The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  Pierre-Roger stood gape-jawed, unable to fathom her sudden change of heart. “Have these daft hermits infected you with their lunacy? If we’re to have any chance, we must keep our forces combined.”

  Loupe strapped a crossbow to her back and loaded her side quiver with arrows. “Then you have a decision to make.”

  Pierre-Roger swung about in disbelief and watched as the rest of Raymond’s men came to Loupe’s side. He knew he stood little chance of breaking past the French with his small troop alone. He glowered at Esclarmonde, enraged that she had again managed to circumvent his authority. Left no choice, he angrily waved his charges toward the walls to help prepare the defenses. When Esclarmonde’s back was turned, he chased her with an obscene gesture.

  Armed with loops of hemp rope, Loupe and her contingent of seventy men slithered down the western face and threaded past the rows of barbican stakes that had been posted as the first barrier to the temple. The advent of spring had fleeced the pog with shrubby brush and copses of scrub trees, offering effective cover. Weeks earlier, she had made preparations to counter an assault by ordering slender tracks cut in the foliage on both sides of the switchback with gaps notched in the thicket to allow for the low firing of missiles. Halfway down the pog, she heard the rustling of leaves and breaking twigs. Darkening shadows were accompanied by foreign voices. She whistled for her men to fan out behind the boulders.

  The serpentine path was so narrow that the French infantrymen, weighed down by broadswords and scaling ladders, were forced to march two abreast. She bit off a curse of discovery—the Northerners had brought arbalasters with large crossbows that could pierce metal armor. Innocent III had banned the heinous weapons from use against fellow Christians, but infidels and heretics, being deemed less than human, were excluded from the divine protection. The French began shedding their packs, certain that the resistance would be desultory. They kept their eyes trained on the looming fortress while arguing over how much heretic gold they would find.

  Loupe held the itching bow fingers of her men at bay. The French vanguard passed so close that their boots were within reach. When the last of the Northerners straggled past, the Occitans threw the rope snares across the path and concealed them with leaves. She stalked the progress of the French, leapfrogging from boulder to boulder, remaining just out of their sight. Nimble as a ferret, she had the bewitching ability to quiet even the jackdaws from cawing on her approach. When the French came within a few paces from the barbican stakes, she took aim with her bow and fired.

  The French sergeant straightened and fell.

  On the heights, Pierre-Roger and his archers sprang up behind the barbican and let loose with their bows. So many zings filled the air that it sounded as if a nest of hornets had been overturned. Dull thuds of points could be heard impaling flesh. The harried French lurched back and scrambled to form ranks in the dense foliage, but they were unable to discern the direction of the attack. A second volley riddled their exposed legs again. Disoriented and deprived of their officer, they turned, only to be peppered by arrows from their rear. They dropped their weapons and retreated, dragging their wounded.

  Loupe scurried down the worming path a few steps ahead of the panicked horde. She whistled the signal for her lurking men to pull taut the hidden ropes. Running blind, the Northerners tripped over the snares and fell tumbling in staves. Those who did not carom from the cliffs were picked off by Pierre-Roger’s bowmen on the rocks above. Loupe and her Occitans salvaged the abandoned French weapons, including the precious crossbows.

  Below the crag, Otto oversaw the unloading of his new traveling altar, quarried whole from a block of Angevin granite and embellished with crockets and grooved columns filled with soil from the Holy Land. He ordered it set under a canopy in the center of the encampment where he could say mass framed by a panoramic view of the heretic temple. With the Archbishop of Narbonne not due to arrive until Whitsun Day, he was eager to cross-examine the cloggers and search their lair alone. Earlier that morning, he had sent the levies off on their climb with a rousing sermon from Deuteronomy, reminding them of Yahweh’s command to Joshua to wage a war of extermination against the pagan inhabitants of Jericho.

