A Murderous Procession

  “How kind,” said the Bishop of Winchester, wiping his eyes, “Isn’t that kind of Aveyron.”

  More than half the scroll was taken up with compliments, an invitation to grace Aveyron palace, more compliments.

  The Bishop of Winchester’s head began to nod. Father Adalburt started chalking notes for a sermon on his slate.

  Not until the end did the letter reach its nub ...

  “My lord, you will know, in your wisdom, that the foul heresy of Catharism has been spreading throughout this country, and that some of us fight its contagion that it may not infect all Christendom. Accordingly, I must bring to your lordship’s attention that, in this great struggle, the Lord has allowed to fall into my hand five such heretics found wandering the hills....”

  Father Guy’s voice paused for a moment, then he read on.

  “Normally, it would be the work of a moment to mete the punishment inflicted on all who preach false doctrine on these wretches—two women in Cathar dress and three men—were it not that they make some claim to be connected with Princess Joanna’s court. I assume this to be the impudence expected of those who spread evil falsehood, yet I feel obliged to bring the matter to your lordship’s attention. Should you, my dear brother, as I expect, refute this claim, I shall act as I act against all who threaten blessed Mother Church. I await your word to be returned by the hand of my good and faithful chaplain, Father Gerhardt.

  “In the meantime, that God pour His blessing on you is the dearest wish of your servant, Philippe of Aveyron.”

  (“They will know, as I know, that these are their people,” Aveyron had said. “But if I am to satisfy our informant, while at the same time avoid bringing the Plantagenet’s wrath on my head, it is they who, like Pontius Pilate, must wash their hands and permit the execution. And I want it in writing.”)

  Father Guy’s hands took care in rolling up the scroll, his eyes avoiding those of Dr. Arnulf sitting very upright in his chair

  Something, some thing, a fetid eagerness, came into the little room, deepening its shadows; it hung in the dusty rafters out of sight, watchful, timorous, obscene.

  THE CELLS STANK and were dark, containing only a bucket. There were no windows; the faintest gleam touched the tunnel outside where it filtered thinly round the circular stair from the torches in the guardroom above.

  They were beetles in blackness; they crouched beneath the weight of the palace’s mountainous boot in case it descended and crushed them. What if there was a fire? Who would care if insects locked in at the bottom of the pile couldn’t get out?

  The only thing that stopped Adelia becoming a whirling, screaming ball of panic was Boggart, who, she knew, had to be in the same state yet was fighting it because she was. They were like two playing cards propping each other up; if one went so would the other. Presumably to judge from their silence, the three other prisoners were doing the same.

  Yet there were noises; the tunnel had its own creaks and whimpers. Ulf broke the silence: “Anybody else down here?” But the shout sent up diminishing, skipping reverberations of “anybody else ... anybody else ...” like answers from the dead, and he didn’t do it again. Certainly no living voice replied.

  Food was presaged by the sound of clanking. Each of the two guards who came to feed them had a chatelaine chained to his belt such as were usually worn by ladies to attach useful feminine things like scissors, thimble and needle cases, keys to store cupboards, etc. The guards had only keys, massive keys.

  The women’s door was unlocked first. One of the guards shoved in a tray while the other stood back, spear at the ready to repel any rushed escape. The door was locked again. Adelia and Boggart heard the procedure repeated next door, then listened to the rattle of keys as the guards climbed the stairs to their post.

  Darkness.

  “CATHARS? WHY WOULD Cathars be connected with the princess?” The Bishop of Winchester was having trouble catching up.

  “They are not, of course,” said Father Guy, soothingly “It is their ploy to escape punishment. As my lord Aveyron says, all heretics are liars. These are nothing to do with us.”

  “It is strange, though,” the bishop continued. “Is it possible ... could it be that ... how many of our people stayed behind in that nuns’ hospital at the last?”

  “Oooh,” Dr. Arnulf said casually “Seven? Eight?”

  “Not five, then?”

  “And remember, my lord,” pointed out Father Guy, “the Bishop of Saint Albans said before he left for Carcassonne that he would be sending the Saracen and his female back to England. It is safe to assume that they have already gone.”

