Bonfire of the Perfect

By Susan Appleyard

Prompted by the murder of his legate, in 1209 Pope Innocent III launches a crusade – not against the infidels of the East, but against fellow Christians living peaceably in the south of France. They are the Cathars, regarded as heretics by the Roman Church, and the sect is flourishing. Thousands of knights, landless younger sons, mercenaries and assorted riff-raff pour south with Christian zeal to exterminate men, women and children of the same country. A dilemma soon arose: How to tell a Cathar from an orthodox Catholic?
Lovers Bräida and Jourdan are torn apart when Carcassonne falls to the crusaders. Jourdan joins the resistance while Bräida flees with her family to the relative safety of the Pyrenees, neither knowing if they will see one another again. But Bräida is not safe in her mountain retreat, because the Church has found an answer to its dilemma – the creation of the Inquisition. No one can escape its diabolical clutches.
This is a story of faith, endurance and the love of liberty in a time of unimaginable cruelty.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Appleyard
• Release date: Apr 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463628188

Susan Appleyard

Some of Susan Appleyard’s books have won Brag Medallions, been finalists in the MM Bennetts Award and the Wishing Shelf Award, and The Coffee Pot Book Club’s Gold Medal for Historical Fiction.Mother of three and grandmother of six, Susan lives in a snowy part of Canada but is fortunate to be able to spend part of each year in Mexico. No prizes for guessing which part.Before learning how to self-publish, Susan signed a three-book contract with a traditional publishing house in Toronto, which sold out to another company after publishing two of her books. Now, thanks to Amazon and others, she has published ten Ebooks and is working on a story set before, during and after the Russian Revolution.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – The Lame Girl

Montségur 1243

War is the warp and weft of life. I have lived more than half a century and, it has never been far from my doorstep. Big wars and little wars, private wars, internecine strife and international conflicts. This turbulent state of affairs has existed for so long that it has become accepted as normal. Landholders tried to extend their holdings at the expense of their neighbours. Vassals rebelled against their lords. No one sought change. It was the way things were, and we could not imagine anything different. There was a jumble of fiefdoms, a lack of solidarity and communication which complicated matters. The social structure was weak. Towns, villages, isolated settlements were under the thumb of local leaders whose word was law, and the law was applied haphazardly and intermittently.

Meanwhile, the Church, which should have been a shepherd and guide, was looking after its own interests. The priesthood, in general, was not well thought of. Bishops and abbots were larcenous, kept mistresses, had families, were lax in their pastoral duties but could be as active and violent as any baron when it came to protecting their own or moving against a neighbour. The priesthood in the Midi had such a bad reputation that young men were reluctant to join, and it was no longer possible to fill the benefices. The result was that churches stood empty and were used by the locals for other profane purposes. The Church had failed in its pastoral duties, and the lost souls of its flock looked elsewhere for sustenance.

Into this wretched situation came the heresy. It is my observation that when people are miserable, they look for answers. If the cause of the misery can’t be made to go away, it can be made bearable if they are given hope of something better. The heresy came to the valleys of the Midi from the east sometime in the distant past and found fertile soil. It offered the promise of spiritual fulfilment in the absence of a delinquent church. A faith founded on simple principles, the heretics believe in God and preach the gospels. They call themselves Cathars. It is a Greek word that means ‘purified.’ Some also call them Albigensians because there was such a large population of believers in the south part of Albi.

I don’t want to give the impression that we were all about war. No, remarkably, in the midst of all this, there was a flowering of art: music and poetry and literature in our own language. Courtly love flourished, propagated by the troubadours, lovelorn maidens in their bowers and frustrated married ladies. Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the chief proponents of this idle pastime – the delights of which I have never really grasped. She and her ladies enjoyed holding courts of love in which they debated and set the rules to guide a prospective lover in the wooing of his lady. He was never supposed to win her. Only worship her. Only kiss her delicate fingers. Only fetch her book, sit at her feet wearing an adoring mask, carry her little dog and behave like a lunatic if another man should trespass.

