A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin

sent some of them off to pursue Aelith. Of the seven who were left when the others rode away, the torchlight showed rough, country faces and tunics bearing what looked like an ecclesiastical blazon. They addressed their leader, who, like them, spoke with a strong Occitan accent as Arnaud.

Adelia asked again and again where they were to be taken and why, but received no more reply than did Ulf’s threats that Henry II would spill their captors’ guts when they got there-the men didn’t understand them anyway

Arnaud gave a signal, the ropes around the prisoners’ hands tightened as the mules moved forward, and the march began.

The mountains were too rough even for mules to go at anything except walking pace, but every pull on the rope sent pain through Adelia’s broken collarbone. Also, she’d lost a shoe in the struggle and her right foot was being pierced by thorns.

An occasional reassuring whiff told her that Ward was sticking, unnoticed, to her heels. Yet who was there to follow the scent? Rowley had gone to Carcassonne.

“Are we going to Carcassonne?” she asked.

Nobody answered her; Arnaud had ordered silence.

Betrayed. Somebody had told the authorities where Ermengarde and Aelith were staying. It could have been anybody, a peasant looking for reward, a Cathar hater. And he or she had entangled the rest of them in the betrayal.

Whoever the mercenaries were, they knew these mountains well; they followed wide tracks mostly, but now and then diverged from them so that the prisoners’ legs were torn by prickly brush that sent up the smell of thyme and fennel as they went.

The sound of hoofbeats announced the arrival of the men who’d gone hunting the escapee. “Lost her,” Arnaud was told. Ermengarde uttered a shout of triumph and was hit across the mouth for it.

Progress became harder when the mercenaries threw away their spent torches and proceeded by moonlight.

Through it all, and despite more punches because she wouldn’t keep quiet, Ermengarde sent up long and confident Cathar prayers.

Adelia’s eyes were on Boggart, tied to the mule beside hers. When the going became too rough and the girl fell, Adelia shouted at its rider: “Damn you, mind that lady, she’s expecting a baby” To her surprise, the man dismounted and heaved Boggart onto the mule in his stead. Arnaud, who was in the lead, didn’t notice.

It was impossible to calculate in which direction they were going or even to keep track of time; everything reduced to the necessity not to stumble, to stay on one’s feet, not to surrender to thirst and fear.

When would it be day? When would this stop?

Suddenly Arnaud shouted that he was going ahead “to tell ’em we’re coming” and kicked his mule into a trot to disappear down a wide track into the darkness. After he’d gone, the man who’d shown care for Boggart proved his humanity once more by ordering a halt so that the captives could be given a drink. The water was warm and stale and the leather on the flasks it came in smelled foul but, oh, it was beautiful.

The march began again.

At last the mountains ahead became jagged shapes against a dim reflection of a dawn still down over the horizon. They funneled down on three sides of what was, so much as could be seen of it, a sizable town.

Figeres? No. Rowley had said that Figeres was little more than a village.

A hope reared that it was Carcassonne, one of Languedoc’s major cities, where Rowley was going. And yet she’d had the idea that Carcassonne was built on a plain.

She heard Ermengarde say, “Aveyron,” as if something had been extinguished in her, and one of the men laughed.

It was just waking up as they reached its outskirts. A woman emerging from one of the houses to empty a chamber pot shouted at her family to come and see. Shutters were flung back; questions, dogs, and children accompanied the prisoners up a winding, cobbled track toward a square formed by buildings of considerable size. Adelia glimpsed a tall tower and cupolas like graceful saucepan lids outlined against the rising sun.

Up and up into a square, where Boggart was lifted from her mule and the ropes binding the prisoners’ hands were replaced by manacles. They were ushered into a magnificent, arcaded hall, a where a line of liveried servants carrying food dishes into a room on the right paused to stare at the prisoners and were commanded to be about their business by a tap from the staff of a heavily robed steward. A line of people in a gallery above their heads goggled down at them.

In the middle of the hall, a man in the cassock of a priest sat at a table, a scribe beside him. There was an oath and a scuffle and, looking back, Adelia saw that one of the riders had taken Ward by the scruff of his neck and thrown him outside the doors that were then closed against him.

Ermengarde had recovered her courage. Pushed in front of the table, she addressed the priest politely in Latin: “Ave, Gerhardt,” and then, louder, in Occitan: “Ara roda l’abelha.” (“That bee is buzzing round again.”)

There was a laugh, quickly suppressed, that caused an echo making it impossible to tell where it had come from.

“Father Gerhardt to you, bitch,” the priest said in Latin.

“My father is in heaven. Are we to dispute again? Splendid.”

Father Gerhardt addressed his scribe. “Ermengarde of Montauban, a self-confessed Cathar. Write it down.” He raised his head. “Or have you repented, woman?”

“I repent of nothing.”

“You are charged with preaching heresy throughout this region in defiance of the edicts issued by His Holiness Pope Alexander the Third. The punishment is death by burning.”

“I do not recognize such edicts, nor your Satanic Pope. I have preached only true Christianity”

“We have the statements of witnesses.” Father Gerhardt pointed at a roll on his table.”

“Splendid.”

Stop it, stop it, Adelia wanted to shout at her. The statement of an ignorant man as he’d set fire to Ermengarde’s cottage-Like you fuching Cathars-she’d taken to be the threat of a bully; now it was being translated into something else. Here, they were enclosed in the efficiency of a powerful machine, in front of them was a man about serious business, a stone-faced man whose eyes-the only mobile thing about him-had flames in them.

They can’t, she thought. Not us. Henry’s anger would be terrible-don’t they know that? They must know.

But around her were the indifferent mountains of a landscape where the Plantagenet writ did not run. She’d wandered into somebody else’s story, not hers. It was a mistake, she was going to die by mistake. She willed Ermengarde to cower, plead, whisper repentance, instead of shouting for her own execution-and theirs.

One by one they were made to stand before their inquisitor and told to give their names, place of birth, and occupation.

Their explanations were cut short: “You are Cathars, you were found consorting with Cathars.”

For all that she was shaking, Adelia tried for indignation when her turn came. “It is disgraceful that we are treated like this. Who are you? Where is this place?”

“You are in the palace of the Bishop of Aveyron.” The priest had the thin, protuberant features of a dog and an expression that suggested he would be better for going muzzled.

“Then inform your bishop that we are under the protection of the Bishop of Winchester, who is with Princess Joanna at Figeres, and the Bishop of Saint Albans of England, whom you can find at Carcassonne. We are servants of Henry Plantagenet, and we have been traveling with his daughter until…”

“You are Cathars, you were found consorting with Cathars.” It was a mantra.

Mansur’s questioning was briefest of all: who he was or what he was doing in Languedoc was of no interest- his color and robes were those of a self-confessed, if different, heretic; he could burn with the rest.

WHEN HE’D FINISHED his interrogation, Father Gerhardt took up his papers, left the hall for the palace’s dining room, and passed through it to the breakfast room, where a table winked with crystal glass and gold plate.