  “Taking the others with them, one supposes,” Dr. Arnulf said.

  “Also, they would be taking the direct route back to England; they cannot have wandered so far off it as to encroach on Aveyron territory.”

  “Nor would they be dressed as Cathars.”

  The chaplain and doctor were topping each other, and doing it well, though they avoided each other’s eyes like secret lovers. Father Adalburt watched them, smiling his vacant smile.

  The Saracen, thought the Bishop of Winchester wearily. The Saracen and his woman—what was her name? They had blighted with ill luck a journey already hard enough for an old man; he was dreading its recommencement. “I wish the Bishop of Saint Albans were here,” he said. “He would know, but, alas, we shan’t have his company now until we reach Sicily.”

  Father Guy in no way regretted my lord of Saint Albans’s absence. “My lord, why should we concern ourselves over a faraway group of unbelievers?”

  Dr. Arnulf didn’t regret it, either. “Totally unnecessary.”

  They kept quiet while their bishop mused. He was roused by the return of Peter, who began clearing the table; like most of the servants, the man was wearing the Plantagenet leopards on his tunic.

  Plantagenet. The word jolted the bishop out of his reverie. Troublesome and unlucky as the Saracen and his woman had proved to be, King Henry had stressed their importance. Perhaps all pains should be taken to ensure that they were safe—the king’s toes, if stepped on, could deliver a devastating kick.

  “Should we not send someone back to Aveyron ... to see if there has been some unfortunate mistake ... ensure that the bishop’s prisoners do not include our people?”

  Father Guy put out a hand to quell a hiss from Dr. Arnulf. “My lord, if I may say so, that would be an error reflecting badly on yourself. It would indicate to this foreign bishop that you have allowed Princess Joanna’s train to be riddled with heretics, or why else should you even inquire for these?”

  “Oh, dear, yes. No, we mustn’t do that.”

  “I don’t see why your lordship is even troubling yourself with the matter,” Dr. Arnulf said. “The bishop’s prisoners are dressed as Cathars, therefore they must be Cathars.”

  The old man sighed. “Very well, then, I suppose we must send a letter to Aveyron tomorrow disclaiming any knowledge of these people.”

  Doctor and chaplain took in a breath and then dispelled it.

  The thing that Aveyron’s letter had brought into the room’s shadows grew in size, vibrating slightly

  Father Guy said swiftly: “Allow me to pen it, my lord. Best it were done right away If you will retire, I’ll bring the letter to your room for your signature.”

  “Thank you, my son.” My lord of Winchester raised himself from his chair, making gratefully for his bed, a tired man made more tired by the uneasy feeling that something had got away from him.

  As the door closed behind him, Father Guy’s eyes at last met those of Dr. Arnulf.

  The doctor nodded. “Write the letter, then,” he said.

  OUTSIDE ONE OF the tents surrounding the château, Admiral O’Donnell was playing chess with Locusta by the light of a fire.

  “Ah, Peter,” he called as the servant passed him. “Who’s our visitor? The one with a look that would perish the Danes?”

  “Brought a message from the Bishop of Aveyron, my lord.”
br />   “Did he, now?” The Irishman moved his queen. “And what was the letter about?”

  Peter told him.

  “Cathars,” said the O‘Donnell, nodding. “Bad cess to ’em.”

  “Checkmate.” Locusta grinned. “You’re off your game tonight, my lord.”

  “To you the glory.” He stretched and yawned. “And me for me bed. Good night, gentlemen.”

  SINCE LIFE, even in despair, had to be lived, the prisoners made the best of it.

  They established their own routine. Every morning—if it was morning—they took turns to press their faces to the doors’ bars and talk to one another. This was harder on Adelia and Boggart than the men since, to reach the aperture, both women had to stand on tiptoe, a stance that couldn’t be maintained for too long.

