Troubadour (16 page)

‘There is nothing we can do for them,’ said Iseut. ‘Or for the defenders at Carcassonne. Except pray for them. But we have to think what we must do to save ourselves.’

‘You think they will come here?’ asked Elinor. ‘Won’t they go on from Carcassonne to Toulouse?’

‘You forget,’ said Iseut. ‘The Count of Toulouse now fights alongside the French. They won’t attack the rose-coloured city.’

‘So they might come back this way?’

‘Who knows what they might do?’ said Iseut. ‘Who would have thought they would do as they did at Béziers? But I’m not prepared to sit here like a deer caught in a net waiting for the Frenchmen to come and slit my throat.’

But she did not tell Elinor what else she would do.

The main body of the French army arrived at Carcassonne on the 1st of August. Their advance guard had been there four days, digging in for a long siege, such as they had fully expected at Béziers. But now they were flushed with success. After the massacre at Béziers and the easy yielding of Narbonne, they had found nearly a hundred strongholds between there and Carcassonne standing empty with their gates open.

The French were able to replenish their dwindling supplies from the full granaries and fruit-stores they encountered on their march.

‘There must be many landless lords wandering the Midi,’ said the Abbot of Cîteaux to Simon de Montfort.

De Montfort had become his right-hand man, showing great fearlessness and calm at Béziers and winning respect from all the leaders of the host.

‘Then may they long remain so,’ said de Montfort. He was beginning to see just what rich pickings were to be had from this war. All the empty strongholds had been confiscated.

Outside the great walled city, the suburbs were not well fortified and were soon overrun. Carcassonne was impressively walled and towered but it had a weakness and the French were quick to take advantage of it; it was built too far from the River Aude and relied for its water on the deep wells inside the walls.

So the first act of the army was to take the suburb of Saint-Vincent, which lay between the city and the river. But the Viscount didn’t give in without a fight; he led a sortie himself and fought valiantly but they had to withdraw back to the safety of the walls and leave the suburb in French hands.

There were not just soldiers and camp followers in the French army; there was a large contingent of clergy, to bless the fighting force as they went about their work. They had adopted ‘
Veni Sancte Spiritus
’ – ‘Come Holy Ghost’ – as the anthem of the crusade and they sang it lustily as the army took the other two suburbs by storm. They needed siege engines and mines to bring down the walls of the suburb in the south but, a week after they arrived, the French were masters of that too. And still the ‘
Veni Sancte
Spiritus
’ rang out.

It chilled the blood of the defenders inside the city.

‘They really do believe that God is on their side, don’t they?’ said Huguet to Bertran.

The boy was greatly recovered in body though still overwhelmed by grief for what he had seen and suffered. He had no skills as a fighter but he could not keep away from the walls. Bertran did not like to take up arms himself; he had done what he could by passing information and urging the south to defend itself.

But now that it had come to what he thought would be the last stand against the French, he had armed himself and was prepared to kill in order to save his liege lord and the people who relied on him who had fled to the city for its protection.

‘They have their anthem,’ he said, suddenly thinking of a role for the
joglar
. ‘Let us have one of our own. They dare to call on a spirit of Good but we know they act for the love of property and possession. You carry no weapon but you have a great gift still to offer the defenders. Sing to them. Sing all round the city. Sing to raise men’s hearts and to make them think of what is at stake here. Sing to remind them of what they are fighting to defend. Are we to be free men and women or to put our necks under the foot of the northerners?’

Huguet’s face lit up. He didn’t know yet what he could sing but he knew that Bertran was right. He could encourage men on the battlements and give them heart even in the face of the huge French force.

And now there was a lull in the fighting; King Pedro of Aragon had arrived. The King came with a hundred knights to visit the crusaders’ encampment. He was Viscount Trencavel’s suzerain and he had come as a mediator between the Viscount and the righteous anger of the Church.

A lookout on the walls hurried to the Viscount with the news.

‘He has come to save us all,’ said Trencavel and made a welcome ready for Pedro while the Frenchmen allowed him into the city to parley.

