The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  Folques had never spoken to him of that day, but Otto had witnessed the pain in his stepfather’s eyes whenever a troubadour song was sung on the street. The room of his birth was now a gossamer-clotted brooding den for spiders and rats. St. Volusien’s Church, the site of his baptism, stood a roofless shell overgrown with ivy, its consecration font cracked and fouled by the pigeons that had confiscated it for a splashing bath. In the chateau’s bailey, a sinkhole had caved into the limestone, giving one the eerie sense that the looming rock was about to crumble like the salt pillars of Sodom. Heeding the biblical admonition for rejected prophets, he had hurried away shaking the heretical dust from his soles, grateful to have been saved as a babe from the wretched place.

  The Seneschal broke a caustic grin as Otto arrived for his first appearance on the heights of the Montsegur pog. “Here’s a propitious omen, lads. Circling vultures and tonsured scalps after a battle are certain signs of victory.”

  Otto ignored the taunt and searched the detritus strewn across the rocks for wounded captives to interrogate, but the crusaders had cut the throats of the few Occitans who survived the fight. “This attempt was madness. They’re near the end of their resistance.”

  “The military genius has spoken!” roared the Seneschal. “Let’s give the poor bastards the good news.” He signaled for the charred trebuchet to be tested. The stretched arm groaned ominously but survived the recoil. Reassured by its continued effectiveness, the Seneschal turned to his officer. “How many men did the Ocs lose?”

  “At least thirty.”

  “Do they still relieve their barbican watch at night?”

  “They don’t have the reserves to risk it.”

  The Seneschal studied the depleted ranks of the Occitans who manned the temple walls. “How many days until you breach it?”

  “These people die hard,” said the officer. “Another month, at least.”

  The Seneschal set his teeth in a grimace. The siege was six months behind schedule and had cost him four times the men allotted for the campaign. “That snake in Toulouse could arrive any day to relieve them. Then we’ll be the ones trapped like rats. I’m not inclined to sit on this iceberg for the rest of the winter.”

  Otto was alarmed by the commander’s weakening resolve. “The Queen Mother has ordered you to persist until the mount is taken.”

  The Seneschal cuffed Otto with his shoulder as he walked away. “I answer to the King, not to that witless woman. Support for this diversion is fast waning in the royal court. When I advise the exchequer of the mounting costs, he will convince Louis to overrule—”

  “I can take that wall in one night.”

  Otto and the Seneschal turned to discover the source of that absurd claim. A red-bearded Basque ruffian, accompanied by a small band of mercenaries, had been listening to their argument. These tall, wiry Basques from Navarre—whose name derived from the ancient Celtic word for summit—had only recently joined the royal army. They were a brutish mountain people, half-Spanish and half-goat, born with stubborn temperaments that made them better bandits than subjects to king or pope. For centuries they had been held in low esteem for the dastardly role they had played in attacking the great Roland during his retreat across the Pyrenees with Charlemagne. The French officers laughed at the foolish woodsman and dismissed his burly cohorts as inbred descendents of a depraved race.

  The Seneschal did not join in the ridicule. With an incipient smile, he circled the hirsute braggart and examined the fur skins he wore for breeches. “Tell me more.”

  The Basque gnawed methodically on a green shoot of chamomile, displaying not a whit of concern about protocol in the presence of the commander. “We’ll attack them from the rear.”

  The Seneschal snorted in disbelief at the man’s reckless boast. “Your brain has become addled from those opiate weeds you graze on. There is no rear. Their defenses are built to the edge of the cliffs.”

  The Basque parted his black-stained lips and aimed the gap in his front teeth like the porthole of a war galley. He spat a stream of mossy chaw over the precipice in a deft arc, chasing a crow perched on a ledge several hundred feet below. “Where I come from, this ass pimple would be too flat to live on. Of course, we’ll require compensation.”

  “You’re already drawing two francs a day,” reminded the Seneschal.

  “And we’ll be content to sit by and collect them while you bang your bloody heads against that wall.”