  To his dismay, the élan of his carefully crafted homily had been pricked by Hugh D’Arcis, the crusty, pouch-eyed Seneschal of the army. The commander sardonically remarked that the Israelites had been armed with magical horns to bring down Jericho and that the Dominican order, with all of its confiscated largesse, had yet to provide him with such a weapon. This cynical veteran of the western wars against England was embittered by the chafing irony of his new assignment. Defeated in Brittany by the England’s Earl of Leicester—Simon de Montfort the younger, son of the deceased crusader—he was being punished with the task of cleaning up the one heretic stronghold that had eluded the father of his vanquisher. So consuming was the Seneschal’s hatred of monks that Otto feared he might prove an impediment to the Dominican authority that he had so meticulously installed for this campaign.

  While Otto burnished his altar vessels, a tumult of shouts roused him from debating how best to neuter his new agonist. He blinked in astonishment as hundreds of crazed soldiers came running down the pog. Their breeches were bloodied and torn to shreds and their gambesons were quilled with arrows, giving them the appearance of a herd of panicked, upright porcupines.

  The Seneschal’s serried mouth twitched in white-hot anger as he goaded his roan stallion into the midst of the shambled ranks. He hammered at their heads with the flat of his sword. “Who ordered you back down here? Where is that blind whoreson of a sergeant?”

  “Drained dry of his blood!” cried one of the wild-eyed Franks. “The Devil’s demons are on that rock!”

  “I’ll show you the Devil!” shouted the Seneschal, the rucks of his fearsome countenance as rough as emery. “How many?”

  “At least five thousand. Maybe ten.”

  The Seneschal shot a jet of acidic chew into the coward’s face, stunning him as if doused by Greek fire. The commander scissored the hapless man to his knees and bludgeoned his bald pate with the haft ball of his blade. “You rattlepated dungworm of a maggot! There aren’t that many rebels left in the entire Languedoc!”

  Otto came running up with his layered vestments flapping in the breeze like lugsails. Moist from the heat of exertion, he took great pains to keep his chalice level to avoid spilling the consecrated wine. Panting men toppled around him, skirling like castrated dogs and begging to slake their thirst. He held the holy contents of his cup above their outstretched hands, deeming the craven conscripts undeserving of nourishment from Christ’s blood. In full hearing of these converging clusters, he seized on the shameful debacle to gain a measure of revenge against the Seneschal for the day’s earlier humiliation. “I warned you that mount could not be taken by a direct assault.”

  Enraged by the imputation of incompetence, the Seneschal lashed at his horse’s scarred flanks, causing the animal’s hooves to stutter and nearly crush Otto’s sandaled feet. “You’ll get your damn heretics in due time! Until then, stay out of my way!”

  Otto methodically drained the remaining drops from the chalice. He stifled an unholy belch and licked his lips to prevent any of the wine from touching profane ground. “You’re off to an auspicious start.”

  The Seneschal’s facial veins were on the verge of snapping when he saw a captured Occitan being dragged down the pog. He ordered the prisoner’s neck stretched with a rope from a limb to speed his interrogation. “How many rebels are inside that stronghold?” he demanded.

  The prisoner, one of Pierre-Roger’s men, refused to speak—until the French officers yanked him airborne with heels kicking and dropped him before he passed out. Reviving with a mouthful of vomit, he looked up to find the Seneschal’s blade hovering over him. He stammered, “Two hundred!”

  The Seneschal angled his eyes in disbelief toward the pog’s crest, unable to comprehend how so small an Occitan force could have repulsed a thousand of
his well-armed infantry. The rebels had scouts all over these mountains and were too clever to be trapped up there with such a meagre garrison. The scoundrel was no doubt lying to purchase a few more hours of life. Having detected a familiar cadence in his screechy protests, the Seneschal retrieved a small bag of coins and threw it at the prisoner’s feet. “You’re a Gascon, no? You people are always selling your allegiances to the highest bidder.”

  The Gascon prisoner leered at the bribe, momentarily forgetting the painful lacerations that striped the bleeding flesh under his chin.

  The Seneschal fingered one of the coins an inch from the Gascon’s greedy face and allowed the silver’s gaudy flashes to work their seduction. “The King of France will pay you twice what you earn from your rebel liege. And you will have the added advantage of living to spend it.”

  Unleashed, the Gascon crawled in every direction to retrieve the rest of the scattered treasure—until Otto kicked him in the ribs to reclaim his attention.

  “Is there a woman on that rock named Esclarmonde?” demanded Otto.

  “There’s a whole brood of them go by the name. One’s a useless blind nun. Another one fights like a man.”

  “The one I seek is aged,” said Otto.

  “Aye, she’s up there. They all take orders from her. She sits in her church and performs magic.”

  Otto smiled at his superb fortune and began silently rehearsing the list of entrapping questions he would soon be inflicting on his perfidious mother.

  “How strong are the defenses?” asked the Seneschal.

  The prisoner pecked at the grass for the rest of the coins like a rooster in a thrashing stall. “The west side of the scarp can’t be taken. Those sabot priestesses mixed the blood of beasts into the mortar to strengthen the walls on that side.” He nearly had all the silver in his grasp when the Seneschal dragged him back by the noose, causing him to spill his haul in order to loosen the rope’s bite. He rasped coughing and kicking, “There’s a shepherd’s trail up the other side. Only a small tower and a barbican protect it.”

  The Seneschal made a dubious study of the eastern approach to the Cathar temple. He kicked the Gascon prisoner off on a yelping roll toward one of the officers. “Take him up with a scouting party after midnight. If the defenses are not as he says, drop him off those cliffs with his Judas bag tied to his neck.”

  Ye are the Light of the World.

  A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

  - The Gospel of Matthew

  XXXV

  Montsegur

  December 1243

  A sentinel’s cry broke the tenuous stillness of Christmas Eve.

  As if a log infested with stag beetles had been overturned, the Cathars crawled from their shelters on the terraces below the temple and lifted their pallid faces to a heavenly gift more blessed than manna. Tortured by thirst, they sprawled on all fours and licked the falling snow from the rocks along the narrow crest that had been spoliated of every stripling and sprout of vegetation.

  Esclarmonde scooped a wet dollop and savored it on her swollen tongue. Wheezing from the cold in her lungs, she pressed another handful to her burning forehead and shrieked—she had uncovered the bloated corpse of a perfect whose bulging eyes were congealed in their last rivet of terror. She bent to retch, but her stomach held nothing to evacuate. With the ground too frozen to dig graves, she had ordered the corpses stacked against the north wall rather than be rolled down the mount to suffer mutilation. She drew an ice-laced breath to chase the nausea and reminded herself that the remains were only the luring sheaths of the Demiurge. Fearing the onset of catalepsy, she slogged toward the temple, which was shrouded in a blizzard of whiteness. A dark clump near the gate was fast disappearing under the snow, already four fingers deep. She thrashed closer and found Corba unconscious in the sweeping drifts. She shook Corba’s shoulders until she opened her eyes. “You must keep moving!”

  Corba’s head sank against the back of her neck. “Let me sleep.”

  “Raymond needs you.”

  Enlivened by that reminder, Corba flailed spread-eagled across the snow in a manic search. “Raymond! Where are you?”

  “Calm yourself,” pleaded Esclarmonde. “He defends the tower.”

  A hundred paces below them, the bonfires along the barbican fought for life against a stiffening gale that roared up the crystallized spine. Under the lee of the low wall, Loupe and Raymond crouched with their paltry garrison shivering in their frayed mantles. The temperature had dropped precipitously after dusk, forcing them to hold their bows near the fires to prevent the strings from freezing. They took turns inching their eyes above the stones to check that the French were not launching an attack. No communication had been received from Toulouse since the siege began six months ago, but they still held out hope that Count Raymond was mustering an army to repulse the crusaders. After scaling the eastern approach, the French had thrown up a moveable barricade of bundled stakes, shrinking the battlefield to a sliver of jagged rock no wider than the breadth of the temple. The bottleneck between the barbican and gate was so narrow that only four men could traverse it at one time. The Occitans still held the advantage of the steep slope, but the Northerners brought up more men each night and tightened their ring to cut off escape attempts.

