CHAPTER 19
When Alaïs woke again, she was lying between linen sheets, not on grass. There was a low, dull whistling in her ears, like an autumn wind echoing through the trees. Her body felt curiously heavy and weighted down, as if it didn’t belong to her. She had been dreaming that Esclarmonde was there with her, putting her cool hand on her brow to draw the fever out.
Her eyes fluttered open. Above her head was the familiar wooden canopy of her own bed, the dark blue night-curtains tied back. The chamber was suffused with the soft, golden light of dusk. The air, although still hot and heavy, carried in it the promise of night. She caught the faint aroma of freshly burned herbs. Rosemary and the scent of lavender.
She could hear women’s voices too, coarse and low, somewhere close by. They were whispering as if trying not to disturb her. Their words hissed like fat dripping from a spit on to a fire. Slowly, Alaïs turned her head on her pillow towards the noise. Alziette, the unpopular wife of the head groom, and Ranier, a sly and spiteful gossip with an uncouth, boorish husband, both troublemakers, were sitting by the empty fireplace like a pair of old crows. Her sister Oriane used them often for errands, but Alaïs mistrusted them and could not account for how they came to be in her room. Her father would never have allowed it.
Then she remembered. He was not here. He had gone to Saint-Gilles or Montpellier, she couldn’t quite remember. Guilhem too.
‘So where were they?’ Ranier hissed, her voice greedy for scandal.
‘In the orchard, right down by the brook by the willow trees,’ replied Alziette. ‘Mazelle’s oldest girl saw them go down there. Bitch that she is, she rushed straight back to her mother. Then Mazelle herself came flying into the courtyard, wringing her hands at the shame of it and how she didn’t want to be the one to tell me.’
‘She’s always been jealous of your girl, è. Her daughters are all fat as hogs and pockmarked. The whole lot of them, as plain as pikes.’ Ranier bent her head closer. ‘So what did you do?’
What could I do but go and see for myself? I spotted them the moment I got down there. It’s not as if they’d made much effort to conceal themselves. I got hold of Raoul by his hair — nasty coarse brown hair he’s got — and boxed his ears. All the while he was pulling at his belt with one hand, his face red from the shame of being caught. When I turned on Jeannette, he wriggled out of my grasp and ran off without even so much as a backward glance.’
Ranier tutted.
‘All the while Jeannette was wailing, carrying on, saying how Raoul loved her and wants to marry her. To hear her talk, you’d think no girl had ever had her head turned by pretty words before.’
‘Perhaps his intentions are honest?’
Alziette snorted. ‘He’s in no position to marry,’ she complained. ‘Five older brothers and only two of them wed. His father’s in the tavern day and night. Every last sol they’ve got goes straight into Gaston’s pocket.’
Alaïs tried to close her ears to the women’s mundane gossip. They were like vultures picking over carrion.
‘But then again,’ Ranier said slyly, ‘it was fortunate, as it turned out. If circumstances had not taken you down there, then you wouldn’t have found her.’
Alaïs tensed, sensing the two heads turn towards the bed.
‘That’s so,’ agreed Alziette. ‘And I dare say I’ll be well rewarded when her father returns.’
Alaïs listened, but learned nothing more. The shadows lengthened. She drifted in and out of sleep.
By and by, a night nurse came to replace Alziette and Ranier, another of her sister’s favoured servants. The noise of the woman dragging the cracked wooden pallet out from under the bed woke Alaïs. She heard a soft whump as the nurse lowered herself down on to the lumpy mattress, the weight of her body pushing the air out from between the dry straw stuffing. Within moments, the grunts and laboured snoring, wheezing and snuffling from the foot of the bed announced she was asleep.
Alaïs was suddenly wide awake. Her head was full of her father’s last instruction to her. To keep safe the labyrinth board. She eased herself up into a sitting position and looked among the fragments of material and candles.
The board was no longer there.
