than the distant authority of Pierre and Bernard.

  The new Inquisitor was now assisted by an able and feared Dominican from Pamiers, Brother Gaillard. Both took a detailed, almost prurient interest in the amorous affairs of Pierre Clergue and there was no shortage of witnesses eager to implicate him. The two judges were astonished by the extent of Pierre’s promiscuity, and his ability to use his position to convince so many women that they were committing only the mildest of sins, easily pardoned, if they slept with the priest of Montaillou.

  *

  The Bishop

  THE MAN IN the courtyard was right. No less than four women, Grazide Lizier, Alazais Faurs, Alazais Azema and Esclarmonde Fort, who appeared before us in Carcassonne, claimed to have been mistresses of the priest. And they spoke of many more. The Inquisitor and I, used as we were to the frailty of clerics, were astonished by the promiscuity of Pierre Clergue.

  But there was worse. Grazide Lizier made it clear that Pierre, at least for the purpose of seducing her, had declared that all visible and tangible matter, sky and the earth and everything that lives there were created by the Devil, the ruler of the world. And that therefore she needn’t worry about committing the sin of adultery, a sin from which in any case he could absolve her in Confession the following Sunday.

  This was dualism at its worst, rank heresy, a far more serious crime than even the seduction of married women. It explained the many, hitherto unsubstantiated, rumours about Montaillou. And Esclarmonde Fort went so far as to allege that Clergue had intercourse with Beatrice de Planissoles behind the altar of the church itself, although she admitted that she had not witnessed the sacrilege, which we accordingly discounted.

  I did, however, make a mental note that the chatelaine of Montaillou, who had powerful friends, should perhaps be brought to Carcassonne when we had finished with our current crop of prisoners.

  We had more than enough evidence to arrest Pierre Clergue; he was charged with heresy, taken to Carcassonne, and then to Pamiers.

  *

  Francois

  BERNARD CLERGUE MADE expensive and unsuccessful efforts to free his brother.

  ‘I spent fourteen thousand shillings on bribes,’ he told me months later. I was the only man left in Montaillou to whom he could speak in confidence.

  ‘They took my money and kept Pierre inside. I gave a mule to the daughter of Roger Bernard of Foix so that she would intercede with the Bishop. I gave three hundred pounds to Gui de Levis who was on his way to the Curia in Avignon. I persuaded four Cardinals to write to the Inquisitor on my brother’s behalf. All useless. We are finished in Montaillou. We have lost the head of our family, the best a clan could hope for. I’ll never see him again in this world. And there’s a new priest in the village.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘There’s nothing left for me to do except wait until they send for me. I’ll be lucky to escape the stake.’

  The following year Bernard submitted himself to the mercy of the Inquisitor. He was found guilty of heresy and impenitence and handed over to the secular arm.

  21

  After the Clergues

  Francois

  THIS TIME PIERRE would not return. When Bernard was arrested and taken away, replaced by a new magistrate who brought a dozen men-at-arms with him, tough men from the north who spoke little Occitan, it was clear that the Clergue rule over Montaillou was at an end.

  Wild rumours circulated in the village about what had happened to the two brothers – they had been burned, they had been tortured, they had escaped, they had been pardoned and were on their way back, they had been sent on a pilgrimage to Compostela. In the end, to silence the rumours, the new magistrate produced a copy of their sentence, ten years in The Wall. A few months later he told the village that neither had survived the Pamiers prison diet of bread and water.

  The Maurs clan rejoiced, and Andre Belot returned from Catalonia. ‘I hope they burn, both of them. It’s the least they deserve,’ he said to Beatrice. ‘M
ontaillou is a better place without them.’

  Most of the village seemed to agree. But it soon became obvious that although much had changed, it was not necessarily for the better. Two-thirds of the village wore double yellow crosses, and this badge of heresy was rigidly enforced by the new magistrate, a humourless lawyer from Toulouse. The yellow cross could have been worn with pride; instead, it was regarded as a shameful reminder that its wearers had all recanted out of fear of imprisonment or the stake. I understood the feeling only too well.