But his relief was short-lived. Pedro was angry that the Viscount hadn’t come to terms with the Legates earlier and given up his patronage of the heretics.

‘Why did you not listen to my advice?’ he demanded. ‘I can’t help you now – a hundred knights are as nothing against tens of thousands of Frenchmen. You had better surrender.’

The Viscount did not protest that Pedro could have brought more knights if he had wanted. The King of Aragon had been his last hope.

‘You can’t win this battle,’ said Pedro, who had been talking to the leaders of the army. ‘Your city is full of refugees, your wells are running dry and the northerners are lying in the shade of the trees, eating fruit. They have taken control of the salt pans and are trading salt for bread with the locals, so your destruction of the watermills makes no difference.’

Trencavel bowed his head. If Pedro would not help him, he must discuss terms. His face was grey and he looked far older than his twenty-four years.

Within a short time a message came from the French army to say that, if the Viscount wanted to leave the city, he could do so, with eleven companions, each being allowed as many possessions as they could carry. When Pedro heard the terms, he muttered under his breath, ‘You are more likely to see a donkey fly than Trencavel accepting such conditions.’

He was right. The Viscount refused and King Pedro went back to Aragon.

Another week of siege passed and at every assault the crossbowmen of the city repulsed the French knights while Huguet went from battlement to battlement singing songs of encouragement. The defenders called him ‘
Lo rossinhol de la ciutat
’ – the nightingale of the town, because everywhere he went, his sweet notes rallied the spirits of the men of Carcassonne.

The Abbot was worried; they had a meeting of leaders at which it was decided that one of them would become the new viscount when Trencavel was finally defeated. But what would he have to rule over if the same happened as at Béziers?

‘Then offer the Viscount a safe conduct into the camp for another parley,’ suggested Simon de Montfort. ‘Tell him that we will spare all the citizens this time, if they leave wearing nothing but their small-clothes and carrying no valuables.’

‘How would that help us subdue the Viscount?’ objected the Abbot.

‘I said “offer him a safe conduct”, not abide by it,’ said de Montfort quietly.

The two men understood one another. The terms were swiftly transmitted to the castle and Trencavel came out to parley under the walls; he had only nine companions with him.

He was escorted to the tent of the Duke of Nevers. And there he was put in chains, the word of the Frenchmen having been completely broken.

Next morning, the 14th of August, the citizens of Carcassonne left their homes, the men shoeless in hose and breeches, the women in their shifts. It took all day to empty the city and then the Viscount was led back in and thrown into a dungeon under his own castle. He was never seen alive again.

.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Planh

‘They are arguing over the fleece before they’ve got a lamb,’ said one of the French guards outside the leaders’ tent.

‘What fleece?’ said his friend.

‘They are in there quarrelling over who’s going to be the next Viscount of Carcassonne.’

‘While the real one’s still alive?’

‘And how long do you think that’s going to be the case?’ said the first guard. ‘Nah! They’ll pick one of them to give the castle to and then they’ll get rid of young Trencavel. It’s the way of war, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t reckon it was right to break the safe conduct though,’ said his friend. ‘He came out under the flag of truce.’

The guard shrugged. ‘What do you expect after Béziers? I’m sick of the whole thing. Can’t wait till our forty days are up and we can get back home.’

Inside the tent, the Abbot offered the Viscountcy of Béziers, Albi and Carcassonne to the Duke of Burgundy.

‘It would be a dishonour to accept the title while Viscount Trencavel lives,’ he said.

The Abbot was seething inwardly but then offered the Viscountcy to the Count of Nevers.

‘You must excuse me,’ said Nevers diplomatically, ‘but I have enough land in France from my father.’

‘It would be a disgrace to accept the fief,’ said the Count of Saint Pol, when the Abbot turned to him.

It seemed as if none of the northerners wanted to be associated with the city they had razed to the ground and the one they were in the process of plundering. They knew very well that a great treachery was being committed against Viscount Trencavel. The Abbot was chairing the jury of seven key men and he looked at Simon de Montfort. Surely this ambitious but not over-rich lord would not turn down such a fancy title?

