Stigmata (33 page)

He started to laugh, but his laughter became another spasm of coughing. Finally: ‘You are less afraid of being raped and butchered?’

‘I can’t swim.’

‘Neither can I.’

‘Why did you not leave your sword behind?’ she said.

‘In case I have to do away with you, as I promised the captain. Or did you forget?’

He built a fire to get warm, for it was late in the afternoon and the gorge was already in shadow. There was plenty of tinder for it had been a very hot summer.
‘Won’t the
crosatz
see the smoke and know where we are?’ she said.

‘They already know where we are, but they’ll only be able to get us if they jump off the cliff into the river like we did.’

He went to the water’s edge, washed the linen bandages wrapped around her hands and feet, and dried them in front of the fire. He examined her wounds. They were small and round but very
deep; he imagined they went right through the flesh. Those in her feet looked even worse. The flesh around them was pale and puckered from contact with the water. How could someone do such things
to herself?

‘What happened to your horse?’ she said.

‘She broke her leg. She must have stepped in a rabbit burrow.’

‘You killed her?’

‘I did what I had to do.’

‘Yet you seemed very fond of that horse.’

‘I loved her. Do not think that I am so hardened by wars that I can do what I did and sleep easy. But I could not bear to see her in pain and there was nothing I could do to save her. I
asked her forgiveness and then I gave her mercy. It was clean and it was quick. Even if God does not know the meaning of mercy, I like to think that I do.’

‘Are you not frightened to say such things? Do you not fear God?’

The bandages were dry. He started to bind her feet. ‘Perhaps the heretics are right and the God of this world is the Devil and I do not know the real God. You see, that makes sense to me.
This is a heresy I can understand.’

‘And what about this,’ she said, holding up her hands. ‘How does this fit what the heretics say?’

He shook his head. ‘As you say, we cannot know everything. Some things are just meant to remain a mystery.’

They had no blankets. He fetched as much wood as he could from the forest, and they spooned into each other, using each other’s bodies to keep warm.

I never imagined this, she thought. When you are born in a stonemason’s house in Toulouse the walls of the city are the world and I thought my life would be like my mother’s, as her
mother’s was before her. And it had not seemed such a very bad life: a good and strong husband who did not beat her, a house with a
solier
, hams hanging above the hearth, good
neighbours and a promise of a warm corner in heaven at the end of it.

What she had never imagined was that one day she might be sleeping wild with a French nobleman, hunted like an animal and cursed with a gift that set her apart from everyone else. ‘You
said you saw my mother and father, that they are heading for Montaillet.’

‘It is the only refuge from the
crosatz
in these mountains.’

‘So you think they will be there when we arrive?’

‘If they survive the journey. I hope it will be less eventful than ours.’

‘What did they tell you of me? Do you think they believe me to be a witch or a madwoman, like everyone else?’

‘They said that they pray for you every day, and they looked as frantic about you as any mother and father would be. If they knew you were not safe in the monastery tonight they would die
of worry. Why did you leave?’

‘Because the nuns thought I was a witch, too. They thought I made these wounds myself, either because I am mad, or because I like all the attention. Can you imagine that someone is so
needy for the world’s gaze that they drive a knife into their hands and feet every day? But that is what people think. You think so too sometimes, don’t you?’

He did not answer her.

‘Will you still want me when we reach Montaillet, seigneur? I am just a stonemason’s daughter. You are a lord. Is this just for now? I can endure it if you tell me the truth. But a
girl like myself can sometimes have ideas above her station.’

‘You forget, I am no longer a seigneur, I am landless, penniless and excommunicate. There is no future for me. Is this just for now? Everything in my life is just for now.’

A wolf howled, startling her. Then another.

She gripped Philip’s arm. ‘They sound very close.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They won’t come near the fire.’ But he sat up and drew his sword from its sheath.

A half-moon drifted against high white clouds, throwing quick shadows. The river slipped and shivered and the light slid like mercury. He threw more logs on the fire. Something moved in the
bushes.

