Siege Perilous Read online

  “You will refer to me as Father Sinibaldo,” said the man sharply. “Do you understand?”

  Hugue, realizing he had been gaping, closed his mouth. “Sinibaldo? di Fieschi?” he huffed.

  The priest stared back at him without moving for a long moment, then very slowly nodded.

  “Your Holiness—” Hugue breathed, and knelt, head bowed.

  “Stand,” His Holiness said sharply. “Nobody outside this room is to know that I am here. I am glad you keep up with affairs of the church,” he said in a regular voice. “That makes you a good Christian soldier. As I am sure you will demonstrate to me by playing the endgame of this siege the way the Church requires it.”

  “We will kill all the heretics who don’t repent,” said Hugue uncertainly, “If that is what you mean.” He fidgeted nervously with the bandage.

  “You will do more than that,” Father Sinibaldo informed him. Hugue felt mesmerized by his gaze; he would have been terrified to refuse this man anything, lest he strike out suddenly like a poisonous snake and disable him. “You will support whatever conditions of surrender I dictate.”

  “Don’t ask us to kill civilians, Father. The ones called Credents, who have not taken heretical vows, we won’t hurt them. Most of the population in this area are Credents, it’s why we haven’t been able to cut Montségur off. I have never wanted to hurt them. Many of them are children and women. I would like to spare them, if Your Holiness—”

  “Father Sinibaldo,” said His Holiness sharply.

  “If His Holiness would allow it, we wish to atone for the sins of the crusaders who came before us and spare the innocent.”

  “Indeed you shall,” said Sinibaldo. “You’ll do more than that, in fact. All of them but the unrepentant Good Ones will be released without punishment once we have taken the fortress.”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?” said Hugue.

  “Everyone,” Sinibaldo repeated emphatically.

  “Do you mean the lords? We can spare the lords, even that fucking drunk whoreson Peire-Roger, if you will pardon my language, Father.”

  “I do not just mean the lords. You will spare everyone. Including the soldiers. Knights, men-at-arms, all of them. Even if there is among them one you recognize for having killed your men. There will be a total pardon. Only the Perfecti will be put to death, and any of them who repent, even at the last moment, will be spared.”

  Hugue grimaced and rubbed the side of his face with one gloved hand. “That’s irregular, Father,” he said. “And of course there are men, on both sides, who have already fallen in combat, and there’ll be more before this ends.”

  “But we will offer terms of peace that promise no more violence.” Father Sinibaldo spoke in a voice of great composure, suddenly the Bishop of Rome, the all-powerful but all-compassionate spokesman of Christ. “For any Christian. We must astonish them, through charity, into wanting to embrace the true Church.”

  Hugue sighed with relief. He’d been afraid His Holiness would demand something that would trod upon the toes and plans of the French king. This assignment, although it would disgruntle many of his soldiers, would cause no trouble between himself and King Louis. “Easily accomplished, Father, I will make it clear when we approach a surrender on their part.”

  “And there is just one other thing,” said Father Sinibaldo shrewdly. “All of the former landowners up there, who lost their fiefdoms when they fled for safety, will have all of their lands restored to them.”

  “Pardon me?” said Hugue after a momentary pause.

  “And that will be true going back a generation,” continued Sinibaldo firmly. “Any lord whose father was rendered landless by Simon de Montfort or the crusaders, as well as any disenfranchised lord himself—all of them will have their estates restored.”

  Hugue stared at him for a moment, horrified. “That’s impossible. Those lands are settled now. They have been awarded to Frenchmen by the French crown.”

  “My apologies to the French crown, but my charity outranks Louis’ greed in this arena.”

  The Lord of Carcassonne was confounded. “If anyone, even His Majesty, tried to take those lands away now, we’d be in a bloodbath that would make the Albigensian Crusade seem tame. You cannot do that, Father. You cannot unmake a map any sooner than you can unplough a field.”

  Father Sinibaldo scowled.

