Stigmata (21 page)

‘Let him go,’ Philip said, and he grabbed a handful of Loup’s hair to lay proprietory claim.

‘But, seigneur, he is a thief. He stole our master’s –’

Philip rounded on him. ‘If you are going to address a baron and a knight you will do so on your knees with your voice lowered.’ His hand went to his sword. The man backed away.

Pulling a squealing Loup behind him Philip approached the burgher, and tossed a silver coin in his direction. ‘For your inconvenience, sir. He will cause you no further trouble.’

He dragged Loup away. ‘You seem determined to lose your ears, boy. I should have let them put you in the stocks as a lesson.’

‘Owww, you’re hurting me!’

‘I should hurt you more. The art of being a thief is not to get caught. Did no one ever tell you that?’

‘Where are you taking me? Owww . . .’

Philip was almost at the tavern when he let the boy go. Loup made a show of smoothing down his hair and then tried to kick him. Philip shook his head. ‘Very well, you can come with us. At
least until you learn to look after yourself better than you do now.’

Loup grinned. ‘You mean that, seigneur?’

‘I never say anything I do not mean.’ He looked up and saw Renaut standing outside the inn, watching. His squire shook his head. You’re going to regret this, the look seemed to
say.

Saint-Ybars

T
WO DAYS SPENT
stitching gashes in horses and men, counting their losses and exploring the geography of humiliation. Gilles
stayed in his tent and did not come out. Father Ortiz spent the days singing psalms under a tree. The heat was oppressive; the sound of the crickets maddening. Saint-Ybars, this feeble fortress
town, had shaken their faith. Normandy had thought it would go easier than this.

On the second evening Gilles called a counsel, and Father Ortiz and Simon were summoned to his silk pavilion along with his knights and squires. There was one other in attendance, whom Simon did
not recognize, a slight man with a neat black beard. He sat in the corner, on the only other chair, wearing along with the colours of the house of Trencavel a look of utter terror.

The night drew a ragged breath; the air stuck to the skin and the biting insects made everyone irritable. Gilles sat in a chair before a trestle table on which was a large map, held down at the
corners by small rocks.

‘Gentlemen, may I present M’sieur Robèrt Marty, lately
bayle
of Saint-Ybars. During the night, knowing his duty lay to God and not to his heretic lord, he stole away
from the town and made himself known to our sentries, and they brought him here to me. He wishes to show us the way inside the
castrum
.’

‘Praise be to God,’ Father Oritz said.

‘Can we trust him?’ someone said, a midnight devil with one eye and a red beard. His name was Hugues de Breton and he was the Norman’s most trusted lieutenant. He cracked his
knuckles, playing up to the air of menace lent him by his disfigurement.

Gilles turned to Robèrt. ‘Can we trust you?’

‘I have put myself in your hands. You think I would be sitting here if I planned to play you false? I know where my duty as a good Catholic lies.’

‘Truth is he saw what we did at Béziers,’ Hugues de Breton said. ‘He’s shitting his breeches.’

‘He is one of us now,’ Gilles said like an indulgent father. He stood up and indicated the chart that was laid out on the table. ‘He has brought us this, a map of Saint-Ybars.
What he wishes us to know is that there is another gate, right here.’ He tapped the paper with his forefinger. ‘There is a secret passage behind it that leads under the
castrum
and up to the
donjon
. Robèrt is going to lead us there. Hugues will take half our troops in by this way so that this time we can secure the gate from the
inside
. But we must do
it tonight before Robèrt is missed. If they realize they have been betrayed they will flood the passage.’

‘What is this passage used for?’

‘It is an escape tunnel they have used in the past when they have been besieged by the Count of Toulouse’s men. Most of the villagers left this way after our first attack. Only a few
soldiers now remain inside. They plan to wait a further day and then flee also.’

‘Why is he telling us this?’ Hugues said.

Gilles tossed Robèrt a purse. ‘He knows which master is better served.’

‘A man who will betray once, will betray twice.’

‘Once he leads us to the gate he will remain hostage here at the camp. He knows what will happen if he plays us false.’

‘Our prayers have been answered,’ Father Ortiz said. ‘It is a miracle.’

