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  ‘Then offer the Viscount a safe conduct into the camp for another parley,’ suggested Simon de Montfort. ‘Tell him that we will spare all the citizens this time, if they leave wearing nothing but their small-clothes and carrying no valuables.’

  ‘How would that help us subdue the Viscount?’ objected the Abbot.

  ‘I said “offer him a safe conduct”, not abide by it,’ said de Montfort quietly.

  The two men understood one another. The terms were swiftly transmitted to the castle and Trencavel came out to parley under the walls; he had only nine companions with him.

  He was escorted to the tent of the Duke of Nevers. And there he was put in chains, the word of the Frenchmen having been completely broken.

  Next morning, the 14th of August, the citizens of Carcassonne left their homes, the men shoeless in hose and breeches, the women in their shifts. It took all day to empty the city and then the Viscount was led back in and thrown into a dungeon under his own castle. He was never seen alive again.

  .

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Planh

  ‘They are arguing over the fleece before they’ve got a lamb,’ said one of the French guards outside the leaders’ tent.

  ‘What fleece?’ said his friend.

  ‘They are in there quarrelling over who’s going to be the next Viscount of Carcassonne.’

  ‘While the real one’s still alive?’

  ‘And how long do you think that’s going to be the case?’ said the first guard. ‘Nah! They’ll pick one of them to give the castle to and then they’ll get rid of young Trencavel. It’s the way of war, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t reckon it was right to break the safe conduct though,’ said his friend. ‘He came out under the flag of truce.’

  The guard shrugged. ‘What do you expect after Béziers? I’m sick of the whole thing. Can’t wait till our forty days are up and we can get back home.’

  Inside the tent, the Abbot offered the Viscountcy of Béziers, Albi and Carcassonne to the Duke of Burgundy.

  ‘It would be a dishonour to accept the title while Viscount Trencavel lives,’ he said.

  The Abbot was seething inwardly but then offered the Viscountcy to the Count of Nevers.

  ‘You must excuse me,’ said Nevers diplomatically, ‘but I have enough land in France from my father.’

  ‘It would be a disgrace to accept the fief,’ said the Count of Saint Pol, when the Abbot turned to him.

  It seemed as if none of the northerners wanted to be associated with the city they had razed to the ground and the one they were in the process of plundering. They knew very well that a great treachery was being committed against Viscount Trencavel. The Abbot was chairing the jury of seven key men and he looked at Simon de Montfort. Surely this ambitious but not over-rich lord would not turn down such a fancy title?

  ‘What say you, my Lord de Montfort?’ he asked.

  The Abbot was a good judge of men.

  ‘Surely there are others more worthy of this great honour?’ said de Montfort, looking round at the group of nobles; he knew he was of lesser degree than any there. They remained silent. ‘But if you insist . . .’ he said at last.

  So de Montfort modestly accepted the title of the young man who was now in the dungeons of his own castle. The Viscountess Agnes and her little son had been released to the care of the Count of Foix. The new Viscount, de Montfort, had a wife too and several sons, one of them almost grown up enough to fight alongside his father.

  Inside the city, soldiers had piled up heaps of possessions and valuables, while the citizens continued to troop out through the gate.

  But a small contingent, led by Bertran, had left by another route the previous night. Under the northern wall of the city was the entrance to a cavern, which opened on to an underground passage three leagues long. From the outside it looked like a store for keeping wine or cheese cool but Raimon-Roger had told the troubadour about it and urged him to use it as a last resort if things went ill for the city.

  It was a long, nerve-wracking walk in the dark, with no certainty that there wouldn’t be soldiers waiting at the far end. Or armed pursuers following them from the entrance in the city. Those who left with Bertran had abandoned all their worldly possessions and fled only with their lives, but they were spared the humiliation of being driven out wearing nothing but their undergarments. And they did not trust the Abbot and the other leaders not to kill them, since he had broken his word to the Viscount.

  Huguet was among the group who crawled silently through the tunnel not knowing if they were creeping towards or away from certain death. He wished he could have sung something to raise their spirits but, even if it had been safe to make such a sound when their escape had to be kept secret, the songs he knew all seemed to have fled from his mind.

  There was nothing except cold and darkness and the feeling of rock pressing down on him. He thought about Perrin and wondered, as he had a hundred times, whether he had been killed by sword or fire. Which would be a better death? Huguet grimaced in the dark at his own question. What was a good death? His fellow-believers said it was one where you received the consolamentum at the end but where had the consolation been for the Believers of Béziers?

  He felt the Viscount’s ring in the dark. There was another good man gone to certain death because of the Legate’s treachery. Huguet felt as if he had been crawling along a tunnel for a long time, much longer than he had been escaping from Carcassonne. But he couldn’t give way to these thoughts; he was responsible for someone else now.

  The child he had saved from outside Béziers had not spoken a word since they arrived in the city. Huguet didn’t even know his name. But he had visited him every day in the gatekeeper’s house and seen him growing stronger with good food and some cosseting. Huguet had decided to call him Peire, in honour of the dead joglar.

