Stigmata (37 page)

‘What will we do without Mama?’

Anselm was silent for a long time. Elionor’s defection had affected them more deeply than even the invading
crosatz
, in truth. ‘I’ll survive. It’s you I am worried
about. Without dowry, you could end up someone’s mistress and never the wife. If only Pèire had watched where he was stepping that day!’

A woman in a black hood and robe knelt down behind him. She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then she did the same to Fabricia. ‘Goodnight, sweet ones,’ she whispered.
‘
Dieu vos benesiga
– God bless you!’

Anselm did not move and did not answer. The dark-robed figure moved away again, into the shadows. ‘I have never understood that woman,’ he said and rolled over towards the wall.

T
HERE WAS A
natural fissure in the rock, facing the gorge, just below the east wall. It led to a limestone cavern beneath
the fortress and the engineer, when it had been built, had cut a tunnel directly to it from a chamber under the barbican. Philip had been spared a troop of thirty of Trencavel’s best
chevaliers for the expedition against the trebuchet and now they led their horses down the steep cobblestoned passage and gathered together in the cave. Some of them had baskets of straw and flasks
of oil strapped to their saddles.

Philip had ordered sacking tied around the horses’ hooves to muffle them. Surprise was their only advantage. The
crosatz
would expect any sortie to come from the main gate, not from
the east.

Raimon had told him that there was a narrow path that led along the side of the gorge, almost invisible beneath the fortress walls. ‘Even the goats won’t go there,’ he had
said. ‘You won’t be able to use torches, but there is a full moon to guide you. Try not to look down.’ He held a flambeau high above his head and led the way to the tunnel
entrance. ‘I still don’t understand why you’re risking your neck like this,’ Raimon said. ‘It’s not your fight.’

‘They made it my fight.’

Raimon wished him God speed. Philip nodded and led the palfrey they had given him out of the cave, looking for the path. It fought the bridle, the flaming torch making it skittish. He kept a
firm grip.

It was a clear night; the moon like a new-minted silver coin was reflected in the river far below. The horse slid on a loose stone and scrambled for its footing. He did not even hear the rock
hit the bottom. They must be on an overhang, he thought, and despite what Raimon had said to him he chanced one quick look down and could see nothing.

Eventually he reached flatter ground and looked up, saw a sentry on the high barbican, his pikestaff silhouetted against the night sky.

He waited for the rest of his squadron to reach him. No one had fallen into the chasm; so far so good. They mounted their horses and started at a walk towards the crusader camp.

He could see the trebuchet in the moonlight; he could have found it blindfolded anyway, had watched it for days now pounding them with missile after missile while he stood with his fists
clenched on the parapets. He knew its size and position as well as he knew his own hand.

But he could have found it anyway; the bastards who worked it laboured by night as well as day and so their post was well lit with torches; they even had a cosy log fire to keep them warm on
these first cold nights of autumn. They like making war on others well enough, he thought, because they think themselves safe from all retribution. Let us see now how much they like a war that is
brought to
them
.

He wanted to let his horse have its head, but the ground was broken and dangerous and he planned only to come at the gallop for the last hundred paces. Holding back, knowing the right moment,
this was the hardest thing.

He hoped their luck would hold.

But it didn’t.

There were no sentries, not on this side of the camp. But one of the
crosatz
had stumbled out of his blanket to relieve himself and as they crested a small rise they came
across him standing right in front of them, swaying sleepily as he directed his stream against a small bush. Philip spurred forward to silence him before he could shout an alarm but he was too
late. The man had time to let out one piercing scream before he cut him down.

There was nothing for it but to start their charge. But they were too far away and by the time they reached the trebuchet the engineers had already scattered. They cut a few of them down, but
not enough; the rest they lost in the dark.

Some of his men attacked the trebuchet with axes, while those carrying baskets had already dismounted and were stuffing the straw under the machine. Another doused the straw with oil and lit it
with one of the
crosatz
’ own torches.