  Then, at Adelia’s insistence, they all took exercise by walking twenty times round the walls of the cells. These were of stone and extensive, something their occupants were forced to establish by pace and feel. Rankin, during one of his conversations with Adelia through their door bars, shouted: “For what wud a man o’ God want wi’ sic space for his paiks, lessen he’s a black-avised, messan-dog o’ a limmer?”

  Which, interpreted, was a good question. Had the bishops of Aveyron who’d built this place so distrusted their flock that they envisaged incarcerating the hundreds these cells could hold? Was the present incumbent expecting to fill them with Cathars?

  In the afternoon—if it was afternoon—they kept up their spirits by singing or reciting, each taking it in turn to stand near the door so that his or her voice could reach the others. In the case of Adelia this was a penance, for her as well as everybody else; she had the singing voice of an off-key crow and restricted herself to chanting nursery rhymes her childhood English nurse had taught her in Sicily

  Ulf’s voice was little better so he chose to recount tales of Hereward the Wake and the fight that fenland hero had put up against William the Conqueror. Mansur’s high, clear treble sent songs of the Tigris-Euphrates marshland into which he’d been born ringing down the tunnel. Boggart sang pretty ballads she’d picked up from marketplace minstrels. Rankin, in a tuneful and deep bass, rendered incomprehensible but heart-stirring airs from the Highlands and bewailed the fact that he hadn’t his peeps with which he could have kept up their spirits even further.

  “Er, ‘peeps’?”

  “Bagpipes,” came the gloomy explanation in Ulf’s voice. “We been spared them at least.”

  This was their defiance: no hymns, never hymns; in this place they would not give voice to the God worshipped by the Bishop of Aveyron.

  But they became more and more tired; their scraps of food were leftovers from the palace kitchens and, always supposing the cook hadn’t spat in them, were of good quality but too meager to be sustaining. Adelia, her shoulder aching badly, berated the guards on behalf of Boggart who, as she pointed out, should be eating for two, but the rations weren’t increased so she went without herself.

  And still Rowley didn’t come for them.

  Eventually, they stopped singing; emaciation does not lend itself to song. Mostly they sat quietly Even Adelia had given up pointing out that the length of their incarceration proved that Aveyron was waiting for word from Figères before he took any action—there had been time for it to come many times over.

  It was Ulf, next door, who tired her even more. His youth gave him the energy to be furious at what, he had now contrived to believe, was treachery to Adelia, not Ermengarde, a theory he kept putting forward to her through the bars of his cell.

  “They was after you,” he insisted.

  “They were after Ermengarde,” she said wearily “They just happened to capture us with her and thought we were Cathars.”

  “Oh, I grant you the bastards were after Ermengarde, but who told them where she was knowíng we were with her and they’d take us for Cathars? Eh? Tell me that. She and Aelith had been refugin’ in that cottage for months, why did the bastards come for her when we were there? Eh? Too much of a coincidence if you ask me.”

  There was a simpler explanation and Adelia had pressed her face closer to the bars of her door so that she could voice it quietly because it was too awful to be spoken out loud.

  “Ulf, it was us. Rowley and Locusta were riding back and forth to the cowshed every day. Two well-dressed men like that—they were bound to attract the attention of people on the road. They made somebody curious; perhaps he crept up the hill to find out where they were going, saw the Cathar women, spread the word. God forgive us, it was us. We led Aveyron’s men to her ...” She couldn’t finish.

  But Ulf equated their misfortune to others that had marred Adelia’s progress on the journey: the death of the horse that had thrown her, the murder of Brune who had railed against her. “I tell you, some bugger was out to bring you down. You, not her.”

  Hunger and her aching collarbone brought on a terrible irritation. “Well, they’ve done it, haven’t they?” she shouted. “And all of you with me.” She heard her voice rippling along the tunnel, carrying defeat with it, and tried to make amends: “But Rowley will come, I know it.”

  She no longer knew it, and after that she gave up saying so.

  THE RATTLE OF KEYS coming down the steps from the guardroom brought the prisoners’ bodies to attention and slaver to their mouths, but bewilderment to their minds. Had another twenty-four hours gone by? It wasn’t time for their meal yet.

