Indeed, I heard one of the Maurs children, an eight-year-old, point to the magistrate as he left the church on Sunday and say, ‘Look, Mother, he doesn’t have a yellow cross.’ His mother laughed and hushed him; our magistrate was not amused.
I continued to look after my sheep, the flock now three hundred strong. I hired two of the younger boys in the village to help me on the trip up to the mountain pastures in the late spring, but once there found I was able to manage on my own, although I now kept a horse to help with the evening round-up. Beatrice would visit me every ten days or so, and our lovemaking on that primitive bed of wolf skins and pine branches was as passionate as ever. She helped me bake bread and make cheese, both new skills for her, and she turned out to be a good bread-maker.
‘I’ve never done anything useful before,’ she said to me. ‘Only sewing and embroidery.’
‘Neither had I. It was thanks to Arnaud taking me under his wing that I’m now a man of substance in Montaillou, no longer a useless knight.’
‘Those skills saved the village from the English band.’
And displaced Pierre Clergue from your affections and your bed, I thought, but wisely kept those thoughts to myself.
‘The Languedoc is calmer now. The big bands of marauders have all dispersed, and we have nothing to fear from the odd collection of half a dozen robbers. They’ll look elsewhere. Although we should practise what we learned, and not let the grass grow over our mangonel.’
So once a year we did re-create the defeat of the English band. The young men practised with their crossbows for a week beforehand. And on the anniversary day we set up targets in the village street, including one representing the English commander, and herded all the animals into the castle courtyard and the villagers into the Great Hall. Then we pulled up the drawbridge. On a sign from Beatrice we let the drawbridge down, loosed off the crossbows and fired the mangonel.
It turned into a celebration rather than a military drill, but it was none the worse for that. We included the magistrate, his henchmen and the priest, despite some grumbling from a few who would have preferred to see them as targets, and the day went off well. The whole valley, perhaps the whole of the Languedoc, knew Montaillou was well prepared. And the inclusion of the magistrate and the priest made it plain that we were not planning another Cathar revolution.
Andre Belot was an effective steward for Beatrice. He collected her rents, organised her cattle – she preferred cows’ milk to the distinctive taste of milk from my sheep – and paid visits to her other properties once a year.
Her stepson came to see us once to discuss various legal matters about the castle and lands at Planissoles. He was a stiff young man, perhaps five years younger than me, and the relationship with his stepmother was uneasy, at least until she made it clear she had no claim on his inheritance and was more than happy with Montaillou. He disapproved of our yellow crosses and our apparent pride in them; I suspect he was fearful of guilt by association. He left us after a couple of days.
‘I don’t suppose we will see him again,’ said Beatrice. ‘I can’t say I mind very much. He’s like his father, a dull dog with no tournaments to excite him.’
‘His father was older than you?’
‘Fifteen years older. He was killed in a tournament. They were his obsession, a substitute for real war. I was meant to be heartbroken, but it had been an arranged marriage. I soon recovered after a short period of mourning. And then I came back here. This property was mine through my mother. I was an only child, an heiress, a prize.’
‘You’re still a prize,’ I said, and kissed her warmly, kisses that she returned until we went upstairs to her chamber and the wolf skins.
*
Beatrice
AFTER OUR SUCCESSFUL defence against the English band my feelings for Francois deepened. I had confidence in his judgement, so when he came to see me with Baruch the Jew in Carcassonne jail and told me he would get me out, one way or another, I believed him. I was desperate by then, in need of the hope that he provided. When he told me later of his plan to ambush my guards on the way back to the prison, I had no doubt that it would have been successful.
Montaillou meant a great deal to me. It belonged to my mother, and she and I lived there until I was sixteen and married off to Berenger de Planissoles. This was a good match, I was told, although he was fifteen years older than me, a widower with a ten-year-old son. Our castles and land were about the same size and value, although Berenger lived in greater style at Planissoles than we at Montaillou.
He was kind enough to me, disappointed that I bore him no more sons; his approach to sex was that of a stallion or a ram. Nevertheless, I was genuinely sorry when he was killed in one of the last tournaments held in the Languedoc before real war took over. His opponent’s lance splintered and entered his visor. He was dead, they told me, before he hit the ground.
My relationship with his son, young Berenger, was always uneasy. I tried hard to please him, perhaps too hard, but he understandably wanted only to be with his father, and was devastated by his death. He was at the tournament as his father’s esquire and had to bring the body home.
When my stepson was sixteen I was happy to entrust Planissoles to his care; he and I had inherited a competent and reasonably honest steward from his father. Returning to Montaillou was returning home, although in my absence (my mother had died two years after I left for Planissoles) the two Clergue brothers, Pierre and Bernard, had established their total dominance over the village. And very soon, in Pierre’s case, of me.
Pierre taught me, at first roughly, then carefully, about sex. I had known only Berenger and, after his death one other lover, a visiting troubadour who, as it transpired, was better at singing about love than making it.
Pierre had no inhibitions, no scruples, and was apparently insatiable. He always had at least one other woman in the village as his mistress. He liked to live dangerously, regarded my chamber as only one of the many places for making love, and persuaded me to organise my undergarments to make sexual intercourse easy – in the barn, in the gatehouse, on the stairs, and once in the church behind the altar. And for a while sharing myself between Pierre and Francois, the latter no less ardent but more conventional, more tender, seemed a satisfactory arrangement.
Sharing came to an end after the attack by the English band. This pleased Francois and disappointed Pierre, although he soon found consolation elsewhere. I was genuinely sorry when I learned Pierre was dead, and found it easy to forgive his naming of me in his lengthy confession. We were told he had been tortured before appearing in front of the Inquisition. Those who attended the trial said he looked a wrecked version of the confident priest he had once been. I was only saved from a similar fate by Francois and Baruch the Jew.
Montaillou without the Clergues was a calmer, more settled village. We all wore our double yellow crosses proudly, and there was nothing and no one left to denounce to the Inquisition or the secular authorities. Montségur had been the last Cathar castle; Montaillou was the last Cathar village. Both had fallen. The Catholic Church had re-established its absolute supremacy, which once appeared under serious threat, throughout the Languedoc. There was only one Perfect, Guillaume Authie, left.
25
Arrivals and Departures
Francois
FOR TWO YEARS there was a good price for wool and the whole of Montaillou prospered – carders, weavers, cheese-makers, shepherds. I had decided that three hundred sheep was the most my mountain pastures would feed. It was also the most that I, together with six dogs all descended from the unruly animals that Arnaud bequeathed me, could safely manage. At lambing time I needed help; I had built two sheepfolds in the valley to shelter my flock in the winter and early spring, but the lambs had a habit of arriving all at the same time, and it needed at least three men to deliver them safely.
I had good merchants in Ax who were eager to buy my wool and my cheese, the latter always commanding a high price. When I realised my cheese wa
s not being sold in the Ax market, but was sent on to Carcassonne, I decided to sell at least half of my production there myself. Beatrice was uneasy.
‘Why would you want to go back to Carcassonne? It has terrible memories for us. We know the jail there only too well. You’re easily recognisable; the Inquisition is capable of arresting you again.’
‘I’ve been to Compostela, I wear the double yellow cross, as do you. We have become good Catholics again and neither of us has anything to fear. On my next trip I’d like you to come with me, and we’ll go on to Barraigne. It’s time we had some decent wine again. The red terror we buy at Ax is bad for my digestion. And I’d like you to meet Etienne and Stephanie.’
‘And the famously beautiful Blanche,’ said Beatrice.
I overcame her fears, and we planned a trip at the end of the summer once my sheep had been brought down from the mountains. I was talking to Beatrice in her parlour one evening when she said, ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to go to Barraigne, at least this year.’
‘We have nothing to fear from the Inquisition.’
