The Song of the Troubadour

by Stephanie Cook

  THE SONG OF THE TROUBADOUR

  Stephanie A. Cook

  ©2005

  For Edna Keller Tonnersen Malik

  “Kill them all. God will know his own.”

  “Kill them all. God will know his own.” -Abbot Arnald Amaury, head of the Cistercians and spiritual leader of the Crusade, at the sacking of Béziers, July 22, 1209, Feast Day of the Magdalene

  “Nearly twenty thousand of the citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age and sex. The workings of divine vengeance have been wondrous.”

  -Abbot Arnald Amaury in his letter to Pope Innocent III, describing the Crusaders’ victory at Béziers

  CARCASSONNE

  Friday, July 31, 1209

  Trencavel

  Friday, July 31, 1209, midday

  “It’s the water. That’s our weakness,” said Cabaret.

  “And they know it,” said Trencavel, gesturing in the direction of the river Aude. The descent to the river was steep. At the river bank, the trees were the only green in a landscape of dusty browns. The Crusaders were still arriving. They had been coming for a week, their tents and banners seeming to take over the whole valley to the foothills of the Corbieres. And still they spilled up the old Roman road from the Mediterranean.

  The two men continued walking south along the walls, leaving the covered wooden galleries for the entrance to a tower, one of twenty-six placed along the city walls. The men in the tower holding their javelins and crossbows instantly stood to attention as Trencavel and Cabaret passed through. The cool of the stone walls of the tower felt good in the scorching heat of the day. They continued out of the tower and along the walls.

  “How many do you estimate?” said Trencavel.

  Cabaret paused and stared at the army massed to the west of the city, along the river banks.

  “It is the largest army I have ever seen,” he said. “Mounted knights, thousands, maybe ten thousand. Plus mounted sergeants, squires, crossbowmen, mounted archers, infantry, engineers, archers, miners, sappers, carters, carpenters, foragers, camp followers. There are maybe 50,000 souls out there waiting to lay siege to our city.”

  “And don’t forget the Abbot and his Cistercian monks,” said Trencavel. “Do you know what that mad Abbot said at Béziers?”

  Cabaret kicked at a loose stone with his foot before replying.

  “They say that a knight asked him how to tell the heretics from the Christians and the Abbot said, ‘Kill them all; God will know his own.’”

  Both men turned to face the city. Everywhere people worked. Women carted stones to stockpile next to the trebuchets, ready to be used as missiles when the attack came. Children helped the water sellers carry bucket after bucket of water from the river to be stored in the city’s cisterns and in the bathhouses, now closed to preserve water. Men continued to build the wooden galleries covering the walls and the towers; these galleries projected out over the walls. They would not only protect the sentries and crossbowmen from the arrows of the Crusaders, but would also be used to throw down stones and fire on the attackers if they came too close to the wall itself. Everyone worked with a grim determination.

  “The people are terrified,” said Cabaret. “They do not want to be slaughtered like pigs.”

  “I will not let that happen again,” said Trencavel. “I swear it.”

  Trencavel and Cabaret continued to walk the sentry-route, passing to the southern portion of the city walls which overlooked the Castellar suburb. This suburb was itself strongly fortified, which was vital since it provided access to the Fontgrande spring, the only other source of water to the population other than the river. The water of most of the city wells had either run dry or turned brackish with the drought of the summer. They passed into the first city tower overlooking the Castellar suburb. Here the work of preparation was not as far advanced. The galleries were not finished, and, in some sections, not even started. In the first tower, the guards were resting asleep on the stone floors, their javelins fallen to the ground.

  “Is this considered acceptable practice for guards in this sector?” said Trencavel to their stammering sergeant.

  “No, my lord,” said the sergeant. “But, the heat.” He looked at Trencavel’s hard face and stopped. “These men are not my best. They are fat and lazy. We are stretched thin. We can’t even properly man every tower of the city walls. These towers are behind the Castellar suburb. The suburb is well-defended. Its walls are high and I have some of my best men defending them. These towers need not be well-guarded, I assure you.”

