Siege Perilous

by E. D. Debirmingham

  Vera assisted Raphael up the icy slope. Back in the courtyard, she went in search of Rixenda while Raphael finally indulged Percival in talking about ritual procedure to Ocyrhoe. As they stood beside the chicken coop, Ocyrhoe looped her arms around Ferenc and pressed herself to him under his arm for warmth. He squeezed her protectively, and kissed the top of her head. Life is miraculously strange, he thought.

  “I want to be a part of whatever happens,” he said. “To me this isn’t just about that damned cup; it’s about Ocyrhoe.” He looked down at her. “If it were up to me, I’d grab it from you and throw it far away and he’d have to go retrieve it.”

  “I don’t think that is how it should happen,” said Percival seriously. Ferenc repressed an urge to chortle.

  “Let me keep it overnight,” said Ocyrhoe. “I have hardly thought of it, but perhaps I should have a final moment with it before I hand it over so that I really feel the magnitude of what I’m doing.”

  Raphael made a dubious sound.

  “Sir, whatever it is, it is powerful,” Ferenc assured him. “I do not understand it, and I do not like it, but I do not dismiss it. I saw a mob in Rome…” he trailed off, choosing not to remember those days of havoc. “Whatever they want to do is fine with me as long as Ocryhoe releases it. I want to be there to see that actually happening.”

  “Of course,” said Ocyrhoe lightly, squeezing him. “Stay with me from the moment Rixenda hands it back to me.“

  “Assuming Rixenda has it,” said Percival. “This is all dependent on her knowing where it is.”

  “I might need to spit on it when I see it again,” Ferenc said almost under his breath. He felt Ocyrhoe, under his arm, huff quietly and was not sure if this was annoyance or amusement. He looked around the glare of the muddy-snowy courtyard. Men were working on the trebuchet, and guards were on the wall-walk, but otherwise it was empty. There was a strange moment of calm, almost of peace.

  “I wonder where Vera has got to,” said Raphael.

  “She was going to find Rixenda for me. Let’s see if she’s in the donjon,” said Ocyrhoe. She squeezed Ferenc briefly, then released her grip and began to walk toward the steps to the keep. As her foot fell upon the muddy snow, as she completed the first step away from him, Ferenc heard the siren from the barbican that warned of an incoming trebuchet rock. It was fainter than usual, as if there was a blockage in the whistle. Nobody else in the courtyard seemed to hear it: The usual collective tensing was absent, and absent also was the collective glance to the east before running for shelter. Ocyrhoe continued to walk as if completely unaware of it. Raphael began to follow her, also indifferent to the warning call.

  Ferenc opened his mouth to speak, but stopped because he heard the whoosh of the incoming rock. Compared to the damaged whistle, it sounded loud to him.

  But only to him. Ocyrhoe and Raphael continued across the courtyard. Out of his peripheral vision, Ferenc saw the stone. Its trajectory was a hair’s-breadth north of where the trebuchet had been shooting all morning. Ocyrhoe and Raphael were walking directly into its path.

  “Ocyrhoe!” Ferenc shouted. Everything slowed as he ran toward them across the slush; it was as if his body were encased in honey, or running upstream in a river; he could not move fast enough. With a feeling of dread he realized even calling out her name had taken too long, or perhaps he had not really called it at all, or perhaps he had but the sound was trapped in whatever held him back and was taking too long to reach her.

  At the same moment, as he approached too slowly, he saw both Raphael and Ocyrhoe startle slightly, then turn together and look up to their right. He wanted to shout at them not to do that, to keep moving forward, to get the hell out of the way, but he could not even draw breath to make the sound. He begged Nagy Asszony, the Great Mother, to break the invisible chains that prevented his rushing, to put wings on his feet so he could reach them in time and drag them to safety.

  The Great Mother heard him; suddenly, with a strength he had never known inside himself, he felt propelled by some greater force across the yard and reached an arm out toward each one to push them out of the way.

