Gene of Isis

His insistence had me worried; what the hell did he expect me to find in this manuscript? I promise.

I dismissed Albray before untying the red leather that bound the scroll closed.

It unfolded to reveal a large emblem, crowned by the title of the House of du Lac. The stamped emblem was scarlet red in colour and portrayed a dragon emerging from a lake with a lily in its mouth, which was contained inside the emblem of a five-pointed star. It was highly detailed and very impressive. The parchment had obviously been reinforced by some modern backing paper, which had prevented the old document from crumbling to pieces.

The text itself was in an old dialect, D’oc, that had been employed in the south of France around the time of the Crusades. D’oc was related to the provinces of Languedoc. I had a couple of computer programs that I could refer to if I found it difficult to follow the language. The penmanship was beautiful from the outset, and a pleasure to read.

‘So, tell me your story, Lillet du Lac.’ I settled at my desk with a cup of tea and some nibbles. I switched on my computer in case I needed to research a word, or anything else, and then began to devour the story of the Cathar priestess and my Knight of Sion.

PART 3

LILLET

13^TH CENTURY

FRANCE

LESSON 16

PERSECUTION DECEMBER 31^ST 1243

I am Lillet of the House of du Lac, a priestess of the Church of the Holy Mother, and a daughter of the blood of the Royal House of Judah. In Narbonne, my family have resided since the kingdom once known as Septimania thrived. It was to here that my great foremother, Mary Magdalene, came when fleeing the Holy Land with her children to preserve the royal line of David. Down through the centuries my family has fought to reclaim their rightful title. For a brief time in the eighth century, my forefather, Theodoric, was decreed by King Pepin of the Franks, by the Caliph of Baghdad and even by the Pope, to be a true king of the House of Judah and the seed of the royal house of David.

A fact that the Church of Rome has since tried very hard to conceal throughout the centuries.

For eight months our one hundred and fifty warriors have held at bay a force of ten thousand men, preventing the Frankish force from scaling the high pog upon which the fortress of Montsegur is perched. This mountain is riddled with secret caves and pathways, which has enabled supplies to trickle in and communications to be sent out. But our besiegers tighten their defence and access to the outside world is becoming harder to maintain.

Montsegur has been besieged before and barely has a scar to show for it, but this time I fear Hugues de Archis and his Crusaders, by order of King Louis IX and the Inquisition, mean to topple the last bastion of the ‘Church of God’ left in Occitania, no matter how long it takes.

Tens of thousands of our people have been slaughtered since the dawn of this century, when Simon de Montford, Dominic Guzman and thirty thousand Crusader knights descended on Languedoc like a dark plague, destroying everyone and everything in their path. Finding it difficult to separate Roman Catholics from the Christians and Perfecti of our church, the Crusaders were commanded to ‘kill them all, as God would know his own’.

Over fifteen thousand people were massacred in the town of Beziers alone, many of whom were inside the church of Mary Magdalene, where they prayed for deliverance. The church was set ablaze and all were burned alive—neither sex, nor age, nor rank were spared.

This horrendous event took place ten years before I was born. I cannot remember a time when my people did not live in fear of their lives, their faith and their souls. And for what purpose has the Church of Rome hunted and slaughtered our people? The answer is simple: our faith, our knowledge, our history is a threat to them for we have in our possession something more meaningful than the advent of any faith. The church and its crusader knights have already destroyed most of the principality of Occitania in search of this treasure. Perpignan, Carcassonne, Toulouse and Narbonne have all been laid to waste and the few survivors fled here to Montsegur. As it is the last stronghold of gnostic thought and study in Occitania, our persecutors have assumed that the ancient treasure is hidden in Montsegur—the Inquisition and its crusaders will not stop until this fortress has been searched and levelled.

In the year 1241, Montsegur was besieged by Raymond VII, the Count of Toulouse. He sympathised with our faith, and only half-heartedly surrounded our fortress when he was forced to by the king of the Franks to whom he had pledged allegiance after the fall of his city. All lines of trade remained open and our people felt no threat from the count’s forces. By autumn that siege had all but dissolved.

In spring 1242, Raymond d’Alfaro, the bailiff at Avignonet, sent a letter to the Lord of Montsegur, Pierre-Roger Mirepoix. This communique advised that the chief Inquisitors of Toulouse—Etienne de Saint, Guillaume Arnaud and their assistants—were going to be arriving in Avignonet in a few days. Since the formation of the dreaded Holy Inquisition in 1233, the Church of Rome has inflicted torture and death on thousands of our people. Our lord and his loyal supporters did not hesitate to hatch a plan to destroy the party of friars before they could inflict their toll on the faithful of Avignonet.

As the Perfecti—the church leaders—of our faith reject all violence, we advised against the attack and the drawing of more ill will to our community. Yet our lord and his men, being Credenti (believers) and hardened warriors, refused to allow another bloody incursion to take place in the name of the Church of Rome.

Our lord assembled a force of knights in the Antioch woods. Guillaume de Lahille, Bernard de Saint-Martin and Guillaume de Balaguire led a force into Avignonet under the cover of darkness. Our assassins were guided to the quarters where the Inquisitors were sleeping and the ten friars therein were disposed of. It was said that there was not a skull among the dead that was whole enough to take as a trophy and drink a victory toast from.

This massacre was considered a victory by our men-at-arms, as there were widespread revolts in Occitania against the Crown following the assassinations. But by January 1243, Frankish forces allied to Rome had put down the revolution.

The fort at Montsegur was dubbed ‘the synagogue of Satan’ and on the day of the Feast of the Ascension in May 1243, which marked the anniversary of the assassinations of the church’s Inquisitors, warriors from Gascony