  The four guards were now awake and had jumped to their feet, faces humbly lowered. Trencavel turned and spoke to them.

  “Look at me, men,” Trencavel said. “The Castellar suburb will come under attack; the walls may even be breached. That is when you must be ready. This suburb must not be taken. We must have access to the Fontgrande spring. You must be prepared to fight, and fight long and hard. Or you must be prepared to die of thirst. It is your decision.”

  The guards stared at Trencavel.

  “They will be lashed, my lord,” said the sergeant. “This will not happen again.”

  Trencavel and Cabaret left the tower and continued around the southern edge of the city. They looked down at the Castellar.

  “They seem ready,” said Cabaret. The suburb was a warren of activity. Water gatherers came from the Fontgrande spring to fill the suburb’s cisterns. Men dragged siege machines, trebuchets and mangonels, into place near the suburbs’ walls.

  “They had better be,” said Trencavel. “The Crusaders will attack here and the walls are not as high and strong as those of the city.”

  “But our men are courageous and strong,” said Cabaret. “And fighting for their lives, which always gives an army an incalculable advantage.”

  The two men continued northwards, along the eastern edge of the city walls. Once fertile farmlands stretched eastwards across the plains to where the Black Mountains rose to craggy heights. The fields were blackened and scorched. Trencavel’s orders had been followed exactly. No crops were left in the fields, all pigs, goats, cattle, and chickens slaughtered or brought into the walls of the city of Carcassonne. Even the valuable water-mills floating in the river Aude had been dismantled to prevent the Crusaders from milling any grain they managed to buy or steal. The Crusaders’ army would find it very difficult to feed 50,000 people off the lands around Carcassonne for very long. Nevertheless, foragers from the attacking army wandered through these fields, searching for wood, a forgotten stash of grain, eggs left in empty hen houses. Trencavel wanted nothing more than to see these crusaders miserable with aching, empty bellies in one weeks’ time. Everyone knew that fever followed famine. Maybe half of them would be dead before the month was out.

  Trencavel and Cabaret continued their inspection of the sentry-walk and towers along the northern wall of the city, overlooking the Bourg suburb, defended in a similar manner to the Castellar. Here they were pleased with the preparations, wooden galleries were finished, and mounds of stones stood piled next to trebuchets. They walked now southwards, completing their circuit of the city walls and coming back to the castle, where they had started. It stood strong and inviolate, well-maintained and well-defended. Before going back into the castle, they stood looking west across the river Aude at the army continuing to mass just beyond its banks. A garrison defended the route to the wooden bridge across the banks of the Aude, a route protected by only a simple wooden palisade spanning the 500 yard drop to the river. Another suburb, St.Vincent, sprawled on either side of the palisade.

  “They will try to take the bridge and St. Vincent soon,” said Trencavel. “And if they succeed, our access to the river will be cut off.”

&n
bsp; “And how do you propose to stop them? St. Vincent has no walls and the route to the bridge is only protected by a palisade,” said Cabaret.

  “I will do something,” said Trencavel. “My city will not be taken and made a charnel house while I stand by watching.”

  “That sounds like a memorable line in some troubadour’s chanson de geste. You would be quite the hero with those kinds of words,” said Cabaret. “Just remember that experienced soldiers do not read chansons de geste for military strategy. They read Vegetius. You must remember his best advice on fighting battles. Avoid them.”

  Trencavel looked at the old man and walked into the castle.

