The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  The Marquessa threw up her grainy hands in dismay. “You can’t expect us to tame the phantasms of our sleep!”

  “With courage and discipline, it is possible,” said Esclarmonde. “We can also relinquish the fear of separating our spirit from the body. This path offers the only true escape from this world.”

  “If our fears and instincts are so malevolent,” asked Corba, “why were we born with them?”

  “The Demiurge instilled our nature with the base desires and tendencies to keep us enchained. He wants us to shirk from the Light at the moment of decision and thus be forced to incarnate again.”

  “How can anyone know what happens after death?” asked Chandelle. “Father Castres was wise, but how could he know?”

  Esclarmonde had posed that same question on the night she tried to take her own life. “Each of us has lived and died many times. There is a part of us, our Robe of Light, that remembers our past incarnations.”

  “I don’t remember them,” protested Chandelle.

  “Do you remember being born?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you deny it happened?” Esclarmonde pressed home the crucial point of the lesson. “I have been speaking of the moment of death, but that description is misleading. In truth, there is no one moment of death, just as there is no one moment of birth.”

  Corba returned in memory to that joyous morning more than forty years ago when Chandelle had entered her world. “We’ve both experienced the pangs of childbirth. There was no doubt when it happened.”

  “When was Chandelle born?” asked Esclarmonde. “Was it when the seed quickened? When she emerged from the birth canal? When her head came forth? Her body? Or was it when the Marquessa gave birth to you? Chandelle could not have come to us unless you were born first. Is dying not the same? Do we not begin to die with our first breath and die a little more each night when we fall asleep?”

  “At this moment,” cried Corba, “I know only one thing! My head is pounding like a drum!”

  Esclarmonde laughed in relief to find the tension dissipated. She conceded that these teachings were difficult to comprehend and accept. “I tell you these things to explain why we meditate. If we learn to endure longer periods without sensation, we’ll not be jolted when the time beyond death arrives. What happens if you place a live chicken in a cauldron of boiling water?”

  “The chicken will be scalded,” said the Marquessa.

  “And if you place it in lukewarm water and slowly heat the pot?”

  “The chicken will sit calmly until it dies,” said Corba.

  “Likewise, we must we raise our spiritual temperature degree by degree to prevent the full manifestation of the Light from scalding us.”

  “So,” said Chandelle to herself, “every meditation is a little death.”

  “A good passing cannot be attained without years of diligent preparation. The Roman Church insists that our souls were nascent before birth and must face a lone day of judgment to be assigned eternal punishment or reward. But we know otherwise. Our fate hangs in the balance at that instant between flesh and spirit, when the Light beckons us home. If we fail to recognize its fleeting call, all is lost. These fears and desires instilled into our body by the Demiurge are designed to thrust us back into this world again and again.”

  Corba was not convinced. “What about Purgatory?”

  “The Scriptures say nothing about a holding pen for sinners,” said Esclarmonde. “Why would the Roman pontiffs invent such a place?”

  Chandelle swiveled her delicate head as if to shake forth a connecting thought. “If the priests had not invented Purgatory, they could not sell their indulgences to bind and unbind our sins. But if the Light comes to those of all faiths, why does it matter what we believe?”

  “Ah, my clever one, you have bit on the kernel in the nut,” said Esclarmonde. “It’s not the existence of a place such as Hell that causes our entrapment. No, it’s our belief in its existence. Our last thought at the transition into spirit will determine if we go home to the Light or reincarnate here.”

  Anguish scored the crosshatched fissures in the Marquessa’s ancient face. “You mean if we live a good life and still hold a fear of Hell in our minds with our last breath, we will be returned to this world?”

  “As a man thinketh,” reminded Esclarmonde, repeating Christ’s own words. “Belief in a nonexistent Hell and Purgatory is the ultimate seduction of the Lords of Darkness. The truth is precisely the opposite of what Rome would have us think.”

  “Did Phillipa find a good death?” asked Corba.

