He struggled to keep up, his ribs aching, his breath short. She stopped and waited for him. ‘I am breathless . . . as an . . . old man.’
‘Don’t worry. Soon you will be yourself again and well enough to start killing again.’
‘I do not enjoy . . . killing. The jousts, yes . . . pitting my wits . . . and my arm . . . against another man’s for . . . honour or his . . . horse. But taking a life is not something . . . I take pleasure in.’
‘Men die whether you take pleasure in it or not. The result is the same.’
‘Sometimes there is no choice. To defend his . . . family or his faith or his . . . lands a man must fight. That . . . is the way of it.’
He felt a draught of warm air on his face and knew they were almost at the end of the tunnel. He wondered what new surprise she had in store for him.
‘A man can find justification for anything. Words can be twisted. The truth cannot.’
She stepped to the side. He hovered for a moment on the edge of an abyss. He gasped in shock, almost went over, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
‘What is . . . this place?’ he said, when he had his breath back.
A narrow band of light shot through the ceiling of the cave from a fissure in the earth above, God’s finger pointing the way to hell, he thought. Below there was only darkness, all the way down. The light could not penetrate to the bottom of it.
She pointed. He turned around and saw a huge pillar of calcite that had accreted on the very edge of the abyss. Parts of it had fallen away into the pit so that now it formed the shape of a hammer.
‘The hammer of God,’ she said. ‘Only a few have seen it.’
He took the candle from her, held it above his head so that he might see it better. ‘Why do they . . . call it that?’
‘In the days of the Visigoths they would bring prisoners here and throw them into that hole. I cannot imagine what kind of death that would be. But that is how that rock got its name. The hammer of God, of course, is death. We are all broken by it in the end. It is the only reality there is, the only time in our lives we know the truth, that we are born to die. The rest is the Devil’s dream.’
As he turned back to her, she touched his hand lightly with her fingertips. She was so close; through the neck of her robe he glimpsed a pale and ivory shoulder, saw the throb of pulse at her neck. He imagined the scooped hollow below her collarbone and the soft swelling of her breast.
‘You are of noble blood, Philip of Vercy?’
‘A baron, as I told you.’
‘Then forgive me if I have spoken impudently to you. I have only a workman’s blood in my veins. I am not of your station.’
‘You saved my life. I would allow that you speak to me as you wish.’
‘I do not really think that is possible,’ she said. ‘It is a pity, for I should like to.’
She was so close he could feel her breath on his cheek. She twisted away from him and led the way back down the tunnel, chasing the dying light.
Halfway along she put out a hand and stopped to rest. When she moved on again he saw that she had left a bloody handprint on the limestone.
‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Have you injured . . . yourself?’
She sat down on a rock, wincing with pain. ‘I need to stop for a while,’ she said. He crouched down beside her. There were ancient figures crudely painted on the walls. A drop of cool water splashed on to his neck.
‘What is it? What is wrong?’
‘Hold the candle,’ she said. He took it from her and she peeled off one of her gloves. It was sticky with blood. She held it out to him. ‘Look for yourself.’
Philip had seen such a wound before, in Outremer, when a man had been lanced through the hand by a Saracen spear. But this wound was clean and had a fragrance to it, like fresh-cut lavender. He bent closer to examine it, but at that moment a draught blew out the candle.
‘Who did this to you?’
‘No one.’
‘You should have it properly bound.’
‘It will make no difference.’ She replaced her glove. ‘There is the same wound on my other hand and on both my feet.’
‘Then how did you come by them?’
‘I don’t know. They started as sores and grew bigger each day.’
‘These are the wounds of the cross.’
‘Yes.’
She stood up and started to limp back towards the main cave. ‘Life is mysterious, seigneur. It is why I am not a crezen. The bons òmes are good men, but they say they know the answers to everything and I do not see how they can.’
‘We all have to believe in something.’
‘We can believe in whatever we wish, but we don’t have to. If you will pardon me, seigneur, it seems that what you wish is not something to believe in, but dominion over life, even over God Himself. You want Him to do your bidding, just as you wanted Him to save your son.’
‘Was that so unjust?’
‘It is neither just nor unjust, it is only the way things are. I see how you loved your boy. You did all you could, perhaps more than any other man might have done to save him. You’re a good man. At least, you are when you do not have a sword in your hand.’
They reached the main cave. Fabricia went to tend the sick. Philip slumped down on his haunches, overwhelmed with all he had seen and heard. This cave reminded him of his own life. It seemed to him that there was a world beneath the one of light and air, a subterranean realm waiting for him to explore, the place where his true answers lay.
Sleepless, he watched the stars swing across the heavens through the mouth of the cave. Fabricia moved among the huddled sick by the light of a single candle. The hum of insects rose and fell in the forest outside.
Thoughts of God, thoughts of sex; she had awakened something in him he thought was dead, put a brand again to his flesh. He had thought that when he found her she would give him his answers, but she had instead only posed more questions.
A God helpless to intervene was at least comprehensible, and his life then made a kind of sense. Was that the answer he had been seeking? It surely seemed to be the Devil’s world, no matter what the priests said.