  “Run!” he heard his own voice thundering around the courtyard and inside his own head. He saw with relief and gratitude that they both stumbled from his shoving them, stumbled far enough toward the steps that surely they would be out of the stone’s path. Still everything moved in slow motion—their looks of shock, Ocyrhoe opening her mouth, he thought, to thank him, but instead, a look of horror on her face and a scream that sounded very far away. He saw her reach her hands up toward her head. Raphael opened his mouth, a look of furious urgency on his face. Why were they upset when he had just saved them from the missile?

  “You’re safe!” Ferenc said. There was a deafening roar, he tasted metal, and then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 31:

  GRIEF

  The first hour was confusion, too much confusion to think or feel. She was aware that Raphael, grimacing from the pain in his leg, had grabbed her and turned her forcibly away from Ferenc’s body. She heard him shout, she heard people approach, she felt other hands and arms reach out to her, pick her up, help her to walk, take her indoors. Somebody gave her something hot to drink, somebody wrapped her in a blanket, somebody even gave her a pillow. Whether it was all the same somebody or a collection of persons she had no idea. She kept waiting for somebody to tell her how badly Ferenc was injured, or at least for somebody to mention it in hushed tones where she might overhear it. Nobody was talking about him. There was nothing to talk about.

  She closed her eyes and tried to force her body to relax. Cutting out the light helped. In the darkness the brew she had been given seemed warmer.

  There was a horrible thud and everything around her shook. A wave of worried voices washed over her and then faded away. She opened her eyes properly and looked around. Women and children were running to the far side of the hall. She understood at once that the thud had been the French trebuchet, that the stones were now being slung at the walls of the donjon as well as into the yard. She had finished drinking whatever was in the cup. Now she remembered: the drink had come from Raphael and the cushion had come from Rixenda. She could not remember the rest.

  Rixenda was sitting beside her against the eastern wall. She made a small, clucking sound when she caught Ocyrhoe’s eye, and moments later, Raphael was beside her on the other side. She was glad of Percival’s absence. Vera’s too, she realized. Raphael was the gentlest of these strange intruders.

  “How are you?” he said. His voice was very heavy.

  “That depends,” she heard herself say. Her voice was also heavy; it sounded strange in her own ears. “Tell me.”

  “He felt nothing,” Raphael said gently. “It was instant.”

  She dropped the empty cup and fell over against Rixenda. There was a throbbing in her stomach and her ears. “I want to see him,” she said.

  “No,” Raphael said, too quickly. She grimaced, then nodded.

  “He saved us,” she said dully. Raphael nodded. “I don’t want to have been saved if he’s not here. There doesn’t seem any point in it.”

  “You should eat something. I think you missed breakfast and you have certainly missed dinner. There’s been so much today.”

  “No thank you,” she said. “Let’s just…what do we…I don’t know.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “What happens now?” she asked.

  “The bishop and Peire-Roger will determine what to do with his…with him. There is no way to bury him or cremate him.”

  “I think she needs another draught,” urged Rixenda, slowly edging Ocyrhoe back to sitting upright. “Put her out entirely, let her sleep.”

  “Can we go back and do it again, and hear the whistle ourselves this time?” asked Ocyhroe.

  Rixenda put her hand over Ocyrhoe’s; the aged thumb stroked the youthful one.
“The whistle didn’t sound. It split, and the guard on the barbican was trying to squeeze it, hold it together.”

  “Ferenc’s hearing was unusually acute,” said Raphael. Ocyrhoe nodded. “If it hadn’t been, that would be you or me, or both of us, on the ground.”

  Ocyrhoe looked at him wearily. She was about to talk, and then realized she lacked the energy completely.

  Dimly she was aware that the rest of the keep was full of people, but they were now filing out of the building and into the courtyard. It was safe out there, briefly, in the moments following a trebuchet attack, while the enemy was repositioning the counterweight.

  But among the figures leaving, one moved toward them. Ocyrhoe sighed with resignation. “Hello,” she said to Vera.

  “I’m sorry,” said Vera gently. Ocyrhoe had actually been expecting Vera to criticize her for even having feelings. “He was a good man. He was my friend, and I do not have many friends.”

