Troubadour (15 page)

‘Oh don’t say so, my love,’ said Clara. ‘If only they would pass by us.’

‘Then it would be to go on and sack another town,’ said Lanval.

‘Why can’t they just go back, now that Raimon has surrendered?’ Clara asked bitterly. ‘Their argument is with him, not us.’

Lanval had summoned all his family members and closest advisors together with his knights, to a meeting in the great hall.

‘The French force’s argument with us, since my wife has raised it, is that we are sympathetic to what the Pope calls heretics.’ He looked round at his senior knights. ‘We cannot claim to be guilt-free of that charge, as I think you know, though I would dispute the Pope’s term. It seems that the Church cannot bear to be disagreed with on matters of doctrine. The Pope hates the Believers and the French love our lands and property. So we are caught like an almond in a pair of nutcrackers.’

His use of ‘we’ was as close as he dared come to admitting he was one of the ‘heretics’ the Pope so hated.

‘What I have summoned you here to say is that if we are offered peace on terms of surrendering up any Perfects
or Believers in Sévignan to the “mercy” of the French army, I shall not accept those terms. My mind is made up on this. We have heard what French mercy consists of and it is sword and fire. If any man here disagrees with my decision there is still time to take shelter and give aid in another bastide, where the decision might be different.’

He looked round the hall expectantly, but no one stirred or spoke.

‘You understand that if it comes to that, we shall be subjected to the full force of the besiegers?’ Lanval added.

Still no movement.

‘Well, then there is no more to be said. We will stand firm and protect the Believers and our lands. But if we should overcome we will show mercy to the invader. And may the Divine Spirit be with us.’

Bertran and the Viscount rode back to Béziers through the night and they were there before dawn. But Trencavel did not rest. He called for Samuel, his bailiff, to gather all the Jews in the city together. There were so many Jews in Béziers that the city was known as ‘Petite Jerusalem’. ‘They must come with me to Carcassonne,’ he said. ‘I can protect them even better there.’

‘But are you afraid for the city?’ asked Samuel. ‘I thought we were well garrisoned and well provisioned here?’

‘We are indeed,’ said Trencavel. ‘But I myself must get back to my château – my wife and child are there. And I should like to keep the Jews under my personal protection. The French are even more set against them than against the Believers.’

The Viscount summoned the citizens and asked them to defend the city as best they could.

‘Hold up the crusaders for as long as you can, while I fortify Carcassonne,’ he begged them. ‘You control their access to the bridge across the Orb and the longer you can delay them, the better for us.’ He did not speak of victory.

Bertran himself went to his friend Nahum’s house and found the spice-trader ready, with his portable goods packed up.

‘We have been expecting to leave for some time,’ he told the troubadour. ‘We were just waiting to know when and where. You will find many of my people likewise prepared.’

As they left, Nahum locked his front door and pocketed the big iron key. It pierced Bertran to the heart to think that his old friend had faith that he would one day return to his family’s home. But there was no time to give way to such feelings. The several hundred Jews had to be assembled and got on their way to the bigger town and the stragglers outside Béziers had to be brought within the walls. Just as in Sévignan, the bell tolled out to warn any remaining country people to hasten to safety.

Bertran didn’t know it but there were other friends in the city. The
joglar
s, Perrin and Huguet, had parted company with Lucatz and the rest of the troupe earlier that summer. Lucatz had decided to carry on into Italy but by then the troupe had heard the news about the northern force and they felt drawn back to their old haunts, in spite of the danger.

There was no hard feeling; troupes of performing players were often fluid, changing with the seasons or other vagaries of the wandering life. New
joglar
s could be picked up along the way, before the troupe settled again for the winter. Lucatz said goodbye to them with his blessing. The
joglaresa
s were more uneasy. They had a stronger sense of what their friends were heading back to and were themselves grateful to put as much distance between them and the Rhône as possible.

Perrin and Huguet dug ditches and carried in supplies with the citizens of Béziers, confident in the strength of its walls. It had been a very hot summer and the humid air that hung over the marshes and saltpans to the south had brought swarms of flies and mosquitoes.

