Philip threw himself at the soldier to protect her, lost his shield in the struggle and fell. Now he was defenceless as the crosat came at him a third time.
Something hit the man in the face, and he howled in pain and staggered back. It gave Philip enough time to grab his sword and make the killing stroke, two-handed, bringing the blade up in a practised arc just below the man’s midriff and burying it almost to the hilt in his chest.
Fabricia looked around for their unlikely saviour. Loup stood framed in the doorway of the gatehouse, his slingshot in his right hand. He grinned at Philip. ‘I just saved your life,’ he said. ‘Now you owe me.’
LXXXII
THE CHURCH BELLS pealed across the citadel, announcing the victory. The crosatz had retreated; even with only half the garrison standing they had somehow beaten them back. Philip slumped to his haunches and took off his helm. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall.
Trencavel’s soldiers were already dragging the bodies of the dead crusaders across the courtyard, tossing them over the northern wall into the gorge. Get them out before they bloat and stink. And damn them all.
At one point they had had their ladders on the gatehouse and the battering ram at the main gate. He had thought it was over. It was the women and the old men that saved them, pouring pitch and boiling water from the barbican, tipping back the ladders, making up in numbers and enthusiasm what they lacked in archers and crossbows and men-at-arms.
He stumbled as he made his way back to the donjon. He had never been so tired.
He saw Navarese’s routiers below the south-east wall, a score of them, jeering and kicking. Trencavel’s own soldiers watched them, but stood off, wary of them. He suspected he knew what this was about and he unsheathed his sword and went over to stop it.
Their crusader prisoner had been stripped and his hands were tied with hemp behind his back. He was writhing on the cobblestones like an animal, blood and saliva in his beard. The mercenaries were prodding him with their lances, but enough only to make him bleed, and scream.
He pushed them aside. The stink of them! They were like a pack of wild animals.
‘What is happening here?’ he shouted.
‘Stay out of this,’ Navarese said. ‘He is our prisoner. It is none of your business what we do with him.’
‘Where is your honour, man?’
‘Honour? What has honour to do with anything here? You pay us to fight for you; we will fight. Don’t talk to me about honour, you hypocrite.’
‘Just kill him and be done with it.’
‘You saw what they did to our prisoners. They gouged out their eyes and cut off their faces. Why should this pig expect any different?’
Philip did not answer. He stared at the desperate, bloody thing on the ground at his feet and wondered what this man would do if the tables were turned. ‘Who is your lord?’ he said to him. He was still crying, so Philip put his boot on his throat to get his attention. ‘Who is your lord?’ he repeated.
‘Gilles de Soissons of Normandy,’ he panted. ‘Please, Lord, help me. I –’
‘What is his device?’
‘We have three blue eagles . . .’
Navarese kicked him into silence. ‘What is this? What does it matter?’
So, he was one of them, Philip thought, one of the men who had stood around, laughing, just like these routiers, when they had blinded Renaut. And now the tables were turned. Let him know then what it is like to have someone do it to him, let him taste the piercing agony and humiliation to the dregs. It is a kind of justice.
And then you’ll become just like them, he heard Renaut say. Is that what you want? Is that what you think I want?
Philip took off the man’s head with one quick blow and stepped back.
There was a shocked silence. Then Navarese stepped close up, eyes red, every muscle twitching. He stabbed a forefinger into his chest. ‘You Devil-fucker! You whoreson piece of God-fucking goat-shit. You Frenchman. You whore!’ He stood there, prodding him with his finger as if it were a red-hot fork. But the chain mail and the baron’s chest were implacable. The words and the threats bounced off.
‘Now you can do what you want to him,’ Philip said.
‘You have made an enemy here today!’
‘You will have to wait your turn, I have too many to count.’ Philip said and walked away, daring him to strike at his back. But for all his foul mouth, he did not dare.
*
Fabricia sat on the steps of the church, her head between her knees. Everywhere the smell of death. He sat down beside her.
‘I knew your trade before this, seigneur, I have seen other men like you fighting and killing each other. But this is the first time I ever saw you do it, with my own eyes. The way you killed that man! Not a moment’s hesitation. And so expertly done, like you were slaughtering some barnyard animal.’
‘It is what a warrior does. I was trained for it since I was a child. I am a knight, Fabricia, not a baker. Or a stonemason. I kill or I am killed, it is the law I live by, the law that has kept you and all these other women and children from their deaths here today.’
‘I am not accusing you, seigneur, it is just I never expected to be so shocked when I finally saw it.’
‘Why didn’t you use that sword yourself? You had the opportunity. He might have killed us both.’
‘I told you, I cannot kill. I cannot have another man’s death on my conscience, no matter who he is.’
‘You do understand that we are only talking like this, here, now, because you have the luxury of being virtuous while I take it upon myself to sin.’
‘Perhaps then we have both seen the worst of each other today.’
‘We come from different worlds, Fabricia. I suppose it was inevitable that one day we would.’
LXXXIII
RAIMON WAS A young man grown suddenly old. There were lines on his face where there had been none before. His eyes were sunken into plum-coloured bruises in his head from the strain of command and from lack of sleep.
