The Blood of Toulouse

by Maurice Magre

  That courage and our common love of music almost cost us our lives. The Mint workers had had the custom, before the siege, of going in a band in the evening to a little wood of laurels and fig trees situated outside the city. There they sat down and listened to the voice of an extraordinary nightingale that had established its domicile in a unique centenarian oak. Now they were deprived of that song because the little wood was situated between the city and the crusaders’ camp, closer to the camp than the city.

  As soon as night fell they listened, and sometimes claimed to hear a feeble echo of the marvelous song. In the end, a fat man named Samatan, who seemed to have a mind as thick as his body, declared that he would rather die than not hear the song of the nightingale. I proposed, but without believing that he would accept my proposal, so audacious was it, to leave the city when the night was further advanced and go as far as the little wood, hiding ourselves as best we could. To my great surprise, many of those musical founders accepted joyfully, and I could not take it back.

  Nights in July are particularly serene. About fifteen of us left, bent double, running from one bush to another, and reached the little wood without attracting the attention of either the sentinels of the camp of those of the city. There we waited for more half an hour, amusing ourselves with Samatan’s skill in imitating the croaking of a fog—which, he claimed, would incite the nightingale to sing.

  In the end, it sang, and we were all transported by the spell of that extra-human melody into a celestial universe. When, by virtue of an inexplicable whim, the marvelous bird paused, its silence spread around us a melody so great that the war, the Cathar heresy and death seemed to us to be deprived of any importance.

  And as I glimpsed that melancholy on the faces of my companions in the gloom, bearing in my throat a gift of song almost equal to that of the nightingale, I could not master the generous impulse that impelled me to return the dream to them that they had savored and lost.

  At the top of my voice, I brought forth from my lungs on their behalf the first lines of the Song of the Violet. They threw themselves upon me immediately to stop me. Now, I have no idea how, but our presence had been detected in the camp and we were surrounded. Arrows whistled and men in shining armor rushed us from all sides at once. They shouted savagely without fear of frightening the divine bird in the branches of the oak. My companions, who had come unarmed, fell round me, but thanks to the lamp of prudence that is always aglow in the heart of a man of Toulouse, I had brought my sword. I was able to parry the first thrusts and cause the shadows to recoil around me. I started running as fast as I could toward Carcassonne. Samatan, thanks to my aid, was able to pierce the enemy line. I sustained him with my arm, for he had difficulty running because of his stoutness.

  We arrived alone at the Samson Tower and waited in vain for the return of those who had accompanied us.

  Pierre de Cabaret appeared, scimitar in hand, awakened by the tumult, and assured me that, for having led that expedition, I would be transferred to the prison tower the following day. But graver events, in precipitating, deflected his attention from that punishment.

  The next morning, a knight of gigantic stature mounted on a horse of unaccustomed dimensions cavorted in front of the ramparts on the side of the Narbonnais Tower. He was so extensively barded in iron that no one thought of launching arrows at him. He proffered insults and demanded a single combat with one of the knights of Carcassonne.

  The entire city had come to watch from the ramparts. As I arrived myself I heard the Vicomte de Béziers demanding his arms and his horse. But Pierre de Cabaret ran toward him, gesticulating, as well as several the barons, and he renounced going to fight.

  I thought immediately that a glorious exploit might perhaps enable me to avoid prison. I was not a knight, but if I emerged suddenly and charged the gigantic cavalier, he could not refuse to fight me. I was about to go back to the Samson Tower to get a horse worthy of combat when I was anticipated by an adolescent so small that he would seem like a dwarf compared to the enemy against whom he wanted to measure himself. A breastplate and a helmet had been handed to him in haste, which were not his own and were too large for him. His lance, by contrast, was short to the point of being ridiculous.

  He went past me in the midst of enthused men who were shouting and running. I heard someone say that he was the son of Seigneur d’Espinouse. The drawbridge had just been lowered and I raced to the ramparts in order to see what would happen.

