Stigmata (29 page)

Vital and another of the
bons òmes
passed them. People bowed or prostrated themselves on the ground. Even Father Marty raised a hand to them. ‘There they go, the cause of all
this trouble. Look like starved crows, don’t they? For myself, I don’t hold with a single thing they say but they are holier than I will ever be.’

‘You don’t hate them?’

‘I’ve never minded them if they never minded me. But they don’t like the girl. I think she frightens them. She doesn’t fit into their perfect picture of how the world is.
She has the wounds of Christ and they say that Christ was not crucified. They cannot explain her. I imagine they wish she would just go away.’

‘How did she come by those wounds on her hands?’

‘Who knows? The
bons òmes
say she made the marks herself.’

‘Is that what you believe?’

‘It is what I would like to believe. And yet she has had those wounds for months and they do not heal, nor do they weep or discharge anything foul. How do you explain it? Even if they were
done by her own hand, how could anyone stand such pain?’ Father Marty took a hold of Philip’s tunic and drew him closer. Philip winced, his breath was foul. ‘Some people say she
is a witch, you know? Others call her a saint. Did you know that? I tried to seduce her once. Imagine that! A priest trying to fuck a saint.’ He gave a barking laugh. ‘I have seen you
watching her.’

‘What?’

‘She is a beauty, isn’t she? She is no maid, though. I have it on good authority.’

Philip prised the priest’s fingers loose. ‘You disgust me,’ he said, and walked outside to get some fresh air.

The weather had turned abruptly. The wind rushed through the trees and it was suddenly cold. He felt the first stinging of hard rain on his face.

He closed his eyes, saw his little boy lying in his bed, before he got sick, remembered how he had once pointed in wonder at the tiny splashes as the raindrops fell on the stone sill of his
window.

‘Can you see the fairies?’ Philip said. ‘They are the rain fairies and they are dancing just for you.’

The grief hit him like a cramp, so that he almost doubled over where he stood.
Everyone I have loved I have lost.
While he had God to blame for it his anger provided some consolation, but
if what the Cathars said was true, there was no one to blame but the Devil.

Then we have no hope, he thought. We are all defenceless in a world of pain. He reached into his tunic, took out the silver comb. What was the use? He could not even remember her smell any more.
He drew back and tossed it as far as he could into the darkness.

The rain drove down in sheets. The whole mountain seemed suddenly to tremble with the din of water trying to find passage through the limestone fissures in the rock. He went back inside the
cave.

‘Too hot in here, too cold out there,’ Fabricia said. She flapped a hand to fan herself. The girlish gesture disarmed him. She looked so fragile in the stormlight, all creamy skin
and thin bones. ‘I see you met Father Marty.’

‘He told me that you’re a saint.’

‘A saint? He tried all he could to desecrate me then. Did he tell you about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think the poor man’s conscience weighs heavy on him.’

‘He is being reshaped by the hammer of God perhaps?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, perhaps that is it.’ She put her head to the side. ‘Every day I think to find you gone and yet you are still here.’

‘I cannot get escort out of these mountains.’

‘Is that the reason?’

‘Also, I am torn.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Does it show so plainly?’

‘I have never seen a man so tormented.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, I have never met a saint before. It has confused me.’

‘I am no saint, seigneur.’ She moved closer. ‘But I will tell you this; I dreamed of you, a long time ago. When they first brought you here, I could not believe it. If I told
you that I knew your name before I ever laid eyes on you, you would think me mad. Why wouldn’t you? Half the world does. I do not know what it all means, and it terrifies me.’

She turned on her heel and hurried away.

N
UN, OUTCAST, SAINT,
witch.

She had been awake since dawn tending to the sick and laying hands on those that asked and cooking broth for those that could not feed themselves. For this short time I belong, she thought. They
will adore me and fear me again when the
crosatz
leave. Until then I have found my place.

She left the cave and went into the woods to search for herbs, stopped at the stream to wash linen for wounds. Afterwards she removed the bandages on her own hands and rinsed them in the water.
She bit her lip to stop herself crying out from the pain.

She washed the holes in her feet the same way. When it was done she bandaged them again, put the boots back on her feet and limped back up to the caves, where she knew she would find Philip, as
always at this time of day, feeding and watering his horse.

She watched him for a while before she let him know she was there. He was rubbing down his big Arab mare, and whispering to her as he worked.

‘Why do you do that?’ she said, moving out of the shadows. ‘Why do you talk to a horse? She can’t understand you.’

‘She understands well enough. Perhaps not about politics or religion, but she understands the tone of my voice and the touch of my hand.’

‘And can she talk back to you?’

‘You can laugh at me, as you wish. But she can let me know when she’s tired or when she’s sick, and she senses trouble before I do. When we ride we ride as one, I feel every
little ripple and tension in her muscles and I swear she feels the same from me. If she were a man, she’d be a good friend. If she were a woman, she’d be a wife.’

Fabricia shook her head. He was a complex man: an expert at the arts of war and killing, according to Raimon, yet consumed by a search for meaning in his life and as loving to a brute animal as
a father to a child.

‘You think she has a soul?’

‘I know it. But if you were to ask me about the men who put out my squire’s eyes, then I could not be so sure. What brings you down here this fine morning?’

‘I need your help.’

‘I am at your service.’ He threw down the towel, gave the mare a final rub of the muzzle and fed her a handful of hay. ‘May I ask what it is you wish of me?’

‘Father Marty is dying and wishes to take the
consolamentum
. He needs good Christians as witness.’

‘I would not describe myself as a good Christian.’

‘Neither would I. But you will just have to do.’

As he followed her up the slope he asked her why a priest would take his final consolation from a heretic.

‘Because he is dying. He does not wish to die unshriven.’

‘But he is a Catholic priest. I know that is just another word for hypocrite, but why would he look to a heretic to save his mortal soul?’

‘You call the Cathars heretics, seigneur, but they revere Christ the same as you or I. Because they do not love the Pope does not mean they do not love God. Besides, there is no priest
here to give him the final unction, so he has no choice.’

‘And these
bons òmes
will do it?’

‘They will refuse no one the last consolation. Of course, if Father Marty were in their position, he would do it only if they had the money to pay. That is the difference.’

Father Marty seemed to have shrivelled overnight. As his flesh shrunk, so his eyes appeared to have grown in his skull. He offered them a smile as they knelt down on his left side, with the
Cathar priest Guilhèm Vital, and his
socius
, on the other side.

‘What about the others?’ Philip asked. ‘Won’t any of the other
crezens
join us?’

She shook her head. ‘They hate him,’ she whispered. ‘They believe this is a sham. In his life he despoiled their women and took their first fruits and charged them for every
confession, every birthing. He has no friends here but us, poor man.’

Vital lit several candles around Father Marty’s body. ‘Brother,’ he said. ‘Do you wish to embrace our faith?’

‘Yes, Father. I have the will; I pray God gives me the strength.’

Vital looked up at Fabricia and at Philip. ‘Good Christians, we pray you for the love of God to bestow your blessings upon our friend here present.’

‘Father,’ Father Marty murmured, ‘ask God to lead me, a sinner, to a good end.’

‘May God bless you, make a good Christian of you and lead you to a good end.’

‘For every sin that I may have committed, by thought, word or action, I beg the forgiveness of God, the Church and all those here present.’

‘May God and the Church and all those here present forgive you these sins and we pray God absolve you of them.’

‘I promise to dedicate myself to God and his gospel, never to lie, never to take an oath, never to have any contact with a woman, never to kill an animal, never to eat meat and to feed
myself only with fruits. In addition I promise never to betray my faith, whatever death awaits me.’

Vital held out the scroll of the Gospel of John and Father Marty brought his lips to it. Then he and his
socius
put their right hands on his head. ‘Our Father, Who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our spiritual sustenance, and deliver us from evil.’

He placed a plaited sash around Father Marty’s head and gave his
socius
the kiss of peace. He in turn gave it to Philip, and Philip kissed Fabricia lightly on the cheek. Finally,
she bent and kissed Father Marty’s forehead.

‘The neophyte is to eat nothing but bread and water for the forty days of his
endura
,’ Vital said to Fabricia.

Father Marty gave a barking laugh. ‘I shall not see another forty hours.’

‘It seems to me,’ Philip said to Fabricia, ‘that it is not unreasonable to ask a man to disavow women and meat on his deathbed.’

‘That is why so few take the vows until the very end. People admire the
bons òmes
, they may even wish to be like them, but the vows are too hard. Only a few can live their
lives that way. Their religion is mild in that it does not condemn our natures.’

‘And this
consolamentum
? It will save his soul and send him to heaven?’

‘Send him
back
to heaven. Without the vows, his soul will just migrate to another body here on earth and he will suffer, because suffering is inevitable here. If we love, we lose.
If we live and are happy, we die. It is the Devil’s trap.’

He touched her gloved hand. ‘And what is this? Is this the doing of God or the Devil?’

‘I don’t know what it is.’ She winced with pain and stopped to rest, leaning her weight against him. He hesitated, and then put an arm around her shoulders.

‘It’s not there,’ she said, putting her hand lightly on his chest.

‘What isn’t there?’

‘You carried a lady’s comb inside your shirt. I found it when they first brought you here.’ She patted all around his tunic. ‘It’s gone.’

‘It belonged to Alezaïs. She was my first wife.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘It’s gone, as she is gone.’

‘You threw it away? Why?’

He shrugged. ‘What is the use?’

‘What happened to her, seigneur?’

‘She died, this four years now, birthing my boy. I was away, on crusade.’

‘And you still miss her?’

‘Every day. I loved her very much.’

‘I have never loved a man,’ Fabricia said. ‘I would not know what it is like.’

‘Would you like me to describe it to you?’

‘Do you think you can?’

He pulled her closer. ‘In Outremer, in the desert, they have watering places where travellers can stop and find rest and shade and sustenance and water. Otherwise they would not survive a
long desert crossing. It is the kind of place you dream of constantly when you are thirsty. When the heat and the journey have broken you, the promise of such a place keeps you going. When you
finally reach there, it is green and cool and you never want to leave it. They call such a place an
oasis.
Alezaïs, she was my oasis.’

Fabricia thought about this for a long time.

Finally: ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I should like to stop for shade and water. But I cannot imagine how this might happen. You are fortunate, seigneur, to have known what an oasis
is like.’

She kissed her fingers and placed them on his cheek. ‘If only you were a stonemason’s apprentice looking for a wife.’

She rose to her feet and left him there.

He sat for a long time, thinking about what she had said. He realized he could not go back now, even if Raimon found him an escort. Yet neither did he wish to die; not tomorrow at least. He
would give it one more day and then think again, as he had done every day since they brought him here. When the time was ripe to kill and be killed, he would know it.

Carcassonne

H
UGUES DE
B
RETON
had suffered. For almost a week now he had lain groaning and tossing in the
hospital by St Anne’s Gate. The nuns prayed by his bed and tended his fever with cool cloths. The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet had been burned by the physician’s cautery
iron and he had been given sedatives and herbal potions for the pain. But none of it had served, and every day he thrashed and screamed and sweated and raved, red-faced, at the phantoms who came to
torment him.

Father Ortiz bent to hear his last confession but could not make out anything that would pass for words. He was babbling, making no sense. He gave him the last unction, and asked God for His
mercy.

Gilles watched, one hand on his hip, his face livid.

Simon brushed away a fly. They were persistent and plentiful inside the monastery, attracted by the mountains of bloodied bandages and the putrefying wounds of the knights who had been brought
there. The heat was stupefying. Outside, the city seethed. The stink of the bodies that had piled up during the siege pervaded everything even though there had been mass burnings all week. De
Montfort and the other barons had returned to their camps on the other side of the river, unable to bear the stench or the heat in the city they had taken such pains to conquer.