He stood on the barbican with his eyes closed, letting the rain run down his face. ‘Fine weather at last,’ he said.
‘At last,’ Philip said.
Such a storm; it had half filled the cistern in a single night. The weather had turned so quickly; Philip had gone to sleep sunburned and woken up shivering with cold.
Now a chill mist hung above the trees behind the crusader encampment. Below them a vulture stood atop one of the bodies below the walls, occasionally lowering its beak to take a leisurely breakfast.
‘Perhaps they will give up and go home now,’ Raimon said.
*
But they did not give up and go home. Later that day a sentry at the south barbican shouted the alarm. Raimon and Philip ran up the steps to the parapet and stared down the ridge towards the crusader camp. A column of men was riding up the road from the Toulousain and by the standards and pennants they carried he realized it must be Simon de Montfort himself come from Carcassonne to join the assault on Montaillet. He had twenty knights with him. He had also brought another one of his trebuchets.
*
‘One in five of my fighting men is dead,’ Raimon said. ‘Another one in five has succumbed to, or is yet weak from, the fever that woman brought with her. We have enough water, thanks be to God for last night’s storm, but we do not have soldiers to drink it all. If they attack again, this time they will overrun us.’ He pointed to the crude map, drawn in chalk on the oak table in the centre of the room. ‘They will position the trebuchet once more against the west wall.’ He looked at Anselm, who had been invited to participate in the conference. ‘How long?’ he said.
‘It is already badly damaged. If they start another bombardment . . . three days, at most, and then part of it may come down.’
‘What are our choices?’ Philip said.
‘We pray that winter comes quickly, for they may yet tire of the work once the snows come. Winter here is vicious. Our other choice is to s
eek help.’
‘Help?’ Philip said.
‘From Count Raymond in Toulouse.’
‘Do you think he will come to the aid of a Trencavel army?’
‘Who knows? He has allowed the priests to flog him in the cathedral in his own city, he even rode with the crosatz at Béziers and at Carcassonne for a time. But still the Church wants to bring him down and while he tries to appease them he loses the chance to strike back. This may be his chance. Half de Montfort’s army left him after Carcassonne and now our little army has stalled him here for almost six weeks. He is not invincible. If Raymond joined the fight now we could put an end to this crusade for good.’
‘You think he would listen to such reasoning?’
‘Perhaps, if someone makes the argument forcefully enough. If he were to come now, we could trap de Montfort here in the mountains and destroy this crusade. If not, the crosatz could come back next spring with reinforcements. It is Raymond they are after; he must see that. The longer he hesitates, the surer his fate. My master, the Viscount Trencavel, was no threat to them and look what they did to him. Count Raymond thinks he can play politics but he has to understand that they don’t play politics in Rome; they play for eternity. You cannot trust someone who has his eyes on God.’
‘But what ambassador could you send that he would listen to?’
‘You, seigneur.’
‘Me?’
‘I will give you ten of my best knights and chevaliers as escort. The men who rode with you when you burned the trebuchet would follow you anywhere after you led them in and out of the crusader camp.’
Philip warmed his hands on the fire. It was a meagre hearth, for they did not have much timber to spare; Anselm needed it all for the extra barricades he and his carpenters were building behind the west wall.
‘How might it be done?’
‘You can slip out of the castle as before, and there are gullies and ridgelines that will hide you at night. Dampen your horse’s hooves with sacking again.’ He took Philip’s arm and led him to the window. ‘You see that ridge? They are camped just below it. If you were to follow the defile on the other side they would not see you. Once you were in the forest you could climb the spur and then down into the valley. You would have to avoid the road to Cabaret but you could follow the river. It would be slow progress but the north star will lead you to the Toulousain.’
‘As I understand it, you Trencavels have been at war with Raymond for years. Why would he receive me when my men carry your colours?’
‘You are right; we were most often enemies. He may not receive a Trencavel but he may heed a northern knight who has fought against the crosatz.’
Philip considered: a suicide mission, he suspected, much like the last one. Raimon made it all sound so easy from high in his barbican. But what did he have to lose anyway? If he stayed here, and did nothing, they would have to surrender or die. This way, at least his fate was in his own hands again.
‘All right, find me good men and good horses. I’ll do it.’
‘Dieu vos benesiga! May God grant you speed and a safe passage. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘But if you don’t return I shall not blame you. Just do your best to persuade him. It is all I ask.’
‘I will return, with or without Raymond.’
Raimon laughed and shook his head. ‘Return? If you do then I shall know you are quite mad, seigneur.’
LXXXIV
LOUP HAD MADE a circle on the wall of the church with a piece of chalky rock that he had found on the ground, probably a piece of some stone slung at them during the night by the crosatz. He used it now as target, a measured thirty paces, his slingshot finding the very centre each time.
‘I cannot find Fabricia,’ Philip said to him.
‘She’s sick.’
‘Sick?’
‘She has a fever and retches constantly. Like Guilhemeta.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘During the night.’ He put down the slingshot. ‘Is it true you are leaving us?’
‘What?’
