The Fire and the Light

by Glen Craney

  This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for another.

  “North!” screamed the sentinel.

  Esclarmonde touched the heads of Bernard and Loupe to offer the melding of the Light. The hiss of the launched stone became louder. The north corner of the chapel exploded and felled several Cathars, who lay in agony and tried to muffle their moans. She took a deep breath to maintain her mind’s balance. I must finish this before I die. “Bernard Saint-Martin, do you take Esclarmonde Loupe de Foix as your wife?”

  “I do with all my heart,” said Bernard.

  “Do you, dear Loupe, take this man as your husband?”

  “I do.”

  Esclarmonde gathered their hands together. “Blessed God of Light, we ask that You make this union sacred in Your eyes.”

  Loupe had not told Bernard of her decision to make the escape attempt, fearful that he would lose all hope and cease fighting for life. Now, unable to delay the revelation further, she kissed him and whispered, “I must go.”

  A fractured moment passed before Bernard understood what she intended. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he brought her face into his unsteady palms. “I have kept my promise. Now you must promise to return to me.”

  Raymond’s hand came to Loupe’s shoulder to remind her that dawn was fast approaching. Stifling coughs of emotion, she pulled from Bernard’s embrace and retired with Esclarmonde to the chapel. Inside, she hurriedly removed the wedding gown and returned it.

  “No,” said Esclarmonde. “It is yours now.”

  Loupe insisted, “I want to see you give it to my daughter.”

  That promise for a future caused Esclarmonde to enliven with hope. She struggled to find the words. “I have—”

  “There is no need to say more.”

  Esclarmonde captured Loupe’s hands to interrupt her harried preparations. “There is something I should have said to you years ago ... We have never understood each other. It has been my shortcoming.”

  Loupe looked away in remorse. “And mine.”

  “You are so much like ... I have always been proud of you.”

  Loupe choked with emotion. “They all expected me to be like you.”

  “I have tried to turn the other cheek, but I see now that it has brought only more suffering on this family ... I find myself at a loss of faith.”

  “My way has met with no more success than yours.” Loupe turned aside. “There is something I have kept from you for too long.”

  “What, child?”

  Loupe spoke quickly to blunt the impact. “I saw your son.”

  Esclarmonde did not trust her ears. “You’ve seen Otto?”

  “In Rome.”

  “Why did your father not advise me of this?”

  “I never told him. I tried to convince Otto to come home, but he wouldn’t leave Folques.”

  Esclarmonde braced with a hand against the wall. “What was he like?”

  “He favors the Gascons in features and temperament, but Folques’s cunning and treachery have also taken hold in him, I fear.” Loupe hesitated before finishing. “Years later, I encountered him again.”

  Esclarmonde tilted a step closer. “Where?”

  “At Avignonet.”

  Esclarmonde blinked hard, unable to make sense of why her son would have been at the church where the Dominicans were murdered. “With the Inquisitors? But I was told no Cistercians were there.”

  “He joined the Black Friars. I had the chance to kill him, but I let him live ... to spite you.” When Esclarmonde stumbled from the revelation, Loupe caught her and revealed more. “He’s here with the French army.”

  “What?”

  “The day after the raid, I saw him from across the barbican.”

  “I must go to him!”

  Loupe blocked her attempt to rush out. “The Dominicans would do unspeakable ... ” She dared not say what they both knew.

  Esclarmonde circled in distress. “I am the reason for this misery!”

  Raymond opened the door. “The French guards are changing.”

  Loupe gathered up the climbing gear and hugged Esclarmonde. “You must promise to hold out ... I will return.”

  The besieged Occitans cowered for three more weeks, but the signal fire on Roquefixade gave no indication of Loupe’s fate. When Esclarmonde could no longer bear the suffering and travail in the crowded bailey, she would ask the soldiers to lift her to the ramparts during lulls in the bombardment. From that vantage, she prayed to catch a glimpse of her son, but all she could see with her failing eyes were the black specks in the valley.