  With the people all about to leave the city, Peire could have gone with the gatekeeper and his wife. But to what? Huguet had come in the hours of dark and talked it over with the boy’s protectors.

  ‘I don’t think he’d leave without you anyway,’ said the gatekeeper’s wife. ‘And we’ll have enough troubles without another mouth to feed. I think he’ll be better off with you.’

  And she woke the boy up and dressed him warmly, giving them both food for the journey, crying over them and over Carcassonne.

  And now Peire walked silently beside Huguet, his little pack on his shoulders, holding on to the older boy’s hand and gripping in the other the wooden dagger that was all that was left of his old life.

  ‘I can’t just sit here waiting for news to come to us,’ said Iseut. ‘I have been through that once in my life and it did not turn out well.’

  Rumours were flying all over the south but real news was hard to come by. Iseut sent out her own messengers in the end, and when they returned to Saint-Jacques, their faces told their story before they made any report.

  ‘Many places have surrendered, my lady,’ said one.

  ‘Or been abandoned,’ added the other.

  ‘What places?’ asked Iseut.

  ‘Fanjeaux, Castres, Mirepoix, Saverdun, Foix . . .’

  It was a litany of names of some of the most important towns in the region. But they were all well to the west of the Rhône.

  ‘And Carcassonne?’ asked Elinor.

  ‘The army let the people leave but the city is in French hands and the Viscount has disappeared. People say he is a prisoner there.’

  ‘There is one further piece of news, my lady,’ said the second messenger. ‘The French let the knights go too, and there are rumours of a fighting force gathering in some of the hill towns. Termes, Minerve and Cabaret, particularly.’

  ‘That is the best thing you have told us so far,’ said Iseut. ‘What are the French doing?’


  ‘Mostly dispersing. Their forty days were up by the time they took Carcassonne, so the army is dwindling.’

  Elinor wondered what was going through the lady’s mind. They hardly saw Berenger any more and there was no one else to advise them. They were completely reliant on whatever news came off the Pilgrims’ Way or was brought by messengers. Elinor thought as she often had before how much more she had known of what was going on in the world when she was living on the road. Cities like Montpellier had been centres for information, even if that information was not entirely accurate.

  But after some weeks of this state of inaction and ignorance, everything changed.

  A new message came that the French army, heading back north so that the landowners could attend to their own harvests, had split into many separate groups, some leaderless and all uncontrolled. Their successes in the south had gone to their heads and now they had dropped all pretence of marching to eradicate heresy. They were burning and pillaging as they went. And some had crossed the Rhône.

  The danger was coming nearer; what should they do? Continue to wait and hope that the rabble army would pass Saint-Jacques? Iseut was so tense that the little frown line between her brows had deepened.

  And then Digne was taken. The French were less than a day away.

  They could get no news of Berenger or the fate of everyone else in the town. But there was nothing they could do to help them; they had to look to their own safety.

  ‘There is no time to waste,’ said Iseut, resolute at last. ‘We are leaving.’

  Elinor had thought the lady would offer her vassals the protection of her castle. But instead she summoned them all to the castle and then gave them all her animals. One animal from each flock was slaughtered for food and the rest handed over.

  ‘I don’t know how long you’ll have to enjoy them,’ she said. ‘But from now on the herds and flocks are yours. You can choose whether to stay in your homes or herd the animals eastwards. Go with my blessing and my thanks.’

  The peasants were so baffled it took them a long time to understand. But news had filtered through about Digne and they made their decisions accordingly. About two-thirds started herding their animals – an undreamed of richness – down the valley and headed off to a new life.

  Back at the castle, Iseut was busy releasing servants, packing stores and saddling up horses.

  ‘We will go alone,’ she told Elinor. ‘Just you, me, my senescal and two pack ponies. That way we can travel light and get as far away from the French army as possible.’

  Nicolas the senescal was directing servants to dig holes to hide silver plate and any other large valuables.

  ‘It’s not worth it,’ said Iseut, who seemed to have become almost indifferent about possessions. ‘Even if the French don’t find them, their hiding-place will be known. Do you really think if we ever come back here we will find such buried treasure still in the same spot?’

  But Nicolas went doggedly on with his task and Iseut made Garsenda sew jewellery and gold coins into the hems of her and Elinor’s dresses and cloaks.

  The maid gave Elinor some vicious looks as she went about her task. Because the end of everything she had ever known was coming and the world was turning upside down, she dared to speak her mind.

  ‘I know your secret,’ she hissed at Elinor. ‘Coward! Why don’t you stop sheltering behind a woman’s skirts and show your true colours. Be a man again!’

  It was dawn before Bertran and his followers emerged from the tunnel. They stood in the warm early morning air, sniffing the breeze, unable to believe that they had made it through without capture. It seemed strange to Huguet that the sun still rose in the same way as it always had when everything the little group had ever known had come to an end.

  Bertran tried to organise the raggle-taggle company into some sort of credible rebel group. His goal was to get them to Termes, one of the heavily fortified towns where they might meet up with other Carcassonnians and join up to resist the French.

