It was difficult to tell how many soldiers there had been during the assault because their leader immediately sent some of them off to pursue Aelith. Of the seven who were left when the others rode away, the torchlight showed rough, country faces and tunics bearing what looked like an ecclesiastical blazon. They addressed their leader, who, like them, spoke with a strong Occitan accent as Arnaud.
Adelia asked again and again where they were to be taken and why, but received no more reply than did Ulf’s threats that Henry II would spill their captors’ guts when they got there—the men didn’t understand them anyway
Arnaud gave a signal, the ropes around the prisoners’ hands tightened as the mules moved forward, and the march began.
The mountains were too rough even for mules to go at anything except walking pace, but every pull on the rope sent pain through Adelia’s broken collarbone. Also, she’d lost a shoe in the struggle and her right foot was being pierced by thorns.
An occasional reassuring whiff told her that Ward was sticking, unnoticed, to her heels. Yet who was there to follow the scent? Rowley had gone to Carcassonne.
“Are we going to Carcassonne?” she asked.
Nobody answered her; Arnaud had ordered silence.
Betrayed. Somebody had told the authorities where Ermengarde and Aelith were staying. It could have been anybody, a peasant looking for reward, a Cathar hater. And he or she had entangled the rest of them in the betrayal.
Whoever the mercenaries were, they knew these mountains well; they followed wide tracks mostly, but now and then diverged from them so that the prisoners’ legs were torn by prickly brush that sent up the smell of thyme and fennel as they went.
The sound of hoofbeats announced the arrival of the men who’d gone hunting the escapee. “Lost her,” Arnaud was told. Ermengarde uttered a shout of triumph and was hit across the mouth for it.
Progress became harder when the mercenaries threw away their spent torches and proceeded by moonlight.
Through it all, and despite more punches because she wouldn’t keep quiet, Ermengarde sent up long and confident Cathar prayers.
Adelia’s eyes were on Boggart, tied to the mule beside hers. When the going became too rough and the girl fell, Adelia shouted at its rider: “Damn you, mind that lady, she’s expecting a baby” To her surprise, the man dismounted and heaved Boggart onto the mule in his stead. Arnaud, who was in the lead, didn’t notice.
It was impossible to calculate in which direction they were going or even to keep track of time; everything reduced to the necessity not to stumble, to stay on one’s feet, not to surrender to thirst and fear.
When would it be day? When would this stop?
Suddenly Arnaud shouted that he was going ahead “to tell ’em we’re coming” and kicked his mule into a trot to disappear down a wide track into the darkness. After he’d gone, the man who’d shown care for Boggart proved his humanity once more by ordering a halt so that the captives could be given a drink. The water was warm and stale and the leather on the flasks it came in smelled foul but, oh, it was beautiful.
The march began again.
At last the mountains ahead became jagged shapes against a dim reflection of a dawn still down over the horizon. They funneled down on three sides of what was, so much as could be seen of it, a sizable town.
Figères? No. Rowley had said that Figères was little more than a village.
A hope reared that it was Carcassonne, one of Languedoc’s major cities, where Rowley was going. And yet she’d had the idea that Carcassonne was built on a plain.
She heard Ermengarde say, “Aveyron,” as if something had been extinguished in her, and one of the men laughed.
It was just waking up as they reached its outskirts. A woman emerging from one of the houses to empty a chamber pot shouted at her family to come and see. Shutters were flung back; questions, dogs, and children accompanied the prisoners up a winding, cobbled track toward a square formed by buildings of considerable size. Adelia glimpsed a tall tower and cupolas like graceful saucepan lids outlined against the rising sun.
Up and up into a square, where Boggart was lifted from her mule and the ropes binding the prisoners’ hands were replaced by manacles. They were ushered into a magnificent, arcaded hall, a where a line of liveried servants carrying food dishes into a room on the right paused to stare at the prisoners and were commanded to be about their business by a tap from the staff of a heavily robed steward. A line of people in a gallery above their heads goggled down at them.
