Labyrinth (21 page)

She pulled herself up short, realizing what she had said.

“Everybody was much occupied, Dame. The curfew was not set. So although the Western Gate was closed, the Eastern Gate stood open all night. It would have been easy for two men to transport you between them, provided your face, your clothing, were hidden. There were many ladies… women, I mean, of the sort…”

Alai’s stifled a grin. “Thank you, Francois. I quite understand your point.”

The smile faded from her face. She needed to think, decide what she should do next. She was more confused than ever. And her ignorance of why things had happened, in the manner they had, compounded her fear.
It is hard to act against a faceless enemy.

“It would be well to circulate it that I can remember nothing of the attack,

Francois,“ she said after a while. ”That way if my assailants remain within the chateau, they will have no need to feel threatened.“

The thought of making the same journey back across the courtyard chilled her soul. Besides, she would not sleep under the eyes of Oriane’s nurse. Alais had no doubt she was set to spy on her and report to her sister.

“I will rest here for what remains of the night,” she added.

To her surprise, Francois looked horrified. “But, Dame, it is not seemly for you—”

“I’m sorry to put you from your bed,” she said, softening her command with a smile, “but my sleeping companion in my chamber is not to my liking.” An impassive, shuttered look descended over his face. “But if you could stay close by, Francois, in case I have further need of you, I would be grateful.”

He did not return her smile. “As you wish, Dame.”

Alais stared at him for a moment, then decided she was reading too much into his manner. She asked him to light the lamp, then she dismissed him.

As soon as Francois had gone, Alais curled up in the center of her father’s bed. Alone again, the pain of Guilhem’s absence returned like a dull ache. She tried to summon his face to her mind, his eyes, the line of his jaw, but his features blurred and would not stay fixed. Alais knew this inability to find his image in her mind was borne of anger. Over and over, she reminded herself Guilhem had been only fulfilling his responsibilities as a
chevalier.
He had not acted wrongly or falsely. In fact, he had acted appropriately. On the eve of so important a mission, his duty was to his liege lord and to those making the journey with him, not to his wife. Yet, however many times Alais told herself this, she could not quieten the voices in her head. Whatever she said made no difference to what she felt. That when she’d had need of Guilhem’s protection, he had failed her. Unjust as it was, she blamed Guilhem.

If her absence had been discovered at first light, then the men might have been caught.

And my father would not have left thinking ill of me.

CHAPTER 20

In a deserted farm outside Aniane, in the flat, fertile lands to the west of Montpellier, an elderly Cathar
parfait
and his eight
credentes,
believers, crouched in the corner of a barn, behind a collection of old harnesses for oxen and mules.

One of the men was badly wounded. Gray and pink flesh flopped open around the white splintered bones that had been his face. His eye had been dislodged from its socket by the force of the kick that had shattered his cheek. Blood congealed around the gaping hole. His friends had refused to leave him when the house in which they had gathered to pray had been attacked by a small, renegade group of soldiers that had broken away from the French army.

But he had slowed them down and lost them the advantage of knowing the land. All day the Crusaders had hunted them. Night had not saved them and now they were trapped. The Cathars could hear them shouting in the courtyard, the sound of dry wood catching light. They were preparing a pyre.

The
parfait
knew they were facing the end. There would be no mercy from men such as this, driven by hatred and ignorance and bigotry. There had never been an army the like of it on Christian soil. The
parfait
would not have believed it had he not seen it with his own eyes. He’d been traveling south, on a parallel course with the Host. He had seen the huge and unwieldy barges floating down the River Rhone, carrying equipment and supplies, as well as wooden chests ringed with bands of steel that contained precious holy relics to bless the expedition. The hooves of thousands of animals and men riding alongside created a giant cloud of dust, which floated above the Host.