  Bernard

  Friday, 31 July, 1209, afternoon

  My brother Guillaume and I came to Carcassonne, that city of sin, in the days before the siege. We came to infiltrate their defenses, and to aid our brother Crusaders in their Holy battle against the heretic. Guillaume prayed that we would be allowed to serve in a more Holy manner, for he was a simple boy and fearful of our task, but our Father Abbot assured us that our service was just as Holy in the eyes of God as our chanting brothers and just as noble as the warriors called to the Cross. I, of course, realized the importance of our task from the first moment our Father Abbot spoke of it. For God is omniscient and omnipotent, but His disciples here on earth must implement His plans to His greater glory.

  I knew that these people had to learn that he who protects the heretics and flaunts the one true faith must be stopped. The death of our martyr would be avenged. Like our Lord Jesus Christ, his blood would serve to cleanse the sins of the others. His death would remove the rot of heresy from this land and he would be remembered as the savior of these people.

  As Guillaume and I approached Carcassonne from the bridge over the river Aude, I saw the city rise up from the plains of olive fields that surrounded it. It was placed on a hill, surrounded by walls and impregnable to invaders who have been trying to attack it from days long before the Romans ruled over these lands. Even the great Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne besieged this city for seven years without it yielding. With the grace of God, we would be part of the army that finally forced it to submit. In the north and the south, suburbs spilled from the city and were themselves surrounded by walls. The tramontano whipped down from the North, rushing to the sea, and setting the windmills to a high speed of frenzy. The trip had seemed much longer than it was, as Guillaume and I fought the hot wind every step of the way, as it lifted great clouds of dust off the fields and into our faces, taunting those of us who worked tirelessly on God’s business.

  The city was impressive, even to me, who knew what filth and heresy lay hidden behind its walls. The cathedral and many fine houses and towers loomed over the city walls. But the most imposing structure was the castle, home of the Viscount Trencavel, most vile and depraved heretic. Yes, the same Trencavel who forced his choice of Abbot on the monastery of Alet. How did he do this? Did he buy the office or use intrigue to promote his candidate? While these sinful practices were all too common, all of us who have lived in this world understand the ways of power and money. This would have been understandable. No, Trencavel did something far, far worse. His sacrilege was almost unspeakable, and showed only too well his level of depravity. He sent his man to oversee the new Abbot’s election with orders for this man to dig up the former Abbot from his grave. He placed the earthly remains of this most Holy man, already wormy and shedding black earth, in the Abbot’s chair. And then he told the monks to listen to the choice of their former Abbot. These gentle men of God fainted at the stench of decay, for while their Abbot was a good man, he was not a saint. It was said that his body was bloated to twice the size of normal. The monks elected Trencavel’s choice as Abbot in this abbey gone to damnation and decay. And this was but one example of Trencavel’s depravity.

  My brother Guillaume and I had spent one week with these vermin, these vicious monsters who spoiled the church of God on earth with their evil ways. Over the last few nights, Guillaume whined and cried in his sleep, as he always did in the monastery. But there was no one to spoil and cosset him here. He has spent sixteen years on this earth and finally it was time that he learned that discipline and sacrifice were required to build greatness. I continued my work, despite his weakness, and my Father Abbot was proud of my intelligence and resilience. Guillaume and I watched this week as the Army of God arrived outside of the gates of this modern-day Sodom, this Gomorrah. Host upon host, the golden lion of the Count of Nevers and the blue and yellow diagonal stripes of the Duke of Burgundy. The greatest Christian army ever mustered and all flying banners with that most holy of symbols, the Cross. It was a sight beautiful to see.

  I knew in my heart that this city would fall and with it, the heretics who threatened the fibers of the faith. These heretics were a disease in the flesh, weakening the church and all earthly power that descends from it. Plague, pestilence, famine would fall on the land that lost the protection of the Lord. I knew that the lost sheep must be brought back to the fold. It was the decay of heresy that blighted this land and these souls.

  Through the power and magnificence of our Lord and his most Holy representatives on earth, the Holy Father in Rome and my Father Abbot, I would make sure that this city would fall. I swore it on the Feast Day of St. Bernard, with whom I share a Christian name and the desire to build a church upon this earth to rival the one we will find in heaven.

