Stigmata (36 page)

‘You should go up there and help,’ Anselm said to Fabricia. ‘There are women, even children, carrying rocks up to the towers. Some of the women even work the slings
themselves.’

She shook her head. ‘I won’t kill, Papa.’

‘Have you gone soft in the head, like your mother? Why should we show these northerners any mercy? They will butcher us all if we do not defeat them. Will you not even defend
yourself?’

But she was resolute. ‘I will have no hand in killing,’ she said. ‘Not ever.’

That night Elionor finally took her leave of them.

Anselm had churched her the year Jerusalem fell to the Saracen, perhaps a poor omen, but they had been happy enough over the intervening years. But after that night, she said, she could no
longer be his wife; she could not sleep with him, or live under his roof, should he ever find one again. She would take the robes of a
bona femna
, and live a holy life.

They whispered their goodbyes in the candlelight, sitting on the floor of the church. It might be better, Fabricia thought, if she were going away, instead of merely crossing the nave of the
church to sleep with the rest of the heretic priests. Seeing her every day would only make it harder for him to accept her decision.

When they had done Anselm walked out of the church, tears in his beard, his face creased in anguish. Once outside he wept aloud, something she had never seen him do, and the sound he made was
more like the keening of an injured bird. He would accept no consolation, from her or from anyone. But when he was done he went back up to the ramparts to fetch more rocks for the mangonel, working
like a man possessed with devils.

Fabricia watched while Father Vital murmured his prayers over her mother in the company of several of his fellow priests and deacons. He placed the Gospel of John upon her head.
‘May God bring you to a good end,’ he said. He recited the Benedictus, then the Adoremus three times, and said the paternoster seven times. Elionor spoke her vows and it was done.

She said goodbye to her daughter, embracing her stiffly, and followed Father Vital and the other
bons òmes
out of the church.

She woke to find a small boy shaking her by the shoulder. ‘Fabricia,’ he said. ‘She’s gone.’ It was the urchin, Loup.

Fabricia had been all day at the great hall, mixing herbs and medicines for the wounded soldiers. Exhausted, she had fallen asleep in a quiet corner. She could no longer sleep in the church, for
always there was someone wanting her to lay hands.

‘Who has gone?’ she said.

Loup did not answer, only beckoned her to follow. She stumbled to her feet and went after him. He led her across the cobbled courtyard, now littered with rocks and bodies, to the church.
Guilhemeta lay in the nave, cold and blue. Her eyes were open. Fabricia could not close them so she laid her scarf over her face.

‘You said you could heal her,’ Loup said.

‘I never say that to anyone,’ she told him. ‘People ask me to do things but I have never promised anything, ever. Now go and fetch the Baron de Vercy. Quickly!’

Philip bent down to examine her, looking for the tell-tale signs of pestilence. If she had the plague then we are all done for, he thought. He called over two of Raimon’s
soldiers. ‘Get her out of here,’ he said. Perhaps too little, too late. Foul humours could spread quickly in conditions like this.

Loup sat slumped against the wall, his head between his knees.

A crowd had gathered. One of the women hissed at Fabricia and an old man spat at her feet. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ Philip said.

‘They say I am a fraud, that I said I could heal their children when I could not. I never said I could heal. They believed it, I didn’t.’

Another man ventured closer, shouting at her. Philip pushed him back. He took Fabricia’s hand and led her outside, and they found a quiet corner in the stables. Fabricia peeled off her
gloves and unwrapped one of the bindings on her hands. ‘Look,’ she said. There were fresh scabs on the wounds; they had crusted almost dry.

‘What does it mean?’ he asked her.

‘Whatever this thing is, it’s leaving me.’

‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘Yes, it’s what I wanted. But it was selfish of me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It was
you
. Ever since that night, something has been different. You brought me back to my body, to this earth. I do not regret it, but . . . it feels like it cut the thread that
led to heaven.’

‘But you said yourself you don’t understand how this thing happened to you. By your own reasoning how can you know why it has stopped?’

