The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  She sat with eyes closed and tried not to think about the starving cat that was mewling somewhere on the eastern ridge. On the summit above her, a loose shutter rattled against the chapel’s embrasure. Whom had she placed in charge of the sanctuary this night? Ah yes, the new perfect from Barcelona, a Gorgonish little man with skeins of ratty hair and pimpled skin like that of a plucked chicken. No, she must not think of him in such harsh terms. She would speak to him discreetly about his body odor. A converted Jew, he apparently labored under the misapprehension that the admonition about cleanliness being next to godliness was a falsehood propagated by the Pope.

  She would have given the perfect no further thought had she not overheard him gossiping about a group of young adepts who had formed a mystery school in Gerona. According to his account—which she suspected might be apocryphal—these upstart students had broken away from Rabbi Isaac’s tutelage after discovering another route up the Tree, one that took less time and effort. They called their mysteries the Way of Zohar—the Hebrew term for Splendor—and their revolutionary technique, the Flash of Lightning. The insurrectionists claimed to have bypassed most of the outer paths by leapfrogging up the nine major trajects in a zigzagging bolt; hence, its tantalizing sobriquet. She traced a schematic of the Tree of Life in the wet clay and studied how this Flash of Lightning overlaid the paths:

  The shortcut was intriguing, but she chased the temptation. She smoothed the ripples of her mind by picturing the surface of a limpid lake on a summer day. Her respiration slowed—inhale, hold, exhale, hold—until each breath became almost imperceptible. Her chin sank to her chest as she allowed all intrusive images to sail past. She watched for the gate of Malkuth, the first entry where she had encountered the archangel Mikael. Slowly the swirling colors of that station emerged; the familiar russet hue became tinged with the flaming aura of citrin. Malkuth was like the outer portcullis of a walled city. All who entered the spiritual realms, novices and initiates alike, were required to pass through this gate before reaching their ultimate destinations.

  She waited and waited, fighting the seduction of sleep and the growing numbness in her legs. How much time had passed? An hour? Agitated, she eased her breathing again and restarted the process. The swirling colors began receding. Where was the infernal gate?

  Damn this delay!

  How long would she be required to endure this crushing ennui? And why was Malkuth closed when she had already attained it months ago? Had she forgotten some incantation for unlocking its entry? Perhaps Castres and Blind Isaac had grown so forgetful in their senescence that they neglected to impart all the essential steps for the ascent. She could well understand why the rebel kabbalists had taken matters into their own hands.

  Had she not been admonished that boldness was essential for this work? Perhaps the delay was a test. She could bypass Malkuth and Yesod by climbing directly to Hod, the first sphere on the Pillar of Severity. From there she could ride the Flash of Lightning all the way to the Crown. Hod was the station of mental acuity and artistic expression where the vibrations of sacred words were honed. She had always been blessed with a faculty for language; that station should open to her like petals of a blooming flower. After all, those Jewish adepts had accomplished their breakthrough with less meditation experience than she possessed. During her initiation, she had stood shivering in the wind on this pog until she had enough verve to remove her blindfold. How foolish she had felt that night, waiting to do what in retrospect had been quite obvious.

  She would attempt it.

  She drew a deep breath and again summoned the image of the Tree. She launched her spirit up the left rung and bypassed the first two vessels. Within minutes, she felt exultant, freed of all constraints. Waves of deepening blackness rushed at her—she was being hurled through a tunnel that appeared carved into pure agate. Without warning, she was braked to a jouncing halt. Before her hovered a brilliant silver orb circled by ribbons of red, yellow, and green; a bloodless moon studded its center. There was something both beautiful and devastating about the radiance of this pulsation. She could not take her inner eyes from it. A swirling heat ignited at the base of her spine and began coursing through her limbs. Her skin crawled as if bitten by thousands of fire ants and a liquid fire lapped up into her core in spasms. She was heaving and breathing so fast that her lungs felt on the verge of bursting.

  What is happening to me?