  Though light came into the tunnel, their doors remained locked. Hauling herself up so that she could look through the bars, Adelia saw Father Gerhardt standing outside Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin’s cell. There was a scroll in his hands, and his teeth were showing in the glare of torchlight held for him by one of the guards. “Can all of you hear me?”

  Nobody answered; they could hear him.

  He began reading. “Hereby is notification from our good and saintly Bishop of Aveyron that the five Cathars in his custody have been found guilty of the most foul sin of heresy. Whereof it has been witnessed that they did congregate in a hut in the hills to perform wicked acts, the devil manifesting himself to them in the shape of a black dog, the Cathars prostrating themselves before it and performing lewd dances . . .”

  There was uproar from the men’s cell; Mansur was shouting in Arabic, Rankin in Gaelic. Above them both rose Ulf’s voice: “Witnessed? Who witnessed that? Give us his name, you bastard.”

  “... after which each applied his and her lips to the creature’s rear end in a kiss and did begin copulating with one another . . .”

  “Dog?” asked Boggart, trying to hear. “Only dog we got was Ward.”

  Adelia shook her head. Inevitably a dog. Or a goat. Sometimes a cat or toad. And always the osculum infame, the obscene kiss. It was the age-old accusation made against Jews, supposed witches, heretics; never varying except in small detail. God, how tired she was.

  Ulf was continuing to demand the name of their accuser. “You bastard, we ain’t even had a trial.”

  Stop it, she thought. Darling boy, save your breath. Were not under Henry Plantagenet’s justice now. No trial here, no defense, just sentence.

  Father Gerhardt went steadily on, his rising staccato drowning Ulf’s shouts like a hammer. “In accord with which acts, it has been agreed that such wickedness has proved these heretics barred from the mercy of Christ and that their bodies must suffer the penalty of burning that their souls might appear before God’s great Judgment Seat in some part purified cf theír great sins. The sentence to be carried out at twelve noon tomorrow.”

  The priest rolled up the scroll and signaled to the guards to light him back to the steps.

  Ulf’s voice became a scream. “In the name o’ God, send to Carcassonne, ask the Bishop of Saint Albans. We ain’t Cathars, he’ll tell you.”

  “Your bishop is no longer at Carcassonne; he has gone down into Italy”

  “Send to Figères, then.”

  The priest paused and turned. His smile, if it was a smile, widened.
“We have sent,” he said, “and received a reply They don’t know you.”

  Adelia let go of the bars and slid down to the floor. A small hand felt for hers in the darkness. There was a whisper. “Burn us? They going to burn us?”

  She was dumb.

  “Cut me,” Boggart said urgently. “You got to cut me.”

  Adelia held her close. “Shhh.”

  “Get the baby out. Don’t let ’em burn my baby Cut my belly open, get the baby out. Pull it. You can do that.”

  “Sweetheart, I can’t. I can’t. Almighty God help us, I can’t do anything.”

  “IT IS DONE, Wolf, my love. The long plan, all our wiles and stratagems have borne their fruit. She’ll die screaming. And, yes, we shall be there, you and I. We will creep away to watch her burn, sniff the smell of roasting pig, see her pork form a rich crackling before she crumbles to cinders. Quae vide, my Lupus. See what I have achieved in your name and be proud of me.”

  BOGGART WAS QUIET NOW. They were all quiet. Adelia’s cell was full of Allie and music. She watched her child dance, the little hands waving.

  The notes became discordant, changing into the rattle of keys.

  God, they’re here. Allie. Not yet, not yet. Jesus, I’m so afraid.

  They were opening the men’s door. A kerfuffle—bless them, they won’t go without a fight. Me, too. I’ll run on their spears. God be with me in this, the hour of my death.

  She was so deaf and blind with terror that she didn’t hear her own cell door opening, nor see the light as it shone on where she crouched, clutching Boggart in her arms.

  And then Mansur was in front of her, holding out his hand. Yes, my dear, I’ll go with you. Just stay close, promise to stay close.

  Ulf and Rankin, they were all there. And, behind them, somebody else, telling her something ... about shoes?