LX
THE SKY IN the west was full of red smoke; the crosatz at work. But the Montagne Noir was untouched and on a windless evening like this, in the stormlight before the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the air was so clear Philip could make out the leaves on the bushes on the far side of the valley. A tempest was on its way from the north. The afternoon had been oppressively still and as the sun set the first rush of wind was a blessed relief. He heard a roll of thunder.
He followed the path below the smoke-blackened walls that led to the cave. He thought of his son. I wonder if she could have saved him, had I known about her sooner. I failed him. He remembered the way little Renaut looked at him that last morning. He trusted me. I told him everything would be all right and I let him down.
A thicket of fig trees and brambles concealed the mouth of the cave. Raimon was there, with some of his soldiers. By the looks on their faces they had just returned from a raid. The flanks of their horses were steaming and streaked with foam.
Raimon grinned when he saw him. ‘Are you still here, Northerner? Have you not tired of our company yet?’
‘I have almost grown accustomed to your soft southern way of life.’
‘Your injuries are healed?’
‘My ribs don’t hurt any more. My ankle sometimes gives way, but otherwise I am as well as I have ever been. What about you, Raimon? You look like you’ve been in a fight.’
‘We ambushed a party of crosatz on the Roman road. They thought they were going home. Well, if they earned a dispensation for heaven by coming here, that’s where they are now. We did them a favour. I am told heaven is a better place than France.’
‘I certainly hope so.’
‘You heard what happened at Carcassonne? The crosatz declare
d Simon de Montfort the new seigneur in place of Trencavel. Our Viscount was offered safe passage to parlay a truce and instead they took him prisoner. After that nice little business, the people of the town were forced to surrender and had to leave the city with nothing but their shirts and breeches. I tell you, Frenchman, this war is not about heresy, it is about looting. Well, this so-called holy Host will be leaving soon and when they do we will throw this upstart de Montfort out on his arse.’
‘When will it be safe for me to go home?’
‘In another hundred years. Until then, you will need an escort. The roads are full of mercenaries, bandits and freebooters. A man alone, even a knight, will not get far without a bodyguard.’
‘You can provide such an escort?’
‘I cannot spare a man to see you safe down to the creek right now. But I’ll think on it. For now we have to water these horses before the storm spooks them. God speed, amic.’
Inside the cave Philip was assaulted by the smell of dung and animals. His eyes smarted from the smoke of the cook fires. Everywhere he looked he saw vacant stares and silent and unsmiling children. No one here had enough to eat, and none of them knew what tomorrow would bring them.
‘A fine seigneur as yourself,’ a voice said, ‘you must be missing your soft bed and your feather coverlet.’
Philip looked around for whoever had the temerity to speak to him with such disrespect. A man lay on the ground wrapped in a filthy linen sheet. He had the tonsure of a priest. He had an unctuous smile and Philip disliked him immediately.
‘You’re a priest,’ Philip said.
‘I am. Do you wish to make confession, my son?’ He laughed.
‘These people are all heretics. What are you doing here?’
‘The crosatz would have murdered me with the same enthusiasm they butcher a Cathar, just for being in the way. My name is Father Marty. Yours is Philip, and you are a fine gentleman and knight from Burgundy. You see, I know all about you. We are practically friends. Please, come, sit by me for a while. I should like to talk. It is all I can do these days, talk.’
‘What is the matter with you, priest? Are you sick?’
‘I am dying, Philip of Vercy.’
‘What about the girl? Could she not heal you?’
‘See for yourself,’ he said.
Philip squatted down on his haunches and lifted the sheet. There was a gross canker on the priest’s thigh and it had begun to suppurate. Philip felt his stomach rise.
‘It’s a pretty thing, isn’t it? It will kill me eventually. I can feel it eating me from the inside. She put her hands on me but it didn’t do any good. But I told people it had and for a time it added to her reputation.’
‘Why would you say such a thing if it were not true?’
Marty shrugged. ‘I wanted people to think she was a sorceress. Perhaps that is why she could not heal me. The fault is mine, you see, I am not pure enough to be redeemed. I have the robes of God and the heart of a devil.’ He laughed again.
‘You find amusement in doing such things?’
‘I had my own reasons.’
‘How do you know her?’
‘I come from the same village as that girl. Well, she and her family had only been there a few years; me, I had lived there all my life. My brother was bayle at the castle but I fled before the crosatz came. He stayed and they hanged him. Another of life’s little jokes. Life has plenty of them for a man with a good sense of humour.’
‘Some people laugh to stop themselves weeping.’
‘Ah, you have me there. I see you are a student of the human condition. Very good. I think you are right; it is not funny at all. You see that man? His name is Bernart. He says she brought him back to life. Perhaps she did. I see other people getting better all around me – like you; when they brought you in here you had blood spraying out of your mouth and nose with every breath. You were a dead man, too. And she put her hands on you and now look! But not me. Some jest, huh?’