  On this fading afternoon, as she stood atop her favorite perch on the western wall, the sun broke through the fast-moving clouds. Filled with a bone-deep despair, she raised her face to soak in the warmth and prayed to the Light, “Tell me ... what am I to do?”

  As usual, no answer came. Resigned to the spiritual abandonment, she was about to descend from the allures when a gray cloud sailed overhead and shadowed her in darkness. The golden rays reappeared on the western slope and illumined the spot near the cliffs where she had contemplated the leap years ago.

  Preparation for death takes a lifetime.

  Hearing again the words that Castres had spoken on the night of her attempted suicide, she understood what was now required. One last time, she took in the stunning beauty of her homeland. The weather had turned mild, melting most of the snow and revealing napped patches of foliage that hinted at spring. Strangely, this day appeared identical to that morning three months shy of fifty years ago, when she had been initiated into the court of love. Her gaze swept the endless Tarascon forest and the grottes and caves that she had so loved to explore. Beyond them stood the desolate keeps of Aragon where Guilhelm had vowed to seek his exile, never to return. Could he be alive? No, not after thirty years. The Temple would have arrested and executed him. She found solace in the magnificent hues of the Pyrenees: The dark green of the oaks, the robin’s-egg blue of the sky, the silver of the rushing river, the dusty tan of the awakening garrigue. She drew a fortifying breath—and turned away from it all.

  The Cathars and soldiers watched her like a cast of hawks. Her steps were so purposeful that they were certain she had been gifted with the revelation that would save them from this nightmare. They crowded around her, desperate to hear the message of deliverance.

  “This night,” she told them, “I will undertake the Endura.”

  The Cathars froze with a collective gasp of disbelief—then fell to their knees, weeping and shouting protests. The Endura was the most fearsome sacrament of their faith. Castres had taught that under extraordinary circumstances they were permitted to starve themselves to avoid denying their faith. Yet the ritual of suicide had never been invoked. Embracing the sacrament meant that she had failed in her quest to merge with the Light during meditation. If she did not capture the Chariot at the fleeting moment of her passing, she would be returned to this world to suffer and grope in spiritual blindness again.

  Corba tried to slap blood into Esclarmonde’s cheeks to chase the grip of melancholy. “Someone boil a cup of beech leaves!”

  Chandelle groped for Esclarmonde’s hands. “Why?”

  “The Dominicans will not abandon this siege until they have me. If I go to them alive, I fear what I might reveal under their methods. All we have accomplished would be lost. When the monks have their confirmation that I am dead, they will leave this mount.” She ordered Raymond, “Deliver my body to them in exchange for the release of the others.”

  “Loupe will come,” pleaded Chandelle.

  Esclarmonde kissed the blind perfecta’s streaming cheek and whispered, “Be strong for me. I must do this.” She took one last look at her beloved temple, then walked into the chapel to commence her deathwatch.

  The flash of lightning is not to light the way, but a command to the cloud to weep.

  - Rumi

  XXXVII

&
nbsp; Montsegur

  February 1244

  Acommotion at the base of the pog interrupted Otto’s morning Lauds. Galled to hear the Sabbath so boisterously violated, he rushed from his consecrated tent to chastise the conscripts and was stopped short by a spectacle passing strange: A tall monk shrouded in a hooded Cistercian robe was lashing twenty barefoot penitents through the lower French encampment. The sinners were burdened with dirt-filled sacks hung from their necks and they dragged large crosses of oak beams tethered with ropes. The crusaders joined in the torment by pummeling the wretches with dung clods and poking their feet with pikes.

  “What blasphemous parade is this?” demanded Otto.

  “Lapsed Waldensians,” said the Cistercian. “My superior, the Abbot of Frontfroide, ordered them to carry the crosses to this mountain of iniquity.”

