Stigmata (23 page)

‘She’s alive, Renaut! I will not give up on this now.’

Renaut shook his head.

‘You have more to say on this subject?’

‘I am your squire and liegeman. Where you say “follow”, I will go.’

‘Tomorrow we will find the girl, then we will leave this accursed place.’

Renaut did not answer; he just stared gloomily into the fire.

Philip left him there. One more piece of bad news to pass on, he thought, then I shall find myself a patch of soft ground and try to sleep. He found Loup tucked under Guilhemeta’s arm,
sucking his thumb, almost asleep. She was holding him against her breast and stroking his hair. He could have been hers, he thought, and she could be his. He crouched down in front of them. Loup
opened one sleepy eye.

‘A bad business today,’ he said.

Loup sat up. ‘No! I liked it! You smashed them! They ran away like Mohammedans!’

‘Don’t talk about things you know nothing about, boy. What happened here may have made you excited for the moment, but it will have bad consequences for us if they come back with the
rest of their army. Now listen, these villagers are headed into the forest at first light. They are going to a place called Montaillet, a fortress where they say they will be protected. You are to
go with them.’

‘Go with them? But why? No, I want to stay with you.’

‘That is impossible. This way you and the woman here will be safe, you may see out the summer in Montaillet. By winter this will be over. The Count of Toulouse and the King of Aragon will
come with their armies and drive out these so-called crusaders.’

‘You are abandoning us?’

‘I am ensuring your safety. You cannot come with me. I have always made that clear to you.’

The boy’s lip curled. ‘I thought you were my friend.’

‘I am your friend, I am just not your father.’

He walked away, found a grassy space beneath a stunted oak near the fire and wrapped himself inside his cloak. He tried to sleep.

But sleep would not come. He could not stop thinking about his adversary at the ford, the one with the red beard. Those men would not forget this skirmish and this insult. They would be
back.

S
IMON JOINED
F
ATHER
Ortiz under the trees and together they knelt in prayer. The rest of the
soldiers joined them to sing the
Veni Creator Spiritus
and ask for God’s blessing on their holy endeavour.

The haze that would later disperse under the hot sunshine still threaded between the pine and chestnut trees, hiding the distant blue peaks of the Pyrenees.

They were less than a day’s ride from Carcassonne. The Host had left nothing in its wake; everything on the way was burned or uprooted, and every hamlet and town was empty. They did not
know if it was the crusaders or the fleeing Trencavel soldiers who had poisoned the wells and left animals to rot in the sun.

The siege of the city must be under way. The sky had turned red the night before, and this morning a plume of black smoke smudged the sky just beyond the horizon. Thunder rolled around a blue
sky. Simon had asked Father Ortiz what it was.

The siege engines, the friar had said.

He remembered his boyhood there, hours spent wrestling with his brothers in the courtyard of their father’s warehouse. It brought an unexpected pang. Would he even recognize any of them
now, or his father? No, he decided, I wouldn’t. The family I had is dead to me now. The Church is all I have.

As they rose from their prayers they saw riders approach from out of the rising sun. Simon put hand to his eyes and saw the three blue eagles of Gilles’s device. Even an untrained eye like
his could see straight away that there was something wrong; the formation was ragged and several of the chevaliers were slumped in their saddles, not upright in the stance customary to a knight or
equerry.

Gilles de Soissons burst from his tent to greet them. Hugues de Breton slid from the saddle, and took just one step forward before he slumped to one knee. His hair and his beard were matted with
blood. As he lowered his head to the baron Simon saw there was a gash from his temple to his crown. His helmet, which he held under one arm, had been half stove in. Whoever had struck him had all
but taken his head off.

Gilles’s hands closed into fists at his side. ‘Sir Hugues. You met with some difficulty, it seems?’

‘We found the heretics from Saint-Ybars easily enough, seigneur. We were applying God’s holy justice when we were foully ambushed. They had superior numbers and slaughtered four of
us before we knew that they were on us.’

‘Trencavel’s men?’

No, my lord. They were northerners, like us. Their shields had four red crowns.’

Gilles looked up to heaven, as if seeking explanation for this thwarting of his plans from God Himself, and then glared at Father Ortiz and Simon as if they also shared responsibility for this
setback. ‘How could this happen?’ When they did not answer, he rounded again on Hugues. ‘How many knights did they have?’

‘Two score at the most.’

‘You are sure this baron of theirs is a northerner?’

‘I have no doubt.’

Only then did Gilles seem to notice the gash on his sergeant’s scalp. ‘You are wounded,’ he said.

‘Pay no heed to it, seigneur. Give me the men and I will go back and settle our account with these foul traitors.’

Father Ortiz stepped forward. ‘Seigneur, enough of this. We have been distracted enough from our true aim. We should join the Host at Carcassonne.’

‘Is that your spiritual direction? I do not follow your reasoning.’

‘The Host needs us at the walls of Carcassonne.’

‘Do they? To what purpose? We are here to rid the Pays d’Oc of the enemies of Christ, is that not so? It seems to me that it is easier to send a heretic to eternal flames when he has
not the benefit of a stout wall to hide behind. The Devil-fuckers who attacked my soldiers have sided with the heretics so they must be heretics themselves and they shall reap the reward for their
foul belief. This insult to our honour will not stand, gentlemen!’ He turned back to Hugues. ‘Wash your wounds and take the rest of my chevaliers and find these traitors to
God.’

‘But, seigneur, we cannot delay any longer!’ Father Ortiz protested. ‘There is nothing to eat here and the wells have all been poisoned. The army needs us elsewhere.’

‘And the army shall have us all, in spirit and body, in due time. Sir Hugues will join us at Carcassonne after he has enacted God’s vengeance.’

‘It seems to me we are continually being diverted from God’s holy purpose.’

‘On the contrary, we pursue it relentlessly.’

‘But if Hugues takes our knights and chevaliers we will be left with just foot soldiers and equerries!’

Gilles stamped his foot, petulant as a child. His face flushed to pink, livid against the whiteness of his hair and eyebrows. ‘You will not harangue me, Father Ortiz! Neither shall you
lecture me on my duty or my tactics!’ They stood nose to nose. Simon held his breath.

Gilles turned to Simon. ‘And you, do you have anything to add?’

‘In this, I stand with Father Ortiz. We can only advise you on your spiritual duty, which I too would remind you lies at Carcassonne, with the Host.’

‘Thank you for your counsel.’ Gilles turned back to Hugues. ‘Avenge our dead and then honour us with your presence at Carcassonne, as soon as you may. Three days. No
more.’

Hugues grinned. ‘Thank you, seigneur,’ he said, dragged the wounded from their saddles and told the rest to be ready to ride again within the hour.

T
HEY SKIRTED
S
AINT
-Y
BARS
on the way back down the mountain. Black ravens
and vultures circled high over the village. The war was going well at least for the carrion crows.

Philip pushed his men and the horses as hard as they would go.

As he rode he tried to calculate how many days since they had left Vercy, how long it might yet be before he saw its familiar
donjon
once more. Time was slipping through the hourglass. He
prayed to a God who had so far proved faithless:
Give me enough hours to save him.
We are so close, let me find her and let her be the miracle I am owed.

But when they crossed the stream below the
castrum
, he saw a lone rider on the far bank, slumped beneath a tree. The man’s horse cropped the meadow, exhausted; she had been ridden
hard, and there were lines of white foam on her withers and round her jaws. He recognized the four red crowns embroidered on to the horse’s underblanket, and as they drew closer he recognized
the young man that stood up to meet them, an equerry from his household by the name of Jean-Pierre Gaignac.

His face and clothes were splashed with mud from his wild ride. This could mean only one thing. Philip held himself straighter in the saddle, tensed his shoulders ready to receive the blow.

Jean-Pierre fell to one knee.

‘How did you find us?’ Philip said.