She shrugged and put the bandages back on her hands. ‘What will you do,’ she asked him ‘if we survive this?’

‘I don’t know. Even if I live out this siege, I will have to face tomorrow without my lands and my castle and my good name as Baron of Vercy. What might I do then?’

‘Yet you have thought about it.’

She was right, he had thought about it, and he felt ashamed that she could read him so easily. ‘I suppose I might go to Aragon and pledge my services to the King there, though it is
unlikely he will accept an excommunicate. Or perhaps the Count of Foix will employ me; I can join all the other southern
faidits
in his court.’

‘Have you forgotten asking God for a hundred times a hundred nights with me?’

‘How might I keep a wife when I do not know if I can keep myself?’

‘I will not press you on the promises you made in the forest,’ she said. ‘I knew then that you did not mean what you said. You are a good man, seigneur, but I am no foolish
girl. You are yet young. If you pay your penance to the Pope, you could find yourself back in your castle before the spring and nothing lost.’

He laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose that would be the wise course.’

‘Then you should take it.’

He could not answer her. Once he had believed in miracles; it had brought him here to this accursed country, and what good had come of it? And yet from the heart of his own darkness he had met
another kind of miracle, a witch with Christ’s wounds on her hands and feet who said she had foreseen him in a dream and then saved his life simply with her prayers. Or so some said. What was
he to think or believe?

As to the future: it would be easier to die here at Montaillet. He could not imagine a future with his fiefdom and its gloomy castle and fiery wife – or without it.

And what of this woman? How should he reconcile his feelings for a commoner and a witch?

No, easier to die here on the walls. It was living that would make a coward of him.

He saw Raimon striding from the
donjon
with his escort and he walked away, grateful for the intrusion, and crossed the court to meet him.

‘You should get rid of the body as soon as you can,’ Philip said. ‘I suspect this woman had some kind of pestilence.’

‘If it is plague then it is already too late,’ Raimon said. But he turned to his soldiers and gave the order anyway. There was no room to bury the dead inside Montaillet. All they
could do was put them into shrouds and pitch them over the north wall into the river.

The ground shuddered as another massive limestone boulder crashed into the walls. Raimon shook his head. ‘I have heard de Montfort pays his siege engineers twenty livres a day. Can you
imagine? Devil-fuckers! They have no courage and no honour and they grow fat just by throwing rocks at us.’ He went to the nave and looked out of the portal towards the barbican. ‘I
have spoken to the mason – what is his name? Bérenger. He is trying to strengthen the wall but he says that another two or three days of this and it will start to crumble. We have to
do something about that infernal machine.’

It was getting on to dusk. Flambeaux bobbed in the streets and ramparts as men toiled at a barricade they were building behind the weakened wall. A horn sounded the alarm at the main gate.
Probably nothing; the sentries were nervous, jumping at shadows.

‘Is there a hidden way out of this castle?’

‘You wish to leave us?’

‘I wish to save you.’

Raimon hesitated. ‘Perhaps. On the south-east side, there is a fissure in the rock, just as it falls to the ravine. When the fortress was built an escape tunnel was mined there, just below
the cistern.’

‘Then we should use it. I have noticed the horses are getting restless, all this time in the stables with no room to gallop. We could give them some exercise tonight.’

Raimon smiled, for the first time in days. ‘You think we should try and destroy the trebuchet?’

‘That, or our wall comes down. What other choice is there?’

‘But who would risk such an expedition?’

‘The kind of man, I suppose, who would ride alone against two score.’

‘Are you in such a hurry to meet God, Frenchman?’

‘More than He is to meet me.’

‘I knew fortune brought you to Montaillet for a reason. All right. Let us hurry and make ready.’

S
INCE THAT FIRST
day the great hall had emptied by natural attrition; men either recovered and went back to the walls, or
they died. But there was still a daily influx of injuries, mostly from the bombardment of rocks and stones.