On 21st July the vast French army crossed the River Hérault and entered Trencavel lands. The soldiers suffered from the biting insects more than the locals did and were made irritable by the itching and stinging. This open scrubland with its crops of barley or fields lying fallow and yellowed in the sun was so different from their forested lands in the north that it seemed indeed a foreign country.

At Servian, only eight miles from Béziers, the village surrendered without a fight. There were few heretics there and their Lord, Etienne, was anxious for the army to pass through quickly.

The Abbot of Cîteaux sent the new Bishop of Béziers, Renaut de Montpeyroux, who had travelled with the force from Montpellier, to parley with the citizens. Renaut was an old man and he rode in on a mule. He carried with him a list with two hundred and twenty-two names on it. These were the people, men and women, who had been identified as heretics, a small proportion of a city of about twenty thousand inhabitants.

Renaut went to the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire and spoke to the Consuls of the town.

‘If you yield up the people on this list, the army will leave you and your property alone,’ he said. ‘Or if everyone vacates the city, leaving just the names on the list, the soldiers will not harm you. But if you don’t hand the heretics over to the army that has come in God’s name, then your safety cannot be guaranteed.’

The Bishop was booed out of the cathedral. ‘We would rather drown in the salty sea,’ said the Consuls.

They might have had their disputes with the Trencavel family in the past but they were fiercely independent and would not give up fellow citizens so easily. They had good defences and provisions and they expected reinforcements from Carcassonne before long. Only a handful of them chose to go back to the army with Bishop Renaut, who beat a hasty retreat on his mule.

Perrin and Huguet were among many who watched the Bishop go back to the lines. To the southeast of the city, under the rocky outcrop where the cathedral stood, the French army began to dig in for a long siege.

.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Nightingale of Carcassonne

At Carcassonne there was furious activity; the bells rang constantly to gather in people and animals from the surrounding countryside. The Viscount was everywhere, overseeing repairs and the building of extra defences, but Viscountess Agnes and her little son Roger kept to the château.

Trencavel ordered the stones torn down from the refectory of the cathedral and the wooden stalls sawn up to build more galleries round the towers, which would hold the archers. Outside the castle, the fields were being burned, animals slaughtered and the water mills destroyed so that the crusaders would have nowhere to grind their grain.

It was a grim countryside that would greet the French army when it arrived from Béziers, as the Viscount knew it surely would. And across this burned and inhospitable land two small figures came limping. One was a boy of about fifteen, who asked to be admitted to the Viscount. The other was a silent child, of no more than six, clutching a wooden dagger.

‘You can’t see the Viscount,’ said the gatekeeper, not unkindly. ‘He’s busy. Can’t you see we’ve got a city to defend? The French are coming.’

‘I know,’ said the boy. ‘I have come from Béziers.’

That changed everything. The gatekeeper sent a messenger to find Trencavel and the smaller boy was carried off by his wife, to be washed and fed. He did not want to let go of the older boy’s hand at first, but the gatekeeper’s wife was a plump and motherly woman, who cooed over him and coaxed him away with promises of sweetmeats.

The messenger returned and took the weary youth to the château, where the Viscount called for him to come to his private room. Bertran was with him and, as soon as the exhausted boy was shown in, he gasped.

‘Huguet! What are you doing here? I thought you safely on your way to Italy.’

‘You know him?’ asked the Viscount.

‘He was my youngest
joglar
,’ said Bertran, taking the boy in his arms. Huguet was at the end of his strength, shaking now and ashen, tears seeping from his eyelids without his making a sound.

‘He looks as if he’s going to faint,’ said the Viscount. ‘Give him some wine.’

The two men stood over the boy feeding him sops of bread soaked in wine until he had revived enough to drink from a cup.

‘The messenger said you come from Béziers,’ said the Viscount urgently. ‘I don’t want to press you but I must know what happened there. You can see we are preparing for siege here. What must we expect?’

‘Death,’ said Huguet. His eyes were wide and unfocused. He recognised Bertran but saw him as if from far away, part of a life that had gone for ever. ‘The French bring nothing but death.’

Bertran knew that the young
joglar
would not have ever seen warfare before and understood that he was in a state of shock. He signalled to Trencavel to let him take over the questioning.