‘Greed is not a miracle,’ Hugues said. ‘Just an inevitability.’

‘Get the men ready. Once Hugues and his men have secured the gates I will take my knights and claim Saint-Ybars for God.’

Am I the only man in this room who does not see the futility of this? Simon wondered. ‘What of the men inside?’ he said. ‘What of their souls?’

Gilles looked at him in astonishment. ‘Their souls? That is God’s concern, not ours.’

‘So we are to slaughter a few men who have remained loyal to their liege lord and reward this Judas?’

There was a heavy-breathing silence. Father Ortiz stared at him in astonishment. ‘These men stood against God’s army,’ Gilles said.

‘God’s army is at Carcassonne,’ Simon said. ‘This has served us nothing.’

Gilles kicked the trestle over. ‘We are ridding the land of heresy as your Church asked us to do! I thought you were here to guide us on matters of religion, Father Jorda? It seems we must
now instruct
you
.’ There was bitter laughter. Then he and his soldiers left the tent to fetch their armour and their arms.

Father Ortiz grabbed Simon by the arm. ‘Never speak again unless I give you leave! Do not forget who is master here and who is the pupil.’

Simon knew it was pointless to argue further. He still could not get the stench of Béziers out of his nostrils: burned and rotting flesh mixed with horse dung and the drone of meat flies.
He wondered if he ever would.

I
N
T
OULOUSE, IN
Carcassonne, in Lyons, in any city in France, the butchers slaughtered sheep and
cattle at their shopfronts and let the blood and offal run into the gutters; they would kill chickens in front of their customers so they might have the meat fresh and then throw the heads and
feathers into the street. Simon was accustomed to hitching up the hem of his cassock when he walked through this mess, and even though he was a seasoned city dweller he would resort at times to
holding a scented handkerchief to his nose on the hot summer days when the smell of bloodied meat and stinking guts made him gag.

But that was sheep; that was cows; and the blood was from domestic animals.

But this.

This . . .

He had never seen or imagined anything like it. One thing to kill a man; for a seasoned soldier such as these it might take one sword stroke, two at most. But why did they do this? They were not
chopping the bodies up for meat, they did not have to spread the limbs and torsos through the street and decorate every doorway, every sewer, with them.

Black blood had dried in the gutters, gouts of it, puddles of it; its coppery stink as it dried in the hot sun made him retch and he tumbled from his horse and vomited into the street. Father
Ortiz watched him, disgusted.

Simon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What have these men done here?’ he said.

‘I made a mistake with you, I fear.’

‘What did you expect? I thought you wished for a theologian and a preacher on this crusade, not a butcher.’

‘We cannot spend all our time with the hymnal. Was Our Saviour kind when he threw out the moneychangers from the Temple?’

‘He turned over their tables; he did not chop them up like joints for the cook fire. Look at what these men have done!’

‘Gentleness is what we bring to the weak and those in need of our charity. Should we extend it to the enemies of the Church also? Those who seek to bring it down? We are instruments of God
and our duty is to save souls. What we do, we do from love, love of God.’

The market square was just dirt with a meagre fountain. There was a smoking ruin on the far side of it. Simon pointed, astonished. ‘They have even burned down the church!’

‘The church had been defiled.’

The limestone walls were charred and the roof had caved in. It was too hot to approach it, for the roof timbers were still burning on the floor of the chancel. But he recognized the taint of
burned meat. ‘What happened here?’

‘They were heretics,’ someone shouted behind him.

He turned around. Gilles de Soisson led a procession into the square: a handful of prisoners, Trencavel’s men, chained by the wrists and each with a loop of rope around his neck, the end
of which was tied to the saddle of his warhorse. His knights and a troop of foot soldiers followed.

‘But they had sanctuary! They were inside a church!’

‘It was no longer sacred. They were heretics in a place they had themselves defiled. So we burned it down.’

‘You cannot know that these people you slaughtered were heretics!’

‘They shielded heretics and that is the same thing.’

‘Because a man has a heretic for a neighbour does not make him a bad Christian.’