  A heavy silence was broken by coughs of grief. Esclarmonde sidled next to Corba and hugged her. “I believe in all my heart she did. She had a look of peace when ...” She could not bring herself to speak further of that day in Carcassonne when Phillipa was released to the Light by Guilhelm’s arrow.

  The Marquessa had suffered too many tragedies to wallow in them again. “You must tell us at once how to make ready.” Renewed in their determination, the women nodded and drew nearer to hear the instruction.

  Esclarmonde closed her eyes to recall the details of what the Bishop had taught of the final passage from the body. “There are four stations. The first is called the Shedding of the Earth. Its approach will feel as if the channels within our spiritual body are losing their wind.”

  “I once experienced such a feeling,” Chandelle whispered. “At Avignonet. When Jean left me that morning, I could hear the bindings release from his soul.” She began weeping softly. “Why was I permitted only a few hours with him?”

  Esclarmonde smiled sadly. She had asked Castres that same question about her stillborn daughter. “Was not that night you spent with him more blessed than the thousand others you have passed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then perhaps his purpose in coming into this world was fulfilled by showing you—showing all of us—the depths of true love.”

  Chandelle reached into the recesses of her robe and brought forth the flat stone that Jean had given her. “Will you tell me what he looked like?”

  Esclarmonde could see that the stone had once held a drawing, but the charcoal had been smudged and partially erased. She hesitated, unsure of how to answer, for she was forbidden by her vows to speak a lie. “I see a beautiful soul who has reached the Light.”

  Smiling through tears, Chandelle placed the stone back into her robe pocket for safekeeping. “Will I be with him again?”

  “Let us do our best to assure it,” said Esclarmonde.

  “The passage,” asked the Marquessa. “Will it be painful?”

  Esclarmonde so wished the Bishop were here to explain the arcana. She found it difficult to articulate the mysteries with his subtle clarity. His abiding love for his flock had survived to the end; too feeble to continue his mission in Aragon, he had been brought back to Montsegur to die. In his final hours, he had described each station to her as he passed through them. “He said it felt as if a great mountain were pressing against his chest. The knots that bind the wind in the channels will loosen like snapped moorings of a ship.”

  Corba clasped hands with her mother, fearful that this reliving of the Bishop’s last moments might be too much for her to endure. “Are you certain you wish to hear this?”

  “I must,” said the Marquessa. “I am nearer joining him than any of you.”

  Esclarmonde lowered her voice to signal the gravity of what she would next impart. “Then comes the Draining of the Waters. A hazy gauze will spread over our vision, and our veins will release their fluids. When this stage arrives, we will know that our return to the Light is half accomplished. There will be no turning back.”

  Chandelle cried, “There will be more to endure?”

  “Have patience,” pleaded Esclarmonde. “Go through each door without rushing. The third station brings the Consummation of the Flame and a coldness ten times the intensity we have ever felt.”

  “Fire and cold?” exclaimed Corba. “You have l
ost me again!”

  Esclarmonde searched for some means of demonstrating the paradoxical nature of this station. She rushed out to the cistern and returned with a bucket of chilled water. She placed Corba’s right hand in the water and her left hand near the fire. “What do you feel?”

  A perplexed look came over Corba’s face. “I’m not certain.”

  “Hot and cold are two poles of our limited vision. When our corporeal senses are disintegrated, all opposites will merge into one.”

  “The last station!” begged the Marquessa, tiring quickly.

  Esclarmonde circled the women. “What always accompanies fire?”

  “Light!” Chandelle answered.

  “A Light whose radiance will be beyond any you can imagine,” promised Esclarmonde. “Its approach will be harbingered by a red windstorm. Sparks like dancing fireflies will appear before our eyes, and we will find it difficult to breathe. The air will move so swiftly that we won’t be able to catch it. When we reach this maelstrom, we will know the passing is near.”

  “Blessed Jesus!” said the Marquessa. “How much time will we have?”

  “The Scriptures say the sacred radiance will last both the blink of an eye and the eternity of creation.”

  “The opposites again,” Chandelle whispered.

  “When the Light comes,” said Esclarmonde, “no matter how terrifying it may appear, we must embrace it with all our hearts.”