In the middle of the hall, a man in the cassock of a priest sat at a table, a scribe beside him. There was an oath and a scuffle and, looking back, Adelia saw that one of the riders had taken Ward by the scruff of his neck and thrown him outside the doors that were then closed against him.
Ermengarde had recovered her courage. Pushed in front of the table, she addressed the priest politely in Latin: “Ave, Gerhardt,” and then, louder, in Occitan: “Ara roda l’abelha.” (“That bee is buzzing round again.”)
There was a laugh, quickly suppressed, that caused an echo making it impossible to tell where it had come from.
“Father Gerhardt to you, bitch,” the priest said in Latin.
“My father is in heaven. Are we to dispute again? Splendid.”
Father Gerhardt addressed his scribe. “Ermengarde of Montauban, a self-confessed Cathar. Write it down.” He raised his head. “Or have you repented, woman?”
“I repent of nothing.”
“You are charged with preaching heresy throughout this region in defiance of the edicts issued by His Holiness Pope Alexander the Third. The punishment is death by burning.”
“I do not recognize such edicts, nor your Satanic Pope. I have preached only true Christianity”
“We have the statements of witnesses.” Father Gerhardt pointed at a roll on his table.”
“Splendid.”
Stop it, stop it, Adelia wanted to shout at her. The statement of an ignorant man as he’d set fire to Ermengarde’s cottage—Like you fuching Cathars—she’d taken to be the threat of a bully; now it was being translated into something else. Here, they were enclosed in the efficiency of a powerful machine, in front of them was a man about serious business, a stone-faced man whose eyes—the only mobile thing about him—had flames in them.
They can’t, she thought. Not us. Henry’s anger would be terrible—don’t they know that? They must know.
But around her were the indifferent mountains of a landscape where the Plantagenet writ did not run. She’d wandered into somebody else’s story, not hers. It was a mistake, she was going to die by mistake. She willed Ermengarde to cower, plead, whisper repentance, instead of shouting for her own execution—and theirs.
One by one they were made to stand before their inquisitor and told to give their names, place of birth, and occupation.
Their explanations were cut short: “You are Cathars, you were found consorting with Cathars.”
For all that she was shaking, Adelia tried for indignation when her turn came. “It is disgraceful that we are treated like this. Who are you? Where is this place?”
“You are in the palace of the Bishop of Aveyron.” The priest had the thin, protuberant features of a dog and an expression that suggested he would be better for going muzzled.
“Then inform your bishop that we are under the protection of the Bishop of Winchester, who is with Princess Joanna at Figères, and the Bishop of Saint Albans of England, whom you can find at Carcassonne. We are servants of Henry Plantagenet, and we have been traveling with his daughter until ...”
“You are Cathars, you were found consorting with Cathars.” It was a mantra.
Mansur’s questioning was briefest of all: who he was or what he was doing in Languedoc was of no interest—his color and robes were those of a self-confessed, if different, heretic; he could burn with the rest.
WHEN HE’D FINISHED his interrogation, Father Gerhardt took up his papers, left the hall for the palace’s
dining room, and passed through it to the breakfast room, where a table winked with crystal glass and gold plate.
Above, a flat ceiling glowed with Bible scenes painted by a master; below, the morning robe of the man at the table was no less inspired with autumn color and the skill of embroideresses.
The Bishop of Aveyron, a plump man with clever eyes, took one more honeyed fig, wiped his fingers on the linen napkin tucked into his neck, and looked up. “So the information was exact?”
“In every detail, my lord. I doubt we’d have found her hideout without it. Unfortunately, she managed to delay the men’s entry long enough for the daughter to escape. I’ve ordered a hunt for her.”
His bishop waved a hand in dismissal. “Do we care about the daughter? Ermengarde is the one we wanted.”
“And now we have her.”
For a moment these two very different men shared the same, searing memory—a black-clad woman standing in the town square making fools of them both: “Leave me alone, old men. Abandon either your luxury or your preaching.”