‘I rode to Narbonne, asked the watchmen at the gate the way to Saint-Ybars, for my mistress told me this was where you were headed. The man told me to follow the Roman road, that it would
lead me here.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘An hour, no more. I despaired of finding you, but was too exhausted to ride on until I had rested.’

‘God has been watching over you. A rider alone in this godforsaken place . . .’ He could think of no further questions and Jean-Pierre was not eager to impart his message, as if by
delaying the moment it might help his son live a little longer.

‘Was it your mistress who sent you then?’

‘Indeed, seigneur. I have come at the express command of the lady Giselle.’

Renaut walked his horse alongside him and they exchanged glances. What was the look in his eyes? Sorrow, of course, but relief too perhaps. It was over; now they could go home.

‘What is your news?’

Jean-Pierre stared at the ground. ‘I bring words of solace and sympathy from the lady Giselle. Your son is dead. She asks that you return swiftly to Vercy to console her and your household
in their shared grief.’

Philip slid from his horse. Jean-Pierre flinched, perhaps wondering how the seigneur might react to this news, if he might be disposed to punish the messenger for his message. But Philip merely
handed Leyla’s reins to Renaut and walked into the forest without another word.

He did not know where he was going, he knew only that he wished to walk and that he wished to be alone. He heard Renaut call after him but he ignored him.

He plunged off the path into the undergrowth. He startled a hart; the young deer was so close he might have reached out and stroked its hide. It stared back at him with bright black eyes before
darting away into the undergrowth.

He came upon the ruins of an ancient wall. A few steps further on and there was another. The Visigoths had built their towns and cities here; this was an old land, with old ghosts. Who thought
to find them still here, in the brambles? The old Merovingian kings had come this way too, and then the Saracen for a time; all these old bones lay underfoot, the bloodless dead who succoured the
olives and the grapes and the figs.

I should join them, soon. Why not? Everything I held precious is gone.

He heard the caw of a black crow.

I should weep now. Why can I not weep? Where are the tears I have held dammed all these months?

He slumped to his haunches, his fingers exploring the cracks of the crumbling bricks under the forest mould.

What should I do now? There is nothing left but to go home.

But what was home, now? A cold and smoky castle in a dank forest, a wife he did not care for, the grave of a son beside his mother in a crypt. Ghosts slipped beyond the green shadows of the
leaves.

Perhaps I shall sit here for ever. Perhaps I shall not have the strength to go home.

He reached into his tunic, pulled out the silver comb that he had carried with him all the way from Vercy. If he held it close to his nose he could still smell her hair.

What must I do to tease from my faithless gods some sliver of grace, some lapse in their glowering piety, so that I might find some chink of hope in the darkness of this blue morning?

He heard Renaut calling his name. He steeled himself to rise and then walked back to the clearing, leaving the ghosts who had built the wall to their ancient sleep. He found his way through the
trees by following the sound of Renaut’s voice, wished that there might be some other voice that would likewise summon his soul away from the air and the light, towards the green dreaming of
the dead, if only they would show him the way.

T
HERE WAS JUST
one duty yet weighing on him, and that was to get his men safely back to Vercy. Nothing else mattered to him
now. They were almost out of the foothills; he could even see the Roman road in the distance. Once they reached Narbonne, it would be a clear road north to Burgundy and home.

It was instinct that warned him first, a prickling of the small hairs on the back of his neck. He saw some rooks pecking at a heap of yellow dung on the grass, and when he got down from the
saddle he found the droppings were still warm. Horses had recently passed this way. He knew then that they were in the jaws of a trap.

‘Put your helmets on,’ he shouted. ‘Draw your swords.’

The words were barely out of his mouth when the first bolts hissed through the air, followed by the shrieks of men and of horses. Several of his soldiers fell and were trampled under the hooves
as the horses panicked. Their riders circled, searching the hills for their hidden enemy.

Then they saw them well enough.

They swooped down from the trees above them, scores of them from either side in a pincer action. He looked for the pennants, saw three royal-blue eagles on their standards and livery. Redbeard
had come back, as he knew he would.

There were too many of them to fight. They would have to ride or die. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted.