‘Who are you, seigneur?’ Bernadette asked him. ‘You are a knight, this is obvious by your bearing, and your accent is northern. But you are not a crosat?’
‘You are right, I have a castle and lands in the north, but they are now under interdict by the Church. So I shall leave as soon as I may. If anyone should find me here, it will cause a lot of trouble for you.’
‘We have no visitors here in winter so do not disturb yourself on that account. We are forgotten here until spring. But why do you find yourself excommunicate, seigneur?’
‘For doing as you are doing; helping a heretic.’
‘This girl is no heretic.’
‘Her mother took the Cathar rites and her father killed a priest.’
The abbess took a moment to compose herself after hearing this news. She made the sign of the cross.
‘Will she be all right, do you think?’ he asked her.
‘The infirmarian says that the wounds in her hands are infected. It is very strange.’
‘Strange?’
‘When she was with us, she had sores on her hands and feet the whole time, but the wounds never putrefied then. She has also suffered very badly from her exposure to the cold. And she is skin and bone, poor girl.’
‘But she will live?’
‘If it is God’s will.’
And I know how fickle He can be, Philip thought.
‘What is worse is the violence that has been done to her spirit. I fear that even if her hands heal, there will still be a scar, deep inside. I think she will need time, long after the wounds have closed over, to recover from the tortures they have submitted her to. She will need kindness and patience and God’s grace. Where will she find such gifts out there in the world?’
‘I will look after her.’
‘I do not think that would be wise. With respect, seigneur, you are a man of violence. What kind of peace will she ever find with you?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I think she should stay here with us. The world is no place for a gentle spirit like hers. She may find true sanctuary here. Of course, this is only the opinion of a poor nun who has spent her entire life in the cloister.’
Philip reached out and placed a hand lightly on Fabricia’s forehead, smoothed down a stray lock of her hair. ‘I love this woman.’
‘You need not convince me of that. You have saved her life. But we may display our devotion not only with our possession, but with our sacrifice. After all, you may crush a flower and keep it between the pages of a book, but then it stops being a flower. And if you are held excommunicate by the Church, where will you go that will be safe for you, let alone Fabricia? Let her go, seigneur. Yours is not the kind of life that she needs.’
She’s right, Philip thought. The world I live in is no place for her. I came back for her, as I said I would, but to keep her for my own selfish desires would be wrong.
He hung his head. ‘I so wished her to be my wife.’
‘She is the daughter of a stonemason, inclined to mysterious wounds and visions. You are a man of war. How could that ever be?’
Philip nodded. ‘I cannot leave until I know she is well again.’
‘You may stay until the weather breaks. We can give you a donkey and a little food. Where will you go?’
‘I have business I should attend to. As you say, sister, I am a man of violence. I have one more score to settle before I can leave the Albigeois.’
*
Take a man from his family, Simon thought, and what is left? Take away his mother, his father and his brothers; take away the right to marry and make a family of his own; what is left?
What is left is the hope of God and of heaven; what is left is the cloister and the prieu-dieu; what is left is knowing the Church is the only place you can ever really belong.
But take away the certainty of faith – what is left then? There has to be certainty. A man has to know; there can be no room for doubt. He cannot dedicate his entire life to a faith that will not finally earn him redemption.
Because if you take away God – what do you have? Two things only: the sound of your own heartbeat and a nameless, black terror.
*
The world was smothered in white. It was as if a blanket had been thrown on the earth to silence it.
He made out the black shadow of a cave at the foot of a cliff. There was no sign of habitation but that did not mean they were not there. He could feel their eyes watching him. They would have seen him coming up the valley long ago.
He hitched his horse to a tree.
He imagined that they would have found Gilles by now. He could hear the bells pealing at Montaillet, the sound carried clearly on the frozen air. The stable boy would be babbling to the soldiers about the priest’s hurried departure. They would know who it was that had murdered the great lord.
‘Hello!’ he called. He stepped inside the cave, found the remains of a fire. He rubbed the ashes between his fingers. They were still warm.
He got down on his knees. Be careful, you’ll wear them out, he heard Gilles mocking him.
Well, we’ve seen now who wore out first. The floor of the cave was gritty sand. He heard water dripping somewhere.
He spoke the words of the Our Father. He saw movement in the shadows.
There were at least six of them: men or women, it was impossible to tell as they all wore hoods. They waited until he had finished his prayer.
‘What do you want here?’ a man’s voice growled.
‘I want to join you.’
‘A trick!’ another hissed.
‘There is no trick,’ he said. He took off his cross and spat on it. Then he tossed it on the ashes of the fire. ‘If it were a trick I would have soldiers with me. But as you can see, I am quite alone.’
One of the bons òmes came out of the shadows. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Father Simon Jorda. I am a monk of the Cistercian order at Toulouse. Or I was. I am a Christian monk no longer.’
‘What do you want with us?’
‘I killed a man tonight.’