War and love – those were the twin pillars of our society.

My name is Bräida, and I write this in Montségur in my Spartan little hut in an enclave of Perfect. Not that I am a Perfect or perfect. Ha! As you shall discover.

The view from the ground is impressive. Montségur is a fortress built on a mountain that appears to rise straight up from the wooded valleys, encircled by a high wall hugging the castle and village of huts. It seems almost to touch the clouds and, indeed, sometimes the clouds descend and we have to grope our way around. It is reachable only by a series of rough and steep tracks cut by deep defiles. Impregnable, they say. But they said that about Carcassonne.

If I were to climb up on the walls, which I did only once (It is a steep climb, and I have a bad hip which causes me great pain these days) I would see far below me, a vast army of Frenchmen numbered by some at ten thousand. But this is not the Holy Land, it is Languedoc, and we are not infidels. We are Christians, and they are Christians, and both are French.

I have decided to write a history of these times. I don’t claim to have any great proficiency as an author, and I’m no historian, just an ordinary person who lived through extraordinary times. But I will try to be as objective as a historian should be within my limited skill and scope. Much will be written by the other side, I’m sure. The winners have a claim on history while the losers are shovelled into the ground and their stories expunged. Mine will be a story of love and war, a war that ended as the conquest of an entire province. It was an episode of manifest injustice and unparalleled cruelty that we must never forget.

Carcassonne – Summer 1208

Under bright blue skies and benevolent sunshine, two girls walked along the winding street hand-in-hand to show the world they were best friends and nothing could ever come between them. The first thing anyone noticed about Bräida was that she had a twisted foot. It tended to turn inwards toward her other foot at almost a right angle so that she had to walk with her legs apart which produced an ungainly waddle. She was, of course, very self-conscious about it and had tried to twist it in the right direction with no result except to cause herself pain. According to her mother, it was something that had happened during the birth.

Notwithstanding her bad foot, she was quite a beauty, which she thought should count for something. Her long chestnut brown hair, luminous blue eyes beneath brows that slanted up toward her temples, a generous mouth and a dimple in her chin caused heads to turn in her direction. She sometimes thought these two aspects of her physical being, the beauty and the flaw, were responsible for her somewhat skewed view of things.

Observing housewives strolling from shop to shop, bartering with the vendors, put Bräida in mind of the fate she had narrowly escaped. Her father viewed her as a useless drain on the household and had attempted to marry her off by betrothing her to a fellow physician. They had been students together, so he was of a similar age to her father and had three children. She had protested, but her father pointed out that with her deformity, she was lucky to get such a respected and prosperous man.

Just think. If I had married last year as my father wanted, I would have inherited the children. That horrible eldest boy is one year younger than me. I wonder how I would have managed him. She had been saved from a life of servitude to the physician’s family when he had dropped dead in the street. While dutifully saying prayers for the good man’s soul, Bräida rejoiced in her lucky escape.

I hope father doesn’t find a replacement. I don’t want to marry, she told Beatrice. Look at poor Amicie. Married only three months, and already I hear that oaf often beats her, ‘To teach her obedience’ is his excuse. The single life is the better choice. I could take lovers.

Oh, Bräida. Beatrice rolled her eyes.

Other than by the church and the Cathars, who were against even marital sex, such matters were trivialised rather than condemned in Languedoc.

Aren’t you even a little tempted?

No. I have to remain pure if I wish to become a Perfect.

Beatrice was plump and rosy with hair so blonde Bräida teased her about having Viking blood. She and her family were credentes, Cathar believers who had undertaken to go through a special ceremony called the consolamentum before their death. It was her ambition to become a Perfect, which meant that she would attain a high degree of spiritual purity. But being a Perfect also meant that she must abjure sex, eating meat, swearing oaths, and observe many more restrictions. It seemed to Bräida that already Beatrice possessed the serenity and unquestioning faith of a Perfect. Bräida was a Catholic because, as she had been told from infancy, the Church of Rome was the one true church. She supposed Beatrice must have been told the same thing about Catharism by her family. They called themselves Believers, which made Bräida an unbeliever, which tickled her sense of the absurd.

