Stigmata (28 page)

‘A very practical religion, then.’

‘Is it practical that they don’t threaten to burn anyone who does not believe in them? To me, it is only human. My own mother is a
crezen
.’

‘And you?’

‘I love the Madonna, but I respect the
bons òmes
. They are, as their name suggests, good men. And perhaps they are right about the world, I don’t know. Perhaps they
have the answers you are seeking. It is not God who has punished you in the world this way because God cannot reach you. It is the Devil that has done this. Is that your answer?’

One of the
bons òmes –
Fabricia told him his name was Vital
–
took his place behind the altar and began to preach. Though he barely spoke above a whisper his
voice was distinct even to the back of the cavern, where Fabricia and Philip stood. It was the story of paradise; in the beginning, he said, some spirits fell through a hole in heaven down to
earth. God put his foot over the hole but it was too late to stop them falling out. So from that moment until the end of time all the good souls had to work their way back to heaven by becoming
bons òmes
or taking the rites of the
consolamentum
. When there were finally no just men left on the earth then the end of the world would become possible. The sky would fall
down to the earth and the sun and the moon would be consumed by fire and the fire would be consumed by the sea. The earth would become a lake of pitch and sulphur.

When the sermon was over the
crezens
knelt as one and said together: ‘Pray to God for us sinners so that He will make us good Christians and bring us to a good end.’

And Vital raised his hand in blessing: ‘
Dieu vos benesiga.
May God bless you, make good Christians of you and bring you to a good end.’

When it was over Fabricia took his hand. ‘Come,’ she said.

He followed her by the flickering light of the candle, deeper into the mountain. He wondered where she was leading him. The tunnel walls closed in on them. He banged his head on
an overhang and had to crouch over to walk the rest of the way.

He was conscious of the warmth and closeness of her. Perhaps she wants us to be private, he thought. A long time since he had touched a woman; poor Giselle could have assured her of that.

He struggled to keep up, his ribs aching, his breath short. She stopped and waited for him. ‘I am breathless . . . as an . . . old man.’

‘Don’t worry. Soon you will be yourself again and well enough to start killing again.’

‘I do not enjoy . . . killing. The jousts, yes . . . pitting my wits . . . and my arm . . . against another man’s for . . . honour or his . . . horse. But taking a life is not
something . . . I take pleasure in.’

‘Men die whether you take pleasure in it or not. The result is the same.’

‘Sometimes there is no choice. To defend his . . . family or his faith or his . . . lands a man must fight. That . . . is the way of it.’

He felt a draught of warm air on his face and knew they were almost at the end of the tunnel. He wondered what new surprise she had in store for him.

‘A man can find justification for anything. Words can be twisted. The truth cannot.’

She stepped to the side. He hovered for a moment on the edge of an abyss. He gasped in shock, almost went over, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

‘What is . . . this place?’ he said, when he had his breath back.

A narrow band of light shot through the ceiling of the cave from a fissure in the earth above, God’s finger pointing the way to hell, he thought. Below there was only darkness, all the way
down. The light could not penetrate to the bottom of it.

She pointed. He turned around and saw a huge pillar of calcite that had accreted on the very edge of the abyss. Parts of it had fallen away into the pit so that now it formed the shape of a
hammer.

‘The hammer of God,’ she said. ‘Only a few have seen it.’

He took the candle from her, held it above his head so that he might see it better. ‘Why do they . . . call it that?’

‘In the days of the Visigoths they would bring prisoners here and throw them into that hole. I cannot imagine what kind of death that would be. But that is how that rock got its name. The
hammer of God, of course, is death. We are all broken by it in the end. It is the only reality there is, the only time in our lives we know the truth, that we are born to die. The rest is the
Devil’s dream.’

As he turned back to her, she touched his hand lightly with her fingertips. She was so close; through the neck of her robe he glimpsed a pale and ivory shoulder, saw the throb of pulse at her
neck. He imagined the scooped hollow below her collarbone and the soft swelling of her breast.

‘You are of noble blood, Philip of Vercy?’