  Seething at the French taunts, Loupe pressed her knees against the string of her crossbow in preparation to retaliate, but Raymond signaled for her to lower the weapon. The few arrows they possessed were too valuable to waste on idle vengeance. A stone’s throw away, the boisterous invaders enjoyed a Yuletide feast of roasted chicken, almond soup, and a barrel of claret sent as a gift by Blanche from Paris. For amusement, the French heaved their refuse over the palisades and watched with insufferable hoyden as the starving Occitans pounced on the chicken bones to suck the marrow.

  At the temple, Corba stirred from her languor and cocked an ear toward a distant chorus in the darkness. “What is that melody?”

  “The Franks are singing carols,” said Esclarmonde. “The Dominicans have no doubt told them that we don’t believe in Christ. They think the Noel hymns will anger us.”

  “Listen to them!” cried Corba. “They’re laughing at us.”

  The scratchy Gascon accents scattered among the French voices caused Esclarmonde to think of Jourdaine. His hand had inflicted the same prickly numbness she now suffered in this bitter cold. It would be so easy to lie down and die this night, to retire to her hut and ascend in the Chariot for the last time. She quickly chased such thoughts of abandoning her flock and forced Corba to speed the blood back to her toes by walking and stomping her feet. “The sun will be up soon. The French must not see us like this. We should replenish the cistern before they discover we are out of water.”

  Drugged by enervation, the Cathar women moved slowly but did their best to follow Esclarmonde’s example by scraping the snow with their bowls and carrying their pitiful collections to a vat that hung over a fire. When they had melted as much water as their flagging stamina allowed, Esclarmonde ordered them to return to their huts for rest. She dragged Corba falling and crying into the Marquessa’s sparse hovel. The matriarch, colored the hue of chalk, lay on the frozen dirt floor next to the wraithlike Chandelle, their shaking arms entwined. The hearth embers had died, costing the room what little warmth had been trapped. Esclarmonde lowered Corba next to Chandelle and tried to blow life back into the coals.

  “I’m sorry,” rasped Chandelle. “I couldn’t keep the fire tended.”

  Chandelle’s graveled voice was alarmingly altered. Esclarmonde pressed a hand to her sunken chest. The moist swell of mucous in her lungs had risen, a portent of the flux. “There is little wood left to burn anyway.” She jangled her bowl to melt the ice and placed a drop on the Marquessa’s tongue.

  The Marquessa lurched up in a fit of coughing. “What day is it?”

  “Almost Christmas,” promised Esclarmonde. “On the morrow I will ask Raymond to distribute the last of the lentils.”

>   “Has that snake de Montfort slithered back to Paris?”

  Esclarmonde was about to remind her that Simon de Montfort was long dead and buried, but she thought it best to say nothing. Her spectral godmother’s failing memory was in truth a small blessing, a place of refuge for her to escape the present horrors. Seeing Chandelle trying to quell her own tremors, Esclarmonde raised the cup to the blind perfecta’s lips while steadying her head. “Your humours have worsened. I’ll try to find another robe.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Chandelle. “Is there word from Father?”

  “He still holds the tower. You needn’t worry about him.”

  Despite Chandelle’s blindness, Esclarmonde reflexively averted her glance; that was as near a lie as she had uttered since taking the vow. Morale was low. The stores of salted meat and pickled vegetables had long since been consumed, and what little remained of the fava beans, raisins, and honey in the larder was carefully rationed each morning, one handful to the soldiers, half that amount to her Cathars. The strict diet of their faith had proved a mixed blessing; she and her followers were accustomed to small portions, but they had built no reserve of fat to draw on. They had also used up the last of the herbs required to treat the fever that was spreading rapidly. In sieges past, the suffering had been confined to the summers. Unfathomable as it seemed, she now held the blistering heat of Carcassonne preferable to this wretched cold.