  “He has a point,” said the archbishop. “If you would limit your terms to the lords who lost their lands recently by retreating to Montségur.“

  “Even then,” protested Hugue, “the French lords who were given those estates were not told, Here, steward these until the Occitanian lords return to the bosom of Christ. They were told, Here’s land, complete with farms and vineyards and serfs. You have earned it. And they have, by fighting on behalf of the true Church.” His voice constricted somewhat. “I am such a man myself. Would you remove me from Carcassonne and replace me with some lord I am about to defeat? What element of canon law allows for that?”

  “There is no lord of Carcassonne up there waiting to replace you,” said Sinibaldo impatiently. “The direct family line was massacred, quite spectacularly, by Simon. The closest thing to an heir, Raimon Trencavel, rescinded his claim voluntarily when you were given Carcassonne in ’40. Your estates are not threatened by this.”

  Hugue relaxed a little. “That helps me,” he said. “But it will not help a number of my captains. Peire-Roger has rights to Mirepoix, an estate in which one of my lieutenants is currently ensconced. His children are growing up there.”

  “They can grow up somewhere else,” said Pope Innocent. “That is not my concern. I require these terms for a peaceable surrender that will publicly lure the heretics back to the Mother Church. A military victory here is meritless if there is not a spiritual victory that goes with it. ‘And the greatest of these is charity.’”

  Hugue looked disgusted. “You would reward those whoresons for all the trouble they have caused,” he grunted only half under his breath, his fingers brushing his bandaged jaw.

  “I would forgive them,” Father Sinibaldo said, his voice steelier than ever. “It is the Christian thing to do. I would forgive them for the trouble they have caused, and I would embrace them for returning to us. Unlike my overeager predecessors, I shall set an example that will encourage heretics to abandon the devil, not just seek more subtle ways to dance with him. Decades of threats, massacres, and torture have not worn down the Cathars’ fervor one jot. I will be remembered as the Pope who defeated the Cathars. This is the way to defeat them.”

  Hugue had broken out in a sweat. “I hope His Holiness is willing to break the news of this to His Majesty directly. As well as to the French army. It will be hard enough to follow this directive without also being reviled for heralding it.”

  “Such details can be worked out later,” said Father Sinibaldo breezily.

  Hugue blinked. “Is this not imminent?” he said. “I thought you would be sending someone up the mountainside at once with a white flag.”

  “There is a more pressing matter to be determined first,” said Innocent.

  Hugue frowned and held his hands out helplessly. “We are in the middle of a siege in winter. What could be more pressing than determining how to proceed with it?”

  “We’re looking for something,” said the priest cryptically. To the archbishop and the Livonian soldier, Dietrich von Grüningen, he asked, “More thoughts?”

  Dietrich cleared his throat. “I still believe the Shield-Brethren up there have some connection to the grail.”

  “We’ve already tried that,” said Father Sinibaldo impatiently.

  “We went about it the wrong way. We used the Lord of Carcassonne’s name, and it inflamed Peire-Roger against us.”

  “You did what?” said the Lord of Carcassonne.

  Dietrich was happy to ignore him. “If Peire-Roger won’t
give us the knight as a hostage, is it possible we could get a message up to the knight in private? We thought it was a tactical advantage to intertwine two separate missions—the grail, and taking the fortress—but perhaps we should, in fact, keep them separate.”

  “The what?” asked Hugue.

  “I don’t think a Shield-Brethren knight would indulge in such intrigue,” said Father Sinibaldo. “But if we were to try it, do we know his name?”

  “He was introduced to me as Raphael.”

  Hugue sat up. “What, the fellow with the rose on his tunic? The tall, good-looking fellow?”

  Dietrich hesitated. “The knight I met was swarthy, looked Levantine. Wasn’t tall. He had a limp.”

  “There was a knight came through here months ago.”

  “That’s right,” said the archbishop, with vicious agreement. “You let him slip through your fingers.”

