Siege Perilous Page 19

  Vera nodded, then said, “Yes,” when she remembered he could not see her.

  Raphael had lain in a twilight state for nearly a week, his leg set by the best among the Perfect healers. Percival returned before the others who had spirited away the treasure; he and Vera sat with their injured comrade in the rare moments they were not on the battlements or sleeping. Old Bishop Marti had some skill with healing, and pacifist though he was, he was used to treating fallen soldiers. Groundsel was the herb of choice for wounds caused by iron, but Vera knew Raphael carried with him tinctures from the east that also helped with the fever that was more of a danger to him than the physical wound.

  Eventually the Levantine had come back to wakefulness; he dressed himself properly, and when the swelling on his face subsided enough for him to see he insisted on hobbling gingerly around within the keep, on crutches Ferenc fashioned for him. For several days he could not manage to get up the single step to the door, and he found it maddening to be shut in with the women and children all day. He could guess what was happening outside the fortress walls as clearly as any of the others could see it from the battlements.

  Down the slope, the French grew greatly industrious, hauling lumber and hardware up the eastern cliff, and starting to mine the mountaintop for limestone.

  The very night of Raphael’s injury, Peire-Roger had sent an urgent plea to one the Credent barons still in residence, and within three days a constructor of siege-machines, Bertran de Bacalaira of Capdenac, had arrived from Castèlnòu d’Arri, having broken through the French lines at night. A sturdily built, self-important man, he’d immediately turned the courtyard into chaos. He instructed a number of the wooden buildings be disassembled, both to provide lumber to build a trebuchet for Montségur itself, and to allow room for it to maneuver.

  Ocyrhoe did not like him: clearly he considered himself, prematurely, the hero of Montségur, for having answered the summons for help. A Credent himself, he had grandly announced he wanted no monetary reward, just the satisfaction of helping his beloved Good Ones. Within an hour, however, it had seemed to Ocyrhoe that he wanted in payment was obsequious gratitude. He wanted to be omnipotent within the fortress walls. That would not, she was certain, sit well with Peire-Roger—nor even with the blacksmith, who had immediately gotten into a furious argument with Bacalaira about saving the smithy, at least, from disassembly. She herself wondered about the wisdom of a trebuchet; once Ferenc explained to her how it worked, she asked him the most obvious question, which did not seem to have occurred to Bacalaira: where would their ammunition come from? They had no means to mine the mountain. They had nothing to use as a counterweight. It seemed an implausible undertaking. Almost as implausible as what the French were doing.

  Every sunset, Ferenc and Ocyrhoe would bundle up in white-and-dun wool clothing, sneak out the gate, and move undetected across the north face of the wintry mountain to check on the enemy. The snow was glaringly white where it remained, but much of it had blown away.

  Once the lumber, ropes, and hardware had been brought up, the frame of the French trebuchet had been reassembled within days. It was enormous, three times the height of a man. Makeshift workshops had also been built; villeins and soldiers started mining limestone around the summit through the snow, and within the workshops, others were shaping raw blocks into round projectiles; they were stored carefully in piles outside and ranged from what looked about the weight of a large dog up to what looked about the weight of a large man. Other blocks were being shaped and pressed together to be contained within a massive iron net: the counterweight. The mining of the counterweight seemed to be very slow going. In contrast, within the walls of Montségur, that had turned out to be the easiest aspect of the much smaller trebuchet: the men had simply begun to disassemble the interior walls separating the Goodmen’s village from the Goodwomen’s, and the stones were loaded into a large cage the smith had forged. The cage used up the last of his iron, and the forging used up the last of his charcoal. Bacalaira then demanded the smithy be taken apart, on the grounds that without iron or charcoal it was just an empty building—sited in the best possible place to put the trebuchet.

  But even with an assembled trebuchet, they had no ammunition. Unless they were perfectly round and smooth, the balls would swing wide of their intended targets. They had no way to shape the projectiles.