  Otto tried to examine the monk’s occulted features but could make out only a scraggly gray beard in the shadowed recesses of the white cowl. Penitential processions during winter were unusual, yet the Languedoc abbeys were notorious for their lax enforcement of St. Bernard’s regimen and traditions, often allowing facial hair and other pagan vices if the novitiate’s familial bequest was generous enough. He had once met Benoit Renault, the patriarch of Frontfroide, an old gasbag who took pride in concocting clever methods for bringing malfeasants to their knees in contrition. This penance smacked of his rigorous method. “Why are they hooded?”

  “They must remain cloaked for one year to learn humility.”

  “And you are?”

  “Brother Benedict.”

  Otto detected a note of condescension in the monk’s tone. His own transfer of allegiance to the Dominicans had never been forgiven in the Cistercian abbeys. He was amused to know that this brother considered him a traitor. He commanded the birches and thrashed the feet of the apostates to demonstrate that he alone wielded spiritual authority in Foix. When he finally lost interest in doling out the punishment, he threw the bloodied branches at the monk’s sandals and ordered him, “If your Abbot wishes to send his failures to my district for rectification, advise him that I will expect donations for the trouble. Now, return to that Sodom’s den you call an abbey and get out of my sight.”

  The Cistercian looked up at the heights and saw a stone crash into the temple. “Should their atonement be less severe than Our Lord’s ascent to Golgotha?”

  “Leave off the sermonizing and speak what’s on your mind.”

  “The Abbot’s mandate called for the sinners to pray under the shadow of those who deny Christ,” said the Cistercian.

  The prostrate penitents groaned at the prospect that their agony was not finished. Otto broke a sardonic smile on divining the import of the monk’s suggestion. “You have the makings of an inquisitor. Pity you chose the one order that failed miserably in its mission.” Never one to impede the mortification of others to the greater glory of Christ, Otto gave his assent to the penitents carrying their crosses up the crag to confess their derelictions below the heretic walls.

  “How much longer until the keep is taken?” asked the Cistercian.

  “Another week,” said Otto, “and that crypt should be filled with rocks.”

  “The cloggers have not attempted a breakout?”

  “One rat managed to scamper past us. He’ll be apprehended soon enough.”

  The brutal climb up the treacherous Pas de Trebuchet was accomplished as the last mauve light of dusk descended. After commanding his weary penitents to their knees, the Cistercian monk strode through the ranks of curious crusaders and produced the abbatial decree for the Seneschal’s inspection. “The engine’s firing must be halted for an hour.”

  “By whose order?” asked the Seneschal.

  The Cistercian kept his shadowed eyes fixed on the narrow defile beyond the barbican. “By order of God’s representative on earth, His Holiness, Innocent IV, who watches over your soul with his faithful servant, the Abbot of Frontfroide.”

  The Seneschal considered banishing the smart-mouthed Cistercian, but the last thing he needed was the wrath of another monastic order brought down on his head. “Finish it, then get out of my sight.”

  “I need three cauldrons of boiling water.”

  “Are you making soup?” chortled the Seneschal.

  The Cistercian waited in rigid silence until the guffaws around him dissipated. “The ground must be thawed to dig the holes.”

  The Seneschal walked among the bent penitents and kicked one in the ribs. “If you’re going to all the trouble of staking the crosses, why not crucify them?”

  “You mock Our Lord’s death?”

  The Seneschal lost his smarmy grin, aware that even the King’s officers were not immune from being called before the Inquisition tribunals. He grudgingly signaled his men to the task. “If you’re foolhardy enough to walk into the range of those hell-spawned whoresons, have at it.”

  The crusaders threw open a section of their palisade and allowed the Cistercian to whip his penitents over the ruined barbican and up the jagged defile toward the temple. The French deposited three vats of steaming water below the walls, then hurried back to safety. The ragged apostates staggered up to the rocky incline and fell to their bloodied knees under the heavy crosses.