  Hugue ignored him, staring intensely at the Holy Father. “His name was Percival. If your man here met someone else, then there are two of them—at least—up there.”

  Father Sinibaldo stared at him sharply. “Percival?” The tone was somewhere between an accusation and a dare.

  Hugue nodded.

  The priest’s eyes darted angrily at Dietrich. “Did you know that?”

  Dietrich looked flustered to suddenly be the one under scrutiny. “I think Hugue mentioned it when I attempted to get information.”

  “You’re German,” said Father Sinibaldo irritably. “You are an educated, German knight.” He spat out each word distinctly. “How could you not know the story of Parzifal?”

  Dietrich grimaced dismissively. “That was written decades before this fellow was even born. If there ever were a real Parzival, he’d be long dead by now.”

  “Of course there was never a real Percival, and clearly it’s not this fellow’s real name,” Sinibaldo pressed, still irritable. “It is a code. He is advertising his connection to the grail to anyone who would be in the know. You should have been among that number, Dietrich.”

  “Excuse me, Father, but I heard the name once, in passing, before I knew anything about the grail,” said Dietrich irritably.

  “What are you talking about?” Hugue cried, increasingly alarmed.

  “It’s not your matter,” said the Holy Father shortly.

  “Excuse me, Father, but I disagree,” said Hugue. “You are asking me to go against the express directives of my own king, apparently as a cover for some other intrigue you’re not telling me about.”

  “I have the power to do that,” said His Holiness.

  “With all due respect, not on the battlefield,” Hugue shot back. “Not on my battlefield.”

  “There is no battlefield here,” said Dietrich with contempt. “That’s the problem. It’s a war with no battles.”

  Hugues reddened with anger. “But it is a war, and I am the general.”

  “It is a religious war, and I am the Pope,” said His Holiness in a furious staccato.

  “But I am not allowed to tell anyone that you’re the Pope,” Hugue retorted in the same style. “If you are going to impose outrageous terms that favor the vanquished over the victors, I need some explanation, some rationale, some believable excuse to give my men. I am the only one in this room who does not know of what you speak. Do not tell me it is not my matter!”

  “I will explain it,” said His Holiness, “as soon as you have won.”

  CHAPTER 34:

  BACK TO THE BARBICAN

  The preparations for the fire arrows were grim and frustrating; it was not safe in the courtyard, so the soldiers, their men-at-arms, and squires pressed against the eastern wall to work.

  Given their limited resources, making the fire-arrows was particularly tricky. A proper fire-tipped arrow had a special arrowhead with a small, bulbous cage just behind the point, into which could be stuffed both hemp and the sulfur-and-charcoal mixture to be lighted before shooting. They could not make these arrowheads with the smithy disassembled. There was no time to try to collect them from the outside world. So they would have to be inventive, but an arrow that flew with fire was no easy thing to conjure.

  Rags saturated in the flammable mixture would be tied to each shaft just behind the head. But the wooden shafts would burn through if the fire worked quickly, and a slow-burning flame was easily extinguished by the rush of the arrow’s flight. Also, the weight of this addition to the front of arrow limited its range and altered the angle at which it had to be shot. In the field, the archers would have to contend with all these variables.

  Crouching against the eastern wall for safety, the squires and servants boiled up the flammable mixture, creating a terrible stench in the courtyard. The wind from the northeast and the smoke away from the French on the mountaintop, but the smoke was obvious and it was likely the army camp—on the southwestern flank of the mountain—would recognize the smell.

  Once the mixture was ready, rags were soaked in it, and then these had to be tied onto hundreds of arrows. This was also was done along the eastern wall, by men and boys fighting off frostbite and nausea at the stench.

  As the shadows grew longer and the air colder, Raphael and Percival conferred with the men who would control the fire on the field, to help improvise braziers that could be moved quickly without danger of spilling the fuel or being extinguished by the wind.