The two girls were aimlessly strolling the streets of Carcassonne. Both had lived there all their lives and had been drawn together by their common age – both were fifteen – and proximity – two doors separated their houses – rather than any likeness of temperament or thought.

Let’s go to the cathedral, Beatrice suggested. There is a disputation between masters of your faith and mine.

I don’t know why you enjoy that kind of thing. It’s all so boring.

Two old men, one Catholic and the other Cathar, debating the dogmas of their respective faiths, each hoping to save some souls from error. Sometimes there were shaken fists and usually plenty of fiery rhetoric, and the crowd would cheer when their particular champion made a telling point.

Aren’t you just a little curious about Catharism?

No. Are you curious about Catholicism?

Beatrice laughed and then pressed Bräida’s hand. Come on. We’ve got nothing better to do.

Every time Beatrice passed a Perfect, she was required to kneel as if worshipping at a shrine or a statue of Our Lady. She explained her act as the melhoramentum, acknowledging the Holy Spirit dwelling in the Perfect. Bless me, Lady. Pray for me. Lead us to our rightful end, Beatrice intoned.

The Perfect replied, God bless you. In our prayers, we ask God to make a good Christian out of you and lead you to your rightful end.

Meanwhile, Bräida moved away, a knot of irritation between her eyes. There were many Perfect in Carcassonne, and Beatrice often had to interrupt their activities to perform this senseless ritual. Bräida thought it wrong to go to her knees for anyone but the Holy Family and the Saints.

Cathar Perfect were easily recognised by their black robes and a thin leather cord around their waists. They always went abroad in pairs of the same sex. To Bräida, they invariably looked pale and emaciated. Her father put that down to a diet without any animal products, although they were allowed to eat fish. Two female Perfect sat on a bench outside a Cathar house that also served as a school and hospital as still as statues and with their eyes lowered.

The busy street of narrow fronted shops and houses opened into the wide Place St. Nazaire, fronting the cathedral. The debate had already commenced when the two girls arrived. Whenever prominent men were involved, the disputations were promoted widely, and people came from miles around to hear them. Three years earlier, two Catholic priests who were making names for themselves as preachers had come to Carcassonne to engage the Cathar bishop. The debate had lasted for eight days, and on the eighth day, there was still a big crowd gathered to hear them. People of the Midi loved these rhetorical exercises.

There was a time when the Cathars had to preach their doctrines in the dark, in secret places, and then they began to be welcomed into people’s homes, to sit with the family by their fires. Eventually, they were invited into baronial halls where they spoke to many. Now they preached freely in the fields and streets, protected by those in authority; not only men like Count Raymond of Toulouse and the Trencavel viscounts of Carcassonne and Béziers but petty seigneurs in their hilltop forts. Indeed, some were Cathars themselves or had family members who were. The heresy was pervasive in Languedoc and to a lesser extent in other places around it such as Albi, Quercy and Provence.

Bräida did not concern herself with the tenets of either faith. She was a Catholic by habit and upbringing rather than conviction. Leading Beatrice by the hand, she pushed her way through the dense crowd, ignoring the complaints, to a point where they could hear.

God is everywhere and can be worshipped anywhere, in field or forest, castle or hovel. Where in the Bible does it say otherwise? We need no man-made edifices in which to worship Him. That, obviously, was the Cathar.

Who is he? Bräida enquired of her friend.

Guilhabert of Castres, a voice on her other side replied.

The speaker was a young man of the garrison, still in the chain-mail they wore while on duty, but with the hood thrown back to reveal sweat-sleek hair. He was quite handsome, with arresting eyes the colour of hazelnuts, a long nose and shapely mouth. There was a faint suggestion of a line between feathery brows that traced gentle curves on his forehead. On his left cheek, a small scar parted his beard.

Ah, said Beatrice. He was once a nobleman before giving all his wealth to the Cathars and becoming a Perfect.