  “Yes,” said Ocyrhoe, not knowing what else to say.

  “But we must continue,” said Vera. Turning to Rixenda: “Do you have the cup?”

  Ocyrhoe groaned a little; Rixenda rubbed the girl’s knuckles with her thumb. “I do not have it with me,” she said. “But yes, I took it from the cabin and I know where it is.”

  “Why did you take it?” Ocyrhoe asked, hardly caring.

  “Common sense,” said Rixenda, with a shrug. “We were evacuating the village and I knew would you not be able to come for it.”

  “But you didn’t approve of my attachment to it.”

  Rixenda’s warm face made her words sound kinder than they really were. “It’s still worth money if it’s sold, so leaving it behind would make no sense. I did not bring it for your sake.”

  “But you won’t keep it from her, will you?” asked Vera. “Percival still will not leave until you’ve given it to him,” she said to Ocyrhoe. “He sent me to speak to you. He felt his presence here would be unwelcome.”

  Ocyrhoe’s weariness was so great she wished that she could faint. “He cannot have it now,” she said.

  A pause.

  “You’re not serious,” said Raphael.

  “I was willing to give up what the cup offered me because I would have Ferenc to fill that void. And now I don’t. I have nothing but the cup. Percival has everything he needs in his life—except the cup. Let him have Frederick’s court and his Shield-Brethren and his training. His prestige, his community, his skills, his living. He has so much, he will survive the absence of a cup. I’m done talking now, it’s time to sleep.” She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the cold, uneven stone wall.

  “If you came with us to Frederick’s…” Raphael began.

  “I can’t do that. I’m needed here.”

  “If you came to us afterwards.”

  “Would you be at Frederick’s then? Would I not be returning to Léna’s lair? Would I not become a piece of flotsam in the general currents of the world? Where is there a place for me?”

  “Léna could complete your Binder training,” Raphael suggested.

  Ocyrhoe made a disgusted sound. “One outlaw Binder teaching another outlaw Binder. That’s not training.”

  Vera frowned and opened her mouth to rebuke the girl, but Raphael stopped her with a gesture. “This is not the time. Let her rest. We’ll discuss it tonight, or tomorrow. Nothing is going to change between Montségur and the French in that time.”

  Vera turned to Rixenda. “We could cut through this Gordian Knot if you would just give us the cup.”

  Ocyrhoe gave her a look but was too enervated to protest.

  “It is not mine to give,” said Rixenda, putting a comforting arm around Ocyrhoe. “All of us here are beholden to this young woman. I will not betray her trust.”

  “Besides which, it is in your interest for us to stay here, so why would you give us the one thing that anchors Percival, and therefore us, to this place?” Vera added sardonically.

  Rixenda shook her head peaceably. “Peire-Roger might do that. I would not. I will give it to Ocyrhoe when she desires it. At this moment, she desires nothing more than sleep.”

  CHAPTER 32:

  A TEMPORARY TRUCE

  Nobody dared to question the archbishop’s authority, but “Father Sinibaldo” and the Livonian knights—who somehow knew each other—had been given one of the village houses, turning a score of Narbonnese soldiers out into a tent. Now, in the common room of the house, Father Sinibaldo sat with His Eminence and Dietrich.

  “I require the chalice more than I require the death of heretics,” said Sinibaldo.

  “Your Holiness,” began the bishop.

  “Stop that. Even in private. Break the habit. I am a priest. Speak to me as a priest, Your Eminence.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You mean, of course, yes, my son.”

  “Yes, my son. If that is the Holy Father’s—dictum, of course it is my wish to honor it. However, you must remember this is the French king’s crusade as least as much as ours. He wants all the lords of Occitania to yield to him. On His Majesty’s behalf, Hugue de Arcis will not agree to any plan that does not include the absolute surrender of the Cathars and their supporters.”

  Father Sinibaldo grimaced. “His Majesty claims he is acting on behalf of the Pope. If the Pope has plans that deviate from His Majesty’s, His Majesty is the one who needs to change plans. I will make that very clear when I am back in Rome. Meanwhile, let us consider the current plan. Dietrich, make your point.”