An archer had fallen from the parapet and broken his ankle, but the wound was open and had become infected. Elionor had found a store of dried herbs that the
bons òmes
had led her
to, and with it she helped Fabricia mix a concoction of knitbone root and leaves in hot wax and apply it to the poor man’s leg as a compress.

When she had done she looked up and found Philip watching her. The candelight made him look grim, as if he was about to impart bad news. Then suddenly he flashed a smile, and it was like the sun
coming out from behind dark clouds.

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. He took her hand and led her into a private corner, behind a pillar. ‘Fabricia,’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful name.’

‘What is wrong, seigneur?’

He kissed her, without warning.

‘You could get this anywhere,’ she whispered. ‘I am just a girl like any other.’

‘No, you’re not.’ She wondered if he would take her, right there against the pillar. But then he pulled away. He just held her face in his hands, his breathing ragged.
‘You are my every hope,’ he said, and then he left, leaving her shaken and mystified.

So what will happen if you do not come back tonight? he thought. He had gone there, intending to say goodbye, but found he could not. Perhaps there was another way. There was no
law that said that only a landed baron might be happy with his lot. He had found joy once with Alezaïs, he might yet find it again.

But first they must do something about the giant siege engine, and if he came back from the raid he might think again about what he would do about the stonemason’s daughter.

It was chill tonight in the castle keep, autumn not far off. Loup huddled in the straw, his knees to his chest. Some soldiers sat by the hearth talking in low voices, chewing on
bread and salted pork.

‘Now see you, Loup,’ Philip said, crouching beside him. He nodded at two old men lying close by with their cloaks wrapped around themselves. ‘You are a fortunate lad, you sleep
with royalty tonight. That old man lying on his back and snoring like a hog once had a castle and lands in the Minervois. The man next to him is his cousin. Tonight they sleep with the common
round, same as you and I.’

‘Will you sleep here tonight, seigneur?’

‘Not tonight. There is something I have to do.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘Not on this errand.’

Loup tucked his hands inside his jerkin and shivered. ‘And when the siege is ended, seigneur? Shall I come with you then?’

There had been a bitch once, in the castle, that had died giving birth to its pups. Only one of the litter had survived. It had attached itself to the tomcat they kept to eat the mice, and
followed it faithfully every day even though it showed not the slightest interest in it. Loup is just like that puppy, he thought. ‘I could have made you part of my household, if I still had
one. Found a job for you in the scullery. But I no longer have a household.’

‘Did I not hear you say that you once had servants, seigneur? And a castle? And a horse?

‘I had a whole stable of horses.’

‘And a wife? And meat to eat every day?’

‘Yes. And a feather bed with bolsters and a curtain around it.’

Loup blinked. ‘Then if life had given you such fortune, why was it not enough?’

A good question, he supposed, and it would take the rest of the night to answer it. He ruffled the boy’s hair, and told him to go to sleep.

That night Fabricia risked a return to the church. She did not like the thought of her father sleeping alone in there. By now she had grown accustomed to the stink of so many
people crammed inside, and could even sleep through the shock of the rocks hitting the south wall, though it rattled dust from the ceiling and the church shook as if it might crash down around
them. No one recognized her in the dark, so there were no curses or entreaties tonight.

She lay down on the flagstones next to him, listened to his slow and even breathing. ‘Papa,’ she whispered. ‘Are you awake?’

‘I am awake. What is it, little rabbit?’

‘What will we do? When the
crosatz
go home?’

‘There will always be work for stonemasons, especially now, with half the country in ruins. I will go back to work and we will see about finding you a husband, I suppose. Though I have not
much of a dowry to offer anyone now.’

‘Do you think the
crosatz
will go home?’

‘What does your fine lord say?’

‘He thinks that as soon as the weather turns they will all go back to France.’

‘Well then, he would know more about these things than us. All I know is that the Count of Toulouse is vassal to the King of Aragon so sooner or later that fine Spanish gentleman must come
with his army and throw these Frenchmen out, if they don’t go of their own accord.’