Vital and another of the bons òmes passed them. People bowed or prostrated themselves on the ground. Even Father Marty raised a hand to them. ‘There they go, the cause of all this trouble. Look like starved crows, don’t they? For myself, I don’t hold with a single thing they say but they are holier than I will ever be.’
‘You don’t hate them?’
‘I’ve never minded them if they never minded me. But they don’t like the girl. I think she frightens them. She doesn’t fit into their perfect picture of how the world is. She has the wounds of Christ and they say that Christ was not crucified. They cannot explain her. I imagine they wish she would just go away.’
‘How did she come by those wounds on her hands?’
‘Who knows? The bons òmes say she made the marks herself.’
‘Is that what you believe?’
‘It is what I would like to believe. And yet she has had those wounds for months and they do not heal, nor do they weep or discharge anything foul. How do you explain it? Even if they were done by her own hand, how could anyone stand such pain?’ Father Marty took a hold of Philip’s tunic and drew him closer. Philip winced, his breath was foul. ‘Some people say she is a witch, you know? Others call her a saint. Did you know that? I tried to seduce her once. Imagine that! A priest trying to fuck a saint.’ He gave a barking laugh. ‘I have seen you watching her.’
‘What?’
‘She is a beauty, isn’t she? She is no maid, though. I have it on good authority.’
Philip prised the priest’s fingers loose. ‘You disgust me,’ he said, and walked outside to get some fresh air.
The weather had turned abruptly. The wind rushed through the trees and it was suddenly cold. He felt the first stinging of hard rain on his face.
He closed his eyes, saw his little boy lying in his bed, before he got sick, remembered how he had once pointed in wonder at the tiny splashes as the raindrops fell on the stone sill of his window.
‘Can you see the fairies?’ Philip said. ‘They are the rain fairies and they are dancing just for you.’
The grief hit him like a cramp, so that he almost doubled over where he stood. Everyone I have loved I have lost. While he had God to blame for it his anger provided some consolation, but if what the Cathars said was true, there was no one to blame but the Devil.
Then we have no hope, he thought. We are all defenceless in a world of pain. He reached into his tunic, took out the silver comb. What was the use? He could not even remember her smell any more. He drew back and tossed it as far as he could into the darkness.
The rain drove down in sheets. The whole mountain seemed suddenly to tremble with the din of water trying to find passage through the limestone fissures in the rock. He went back inside the cave.
‘Too hot in here, too cold out there,’ Fabricia said. She flapped a hand to fan herself. The girlish gesture disarmed him. She looked so fragile in the stormlight, all creamy skin and thin bones. ‘I see you met Father Marty.’
‘He told me that you’re a saint.’
‘A saint? He tried all he could to desecrate me then. Did he tell you about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think the poor man’s conscience weighs heavy on him.’
‘He is being reshaped by the hammer of God perhaps?’
She smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps that is it.’ She put her head to the side. ‘Every day I think to find you gone and yet you are still here.’
‘I cannot get escort out of these mountains.’
‘Is that the reason?’
‘Also, I am torn.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Does it show so plainly?’
‘I have never seen a man so tormented.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, I have never met a saint before. It has confused me.’
‘I am no saint, seigneur.’ She moved closer. ‘But I will tell you this; I dreamed of you, a long time ago. When they first brought you here, I could not believe it. If I told you that I knew your name before I ever laid
eyes on you, you would think me mad. Why wouldn’t you? Half the world does. I do not know what it all means, and it terrifies me.’
She turned on her heel and hurried away.
LXI
NUN, OUTCAST, SAINT, witch.
She had been awake since dawn tending to the sick and laying hands on those that asked and cooking broth for those that could not feed themselves. For this short time I belong, she thought. They will adore me and fear me again when the crosatz leave. Until then I have found my place.
She left the cave and went into the woods to search for herbs, stopped at the stream to wash linen for wounds. Afterwards she removed the bandages on her own hands and rinsed them in the water. She bit her lip to stop herself crying out from the pain.
She washed the holes in her feet the same way. When it was done she bandaged them again, put the boots back on her feet and limped back up to the caves, where she knew she would find Philip, as always at this time of day, feeding and watering his horse.
She watched him for a while before she let him know she was there. He was rubbing down his big Arab mare, and whispering to her as he worked.
‘Why do you do that?’ she said, moving out of the shadows. ‘Why do you talk to a horse? She can’t understand you.’
‘She understands well enough. Perhaps not about politics or religion, but she understands the tone of my voice and the touch of my hand.’
‘And can she talk back to you?’
‘You can laugh at me, as you wish. But she can let me know when she’s tired or when she’s sick, and she senses trouble before I do. When we ride we ride as one, I feel every little ripple and tension in her muscles and I swear she feels the same from me. If she were a man, she’d be a good friend. If she were a woman, she’d be a wife.’
Fabricia shook her head. He was a complex man: an expert at the arts of war and killing, according to Raimon, yet consumed by a search for meaning in his life and as loving to a brute animal as a father to a child.
‘You think she has a soul?’
‘I know it. But if you were to ask me about the men who put out my squire’s eyes, then I could not be so sure. What brings you down here this fine morning?’
Stigmata Page 22