‘Burn!’ one of the chevaliers shouted. ‘Burn, burn, burn!’

The alarm had been raised through the camp with trumpets and shouts and drums. Philip knew the fire would make them easy targets so he ordered his men to withdraw and wait for the counterattack
from the shadows. They could not make their escape yet. They had to stop the crusaders from dousing the flames before they had properly taken hold.

The first crusaders rushed in, still struggling into their armour, and Philip and his chevaliers wheeled in from the dark and cut them down. But there were too many of them streaming out of the
camp now. They were everywhere, in and around and behind them, trying to drag them from their horses.

Philip slashed wildly with his sword. Why did it take dry timber so long to burn at the end of such a long summer?

Someone grabbed his horse’s bridle and he slashed down with his sword and the man disappeared screaming under the hooves. But close by he saw another of his chevaliers pulled from the
saddle, and then another.

A shower of sparks rose from the trebuchet. Suddenly she was fully ablaze. Just as well, he thought, for we have to get out of here now. He wheeled his horse around and signalled for his men to
follow him. Another wave of
crosatz
streamed towards them. There was just one last card to play.

He raised his sword. ‘The gates are open!’ he screamed at them. ‘Follow me! For God and de Montfort!’ And the crusaders cheered him and followed as he galloped right
through the middle of them towards Montaillet.

He spurred his palfrey as hard as he dared across the broken ground and only stopped when he was in the shadow of the fortress walls. He turned in the saddle. Only a pitiful
number of riders were still with him. They could not wait. The crusaders were streaming after them, thinking it was an attack on the gates.

He led the surviving cavalry towards the cliffs, losing their pursuers in the dark. Then he ordered them to dismount and they walked their horses the rest of the way down the crumbling path back
to the cave. Raimon and his men were waiting for them. ‘Did you do it?’ Raimon shouted when he saw him.

‘We did. With any luck it’s still burning.’

‘And you? Are you all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ Philip said. He handed over his reins and and sat down on a rock. In the light of Raimon’s torch he discovered an ugly sword slash between his greaves and
shin. He had not even felt it, but it hurt him now, though, well enough.

‘How many men did we lose?’ he said.

Raimon counted the heads. ‘A dozen and one by my count. It might be worth it, if the trebuchet is destroyed.’

‘It’s well alight. In the morning we will see if we did damage enough to justify the lives of thirteen good men.’

But they did not lose thirteen men; only six. Seven of Philip’s men were sent back the next day, without noses, lips and eyes. One they only half-blinded, so he could lead
the others.

Raimon cut himself with his sword and swore vengeance with his own blood when he saw them. The rest of the day he spent in silent rage. The trebuchet was at least charred ashes, and was still
smoking at first light. Was it worth what was done to those men? Philip wondered. They had saved the fortress, so he supposed it could be counted as success. He hoped they would think so too.

‘Thank God we are fighting God’s own army,’ Raimon said when finally he was calm enough to speak. ‘For I should hate to fight the Devil’s!’

Saints; no saints. Hell; no hell. God loves us; God will destroy us. Jesus was meek and mild so I will murder you if you do not eat his body in this bread. Jesus died on the
cross; Jesus did not die on the cross.

He had grown tired of men arguing over it; he had especially grown tired of men dying over it.

Did you not once have a castle? Why was it not enough?

What would be enough, then, if not a castle and a horse and servants and a beautiful wife? This: a narrow bed in a shuttered room with no servants but some bread and cheese on the table and a
woman he loved in his bed and a plump and healthy baby in the trundle.
Not much but enough.
Oh, and to be left in peace. To not have friends butchered because of him, not to be haunted by
the ghosts of the men he himself had killed.

Enough: to tease from the unsmiling gods some glimmer of grace, some transigence in their unflinching retribution.

The softness of a woman’s breast. The cooing of an infant. The rising of the sun.

Enough.