  The Seneschal tried to browbeat a concession from the man with a snarling glare, but the Basque would not be moved off his demand. Finally, the commander gave up with a contemptuous huff and accepted the arrangement, if for no other reason than it might provide a modicum of amusement to chase the boredom of the siege. “A thousand francs if my trebuchet is in range of the heretic hold within the week.”

  “A thousand each,” countered the Basque.

  “I should string you up for Jewing the crown.”

  Undaunted, the Basque curled a stubble-rimmed grin. “You have ten thousand conscripts draining your coffers each day you sit up here on your powdered ass. Not to mention the gold you’re wasting on this slingshot. Another month and you’ll be bankrupt. My offer is a bargain.”

  The Seneschal begrudged a nod of admiration for the Basque’s brass, rare enough among these degenerates and fools that he had been supplied for soldiers. He threw the rope at the man’s boots and ordered his sergeant, “See to it he doesn’t steal me blind.”

  The sign of your having this Light is your vision of the end.

  - Rumi

  XXXVI

  Montsegur

  January 1244

  Alert to every voice on the pog, Loupe crouched behind the eastern gate and sipped her ration of root broth, keeping it awash in her parched mouth for as long as possible. To thwart the French bowmen from taking accurate aim, she had delayed her return run for the barbican until the sun’s tawny filaments were swallowed by the horizon. As darkness finally prevailed, she tightened the bindings on her battered shield and darted across the defile under the cover of rocks thrown by her comrades.

  Raymond pulled her into his dugout. “Bernard?”

  She cursed her eyes for wasting precious fluids in tears. “The fever hasn’t broken.” She had endured the privations and freezing better than most, but a sharp burning had begun to eat at her lungs and at times she would lose the feeling in her right arm. “You need rest.”

  “I can’t risk it,” said Raymond.

  Pierre-Roger called out, “Perella, listen to her!”

  The claustrophobic mirk along the spine crawled with shadows. On the night prior, some of the Occitans, disoriented and jittery, had fired on their own. Every vein of ice and shoot of vegetation on their side had been grubbed, but just beyond their reach lay three inches of pristine snow. The French amused themselves by loosing rabbits and shooting them when they scampered close to the defenders. One of the Occitans became so crazed by the torment that he flung himself over the wall. He might have made it back with his catch had he not lingered to slake his thirst. The Northerners used his riddled corpse for target practice.

  “Some of the perfects have offered to crouch at our stations to give us a few hours of sleep,” whispered Loupe. “If we make the exchange at night, the Franks will think we’re only changing the watch.”

  Raymond blinked in a desperate effort to compose his fragmented mind. The slouching men stared at him with veiled, unfocused eyes. They would soon be of no use if he did not find a way to get them off the line. “I’ll take half with me. Keep the sentinels posted at all times. Is that understood?”

  Pierre-Roger kicked at him. “I’m not some wet-eared milksop who’s never manned a watch! Be gone with you.”

  After passing the orders down the barbican, Raymond and Loupe led twenty soldiers up the defile, keeping low to prevent the French from spying their departure. Minutes later, Loupe returned from the temple with the volunteers. She supplied the perfects with hauberks and helmets to
disguise the substitution. Pierre-Roger tossed over a few swords and shields. The perfects declined the weapons and lowered to their knees clutching their copies of the Gospel of John, which they kept wrapped in reliquaries under their tunics.

  Pierre-Roger stuck his nose into the face of a Cathar to test the depth of his meditation. “This one will make a fine guard.”

  “Leave him be,” ordered Loupe.

  “Since when did you become so enamored with these cloggers?”

  Loupe took aim with her dagger. “My aunt may have been right about you.”