‘It’s not the Inquisition. It’s for a much better reason. I’m pregnant.’
I looked at her, astonished, then knelt beside her and put my head in her lap, half laughing, half crying.
‘I’m four months overdue, so the baby will be born close to Christmas. No bouncing about on horseback for a while.’
Words were hard to come by. I had believed that by now Beatrice was too old to conceive; she had had no children by de Planissoles, and after an early miscarriage any hope either of us had about children seemed to have been extinguished. It was a possibility we had avoided discussing.
‘We’ll need a nurse,’ I said. ‘I only wish Guillemette was still alive.’
‘We’ll need a nurse, not a witch,’ said Beatrice. ‘This won’t be the first baby born in Montaillou.’
‘It will be our first. A quiet life for you until he arrives.’
‘Or she. I’m not going to stay in bed all day. Cheese-making isn’t too strenuous.’
I watched with delight and apprehension as Beatrice’s normally elegant figure swelled. I stroked the tight curve of her stomach as we lay in bed together; pregnancy in no way lessened her desire to make love.
‘You aren’t going to disturb the baby,’ she said, laughing as she lowered herself onto me. ‘I’ll try to be gentle with you. You’re strong enough to bear the extra weight.’
I was strong enough, and she managed our lovemaking in a new and stately fashion almost until the baby was born. This happened the week before Christmas; I was in the courtyard when her maid came running out.
‘Her waters have broken. Lady Beatrice has sent me to fetch Ermengarde.’
Ermengarde Benet arrived soon afterwards; she had borne five children herself, all still living, and assisted at the birth of many more.
‘What can I do?’ I asked her as she made her way across the courtyard.
‘Nothing. Just keep out of the way. You played your part nine months ago.’
For the next five hours I paced up and down in the Great Hall. The walls were thick, but I could hear the occasional groan from Beatrice in her room on the floor above. Towards the end the sounds became more frequent, then suddenly stopped, and two minutes later Ermengarde came down. She was smiling
‘You can go now and see your babies. You have a son and a daughter.’
Beatrice was lying back on her bed, a baby suckling at each breast, her eyes closed. She opened her eyes as I leaned over her and kissed her forehead, which was still damp. She had one hand round each pink, wrinkled bottom. She was too tired to speak.
When the twins had finished feeding Ermengarde wrapped them tightly in linen cloth and gave them to me to hold, one at a time, watching as though I was about to drop the precious bundle. All I could see was a little face and a crown of black hair, and I can remember to this day the smell, the warm, milky smell. It was the happiest moment of my life.
The next two years the babies – Francois and Constance (her mother’s name) – dominated our lives. They were christened in the Church of Notre Dame at the bottom of our village. This was a joyful event, attended by most of the village, although it made me realise the double religious life we had to lead in order to conceal our Cathar faith.
‘It’s another kind of dualism, I suppose. I would have liked to have them blessed by a Perfect,’ I said to Beatrice as we walked back up the village street. She carried our daughter and the nurse carried our son; it was not thought appropriate for a knight, or even a shepherd, to carry his own child.
‘I’m only surprised that our priest didn’t insist on having the yellow crosses sewn onto the christening robesa.’
‘We are no longer Cathar, remember,’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s safer that way.’
Not long afterwards, when Beatrice felt able, reluctantly, to leave the twins behind in the capable hands of the nurse Ermengarde had found for us, I decided to visit Barraigne.
‘We can call on Baruch on our way,’ I suggested, but Beatrice did not want to enter the walls of Carcassonne ever again. Eventually she was persuaded. I wanted to sell cheese in the Carcassonne market on the way to Barraigne. And, as I pointed out, but for Baruch, ‘You might still be in Carcassonne, in The Wall, if you survived that long.’
‘What about your gang of ruffians?’
‘That might not have succeeded. But even if it had, we’d be in Catalonia now, not Montaillou.’