‘You are going as embassy to Count Raymond.’
How did he know? But of course: Anselm.
‘Weren’t you going to tell me?’
‘We will talk later,’ he said, and hurried back across the square to the infirmary.
It was cold in the great hall and his breath frosted on the air. Two days ago they had been gagging from heat. Now they froze. ‘Fabricia!’ he shouted.
Elionor hurried towards him through the rows of the sick. ‘Where is she?’ he said.
‘This way.’
This is impossible, he thought. Fabricia is not the one who gets sick; she is the healer. But Loup had not lied, Fabricia lay on the floor at the far end of the hall, beneath the great arch. She looked wretched, and she did not rouse even when he called her name.
‘How bad?’ he said to Elionor.
She shook her head. ‘Who knows when it is our time? I have asked her if she will take the consolamentum, but she refuses. I worry for her soul.’
Philip picked up Fabricia’s hand; it was limp and hot. Her face was pink, and slick with sweat, burning up while there was still frost on the barbican. ‘Fabricia,’ he said again.
Finally her eyelids flickered. ‘Seigneur?’ She pitched to the side and retched, nothing but bile.
Elionor soaked a linen cloth in a basin of water and put it on her forehead. ‘Before now,’ she said, ‘those with the sickness died for lack of water. Now we have plenty.’ She held her head and dribbled a few drops of rainwater into her daughter’s mouth. Fabricia coughed but gulped it down gratefully.
‘Make her well,’ he said.
‘It is out of my hands. It is the fate of her spirit that concerns me now.’ She slipped away, a hundred others groaning and crying for her attention.
‘Fabricia, my heart. Can you hear me?’
She squeezed his hand to let him know that she had.
‘I have to leave here. I am going to get help for us.’ The flagstones trembled and dust and flakes of mortar drifted down from the ceiling. A woman screamed. The crosatz had assembled their new trebuchet and recommenced their bombardment of the citadel. That one was close. It sounded as if it had landed in the courtyard; the engineers were still finding their range with their new equipment.
‘I won’t ever see you again,’ she murmured.
‘But you will. I am coming back for you, I promise.’
He looked at her hands. It was the first time he had seen her without gloves or linen bindings. Her wounds were healing over.
She reached up to her throat for the crucifix that Father Marty had given her and ripped at the thin chain. It snapped easily. She pressed it into his palm.
‘What’s this?’
‘If you get . . . across the mountains . . . to Barcelona . . . Marty has a brother . . . Show him this . . . he will help you.’
‘I do not need this. I am coming back for you.’
‘Take it. Goodbye, seigneur. We had one dawn together. It seems God is jealous to keep the rest.’
*
Mist settled in the gorge: they were above it now, in their own peculiar heaven, looking down at the clouds. The evening was still; then a sudden shower of rain like a hail of small stones whipped against the rocks.
Somewhere in the citadel, Fabricia tossed and groaned in a slick of her own sweat; Anselm grunted as he hefted a large stone into the sling of the mangonel – he had taken to firing boulders into the crusader camp day and night, each of them stamped with his mason’s mark; in the donjon Loup whimpered in the straw, troubled by bad dreams.
There was the faint sound of a hymn, the pilgrims perhaps, or holy Christian soldiers drunk on wine.
He took out the cross Fabricia had given him and knotted the chain where she had broken it. Then he put it over his head and tucked it inside his shirt.
The cold weather made the ancient scar on his leg ache while he waited to lead his horse in
to the black rain right under the noses of his enemies. Death in a thousand forms, hers, his, tormented him.
LXXXV
SO HERE WE sit in the wind and the drenching rain, Simon thought, our skin tanned like leather from this endless summer, wondering where it all went wrong. For myself I am glad there will be no more mutilations and massacres.
The wind tore at the fine silk of the pavilion and threatened to blow them all into the gorge.
Simon de Montfort himself sat at the head of the table. He looked every bit of his forty-nine years, grey-bearded and sombre, with a face you could break walnuts on. They said he was no ordinary Christian knight, the kind of man who would retain his virtue even in a barrel of whores. But as strong as an ox, by all accounts, and with a will to match.
Father Ortiz was explaining to him the vagaries of their campaigning so far, God earning credit for every advance, Gilles de Soissons the blame for their every setback. However the canvas was painted, it was clear to Simon that the crusade was dissolving into a shambles. De Montfort may have been acclaimed the new lord of the Trencavel lands but that did not make him master of them. Now that winter was getting closer and the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Nevers had gone home with all their soldiers, de Montfort had no more than thirty knights and their retainers to contain and conquer the south of France.
‘I intend to invest the Cathar fortress at Cabaret,’ de Montfort said. ‘I cannot do that unless I am sure I will not suffer an attack from the rear. It means we must have this fortress in our possession.’
‘Now we have the trebuchet,’ Gilles said, ‘I guarantee we shall bring down the west wall before All Souls’ Day.’
‘If you had not lost the first one, it would be in our possession now,’ Father Ortiz said.
Gilles gave him a poisonous stare. ‘No commander could have foreseen such an impudent action.’
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