The townspeople had laughed at them. Them.
“Also,” said Father Gerhardt, “we have written proof against her. Our men searched the hovel before setting fire to it. There was a gospel written in the langue d’oc.”
The bishop shook his head sadly: “Gerhardt, Gerhardt, is there no end to Cathar evil? Where should we poor Latinate clergy be if the common herd were able to listen to the holy word in their own language?” He stretched out his hand to take one of the soft, white rolls nestling in a basket that his steward had just put in front of him. “You and I would have to go begging our bread.”
Gerhardt was put out; he never knew when his bishop was joking.
“A joke,” the bishop explained, seeing him puzzled. That was the trouble with priests who brought their zeal straight from the Vatican, no humor.
“Yes, my lord. And the foreigners captured with Ermengarde? Our bargain with the informant was to ensure that they suffer the same punishment, but I have to tell you”—Gerhardt said this with reluctance—“they persist in their story that they are all servants of Henry Plantagenet.”
“And they are? Tell me again.”
Father Gerhardt consulted his list. “A youth purporting to be a pilgrim—the cross he carried was of interest to our informant, if you remember, and as it was of no account our men let him have it. A female servant who is pregnant ...”
The bishop stopped using his butter knife in order to wave it. “Pregnancy does not absolve her. Root and branch, Gerhardt, root and branch. Remember that.”
“Yes, my lord. Then there is a mercenary speaking a language nobody can understand. Also a Saracen, and a woman who interprets for him.” Gerhardt looked up. “She is the woman our informant is eager to have destroyed—if the others die with her, so be it. Surely no Christian king would inflict wharf rats like that on his daughter?”
The bishop shrugged. “I wouldn’t put it past this one from what I’ve heard, not Henry Yes, I have no doubt they are who they say they are.”
Father Gerhardt was taken aback, not so much by fact, but that his bishop was making no bones about it. “Yet do we need to worry about his opinion?” he asked. “A priest killer?”
“Ah, but a priest killer who’s done penance for Becket and been accepted back into the fold.” The bishop poured himself another glass of wine while he considered. “I wonder. Can we afford to offend the King of England?”
“If we don’t, we lose a spy who can take us into the center of the king’s web. Moreover”—a flash of Father Gerhardt’s canines showed his happiness at imparting a nugget he’d been hugging—“my lord, I can tell you that the Bishop of Winchester and others in the princess’s party complain that the Saracen and his woman are witches. They say the two have brought bad luck on them. They would not be unhappy to lose them.”
“Witches, eh?” The bishop liked that.
“Yes, my lord. Apparently, the Saracen’s woman has fed a love potion to the other bishop, Rowley of Saint Albans, so that he lusts after her and will hear no word against her.”
“I thought she was supposed to be plain.”
“She is, my lord, which only emphasizes the strength of her magic.”
“A Jezebel,” mused the bishop. “‘And Jezebel was cast down, and the dogs did eat her, and no more of her was found than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.’ A gratifying image, I’ve always found. So wholesale, don’t you think?”
“Indeed, my lord.” Gerhardt refused to be diverted. “Nor does this harlot wear a cross. Both she and the maid are dressed as Cathars. In any case, they’ve spent time with Ermengarde and so will have been infected.”
The bishop smiled. He was fond of the principle of post hoc ergo propter hoc. So useful.
Father Gerhardt raised flailing arms in appeal to Heaven. “When, O Lord, when wilt thou grant us full crusade against this cancer?”
Whenindeed, the bishop thought. Increasingly severe anti-Cathar edicts had been issued by the Vatican for over thirty years without, so far, calling for a crusade against the heretics. Yet crusade was the only option, as the bishop knew; the infection was becoming a plague.
A new order was needed. A man to raise the Holy Cross against the Cathars in the teeth of the Pope, begin God’s righteous slaughter.
Lying in his bed at night, the Bishop of Aveyron sweated into his silk sheets. If it was successful it would take him high, perhaps to the throne of Rome itself. Failure ... ?
