From the start, townspeople and villagers had shut their gates, watching from behind their walls and praying that the army would pass them by. Stories of increasing violence and horror circulated. There were reports of farms being burned, reprisals for farmers who had refused to allow the soldiers to pillage their land. Cathar believers, denounced as heretics, had been burned at the stake in Puylaroque. The entire Jewish community of Montelimar, men, women and children, had been put to the sword and their bleeding heads mounted on spikes outside the city walls, carrion for the crows.
In Saint-Paul deTrois Chateaux, a parfait was crucified by a small band of Gascon routiers. They tied him to a makeshift cross made from two pieces of wood lashed together with rope and hammered nails through his hands. The weight of his body dragged him down, but he still would not recant or apostatize his faith. In the end, bored with the slow death, the soldiers disemboweled him and left him to rot.
These and other acts of barbarism were either denied by the abbott of Citeaux and the French barons or else disclaimed as the work of a few renegades. But as he crouched in the dark, the parfait knew that the words of lords, priests and papal legates counted for nothing out here. He could smell the bloodlust on the breath of the men who had hunted them down to this small corner of the Devil’s earthly creation.
He recognized Evil.
All he could do now was try to save the souls of his believers so they could look upon the face of God. Their passing from this world into the next would not be gentle.
The wounded man was still conscious. He whimpered softly, but a final stillness had come over him and his skin was tinged with the grayness of death. The parfait laid his hands upon the man’s head as he administered the last rites of their religion and spoke the words of the consolament.
The remaining believers joined hands in a circle and began to pray.
“Holy Father, just God of good spirits, thou who are never deceived, who dost never lie or doubt, grant us to know…”
The soldiers were kicking against the door now, laughing, jeering. It would not be long now before they found them. The youngest of the women, no more than fourteen years old, began to cry. The tears ran hopelessly, silently, down her cheeks.
“… grant us to know what thou knowest, to love what thou dost love; for we are not of this world, and this world is not of us, and we fear lest we meet death in this realm of an alien god.”
The parfait raised his voice as the horizontal beam holding the door shut fractured in two. Splinters of wood, as sharp as arrowheads, exploded into the barn as the men burst in. Lit by the orange glow of the fire burning in the courtyard, he could see their eyes were glazed and inhuman. He counted ten of them, each with a sword.
His eyes went to the commander who followed them in. A tall man, with a pale thin face and expressionless eyes, as calm and controlled as his men were hot and ill disciplined. He had an air of cruel authority about him, a man used to being obeyed.
On his orders, the fugitives were dragged from their hiding place. He lifted his arm and thrust his blade into the parfait’s chest. For an instant, he held his gaze. The Frenchman’s flint gray eyes were stiff with contempt. He raised his arm a second time and plunged his sword into the top of the old man’s skull, splattering red pulp and gray brains into the straw.
With their priest murdered, panic broke out. The others tried to run, but the ground was already slippery with blood. A soldier grabbed a woman by her hair and thrust his sword into her back. Her father tried to pull him off, but the soldier swung round and sliced him across the belly. His eyes opened wide in shock as the soldier twisted the knife, then pushed the skewered body off the blade with his foot.
The youngest soldier turned away and vomited into the straw.
Within minutes all the men lay dead, their bodies strewn about the barn. The captain ordered his men to take the two older women outside. The girl he kept behind, the puking boy too. He needed to harden up.
She backed away from him, her eyes alive with fear. He smiled. He was in no hurry and there was nowhere for her to run. He paced around her, like a wolf watching its prey, then, without warning, he struck. In a single movement he grabbed her around the throat and smashed her head back against the wall and ripped her dress open. She was screaming louder now, hitting and kicking out wildly. He drove his fist into her face, relishing the splinter of bone beneath his touch.
Her legs buckled. She sank to her knees, leaving a trail of blood down the wood. He bent over and ripped her shift from her body, splitting the material from top to bottom in a single tear. She whimpered as he pulled her skirts up to her waist.
“They must not be allowed to breed and bring others like themselves into the world,” he said in a cold voice, drawing his knife from its sheath.
He did not intend to pollute his flesh by touching the heretic. Grasping the blade, he plunged the hilt deep inside the girl’s stomach. With all the hate he felt for her kind, he drove the knife into her again and again, until her body lay motionless before him. As a final act of desecration, he rolled her over onto her front and, with two deep sweeps of his knife, carved the sign of the cross on her naked back. Pearls of blood, like rubies, sprang up on her white skin.
“That should serve as a lesson for any others who pass this way,” he said calmly. “Now, get rid of it.”
Wiping his blade on her torn dress, he straightened up.
The boy was sobbing. His clothes were stained with vomit and blood. He tried to do what his captain commanded, but he was too slow.
He grabbed the boy by the throat. “I said, get rid of it. Quick. If you don’t want to join them.” He kicked the boy in the small of his back, leaving a footprint of blood, dust and dirt on his tunic. A soldier with a weak stomach was no use to him.
The makeshift pyre in the middle of the farmyard was burning fiercely, fanned by the hot night winds that swept up from the Mediterranean Sea.
The soldiers were standing well back, their hands at their faces to shield themselves from the heat. Their horses, tethered by the gate, were stamping with agitated hooves. The stench of death was in their nostrils, making them nervous.
The women had been stripped and made to kneel on the ground in front of their captors, their feet tied and their hands bound tightly behind their back. Their faces, scratched breasts and bare shoulders showed marks of their ill use, but they were silent. Somebody gasped as the girl’s corpse was thrown down in front of them.
The captain walked toward the fire. He was bored now, restless to be gone. Killing heretics was not the reason he had taken the Cross. This brutal expedition was a gift to his men. They needed to be kept occupied, to keep their skills sharp and to stop them turning on each other.
The night sky was filled with white stars around a full moon. He realized it must be past midnight, perhaps later. He’d intended to be back long before now, in case word came.
“Shall we give them to the fire, my lord?”
With a sudden, single stroke, he drew his sword and severed the head of the nearest woman. Blood pumped from a vein in her neck, splashing his legs and feet. The skull fell to the ground with a soft thud. He kicked her still twitching body until it fell forward into the dirt.