‘What was that?’

He took a brand from the fire and held it high above his head. Somewhere out there a pair of eyes glittered orange; four of them, perhaps more. ‘As long as we stay by the fire they
won’t venture closer,’ he said.

‘Do we have enough wood to keep it fed?’

‘I don’t know.’ She heard the bell sound for matins at the chapel at Montaillet; still half the night to get through then.

Philip stood watch, fuelling the fire, occasionally walking forward a few paces swinging the brand so that the animals retreated further into the darkness. She could hear them yowling in
frustration, padding up and down along the edges of the wood.

‘They are hungry,’ he said.

The moon sank behind the cliffs. And then, without warning, she heard a rush as one of them took its chance. Philip slashed at it with his sword and then wheeled in a circle slashing again.
Sparks from the brand he held in his other hand flickered into the grass.

She heard a yelp as one of the beasts tumbled away and another scampered back up the bank into the wood. He roared and ran at them, swinging the torch in a wide arc. They snarled and retreated,
eyes glittering.

Philip kicked more wood into the fire. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They won’t come back now.’

Fabricia shivered and drew closer to the flames. ‘Can you stand the night?’ she said.

‘I have done it before. Besides, there are enough things I have done that help to keep me awake on the most serene of nights.’

‘What things?’

‘I have killed my horse. I have failed my wife and my son.’

‘Does calling your grief a failure make it easier to bear?’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘You blame yourself for so many things that are beyond your power to change. Perhaps you should weep for your boy rather than hurl insults at the Invisible – or at
yourself.’

He did not answer her for a long time. But finally he murmured: ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

The wolf pack did not retreat too far. They stayed until the sun inched over the cliffs and then they vanished into the forest, leaving their dead comrade behind.

As the sun rose Philip sank to his haunches in exhaustion, leaning on his sword, his head resting against the hilt. She put her hand on his shoulder. Like the Cathars she believed it was wrong
to kill anything. But then it was easier to think that on your knees, in a church. In the dark, surrounded by hungry wolves, it was harder to keep the faith.

M
ONTAILLET SAT ATOP
a lonely knuckle of blackened limestone. Beneath the fortress walls, the ochre roofs of the town
slumbered in a yellow sun. The people who lived there would shortly have a rude awakening, he thought.

Vertiginous cliffs fell away to plummeting ravines on the north and east sides. The southern and western walls were protected by tall barbicans. It could be approached only by the road that led
up from the valley.

Philip studied it first with the eyes of a warrior, estimating its weaknesses, where he would place his catapults if he were an enemy, how he might deprive the garrison of water. The red walls
that encircled the town might keep out the bandits and the wolves but they would not withstand a determined assault by an army with siege engines. He imagined Trencavel’s men would concede
that soon enough. But the fortress itself looked formidable.

It was a long, hot climb up to the town, past deserted vineyards and olive groves. Fabricia was walking better today; she said her feet pained her less. Still, it had taken all that morning for
her to hobble the remaining half a league from the gorge.

The sides of the road were a riot of thyme and wild buttercups. Some gaiety at last. They passed a mill and a watchtower. A hanged man, or the little that remained of him, swung in the wind.

There were just two watchmen at the gate, lounging on their pikes. One of them stepped forward and barred the way with his weapon. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Philip drew his sword and had it at the man’s throat in an instant. He grabbed his hair and brought him to his knees. Then he turned to the man’s comrade. ‘If you move even
your little finger I shall cut out his gizzard and jam it up your arse, you impudent pair of turnips!’

Neither of the men moved. One could not; the other was just too terrified. Philip controlled his temper with difficulty. ‘My name is Philip, Baron de Vercy. I have lost my horse, my
armour, my faith and almost my life in your accursed country when I came here in peace, looking for succour. I will not tolerate further bad manners from anyone. If you ever talk to me or this
young woman like that again I will cut out your liver and feed it back to you whole. Do I make myself clear?’

The watchmen had no further questions as to their business in Montaillet.

‘You have a temper, seigneur,’ Fabricia said.

