Balthesar held out a restraining hand. ‘Come, talk. That is all I ask.’
With an explosive stream of invective, suddenly Tristán was with them, hand reaching for his sword as he made some loud and surprising assumptions concerning d’Orbessan’s family tree.
‘Stand down,’ Ramon turned to the former squire, and as Tristán continued to draw his sword, he grabbed the hand and pushed the blade back in. ‘Stand down I say, Tristán!’
Glowering, Arnau and Tristán both stood silent as the two arrivals rode into the courtyard, both men’s hands never leaving the hilt of their swords. The last they had seen of the turbulent Frank had been on the hillside above the battlefield at Las Navas when the man had accused Arnau of cowardice and had forced him into a duel that had only been ended by the pious Brother Calderon. Almost a year had passed since then, and yet still on quiet nights Arnau had found his memory sweeping back to that day. D’Orbessan was his enemy. One of many, assuredly, and less important perhaps than the current crop, but still an enemy entirely in his own right.
As Balthesar and the Frank slid from their mounts and the young lad Jordi came to take their reins, Arnau and Tristán joined Ramon in following the pair towards the door. ‘This place looks all-but deserted,’ d’Orbessan said suspiciously.
Balthesar merely repeated himself, ‘Come. Talk.’
The four men traipsed into the hall, where Lady Titborga had seated herself in her father’s chair. All power and poise, she reminded Arnau in many ways of the preceptrix, especially with that great sword hanging on the wall behind her.
‘My lady,’ the older knight said with a smile as he entered, dropping into a low bow.
‘My dear Balthesar, it has been an age. Welcome to Santa Coloma. I have sent for wine already.’
‘Wine will be most welcome. May I introduce Sir Henri d’Orbessan, a knight of Occitania and vassal of the Baron de Roquefeuil.’
Titborga made a good show of hiding her surprise. She had never met the man, but the name had been spoken of from time to time. Moreover, he was a nobleman from that war-torn and heretical land beyond the mountains. Her smile was almost perfect. Almost genuine.
D’Orbessan bowed and offered her a smile of his own. ‘I thank you for your hospitality, my lady.’
She turned her face, unchanged, to Balthesar. ‘Perhaps you would like to enlighten us, old friend?’ Her voice was quiet, though a little strained.
Balthesar straightened. ‘I am sure that by now Ramon has explained the somewhat unique and fortuitous opportunity that looms in the coming months?’
‘That all our enemies take up arms around their black-hearted master the king, and march across the mountains,’ Arnau said, his voice unable to shake off the spite and hatred he was feeling.
‘Quite. And while Ramon and I are quite willing to march into Occitania seeking an opportunity to meet our foes, those men who go to war as routiers, as mercenaries you might say, are treated like arrow fodder and are tending to end their days butchered in the aftermath of some clash or other. The only way to realistically join such a war and hope to take the field against the king directly is in taking service with one of the high nobles of the crusading army. It is my proposal that we lend our sword arms to the baron, and through him to de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester. In their service, we may find ourselves facing our own enemies and with a reasonable chance to meeting them at sword point. Only in battle can we hope to reach the king, and his nobles and priests. Alone we are destined only to fail.’
Arnau boggled. ‘You want us to go into service alongside d’Orbessan?’
The Frank’s lip twitched. ‘I was equally against this, Vallbona. However, my lord the baron and his masters are of a different mind. D’Aixere here tells us that we can expect a commitment of at least a hundred men to the cause if you take service and, pressed as we are by the heretic-loving Count of Toulouse, and threatened by half of Aragon arrayed against us, we have need of men.’
Arnau turned an accusing look on Balthesar. ‘A hundred men?’
‘It was not an intentional exaggeration,’ the old knight said, looking a little sheepish. ‘We had assumed the Santa Coloma estate to be thriving. How many men do you have?’
‘Six,’ spat Arnau.
D’Orbessan, his brow deeply creased, sat back suddenly. ‘This was a lie. A ruse. You seek to use service in the crusading force to settle your own scores and you offer nothing in return. Six men-at-arms and a handful of ageing Templars? Had I known the truth I would not have ridden seven days from the war zone to hear such feeble offers.’
Arnau slammed his hands on the table. ‘That would be perfectly to my satisfaction. Perhaps you would take your horse and your ingratitude and depart for somewhere dangerous where a helpful Cathar might impale you.’
D’Orbessan made to rise, but Balthesar’s hand was on his shoulder urging him back into his seat. ‘The situation is not as poor as it looks, d’Orbessan. Ramon and I both have coin in reasonable quantity, and there are good men in the region who will join us. I will find you your hundred men, and you will introduce us to de Montfort. While you might feel cheated right now you know that we are men of the sword, and despite your spat with Vallbona here, you know he can wield a blade, and you know that he will fight.’
Ramon nodded. ‘And while this is a path to bring us face to face with our enemies, and we no longer wear the white mantle, we are still men of God and faithful to Mother Church, with more than a little will to fight the heathen Cathars. To refuse us is to pass up a solid fighting force.’
Arnau could take no more. He snarled and slammed his fist on the table once more. ‘So perhaps we need to fight for them, but I say we do not need this man’s say-so. He hates us. It is astounding you managed to bring him this far, but I swear that if we march with him, he will have a knife in my back before we cross the mountains.’
Balthesar turned on him angrily.
‘You think I do this lightly, Vallbona? You think I rode into a land of ravaging war for the better part of a month seeking a man I knew to be your enemy on a simple whim? Think, Arnau. The King of Aragon rides to war against de Montfort and his crusaders. His army is made up almost solely of knights from Aragon and Catalunya. How many Aragonese and Catalan knights do you think are under arms for de Montfort? How many fight for the Pope?’
The younger man did not answer, though he was fairly sure he knew.
‘That’s right,’ Balthesar snapped. ‘None. Not one. And how well received do you think we would be among the crusaders, given that their enemies are all our neighbours and relations?’ He sighed, calming, but still addressing Arnau directly and pointedly. ‘Vallbona, for half a year now, Ramon and I have sought any way to gain access to our enemies, but they are unassailable here. The king might be vile and impoverished, but he is still the most powerful man in Aragon, and his power protects all the others. You think the troubles you have here at La Selva’s hand are dire? Imagine what the king might do if you openly move against his men? In the blink of an eye all our lands, money and titles are gone, and a death sentence would be carried out without fear of reprisal. As long as nothing changes here we cannot touch our enemies. In Occitania, though, we are free to face them openly and at sword point.’
He leaned back. ‘The only place we can achieve retribution is on the field of battle, and without patronage we will swiftly become simple casualties of that war. If you want to face the King of Aragon and his cronies in the field, then it can only be as part of de Montfort’s crusading army, and you will only become part of that if it comes through someone they trust. D’Orbessan here is our way into the war. We gain legitimacy, and he and his masters gain a force of much needed swordsmen. It is the only way.’
Arnau glared at d’Orbessan, and the Frank met his gaze with equal dislike. Finally, he gave a single, curt nod. ‘Very well. I agree. Though the moment he turns on us, and he assuredly will, I will gut him myself.’
‘Not so fast,’ snarled the Frank, tu
rning back to Balthesar. ‘You offer nothing for your side of the bargain, old man. I came here on the pretence that I would return with knights and footmen.’
‘And you shall,’ the grey-haired knight said flatly. ‘By the Sabbath, I will have a hundred men under arms gathered here to accompany us to Occitania.’
He turned to Arnau. ‘All you both have to do is not kill each other until we all have what we want.’
Chapter Fourteen
Crusade
Pujol, Occitania, 16th July 1213
The summer heat sizzled across the fields and meadows that lay in the flat lands between the Garonne and Tarn rivers. The journey had settled into that rhythmic clatter of horses’ hooves, and chink and shush of chain-mail and armour, almost hypnotic with the heat and the dazzling light. Arnau’s thoughts wandered back to the meeting as his horse plodded forth inexorably: dragging him into a new war in which he would find old enemies, both facing him and, more worryingly, at his side.
Accepting that, while he might not like it, the only way to deal with those men who seemingly yet sought their downfall lay in the hands of Henri d’Orbessan, they had ridden north, across the mountains. Taking routes too small for a full army, yet sufficient for a small group of riders without the usual entourage and baggage train, they made good time across passes that would be sealed in winter, but were open and relatively straightforward at this time of year.
Balthesar had been true to his word. Using the funds he and Ramon had acquired from the sale of their estates, they had retained the services of a number of local knights and their soldiers, men whose loyalties to Aragon had ever been shaky, still considering themselves Catalan and very separate. In all just less than a hundred and fifty men had begun the journey, which had mollified the incendiary d’Orbessan somewhat, and even with the expected injuries, illnesses and drop-outs, they had only lost eight men by the time they descended into the valleys of Occitania. That the Frank had not tried to put a knife in his back during the night came as a daily surprise to Arnau, though he continued to sleep with one eye open.
They had been led by d’Orbessan to the town of Pamiers in the hill country at the foot of the Pyrenees, apparently the home, that spring, for the leaders of the crusade. The Earl de Montfort himself and his brother had been present in the city, where the crusade’s leader had published a set of edicts by which all Occitanians were expected to live, should they wish to avoid the surge of Papal fury. As the riders had approached the city, they had seen fewer military camps around its periphery than they had expected, and had been told by the volatile Frank in their midst that this was because war raged across the whole region, and freshly conquered lands to the east were now being settled and garrisoned. Unlike the focused campaign for Las Navas, this was not a war against a single power, but a suppression of region-wide heresy led by numerous powerful men and so the forces of de Montfort were by necessity scattered.
It did not escape Arnau’s attention that the road along which they approached the town was lined with newly-made gibbets, each containing the rotting remains of a naked man, and painted with a sign below which, in Frankish, labelled them heretics. He knew de Montfort to have a fierce reputation and, while the Cathars had clearly abandoned and defied the true Church and had perpetrated atrocities of their own, Arnau wondered whether perhaps the crusaders were taking this war down dark roads.
They had been led to a large building in the town square, across from a grand cathedral, and there they had been told to dismount. Guards in de Montfort’s livery, a silver lion on crimson, stood around the doorway and it took some persuading even from d’Orbessan before they were admitted. The five of them, three ex-Templar brothers, d’Orbessan and Tristán, had left their hirelings and men at arms in the square outside and were now made to wait interminably several times in a row, in different places, before being escorted elsewhere, always to someone slightly more senior.
Finally they found themselves at a door beyond which it seemed the leaders of this great crusade were in conference. When, after another extended pause, they were admitted, it had been so long that Arnau had to take a moment to pull himself together and draw on his wits.
The room they entered was a grand affair, centred around a massive table spread with a vellum map of the region, of enormous proportions, marked with important locations and dotted with carved and painted wooden pieces showing coats of arms or symbols for armies. Arnau’s eyes shot around the room and of the dozen or so men standing there, he singled out the Earl of Leicester and his brother with ease, for the elder of the two exuded such a presence that it almost seemed as though the building had been constructed around him.
De Montfort had a mop of shaggy, brown hair and a full beard that sat well on a lantern jaw. His eyes were intense and close beneath angled brows and his face and physique both spoke of immense strength. Arnau was somewhat reassured to see a plain wooden crucifix hanging around the nobleman’s neck. Whatever his reputation for fierceness, clearly no one could question his piety. Close by, Guy de Montfort, his younger brother, was almost an echo of the man, though with golden hair.
The Earl of Leicester turned to frown at the new arrivals and paused in moving pieces across the map. ‘Who are these men?’ he asked in the Frankish tongue. The nobleman who had admitted them smiled reassuringly.
‘They are the knights from Catalonia that we were expecting, in the service of the Baron de Roquefeuil.’
De Montfort appeared to search his memory for a moment and come up blank. With a sort of facial shrug, he singled out Balthesar as clearly the senior in the group. ‘How many men have you?’