  Gauda

  Friday, July 31, 1209, afternoon

  Once, as a girl, my father took me to the wild sea far to the west. I smelled the salt in the air, felt the rhythmic suffering of the waves, forever moving up and down and never going anywhere, only force moving through them, using them, until at last they roared and crashed and died against a cliff. This was how I felt; that my life had stood still while the force of others had swept through it, on to greater and bigger things, leaving me alone in the middle of a vast sea.

  In my thirty-fifth year, I chose to no longer wait while others lived their full lives. I devised a plot that would brand me an unscrupulous traitor, were it ever to be revealed. I lived at the court of Raymond-Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Béziers, Albi, Carcassonne, and Razes, a lady-in-waiting to his wife and my cousin, Agnes. For almost two years, I attended to Agnes, jumping at her every whim and avoiding the back of her hand. I played my harp and sang for the viscount and went to his bed, when he asked it of me. I served my lord and lady both day and night, a poor relation grateful for her home in their palace. But they did not know that I spied on them. Every month I sent a letter to a troubadour at the court of the Count of Toulouse, Viscount Raymond-Roger’s uncle and his rival. When I finished my service, and I was almost done, I would receive my reward from the Count of Toulouse - my father’s lands and castle, stolen from me by my despicable stepsons.

  I passed the bitter days dreaming that I would be able to one day recreate the joy and beauty of the court of my father. Troubadours from far lands would come to my castle and would duel with song far into the night. They would sing of my generosity and the skill of my cooks. We would eat wild boar in fine basil sauce; sorbets of cinnamon, ginger, and mint; swordfish with chickpeas and the milk of almonds; sugared peaches with spices of the Orient. We would drink wine with spices and honey and beautiful women would sing and the castle hall would smell of fresh rushes and lavender. I would sing my songs again.

  I looked out at the Crusaders gathered outside the gates of Carcassonne. I saw the pennants of the Count of Toulouse flying from his tents down by the green grass near the river. I willed them to victory. I only hoped I would survive to claim my reward.

  Bernard

  Friday, July 31, 1209, early evening

  Guillaume and I walked through the dusty, hot streets of the damned city of Carcassonne. People talked everywhere of the impending siege, fearing not for their souls, as they ought, but for their miserable heretical lives. Supplies were running out in the stores and markets as people hoarded. Houses were packed with thr
ee, four, even five families as relatives poured in from the countryside. The city was full of fighting men from Foix, the Minervois, and the Black Mountains. Trencavel’s vassals from the plains between Béziers and Carcassonne had seen the error of their ways and the vast might of our most Holy Crusading army and had surrendered without a fight. But the knights and lords from the mountains were popped up with their vanity, their heretical minds too sealed against the truth to realize their foolishness in daring to resist our might.

  Guillaume and I went to the cathedral, about which we had heard rumors of great sacrilege. We needed to see for ourselves what these heathen dogs were capable of doing. We entered and found workmen everywhere. The unholy apostates were ripping the very wood from the stalls of the choir. Big, brutish men carried heavy timbers from the stalls, while the most holy reverend fathers of the church tried to stop them. We hurried from the cathedral and entered the refectory of the canons next door. The spacious room was being dismantled stone by stone. A line of men carried the heavy stones as they were pried from the walls. Our men of God struggled manfully to prevent this sacrilege, but they were outnumbered and overwhelmed. We watched as a brother monk, young and strong, struggled to grab a stone from the hands of a big mason. I felt Guillaume move to help, but quietly placed a restraining hand on his arm.

  “Do you care so little for your immortal soul that you would destroy the very house of God?” said the monk.

  “God does not live here, but only a bunch of fat priests,” said the mason. The others laughed as the monk’s face turned red. “Better that we use these stones to protect our own city and then we won’t be worrying about our immortal souls for a good long while, no?” said the mason, looking round at his coworkers, who were now hooting.