  In the distance, the crusaders formed an uninterrupted line, and after emitting clamors they were now standing silently. The combat only lasted a few seconds, and the spectators on either side were scarcely able to take account of what happened.

  Young d’Espinouse had launched himself forward as fast as his horse could go. He collided with his enemy, who waited for him without moving and sent his little pike flying into the air at the first thrust. The two horses, nostril to nostril, started to wheel round rapidly, each seeking to bite the other, for animals side with their masters; if they could talk, they would shout much sage advice in the midst of battles, and events would change course in consequence of it. In the dust that the combatants kicked up, it was evident that they were exchanging sword-thrusts.

  And suddenly, from all parts of the horizon, coming from the crusaders as well as the inhabitants of Carcassonne, there was an immense clamor of amazement. No one had doubted the victory of the gigantic warrior over the child, and the latter had only been allowed to depart as a propitiatory sacrifice to the mysterious god of war who likes futile heroisms. The crusader knight was seen to be traversed like a flash of lightning by the blade of the admirable d’Espinouse at the place in the throat where the helmet joins the breastplate. It had required an extraordinary hazard for the point of the weapon to find the only millimeter of the body susceptible of being traversed. The knight collapsed and the enormous horse fled, full of shame.

  The entire city of Carcassonne, prey to delirium, formed two human ranks behind the drawbridge between the two enclosures, under the arch of the Narbonnais Tower to welcome the hero, who came back slowly. His mother, a woman with white hair, tall and impassive, was standing beside the Vicomte de Béziers, who was getting ready to seize the victorious child.

  On all sides people were crying: “It’s David who has killed Goliath!”

  But how slowly he was coming back, having departed so rapidly! There was something uncertain and unsteady in his bearing. He even let go of the bridle of his horse. When he passed over the drawbridge the acclamations froze on the lips. The faithful horse stopped in front of the mother. It was a dead man that it was carrying.

  Goliath had indeed been slain by David, but David was dead too.

  Then I regretted bitterly not having been fast enough to get in ahead of the son of d’Espinouse, for I would have come back without a scratch, because of my lucky star.

  V

  The heat, more intense than usual that year, had dried up the wells. Certain inhabitants took advantage of that only to drink wine, which they had in abundance in the cellars, and they were drunk from the early morning on.

  The assaults were continual and the combatants, obliged because of their small number to run from one tower to anther in accordance with the attacks, were eventually exhausted. A bizarre malady spread through the city which cast those afflicted with it into languor and caused them to die in three days, in great mental distress. As the cemetery was situated outside the ramparts, the Vicomte ordered graves to be dug in the courtyards of houses and public squares, with the result that people were walking through a vast necropolis. People said that they would be fortunate if they could get out of the city with nothing but the shirts on their back—an imprudent wish that was to be granted.

  That day, at sunrise, a bishop came with canons bearing crosses to the foot of the Narbonnais Tower in order to negotiate. I happened to be there and I was able to count a dozen Christs whose metal was glinting around the bishop’s miter. That cortege drew away afte
r a brief interval, and the rumor spread through the whole city that Arnaud, the Abbot of Cîteaux and Simon de Montfort, in command of the crusade, had invited Roger Trencavel to come and negotiate an honorable capitulation with them, under the safeguard of their oath. It was specified that in order to avoid the unfortunate quarrels that the men of an escort might have with the crusaders, he had to go to the camp alone, with a single squire.

  Then, the inhabitants were seen running from all points of the city toward the entrance to the château. The knights and the soldiers did the same, and when the Vicomte appeared on horseback, the members of that crowd fell to their knees and begged him not to trust the word of the men who had massacred the sixty thousand inhabitants of Béziers. All of them proclaimed that the bishop, the dozen Christs and the oaths were not a sufficient guarantee. Roger Trencavel, pale and calm, tried to reassure his people and his soldiers by the tranquility of his attitude.

  “I shall be back in an hour at the latest,” he said.

  Bare-headed and without any weapon, cad in an ordinary doublet, he traversed the crowd slowly. When he passed over the drawbridge and started galloping toward the camp he turned round and with his black-gloved hand he gave his city an amicable gesture, like the gesture of adieu that one makes to a mistress that one will not see again.

  Pierre de Cabaret, next to whom I was standing, was twisting his white moustache so much that I feared he might rip it out. As no attack was to be feared, the crowd had invaded the ramparts. Toward midday a pauper woman who was said to be a visionary stated uttering frightful howls without apparent reason, and when attempts were made to shut her up she departed at a run along the crenellations, leaping from one to the next. Her hair undone, she passed like a somnambulist along the round-path and went to fall, finally, to the foot of the Tower of Trésau, from which her cries rose up for some time thereafter, chilling all hearts with fear by their impressive tone.

  The sun was about to set and people waited in vain. Suddenly, there was a buzz in the distance, which grew. A trail of murmurs ran through the crusaders’ army, swelling and rising. It reached the ultimate extremities of the camp, where the laggards were, the improvised stalls of merchants, and the caravans of actors and strolling players. And that rumor, which became immense, was a rumor of joy, something like the delight of an entire people participating in a monstrous farce. We saw men running across the plain making obscene gestures toward Carcassonne. It was the time when fires were being lit for the evening meal. Through the descending shadows, silhouettes could be distinguished in the firelight that were guffawing or sketching grotesque dances. Even the machines of war started trembling like drunken giants.

  And it was as if the heart of the heroic city had broken. A sob uttered by all the creatures enclosed within the circle of stone walls, one unique sob, rose up toward the nascent stars. No one doubted the treason, nor the loss of the city deprived of its leader. There were very few who fell to their knees. Everyone wept standing up, and the despair was visible in the depths of the pupils, like a landscape of nothingness with infinite perspectives.

  “Come,” said Pierre de Cabaret, going past me.

  I saw that he was making a sign to the Jew Nathan, who had been chosen, because of his knowledge of mechanics, to organize the mountainous heights. I heard him say in a muffled voice: “We can still save everyone.”

  We went into the great hall of the château, where the brothers Bellissend, the Seigneurs d’Avignonnet, de Bram and de Beauxhoate, the armorer Sarraut, the butcher Camus and the principal citizens were already gathered. All of them thought that the crusaders, in order to take advantage of their disarray, would attack at dawn. Only the butcher Camus proposed surrender. The others wanted to make a sortie en masse in order to perish in combat.

  Then Pierre de Cabaret explained that Roger Trencavel’s father had once hollowed out a subterranean tunnel going from Carcassonne to the Château de Cabardez, one of Cabaret’s fiefs.14 That subterranean tunnel, which was several leagues long and had collapsed in places, Roger Trencavel had had repaired at the commencement of the crusade. All the inhabitants of the city could escape by that route, but for that, all night would not be too long.

  Everyone received the mission to alert a quarter and to direct its inhabitants toward the entrance to the tunnel, which was in one of the château’s cellars. The desperate clamor gradually fell silent, to give way to whispers and hopeful sighs. Many who had prepared to die were gripped again by the love of life.

  The surroundings of the château were filled after an hour by a silent crowd, but that crowd came laden with luggage of all kinds, bundles of clothes, sacks of provisions, and even items of furniture. A dealer in earthenware pottery presented himself with a donkey laden with his pots. He resisted, begging, saying that he cherished his donkey, a lifelong companion of his existence, as much as himself. I believed that I recognized the animal on which I had made my entrance to Carcassonne a few days before.

  It was necessary for everyone to renounce burdens that would have slowed down the general progress. Pierre de Cabaret was obliged to draw his scimitar and to swear that he would put to death anyone who presented himself with any sort of burden on his back. There were some who turned back and went home, preferring to confront the fate of the inhabitants of Béziers rather than renounce their possessions.