From the start, townspeople and villagers had shut their gates, watching from behind their walls and praying that the army would pass them by. Stories of increasing violence and horror circulated. There were reports of farms being burned, reprisals for farmers who had refused to allow the soldiers to pillage their land. Cathar believers, denounced as heretics, had been burned at the stake in Puylaroque. The entire Jewish community of Montelimar, men, women and children, had been put to the sword and their bleeding heads mounted on spikes outside the city walls, carrion for the crows.

In Saint-Paul deTrois Chateaux, a
parfait
was crucified by a small band of Gascon
routiers.
They tied him to a makeshift cross made from two pieces of wood lashed together with rope and hammered nails through his hands. The weight of his body dragged him down, but he still would not recant or apostatize his faith. In the end, bored with the slow death, the soldiers disemboweled him and left him to rot.

These and other acts of barbarism were either denied by the abbott of Citeaux and the French barons or else disclaimed as the work of a few renegades. But as he crouched in the dark, the
parfait
knew that the words of lords, priests and papal legates counted for nothing out here. He could smell the bloodlust on the breath of the men who had hunted them down to this small corner of the Devil’s earthly creation.

He recognized Evil.

All he could do now was try to save the souls of his believers so they could look upon the face of God. Their passing from this world into the next would not be gentle.

The wounded man was still conscious. He whimpered softly, but a final stillness had come over him and his skin was tinged with the grayness of death. The
parfait
laid his hands upon the man’s head as he administered the last rites of their religion and spoke the words of the
consolament.

The remaining believers joined hands in a circle and began to pray.

“Holy Father, just God of good spirits, thou who are never deceived, who dost never lie or doubt, grant us to know…”

The soldiers were kicking against the door now, laughing, jeering. It would not be long now before they found them. The youngest of the women, no more than fourteen years old, began to cry. The tears ran hopelessly, silently, down her cheeks.

“… grant us to know what thou knowest, to love what thou dost love; for we are not of this world, and this world is not of us, and we fear lest we meet death in this realm of an alien god.”

The
parfait
raised his voice as the horizontal beam holding the door shut fractured in two. Splinters of wood, as sharp as arrowheads, exploded into the barn as the men burst in. Lit by the orange glow of the fire burning in the courtyard, he could see their eyes were glazed and inhuman. He counted ten of them, each with a sword.

His eyes went to the commander who followed them in. A tall man, with a pale thin face and expressionless eyes, as calm and controlled as his men were hot and ill disciplined. He had an air of cruel authority about him, a man used to being obeyed.

On his orders, the fugitives were dragged from their hiding place. He lifted his arm and thrust his blade into the
parfait’s
chest. For an instant, he held his gaze. The Frenchman’s flint gray eyes were stiff with contempt. He raised his arm a second time and plunged his sword into the top of the old man’s skull, splattering red pulp and gray brains into the straw.

With their priest murdered, panic broke out. The others tried to run, but the ground was already slippery with blood. A soldier grabbed a woman by her hair and thrust his sword into her back. Her father tried to pull him off, but the soldier swung round and sliced him across the belly. His eyes opened wide in shock as the soldier twisted the knife, then pushed the skewered body off the blade with his foot.

The youngest soldier turned away and vomited into the straw.

Within minutes all the men lay dead, their bodies strewn about the barn. The captain ordered his men to take the two older women outside. The girl he kept behind, the puking boy too. He needed to harden up.

She backed away from him, her eyes alive with fear. He smiled. He was in no hurry and there was nowhere for her to run. He paced around her, like a wolf watching its prey, then, without warning, he struck. In a single movement he grabbed her around the throat and smashed her head back against the wall and ripped her dress open. She was screaming louder now, hitting and kicking out wildly. He drove his fist into her face, relishing the splinter of bone beneath his touch.

Her legs buckled. She sank to her knees, leaving a trail of blood down the wood. He bent over and ripped her shift from her body, splitting the material from top to bottom in a single tear. She whimpered as he pulled her skirts up to her waist.

