“He never attempted to see Alais?”
“He loved her,” Audric said simply. “He would not have risked leading the French to her.”
“And she, too, made no attempt to see him?”
Audric slowly shook his head. Would you have done, in her position?“ he asked softly.
Alice thought for a moment. “I don’t know. If she loved him, despite what he’d done…”
“News of Guilhem’s campaigns reached the village from time to time. Alais made no comment, but she was proud of the man he had become.”
Alice shifted in her chair. Audric seemed to sense her impatience, for he started to talk more briskly.
“For five years after Sajhe returned to the village,” he continued, “the uneasy peace reigned. He, Alais and Harif lived well. Others from Carcassona lived in the mountains, including Alais’ former servant, Rixende, who settled in the village. It was a simple life, but a good one.” Baillard paused.
“In 1226, everything changed. A new king came to the French throne. Saint-Louis was a zealous man of strong religious conviction. The continuing heresy sickened him. Despite the years of oppression and persecution in the Midi, the Cathar church still rivaled the Catholic Church in authority and influence. The five Cathar bishoprics – Tolosa, Albi, Carcassona, Agen, Razes – were more respected, more influential in many places than their Catholic counterparts.
“At first, none of this affected Alais and Sajhe. They carried on much as before. In the winter, Sajhe travelled to Spain to raise money and arms to fund the resistance. Alais remained behind. She was a skilled rider, quick her bow and sword and had great courage, taking messages to the of the resistance in the Ariege and throughout the Sabarthes Mountains. She provided refuge for parfaits and parfaites, organising food shelter and information about where and when services would take place. The patfaits were itinerant preachers for the most part, living by their own manual labour. Carding, making bread, spinning wool. They travelled in pairs, a more experienced teacher with a younger initiate. Usually two men, of course, but sometimes women.” Audric smiled. “It was much as Esclarmonde, her friend and mentor, had once done in Carcassona.
“Excommunications, indulgences for Crusaders, the new campaign to eradicate the heresy, as they called it, might have continued much as before, were it not for the fact that there was a new Pope. Pope Gregoire IX. He was no longer prepared to wait. In 1233, he set up the Holy Inquisition under his direct control. Its task was to seek out and eradicate heretics, wherever and by whatever means. He chose the Dominicans, the Black Friars, as his agents.”
“I thought the Inquisition came into being in Spain? You always hear of it in that context.”
“A common mistake,” he said. “No, the Inquisition was founded to extirpate the Cathars. The terror began. Inquisitors roamed from town to town as they pleased, accusing, denouncing and condemning. There were spies everywhere. There were exhumations, so corpses buried in holy ground could be burned as heretics. By comparing confessions and half confessions, the Inquisitors began to map the path of Catharism from village, to town, to city. The Pay d’Oc began to sink beneath a vicious tide of judicial murder. Good, honest people were condemned. Neighbour turned, in fear, against neighbour. Every major city had an Inquisitional Court, from Tolosa to Carcassona. Once condemned, the Inquisitors turned their victims over to the secular authorities to be imprisoned, beaten, mutilated or burned. They kept their hands clean. Few were acquitted. Even those who were released were forced to wear a yellow cross on their clothing to brand them as heretics.”
Alice had a flicker of memory. Of running through the woods to escape the hunters. Of falling. Of a fragment of material, the colour of an autumn leaf, floating away from her into the air.
2›Did I dream it? 2›
Alice looked into Audric’s face and saw such distress written there that it turned her heart over.
“In May 1234, the Inquisitors arrived in the town of Limoux. By ill fate, Alais had travelled there with Rixende. In the confusion – perhaps they were mistaken for parfaites, two women travelling together – they were arrested also and taken to Tolosa.”
This is what I have been dreading.
“They did not give their true names, so it was several days before Sajhe” heard what had happened. He followed straight away, not caring for his own safety. Even then, luck was not on his side. The Inquisitional hearings were mostly held in the cathedral of Sant-Sernin, so he went there to find her. Alais and Rixende, however, had been taken to the cloisters of Sant-Etienne.“
Alice caught her breath, remembering the ghost-woman as she was dragged away by the black-robed monks.
“I have been there,” she managed to say.
“Conditions were terrible. Dirty, brutal, demeaning. Prisoners were kept without light, without warmth, with only the screams of other prisoners to distinguish night from day. Many died within the walls awaiting trial.”
Alice tried to speak, but her mouth was too dry.
“Did she…” she stopped, unable to go on.
“The human spirit can withstand much, but once broken, it crumbles like dust. That is what the Inquisitors did. They broke our spirit, as surely as the torturers split skin and bone, until we no longer knew who we were.”
“Tell me,” she said quickly.
“Sajhe was too late,” he said in a level voice. “But Guilhem was not. He had heard that a healer, a mountain woman, had been brought from the mountains for interrogation and, somehow, he guessed it was Alais, even though her name did not appear on the register. He bribed the guards to let him through – bribed or threatened, I know not. He found Alais. She and Rixende were being held separately from everyone else, which gave him the chance he needed to smuggle her away from Sant-Etienne and out of Tolosa before the Inquisitors realised she had gone.”
“But…”
“Alais always believed that it was Oriane who had ordered her to be imprisoned. Certainly, they did not interrogate her.”
Alice felt tears in her eyes. “Did Guilhem bring her back to the village?” she said quickly, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “She did come home again?
Baillard nodded. Eventually. She returned in agost, shortly before the Day of the Assumption, bringing Rixende with her.“ The words came out in a rush.
“Guilhem did not travel with them?”
“He did not,” he said. “Nor did they meet again until…” He paused. Alice sensed, rather than heard, him draw in his breath. “Her daughter six months later. Alais called her Bertrande, in memory of her father Bertrand Pelletier.”
Audrie’s words seem to hang between them.
Another piece of the jigsaw.
“Guilhem and Alais,” she whispered to herself. In her mind’s eye she could see the Family Tree spread out on Grace’s bedroom floor in Salleles d’Aude. The name ALAIS PELLETIER-DU MAS (1193-) picked out in red ink. When she had looked before she hadn’t been able to read the name next to it, only Sajhe’s name, written in green ink on the line below and to the side.
“Alais and Guilhem,” she said again.
A direct line of descent running from them to me.
Alice was desperate to know what had happened in those three months that Guilhem and Alais were together. Why had they parted again? She wanted to know why the labyrinth symbol appeared beside Alais’ name and Sajhe’s name.
And my own.
She looked up, excitement building inside her. She was on the verge of letting loose a stream of questions when the look on Audric’s face stopped her. Instinctively, she knew he had dwelt long enough on Guilhem.
“What happened after that?” she asked quietly. “Did Alais and her daughter stay in Los Seres with Sajhe and Harif?”
From the fleeting smile that appeared briefly on Audric’s face, Alice knew he was grateful for the change of subject.