  Two weeks later, Esclarmonde sat with her perfectas in their morning meditation. The sun was rising earlier now, warming the chapel with the renewal of spring. The returning larks came fluttering to the window slits to serenade her with their trilling. Even the ceiling beams with their groans of expansion seemed to awaken from the winter freeze. The shimmering rays piercing the embrasures promised the kind of glorious Pyrenean day that she had so relished as a girl, when she would race Corba into the blooming fields to see who could pick the most daffodils.

  She reproached herself for letting her mind wander. She always found the meditation most difficult during this time of the year when the mountains exploded with life and the fields blazed with the lavender tongues of toad lilies. Years ago, the courts of love would be held in May, usually on the Nones. The troubadours would arrive in gaudy silks from their hibernation in far-off places such as Mallorca and Sevilla and Rhodes. She wondered how many of them were still alive. The great Vidal had passed away in Aragon; his body was floated down the Ebro and ferried out to sea on a ceremonial barge in the fashion of the old Celtic bards. Cardenal, that flaming comet, disappeared soon after the disaster at Muret, never to be heard from again. Her favorite, Miraval, was so disheartened by the loss of Toulouse that he swore off singing, the only protest he could muster against this cracked world. How different their fates might have been had she not offered up Guilhelm as their challenger in—

  Distant alarums echoed in her ear. A foreboding clutched at her breast. She opened her eyes and found the other women unstirred in their meditations, this time giving no heed to the interruption. They kept their breathing calm and even, just as they had been taught. The students, she lamented, had surpassed the teacher.

  Raymond, gray-faced and breathless, rushed into the chapel.

  She knew before he spoke a word. “Who commands the army?”

  “The Seneschal of Carcassonne. He has brought ten thousand men. The Dominicans are with them.”

  Before the perfectas could make sense of the commotion, Esclarmonde hurried from the chapel and climbed to the ramparts with Raymond’s assistance. Her heart was plunged into a frigid bath of despair. The valley churned with black smoke and the western face teemed with perfects scrambling up the pog to escape the pursuing French rutters. There was a searing familiarity to it all. It had been thirty-two years since she had watched a siege army make preparations. The horrid memories of Beziers and Carcassonne came flooding back to her. The gasping moment of terrifying calm was short-lived—the temple exploded in a maelstrom of confusion: women screaming, men shouting orders, birds shooting skyward in a whirlwind of flapping and cawing. Raymond broke open the arsenal and directed his sergeants to pass out the pikes and ballistae. She hurried across the allures and searched the stricken faces converging on the western gate below her. “Where is Loupe?”

  “Holding off the French advance in the valley!” shouted Raymond.

  Pierre-Roger came running up from the barbican. “If we move quickly, we can still break through to the east passage and reach Queribus.”

  “And leave these people to the mercy of the French?” said Raymond.

  “We can’t hold this rock with two hundred men.”

  Loupe corralled a band of Cathars up the path and led them into the safety of the temple. “I couldn’t find them all in time.”

  “How many were captured?” asked Raymond.

  “Fifty, maybe more,” said Loupe. “If they break under torture, the French will know every inch of our defenses.”

  Pierre-Roger took an insistent step toward Raymond. “Do you need more convincing?” Receiving no indication, he pleaded his case to Loupe. “Talk some sense into him. The men will follow you.”

  The two contingents, one loyal to Raymond and the other to Pierre-Roger, stood on the walls awaiting the decision to stay or retreat. They turned toward Loupe, the linchpin that held the two commanders in yoke.

  “How full is the cistern?” asked Loupe.

  “Three months’ supply at most,” said Raymond.

  Already parched from the forced climb, Loupe shielded her dry eyes from the sun. There was no well on this rock and the spring rains had been sparse. She had left the management of the cistern to Raymond, who postponed the transportation of additional water from the stream to finish erecting the barbican. Until now, she had not calculated how vulnerable their position truly was. Having seen firsthand the horrors that protracted thirst could inflict, she had vowed never to endure such a Hell again. Firmed in her decision, she tightened the clasps on her leather jerkin and told Pierre-Roger, “Take your men down and hold the gap. We’ll follow with as many weapons as we can carry.”