  Pierre-Roger dared her. “Must be a family weakness. I should’ve—”

  A loud honking cut the darkness behind them. Loupe rubbed her bleared eyes—a plump goose waddled across the rocks. She was about to dismiss it as a hunger vision when Pierre-Roger and his men dropped their blades and gave chase, leaving the Cathars abandoned at the barbican. The spooked bird darted for shelter under the limestone crevices. She could already taste the succulent meat. With no chance to outrun the others, she loaded her bow and took aim, steadying her thrumming hand and—

  A sharp jolt slammed her shoulders and drove her into the frozen ground. She rolled to one side to avoid a sword thrust inches from her ribs.

  A grinning Basque stood over her.

  She blocked his next blow with her boot and kicked the weapon from his grasp. Disarmed, he lunged atop her and dangled her head over the cliff.

  I am dying.

  The Basque bolted stiff and fell from the scarp with his entrails impaled by a pike. Loupe staggered to her feet and found a dazed perfect staring in horror at his murdering hands. She dragged him to his knees seconds before a volley of barbed arrows whizzed over their heads. Dozens of the Basque mercenaries spawned across the spine like dragon’s teeth. More rappelled across the scarp and swarmed over the ledge. The Cathars who had been left behind at the barbican lay dead with their throats cut.

  Loupe screamed, “Attack!”

  The Occitans rushed back to the barbican, too late. Their weapons had been thrown from the precipice. Outnumbered, they were driven into the chateau.

  The French wasted no time in repositioning their trebuchet behind the captured Occitan barbican. By morning, the aerial onslaught had decimated the shamble of Cathar huts on the north face of the pog.

  Inside the pockmarked temple, Esclarmonde was surrounded by more than two hundred starving believers and half that many soldiers, many badly injured. Loupe knelt aside Bernard, whose swollen leg had become black with infection. The ill and dying were laid against the south wall with no shelter save for a few crumbling planks. Those soldiers who could stand shared the few swords and bows that had been stored in the reserve armory. The panic caused by the constant pounding was doubled by the wailing of the wounded. Volunteers braved the parapet brattice and tried to predict the landing spot of the launched stones. Below them, the Occitans thronged together in a collective terror. To increase their misery, the French hurled over sacks of dung soaked in urine to douse the cramped confines with a noxious stench.

  Esclarmonde crawled among her flock to offer the only consolation at her disposal, the touch of the Light, a ministration that drained her own flagging energy. She knew that unless a miracle was soon granted, all was lost. She asked Raymond, Loupe, and Pierre-Roger to join her inside the crumbling chapel. She stood in impotent silence at the embrasure and watched the funnel of smoke that curled aimlessly from the signal tower of Roquefixade three leagues away, their only means of communication with the outside world.

  Pierre-Roger waited to hear a reason for the summons. Receiving none, he said, “If we give up the chateau, the French will allow my soldiers to leave.”

  “What will happen to my people?” asked Esclarmonde.

  Pierre-Roger would not look at her. “I am responsible for my men only.”

  “There will be no surrender!” insisted Raymond.

  “All you give a damn about are those cloggers!”

  Raymond grappled him. “Had you had stayed at your post!”

  Esclarmonde separated the two men, swirling with vertigo from the effort. “Count Raymond must not be aware of our dire predicament.”

  Loupe stood apart in the corner, lost in her thoughts. Finally, she said, “Roquefixade may have fallen. The French could be keeping the signal fire stoked to confuse us. We have to get a message out from here.”

  “No man can get through those lines,” said Raymond.

  Loupe slid to her haunches, too tired to remain standing. “No man ... but I will.”

  That promise was met by astounded silence. Esclarmonde was stunned to find that Raymond did not immediately countermand the foolish plan. “You must order her not to attempt it.”

  “I won’t sit on this rock and wait to die,” said Loupe. “I’ll try the northwest face. The French line is weakest there.”

  When neither commander voiced a protest, Esclarmonde reluctantly drew her niece aside. “You are certain of this?”

  “It’s the only way.”

  “Take some of Raymond’s men with you.”

  “He can’t spare them. I’ll stand a better chance if I go alone.”

  Resigned to Loupe’s insistence, Esclarmonde asked Raymond, “Have we any parchment left?”

