Stigmata (22 page)

The air smelled of thyme and of the charnel house.

The village had been burned recently, for last night’s rain had not yet washed out the soot. Wisps of grey smoke still rose from the ruins. Foxes and wolves picked their way carefully
through the scorched ground, lured into the open by the promise of fresh meat. They followed the road up the narrow lane from the
portal
. Philip put a hand over his mouth and nose, heard
several of his men gagging also. In the square there were seven crosses. Before this the only crucifixions he had ever seen had been carvings of the Lord, inside a church. He did not imagine that
men might still torture one another this way.

A tree outside the church had been blackened and almost consumed by fire. Enough of it remained that they had been able to hang someone from it. The man’s corpse twisted in the wind. A
vulture flapped its wings to drive away the crows that were gathering around the carcass.

No one spoke.

Philip turned his horse’s head and rode back out of the town. All this way, for nothing. The poor girl he had come to find was no doubt one, or several, of these pieces of raw and
blackened flesh lying around the square.

God have mercy. She had been his last hope.

The crusaders had camped by the river to the south of Saint-Ybars; they found horse dung, flattened earth, and the warm ashes of their camp fires. There could not have been more
than two or three hundred, Philip guessed.

Philip sat slumped under a fig tree with his head in his hands.

‘What shall we do?’ Renaut asked him.

‘We can’t do anything until the morning. Tell the men to make camp here tonight.’

He saw a shadow moving under the trees, a woman in a hooded tunic.

Renaut saw it too. ‘What’s that?’ he said.

Philip was already on his feet and running. His quarry was hampered by her long dress and the treefall underfoot and he soon overtook her and wrestled her to the ground.

She lay where she fell, and did not try to fight him. He stood up. Her hands and feet were filthy and covered in cuts. She said something in the
langue d’oc
that he could not make
out. And then she rolled on to her back and opened her legs.

Renaut ran up beside him. Loup had followed also.

The woman said something else to Philip. ‘What did she say?’ Renaut asked Loup.

‘She said to do whatever you want but asks that you don’t hurt her.’

Philip knelt down. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said. There was blood on her tunic. ‘Did you live in Saint-Ybars?’

She shook her head. She was from Béziers, she said. She and her husband had fled before the crusaders arrived, but bandits had ambushed them on the road. They had killed her husband and
her baby and then raped her. By some caprice, they had left her alive. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.

‘Guilhemeta.’

‘Guilhemeta, we will help you if we can.’

‘I don’t want your help,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anybody’s help.’

‘What are you doing here?’ he said.

‘The crusaders brought me. They had a priest with them and he was kind to me and helped me bury my baby and blessed him so he will go to heaven. But then their soldiers raped me and so I
ran away.’

‘What happened to the village?’

‘The soldiers got angry when the people would not open the gates. They fought them and then they ran away. So they killed everyone left behind. Even the
bayle
who helped them. They
hanged him.’

‘Some of the people got away?’

‘In the night. They escaped and went into the mountains.’

Philip turned to Renaut. ‘It seems the witch might still be alive.’

Renaut shook his head, horrified at the turn this interrogation had taken. ‘Please, seigneur. Let’s leave the woman in peace and go. It’s hopeless. This sorceress you’re
looking for could be anywhere in these mountains now. We would never find her.’

‘If she’s alive, trust me, I will find her.’

‘But we don’t know if she is still alive. We don’t even know if she can do miracles. We could be just chasing a phantom.’

‘I did not come this far to give up now, Renaut. Tell the men.’ He stood up and held out a hand to Guilhemeta. ‘Stand up. Come with me. No one’s going to harm you here.
We are men of honour.
Òmes de paratge
,’ he said, using the Oc words.

Guilhemeta hesitated. She looked at the boy for reassurance. Loup nodded. Philip helped her to her feet and led her back to the camp.

N
EXT MORNING, AS
he rode, Philip thought about the mutilated soldier they had found on the way to Saint-Ybars.

He should have finished the wretch himself. Why did he hesitate? Renaut had had no such qualms. He could not forget the look on his young squire’s face. It was neither pity nor terror; it
had terrified him.

