yearned to return. In that time of danger, when all their lives were under threat, he thought he could begin to appreciate what that meant.
Despite their eagerness to answer his questions, nobody tried to make him join them. Not all of them were what they called Perfects, by which they meant those ‘pure ones’ who had taken the ultimate vow. Many referred to themselves as adherents, which seemed to mean people sympathetic to the Cathar faith who did not yet feel ready to give up the earthly things of the flesh.
Ninian was fast growing to respect the Cathars. Some of them he thought he loved. Alazais continued to treat him like a son, and, lonely for his own kin, he responded. And there were others to whom he swiftly grew close because they had known Josse. One of them, a woman, had even known Ninian’s mother.
He met her one day when she made the difficult journey through the snow to Alazais’s village specially to meet him. Pointing to a barely visible scar on her forehead, she told him that Joanna had rescued her from an unspeakable fate and, at grave risk to herself and to her little girl — Meggie, Ninian realized with a pang — had cared for her and helped her to safety. He thought the woman said that Joanna had even killed a man to save her, but the woman spoke the language with a strong accent and he might have been mistaken.
When the woman got up to leave, she took Ninian in her arms, hugged him tightly to her and said, ‘Your mother I love. You, too, are good, like her.’
He understood sufficient about the general situation to know that war was coming and that the Cathars would be relentlessly pursued all the time the king and the pope had men to send after them. The elders — both men and women achieved respected elder status in the community — had explained to him how the people were defending themselves, and as far as Ninian could tell, their plan consisted mainly of constructing strong fortresses high in the inaccessible upper reaches of the mountains.
Nobody said much about fighting.
Ninian knew how to fight. He had spent his youth learning the skills of a knight. Now, at last, he began to see a purpose to those long years in training. He had tentatively suggested to Alazais and the other Perfects in the village that he could teach the men the things he knew, and they had accepted his offer with grave thanks.
‘We do not want to kill,’ one of the Perfects, a tall, skeletal old man had said sadly to Ninian. ‘It is not right. But if armies come against our womenfolk and children, intent on burning down our homes and sending us into the flames, it is best that some of us at least can fight them off.’
The long winter was now passing more quickly for Ninian, busy as he was with his school of would-be warriors. Just like young men anywhere flung together for any length of time, there was plenty of fun alongside the serious business of learning to kill. Ninian found he was enjoying himself and, often at the end of a satisfyingly hard day, he would be aching with laughter as well as sore from physical work.
For hours, even days, at a time he would have said that he was happy. Little Helewise came to him in his dreams, and sometimes he woke longing for her so acutely that the fierce desire spilled out of him. He told one of his trainee fighters about her; the young man could not manage the English version of her name and thought she was called Eloise. Gradually, Ninian came to think of her by that name too.
The other person who seemed to haunt him was Meggie. On occasions he thought he heard her call out to him, and once he had a vision of her desperately trying to tell him something. He told himself it was probably his imagination.
There was nothing to be done but stay where he was. He could not have left the mountains yet even if he wanted to, for the ways down to the valleys were still impassable and the community was cut off. Besides, he had left England because he was wanted for murder and would probably hang if they had caught him.
Sometimes, in the midst of his new life, it was quite hard to recall what had driven him out of the old one.
Despite his feelings for his new companions and his deep respect for their faith, he knew he did not want to join the community. He would defend them if the enemy came, for they were his friends. But if he was honest with himself — and Josse had always taught him he must be — then he had to admit that their fight was not his fight.
One afternoon, when the ice and snow began to ease their iron fist, Ninian went off by himself up the track that led out of the village and towards the peak that rose up behind it, where he now knew there was a fortress. The day was fine, and the sun was out, glittering on the snow and making such brilliant reflections that it hurt the eyes. Ninian needed to be alone, for he had to think.
For some time now he had been wondering what to do. There were no easy answers, and the future was a mist. He still heard Meggie calling to him — he had heard her that morning — and now, as he stood by himself on the mountainside, he tried to send back the message that he was alive, well, and — for the moment — safe with good friends.
But when spring came and the crusade against the Cathars began again, safety would be gone. Ninian did not want to die, for he loved his Little Helewise — his Eloise — and he had promised he would return to her if it was in his power. There would be fighting; there would be danger. Ninian knew his own nature and, even loving Eloise as he did, he knew he would not be able to stand back and watch when his friends battled for their lives.
So, he thought, I will fight.
Perhaps he would fight his way out of the mountains; he did not know.
He thought of Eloise. He imagined marrying her, taking her home to some simple dwelling, lying with her, planting his seed inside her so that she bore his child. The pictures in his mind were so vivid that he believed they must be a true prediction of what lay ahead.
Before the vision could come true, though, he would have to fight.
He cleared the snow from a rock and sat down on it, gazing out across the endless mountains. He stayed there for a long time. Finally, growing cold, he realized it was time to return to the village.
He stood up, squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and said aloud, ‘I’d just better make sure I stay alive, then, hadn’t I?’