  Raymond appeared on the ramparts with a crossbow. “If you value your useless life, monk, you’ll remove those Roman abominations from our sight!” Ten Occitan archers joined him atop the wall and took aim.

  The Cistercian stole a glance over his shoulder. The crusaders behind the barbican were taunting the Occitans to fire on the sinners. Their bows were stacked and the trebuchet’s sling was empty. The Seneschal had retired to his pavilion for his evening repast.

  Raymond shouted a second warning, “Are you deaf?”

  The Cistercian nodded in a signal to one of his penitents. The sinner untied the beams and fastened them to the cross held by his nearest comrade. Together, the two penitents hoisted their new creation—a cross with three traverse arms. The Cistercian shouted, “Look upon the true cross and be saved!”

  Raymond and his men traded confused glances. Why would a Cistercian monk require Catholic penitents to build a Catharist cross?

  The Cistercian raised his hand as if offering a benediction.

  Without turning his head, Raymond whispered an order to his men. Perplexed, they drew their bows as commanded and fired high into the sky. The arrows landed several feet behind the penitents. The crusaders beyond the barbican roared with laughter and hectored the Occitans for their poor aim. When a second volley filled the air, the Cistercian and his penitents took off on a run for the temple with the crosses on their shoulders. The gate swung open—Raymond and his men dashed out and stole the cauldrons of water.

  A scudding silence fell over the French camp. Dining in his open tent, the Seneschal, alerted by the cessation of jeers, nearly choked on a forkful of mince as he sprang from his table. “Bastards! Cut them down!”

  The duped crusaders jumped over the barbican and fired their bows at the fleeing penitents. An impaled sinner released his grip on the water cauldron and waved his compatriots on as he fell. Atop the walls, the Occitans loosed another volley to stave off the disorganized French attack.

  The Seneschal ran toward the barbican. “Fire the engine, damn you!”

  The Occitans dragged the last cauldron through the temple gate seconds before the missile crashed against its planks.

  Inside the chateau, the heaving penitents stared with disbelief at the tableau of misery surrounding them. The temple looked like a charnel house. The fever-racked faces of the Occitans were spotted with lesions and their gums were inflamed and crusted white. The Cistercian monk extended his left hand—made of iron—in a dismayed greeting.

  Raymond leapt from the walls to embrace his old friend. “Montanhagol! Christ in Heaven, you are a blessed sight! How did you learn of our plight?”

  Mobbed by the grateful Occitans, Guilhelm revealed, “The troubadours are spreading the word. We wou
ld have been here sooner, but the mountain passes are blocked. We had to find transport by sea from Valencia.”

  Corba fought her way through the scrum. Too overcome to speak, she pressed a kiss to Guilhelm’s cheek. He heard a frail voice call his name and turned to welcome Chandelle into his arms. The blind perfecta was so wasted that he feared she might break in his embrace. He searched for the feisty tomboy who had never been far from Chandelle’s side. “Where is the She-Wolf?”

  That question cast a sudden pall over the Occitans. Raymond dropped his head in shame and said, “She tried to run the lines.”

  “How many did you send out?”

  “She insisted on going alone.”

  Guilhelm braced Raymond with a knowing grin. “A Dominican friar with a flapping mouth told me that one from your garrison had eluded their nets.”

  The Occitans shouted jubilant ejaculations of hope for Loupe’s breakthrough. But what next met their eyes transformed the celebration into an astonished silence. Guilhelm’s disguised penitents discarded their homespun tunics and revealed themselves to be Aragon knights armed with short swords strapped to their backs. They ripped open the bags that had hung around their necks and poured wheat for the bread kilns. The parched Cathars lined up at the cauldrons and sipped the water with eyes closed to savor its blessed relief.

  Guilhelm brought forward one of his compatriots in the deception, a short, white-bearded gentleman with penetrating cobalt eyes. “This is Bertrand de la Baccalaria, the most accomplished engineer in Aragon.”