‘One of my many faults, my lady. I pray you will excuse it. I have not yet broken the fast and I am insulted by a third-rate bully with a pikestaff and bad teeth. I was raised in noble
fashion and it offends me to be so used.’

The town was crowded with sheep, pigs, goats and people. It smelled like a barn. ‘Seigneur, in defence of those men at the gate, you do not look like a lord and I do not look like a lady.
We blend into the common herd, in our present straits.’

‘Sadly, you are right,’ he said. ‘Do you see your parents yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘The refugees may all be inside the fortress. Come on.’

A stone bridge led across a dry moat, and then to a wooden walkway that could be lowered and raised from the gatehouse. The courtyard of the castle was in chaos. Montaillet was preparing for
war. Some knights rushed to the forge for last-minute adjustments to armour or the sharpening of a sword. Lacquered helms and shields glittered in the sunlight.

There were refugees camped inside and outside the church. Already it stank and the siege had not yet begun. Fabricia searched the terrified faces for her mother and father.

‘Perhaps they did not survive the journey,’ she said. She took hold of a stranger, asked if he had seen them; a giant, she said, with fists like hams; his wife, red hair turning to
grey and a proud way of walking. The man shook his head and walked away. She saw someone she knew from her village and asked again. He pointed vaguely towards the other side of the courtyard. Yes,
he thought he had seen Anselm; look over there.

A ragged tramp sitting on the steps of the church stood up and shouted her name; the tangle-haired woman beside him dropped to her knees and sobbed. Fabricia threw herself at them. The crowd
around them stared cold-eyed. So little joy in this place, perhaps they resented it.

‘My little rabbit!’ the man yelled and picked her up and threw her in the air like a doll. Fabricia burst into tears, as did her mother. Philip hovered, thinking for a moment to join
the celebration, but instead turned away. He was not a part of this; he would rejoin her later.

A troop of Trencavel soldiers, their shields emblazoned with the Viscount’s mustard and black ensign, went past him at the double, headed for the southern wall. Someone shouted his name.
Philip saw Raimon peel away from the squadron and head towards him. ‘So, you made it! I would never have believed it. But, seigneur, you look more like a bandit than a lord. Are you
well?’

‘Well enough for a man who has been chased around the country by fanatics, near drowned and set upon by wild animals.’

‘Well, you made it here, that is triumph enough! Come along with me, let me find you a glass of wine.’ He put an arm around his shoulders and led him inside the
donjon.

S
UCH A CONTRAST
in fortunes, Philip thought. One day eating wild figs and berries and lying in the river mud to scoop up
water to drink; the next, reclining at his ease drinking Rhenish and gorging from a trencher of rye bread and sheep’s cheese.

While he dined Raimon stood at the window watching the preparations for the siege. ‘You can stay here in the
donjon
,’ he was saying, ‘but I’m afraid you
won’t have a private bed with velvet curtains. But you shall share the straw with fine company, for there will be two barons and much of the minor nobility of the Minervois with
you.’

‘I’ve known worse.’

‘The straw or the company?’ He shook his head. ‘What happened to that fine horse of yours?’

Philip shook his head.

‘A pity. One of the finest Arabs I ever saw. And your armour?’

‘I had to swim a river. It is a task made more difficult with a suit of iron mail, even one made in Toledo. So there was no choice but to leave it as a parting gift to the men who chased
me.’

‘How quickly a man’s luck can change. My circumstances have altered somewhat also since we last met at the caves. One day I was captain of a score of chevaliers harassing the
crosatz
, the next I am seneschal of a castle and charged with stopping the crusader invasion of the Pays d’Oc.’

‘A day is a long time in any war. How did you come by such a rapid promotion?’

‘The previous seneschal fled after they told him what had happened at Béziers. They caught him and hanged him from the tower – you may have noticed him on your way here. His
good looks are not what they were. But tell me, you are a seasoned warrior, what do you think of Montaillet? Can we withstand an assault from the
crosatz
’ army, do you
think?’