  “We want the Shield-Brethren knight. There is no proof of it, but the timing of his arrival and the sudden appearance of the Grail might be more than coincidence. We take him as our political hostage and question him, and during such time as we have him, the trebuchet stops. He yields the grail, or helps lead us to it, in exchange for the entire population of the fortress being freed to safety.”

  “Why would he do that?” asked Archbishop Pierre.

  “Because he is a knight,” said Dietrich, more sharply than he should have. “Given the opportunity to save a community of people with whom he has aligned, he will do it, even if it requires a deep sacrifice on his part.”

  “But Dietrich, what if you’re mistaken and he knows nothing about the cup?” asked Father Sinibaldo.

  “Then we resume bombardments,” said Dietrich, with a shrug. “Return to things as they were. The trebuchet is almost at their barbican, and once we take the barbican—which we will—they’re doomed. We certainly have lost nothing in this attempt.”

  The trebuchet—now alarmingly close to the barbican—had been still for the day. The counterweight was at its resting position on the ground, visible to the barbican guards, who bemusedly assured the fortress population they were in no present danger. The archers had not shot a single arrow all day.

  Then came the message for a request to parley. Peire-Roger looked confused when Artal ran in from the walls with the news.

  “They have a white flag and everything,” the youth said, wide-eyed. “There is one knight and a few men-at-arms. He asks to speak with you, milord, in private.”

  The only private, indoor space remaining was the chicken coop, which would not do. Peire-Roger instructed that the upstairs chapel be respectfully cleared of all meditating Good Ones, and told the guard at the keep door that nobody was to be allowed upstairs with weapons. He called his own entourage around him and went up the rickety wooden stairs to await the enemy. Torches were lit, but they were running low now even on the oils, and they had to conserve. It was colder up here than in the hall below.

  They did not have to wait long. Soon a thin-faced knight entered with three followers, all unarmed. The knight wore a surcoat with a cross and a sword emblazoned on his left shoulder, and he carried himself with an air of slightly piqued arrogance.

  Behind the visitors, to Peire-Roger’s s
urprise and irritation, appeared Raphael, fully armed and limping—it was the first time he had taken stairs without using his cane for support. Raphael ignored Peire-Roger’s scowl and came around to stand behind Peire-Roger as if a member of his entourage.

  “Welcome,” the Lord of Montségur said brusquely.

  “Thank you for receiving me, milord,” said the visitor loftily.

  “I am Peire-Roger of Mirepoix. This is Raphael of Acre.” He tried to sound as if he had been expecting, even desiring, Raphael’s presence.

  “Dietrich von Grüningen,” said the visitor, gesturing to himself, and bowed.

  “Sit,” said Peire-Roger, gesturing vaguely to the stools scattered about the empty prayer-hall. He chose the nearest one, and Dietrich the one across from him. Raphael placed a stool close beside Peire-Roger, his eyes never leaving Dietrich. “So,” he said briskly, as he sat, “you are a knight of the Livonian order. I myself am of the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae. I hope our orders’ history does not account for your presence here today.”

  “Not at all, my friend. I assure you, I am here only as a spokesman for the leaders of the army,” said Dietrich. “Although it is a happy coincidence to find you at this meeting.”

  “Why?” asked Peire-Roger, before Raphael had a chance. “What do you want?”

  “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, his lordship wants you,” Dietrich said to Raphael. “There was a rumor of a Shield-Brethren knight in residence in the fortress, and his lordship wishes to speak with you. If you will surrender yourself as a temporary hostage, we promise a cessation of all hostilities as long as you are in our care.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Why me?” asked Raphael. To Peire-Roger he said, in a casual aside despite Dietrich’s proximity, “The Livonian order has a dark history, and they are ill-disposed toward my brothers, so the likelihood that this as straightforward as it seems is infinitesimal.” To Dietrich: “Nevertheless, in the interest of the general welfare, I am willing to entertain your request. But explain, please.”