Philip had put Guilhemeta on a pony with Loup. Look how they clung to each other. Good for her to have another to care for, he thought, it might break her out of her despond. And Loup, he needed
another mother perhaps.

Finally his mind ranged, as it always did, back to Alezaïs; she crept up to surprise him in death much as she did in life.
You’re like a sprite,
he used to say to her,
I
should put a bell on you so I know where you are.
Now he saw her in the dust spirals of midday, the clouds at evening. Four years in her grave and still she haunted him.

Let me go, my heart; if you cannot be here, let me go.

His throat was parched. Heat hummed in the rhythms of the cicadas, his own sweat tickled as it inched down his nose. A smudge of ink-black cloud appeared in the northern sky, the promise of a
thunderstorm to cool the air. They saw no one, just stunted oak and beech.

And then a scream.

Not just one scream; many screams, from many people. Renaut pointed, and Philip saw them at the same moment that he did. The soldiers had caught their victims in the open, as they were crossing
the neck of the valley. It was a well-executed ambush, three chevaliers sweeping in from the wooded spurs to chase the wretches into the path of their companions, who cut them down with slashes
from their swords or trampled them under the hooves of their warhorses.

‘These must be the refugees from Saint-Ybars,’ Renaut said.

‘They intend to massacre them.’

Renaut’s palfrey smelled the blood in the air and shied on its back legs. He fought to calm her. ‘What do we do?’

‘We cannot just do nothing,’ Philip said. He and his men were all wearing steel mail, had been travelling armed since Béziers, despite the heat. They had been expecting
trouble and now they had found it.

Philip turned to his sergeant. ‘Wait till they are all down from the spurs. Then we take them.’

The men seemed startled by his order. The knights and chevaliers down there wore the cross. Was it right to go against crusaders? But they were his liegemen and Philip knew they would do as he
ordered them to.

He turned back to the skirmish and saw a woman trying to outrun a horse, splashing into the shallows of the ford, stumbling on the wet stones. The chevalier who pursued her did not even bother
to raise his sword. He let his horse trample her and then went after a child who was running for the shelter of the trees.

Philip spurred his horse forward. It was a steep descent but Leyla went at the gallop, sure-footed as any mount he had ever had, and he gave her free rein. The crusader turned only at the last
moment; he did not have the visor down on his helmet and the look on his face changed in a moment from surprise to terror. He had no time to evade the sword stroke that unseated him; then Philip
was past him and after the next.

A blur of movement: a woman fleeing up the bank, a crusader with a fiery red beard pursuing her. Another of the villagers, a man, threw himself on top of her to protect her. The bearded knight
was about to dismount to execute them both when he saw Philip. He tried to wheel his horse around to face him but before he could react Philip was on him. He slashed at him and the redbeard could
only half-parry his blow and then his head snapped back and his helmet flew into the water and he fell.

Philip turned Leyla around and saw the rest of his men complete their charge. Shocked and outnumbered, the crusaders fled, escaping any way they could. The red-bearded knight remounted, shook
his fist at Philip and followed his men into the hills.

Over in moments.

The ford was littered with bodies. Just four were crusaders, the rest were refugees. The river was stained with their blood. A child floated in the shallows face down, a sword slash on his
back.

Renaut appeared beside him. ‘Is this what the Pope had in mind when he ordered this crusade, do you think?’ Philip said. ‘Renaut, I will tell you this. I may never find my way
into heaven, but sometimes I believe His Holiness himself will have some difficulty squeezing through the gate. Come, let’s not linger. I wager Redbeard and his men will be back with their
fellows soon enough to try and finish this business.’

A ragged lot, these benighted souls he had saved. A leper in a grey coat and scarlet hat, a ploughboy, a tinker, a stonemason. He had found them shelter in an abandoned
shepherd’s hovel, four walls with gaping holes in the mud and thatch. The mother of the murdered child was keening in the corner; others bathed their wounds as best they could with water from
the ford. There was the smell of straw and goat and blood.