So we set off, a little caravan, Beatrice and I on horses, my manservant Hugues on a mule which also carried our clothes. Hugues led two more mules, each laden with cheeses, some for the market at Carcassonne, some to exchange with Etienne for wine. We sent Hugues on ahead, and met him at the inn where we broke our journey on the first night.
Carcassonne looked unchanged as we approached the city, powerful, forbidding, austere. We passed the little settlement outside the walls where I had once killed a would-be robber, and the tavern where I had recruited my ruffians.
‘Do you want to see if they are still there? I’d like to thank them,’ said Beatrice.
‘They’ve had the only thanks they value, ten livres Tournois. They’re quite capable of ambushing us on our return journey if they knew we were carrying a precious cargo of wine.’
There were two long lines of travellers waiting to enter and leave the southern gate of the city. An officious sergeant of the guard took his time to question us when he saw the yellow crosses.
‘Aren’t you the man from Roqueville?’ he asked.
I looked at Beatrice, resisted the temptation to give a clever answer, replying, ‘I’m one of them, yes. I am Francois de Beaufort and my wife is Lady Beatrice de Planissoles. We’ve both done our penance, and I have been to Compostela. Here’s my certificate to prove it.’ I produced the battered parchment with its stamps, which he pretended to read.
‘What brings you to our city?’
‘Selling cheese.’
‘We have plenty of cheese in Carcassonne already; we don’t need any more.’
‘Not good sheep’s cheese from the Pyrenees. Here, try some.’
I cut off a generous section and offered it to the sergeant on the point of my dagger. He tasted it, looked surprised, took another bite and waved us on. He put what was left in the pocket of his jerkin, pleased with the transaction.
We went straight to the inn where we stabled our animals; our route took us past the jail where Beatrice and I had spent too many unhappy, uncomfortable nights. Beatrice closed her eyes until we were safely past.
She came with me to the market early next morning. I borrowed a table from our innkeeper, which Hugues and I set up in a corner of the square. We were twice moved on by indignant sellers whose place, time-honoured they claimed, we had taken, and eventually found a spot which we were able to hold unchallenged.
There was no stampede to buy my cheese, although I made a faint-hearted attempt to cry my wares. ‘Sheep’s cheese, sheep’s cheese
, sheep’s cheese from the Pyrenees,’ I called out, trying to find a lull in the cries from competing stallholders. By noon I had sold a single cheese, beaten down by a tough old woman to the price I would have obtained in the marketplace at Ax.
‘The trouble is they look like any other cheeses,’ Beatrice pointed out. ‘They just taste much better. Here’s what we should do,’ and she cut off thirty or forty generous pieces of cheese, put them on a large wooden platter and went off into the crowd. She was soon back for more, accompanied by three buyers of whole cheeses at good prices. Within two hours we had cleared our table and went happily back to the inn.
‘You’ve missed your calling,’ I said to her. ‘I’d still be there with a laden table, shouting “cheese from the Pyrenees” until I was hoarse. I think your sparkling eyes helped.’
She smiled and looked happy.
‘I’m not sure my mother, Lady Constance de Villeneuve et de Gaja, second cousin of the Comte de Foix, would have approved. I enjoyed myself.’
That evening we called on Baruch, who was pleased to see us, and even more pleased when Beatrice spent half my cheese money on two beautiful bolts of cloth.
‘Woven in Flanders,’ said Baruch approvingly. ‘Now come upstairs and we’ll drink some of your friend Etienne’s good red wine.’
‘We’re on our way to see him and Stephanie,’ I said as we settled down in Baruch’s study. ‘They were both Cathar.’
‘We are all good Christians now, good Catholics, I should say,’ said Baruch. ‘There are no Jews left in Carcassonne, all burned or converted, and only a few by special licence in Toulouse. I carry on my two trades as cloth merchant and advocate quite unhindered, although I am still called Baruch the Jew by most of my customers. I expect the God of Israel will recognise me in due course. There are no Cathars in Carcassonne either.’ in Carcassonne
Cathar Page 27