The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  Taking his protracted silence as a refusal, Esclarmonde mounted the Arabian and headed alone for Carcassonne, refusing to look back lest she weaken. A whistle halted the Arabian again.

  The orange tiles of Carcassonne’s conical towers glistened under the last spikes of daylight. Esclarmonde sat behind Guilhelm on the saddle as they angled across the distant ridge that rose above the marshy banks of the Aude river, which approached from the west and flirted with the pink-hued walls before turning north. Lauded by the troubadours as the Paris of the South, Carcassonne had been built in the shape of a distended oval on a rocky eminence that overlooked the main trade route from the Mediterranean to Toulouse. Although blessed by a rich diversity of culture, the Occitan city differed from its northern rival in one critical aspect—it had no equivalent of the Seine flowing through its center. Here Caesar’s legions had confronted the same predicament that would hamper subsequent defenders: The highest ground in this corrugated verdure was several hundred paces from the river.

  Guilhelm tacked through rows of staked vines to gain a clearer view of the parched ribbon of flatland that sloped down from the walls. He cursed under his breath—the van of the Cistercian army had arrived and was throwing up palisades between the river and the city. “Trencavel is finished.”

  Esclarmonde was perplexed by Guilhelm’s dire assessment. Although the Northerners had marched west with stunning speed, Trencavel was afforded several days to strengthen the already-imposing castellated defenses. The city’s thick walls, twice the height of Beziers’s ramparts, were protected from the north and south by the Bourg and Castellare, suburbs of mud shanties surrounded by ditches and barbicans. The Chateau Comtal, Trencavel’s impressive palace, sat in the northwest corner of the ville like a hard kernel in a chestnut. “The city appears heavily fortified.”

  Guilhelm pointed toward the lone bridge now under the control of the crusaders. “Trencavel could be sitting behind the walls of Jerusalem and they would do him no good. Do you see the placement of that aqueduct?”

  “It runs parallel to the Pont du Gard.”

  “Why do you think the Romans built it there?”

  She was growing annoyed with his pedantic tone. “Tell me.”

  “There are no wells on that rock. The Cistercians have cut Trencavel off from his only source of fresh water.”

  Esclarmonde reflexively slid her swollen tongue across her dry mouth. On their forced ride from Beziers, she had tasted only a few drops from Guilhelm’s depleted flask, for the cisterns in the abandoned villages they had passed en route had been salted. She scanned the teethed bastions and searched for the black robes of her perfects. She prayed Castres had intercepted Phillipa in time, but she had to make certain. “I must get inside.”

  Guilhelm knew better than to renew his remonstrance against such a foolhardy attempt. Dismounting, he stroked the Arabian’s nostrils to allay its nickering and wrapped its hooves with sackings to muffle its clop. His aggrieved silence made all too clear his opinion that such a crossing would not be for the faint of heart. When the gloaming finally gave way to night, he mounted again and this time positioned her in front. They advanced on the bridge at a rising canter and took aim at the unsuspecting guards lounging along its entry. She tried to monitor their approach, but Guilhelm pressed her face into the mane to shield her from missiles. His arms tensed around her with such tenacity that she found it difficult to breathe. So this is what he feels during battle. A few paces from the bridge, he spurred to a jolting gallop.

  “Breakthrough!” shouted a sentry.

  The crusaders scrambled for their bows. The night air whistled with fletches and the water was stippled with pings. Halfway across, Esclarmonde escaped Guilhelm’s restraint long enough to look back. The crusaders were giving chase and gaining ground. Guilhelm whipped their struggling horse past the far entry and rushed up an earthen ramp that ran parallel to Carcassonne’s walls.

  “Fire!”

  She braced for the impact. To her relief, she discovered that the command had been shouted by an Occitan sergeant directing the defense on the walls. She heard shafts glancing off Guilhelm’s cuirass and the whinnies of stumbling horses. The herse spikes of the portcullis lifted. A band of knights sallied out and held off the crusaders long enough for Guilhelm to reach the archway.