Hush! Don’t talk to him, Bräida hissed. An ordinary soldier had no business addressing two girls from a higher class.

I wasn’t. I was talking to you.

Bräida glanced at the soldier. His eyes were smiling as if he had heard their words and found them amusing. She felt herself blush and looked away.

The Bishop of Montpellier presented the Catholic view. Like all prelates, he dressed in fine raiment, sleek and smug. The Cathar was typical of the Perfect, thin and pale, exuding an air of serenity. He wasn’t a very imposing man, but he had a magnificent voice.

If you knew the Old Testament, sir, you would know there are many references to God’s house. In Samuel 7:13, book 2, for example, we read: He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. The priest, a more distinguished-looking man, waved a hand toward the west façade of the Cathedral. Only step inside, and you shall understand you are in a holy place.

The Catholic contingent cheered its champion. Bräida agreed. Whenever she was in church, her zeal for religion multiplied tenfold, which led her to wonder why God needed so many houses. She thought the Catholic had it wrong and the reference was to the universal church rather than any building of stone or wood.

Acts 7:48 …the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands… The Cathars roared their approval. When the crowd was quiet again, Guilhabert said, Why do we need the intervention of an institutionalised church and a hierarchy of priests to approach God? In the Cathar church, we have no pope or clerical hierarchy; no one stands between our God and us.

Now he’s done it, thought Bräida. That is precisely why the Church fears the Cathars.

The priest grew red in the face at this unspeakable blasphemy. Pointing a finger, he roared, Do you believe in the Bible?

We believe in God and preach the gospels. We provide answers where Catholic theology fails.

I repeat, do you believe in the Bible, sir?

Guilhabert paused. He licked his lips. It is true. We do not believe the Old Testament, nor the God who dwells in its pages. He threw out his hands, appealing to the crowd. Is it not apparent to everyone that he is brutal and unforgiving? He created this world and everything in it. He is the Devil!

Suddenly the crowd turned menacing. Fists punched the air. Faces ugly and contorted, the Catholics among them screamed in outrage. There were cries of ‘Burn him!’ Barely heard, the Cathars shouted in support of their man.

It’s getting ugly, the soldier said. You ladies should leave.

Bräida thought it was just getting good. She gave the impertinent follow her best ‘Mind your own business’ glare.

The bishop was motioning with his hands, trying to calm his followers. When he had obtained sufficient quiet, he said, Remember, dear people, the man is in error. Our purpose here today is to show him and others among you the path to the true church. Now then. He turned back to the Cathar. You have made a bold, not to say sacrilegious, statement. You must defend your position. The priest’s tone now was cringingly condescending. He knew very well that nothing his adversary could say on this point was likely to sway anyone in the crowd toward Catharism and was quite willing to let his opponent dig himself deeper into the hole.

Which he did.

All matter is evil and transitory. How can there be any relationship to God who is perfect and eternal? The good God cannot have created a wicked world. I will say you a syllogism. God is perfect. Nothing in the world is perfect. Therefore, God made nothing in the world.

You contend, then, that you believe in two Gods? You are a Dualist? The priest pretended to be astonished.

There are two separate entities, God and the Demiurge or the Devil, an evil spirit that created all matter and made man in his own likeness. But the good God created the world of the spirit and gave man the will to do good and thus to save himself. Since the good God cannot control the material world, he is not omnipotent. Thus man must separate himself from all matter and make himself spirit as far as possible if he would be saved.

A Dualist and a heretic! the priest pronounced in a voice of doom, and the Catholics cheered.

It seemed to Bräida that their proponent had won the round. But the Cathar put his splendid voice to good use while pointing a finger at the bishop. Tell me this, sir. How many rooms in your house? How many acres of land do you possess? How many horses, cows? Is that silk I see you wearing? When did you last go among your people to preach? Why are you so far from the example set by Our Lord Jesus?