‘Take your time, Huguet,’ he said gently. ‘Tell us first how you happened to be there. What about the rest of the troupe?’ A flash of fear crossed Bertran’s face.

‘Esteve is in the east, with the Lady of Saint-Jacques,’ said Huguet, understanding. With what he had to tell, he was glad there was that one tiny fragment of good news to pass on. ‘I came back with Perrin . . .’

He gave a huge sob and buried his face in his hands. Bertran waited, appalled.

‘The Bishop came with a list,’ Huguet continued, when he could. ‘But the citizens would not give up the Believers. While he was talking to them, Perrin and I met a man and woman who had lost their child in the press of people coming to take shelter in the town. The woman was distraught and begging the father to go out and look for him. But the gates were closed and he was torn because they had four other children and he didn’t want to leave them and his wife in case he couldn’t get back. But he didn’t want to lose his little boy either. He kept saying that the child was bound to be somewhere in the town. Then the woman started screaming and Perrin said he’d go.’

Huguet stopped to drink more wine to steady his voice.

‘I said, I said, “Let me go – they won’t attack a boy like me.” I really thought they wouldn’t.’

‘That was very brave of you,’ said the Viscount. ‘Did you find the child?’

‘Did they attack you?’ asked Bertran. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Not in my body,’ said Huguet. ‘And yes, my lord, I did find the child. I went with the Bishop, pretending to be among the few cowards who chose to leave the town with him. And I found the child curled up with his toy dagger in some bushes outside the walls.’

‘That was a miracle,’ said the Viscount. ‘Did you restore him to his parents? Where are the rest of the citizens?’

Huguet looked at Bertran, not at the Viscount, and shook his head.

‘There are none, my lord. I brought the child here. Your gatekeeper’s wife is looking after him.’

‘What do you mean, none?’ asked the Viscount, but Bertran stopped him.

‘Tell us what happened, Huguet,’ he said. ‘Tell us what you saw.’

‘Right after the Bishop left and I found the child,’ said Huguet, ‘there was a sortie from the walls.’

‘Madness,’ muttered Trencavel.

‘Young men, not more than about thirty of them,’ said Huguet. ‘A crusader came up on to the bridge over the Orb and taunted the citizens. So this band of youths ran out of the city down to the river, screaming and waving white pennants and shooting arrows into the French army. They beat the crusader and threw him in the river. I took the child and hid him among the trees, away from the fighting . . .’

He paused.

‘It was like a torch thrown into a barrel of pitch,’ he said.

‘The army fought back to avenge their man?’ asked the Viscount.

‘Not the soldiers, Sire,’ said Huguet. ‘At least not at first. It was the camp followers, who were setting up tents and digging trenches. When they saw the crusader in the water, they took tent-poles and clubs and rushed the gates. The wicket gate had been left open and they forced their way in. Within minutes they had opened the main gates and the bells were ringing to call everyone into the churches . . .’

‘What were the French soldiers doing?’ asked Bertran.

‘I saw them arming themselves and mounting their horses,’ said Huguet. ‘They poured into the city through the gates and up ladders. There seemed to be no defenders to stop them.’

Viscount Trencavel was pacing up and down the room now.

‘And then . . . ?’ asked Bertran.

‘And then . . . I wanted to get further away from the walls but there was no shelter other than the copse we were hiding in. The child was crying – he was scared by the screaming and yelling. We had to stay where we were. I sang to him and eventually he fell asleep. But I kept watch. I am glad he did not see what I saw, hear what I heard.’

‘So,’ said Trencavel. ‘We have come to it. What did you mean when you said there are no citizens?’

‘They killed them all,’ said Huguet expressionlessly. ‘There’s no one left. Only me. And the child.’

‘How can you know?’ began the Viscount but Bertran raised a hand to stop him.

‘Just tell us what you saw,’ he said.

‘The army stormed the town but only after the camp followers got in first,’ said Huguet. ‘I heard screams and then, and then, there were flames and smoke. The roof of the cathedral fell in. I could see it from where I was.’

‘The citizens would have been sheltering in it,’ said Trencavel. ‘And the French set fire to it?’

‘I was hiding in the copse for hours,’ said Huguet. ‘And then it was all chaos and shouting. I think the leaders were worried that everything was being destroyed and there’d be no loot for them. The
ribaut
s were out of control, like drunken men. And then the whole town went up in flames.’