  Inside the city, Esclarmonde lifted her eyes in the dismal light to a ghastly scene: Trencavel and Castres stood surrounded by thousands of panicked Occitans whose lips were cracked and bleeding from thirst. The wretches fought for what little space could be found amid bony cattle swarmed by armies of black flies. Several rushed for Guilhelm’s empty flask and begged for water.

  Castres was splotched and pasted in sweat from a fever that was spreading rapidly through the populace. “Child, why did you come here?”

  Esclarmonde searched the panicked faces. “Where is Phillipa?”

  “God be praised!” cried Castres. “She was not here when I arrived. She must have been warned to turn back.”

  Trencavel assisted Esclarmonde from the saddle. “My lady, what is the news from Beziers? We have been cut off from all communication.”

  Esclarmonde could not summon the courage to tell him in the presence of so many Occitans whose relatives had been murdered in the conflagration.

  Breaking the apprehensive silence, Guilhelm answered for her, too harshly for compassion’s need. “The city is razed. Your subjects are massacred.”

  Trencavel could barely form the next question. “All of them?”

  “To the child.”

  A great wailing surged and cascaded down the streets as the report was passed through the pressing crowds. Trembling with rage, Trencavel motioned for his armor. The knights in his garrison girded their livery in preparation to ride out and meet the crusaders.

  “You’re outnumbered,” warned Guilhelm. “Wait them out.”

  “I have forty thousand people inside these walls,” said Trencavel. “There is water in the cisterns for two days, at most. I have to get to the river.”

  Amid the tumult of preparations, Esclarmonde caught sight of the limestone bust of Dame Carcas that hung over the main gate. As a girl, she had listened to her father tell how the city’s maternal namesake saved these walls from Charlemagne by feeding the last of the grain to a calf and releasing it into the enemy lines. When the Franks had cut open the calf, they were so discouraged to find meal pouring from its gut that they lifted the siege and went home. Perhaps, thought Esclarmonde, a variation of the heroine’s strategy might work again. She beseeched Trencavel, “Hold off your attack until I signal you.”

  The perplexed Viscount waited for an explanation for the queer request, but Esclarmonde was already leading the women and children to the cisterns. They filled their pots with what little water could be siphoned from the stagnant pools and carried them up to the allures. She ordered the torches lit so that the Franks could better see them on the walls. Dipping a ladle, she poured water down her face and threw the remainder of her gord to the rocks below. The other women followed her example, laughing and jesting as if they had not a care in the world. The men stripped their shirts and bathed, regaled by musicians who strummed their instruments as if playing for a festival. Out of sight of the Northerners, the children stood below the allures and caught the precious water droppings with skins.

  At the river, the crusaders and routiers watched in disbelief as the Occitans cavorted on the walls. Seeing the Northerners abandon their weapons and draw closer to confirm the city’s seemingly bountiful supply of water, Esclarmonde nodded for Trencavel and Guilhelm to unleash their attack. Four hundred knights came galloping in silence under the long shadows through the Narbonne Gate on the opposite side of the city. She fought the temptation to monitor their advance, fearful of giving away their advantage of surprise.

  Minutes later, Trencavel’s cavalry swept around the corner with a curdling whoop and ambushed the unarmed crusaders in the Castellare suburb. A jubilant cry shook the ramparts
as the Northerners retreated in disarray toward the bridge. The Occitan knights dismounted at the banks of the river and began filling as many water skins as they could carry.

  The celebration on the walls suddenly gave way to screams of warning—Simon de Montfort was leading a squadron back across the bridge.

  Trencavel and his knights had no time to finish filling their skins. They scrambled back to their water-gorged horses to meet the assault. Guilhelm took aim at de Montfort’s nasal, but his blow failed to faze the Norman. De Montfort heaved his blade and forced Guilhelm to slew against his crupper to avoid the cut. The smote caught the nape of Guilhelm’s stallion and sent it crumpling to its forelegs. Guilhelm catapulted and rolled to his knees with the wind knocked out of his lungs. He looked up to find both forces retreating. He was abandoned with wounded men and horses writhing around him.