‘What say you, my Lord de Montfort?’ he asked.

The Abbot was a good judge of men.

‘Surely there are others more worthy of this great honour?’ said de Montfort, looking round at the group of nobles; he knew he was of lesser degree than any there. They remained silent. ‘But if you insist . . .’ he said at last.

So de Montfort modestly accepted the title of the young man who was now in the dungeons of his own castle. The Viscountess Agnes and her little son had been released to the care of the Count of Foix. The new Viscount, de Montfort, had a wife too and several sons, one of them almost grown up enough to fight alongside his father.

Inside the city, soldiers had piled up heaps of possessions and valuables, while the citizens continued to troop out through the gate.

But a small contingent, led by Bertran, had left by another route the previous night. Under the northern wall of the city was the entrance to a cavern, which opened on to an underground passage three leagues long. From the outside it looked like a store for keeping wine or cheese cool but Raimon-Roger had told the troubadour about it and urged him to use it as a last resort if things went ill for the city.

It was a long, nerve-wracking walk in the dark, with no certainty that there wouldn’t be soldiers waiting at the far end. Or armed pursuers following them from the entrance in the city. Those who left with Bertran had abandoned all their worldly possessions and fled only with their lives, but they were spared the humiliation of being driven out wearing nothing but their undergarments. And they did not trust the Abbot and the other leaders not to kill them, since he had broken his word to the Viscount.

Huguet was among the group who crawled silently through the tunnel not knowing if they were creeping towards or away from certain death. He wished he could have sung something to raise their spirits but, even if it had been safe to make such a sound when their escape had to be kept secret, the songs he knew all seemed to have fled from his mind.

There was nothing except cold and darkness and the feeling of rock pressing down on him. He thought about Perrin and wondered, as he had a hundred times, whether he had been killed by sword or fire. Which would be a better death? Huguet grimaced in the dark at his own question. What was a good death? His fellow-believers said it was one where you received the
consolamentum
at the end but where had the consolation been for the Believers of Béziers?

He felt the Viscount’s ring in the dark. There was another good man gone to certain death because of the Legate’s treachery. Huguet felt as if he had been crawling along a tunnel for a long time, much longer than he had been escaping from Carcassonne. But he couldn’t give way to these thoughts; he was responsible for someone else now.

The child he had saved from outside Béziers had not spoken a word since they arrived in the city. Huguet didn’t even know his name. But he had visited him every day in the gatekeeper’s house and seen him growing stronger with good food and some cosseting. Huguet had decided to call him Peire, in honour of the dead
joglar
.

With the people all about to leave the city, Peire could have gone with the gatekeeper and his wife. But to what? Huguet had come in the hours of dark and talked it over with the boy’s protectors.

‘I don’t think he’d leave without you anyway,’ said the gatekeeper’s wife. ‘And we’ll have enough troubles without another mouth to feed. I think he’ll be better off with you.’

And she woke the boy up and dressed him warmly, giving them both food for the journey, crying over them and over Carcassonne.

And now Peire walked silently beside Huguet, his little pack on his shoulders, holding on to the older boy’s hand and gripping in the other the wooden dagger that was all that was left of his old life.

‘I can’t just sit here waiting for news to come to us,’ said Iseut. ‘I have been through that once in my life and it did not turn out well.’

Rumours were flying all over the south but real news was hard to come by. Iseut sent out her own messengers in the end, and when they returned to Saint-Jacques, their faces told their story before they made any report.

‘Many places have surrendered, my lady,’ said one.

‘Or been abandoned,’ added the other.

‘What places?’ asked Iseut.

‘Fanjeaux, Castres, Mirepoix, Saverdun, Foix . . .’

It was a litany of names of some of the most important towns in the region. But they were all well to the west of the Rhône.

‘And Carcassonne?’ asked Elinor.

‘The army let the people leave but the city is in French hands and the Viscount has disappeared. People say he is a prisoner there.’

‘There is one further piece of news, my lady,’ said the second messenger. ‘The French let the knights go too, and there are rumours of a fighting force gathering in some of the hill towns. Termes, Minerve and Cabaret, particularly.’