“They must not be allowed to breed and bring others like themselves into the world,” he said in a cold voice, drawing his knife from its sheath.

He did not intend to pollute his flesh by touching the heretic. Grasping the blade, he plunged the hilt deep inside the girl’s stomach. With all the hate he felt for her kind, he drove the knife into her again and again, until her body lay motionless before him. As a final act of desecration, he rolled her over onto her front and, with two deep sweeps of his knife, carved the sign of the cross on her naked back. Pearls of blood, like rubies, sprang up on her white skin.

“That should serve as a lesson for any others who pass this way,” he said calmly. “Now, get rid of it.”

Wiping his blade on her torn dress, he straightened up.

The boy was sobbing. His clothes were stained with vomit and blood. He tried to do what his captain commanded, but he was too slow.

He grabbed the boy by the throat. “I said, get rid of it. Quick. If you don’t want to join them.” He kicked the boy in the small of his back, leaving a footprint of blood, dust and dirt on his tunic. A soldier with a weak stomach was no use to him.

The makeshift pyre in the middle of the farmyard was burning fiercely, fanned by the hot night winds that swept up from the Mediterranean Sea.

The soldiers were standing well back, their hands at their faces to shield themselves from the heat. Their horses, tethered by the gate, were stamping with agitated hooves. The stench of death was in their nostrils, making them nervous.

The women had been stripped and made to kneel on the ground in front of their captors, their feet tied and their hands bound tightly behind their back. Their faces, scratched breasts and bare shoulders showed marks of their ill use, but they were silent. Somebody gasped as the girl’s corpse was thrown down in front of them.

The captain walked toward the fire. He was bored now, restless to be gone. Killing heretics was not the reason he had taken the Cross. This brutal expedition was a gift to his men. They needed to be kept occupied, to keep their skills sharp and to stop them turning on each other.

The night sky was filled with white stars around a full moon. He realized it must be past midnight, perhaps later. He’d intended to be back long before now, in case word came.

“Shall we give them to the fire, my lord?”

With a sudden, single stroke, he drew his sword and severed the head of the nearest woman. Blood pumped from a vein in her neck, splashing his legs and feet. The skull fell to the ground with a soft thud. He kicked her still twitching body until it fell forward into the dirt.

“Kill the rest of these heretic bitches, then burn the bodies, the barn too. We’ve delayed long enough.”

CHAPTER 21

Alais woke as dawn slipped into the room.

For a moment, she couldn’t remember how she came to be in her father’s chamber. She sat up and stretched the sleep from her bones, waiting until the memory of the day before came back vivid and strong.

Some time during the long hours between midnight and daybreak she had reached a decision. Despite her broken night, her mind was as clear as a mountain stream. She could not sit by, passively waiting for her father to return. She had no way of judging the consequences of each day’s delay. When he had spoken of his sacred duty to the
Noublesso de los Seres
and the secret they guarded, he had left her in no doubt that his honor and pride lay in his ability to fulfill his vows. Her duty was to seek him out, tell him all that had happened, put the matter back in his hands.

Far better to act than do nothing.

Alais walked over to the window and opened the shutters to let in the morning air. In the distance the Montagne Noire shimmered purple in the gathering dawn, enduring and timeless. The sight of the mountains strengthened her resolve. The world was calling her to join it.

She was taking a risk, a woman traveling alone. Willful, her father would call it. But she was an excellent rider, quick and instinctive, and she had faith in her ability to outride any group of
routiers
or bandits. Besides, to her knowledge, there had been no attacks on Viscount Trencavel’s lands.

Alais raised her hand to the bruise at the back of her head, evidence that someone meant her harm. If it was her time to die, then far better to face death with her sword in her hand than sit waiting for her enemies to strike again.

Alais picked up her cold lamp from the table, catching her reflection in the black-streaked glass. She was pale, her skin the color of buttermilk, and her eyes glinted with fatigue. But there was a sense of purpose that had not been there before.