  Trencavel turned back to rescue Guilhelm. De Montfort lashed up in a race to reach the Templar first. Inflamed by the memory of his boyhood humiliation, Trencavel charged and sent his old tormentor airborne with a scything slash. Grounded violently, de Montfort slowly regained his senses, only to be prodded and forced to crawl like a dog to avoid being trampled. Guilhelm crawled to his feet and climbed to the saddle behind Trencavel.

  “My dead father sends his regards!” shouted Trencavel.

  Staggered on hands and knees, de Montfort spied his sword, several paces away and out of reach. His nearsighted eyes darted wildly as he waited for the death clout. Finding Trencavel holding back, de Montfort taunted him with a gallows grin. “Sniveling calf! You don’t have it in you!”

  Trencavel raised his blade—and sheathed it. He deemed it unchivalrous to kill an unarmed man, no matter how much knavery he had committed. “Take a message to those mongrels of Satan. Tell them I will see their bones bleached whiter than their habits for what they did to Beziers!”

  Stunned by the reprieve, de Montfort limped to his horse and lashed for the safety of the bridge. The Occitans abused him with curses and stones as he passed under Carcassonne’s walls. He had nearly reached the river when his eye caught a silhouette on the ramparts framed by the full moon. He reined back and squinted in disbelief at the occulted face looking down upon him.

  Had she returned from the dead?

  De Montfort screamed at Esclarmonde, “This night belongs to you, witch! We’ll see about the morrow!”

  The few skins of water that Trencavel’s bold foray gained did little to ease the suffering inside the city. The next morning, the populace was roused from its misery by distant chants of the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the hymn that Innocent III had authored as the crusading anthem for the Languedoc war. In the field below the eastern wall, Almaric and Folques rode forth with a deputation of white-robed canons waving staffed crucifixes. The two clerics exhorted a phalanx of crusaders forward for an assault.

  “They intend to try for the Bourg!” warned Trencavel.

  Guilhelm, hobbled by the leg injury suffered in the previous day’s fight, had to be assisted to the hoardings. Every man and woman capable of standing took stations on either side of the catapults that fringed the teethed walls. Those with no weapons loaded their tunics with rocks. Some panicked and let loose too soon. Their stones fell harmlessly into the ditches, far short.

  “Hold your fire!” shouted Guilhelm. He shielded his eyes from the blinding light. The Northern barons had cleverly chosen to place the sun at their backs. Squinting, he saw Almaric and Folques ride through the crusader lines accompanied by ten catapults and battering rams whose frames were covered with animal skins. “The Cistercians are up to some artifice,” warned Guilhelm. “Those cowards would never expose themselves in battle.”

  Almaric halted his engines just beyond the range of Trencavel’s catapults. “Citizens of Carcassonne! Surrender the heretic woman and her followers, and you will be spared!” His offer was answered with a fusillade of stones.

  “As you spared Beziers?” challenged Trencavel. “These walls have never been breached! Have at it!”

  Almaric signaled for the hides covering the engines to be removed.

  Esclarmonde shrieked in horror.

  Phillipa, bloodied and half-conscious, was tied to the lead battering ram. On each side of her stood twenty captured Cathars strapped to the guns. Phillipa slowly raised her head and slumped in despair on finding that Esclarmonde had come into the besieged city looking for her.

  Almaric ordered the engines and their human shields forward.

  “If they reach the berm,” warned Trencavel, “these walls will suffer gravely.”

  Esclarmonde tried to escape from the allures and run to the gate, but Guilhelm restrained her. He braced her shoulders and fixed on her with an insistent stare. “Nothing can be done,” he said. “You must commend her to God.”

  De Montfort’s men cranked the catapult latches and loaded the slings. Another twenty paces and their fire would be deadly. Trencavel held his archers at bay and looked to Esclarmonde for a decision. She was too numbed with grief to train her mind. Castres was on his knees at her side, praying incoherently, undone by Phillipa’s plight.

