Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

“Alais wanted to…” he stopped. “A meeting was held with the leaders of the Cathar church, Bishop Bertrand Marty and Raymond Aiguilher.”

“The Cathar treasure. That’s true, then? It existed?”

Baillard nodded. “Two credentes , Matheus and Peter Bonnet, were, for the task. Wrapped up against the bitter cold of the new year, they strapped the treasure to their backs and stole away out of the castle under cover of night. They avoided the sentries posted on the passable roads that led down from the mountain through the village, and made their way south into the Sabarthes Mountains.”

Alice’s eyes flared wide. “To the Pic de Soularac”

Again, he nodded. “From there, to be taken on by others. The passes to Aragon and Navarre were snowbound. Instead they headed for the ports and from there sailed to Lombardy in northern Italy, where there was a thriving, less persecuted community of Bons Homes”

“What of the Bonnet brothers?”

“Matheus arrived back alone at the end of janvier . The sentries posted on the road this time were local men, from Camon sur l’Hers, near Mirepoix, and they let him pass. Matheus talked of reinforcements. Now there were rumours that the new King of Aragon would come in the spring. But, they were brave words only. By now the siege was too tightly drawn for reinforcements to break through.”

Baillard raised his amber eyes and looked at Alice. “We heard rumour too that Oriane was travelling south, accompanied by her son and husband, to provide reinforcements for the siege. This could only mean one thing. That after all the years of running and hiding, finally she had discovered that Alais was alive. She wanted the Book of Words !

“Surely Alais did not have it with her?”

Audric did not answer. “In mid-February, the attackers pushed forward yet again. On the first of March 1244, after a final attempt to dislodge the Basques from the Roc de la Tour, a single horn sounded on the ramparts of the ravaged stronghold.” He swallowed hard. “Raymond de Pereille, the Seigneur of Montsegur, and Pierre-Roger of Mirepoix, commander of the garrison, walked out of the Great Gate and surrendered to Hugues des Arcis. The battle was over. Montsegur, the final stronghold, had fallen.”

Alice leaned back in her chair, wishing it had ended otherwise.

“It had been a harsh and freezing winter on the rocky mountainside and in the valley below. Both sides were exhausted. Negotiations were short. The Act of Surrender was signed the following day by Peter Amiel, the Archbishop of Narbonne.”

“The terms were generous. Unprecedented, some would say. The fortress would become the property of the Catholic Church and the French crown, but every inhabitant of the fortress would be pardoned for his past crimes. Even the murderers of the Inquisitors at Avignonet were to receive pardon. The men-at-arms would be set free with only light penances, once their crimes had been confessed to the Inquisitorial registers. All those who abjured their heretical beliefs would be allowed to walk free, punished only by the obligation to wear a cross on their clothes.”

“And those who would not?” said Alice.

“Those who would not recant were to be burned at the stake as heretics.”

Baillard took another sip of wine.

“It was usual, at the conclusion of a siege, to seal a bargain by handing over hostages. They included Bishop Bertrand’s brother, Raymond, the old chevalier , Arnald-Roger de Mirepoix and Raymond de Pereille’s young son.” Baillard paused. “What was not usual,” he said carefully, “was the granting of a period of two weeks’ grace. The Cathar leadership asked to be allowed to stay within Montsegur for two weeks before they came down from the mountain. The request was granted.”

Her heart started to beat faster. “Why?”

Audric smiled. “Historians and theologians have argued for hundreds of years about why the Cathars requested this stay of execution. What needed to be done that had not already been done? The treasure was safe. What was so important as to make the Cathars stay in that damaged and cold mountain fortress a little longer, after all they had suffered already?”

“And why did they?”

“Because Alais was with them,” he said. “She needed time. Oriane and her men were waiting for her at the foot of the mountain. Harif was within the Citadel, Sajhe also, and her daughter. It was too great a risk. If they were captured, the sacrifices made by Simeon and her father and Esclarmonde to safeguard the secret would have been for nothing.”

At last, every part of the jigsaw was in place and Alice could see the full picture, clear and vivid and bright, even though she could hardly believe it was true.

Alice looked out of the window at the unchanging, enduring landscape. It was much as it had been in the days when Alais lived here. The same sun, the same rain, the same skies.

Tell me the truth of the Grail,“ she said quietly.

Montsegur

MARC 1244

Alais stood on the walls of the citadel of Montsegur, a slight and solitary figure in her thick winter cloak. Beauty had come with the passing of the years. She was slight, but there was a grace to her face, her neck, her bearing. She looked down at her hands. In the early morning light they looked blue, almost transparent.

The hands of an old woman.

Alais smiled. Not old. Younger still than her father when he died.

The light was soft as the rising sun struggled to give the world back its shape and brush away the silhouettes of the night. Alais gazed at the ragged snow-covered peaks of the Pyrenees, rising and falling away into the pale horizon, and the purple pine forests on the eastern flank of the mountain. Early morning clouds were scudding over the ragged slopes of the Pic de Sant-Bartelemy. Beyond that, she could almost see the Pic de Soularac.

She imagined her house, plain and welcoming, tucked inside the folds of the hills. She remembered the smoke unfurling from the chimney on cold mornings such as this. Spring came late to the mountains and this had been a hard winter, but it wouldn’t be long now. She could see its promise in the pink blush of the sky at dusk. In Los Seres the trees would soon be coming into bud. By April, the mountain pastures would be covered once more with delicate blue, white and yellow flowers.

Down below Alais could make out the surviving buildings that made up the village of Montsegur, the few huts and dwellings left standing after ten months of siege. The ramshackle cluster of houses was surrounded by the standards and tents of the French army, tattered pinpricks of colour and fluttering banners, ragged around the edges. They had suffered the same hard winter as the inhabitants of the citadel.

On the western slopes, at the foot of the mountain, stood a wooden palisade. The besiegers had been building it for days. Yesterday, they hammered a row of stakes up the middle, a crooked wooden spine, each post held in place by a heap of tinder and faggots of straw. At dusk, she had seen them prop ladders around the edges.

A pyre to burn the heretics.

Alais shivered. In a few hours it would be over. She was not afraid to die when her time came. But she’d seen too many people burn to be under any illusion that faith would spare them pain. For those that wished it, Alais had provided medicines to numb the suffering. Most had chosen to walk unaided from this world to the next.

The purple stones beneath her feet were slippery with frost. Alais traced the pattern of the labyrinth on the crisp, white ground with the top of her boot. She was nervous. If her subterfuge worked, the quest for the Book of Words would end. If it failed, she had gambled the lives of those who’d given her shelter for all these years – Esclarmonde’s people, her father’s people – for the sake of the Grail.