Careful not to wake the nurse, Alaïs tugged open the door of the bedside table. Its hinge was stiff from lack of use and it creaked as she eased it open. Alaïs ran her fingers around the edge of the bed, in case the board had slipped between the mattress and wooden frame of her bed. It was not there either.
Res. Nothing.
She didn’t like the way her thoughts were tending. Her father had dismissed her suggestion that his identity had been discovered, but was he right? Both the merel and the board had gone.
Alaïs swung her legs over the bed and tiptoed across the room to her sewing chair. She needed to be sure. Her cloak was draped over the back. Someone had tried to clean it, but the red embroidered hem was caked with mud, obscuring the stitching in places. It smelled of the yard or the stables, acrid and sour. Her hands came up empty, as she knew they would. Her purse was gone, the merel with it.
Events were moving too fast. Suddenly, the old familiar shadows seemed full of menace. She felt threats all around, even in the grunts coming from the foot of the bed.
What if my attackers are still in the Château? What if they come back for me?
Alaïs quickly got dressed, picked up the calèlh and adjusted the flame. The thought of crossing the dark courtyard alone frightened her, but she couldn’t sit in her chamber, just waiting for something to happen.
Coratge. Courage.
Alaïs ran across the Cour d’Honneur to the Tour Pinte, shielding the guttering flame with her hand. She had to find François.
She opened the door a fraction and called his name into the darkness. There was no answer. She slipped inside.
‘François,’ she whispered again.
The lamp cast a pale yellow glow, enough to see that there was someone lying on the pallet at the foot of her father’s bed.
Putting the lamp on the ground, Alaïs bent down and touched him lightly on the shoulder. Straight away she snapped her arm back as if her fingers had been burned. It felt wrong.
‘François?’
Still no reply. Alaïs grasped the rough edge of the blanket, counted to three, then ripped it back.
Underneath was a pile of old clothes and furs, carefully arranged to look like a sleeping figure. She felt dizzy with relief, although puzzled.
In the corridor outside a noise caught her attention. Alaïs snatched up the lamp and extinguished the flame, then tucked herself in the shadows behind the bed.
She heard the door creak open. The intruder hesitated, perhaps smelling the oil from the lamp, perhaps noticing the disarranged blankets. He drew his knife from its sheath.
‘Who’s there?’ he said. ‘Show yourself.’
‘François,’ said Alaïs with relief, stepping out from behind the curtains. ‘It’s me. You can put your weapon away.’
He looked more startled than she felt.
‘Dame, forgive me. I didn’t realise.’
She looked at him with interest. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d been running. ‘The fault is mine, but where have you been at this hour?’ she asked.
‘I — ’
A woman, she supposed, although why he should be so embarrassed about it, she could not fathom. She took pity on him.
‘In fact, François, it is of no matter. I’m here because you are the only person I trust to tell me what happened to me.’
The colour drained from his face. ‘I know nothing, Dame,’ he said quickly in a strangled voice.
‘Come, you must have heard rumours, kitchen gossip, surely?’
‘Very little.’
‘Well, let us try to construct the story together,’ she said, mystified by his attitude. ‘I remember walking back from my father’s chamber, after you had summoned me to him. Then two men came upon me. I woke to find myself in the orchard, near a stream. It was early in the day. When next I woke, it was to find myself in my own chambers.’
‘Would you know the men again, Dame?’
Alaïs looked sharply at him. ‘No. It was dark and it all happened too quickly.’
‘Was anything taken?’
She hesitated. ‘Nothing of value,’ she said, uneasy in the lie. ‘Then I know that Alziette Baichère raised the alarm. I heard her boasting about it earlier, although I cannot for the life of me understand how she came to be sitting with me. Why not Rixende? Or any other of my women?’
‘It was on Dame Oriane’s orders, Dame. She has taken personal charge of your care.’
‘Did not people remark upon her concern?’ she said. It was entirely out of character. ‘My sister is not known for such . . . skills.’