‘Priests kill all the time,’ another voice said from the shadows. ‘They call it holy.’
‘This one was a Christian knight and I did it because he killed a crezen. So to whom shall I go to for my absolution now?’
‘Because you no longer wish to be a priest does not mean you are ready for the consolamentum.’
‘I know what you believe. I think, perhaps, that I am ready to believe it also.’
One of the bons òmes crouched down on the other side of the cold fire. ‘You know what your people do to us when they catch us? No doubt you have witnessed it first hand. Are you ready to die that way? And it will be much worse for you if you convert to our religion. They will hate you even more than they hate us.’
‘I am looking for God. Help me.’
One of the other bons òmes came over. ‘Can we trust him?’
‘Of course we can. He is right, if he wanted us dead he would have brought soldiers with him.’ He turned back to Simon. ‘Do you understand what you are about to do? Are you ready to step into the flames?’
‘My brother,’ Simon said, ‘it feels as if I am about to step out of them.’
CVIII
THE ROOM WAS lit by just a few tallow candles, and the black smoke hung heavy in the air. Fabricia, her hands wrapped in linen bandages, wanted to reach for him but he stood two paces back from her bed, as if he was already gone.
The chapel bell rang for vespers. Philip heard the novices hurry across the cloister below to the chapter house.
‘How did they know?’ she said. ‘Did Father Jorda tell them?’
He shook his head. ‘Not the priest. It was the boy, Loup.’
Her eyes blinked slowly. ‘So what will we do now?’
‘They think we are dead, so we are safe, for now.’
‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to go to Catalonia. I want to forget this place and everything that has happened. D
o you still have the cross?’
The cross! He would never find it now. ‘You should stay here, get your strength back.’
There was a silence. He could hear the wax sizzling in the candles. Fabricia closed her eyes.
‘You should stay here,’ he repeated.
‘But what about you?’
‘I have business to attend to. There is something I must do before I leave the Pays d’Oc.’
‘No, please, seigneur. Let it be.’
‘I cannot.’
‘You have no horse, no armour, no men. He is in a fortress surrounded by soldiers and by snow.’
‘I will find a way. I cannot rest until what he did to you and to my squire is avenged.’
There were tears on her face. Under the bandages her hands were encased in the poultices the infirmarian had put on to draw out the infection, but she was able to wipe them away with her thumb. ‘We could have a new life, both of us.’
He thought about what Bernadette had said to him. Yes, but what kind of life would that be for you? he thought.
‘If you leave here, seigneur, I will never see you again. We both know this. They will kill you. Do you remember the prayer you made, for us to be together? Well, God has given you your miracle. He has answered you. But He has put a price on His gift, and it is that you must give up your vengeance.’
‘Should I just forget what he did to Renaut? How can I ever know happiness when I also know that man is still alive?’
‘You will be happy because you are happy. You will be happy because you will just forget about him, knowing he cannot harm you more. If remembering means that it makes you unhappy, then happiness is forgetting. That is what I am asking you to do. Forget, for our sake.’
‘I may have given up my title and my lands but I cannot give up the code I live by. I cannot give up my honour. You know what I am. But should you stay with me, you would come to hate what I am.’
She did not say anything for a long time. He heard the fat from the candle sizzle on the cold stone of the windowsill.
‘You said to me once that when I laid my hands on people, it gave them hope. You said it was not just the healing, that it showed them God had not abandoned them. You said that what I did mattered a great deal.’
‘Yes, and I still believe that.’
‘But I surrendered that gift; I did it for you, because I wanted you so badly. But what a cost, seigneur, not just to me, but to all those who came to me looking for hope. When I chose you, I chose against them. I turned my back on Bernart and Father Marty and everyone like them.’
‘That was not the choice.’
‘Wasn’t it? From our first night together my hands and my feet stopped bleeding. What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know what it means. No one does.’
‘What if I said that is God’s bargain? That I might help others, but in return I must suffer for it. I gave up the gift not because of the pain in my hands but because I would not give up you. What do you say to that?’
‘It is for the best,’ he said, choking on the words. She closed her eyes.
‘You do not truly believe that and neither do I.’ Philip kissed her on the cheek.
‘My father took his revenge,’ she said. ‘But you know, if the priest who murdered my mother was at this very moment eating roast pheasant round a warm fire with all the world’s jewels laid at his feet, I would say yes, let him drink the best wines and wear the finest silks. Whatever pleases him, as long as I can have my father back. What good is revenge when you lose everything you love?’
‘I have given up everything that made me a knight. If I give up my honour as well, I fear there will be nothing left.’
‘If there is nothing left, then start again, be something that you have never been.’
‘I am a knight. I do not know how to be anything else. This is the only way. You will never find peace in the world I live in.’
‘Then I must bid you farewell and Godspeed, seigneur. Know that I will love you until my dying breath and hope that you shall never regret what you are about to do.’