Tapping his teeth, the bishop looked up at the depiction of the Garden of Eden on his ceiling. He was particularly fond of it; the artist had let himself go as far as Eve’s naked body was concerned. “This informant, we’re certain of him, are we?” he asked.
“A valuable man, my lord. As I said, he is privy to what passes between the English bishops and their king; he will be in Sicily when Saint Albans arrives after negotiating with Barbarossa and the Lombards. What are a witch and a ragbag of nonentities to set against that?”
But the Bishop of Aveyron’s careful mind had made itself up; he hadn’t got where he was today by being rash.
“Nevertheless, we must be sure. The Plantagenet is soft toward heretics, yet his arm is long and on the end of it there is a hammer. There is no need to anger him at this stage. Feelers, Gerhardt, we shall put out feelers; nothing too definite on either side. All we need to know from the princess’s officials is: If we have found some heretics wandering in the hills and consequently disposed of them, shall they be missed? Will that fit the situation?”
“From what I gather, the answer will be no, my lord.”
“I gather that, too. But hold off until we get it. As for our ‘perfect,’ you may proceed as planned.” He smiled again; this time his priest knew he wasn’t joking. “Bring the town in to witness it.”
“Where do you want the prisoners lodged, my lord? The dungeons?”
The bishop tapped his teeth. “No, let them have a view of what they may expect. Clear out the tower room and put them up there for now. Set trustworthy guards, mind. Sometimes I think the contagion has infected my own palace.”
When Gerhardt had gone, his lord poured himself another glass of the vintage from his vineyard near Carcassonne and sipped it while he engineered a new vision of Ermengarde, his black-clad tauntress, this time tied to a stake with faggots laid around her feet.
He saw himself thrusting a torch into the wood like a penis into her parts and sighed because, alas, that pleasure must be left to the executioner. One day, though, yes, yes, one day, the flames he’d light would consume them all ... men, women, and children.
This really was most excellent wine.
AND SCARRY? He’s been very busy.
As he promised, he led the heretic hunters to the cowshed. He saw Mansur, Rankin, and Ulf go down fighting. He watched the capture of the women up the hill. Then he began looking for something. He found it—lying in one of the mangers where Ulf had left it. A rough, wooden c
ross.
Now, back at Figères, he is levering out some of the nails that hold together a rough-looking cross. He is doing it quietly, so that no sound escapes from the spartan monk’s cell in which he is lodged.
He takes off the crosspiece and applies an eye to the resultant space. What he sees, packed carefully in horsehair, is a sword pommel gleaming with amethysts. Incautiously, he neighs with satisfaction.
There is a call from the cell next door: “Are you unwell, brother? I heard you cry out.”
“I am well, brother, I thank you. I was carried away by the glory of my God.”
“Amen to that. Good night, brother.”
In reinserting the nails by hammering them with his fist so as to make no more noise, he tears his hands, a fact that he only notices because he can smell the blood.
He doesn’t feel pain much anymore, does Scarry. On the other hand, his sense of smell has become excellent, returning him to his days in the forest with Wolf, when they could sniff their quarry through all other conflicting scents, hunt it down, play with it before they killed, and then dance in its split paunch, animal or human.
He puts his bloody hand up to his nose, just to make sure it is there.
With luck and opportunity, he should soon be savoring the odor of a woman’s burning flesh.
ADELIA HAD HER FOOT in Boggart’s lap and was hoping very hard that it hadn’t become infected by the thorns the girl was teasing out of it.
Ulf was pacing up and down, up and down, getting on everybody’s nerves. “There was some other bugger in the cowshed when they got us. He was looking for something while the bastards were tyin’ us up. I reckon it was my cross.”
“We know,” Mansur said wearily. “The one comfort is that he will be unaware of what’s inside it.”
Ulf turned on him. “But he did. I keep telling you, he asked for it particular. He knew. And he wasn’t one of them who took us over the mountains, he disappeared once they’d got us down.”
“Didn’t you recognize his voice?”