François nodded. ‘But she was most insistent, Dame.’
Alaïs shook her head. The faintest recollection sparked in her mind. A fleeting memory of being enclosed within a small space, stone not wood, the acrid stench of urine and animals and neglect. The more she tried to chase the memory down, the further it slipped away from her.
She brought herself back to the matter in hand.
‘I presume my father has departed for Montpelhièr, François.’
He nodded. ‘Two days past, Dame.’
‘It is Wednesday,’ she murmured, aghast. She had lost two days. She frowned. ‘When they left, François, did my father not question why I was not there to bid him farewell?’
‘He did, Dame, but . . . he forbade me wake you.’
This makes no sense. ‘But what of my husband? Did Guilhem not say I never returned to our chamber that night?’
‘I believe Chevalier du Mas spent the early part of the night at the forge, Dame, then attended the service of blessing with Viscount Trencavel in the chapel. He seemed as surprised by your absence as Intendant Pelletier, and besides . . .’
He broke off.
‘Go on. Say what is in your mind, François. I will not blame you.’
‘With your leave, Dame, I think Chevalier du Mas would not wish to appear ignorant of your whereabouts before your father.’
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Alaïs knew he was right. At present the ill-feeling between her husband and father was worse than ever. Alaïs tightened her lips, not wishing to betray her agreement.
‘But they were taking such a risk,’ she said, returning to the attack. ‘To carry out such an assault on me in the heart of the Château Comtal was madness enough. To compound their felony by taking me captive . . . How could they have hoped to get away with it?’
She pulled herself up short, realising what she had said.
‘Everybody was much occupied, Dame. The curfew was not set. So although the Western Gate was closed, the Eastern Gate stood open all night. It would have been easy for two men to transport you between them, provided your face, your clothing, were hidden. There were many ladies . . . women, I mean, of the sort . . .’
Alaïs stifled a grin. ‘Thank you, François. I quite understand your point.’
The smile faded from her face. She needed to think, decide what she should do next. She was more confused than ever. And her ignorance of why things had happened, in the manner they had, compounded her fear. It is hard to act against a faceless enemy.
‘It would be well to circulate it that I can remember nothing of the attack, François,’ she said after a while. ‘That way if my assailants remain within the Château, they will have no need to feel threatened.’
The thought of making the same journey back across the courtyard chilled her soul. Besides, she would not sleep under the eyes of Oriane’s nurse. Alaïs had no doubt she was set to spy on her and report to her sister.
‘I will rest here for what remains of the night,’ she added.
To her surprise, François looked horrified. ‘But, Dame, it is not seemly for you — ’
‘I’m sorry to put you from your bed,’ she said, softening her command with a smile, ‘but my sleeping companion in my chamber is not to my liking.’ An impassive, shuttered look descended over his face. ‘But if you could stay close by, François, in case I have further need of you, I would be grateful.’
He did not return her smile. ‘As you wish, Dame.’
Alaïs stared at him for a moment, then decided she was reading too much into his manner. She asked him to light the lamp, then she dismissed him.
As soon as François had gone, Alaïs curled up in the centre of her father’s bed. Alone again, the pain of Guilhem’s absence returned like a dull ache. She tried to summon his face to her mind, his eyes, the line of his jaw, but his features blurred and would not stay fixed. Alaïs knew this inability to find his image in her mind was borne of anger. Over and over, she reminded herself Guilhem had been only fulfilling his responsibilities as a chevalier. He had not acted wrongly or falsely. In fact, he had acted appropriately. On the eve of so important a mission, his duty was to his liege lord and to those making the journey with him, not to his wife. Yet, however many times Alaïs told herself this, she could not quieten the voices in her head. Whatever she said made no difference to what she felt. That when she’d had need of Guilhem’s protection, he had failed her. Unjust as it was, she blamed Guilhem.
If her absence had been discovered at first light, then the men might have been caught.