She turned her face to the wall. Philip hesitated, then turned and went out, shutting the door to the cell softly behind him.
*
There was a sheen of ice on the cobblestones and the cold was so deep it hurt to breathe. He loaded the mule. Bernadette watched him as he tightened the straps.
‘What do you plan to do?’ she said.
‘I’ll head for Cabaret. Trencavel’s soldiers are still holding out there, and they will help me.’
‘Is that how you plan to take your revenge?’
‘As Fabricia has pointed out to me, I cannot do it by myself.’
‘How do you know they will not butcher you on sight?’
Philip reached into his tunic and took out a Trencavel pennant. ‘I will show them this. Besides, there will be soldiers there from Montaillet who will remember me.’
‘She says she does not want you to go.’
‘But as you said to me, sister, if I take her with me, she will never find any peace. I am a man of war. She would ask me to forego my vengeance on the man who tortured my squire, and knowing that I should never find peace either. You are right, there is nothing to be done.’
‘Yes, I believe it is better for her to stay here. The world is not the place for a spirit such as hers.’
He picked up the donkey’s reins. The abbess barred the way. ‘Don’t go back to Montaillet, for the sake of your own soul. Violence will never bring you peace.’
‘You hide away from the world up here. It is easier to be charitable when the world is not with you.’
‘Will you not put down your sword and fall to your prayers?’
‘Prayers will not protect you or me from those who wish to destroy us. When we bow our heads it just makes it easier to chop them off.’
‘And if you live as your enemy lives, one day you will not be able to distinguish between him and you.’
‘Thank you for your kindness. It is true I do not agree with much that you say but I wish I were more like you. Look after her for me.’ He went past her but paused at the stable door. ‘Do you think . . . these wounds she had before on her hands and her feet . . . you saw them?’
‘Of course. They were a constant trial to her as a novice, and several times I saw them unbound.’
‘What did you think? Were they real – or is she afflicted with some kind of madness?’
Bernadette sighed. ‘I truly believe Fabricia to be a good soul, as pure from sin as it is possible for a mortal woman to be. But I cannot believe these things, Philip, as much as I might want to. She is not like you or I, but that does not make her a saint.’
Philip nodded and led the mule across the cloister towards the open gate.
CIX
LOOK AT THIS rabble, Martín Navarese thought. They were good fighting men once. Now they look like vagabonds. The crosatz had taken away their armour and their weapons at Montaillet and the next day half the men had slipped away, headed for the lowlands or back to Catalonia.
Soon afterwards they had attacked a crusader patrol in the forest, six well-armed men, and themselves armed only with staves and their bare hands. It was an act born of desperation and most of the men he had left had died that day. But they had won. They took the crusader weapons and ate the crusader horses.
However, the winter had left them hungry and homeless and now he had only seven men left. They would have to wait until spring to find employment again, with the crosatz or with the Cathars. Until then they would have to find a way to survive.
They crouched in the treeline watching the smoke rise from the monastery’s chapter house. ‘That is where we will stay until the snow melts,’ Martín said.
‘Women and food,’ one of them said. ‘A long time since I’ve had either.’
‘They’ll see us coming,’ another protested.
‘We could have written them a long salutation on vellum, telling them of our plans a
nd despatched it on All Souls’ Day,’ Martín said. ‘It would have made no difference. There’s nothing they can do to stop us. It’s just a bunch of women.’
‘There’s a wall.’
‘High enough to keep out wolves and angry dwarves,’ Martín said and the others laughed. ‘Juan here is the tallest. He’ll shin over it and open the gate for us.’
They set off through the snow. The men were all Catholic and some were nervous about pillaging a monastery. But Martín was still their commander and he had got them this far. Besides, they were all in it together. None could back out now.
*
His breath froze on the air. He walked slowly, head bowed to the wind, replaying the conversation with Fabricia over and over in his head.
If you leave here, seigneur, I will never see you again. We both know this. They will kill you. Do you remember the prayer you made, for us to be together? Well, God has given you your miracle, He has answered you. But He has put a price on His gift, and it is that you must give up your vengeance.
Something caught his eye, glinting from the branch of a fir, crusted with ice. It was the cross he had torn from her throat when he took her down from the tree. This was the place where Gilles had crucified her.
It should be lost, buried beneath a drift of snow. Somehow it had tangled here in the branches. He reached out and tore it free. What do you want of me? he thought. I truly cannot divine your purpose.
You said to me once that when I laid my hands on people, it gave them hope. You said it was not just the healing, that it showed them God had not abandoned them.
She had sacrificed all she believed in for him. Why could he not do the same for her? Sòrre Bernadette might think he should give her up, but she had lived all her life in a cloister. What did she really know of men and women? He weighed the cross in his fist. Whatever plan there was to this life, he was sure now that no one truly understood it; not the priests, not even the heretics. He put the chain around his neck and resolved anew. He turned the mule around and headed back the way he had come. Hope then, just not the way he had planned it.
*
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