The First Apostle

hastily built wood-filled stockade and burned alive. None of them recanted their heresy, despite being offered every opportunity to do so.”

For a few moments Bronson was silent. “That really doesn’t make sense. Why would they reject the surrender terms after asking for two weeks to think about it? And, especially, why did the Cathars—and, from what you say, twenty-odd non-Cathars—decide their best option was to scream their way to death in the flames instead of simply walking away?”

“That’s the interesting part. It’s also worth pointing out that even when chained to the stake, the heretics were always given one last chance to recant.”

“And then they could walk away?” Bronson asked.

“No, not at that stage. But as I said before, they would then be garrotted as an act of mercy rather than be burned alive. So what made the Cathars so sure of their faith that they were prepared to die in just about the most painful way imaginable rather than repudiate it?”

Bronson rubbed his chin. “They must have had one hell of a reason.”

“There’s a persistent story—I’ve found references to it both on the Internet and in the books I’ve studied— that suggests there was a definite reason for the delay in the Cathars’ decision to accept or reject the surrender terms, and also for their willingness to perish in the flames. They were protecting their treasure.”

Bronson glanced at Angela to see if she was joking, but her expression remained deadly serious.

“Treasure? But how could the deaths of two hundred Cathars by fire possibly help protect it?”

“I think—and this really is conjecture—that the Cathars were prepared to sacrifice themselves as a kind of diversion. They thought that once they’d died in the flames, the crusaders would be less inclined to mount a proper guard on Montse’gur and that would allow a few of their number to escape with their most precious possessions.

“And I don’t believe we’re talking about a typical treasure. No gold or jewels, nothing like that. I think their treasure was some kind of religious relic, an object of undeniable provenance that proved the veracity of the Cathar faith beyond any doubt. That might be enough, not only to persuade the committed members of the order to accept death at the hands of the crusaders, but also to convince the twenty non-Cathars to join them.”

“So the treasure wasn’t really a treasure at all, in the usual sense of the word?”

Bronson interjected. “It was probably completely worthless in intrinsic terms—just an old bit of parchment or something—but priceless in what it proved?”

“Exactly.”

“But what could it be?”

“Impossible to say for sure, but we can infer certain things about it from what we do know. If the sources I’ve looked at have got it right, sometime during that last night at Montse’gur, as the flames of the huge pyre at the foot of the mountain died away to a dull red glow, the last four parfaits escaped. They’d been hidden in the fortress by the garrison, and chose an extremely hazardous, but almost undetectable, route, using ropes to descend the sheer west face of the mountain.

“They took this risk because they were carrying the treasure of the Cathars. They reached the foot of the mountain and then vanished both into the night and from the pages of history. No one knows what they were carrying, where they went or what happened to them.

“If there’s any truth in that story, then there are at least two points worth making.

First, whatever the ‘treasure’ comprised, it had to be fairly small and not too heavy, because otherwise the four men couldn’t have carried it during their perilous descent. Second, it had to be a physical object, not simply knowledge, or the four parfaits could have disguised themselves as soldiers or servants and left the fortress with the men-at-arms the following day.

“Now, this is all guesswork, unsupported by a single shred of verifiable evidence, but it does provide a plausible explanation for what happened when the siege of Montse’gur ended. But what happened next on the mountain is in the historical record.

“Once the fortress was deserted, the crusaders, acting on the specific instructions of the Pope, tore it apart in a desperate search for some object, some ‘treasure.’ But whatever it was they were looking for, they clearly didn’t find it, because they dismantled the castle, quite literally stone by stone. It’s not generally known, but the citadel that now stands at Montse’gur was actually erected early in the seventeenth century, and no part of the original Cathar castle now remains at the site.

“For the next half-century, Rome ordered all traces of the Cathar heresy to be expunged from the landscape. As well as executing every parfait they could lay their hands on, the crusaders also continued their search for whatever had been secreted at Montsegur, but without result. Eventually, memory of the ‘treasure of the Cathars’ passed into the mists of legend. And that’s the story of Montse’gur as we know it today: a mix of historical fact, rumor and conjecture.”

“But what the hell has that got to do with a six-hundred-year-old farmhouse on the side of a hill in Italy?” Bronson asked, waving his arm in frustration.

“It’s all in the inscription,” Angela explained. “The first verse of the Occitan poem can be interpreted as a specific reference to the end of the siege.”

She read Goldman’s translation of the verse from her notebook:

“ ‘From the safe mountain truth did descend

Abandoned by all save the good

The cleansing flames quell only flesh

And pure spirits soar above the pyre

For truth like stone forever will endure.’

“The second line could describe the surrender of the garrison of Montse’gur, and the third and fourth the mass execution when the Cathars were burned alive. But I think the expressions ‘truth did descend’ and ‘truth like stone forever will endure’ refer to the escape of the four remaining parfaits, carrying with them some document or relic upon which the core of their faith—their unarguable ‘truth’—relied. Whatever the object, it was so compelling in its implications that Cathars would rather die at the stake than renounce their beliefs.”

“And the second verse?” Bronson asked.

“That’s just as interesting, and again some lines seem to refer to the Cathars.”

Again, she read the verse aloud:

“ ‘Here oak and elm descry the mark

As is above so is below

The word becomes the perfect

Within the chalice all is naught

And terrible to behold.’

“The expression in the second line was commonly used by the Cathars, and the

‘word’ referred to in the third line could be the ‘truth’ that guided the beliefs of the parfaits. The first line’s nothing to do with the Cathars, but I think it’s possible that the reference to the two species of tree indicates a hiding place.”

“And the last couple of lines? About the chalice?”

“I’m guessing—I’ve been guessing all along, but now I’m really guessing—that they mean the object was secreted in some kind of a vessel—a chalice—and that it’s dangerous.”

Bronson began to reduce speed. He was approaching Vierzon, where the autoroute divided, and turned southeast for Clermont-Ferrand.

“So what you’re suggesting,” Bronson said, “is that the Cathars had some kind of relic, something that confirmed their beliefs, and that quite probably would have been seen as dangerous by other religions? And the Pope started the crusade to recover or destroy it?”

“Exactly. The Albigensian Crusade was instigated by Pope Innocent III—and rarely was any pope so misnamed—in 1209.”

“Right. So you think the Pope knew about this relic and believed it was secreted somewhere at Montse’gur? And that was why he ordered the different treatment of the Cathars and garrison there, and why, after the massacre, his crusaders demolished the fortress?”