  The attack would be by night—the moon was past full, but in the cold, clear, winter air it shone bright enough for the French to easily discern what the Montségurians were up to. The raiding party would have to get out of the gate and across the narrow ridge for forty strides until the ridge widened to the flat area on which the barbican was built. About fifty men—archers, guards, and assistants—would have to make that trek before alerting the French guarding the trebuchet. The barbican largely blocked the French view of the gate, which was a blessing, but still there would be very little time to get around the barbican and start their work. The trebuchet had moved so far up the slope it was almost level with the barbican.

  Vera took Ocyrhoe as her squire. The raiding party slept fitfully, sitting huddled together in the chapel, until the watch woke them all when it was so late it was nearly early. They had been waiting for the moon to slope down toward the western horizon so that the dim moonlight would be at their backs, throwing their shadows over the enemies’ ground, lighting the enemy for them. There would be a brief period of total darkness, and then the sun would rise upon the smoking ruins of the French siege machine.

  Surely this would all be over soon. They were running very low on supplies, but the troops below were running out of both food and spirit, and the desertion rate was surely rising. The last thing the crusaders had to their advantage was the siege machine; with that destroyed, it was hoped, they would give up and go home.

  The raiding troop collected behind the gate, in formation for a quick crossing: six archers moving two abreast, followed by two assistants carrying between them a bucket or brassiere with a well-banked coal fire in it, then four more assistants following with shields and more materials. Six such units would hurry out to the barbican, huddling together so that the tower’s bulk shielded them from the French guards at the trebuchet.

  On a signal from Peire-Roger, the archers would move into attack formation: three groups moving to either side around the barbican in a phalanx, with one unit of six archers and their aides in front, the other two units flanking them from behind. Raphael, still limping slightly, was in the front unit on the left with Vera; Peire-Roger and Percival were both among the right-hand leaders. The primary goal was to sink as much fire into the wooden trebuchet as possible, but taking down the French guard along with it was also urgent. If they could move close enough to the trebuchet, the buckets of burning fuel used to the light the arrows would be dumped onto the trebuchet directly.

  Crowded with others behind the barbican, Oc
yrhoe shivered in her layers of thin wool and watched the moon in the southwestern sky, sinking toward its diurnal rest. Her bandaged arm was still sore, but she could use it without difficulty now. She would serve Vera well and fearlessly, for she did not care if she died tonight, so nothing would make her hesitate. She was not at all sure where dead souls went, but certainly wherever Ferenc’s was, she’d go there, too, and hellish as it might be she would be spending it in a friend’s embrace, which was more than this world offered her.

  Peire-Roger made a raised-arm gesture that was picked up and imitated by the archers, and immediately the six groups moved around the tower. There was no need to go closer to the trebuchet; the arrows could easily hit it.

  In the darkness, almost wordlessly, each unit hurriedly prepared itself. First, three guards set up large shields to protect everyone else; behind these, squires and other assistants, like Ocyrhoe, settled the fire-pots and dipped one arrow at a time into the burning coals. As Ocyrhoe did this, grateful for the warmth of the flame, she sensed and heard, more than saw, Vera beside her, string her bow, gauge the distance to the siege machine, and then hold out her hand. Ocyrhoe handed her an arrow. Before the fire could burn through the shaft, Vera fitted it onto her string, pulled the arrow back with an admirable appearance of ease, and released it twanging up into the darkness. She sent it high on a trajectory to counterbalance the extra weight of the burning fuel; it made a fantastic whooshing sound as it flew into the air, but Ocyrhoe was disappointed to watch it sputter and go dark while still high up.

  “The fire needs to take more—hurry,” Vera said. Ocyrhoe immediately dipped the next arrow into the fire, then held it up to Vera. Vera took it, examined it, fitted it to the bowstring, and hesitated a moment, wanting to make sure the tuft of sulphur-muddied hemp at the front was indeed alight. Satisfied, she drew back the bow and shot. She and Ocyrhoe watched the arrow as it quietly soared into the air, then plummeted suddenly to the ground halfway to the trebuchet.