  Catharism had been effectively extinguished in Montaillou. We all continued to go to church, but the new priest’s sermons had none of Pierre Clergue’s subtle ambiguities, and he kept a careful record of all those who failed to come to Confession. There had been no sign of the two surviving Perfects, although they were rumoured to be in hiding in Catalonia.

  Beatrice and I went to Mass and Confession, but were careful and selective about our sins. We were not anxious to follow the Clergues to Carcassonne or Pamiers.

  ‘At least our wives and daughters are safe,’ said Andre one evening.

  ‘True. With the new one perhaps it’s your brothers and sons that you need to worry about. But he seems the sort of priest who is sexless. I see they’ve made no attempt to return the confiscated meadows.’

  ‘The Benets tried and failed. No one convicted of heresy has any chance of restitution. We must all make do with what we have, and thank God we’re still alive.’

  In this uneasy atmosphere I told Beatrice that I thought we should leave.

  ‘They’ll come for us sooner or later. The Church would love your land, they’ve never been convinced by my conversion, and we’re the most prominent targets left in the Languedoc.’

  ‘We’re not exactly counts or dukes, with all due respect to your lofty, landless status, Seigneur Francois,’ she said, laughing. ‘We have abided by their rules, you served out your sentence on the road to Compostela, and the Inquisition make some attempt to abide by the rule of law. They don’t trump up charges themselves. They rarely act on gossip and rumour alone, which is why the Clergues survived as long as they did.’

  ‘I still think we should leave for Catalonia while we can.’

  Beatrice became angry at my persistence.

  ‘I belong here, even if you do not. These are my people, this is my village, and it would be the act of a coward to leave unless there was no other choice.’

  ‘I’ve never been called a coward,’ I said. ‘You believe you are safe, untouchable, like the Clergues. Look what happened to them. Who knows what Pierre said about you when he was interrogated?’ I got up and left, sleeping in the Great Hall alone for two nights until we both calmed down.

  Life in Montaillou continued in this new, uneasy fashion, and over the year all but the four condemned to the stake, and two of the young girls who had died in prison, trickled back to the village in ones and twos. They had all recanted, they all wore the double yellow cross and several had been tortured. They were reluctant to talk about their experience or the fate of their friends, or even to rejoice at the deaths in captivity of Pierre and Bernard Clergue.

  Beatrice pretended not to notice the cowed spirit of the village.

  ‘People are too frightened even to gossip,’ I said. ‘At least when the Clergues were in charge there were some good jokes about them, and a ballad or two.’

  ‘No one dared sing the ballad, or tell jokes outside their own families,’ said Beatrice. ‘It wasn’t exactly a golden age.’

  It was the sudden and severe illness of Beatrice’s steward Robert that brought matters to a head.

  ‘He’s dying, he wants the Consolamentum, and I’ve sent for Authie.’

  ‘That’s foolish. He’s too well known in Montaillou.’

  ‘I’ve sent for him. Robert has served me for forty years. Authie will arrive at night and leave at dawn.’

  He did arrive in time to comfort and console the dying man. Robert was lying in his little room in the corner of the courtyard. The airless room, lit only by two guttering candles, smelled sour. Robert’s eyes were closed, but they opened when he heard Authie’s voice.

  Authie laid his hand on Robert, brushed his forehead with a little copy of the Gospels, and told him that the Endura must begin from that moment. He was in a state of grace, could take only water, could no longer be touched by women, and his soul would now certainly travel to meet God in heaven. Only Beatrice and I were present.

  Although I was unhappy at Beatrice’s rashness and was sceptical about the value of the Consolamentum, it was clear that the ceremony, which lasted only a short time, comforted Robert.

  So I joined in the Our Father and felt moved in spite of myself. Robert’s Endura, mercifully, didn’t last long. I put myself in charge of his feeding, to conceal from the other servants that he was only given water. He died the following evening.

  After the ceremony we shared a meal of fish and bread with Authie, and just before dawn I escorted him out of the castle, down past the washing pool and set him on his way back to Catalonia.

  The moment the new priest heard of Robert’s death he asked why he hadn’t been sent for.

  ‘He died in the night, suddenly,’ said Beatrice. ‘And he’d been to church ten days before. I’m sure he confessed his sins, if he had any, and died in a state of grace.’