  But he hadn’t had much choice about who left the city by the underground route. He’d had to pass the word round stealthily and without its leaking to the besiegers that he was leading out a company who rejected the French terms. So perhaps that was one thing the little group had in common: that they were all natural rebels. But they were a mixture of Believers and Church followers, united by the idea that what the army had been doing in the south was wrong.

  The story of Béziers had soon run round Carcassonne once Huguet had brought the appalling news. He was treated with great respect and kindness and the little boy he had rescued was soon adopted as a kind of mascot by the Carcassonne refugees. There was always a willing pair of broad shoulders to carry Peire or someone to encourage him to eat or to play fivestones with him.

  It took weeks but, by the time Elinor and Iseut were fleeing Saint-Jacques, the group of refugees led by Bertran had arrived in Termes. They had taken a roundabout route, hiding in scrubby copses by day and walking through the night, to get round Carcassonne to the south, avoiding the occupying army, and reach Termes.

  Termes was a powerful castle sited on top of a large natural hill in the Corbières and its lord owed allegiance to the Viscount of Carcassonne. There was a citadel within town walls with a suburb next to it which had its own defensive walls. The entrance to the castle was secured by an ingenious ‘dog-leg’ construction, which was easily defended against invaders by a handful of men. And it was protected by a separate forward outpost.

  It was there that the group from Carcassonne presented themselves and asked for protection. Immediately they were enfolded into the garrison and welcomed as heroes, though they had seen no fighting.

  For the first time since the slaughter at Béziers, Huguet felt himself relax a little. Termes was well garrisoned and guarded. Many knights from Carcassonne had made their way there, weaponless and unhorsed but still fit and determined to harry and overcome the French. And since the army was dispersing, it became easier to believe that the south could fight back.

  The Lord of Termes was a brave man, sympathetic to the Believers and horrified by what had happened in just a few weeks at Béziers and Carcassonne.

  ‘And Viscount Trencavel is in prison?’ he asked Bertran. ‘But not dead?’

  ‘I think we must regard him as if dead, my lord,’ said Bertran, the weariness of the many nights keeping vigil in the city and the long march afterwards catching up with him. He had been responsible for the whole group and had feared attack night and day. Now that he was once again in a fortified city, he felt at first the reassurance of thick walls, well-armed defenders and a sympathetic lord. Yet none of these things had saved Béziers or Carcassonne. He sat with the Lord, his head and shoulders bowed in grief, and felt the temptation of despair, which had not once visited him on the road to Termes.

  And then a young voice rang out:

  .

  ‘And they killed all those who had sheltered in the minster

  For neither cross, crucifix or altar could protect them;

  And the crazy penniless soldiery killed the clerics

  And women and children, so I did not believe any escaped.

  May God receive their souls, if it please Him, in Paradise.’

  .

  It was a planh sung by Huguet the joglar, who had been composing the words on the long walk from Carcassonne. And at the end of it, the boy Peire, who could not be separated from his rescuer, said, ‘Are my maire and paire in Paradise, Huguet?’ They were his first words since his rescue from Béziers.

  ‘They are,’ said the joglar. ‘I am sure of it. But we are here, with the lord of this city, who will look after us. Make your bow to him.’

  The little boy bowed and, as if someone had taught him how, he held out his wooden dagger, hilt forward, to the Lord of Termes.

  The Lord and Be
rtran, who had just before been talking like two survivors facing the end of days, stood and smiled. The lament and the little boy’s gesture had brought back hope.

  And all the court, filled with landless knights and beaten soldiers and refugees from captured castles, clapped, as the Lord took the wooden dagger and thanked the boy before handing it back to him. And he let Peire know that he took his offer of fealty just as seriously as he had made it.

  At the bastide of Saint-Jacques, all was chaos. People were streaming out of the castles, their arms piled high with gifts from the Lady. Tapestries, dresses, cloaks, boots, every pan and dish and chopper from the kitchens. Some struggled under the burden of pieces of furniture, others had equipped themselves with handcarts to carry away the larger objects. It was like very slow and courteous pillaging, with the owner willingly bidding the looters to take whatever they wanted.

  ‘I wish them joy of my possessions,’ said Iseut, standing with Elinor on the battlements and watching the trail of townspeople winding down into the valley. ‘I do not think they will enjoy their booty for long. But I’d rather see the things leave the castle in their hands than plundered by the French.’

  Garsenda too had left, carrying a huge bundle of clothes. Elinor was sure that she had taken a few small gems too but Iseut had told her calmly that it didn’t matter.

  ‘We are taking only what we can exchange for goods and food,’ she said. ‘I don’t see a future of our bedecking ourselves with jewels and other finery.’

  ‘Garsenda would have me back in my boy’s clothes,’ said Elinor.

  ‘She knew?’ asked Iseut, diverted, even on the precipice of ruin, by this little piece of gossip.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Elinor. ‘She thinks I really am a boy and your secret lover!’

  It seemed strange to find something to laugh about at such a time but the two women smiled to think of the maid’s suspicions.