A roar went up. Even many of the Catholics cheered. Some yelled, Shame! The priest was red in the face again. Guilhabert turned to the crowd. I ask you, he shouted above their noise, if Jesus walked among us today, which Church would he choose?

The silence was immediate but brief. Then the Cathars began to cheer and the Catholics, one by one it seemed, began to hoot and boo.

As the debate continued, Bräida occasionally stole a glance at the soldier, admiring his fine profile. Once he caught her looking at him, but she didn’t look away immediately, trapped by those eyes that smiled even when his mouth was immobile and moved over her face as if he liked what he saw. Full of confusion and feeling… she didn’t know what, except it wasn’t shame at her brazenness, she finally looked away.

The priest was saying, Good people, you see how insidious their doctrine is. We must wipe it out before it undermines the very foundations of our Church.

Bräida wanted to leave. She had to make supper, and her father would be angry if it wasn’t on time. But if she left now, if he saw her walking away, he would see that she wasn’t beautiful at all but flawed. But that was all right, wasn’t it? He was just a common soldier. What he thought didn’t matter.

I have to go, she whispered to Beatrice and tried to slip into the crowd before he noticed.

Walking home, she put the soldier out of her mind and spoke of what she had just heard. Do you really believe that all matter is evil?

Of course. It’s one of the foundations of our faith.

But that means you and I are evil. Whether I’m evil is debatable, but you’re the kindest person I know, except perhaps your mother. How can you be good and yet evil?

Poor Beatrice, with her simple faith, could not match Bräida’s intellect, but she did her best. Think of the worm. It does no harm in the world, but it comes from evil, and therefore it cannot be good.

It comes from the earth, and the earth is good because it produces food to feed us and trees and flowers and – look. She pointed to a rose bush climbing on a trellis beside someone’s front door. Look at the rose. Isn’t it perfect?

For a little while and then it will wither and die. It contains the seeds of its own destruction as do all things.

So the rose is evil too?

It must be if it comes from evil, even if it appears to be beautiful.

Bräida shook her head. I will never understand you people.

It’s because you only talk to me and I’m not very good at explaining things. If you want to understand, you should talk to my mother or a Perfect.

Bräida shrugged this advice aside. She knew enough about Catharism to be repelled by it.

The two Perfect still sat outside the Cathar house. Bräida stared at them. They looked as if they hadn’t so much as twitched since she and Beatrice had passed by earlier. What are they doing?

Hush. They are meditating. We mustn’t disturb them.

What are they meditating about?

I’m hardly in a position to know that. But I expect they will be considering an unresolved question of our faith.

You have unresolved questions?

Of course. Don’t you?

Bräida had no idea. She was not much interested in religion and aside from Mass on Sundays, only attended church during important festivals. She couldn’t remember the last time she had confessed.

For example, they might be discussing the principles of good and evil. Did evil exist since the beginning of the world, or was it created later by a fallen angel?

Yes, that’s the kind of question that keeps me awake nights. Come on. I have to get home and make supper. To tease her friend, who was not prohibited from eating meat because she was not a Cathar Perfect, only a credente or believer, but chose not to, she added, "I’m going to make a succulent lamb stew, or maybe a roast of beef dripping with juices

The door to her father’s workroom was open, as always. Foulques was a physician. Few people in Carcassonne had this skill, and he was much in demand. His patients were of the professional class or above who could afford to pay well for their health and provided him and his family with a comfortable life. To them, he was invariably amiable, ingratiating, jolly, eager to please, the kind of man with whom you would want to spend time. To his wife and daughter, two people who had disappointed him, he was a very different man, cold, strict and unpleasant.

He was at his bench, his head bowed and his fleshy hand mixing ingredients into medicines for his patients. Bottles, vials and paper packets of various dried plants and exotic elements lined his shelves. He also kept copious notes as well as some medical texts. Bräida’s favourite was the Hippocratic Corpus, which was full of all kinds of information on medical practices.