  Meanwhile, the French men were working around the clock, miserable in the cold. Other men protected them with metal canopies of overlapping shields. No matter how good a Montségur archer’s aim, there were no vulnerable targets.

  One evening, when Ferenc and Ocyrhoe went on their sunset reconnaissance, the counterweight on the French trebuchet suddenly seemed much larger. Days of mining and trimming stone had created the misleading impression that everything was moving very slowly—but now suddenly, the fruit of the Frenchmen’s labor was before them.

  “That’s terrifying,” said Ferenc, calmly. “The weight of that? Think how hard those stones will be coming at us.”

  “But it’s from such a distance,” Ocyrhoe said nervously. “They’re shooting uphill across the length of a mountain ridge!”

  “At first they will be,” Ferenc agreed. “But Raphael says they are going to move that monster a few yards every day.”

  Ocyrhoe shook her head, incredulous. “Look at that thing, Ferenc. It will topple over the moment it hits a frozen tuft of grass.”

  “Raphael—”

  “He isn’t always right, Ferenc. Anyhow, the days are so short now, and they can’t shoot at night. They have no way to aim.”

  “You don’t aim something like that,” said Ferenc of the machine. “If every rock is the same weight and shape, and you throw it with the same force from the same angle, it will get flung to about the same spot every time, whether you’re looking at the target or not.” Seeing her startled face, he smiled and said, “Algebra, geometry, and physics. Frederick taught me.”

  “Are…is that true?” asked unschooled Ocyrhoe. “That sounds like a magician’s formula.”

  “It’s magic in the sense that it always works,” said Ferenc, warm with the pleasure of amazing her. He had stopped resisting the chemistry that was obvious to everyone but her. “Unless there’s some outstanding variable, like a gale blowing or some object interrupting the rock’s movement. Like a hawk, or a giraffe.”

  “A what?”

  “I’ll show you when we’re back at Frederick’s court. You would not believe me if I described it to you. An animal taller than the trebuchet. Similarly built, come to think of it.”

  Ocyrhoe was horrified, but not about the giraffe. “But that means they can bombard us without stop.”

  “And I am sure they will. It would take a miracle to save the fortress now.”

  “There are no such things as miracles,” scoffed Ocyrhoe. “Who knows that better than the two of us? There are only disasters that madmen think are miracles.”

  She paused wondering if that had been a tactical error. The last thing she wanted was to start a conversation that could lead to the cup. It was embarrassing, here with Ferenc, to think of how perversely attached to the cup she was. It was nothing but a cup, as Rixenda had said. She decided that as soon as they were off duty, she would give it to Rixenda and rid herself of it.

  “I would consider a disaster falling upon our enemies to be a miracle,” Ferenc was saying. “Whatever happened to the cup? That could be very useful now.”

  Ocyrhoe’s sudden nervousness masqueraded as contempt. “How?”

  “You saw what it did to the masses of Rome. If we had it, we could use it to hypnotize the crusading army and make them all forswear their allegiance to the French king. We could send them home and end this.”

  “Only Rodrigo could do that,” said Ocyrhoe, trying to disregard the dizzy feeling that came from being untruthful to him. “Rodrigo’s dead. Because of the accursed cup.”

&n
bsp; “We don’t know it was only Rodrigo.”

  “Who else had that power? When anyone else held it, it was only a cup.”

  “What did you do with it, Ocyrhoe?” he asked bluntly.

  She lowered her gaze quickly, knowing she couldn’t look him in the eye without being honest. She was ashamed to still be keeping it. Yes, she would definitely give it to Rixenda.

  “Gave it to an old lady in need, who sold it,” she said as offhandedly as possible. She was going to do that, so it wasn’t too much of a lie.

  “You were that certain it had no power of its own?”

  “He was a madman, Ferenc.”

  “He was a madman who turned the heads of thousands. Because of the cup.”

  She swallowed uncomfortably. “Frederick understood. It was the alchemy of man and cup together. He sent me to separate them, and with your help I did. Now the cup is as inert as the man.” She crossed herself.