  Late into the night, a sort of interminable human column had already plunged into the propitious earth. Pierre de Cabaret charged me with going to make appeals in the houses and see whether any invalid or deaf person had been forgotten somewhere.

  In the deserted city I encountered an old man who was carrying an enormous packet of arrows under his arm. He was going to barricade the door of his house and he told me that when the crusaders presented themselves, he counted on killing as many of them as he could.

  A family in which there were children and old people were sleeping peacefully in a low house. A candle had been lit next to the statue of some saint or other, shriveled and corroded by time. They did not get up in spite of my exhortations, The father shouted to me that he was tranquil. Nothing bad would happen to them. The saint would protect them.

  The night ended. The city was abandoned when I returned to the château. Pierre de Cabaret was on the threshold with a few faithful followers and they were all preparing to go into the tunnel in their turn. One of the Belissend brothers arrived at a run and said that the window of the Seigneur de Canacaude was refusing to leave. He added in a scandalized tone that she was even rejoicing at receiving the crusaders, and that she had made preparations for that.

  Canacaude was a respected name. The Seigneur de Canacaude had been a friend of Pierre de Cabaret and the old Vicomte Trencavel. He had fought by their side in the Orient and he had died the previous year, I had been told, of an abrupt emotion that his wife had caused him. By the way that everyone raised their arms to the heavens I understood that she was known for her light conduct and her eccentricities.

  “You, who are, in sum, a handsome fellow,” Pierre de Cabaret said to me, “try to persuade her to come with us. But hurry, because it will be daylight soon and the crusaders will be here within an hour.”

  The Dame de Canacaude lived in one of the finest dwellings in the city, facing the Church of Saint Nazaire. I ran through the empty streets but as I was unfamiliar with the quarter I was obliged to retrace my steps and I lost a certain amount of time.

  Under the light that precedes the dawn, the Church of Saint Nazaire was like an immense livid phantom whose stones were oozing despair. The portal was open and darkness was swirling mysteriously in the choir and at the feet of the twelve apostles in the apse. The square, transformed into a cemetery, was studded with crosses. And on the other side, facing that mortuary landscape, I perceived the Dame de Canacaude behind a narrow stone balcony on the ground floor of her house. A cross taller than all the others rose up very close to her, to the height of her bosom, and her nonchalantly extended hand gave the impression of trying to pick
it like a flower of that bizarre garden.

  She was covered in powder and carmine; black curls had been stuck artfully to her temples and she was attempting to smile in an engaging manner. With a mechanical gesture, she divided over her throat the veil that was thrown there. Behind her, the matinal twilight illuminated the four columns of an open bed, the gold of brocades and the gleam of wine in carafes.

  In a rapid voice I told her about Pierre de Cabaret’s order enjoining her to leave. She replied, showing me her teeth, that she had learned from her venerated husband that a Dame de Canacaude ought not to fear anything. I thought momentarily that it was heroism and thought that it was my duty to tell her how the noblest ladies had been treated in Béziers. I did so not without blushing. But she was content to raise her eyes to the heavens and say that God would protect her.

  Then I read in her soul, thanks to my native intuition. She was possessed by the appetite that all women have to prostitute herself to conquerors. I wondered whether I ought not to drive that caricature before me by pricking her with my sword. And suddenly, a lassitude took hold of me, as if that womanly treason had caused an interior cup to overflow. I no longer experienced any human passions in movement around me. The destruction of cities, religious furors, and the massacre of innocent creatures became foreign to me. I no longer understood the cause that impelled men against one another. I felt sad and solitary in an incomprehensible desert.

  A dog howled mortally not far away. I perceived birds overhead that were flying at a prodigious height. I interested myself in that flight for a few minutes, as if the entire universe were revolving around it. A green-tinted light spread that seemed to decompose the stones of the church and the houses, and the earth itself. I lay down, with my head against a cross, in order to go to sleep as soon as possible. Everything appeared to me to be vain and the coolness of the matter on my cheek gave me a kind of foretaste of desirable death.