The old knight bowed his head. ‘We bring eighteen knights as well as d’Orbessan here, and one hundred and twelve men at arms, including six crossbowmen. We seek to pledge our blades—’
De Montfort waved aside any further explanation. ‘Yes, yes. One hundred and thirty-five men. Along with de Roquefeuil’s contingent, that should be enough.’ He looked up at a man in a surcoat almost the reverse of his own, bearing a red lion. ‘Des Essarts, should that be enough?’
Des Essarts, a man in his later years with a grey mop of hair and a clean-shaven, scarred face, peered at them. ‘Along with my own, de Roquefeuil’s, Cissy’s and the Saxons, we could hold any fortress.’
‘I hope so,’ de Montfort said quietly, then turned to the newcomers. ‘Our principle enemy, until the arrival of the anti-Christ, Pedro of Aragon, is his brother-in-law, Count Raymond of Toulouse. He has been playing this game with varying levels of skill these past years, but the imminent addition of the Aragonese contingent is making him bold. If we wish to contain him and to prise further territories from his grip, we need to deal with his supplies first. Our own supply lines are stable, coming from Carcassonne, Narbonne and the coast, while his are largely reliant upon the flat lands of his own region. In order to deal with this, during the winter we took a number of fortresses close to Toulouse itself. I have four of them being garrisoned to prevent the enemy securing the harvest. I was short of men, pending Guy’s army returning from the east, and the castle of Pujol was destined to be a weak spot in the system. Your arrival solves this problem. You and your men will accompany the force of Des Essarts to secure Pujol.’
His brother Guy cleared his throat meaningfully, and de Montfort added almost as an afterthought, ‘…as crusaders, taking the cross on behalf of Pope Innocent the Third, you are blessed men. Should you prove to be traitors in the pay of Pedro, you will end your days in a cage on the river bank, being eaten by birds, but if your hearts are truly filled with the glory of the Lord and the desire to chastise the heathen, I welcome you. Before you depart, visit Brother Benedict in the cathedral. He will bless you and absolve you of all past sins. Do the army of God proud.’
And with that the great earl was turning back to his planning. It seemed that they were dismissed, and they followed d’Orbessan back out into the square. They then visited the zealous Brother Benedict in the cathedral and were given his b
lessing. The man was, to Arnau’s mind, not the full dinero, and reminded him uncomfortably of Calderon when they had first met him, but that had not mattered, for they had immediately been sent off to the fortress of Pujol, far from the rabid preacher.
Throughout the journey from Santa Coloma to Pamiers and then beyond, there had been an odd gradual change in their Frankish guide. It wasn’t that he had softened, nor had he shown any fraternal aspect to the Catalan knights, but his outward belligerence had faded. Arnau had learned that one of his men had spent a night drinking with d’Orbessan somewhere in the mountains on their journey and had ascertained that the four of them having renounced their vows and mantles had shaken the Frank, and he remained uncertain of how it all lay with him. Perhaps in time, he might come to treat them as allies. For now, not being treated as enemies was enough.
As they approached the fortress that was to be their first experience of war in Occitania, Arnau found himself as sceptical as ever over their course of action; for all that, he persistently failed to come up with a better one.
At the front of the column rode the nobleman from the council chamber, Roger des Essarts, with his knights, while the bulk of the lesser knights and men at arms followed up at the rear. Arnau made sure to drop back out of earshot of d’Orbessan and pulled alongside Balthesar.
‘I am still of a mind that this is foolish.’
The older knight simply raised an eyebrow.
‘Well,’ went on the younger man, ‘we need to meet the army of our enemies head on and identify their banners, seeking them out. Instead, we are to garrison some mouldering fort against the Count of Toulouse, and to stop farmers gathering in their crops. This is hardly what we signed up for.’
‘Think of it as your first step,’ the older man said. ‘To face those we truly wish to chastise, we cannot do anything at home. The king’s power surrounds them all and protects them in Aragon and Catalunya. It does not do so on the battlefield. Indeed, much the opposite comes into effect, for the king will rely upon his seniors to surround and protect him in the field. To get to him we must first deal with an initial step. The man we will face here is brother to the king of Aragon, and if we can cause enough trouble we will draw Pedro the Catholic to us, where we can face him and his men. It is our only option. We must simply make it work.’
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