  Esclarmonde was resigned to Loupe’s abandonment of the pog. She turned without a word of protest and walked toward the chapel.

  Loupe rushed after her. “You have no time for prayer! The Franks will be on these walls within hours!”

  Esclarmonde ignored Loupe and grasped Corba’s hands. “You and Chandelle go with the soldiers. Your mother cannot survive a march to Queribus. I will stay with her and care for those who haven’t the strength to make the descent.”

  Riven by indecision, Corba embraced her husband and daughter, refusing to release them. There was nothing more she wished in this life than to abide the rest of her days in peace with them.

  Raymond cast his eyes down, withered by Corba’s importuning gaze. “The crusaders have destroyed our chateau at Mirepoix,” he said, his voice trailing off. “We would live in exile.”

  “But we would live!” cried Corba.

  Raymond kissed away her tears. “I cannot leave these people undefended. It is a dying code, I know. I am a relic of a passing age.”

  Stunned by his refusal to escape, Corba turned in desperation to Chandelle. “Convince your father to come with us.”

  Chandelle found her mother’s distraught face and steadied it in her hands. “Jean sacrificed his life so that I could return to this temple. I can’t believe I was brought back here only to leave again.”

  Corba weakened to her knees. She petitioned a dispensation from her family’s duty to remain on the holy mount, but she knew such hope was in vain, for Esclarmonde held no spiritual authority over their souls.

  When Raymond signaled his men to prepare the defenses, Pierre-Roger burned Esclarmonde with a galling scowl, incensed that she had managed to disrupt his strategy without uttering a word of contention. “Damn it, Perella! I can’t break past the Seneschal’s lines without your men!”

  “Then our cause will be won or lost he
re,” said Raymond.

  Pierre-Roger tried to sway Raymond’s troops. “We didn’t come up here to be trapped and starved like rats! Follow me and we’ll fight another day!”

  The soldiers looked to Loupe for guidance, their nervous eyes flicking toward the cordon that the French were tightening in the valley. After a hesitation, Loupe walked across the bailey and joined Pierre-Roger. Some of the men released breaths of relief, but others stirred with misgivings. The prowess of the She-Wolf, the slayer of de Montfort, had become near mythical. She had led them against great odds in every campaign since Toulouse and they had come to trust her judgment. Yet in the past months, a few of the soldiers had developed a grudging admiration for the Cathars and their selfless ways. To abandon them would mean their certain death. A dozen or so remained on the walls, unwilling to accept such ignominy, but most finally broke ranks, averting their eyes in shame while girding their hauberks in preparation to descend the mount. Having won the standoff, Pierre-Roger punished his rival commander with a lording smile of conquest—until Bernard climbed from the allures and stood next to Raymond.

  Loupe stared at Bernard with a silent accusation of betrayal.

  Bernard took her aside. “What is a country without those who live in it? You never ran from a fight, not even from the Lion.”

  Loupe was stung by that reminder—no less because it came from the man who professed to love her. She glared with disdain at the Cathars who waited meekly to hear their fate. Only Corba among them had been willing to take up the offer of safe escort. Ignorant bastards! Why should she care a whit about them if they had no concern for their own lives? She could barely endure their presence, sniveling as they did in weakness, renouncing the world while others bled so they could warble their asinine prayers. Esclarmonde had cleverly forced her hand again. Her aunt would become a martyr, lionized for centuries while she herself would be blamed for abandoning these people.

  Damn that woman! I’ll not give her the satisfaction!

  Loupe surveyed the ramparts and tried to imagine how a siege would play out in this cramped mausoleum. Their garrison would have the advantage of the heights and the French would have to fight without trebuchets. If she and Raymond could hold out for two months, the Northerners would become restive in the oppressive Ariege summer, as they always did. She shot a trumping glance at Esclarmonde, then turned to Pierre-Roger, refusing to meet his eyes. “Raymond and I will take our men down the west face. We’ll do what we can to draw the French off and cover your retreat.”