And my father would not have left thinking ill of me.
CHAPTER 20
In a deserted farm outside Aniane, in the flat, fertile lands to the west of Montpellier, an elderly Cathar parfait and his eight credentes, believers, crouched in the corner of a barn, behind a collection of old harnesses for oxen and mules.
One of the men was badly wounded. Grey and pink flesh flopped open around the white splintered bones that had been his face. His eye had been dislodged from its socket by the force of the kick that had shattered his cheek. Blood congealed around the gaping hole. His friends had refused to leave him when the house in which they had gathered to pray had been attacked by a small, renegade group of soldiers that had broken away from the French army.
But he had slowed them down and lost them the advantage of knowing the land. All day the Crusaders had hunted them. Night had not saved them and now they were trapped. The Cathars could hear them shouting in the courtyard, the sound of dry wood catching light. They were preparing a pyre.
The parfait knew they were facing the end. There would be no mercy from men such as this, driven by hatred and ignorance and bigotry. There had never been an army the like of it on Christian soil. The parfait would not have believed it had he not seen it with his own eyes. He’d been travelling south, on a parallel course with the Host. He had seen the huge and unwieldy barges floating down the river Rhone, carrying equipment and supplies, as well as wooden chests ringed with bands of steel that contained precious holy relics to bless the expedition. The hooves of thousands of animals and men riding alongside created a giant cloud of dust, which floated above the Host.
From the start, townspeople and villagers had shut their gates, watching from behind their walls and praying that the army would pass them by. Stories of increasing violence and horror circulated. There were reports of farms being burned, reprisals for farmers who had refused to allow the soldiers to pillage their land. Cathar believers, denounced as heretics, had been burned at the stake in Puylaroque. The entire Jewish community of Montélimar, men, women and children, had been put to the sword and their bleeding heads mounted on spikes outside the city walls, carrion for the crows.
In Saint-Paul de Trois Châteaux, a parfait was crucified by a small band of Gascon routiers. They tied him to a makeshift cross made from two pieces of wood lashed together with rope and hammered nails through his hands. The weight of his body dragged him down, but he still would not recant or apostatise his faith. In the end, bored with the slow death, the soldiers disembowelled him and left him to rot.
These and other acts of barbarism were either denied by the Abbott of Citeaux and the French barons or else disclaimed as the work of a few renegades. But as he crouched in the dark, the parfait knew that the words of lords, priests and papal legates counted for nothing out here. He could smell the bloodlust on the breath of the men who had hunted them down to this small corner of the Devil’s Earthly creation.
He recognised Evil.
All he could do now was try to save the souls of his believers so they could look upon the face of God. Their passing from this world into the next would not be gentle.
The wounded man was still conscious. He whimpered softly, but a final stillness had come over him and his skin was tinged with the greyness of death. The parfait laid his hands upon the man’s head as he administered the last rites of their religion and spoke the words of the consolament.
The remaining believers joined hands in a circle and began to pray.
‘Holy Father, just God of good spirits, Thou who are never deceived, who dost never lie or doubt, grant us to know . . .’
The soldiers were kicking against the door now, laughing, jeering. It would not be long before they found them. The youngest of the women, no more than fourteen years old, began to cry. The tears ran hopelessly, silently, down her cheeks.
‘. . . grant us to know what Thou knowest, to love what Thou dost love; for we are not of this world, and this world is not of us, and we fear lest we meet death in this realm of an alien god.’
The parfait raised his voice as the horizontal beam holding the door shut fractured in two. Splinters of wood, as sharp as arrowheads, exploded into the barn as the men burst in. Lit by the orange glow of the fire burning in the courtyard, he could see their eyes were glazed and inhuman. He counted ten of them, each with a sword.
His eyes went to the commander who followed them in. A tall man, with a pale thin face and expressionless eyes, as calm and controlled as his men were hot and ill-disciplined. He had an air of cruel authority about him, a man used to being obeyed.