Fabricia used two thin strips of linen to bind the lips of the wound together, then brought a poultice of herbs and bound it to his leg. ‘I thought that we had run out of
medicines for the wounded,’ he said, ‘that you had used them all.’

‘I had one saved, in case you were hurt.’

‘That is unjust to these other men. They bleed as I do.’

‘Why did you not tell me what you were going to do? I might not have seen you again.’

‘I would rather do my duty and leave the rest to my fate than go through long farewells. It unnerves me. As it is, you slept through my moments of danger and now it is done and I am here
safe.’

‘How many men did you kill?’

‘I do not know. It was a bloody fight in the darkness and when all is done, I try not to think too much about it.’

‘Do they never disturb your sleep, the heads and the limbs you have hacked off?’

‘If I did not kill them, they would kill me.’

‘I just know I could never do it, seigneur. I could never kill a man. I would always see his blood on my hands.’

‘In times of peace we hunt meat in the forest, or we die. And in times of war we defend ourselves from those who would kill us. It is the way of things.’ He stood up, testing his
weight on the injured leg. ‘The
bons òmes
would disagree with me. They are good and holy men, I allow. But they are not me. That night when the wolves were circling us, would
you have rather it was Père Vital with you in the dark?’

She did not answer.

‘Because I cannot be like you, it does not mean I do not treasure you. Whatever it was that you did when you laid your hands on people, it gave them hope. I saw it in their faces. Whether
you have the gift or not, it makes them think that God has not abandoned them. The possibility of a miracle is a precious thing, for everyone. It is a glimpse of the divine amidst all the
suffering. You matter a great deal, and not just to me.’ He stood up. ‘Thank you again for your kindness,’ he said, and limped away.

R
AIMON ORDERED HIS
men to knock down the stables and a grainhouse to get stones for the mangonels; Anselm supervised
repairs to the walls damaged by the trebuchet; they dug ditches and built barricades behind the iron-bound oak doors of the main gate, knowing that this was where the
crosatz
would
concentrate their next attack.

The burghers raised blisters on their soft merchants’ hands, serving as apprentice masons or carpenters; their wives and daughters ran soup kitchens or repaired chain mail or tended the
injured or sick, as Fabricia did, their skirts knotted up above their knees. Everyone had been pressed into service, even the children, carrying armfuls of planks or broken beams up shaky ladders
for fuel for the cauldrons.

By now the
crosatz
were desperate. They had lost their main weapon and though they still bombarded them night and day with their smaller catapults, they could no longer hurl stones large
enough to weaken the walls.

Philip did not believe a frontal assault on the walls could succeed. But time was running out; Montaillet had only one cistern for the whole citadel and it was almost dry. If the rains did not
come soon, they would be forced to parlay on whatever terms they could get. Philip did not hold out much hope of mercy from the butchers camped below.

The other problem would not be remedied by the weather, and that was the legacy left them by Guilhemeta.

The great hall was packed with bodies. The stench would fell a horse, Philip thought. Soldiers, children and women lay sprawled together on the flagstones, groaning, retching,
dying.
Half the garrison must be down here.

Fabricia was moving among the sick, rationing the scarce medicine they had. She saw him standing on the steps and picked her way through the chaos towards him.

‘Pray God they do not attack us now,’ she said. ‘We have not even room for all the sick, there would be nowhere to put any wounded.’

‘There would be scarce be any left to defend us,’ he said. ‘This is twice as many as yesterday.’

‘My mother found some angelica root in the storehouse. We powdered it and mixed it with wine, for there is hardly any water to give them. It will help them if they can keep it down, but
most retch it right up again.’

‘It was the woman, Guilhemeta.’

‘But Loup never got sick. Nor I, and I laid hands on her.’

He looked at her hands. She still wore her gloves but they no longer had those familiar brown bloodstains. ‘A pity you cannot still perform your miracles, Fabricia.’

There was a blast of trumpets from the main gate, followed by the urgent clamour of the bells from the church. ‘They are going to storm the walls,’ she said.