Gilles turned to Father Ortiz. ‘Father, instruct your
socius
, will you? He overreaches himself.’ Gilles jumped down from his horse. ‘God will know His own. When they are
all in heaven let His greater wisdom divide them into the saved and the damned. You should understand, Father Jorda, that when we do this, it encourages others to be more diligent in their prayers.
That’s what you want in your flock, isn’t it? Diligence?’

‘The seigneur is right,’ Father Ortiz said. ‘Do you think a good Christian could live cheek by jowl with the Devil?’

Simon realized it was useless to argue further. He dropped to his knees and began a prayer for the souls of the dead.

‘Oh, spare me the piety,’ Gilles said. ‘You want your Church saved for you but it distresses you to see it done. You are hypocrites, all of you.’

Simon looked at the huddle of prisoners, wretched men who had fought bravely and been betrayed at the last by their own
bayle
. ‘What will you do with them?’ he said.

‘They have denied the cross. So I thought it might be instructive for them to find out at first hand what it is they think does not exist. Do you not think so, Father Ortiz?’ He
turned to the captain of the soldiers and started to interrogate him. One of his men, who spoke the Oc dialect better, relayed his questions.
Where are the rest of the townspeople? Which way did
they go? Why did they leave?

‘They heard you were all butchers,’ the captain said, ‘and they begged us to let them leave. We planned to hold you off for two days more, then we would have done the same if
that filthy dog the
bayle
had not betrayed us.’

‘Where were they headed?’

‘Into the mountains. Where you’ll never find them.’

Gilles turned to Hugues. ‘Go after them. They are on foot; so despite what this flea says you have a good chance of finding them and when you do, show them God’s justice.’ He
remounted his destrier and wheeled away. ‘Now show them what we do to heretics round here.’

A good summer for the meat flies. No excuse for any of them not to get fat and bloated and drowsy in the sun.

T
HEY FOLLOWED THE
old Roman road that led through the Minervois, through smoke-blackened and deserted villages and
castra
. The first man hanging by his neck from an olive tree was remarked upon; after a dozen it was just a commonplace. With each league Philip lost a little of his soul. How many abandoned
babies do you pretend not to see, because you cannot rescue even one of them, and you might see a score of them every day?

And what of the soldier they had found lying by the side of the road without feet or hands? Philip could still hear his cries and his curses, as he begged them to put him out of his agony.
Christian soldiers had done this to him, not in the heat of combat, but as a means of terror.

But if Christian soldiers had undertaken such an act, what should his response be, sinner that he was? Did he leave the man to suffer from thirst and let the carrion crows finish him while he
yet lived?

He had jumped from his horse, sword drawn.

‘Do it! For the love of God!’ the man screamed at him. ‘Why are you waiting? Please, don’t let me suffer like this! I beg you!’

One thing to kill a man in battle; another to murder in the name of kindness. His men watched, but no one spoke.

The man screamed, rolled on to his side and tried to shuffle closer. ‘Please, m’sieur, I beg you! Do it! I will speak for you a thousand times in paradise, but please!’

How old was he? Philip wondered. His face was so covered in blood and dirt it was impossible to tell. Pain had furrowed great lines in him. He could have been twenty or eighty.

Philip raised his sword, but something made him hesitate. Not as easy to kill a man you do not hate or fear. As he was about to bring down the sword an arrow thudded into the man’s chest.
For a moment he looked only surprised, and then the light went from his eyes and he died with no fuss at all.

Philip knew who had shot the fatal bolt. ‘Thank you, Renaut. But I did not need your assistance.’

‘I am sorry, seigneur. I just couldn’t stand to watch it any longer. I don’t fear death as much as I fear that.’

Their eyes met. ‘Then let us do what we came here to do and get out of this land of carrion crows,’ Philip said, and got back on his horse.

The evening was windless, the shadows intensely black and the light as vivid as fresh paint. The land here reminded him a little of Outremer; olives and figs flourished in the
thin, stony soil and drystone walls kept out the free-running goats and sheep.

Under the shadow of the walls, the terraced vineyards were laced with tendrils of mist. They said these vines were planted under the crack of the Roman overseer’s whip in the time of
Jesus. Now look at them. They had been torn up by the crusaders, the roots burned and twisted and dead.