‘A baron, as I told you.’

‘Then forgive me if I have spoken impudently to you. I have only a workman’s blood in my veins. I am not of your station.’

‘You saved my life. I would allow that you speak to me as you wish.’

‘I do not really think that is possible,’ she said. ‘It is a pity, for I should like to.’

She was so close he could feel her breath on his cheek. She twisted away from him and led the way back down the tunnel, chasing the dying light.

Halfway along she put out a hand and stopped to rest. When she moved on again he saw that she had left a bloody handprint on the limestone.

‘You’re bleeding,’ he said.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Have you injured . . . yourself?’

She sat down on a rock, wincing with pain. ‘I need to stop for a while,’ she said. He crouched down beside her. There were ancient figures crudely painted on the walls. A drop of
cool water splashed on to his neck.

‘What is it? What is wrong?’

‘Hold the candle,’ she said. He took it from her and she peeled off one of her gloves. It was sticky with blood. She held it out to him. ‘Look for yourself.’

Philip had seen such a wound before, in Outremer, when a man had been lanced through the hand by a Saracen spear. But this wound was clean and had a fragrance to it, like fresh-cut lavender. He
bent closer to examine it, but at that moment a draught blew out the candle.

‘Who did this to you?’

‘No one.’

‘You should have it properly bound.’

‘It will make no difference.’ She replaced her glove. ‘There is the same wound on my other hand and on both my feet.’

‘Then how did you come by them?’

‘I don’t know. They started as sores and grew bigger each day.’

‘These are the wounds of the cross.’

‘Yes.’

She stood up and started to limp back towards the main cave. ‘Life is mysterious, seigneur. It is why I am not a
crezen.
The
bons òmes
are good men, but they say they
know the answers to everything and I do not see how they can.’

‘We all have to believe in something.’

‘We can believe in whatever we wish, but we don’t
have
to. If you will pardon me, seigneur, it seems that what you wish is not something to believe in, but dominion over life,
even over God Himself. You want Him to do your bidding, just as you wanted Him to save your son.’

‘Was that so unjust?’

‘It is neither just nor unjust, it is only the way things are. I see how you loved your boy. You did all you could, perhaps more than any other man might have done to save him.
You’re a good man. At least, you are when you do not have a sword in your hand.’

They reached the main cave. Fabricia went to tend the sick. Philip slumped down on his haunches, overwhelmed with all he had seen and heard. This cave reminded him of his own life. It seemed to
him that there was a world beneath the one of light and air, a subterranean realm waiting for him to explore, the place where his true answers lay.

Sleepless, he watched the stars swing across the heavens through the mouth of the cave. Fabricia moved among the huddled sick by the light of a single candle. The hum of insects rose and fell in
the forest outside.

Thoughts of God, thoughts of sex; she had awakened something in him he thought was dead, put a brand again to his flesh. He had thought that when he found her she would give him his answers, but
she had instead only posed more questions.

A God helpless to intervene was at least comprehensible, and his life then made a kind of sense. Was that the answer he had been seeking? It surely seemed to be the Devil’s world, no
matter what the priests said.

T
HE SKY IN
the west was full of red smoke; the
crosatz
at work. But the Montagne Noir was untouched and on a
windless evening like this, in the stormlight before the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the air was so clear Philip could make out the leaves on the bushes on the far side of the valley. A
tempest was on its way from the north. The afternoon had been oppressively still and as the sun set the first rush of wind was a blessed relief. He heard a roll of thunder.

He followed the path below the smoke-blackened walls that led to the cave. He thought of his son.
I wonder if she could have saved him, had I known about her sooner. I failed him.
He
remembered the way little Renaut looked at him that last morning. He trusted me. I told him everything would be all right and I let him down
.

A thicket of fig trees and brambles concealed the mouth of the cave. Raimon was there, with some of his soldiers. By the looks on their faces they had just returned from a raid. The flanks of
their horses were steaming and streaked with foam.

Raimon grinned when he saw him. ‘Are you still here, Northerner? Have you not tired of our company yet?’

‘I have almost grown accustomed to your soft southern way of life.’

‘Your injuries are healed?’

‘My ribs don’t hurt any more. My ankle sometimes gives way, but otherwise I am as well as I have ever been. What about you, Raimon? You look like you’ve been in a
fight.’

‘We ambushed a party of
crosatz
on the Roman road. They thought they were going home. Well, if they earned a dispensation for heaven by coming here, that’s where they are now.
We did them a favour. I am told heaven is a better place than France.’

‘I certainly hope so.’

‘You heard what happened at Carcassonne? The
crosatz
declared Simon de Montfort the new seigneur in place of Trencavel. Our Viscount was offered safe passage to parlay a truce and
instead they took him prisoner. After that nice little business, the people of the town were forced to surrender and had to leave the city with nothing but their shirts and breeches. I tell you,
Frenchman, this war is not about heresy, it is about looting. Well, this so-called holy Host will be leaving soon and when they do we will throw this upstart de Montfort out on his arse.’

‘When will it be safe for me to go home?’

‘In another hundred years. Until then, you will need an escort. The roads are full of mercenaries, bandits and freebooters. A man alone, even a knight, will not get far without a
bodyguard.’

‘You can provide such an escort?’

‘I cannot spare a man to see you safe down to the creek right now. But I’ll think on it. For now we have to water these horses before the storm spooks them. God speed,
amic
.’

Inside the cave Philip was assaulted by the smell of dung and animals. His eyes smarted from the smoke of the cook fires. Everywhere he looked he saw vacant stares and silent and unsmiling
children. No one here had enough to eat, and none of them knew what tomorrow would bring them.

‘A fine seigneur as yourself,’ a voice said, ‘you must be missing your soft bed and your feather coverlet.’

Philip looked around for whoever had the temerity to speak to him with such disrespect. A man lay on the ground wrapped in a filthy linen sheet. He had the tonsure of a priest. He had an
unctuous smile and Philip disliked him immediately.

‘You’re a priest,’ Philip said.

‘I am. Do you wish to make confession, my son?’ He laughed.

‘These people are all heretics. What are you doing here?’

‘The
crosatz
would have murdered me with the same enthusiasm they butcher a Cathar, just for being in the way. My name is Father Marty. Yours is Philip, and you are a fine gentleman
and knight from Burgundy. You see, I know all about you. We are practically friends. Please, come, sit by me for a while. I should like to talk. It is all I can do these days, talk.’

‘What is the matter with you, priest? Are you sick?’

‘I am dying, Philip of Vercy.’

‘What about the girl? Could she not heal you?’

‘See for yourself,’ he said.

Philip squatted down on his haunches and lifted the sheet. There was a gross canker on the priest’s thigh and it had begun to suppurate. Philip felt his stomach rise.

‘It’s a pretty thing, isn’t it? It will kill me eventually. I can feel it eating me from the inside. She put her hands on me but it didn’t do any good. But I told people
it had and for a time it added to her reputation.’

‘Why would you say such a thing if it were not true?’

Marty shrugged. ‘I wanted people to think she was a sorceress. Perhaps that is why she could not heal me. The fault is mine, you see, I am not pure enough to be redeemed. I have the robes
of God and the heart of a devil.’ He laughed again.

‘You find amusement in doing such things?’

‘I had my own reasons.’

‘How do you know her?’

‘I come from the same village as that girl. Well, she and her family had only been there a few years; me, I had lived there all my life. My brother was
bayle
at the castle but I
fled before the
crosatz
came. He stayed and they hanged him. Another of life’s little jokes. Life has plenty of them for a man with a good sense of humour.’

‘Some people laugh to stop themselves weeping.’

‘Ah, you have me there. I see you are a student of the human condition. Very good. I think you are right; it is not funny at all. You see that man? His name is Bernart. He says she brought
him back to life. Perhaps she did. I see other people getting better all around me – like you; when they brought you in here you had blood spraying out of your mouth and nose with every
breath. You were a dead man, too. And she put her hands on you and now look! But not me. Some jest, huh?’