  She tried to pray the Pater Noster, but her throat tightened and her head began jerking back and forward so violently that she feared her neck would snap. Her insides felt as if they were being bubbled up and expelled from her mouth. She had breached the floodgates of the Light too soon. Her body was an athanor boiling her soul in the bellows of spiritual calcination. She feared that her throbbing heart could not take much more.

  I will die and be forced to start over.

  In that instant, the spears of incaldesence gave way to gentle whooshes that wound through her like the undulations of a rising serpent. The ineffable force reached the top of her head and detonated in a fountain of dazzling diamonds. Her face aglow, she heard a faint thrum of angelic music; and then the strangest of thoughts came to her:

  This is the radiance of Moses and the Burning Bush.

  The floating moon transformed into a golden sun. She could only approach describing the experience as being released from a tomb into the brilliance of a cloudless day. She felt light enough to float away. Her fear was swallowed up by a consuming ecstasy a thousand times more pleasurable than any she had ever experienced. She begged to remain there forever. No sooner had she offered up that plea than Guilhelm’s face appeared within the sun’s nimbus. She thought nothing could increase her rapture—until she shivered anew from spikes of intensified pleasure. Her loins burned with an obliterating lust. She melted into Guilhelm’s arms and found his lips to share her joy with him.

  The Demiurge.

  Conniving bastard! He had chosen the one disguise that might turn her from the path. She thrashed against the demon’s snare and fought desperately to escape. “Away from me! I know who you are!”

  The simulacrum would not be banished. “You don’t recognize me?”

  How cleverly the Evil One contrived Guilhelm’s voice. She raised her fist to strike but the hellion pinned her with its supernatural strength. She struggled loose and slapped something iron-hard—that was proof enough that this was no mortal she was wrestling. The fiend tried to frighten her into submission with a demonstration of its grotesque powers.

  “Would Satan tempt you with a vision like this?”

  Disoriented, she touched a scarred stump. The serried flesh felt as real as her own skin. The spectre dragged her from the floor and forced her pale face into the sunlight at the opened door. The harsh rays jolted her back into the physical realm—but the tempter did not vanish. She stumbled from faintness and nearly fell before being caught.

  Guilhelm slapped the blood back into her cheeks. “Get up!”

  Haltingly, she recovered her equilibrium. She caressed the furrowed lines of his face and her heart danced—it truly was Guilhelm standing before her. Having heard nothing from him since Trencavel’s murder, she had assumed the worst. She stared at the horrid wound. “What happened to you?”

  Guilhelm returned the iron prosthetic to its place with practiced speed and wrapped its bindings around his biceps. “De Montfort besieges Lavaur. He’ll come south if the village falls. We must leave for Foix at once.”

  She paced the floor staggering, her mind still ajar from the abrupt intrusion. “You’d have me abandon this temple to de Montfort’s destruction?”

  “This rock is not what he wants to crack. He wants you. Your brother’s towers offer the only protection.”

  She reclaimed her meditation position. “Take the others.”

  Guilhelm stared at her in utter incredulity, his eyes as sharp as talons. “Damn you, woman! Have you lost all will to live?”

  When she would not answer, he threw her over
his shoulder with his good hand. He was astonished at how diminished she had become in her asceticism. The clews of her spine protruded like the beads of Dominic’s rosary. He wrangled her from the hut and into the bailey where the other perfects stood waiting, having gathered their belongings on his orders. The Cathars watched in stunned silence as their pacifist priestess was carried down the crag screaming like a banshee and pounding at Guilhelm’s back.

  Esclarmonde hurried across the rope bridge that spanned the Ariege and was stopped short. Foix looked like a deserted, plague-ravaged town. The main rue was a river of mud clogged with a flotsam of dangling shudders, abandoned buildings patrolled by wild dogs, and mews full of rotting fowl carcasses, all crowned by a vapor of flies so thick that a black oscillating cloud seemed to have descended. The lavender distillery and tanner’s house had been dismembered. At the far end of the square, the ochrehued frame of St. Volusien’s church stood gutted, its slate tiles caved in on the altar and its lacquered pews hacked for firewood. Warned that de Montfort was on the march, the Fuxeens had retreated south carrying all that they could pry loose from their walls. They had emptied their excrement buckets into the streets to serve up a foul reception for the murderous Norman.

  Esclarmonde looked to Guilhelm for commiseration, but he had long since become inured to such scenes of desolation. Although they had exchanged only a few words on their run from Montsegur, she learned enough to know that he had seen more horror in the past months than he cared to reveal. At Lavaur, he had made it past de Montfort’s guards during the night by strapping a dead Occitan knight upright on a horse and slithering behind it on foot. Halfway down the chasm, he had slapped the phantom rider into a gallop to draw the Northerners off on a chase. Freed to cross the gorge, he had hurried south to deliver disheartening news. De Montfort was concentrating his forces in the western foothills to make an example of the poorly defended villages. If the Lion captured Foix, Montsegur would be cut off and isolated from the other Cathar chateaux in the region.

  Esclarmonde high-stepped her way through the detritus and met her brother, wild-eyed and reeking of wine, stumbling sottish down the path from the chateau. Roger studied her with an uncertain gaze, at first not recognizing her in such macerated condition. He repulsed her attempt at an embrace and swung his fist into Guilhelm’s jaw. “That’s for murdering my wife!” When the Templar offered no defense, Roger turned his fury back on Esclarmonde. “I told you never to set foot in this castle again.”

  Guilhelm stepped in front of Roger. “I forced her to come.”

  “You don’t decide who enjoys my protection.”

  “You think you’re the only one who’s been wronged by this war?” demanded Guilhelm.

  “Why should I suffer for her sins?”

  “De Montfort besieges Lavaur,” said Esclarmonde. “Will you at least go to Giraude’s aid?”

  Roger turned aside to deflect the impact of what he was forced to reveal. “We reached the village two days ago. The walls had been breached and the ground salted. Every man and woman inside ...” He could not bring himself to finish the report.

  Guilhelm kicked at the ground, angered to find that he was too late.

  Before Esclarmonde could recover from the news that Giraude had been lost, the girls came running from the tower. Corba and the Marquessa hurried after them. Chandelle rushed into Esclarmonde’s arms, but Loupe held back. Sobbing, Esclarmonde pressed Chandelle to her breast. “I’ve missed you so!”

  The blind girl tugged at Esclarmonde’s robe and refused to be released. “Will you stay with us, Aunt Essy?”

  Roger could not bear to see Chandelle disappointed. With a huff of disgust, he walked back toward the chateau and ordered his men, “Lodge them in the north tower where I don’t have to look at them.”

  Esclarmonde called to Loupe. “Love, do you have a hug for me?”

  Loupe ran off to join her father, shattering Esclarmonde’s heart like glass.

  The next morning, Esclarmonde was awakened by an explosion that rocked the foundations. She donned her robe and climbed to the allures in time to see a stone hurtling toward the walls. She ducked below the merlon, certain that the chateau would be hit. But Guilhelm, who had become proficient at judging the trajectory of missiles, watched without a flinch as the stone fell short of the scarp. De Montfort and his army had arrived during the night. His engineers were laboring to increase the Bad Neighbor’s range by wedging beams under its front sleds for leverage.

  “The angle is too steep,” said Guilhelm.

  “Are we safe?” she asked.

  Guilhelm rubbed his bruised jaw as he glowered at Roger, who was directing the defenses on the far rampart. “We would be had your hotheaded brother stocked sufficient water and victuals. But he thought it more important to vent his rage by running chevauchees on monasteries.”

  De Montfort forded the river with Folques and rode toward the walls waving a flag of parlay. The Lion cursed under his breath on finding that the Cathars had been evacuated from Montsegur. He sneered a promise of revenge at Esclarmonde, then offered, “Wolf, there is no need for us to ram heads. Surrender the keep. You and your men may leave with your mounts.”

  “Your generosity overwhelms me,” said Roger. “To walk away with my horse and lose only my wife and my home is indeed a windfall.”

  Folques could not hide his relief at finding Esclarmonde alive. His countenance, however, turned black when he saw Guilhelm at her side. He shouted to Roger, “That devil-seeded Templar is to blame for your wife’s death! Hand him over and I will see to it he receives due justice.”

  “And where do you propose my horse and I go?” asked Roger.

  “Rome would look favorably on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem,” said Folques.

  “Where is that cripple of Satan?” asked Roger.

  “The Abbot has returned to Paris. He has assigned me spiritual governance of the Languedoc in his absence. We can resolve this without resorting to arms.”

  Below the allures, the Occitan soldiers silently loaded a sling with horse dung. Roger kept Simon and Folques preoccupied by observing, “You are bold to come out from your tents on such an inclement day.”

  De Montfort squinted at the clear sky in confusion. “You must be mad from thirst, Wolf! There’s not a cloud in—” A large globule of damp compost flew over the walls and splattered the two Northerners.

  Roger slacked his jaw in mock surprise. “The weather in these parts alters as swiftly as your honor.”

  Folques angrily wiped the steaming refuse from his face. He unrolled a parchment containing a papal decree and read it aloud:

  By the Statute of Pamiers, ratified by the Holy Roman Church, all fiefs that do not surrender to the forces of the Holy Father shall be distributed to those barons who have taken the Cross. It is hereby ordered that Occitan barons shall not pass across the frontier borders of Foix without permission and shall employ only Frankish knights in their service. Widows and female heirs of all Occitan chateaux are prohibited from marrying any man who is not a citizen of a domain in the good graces of his Holiness. All heirs shall inherit land and holdings according to the customs and usage in Paris and that part of France surrounding it.

  Esclarmonde’s face bleached. She tried to nullify the sting of this news by acting as if it was already common knowledge. In truth, such draconian terms had never been imposed on a Christian kingdom. The Pope, she realized, was now resolved to exterminate her faith and the entire Occitan aristocracy. Before her brother could answer, she shouted in his stead, “We will never agree to become a colony of Paris or a priory of Rome!”

  “I encountered a woman in Lavaur who spoke of knowing you,” said de Montfort. “That is, before she descended to Hell.”

  “You’ve gained quite a reputation for murdering innocent women,” she said. “No doubt the Pope is preparing your sainthood.”

  Simon’s teeth made the sound of flint striking tinder as he surveyed the imposing towers. He debated adding a concessio
n to the negotiation. “I’m a reasonable man, Wolf. Why risk your kingdom for a godless cause? Hand over your sister and I’ll leave your domain untouched. She’s been nothing but a thorn in your side.”

  Roger mulled the proposal, too long for Esclarmonde’s comfort. Finally, to her relief, he answered, “Bring me the offer with the Holy Father’s seal and I’ll consider it.”

  Simon protested, “That would take months.”

  “I have months to spare.”

  Simon wrapped the papal edict on a lance shaft and hurled it over the walls. “I’ll melt this rock like grease over a flame!”

  July brought the hottest temperatures in Foix’s memory. Three weeks into the siege, the blue-green pastures and chartreuse lemon groves below the chateau turned brown—not the natural desaturation of the dry season, but the tawny dunning that presaged death deep in the roots. The surrounding vales were a bonescape of calcareous downs, ribbed black as if flayed on a grille. Even the jackdaws were dropping dead from the sky, roasted in flight. Yet the Almighty in His infinite wisdom decreed such damnum fatale insufficient. A rare tramontane had turned inland to blister the drouthy vapors. So hard did these infamous tempests blow that some Occitan districts promulgated laws absolving murders committed during them due to the madness they engendered. De Montfort bolstered the effect of the climatory disasters by laying waste to the vineyards and firing bales of vines below the walls to stoke the heat and further foul the air.