‘That is the best thing you have told us so far,’ said Iseut. ‘What are the French doing?’

‘Mostly dispersing. Their forty days were up by the time they took Carcassonne, so the army is dwindling.’

Elinor wondered what was going through the lady’s mind. They hardly saw Berenger any more and there was no one else to advise them. They were completely reliant on whatever news came off the Pilgrims’ Way or was brought by messengers. Elinor thought as she often had before how much more she had known of what was going on in the world when she was living on the road. Cities like Montpellier had been centres for information, even if that information was not entirely accurate.

But after some weeks of this state of inaction and ignorance, everything changed.

A new message came that the French army, heading back north so that the landowners could attend to their own harvests, had split into many separate groups, some leaderless and all uncontrolled. Their successes in the south had gone to their heads and now they had dropped all pretence of marching to eradicate heresy. They were burning and pillaging as they went. And some had crossed the Rhône.

The danger was coming nearer; what should they do? Continue to wait and hope that the rabble army would pass Saint-Jacques? Iseut was so tense that the little frown line between her brows had deepened.

And then Digne was taken. The French were less than a day away.

They could get no news of Berenger or the fate of everyone else in the town. But there was nothing they could do to help them; they had to look to their own safety.

‘There is no time to waste,’ said Iseut, resolute at last. ‘We are leaving.’

Elinor had thought the lady would offer her vassals the protection of her castle. But instead she summoned them all to the castle and then gave them all her animals. One animal from each flock was slaughtered for food and the rest handed over.

‘I don’t know how long you’ll have to enjoy them,’ she said. ‘But from now on the herds and flocks are yours. You can choose whether to stay in your homes or herd the animals eastwards. Go with my blessing and my thanks.’

The peasants were so baffled it took them a long time to understand. But news had filtered through about Digne and they made their decisions accordingly. About two-thirds started herding their animals – an undreamed of richness – down the valley and headed off to a new life.

Back at the castle, Iseut was busy releasing servants, packing stores and saddling up horses.

‘We will go alone,’ she told Elinor. ‘Just you, me, my
senescal
and two pack ponies. That way we can travel light and get as far away from the French army as possible.’

Nicolas the
senescal
was directing servants to dig holes to hide silver plate and any other large valuables.

‘It’s not worth it,’ said Iseut, who seemed to have become almost indifferent about possessions. ‘Even if the French don’t find them, their hiding-place will be known. Do you really think if we ever come back here we will find such buried treasure still in the same spot?’

But Nicolas went doggedly on with his task and Iseut made Garsenda sew jewellery and gold coins into the hems of her and Elinor’s dresses and cloaks.

The maid gave Elinor some vicious looks as she went about her task. Because the end of everything she had ever known was coming and the world was turning upside down, she dared to speak her mind.

‘I know your secret,’ she hissed at Elinor. ‘Coward! Why don’t you stop sheltering behind a woman’s skirts and show your true colours. Be a man again!’

It was dawn before Bertran and his followers emerged from the tunnel. They stood in the warm early morning air, sniffing the breeze, unable to believe that they had made it through without capture. It seemed strange to Huguet that the sun still rose in the same way as it always had when everything the little group had ever known had come to an end.

Bertran tried to organise the raggle-taggle company into some sort of credible rebel group. His goal was to get them to Termes, one of the heavily fortified towns where they might meet up with other Carcassonnians and join up to resist the French.

But he hadn’t had much choice about who left the city by the underground route. He’d had to pass the word round stealthily and without its leaking to the besiegers that he was leading out a company who rejected the French terms. So perhaps that was one thing the little group had in common: that they were all natural rebels. But they were a mixture of Believers and Church followers, united by the idea that what the army had been doing in the south was wrong.

The story of Béziers had soon run round Carcassonne once Huguet had brought the appalling news. He was treated with great respect and kindness and the little boy he had rescued was soon adopted as a kind of mascot by the Carcassonne refugees. There was always a willing pair of broad shoulders to carry Peire or someone to encourage him to eat or to play fivestones with him.