  The priest looked unconvinced but was not bold enough to question Beatrice. But the village knew Robert to be a devout Cathar who had been lucky to escape arrest. Someone, perhaps Arnaud Sicre, who was a compulsive informer and wished to curry favour with the new powers in the village, had seen Authie arrive in Montaillou and told the magistrate.

  Within ten days a warrant arrived for Beatrice’s arrest, and she was taken to Carcassonne. The arrest, like the round-up, was carefully timed; I was away at the market in Ax selling cheese and wool. When I returned she was gone.

  22

  Beatrice in Prison

  Francois

  I FELT ANGRY WHEN I heard the news. Angry not with the Inquisition, who were doing what they had always done, but with Beatrice, who had risked everything in order to ease the last hours of her steward. And neither of us believed that the Consolamentum made much difference to Robert’s chances of eternal life.

  It was difficult to find out anything useful about the arrest. Montaillou’s state of mind was one of stunned acceptance of whatever the Inquisition chose to do to the village. I asked Andre Belot what he knew.

  ‘Almost nothing. There were a dozen of them; they arrived at dawn on horseback, waited till the drawbridge was lowered, went into the castle and took Lady Beatrice. They spoke to nobody except the new magistrate before they left. And he immediately organised a house-to-house search. “We’re looking for the heretic Authie,” he said. “There will be trouble for anyone who has harboured him.”’

  ‘A dozen men – that’s a lot to take a single woman prisoner.’

  ‘They weren’t taking any chances, even though their spies told them you would be in the market in Ax.’

  ‘Spies? You mean Sicre.’

  Andre didn’t reply. I went to see the new magistrate, who was at first unhelpful, and then threatening.

  ‘She’s been taken to Carcassonne. I can’t tell you any more than that. We’ll be taking steps to sequester her land.’

  ‘Not unless she is convicted; Beatrice holds some of her land from the Comte de Foix, some from the King of Aragon, none from the Church.’

  ‘We’ll see about that. And our informant says Authie spent the night in the castle. Were you there when he visited the steward?’

  ‘I’ve never seen this man you call Authie.’

  I had decided I would no longer worry about lying. I went back to the castle and made sure that we were adequately defended against the magistrate and his Basque soldiers. I spent the next week wondering what, if anything, I could do.

  During that time my initial anger faded and was replaced by a reluctant admiration for what Beatrice had do
ne. She had been far braver than me; I admitted to myself that I would never have sent for the Perfect, even if it had been Beatrice on her deathbed.

  My fear of what might happen to her in the hands of the Inquisition was accompanied by a growing realisation of how much she meant to me as a companion as well as a wonderful lover. And I was aware that I had never declared my feelings for her, except through the act of love itself. That no longer felt enough.

  *

  Beatrice

  THEY CAME TO take me to Carcassonne when Francois was selling his cheese in Ax. Perhaps that was fortunate; they had a dozen well-armed men, and Francois, out of pride, of which he had more than enough, might have tried to resist them. We had only half a dozen men-at-arms in the castle, all elderly, and Francois had long ago abandoned any attempt to turn them into a garrison.

  I was surprised and frightened. Surprised because I thought I was beyond the reach of the Inquisition and the secular arm of the law. I was, after all, a second cousin of the Comte de Foix.

  Frightened because on arrival in Carcassonne they put me in a small cell and left me there for three weeks, bringing me only bread and water and porridge in the morning and evening. The cell was cold; little rivulets of water ran down the walls. There was a stone bench to sleep on and a single threadbare blanket which I wrapped around myself all day as well as at night. The chamber pot in the corner was only emptied every other day. The cell smelled; I smelled. And the guards were constantly changed, and were clearly under instruction not to talk to me.

  I could read on the wall crude calendars scratched to show how long previous prisoners had been kept there. One man had been imprisoned for three hundred days. There were little prayers to St James and the Virgin, an obscene caricature of a Dominican with a donkey, and, most frightening and realistic of all, a crude picture of a man tied to a post above a pile of faggots. I was not tempted to add my own drawings to their number; indeed, as I had been given neither knife nor spoon, I would have had to use my nails. I thought I would go mad.