  Raymond thought for a moment, then he removed from his hauberk the letter that Corba had written to him on their wedding night.

  “I couldn’t use this,” said Esclarmonde.

  Raymond refused the letter’s return. “I would flay the skin from my back if it would keep Corba and Chandelle alive.”

  Esclarmonde carefully spread open its creased quarters, ragged and torn from having been opened a thousand times. Splotches from tears past had smeared the ink. She saw that Corba had written her favorite of Capellanus’s maxims on the margin: Love can deny nothing to Love. She wiped the mist from her eyes and turned the letter over to its blank side, then swabbed a sharpened nib with charcoal from the hearth. Her hand shook so fiercely that she had to press her arm against the lintel to brace it as she wrote:

  My dearest Count Raymond,

  At this hour, your loyal subjects are in the final throes of the King’s unlawful siege on Montsegur. Occitania, and all that is cherished in chivalry and freedom of the heart, shall perish if you do not hasten to our aid. My brother, whose soul cries out from the crimes committed on his remains, never failed to heed your call. I pray you not let this stain be laid upon the legacy of your forefathers, who were never known to delay in the defense of all that is noble and good.

  Yours in faith, Viscountess de Foix

  She picked up a limestone chip that had fallen from the altar and placed it into a draw sack with the folded parchment. She would have the small comfort of knowing that at least one remnant of her temple would escape obliteration. “What do we have left in the larder?”

  “A few piles of beans, some almonds and currants,” said Raymond.

  “Give her what we can spare.” Esclarmonde waited for a goodbye, but Loupe remained seated in the corner with her legs crossed and head bowed, preoccupied by a private dilemma. Knowing better than to press her headstrong niece, Esclarmonde prepared to return to the bailey.

  Loupe called her back. “I’d ask a favor before I go.”

  Two hours before dawn, the Cathars formed a path leading from the chapel’s entrance. On Esclarmonde’s orders, the last of the kindling had been piled and lit at each corner of the ramparts, offering as much of a feux de joie as she could provide. Four knights carried Bernard up on a stretcher and placed him in front of a makeshift altar.

  With Chandelle at her arm, Loupe walked from the chapel wearing the emerald satin gown that her grandfather had imported from Cyprus for Cecille’s wedding. It was the same dress that Phillipa had worn when she married Roger. Esclarmonde had kept it stored all these years in the hope that Loupe would one day relent in her disdain for marriage. For the first time in her life, Loupe was unsure of herself, feeling awkward in the finery, part
icularly amid such desolation. She threaded the gauntlet of suffering and knelt next to Bernard. He reached for her hand with a tremulous grasp.

  While the betrothed couple publicly professed their love, Chandelle clutched her stone etching and silently vowed to marry Jean in spirit in this same hour.

  “South!” screamed the lookout.

  This time, the Cathars did not run for protection, refusing to be denied this last remembrance of their lost way of life. The missile fell short and drove stones from the precarious curtain walls. The familiar squeal of rope was heard again—the French engine was being ratcheted and rolled closer.

  Esclarmonde steeled her nerves as she read from the Gospel of John:

  If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, I choose you out of this world ...

  The Cathars, who knew the passage by heart, joined in:

  If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all this they will do to you on my account, because they do not know him who sent me ...

  Several soldiers on the walls knelt and began reciting the verses:

  They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this, because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when the hour comes you may remember—

  Esclarmonde was stunned to silence: Phillipa’s face appeared in the flickering light above Loupe’s shoulder. The vision slowly took on more detail, and Bishop Castres came aside her, then Giraude, Aimery, and Roger. They parted to allow an elderly couple to step to the fore of the assembled spirits. A lady clad in black displayed a merel that hung from her necklace. Esclarmonde gasped in sudden discovery—the souls of her mother and father were also present. She moved toward them to speak, but they faded away. Shaken by the encounter, she recovered to the present and found the living staring at her with consternation. Fearful that her legs would fail, she hurried to finish the benediction: