Stigmata (49 page)

He hitched his horse to a tree.

He imagined that they would have found Gilles by now. He could hear the bells pealing at Montaillet, the sound carried clearly on the frozen air. The stable boy would be babbling to the soldiers
about the priest’s hurried departure. They would know who it was that had murdered the great lord.

‘Hello!’ he called. He stepped inside the cave, found the remains of a fire. He rubbed the ashes between his fingers. They were still warm.

He got down on his knees.
Be careful, you’ll wear them out,
he heard Gilles mocking him.

Well, we’ve seen now who wore out first.
The floor of the cave was gritty sand. He heard water dripping somewhere.

He spoke the words of the Our Father. He saw movement in the shadows.

There were at least six of them: men or women, it was impossible to tell as they all wore hoods. They waited until he had finished his prayer.

‘What do you want here?’ a man’s voice growled.

‘I want to join you.’

‘A trick!’ another hissed.

‘There is no trick,’ he said. He took off his cross and spat on it. Then he tossed it on the ashes of the fire. ‘If it were a trick I would have soldiers with me. But as you
can see, I am quite alone.’

One of the
bons òmes
came out of the shadows. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Father Simon Jorda. I am a monk of the Cistercian order at Toulouse. Or I was. I am a Christian monk no longer.’

‘What do you want with us?’

‘I killed a man tonight.’

‘Priests kill all the time,’ another voice said from the shadows. ‘They call it holy.’

‘This one was a Christian knight and I did it because he killed a
crezen
. So to whom shall I go to for my absolution now?’

‘Because you no longer wish to be a priest does not mean you are ready for the
consolamentum
.’

‘I know what you believe. I think, perhaps, that I am ready to believe it also.’

One of the
bons òmes
crouched down on the other side of the cold fire. ‘You know what your people do to us when they catch us? No doubt you have witnessed it first hand. Are
you ready to die that way? And it will be much worse for you if you convert to our religion. They will hate you even more than they hate us.’

‘I am looking for God. Help me.’

One of the other
bons òmes
came over. ‘Can we trust him?’

‘Of course we can. He is right, if he wanted us dead he would have brought soldiers with him.’ He turned back to Simon. ‘Do you understand what you are about to do? Are you
ready to step into the flames?’

‘My brother,’ Simon said, ‘it feels as if I am about to step out of them.’

T
HE ROOM WAS
lit by just a few tallow candles, and the black smoke hung heavy in the air. Fabricia, her hands wrapped in
linen bandages, wanted to reach for him but he stood two paces back from her bed, as if he was already gone.

The chapel bell rang for vespers. Philip heard the novices hurry across the cloister below to the chapter house.

‘How did they know?’ she said. ‘Did Father Jorda tell them?’

He shook his head. ‘Not the priest. It was the boy, Loup.’

Her eyes blinked slowly. ‘So what will we do now?’

‘They think we are dead, so we are safe, for now.’

‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to go to Catalonia. I want to forget this place and everything that has happened. Do you still have the cross?’

The cross! He would never find it now. ‘You should stay here, get your strength back.’

There was a silence. He could hear the wax sizzling in the candles. Fabricia closed her eyes.

‘You should stay here,’ he repeated.

‘But what about you?’

‘I have business to attend to. There is something I must do before I leave the Pays d’Oc.’

‘No, please, seigneur. Let it be.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You have no horse, no armour, no men. He is in a fortress surrounded by soldiers and by snow.’

‘I will find a way. I cannot rest until what he did to you and to my squire is avenged.’

There were tears on her face. Under the bandages her hands were encased in the poultices the infirmarian had put on to draw out the infection, but she was able to wipe them away with her thumb.
‘We could have a new life, both of us.’

He thought about what Bernadette had said to him. Yes, but what kind of life would that be for you? he thought.

‘If you leave here, seigneur, I will never see you again. We both know this. They will kill you. Do you remember the prayer you made, for us to be together? Well, God has given you your
miracle. He has answered you. But He has put a price on His gift, and it is that you must give up your vengeance.’

‘Should I just forget what he did to Renaut? How can I ever know happiness when I also know that man is still alive?’

‘You will be happy because you are happy. You will be happy because you will just forget about him, knowing he cannot harm you more. If remembering means that it makes you unhappy, then
happiness is forgetting. That is what I am asking you to do. Forget, for our sake.’

‘I may have given up my title and my lands but I cannot give up the code I live by. I cannot give up my honour. You know what I am. But should you stay with me, you would come to hate what
I am.’

She did not say anything for a long time. He heard the fat from the candle sizzle on the cold stone of the windowsill.

‘You said to me once that when I laid my hands on people, it gave them hope. You said it was not just the healing, that it showed them God had not abandoned them. You said that what I did
mattered a great deal.’

‘Yes, and I still believe that.’

‘But I surrendered that gift; I did it for you, because I wanted you so badly. But what a cost, seigneur, not just to me, but to all those who came to me looking for hope. When I chose
you, I chose against them. I turned my back on Bernart and Father Marty and everyone like them.’

‘That was not the choice.’

‘Wasn’t it? From our first night together my hands and my feet stopped bleeding. What does it mean?’

‘I don’t know what it means. No one does.’

‘What if I said that is God’s bargain? That I might help others, but in return I must suffer for it. I gave up the gift not because of the pain in my hands but because I would not
give up you. What do you say to that?’

‘It is for the best,’ he said, choking on the words. She closed her eyes.

‘You do not truly believe that and neither do I.’ Philip kissed her on the cheek.

‘My father took his revenge,’ she said. ‘But you know, if the priest who murdered my mother was at this very moment eating roast pheasant round a warm fire with all the
world’s jewels laid at his feet, I would say yes, let him drink the best wines and wear the finest silks. Whatever pleases him, as long as I can have my father back. What good is revenge when
you lose everything you love?’

‘I have given up everything that made me a knight. If I give up my honour as well, I fear there will be nothing left.’

‘If there is nothing left, then start again, be something that you have never been.’

‘I am a knight. I do not know how to be anything else. This is the only way. You will never find peace in the world I live in.’

‘Then I must bid you farewell and Godspeed, seigneur. Know that I will love you until my dying breath and hope that you shall never regret what you are about to do.’

She turned her face to the wall. Philip hesitated, then turned and went out, shutting the door to the cell softly behind him.

There was a sheen of ice on the cobblestones and the cold was so deep it hurt to breathe. He loaded the mule. Bernadette watched him as he tightened the straps.

‘What do you plan to do?’ she said.

‘I’ll head for Cabaret. Trencavel’s soldiers are still holding out there, and they will help me.’

‘Is that how you plan to take your revenge?’

‘As Fabricia has pointed out to me, I cannot do it by myself.’

‘How do you know they will not butcher you on sight?’

Philip reached into his tunic and took out a Trencavel pennant. ‘I will show them this. Besides, there will be soldiers there from Montaillet who will remember me.’

‘She says she does not want you to go.’

‘But as you said to me, sister, if I take her with me, she will never find any peace. I am a man of war. She would ask me to forego my vengeance on the man who tortured my squire, and
knowing that I should never find peace either. You are right, there is nothing to be done.’

‘Yes, I believe it is better for her to stay here. The world is not the place for a spirit such as hers.’

He picked up the donkey’s reins. The abbess barred the way. ‘Don’t go back to Montaillet, for the sake of your own soul. Violence will never bring you peace.’

‘You hide away from the world up here. It is easier to be charitable when the world is not with you.’

‘Will you not put down your sword and fall to your prayers?’

‘Prayers will not protect you or me from those who wish to destroy us. When we bow our heads it just makes it easier to chop them off.’

‘And if you live as your enemy lives, one day you will not be able to distinguish between him and you.’