The refugees built a fire in the hearth with windfall twigs to cook up the little food they had with them. Philip gave them some of the salted pork. They seemed glad of it, but then they had not
eaten for days.

Little children with huge dark eyes stared up at him from the straw. A woman put an infant to her breast. The woman still cradled the dead child in her arms, her shrill grief making him
wince.

The sky was on fire somewhere near Carcassonne.

A man with shoulders as wide as his broadsword knelt at his feet. Philip recognized him as the man he had saved from the redbeard, the one who had thrown himself over the grey-haired woman to
protect her. ‘Whoever you are, seigneur, we thank you.’

Philip hauled him back to his feet.
God’s blood, he’s as big as me, this one.
‘Who are you?’ Philip asked him.

‘My name is Anselm,’ the man said. ‘I am a stonemason, from Saint-Ybars.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the Trencavel fortress at Montaillet. We hope to find protection there from the
crosats
– the crusaders.’

‘How far is it? Those men will come back for you.’

‘We can turn east, into the forest. It is a longer way but we will be harder to find.’

‘Then you should do that. Rest here tonight if you must, but make sure you are gone before dawn.’

‘May we know who has saved us? You talk like a northerner, like a
crosat.
’

‘I
am
a northerner. My name is Philip of Vercy, I am from Burgundy.’

‘Why don’t you wear the cross? And why did you help us?’

‘I am not a crusader. I am here looking for someone, a healing woman. You may know her, for Saint-Ybars was where I was told she lived.’

Anselm frowned and looked at his wife, then back to Philip. ‘You came all the way from Burgundy for a healing woman?’

‘Her name is Fabricia Bérenger. Did you know her? Is she here, with you? Is that her?’ Philip pointed at the trembling waif in the corner of the hut. Aware of the attention,
the girl ducked her head. ‘Well, man? Speak up.’

‘How do you know her name, seigneur?’

‘Her reputation has travelled. I heard it first from a wise woman on my lands. She in turn heard it from a pilgrim who had just returned from Toulouse.’

‘What do you want of her?’

‘My son is dying. I came here to ask her to help me. I want her to come back with me and heal him for he is too sick to come here.’ Philip saw the looks between the man and his wife.
‘You know this woman?’

‘You must have enormous faith to do such a thing.’

‘He is all I have left. If I lose my son, I lose everything. Is it faith or is it desperation? I don’t know. Please tell me what you know.’

Anselm sighed. ‘This woman you are seeking – she is our daughter.’

‘Your daughter?’

‘Whether she can perform such miracles as you speak of, I don’t know. If it’s true, then it has brought her and us nothing but heartbreak. She left Saint-Ybars several months
ago.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘To the monastery at Montmercy.’

‘So she’s alive?’

‘Yes, she’s alive, God be with her. She went there to try and find a little peace. In the village people called her witch or saint; either way they would not let her be, so she took
orders. I don’t know if it did any good.’

‘Where is this monastery? How do I find her?’

‘It’s to the east, in the mountains near Montaillet, where we ourselves are headed. But the quickest way is back the way you came and then follow the Roman road. You will see the
abbey four leagues on. There is a spur shaped like a horn and you will see it there, below a mountain they call Mont Maissac.’ Anselm placed a hand on his arm. ‘Seigneur, please, if you
get there, tell her we are all right. She will have heard of the massacres. Tell her we still live and we send her our blessings and that there is not a day we do not say a prayer for her. Tell her
we are headed for Montaillet.’

Night had fallen. Philip found Renaut sitting alone by the fire under the trees. He sat down next to him and shook him by the shoulder, unable to hide his excitement. ‘I
have found her!’

‘Seigneur?’

‘The healer! Her mother and father are here among these refugees! They say she is not far from here, at a monastery called Montmercy. Just a day’s ride!’

‘Seigneur, do you realize what we have done here today? We have killed men wearing the crusader cross. Even if they did not recognize us or our pennants, they will discover who we are soon
enough. This makes us heretics. Although I do not doubt the rightness of what we did we are in great danger if we remain in the Pays d’Oc.’