On his orders, the fugitives were dragged from their hiding place. He lifted his arm and thrust his blade into the parfait’s chest. For an instant, he held his gaze. The Frenchman’s flint grey eyes were stiff with contempt. He raised his arm a second time and plunged his sword into the top of the old man’s skull, splattering red pulp and grey brains into the straw.
With their priest murdered, panic broke out. The others tried to run, but the ground was already slippery with blood. A soldier grabbed a woman by her hair and thrust his sword into her back. Her father tried to pull him off, but the soldier swung round and sliced him across the belly. His eyes opened wide in shock as the soldier twisted the knife, then pushed the skewered body off the blade with his foot.
The youngest soldier turned away and vomited into the straw.
Within minutes all the men lay dead, their bodies strewn about the barn. The captain ordered his men to take the two older women outside. The girl he kept behind, the puking boy too. He needed to harden up.
She backed away from him, her eyes alive with fear. He smiled. He was in no hurry and there was nowhere for her to run. He paced around her, like a wolf watching its prey, then, without warning, he struck. In a single movement he grabbed her around the throat and smashed her head back against the wall and ripped her dress open. She was screaming louder now, hitting and kicking out wildly. He drove his fist into her face, relishing the splinter of bone beneath his touch.
Her legs buckled. She sank to her knees, leaving a trail of blood down the wood. He bent over and ripped her shift from her body, splitting the material from top to bottom in a single tear. She whimpered as he pulled her skirts up to her waist.
‘They must not be allowed to breed and bring others like themselves into the world,’ he said in a cold voice, drawing his knife from its sheath.
He did not intend to pollute his flesh by touching the heretic. Grasping the blade, he plunged the hilt deep inside the girl’s stomach. With all the hate he felt for her kind, he drove the knife into her again and again, until her body lay motionless before him. As a final act of desecration, he rolled her over on to her front and, with two deep sweeps of his knife, carved the sign of the cross on her naked back. Pearls of blood, like rubies, sprang up on her white skin.
‘That should serve as a lesson for any others who pass this way,’ he said calmly. ‘Now, get rid of it.’
Wiping his blade on her torn dress, he straightened up.
The boy was sobbing. His clothes were stained with vomit and blood. He tried to do what his captain commanded, but he was too slow.
He grabbed the boy by the throat. ‘I said, get rid of it. Quick. If you don’t want to join them.’ He kicked the boy in the small of his back, leaving a footprint of blood, dust and dirt on his tunic. A soldier with a weak stomach was no use to him.
The makeshift pyre in the middle of the farmyard was burning fiercely, fanned by the hot night winds that swept up from the Mediterranean Sea.
The soldiers were standing well back, their hands at their faces to shield themselves from the heat. Their horses, tethered by the gate, were stamping with agitated hooves. The stench of death was in their nostrils, making them nervous.
The women had been stripped and made to kneel on the ground in front of their captors, their feet tied and their hands bound tightly behind their back. Their faces, scratched breasts and bare shoulders showed marks of their ill use, but they were silent. Somebody gasped, as the girl’s corpse was thrown down in front of them.
The captain walked towards the fire. He was bored now, restless to be gone. Killing heretics was not the reason he had taken the Cross. This brutal expedition was a gift to his men. They needed to be kept occupied, to keep their skills sharp and to stop them turning on each other.
The night sky was filled with white stars around a full moon. He realised it must be past midnight, perhaps later. He’d intended to be back long before now, in case word came.
‘Shall we give them to the fire, my lord?’
With a sudden, single stroke, he drew his sword and severed the head of the nearest woman. Blood pumped from a vein in her neck, splashing his legs and feet. The skull fell to the ground with a soft thud. He kicked her still twitching body until it fell forward into the dirt.
‘Kill the rest of these heretic bitches, then burn the bodies, the barn too. We’ve delayed long enough.’