‘Thank you for your kindness. It is true I do not agree with much that you say but I wish I were more like you. Look after her for me.’ He went past her but paused at the stable
door. ‘Do you think . . . these wounds she had before on her hands and her feet . . . you saw them?’

‘Of course. They were a constant trial to her as a novice, and several times I saw them unbound.’

‘What did you think? Were they real – or is she afflicted with some kind of madness?’

Bernadette sighed. ‘I truly believe Fabricia to be a good soul, as pure from sin as it is possible for a mortal woman to be. But I cannot believe these things, Philip, as much as I might
want to. She is not like you or I, but that does not make her a saint.’

Philip nodded and led the mule across the cloister towards the open gate.

L
OOK AT THIS
rabble, Martín Navarese thought. They were good fighting men once. Now they look like vagabonds. The
crosatz
had taken away their armour and their weapons at Montaillet and the next day half the men had slipped away, headed for the lowlands or back to Catalonia.

Soon afterwards they had attacked a crusader patrol in the forest, six well-armed men, and themselves armed only with staves and their bare hands. It was an act born of desperation and most of
the men he had left had died that day. But they had won. They took the crusader weapons and ate the crusader horses.

However, the winter had left them hungry and homeless and now he had only seven men left. They would have to wait until spring to find employment again, with the
crosatz
or with the
Cathars. Until then they would have to find a way to survive.

They crouched in the treeline watching the smoke rise from the monastery’s chapter house. ‘That is where we will stay until the snow melts,’ Martín said.

‘Women and food,’ one of them said. ‘A long time since I’ve had either.’

‘They’ll see us coming,’ another protested.

‘We could have written them a long salutation on vellum, telling them of our plans and despatched it on All Souls’ Day,’ Martín said. ‘It would have made no
difference. There’s nothing they can do to stop us. It’s just a bunch of women.’

‘There’s a wall.’

‘High enough to keep out wolves and angry dwarves,’ Martín said and the others laughed. ‘Juan here is the tallest. He’ll shin over it and open the gate for
us.’

They set off through the snow. The men were all Catholic and some were nervous about pillaging a monastery. But Martín was still their commander and he had got them this far. Besides,
they were all in it together. None could back out now.

His breath froze on the air. He walked slowly, head bowed to the wind, replaying the conversation with Fabricia over and over in his head.

If you leave here, seigneur, I will never see you again. We both know this. They will kill you. Do you remember the prayer you made, for us to be together? Well, God has given you your
miracle, He has answered you. But He has put a price on His gift, and it is that you must give up your vengeance.

Something caught his eye, glinting from the branch of a fir, crusted with ice. It was the cross he had torn from her throat when he took her down from the tree. This was the place where Gilles
had crucified her.

It should be lost, buried beneath a drift of snow. Somehow it had tangled here in the branches. He reached out and tore it free. What do you want of me? he thought. I truly cannot divine your
purpose.

You said to me once that when I laid my hands on people, it gave them hope. You said it was not just the healing, that it showed them God had not abandoned them.

She had sacrificed all she believed in for him. Why could he not do the same for her? Sòrre Bernadette might think he should give her up, but she had lived all her life in a cloister.
What did she really know of men and women? He weighed the cross in his fist. Whatever plan there was to this life, he was sure now that no one truly understood it; not the priests, not even the
heretics. He put the chain around his neck and resolved anew. He turned the mule around and headed back the way he had come. Hope then, just not the way he had planned it.

Juan leaped the wall, but as he clambered down the other side he surprised the porteress coming the other way. The old nun screamed and ran for the chapter house but Juan
grabbed her from behind and put a hand over her mouth to silence her. He hesitated, unsure what to do next. The old lady continued to struggle so he took out his knife and cut her throat.

Then he opened the gate.

When Martín saw what he had done, he cuffed the boy. ‘Now we’ll have to kill all of them, you idiot,’ he said. He knew what the punishment was for killing nuns; they
could not afford to leave any of them alive now.