  A pause. “Well, it’s a shame,” said Ferenc. “I bet it could be used to upset the enemy camp. It could have done that already, and then Raphael would never have been wounded.”

  “It is a shame,” said Ocyrhoe, suddenly desperate to get away from his company. “Come, it’s too dark to see anything else. Let’s head back and report.” The top layer of snow was very dry here and creaked under her feet like stiff leather.

  She parted ways with him after they reported to Peire-Roger. She moved by feel in the dim of the rising moon, and went down into the Good Ones’ village, sliding on the trampled ice of earlier, damper snowfall. The cup was still hidden in her hard little bed in Rixenda’s hut. She had not touched it since Ferenc’s wonderful appearance. The metal was warm to her touch in the freezing night. She held it against her, and its warmth radiated through her entire body.

  She would give it to Rixenda. Rixenda and the others here were somehow impervious to its properties—perhaps their beliefs inured them to any kind of material wonder. Rixenda was up in the fortress making the last batch of candles before the chandlery was disassembled to accommodate Bacalaira’s trebuchet. Ocyrhoe would give her the cup when she came down to pray or sleep.

  No, that was no good—as long as it was on the mountaintop she would feel fidgety about it. She had to get rid of it.

  Ocyrhoe had brought her heaviest wool blanket up to the donjon, where she was sleeping now, but the lighter coverlet was still here in the hut. She picked it up, shook it to remove the loose bits of straw clinging to it, and draped it around her shoulders, over her mantle. Having sheltered the cup, it was itself warmer than it should have been. She stepped back outside, the starlight suddenly bright to her after the total darkness of the hut. She walked through the Goodwomen’s village, down the brief flight of stairs, through the Goodmen’s village, to the wall that faced north. The wall was to a height just above her head, but it was not smoothly finished—there were such large protrusions that, even one-handed, she could make her way up to the top. She gazed over the dark abyss of the foothills and the plains. In her imagination she could see the city of Toulouse from here, though it was more than twenty miles distant.

  She would throw the cup into the abyss of air. Here. Now. It would fall clattering down the northern slope and be lost in the tangle of bushes below. Whatever strange power it had would be lost. It only responded to her because she had known Rodrigo, had nearly been killed by him—somehow the cup must be picking up some strange remnant of his influence on her, finding his ghost on her skin and responding to that. If the cup was claimed by somebody else, somebody who had never known Rodrigo, it would remain inert. This theory made perfect sense to her.

  She took a deep, quivering breath and raised her arm, cup clenched in her hand. The tension in her chest as she began to hurl her arm forward almost choked her.

  No. She swung her arm all the way around, back down to her side, still clenching the cup. It was not her attachment that kept her from throwing it. It was the fear that perhaps she was wrong and that the cup did have some freakish power, no matter who held it…and if it were down the slope it would most likely be found by one of the enemy. They might do terrible things with it.

  She was stuck with it.

  If only she could use it.

  She climbed down the wall, walked back up through both levels of the Good Ones’ village, and stopped against the fortress wall, facing east to the thick sliver of rising moon. She took off her mantle and placed it on the snow, then sat on it, the thin blanket draped around her shoulders, the cup in her hands. It glowed slightly, lighting her tunic-skirt and leggings, her slim hands loosely draped around it, wonderfully warmed by its touch.

  Ferenc’s idea was not a bad one. She could go down to the army camp—become again the chalice-wielding Angel of Conversion—and find the local soldiers at some convening point, perhaps at mess. She could exhort them all to turn their backs on the French and go back to their ploughs and forges and vineyards, and rebuild Occitania.

  If she did this, she would probably be killed immediately. It was a noble way to die, but then the cup would fall into enemy hands and could be used against Montségur as readily as if she’d given it to them for that purpose.

  She was stuck with it.

  If only she could use it.

  A sound up the slope, to her right, caught her attention. A person approaching. A man, but no maille. She could not see him clearly enough in the darkness, but suddenly she was afraid that it was Ferenc, and he would see the cup. She tucked it behind her, hidden between her body and the thin wool wrap.

  The person came nearer, sliding on the black ice. Paused. He had sensed her, but also could not identify her. “Hello,” said a baritone voice. Even his voice was handsome.

  “God’s evening to you, Percival,” she said. A good thing, then, that she had hidden the chalice.

  “Ocyrhoe,” he said, in a voice more thoughtful than she wanted it to be. “Perhaps you are why sleep has eluded me.”

  “What?” she said nervously.

  “I have been plagued by bad dreams lately. My visions are tormenting me for not attempting harder to find their source. I have nightmares.”

  “I suspect we all have nightmares, sir, given that we are under attack by an army a hundred times our size whilst freezing to death.”

  “These are a different sort of nightmare,” said the knight. “But have I interrupted you at prayer?”

  She almost said yes, but didn’t. “I am just sitting here and thinking,” she said. “Wishing I could do something really useful.”

  “We all wish that,” he said. “May I sit with you a moment? I think it is no coincidence that I’ve stumbled upon you here. There’s something I must speak with you about.”

  Oh, no, thought Ocyrhoe. “Of course,” she said. “Although I was thinking of retiring soon.”

  “I will be direct then,” said Percival. “And the conversation may be short.” A pause. “As you know, I see things. Visions.”

  “Yes,” said Ocyrhoe. “They brought you here. We have already had this discussion.”

  He glanced around in the darkness as if he’d heard something. “It’s warm here,” he said. “Right here, just in this spot. How interesting. Since I could not find any material reason to have been summoned here, I thought perhaps it was to defend the place. But my presence here has had no effect at all on the safety of the people.”

  “We’ve already had this discussion,” Ocyrhoe said, jaw clenched. Was his wit diseased or was he trying to irritate her?

  “In fact, they are in much greater danger now than when I first arrived.”

  “That is not your fault,” said Ocyrhoe.

  “I know. That’s not the point.” A pause. She did not ask him what the point was, so he continued on his own. “There must be some other purpose to my being here. The visions are so strong now; every night they fill my mind. They leave me so exhausted sometime
s it is hard to concentrate on my duties. Usually they take the form of swirling light, but lately there has been a more concrete image. It looks like a chalice.”

  “Oh,” said Ocyrhoe, feeling faint. He really did not remember that they had already had this conversation. That was disturbing.

  “I heard from Vidal that the angel that he saw when he was converted to the cause was a young woman with a cup.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’re having visions of a chalice. Maybe his story put that idea into your head,” said Ocyrhoe quickly. “I know when I hear stories that affect me deeply, the things that affect me almost always make their way into my dreams.”

  “That’s possible,” said Percival, but he sounded dubious. “I rather think that I was drawn here in order to meet the angel with the cup.”

  “Rixenda can assure you that I’m not an angel,” said Ocyrhoe sardonically.

  “I know there is something special about you, Ocyrhoe,” he said gently. “I sense you have a secret, and I hope you will not keep it from me if you come to believe that I am its intended recipient. That’s all.”

  A pause. If she told him something—something else—then that might throw him off the scent.

  “I do have a secret,” she said. “Do you know who the Binders are?”

  He smiled. “I thought you might be one.”

  “I’m a renegade Binder,” she said. “I’m not trustworthy.”

  She could see him smile in the darkness. “Really? That must be an interesting story.”

  “Not at all. But it’s the secret that you sense I’m carrying. You see? It has nothing to do with you.” Go away, go away, go away, she thought.

  She would happily have given up the cup now to almost anyone but Percival. He was the only man she’d met since Father Rodrigo’s death who had that glimmer of otherworldliness that reminded her of the priest. He was a good man, she felt that instinctively, but he was unbalanced by this quest of his. Just as Rodrigo had been. Men like that should not have access to objects of a questionable nature. He was repeating a conversation they had had a few days earlier, with no apparent memory of having had it. That was something madmen did. Madmen and schemers, and Percival was not a schemer.