‘But they must have taken some prisoners?’ said the Viscount. ‘Didn’t they let those who were not Believers go free?’ His fists were clenched.

Huguet shook his head. ‘There were no prisoners,’ he said. ‘I waited and waited and there was nothing but flames and screams and shouting and then the smell . . . No one came out of the walls alive, except the French. They couldn’t bear the heat from the fire and came down to the meadows by the river.’

‘There were twenty thousand people in the city,’ said the Viscount flatly.

‘Twenty thousand and Perrin,’ said Huguet. And then he was weeping uncontrollably. Bertran took him in his arms again and rocked him while the Viscount continued pacing, dangerously quiet.

‘This is what we must expect here, then,’ Trencavel said at last. ‘No mercy from the French. No prisoners. No distinction between those they claim to be fighting and citizens who have never been anything other than faithful to the Church these . . . animals represent.’

‘They are worse than animals,’ said Bertran. ‘No animal kills on such a scale, without reason.’

The Viscount stopped and knelt by Huguet.

‘I am sorry about your friend,’ he said. ‘I had friends in Béziers too. I’m glad I saved the Jews, at least, if only to suffer the same fate here. Did you see where the army went next?’ he asked. ‘Or do they remain outside the town, resting on their laurels?’

‘They went towards the sea,’ said Huguet. ‘There was nothing left for them to eat and no one left for them to kill. I waited till they had gone and then walked here with the child.’

‘You must be famished,’ said the Viscount. ‘Bertran, take him to the kitchens and feed him and then find him a bed. Then join me at the defences. I must send a message to Pedro of Aragon. It sounds as if the army is marching first towards Narbonne. As for you, young man, you have told me what I had to know. If a miracle happens and we survive the army here at Carcassonne, I will see you rewarded. Meanwhile, accept the thanks of a poor man, who once was viscount of the beautiful city of Béziers.’

He gave Huguet a ring from his hand and kissed him on his grimy forehead. Then he left the room.

Bertran continued to cradle the young
joglar
.

‘Why didn’t you stay in the east?’ he whispered. ‘I tried so hard to get you all away.’

‘Perrin wasn’t just my friend,’ said Huguet. ‘He was . . .’

‘I know,’ said Bertran. ‘Hush now, I understand. Let’s find you something to eat.’

‘Why do I feel hunger and the need to satisfy it, when we’re all going to die?’ asked Huguet wearily. ‘The Perfects are right. I was always a Believer, but now I’m sure. The world
was
made by an evil spirit. How else can you explain what the French are doing to us?’

‘We are all going to die,’ agreed Bertran. ‘But not necessarily soon. We must not give way to the sin of despair. You must stay strong and for that you must take food. Do it for me. And for Perrin. He must not have died in vain.’

And then they both wept. It seemed as if they stood together alone at the very end of the world.

It took over a week for the Lady of Saint-Jacques to hear what had happened at Béziers and would be even longer before they heard news from Carcassonne.

Their informant was again Azalais:

‘
No one here can believe the massacre at Béziers
,’ she wrote. ‘
We were so glad the army turned away from us and crossed the river. But now we know what they intended to do we can feel no relief – only horror that men of flesh and blood could do such deeds.

‘They say that every man, woman and child was slain, either put to the sword or burned alive. Priests holding crosses and babies clinging to their mothers, heretics and faithful alike. There is a terrible rumour that the White Abbot who leads the army, that one they call Arnaut-Aimery, gave the order to spare no one. He said it was up to God to sort out the faithful from the wicked, once they were all dead.

‘Can you imagine such evil? And in a churchman too! But it has worked, at least in their terms. Narbonne has surrendered, giving up heretics and all they own, the Jews’ property too. And they’ve offered to pay money towards the Frenchmen’s expenses!

‘The last news I have is that they are marching to Carcassonne, where the Viscount is waiting for them. Heaven help them all.’

‘My family’s bastide is between Béziers and Carcassonne,’ said Elinor, stricken by the news. She could envisage only too clearly Sévignan in flames and Alys or Big Hugo with a French sword in their ribs. ‘What can we do?’