  Guilhelm led Esclarmonde behind a tower to prevent the Cistercians from witnessing her loss of resolve. He pressed his cheek to hers and whispered, “Do you not believe she goes to a better place?”

  Sobbing, she sank into his chest. “I cannot bear to lose her!”

  “Esclarmonde!” shouted Phillipa.

  She looked down into the vale, A golden aura surrounded Phillipa’s head. It was the same nimbus that she had observed during their first meeting in the Lombrives cave. Was it a sign from the Light?

  A single tear fell like quicksilver to Phillipa’s battered cheek. She closed her eyes in acceptance and prayed the Cathar Pater Noster. When finished, she looked up at Esclarmonde and cried, “Tell Roger and Loupe I love them!”

  Esclarmonde collapsed. She knew Phillipa meant the request as a plea to sacrifice her life to save the city. Esclarmonde pressed a kiss to her shaking palm and raised it in a farewell, then turned away, the only act of assent she could manage. Guilhelm ordered the archers to take aim. When their bows were drawn taut, Esclarmonde begged them to hold off. She took Guilhelm aside and whispered to him. The Northern crusaders watched in bewilderment as Guilhelm commanded a bow and nocked an arrow. Esclarmonde touched the shaft to transmit the last rites of the Consolamentum. Phillipa nodded in relief to see that Guilhelm would attempt the shot. She arched her chest to offer him a better target.

  Esclarmonde could not release her hand. Guilhelm pulled away from her reach, and fired. Phillipa kept her eyes fixed on Esclarmonde as the bodkin point sped toward her. She sank into the ropes—the shaft impaled her heart. A rain of missiles from the walls released the other hostages to the Light.

  Their stratagem foiled, the Cistercians reared their spooked horses and retreated to a safe distance beyond the Occitan range of fire. Folques sat paralyzed with disbelief as he watched Esclarmonde pray over her martyred followers. He muttered to himself, “These people go willingly to their deaths for her. We will never command such allegiance.”

  Almaric snorted with disgust at the heretics’ insipid disregard for life. He signaled for the full assault. Unleashed, the routiers dove into the moat and clawed up the banks to gain a foothold under the walls. Sheets of arrows whistled down as they attempted to throw planks across the moat.

  “Loose the catapults!” shouted Trencavel.

  De Montfort angled to avoid the bombardment and scrambled across the backs of wounded routiers. Scaling ladders rattled against the ramparts. Trencavel’s defenders sent the first wave of Franks crashing to their deaths. Repulsed, de Montfort turned to reform the ranks for another attempt when he discovered the other barons had deserted him. Pelted by stones, he discarded his armor to gain speed and beat a zagged retreat on foot toward the bridge, which was gorged with panicked men and horses.

  The Occitans tried to loose a cheer, but their throats were too raw from thirst to m
ake a sound.

  During the days of misery that followed, the sun bore down upon Carcassonne like the tip of a red-hot branding iron. Trencavel begged Esclarmonde to keep her tongue wetted so that she could continue to preach, but she refused the additional ration of water. She did what little she could to nurse Castres, who was grief-broken and manic with fever, as were most of the besieged Occitans.

  On Sunday morning, the church bells interrupted the city’s languorous silence to announce an unexpected arrival at the gate. Esclarmonde came running from the hospital and found King Peter of Aragon riding his magnificent sorrel bay up the Rue Grande d’Aude. Christ entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday could not have received a more glorious welcome. The Occitans roused from their wretchedness and threw themselves before the monarch in a frenzy of relief, certain that their benefactor had crossed the Pyrenees to save them.

  Trencavel broke through the throngs. “My liege, you are a blessed sight!”

  “I fear less so than you wish.” With an upturned nose, Peter scanned the multitudes of walking skeletons and spotted among them a frail woman in black robes. Several moments passed before he recognized Esclarmonde in her haggard condition. “It deeply saddens me to find you here, my lady.”

  “Have you brought us water and medicinals, my lord?” asked Esclarmonde. “Our people die by the hundreds from the flux.”