A conservative dresser, as became his station as a respected physician, he always wore black or dark colours. No taller than Bräida, he carried a considerable paunch, which gave him a comical waddle of a walk. She thought the two of them walking together must look ridiculous. When he walked uphill, he panted. His face was unremarkable apart from his eyebrows. They were thick and spiky, very mobile, but when they drew down over those cold eyes, she knew there would be trouble. Another clue was when his jaw set in a certain way that even his beard couldn’t hide. He did not look up when she entered.

Where have you been?

Just walking with Beatrice.

Did you go to the cathedral?

You told me not to go when there’s a debate.

That’s not what I asked you, he said, slow and deliberate as if she was simple-minded. I asked if you went to the cathedral.

No, I did not, she replied, attempting to match his speech.

Get supper started.

He had an unpleasant tone of voice that he reserved only for her. It was not angry or contemptuous. It held no quality at all and was entirely without nuance or tone, and yet its very neutrality intimated contempt. The difference between the way he spoke to others and the way he talked to his family could not have been more obvious.

Bräida’s mother tried to compensate for Foulques’ coldness by an overabundance of caring in which there were elements of shame and disappointment. To Bräida, she would say sadly, ‘After you, God did not bless us.’

Bräida loved her mother and was worried about her. It had always been the two of them against the despotic master of the house; they comforted each other. But lately, her mother suffered from increasing lassitude, staying in bed late and doing little of the housework. She said she was fine and had no visible symptoms; she just needed to rest. When Bräida asked her father if her mother was ill, he hadn’t given her a satisfactory answer, only saying, You’re going to have to do more around the house. Your mother can’t do everything.

Her mother’s illness also meant that Foulques now expected Bräida to help him in his workroom and even with some patients. In spite of having to be in her father’s company, she enjoyed this. When he was out, and she had some leisure, she would go into his workroom, read his notes, examine the bottles and sniff their contents. He taught her nothing, including how to read and write. He did not approve of education for girls, whose only purpose in life, as far as he was concerned, was to serve the needs of father and husband. It was Beatrice’s father Guillaume, a scrivener, who had taught her to read and write along with his children. But she was quick. She picked things up.

Theirs was quite a large house, consisting of a kitchen/dining area with, on one side, her father’s workroom and the pantry, and on the other her mother’s solar. The long side of this narrow room faced west, but one of the short walls had a window facing south, so there was plenty of light. Four bedrooms were above, one of which was kept for visiting friends, the other used for storage. At the back of the house was a yard where vegetables grew in the shelter of a gnarled fig tree. That patch was starting to look neglected now. Bräida was trying to keep the weeds down, but she was losing the battle. Her father owned the house as well as two others and owed no man, as he often proudly pointed out as an indication of the stratum of society he occupied.

Her mother, Dulcia, was sewing in the solar. Bräida was pleased to see her up and about.

Yes, I am a little better today, she said in response to Bräida’s question. But her smile was forced, and she did not look well. So pale, shadows under her eyes, and she seemed to be losing weight, shrinking. Bräida sat with her for a few minutes and gave her news of Beatrice’s family, how one of her younger brothers had fallen from a tree and broken a wrist, poor boy. She couldn’t stay long, knowing her father would be angry if he discovered she was absent from the kitchen. It was beyond his capacity to understand that she was anxious about her mother and wanted to see how she was. He wouldn’t show his anger – not he. He would perhaps send her for his strop, the heavy leather he used to sharpen his razor. It would be applied to her back and shoulders calmly and deliberately without any trace of anger. It was the only thing in life she feared.

When Bräida curled up in bed with the shutters open to the starry night and a bright moon throwing a rectangle of light on the floor, she didn’t feel at all tired. The soldier stole into her thoughts. The way he had looked at her. In her mind’s eye, she saw him taking her in his arms, his face coming toward hers, and her eyes closed in anticipation, and her mouth stretched in a smile. She could almost feel that kiss. Almost. With it came a strange tingling in her woman’s parts.

Chapter 2 – A stranger in the house

Bräida had barely got started on her morning chores when there was a visitor. Her father spoke to him in deferential tones and when he had gone, said to Bräida, You are to come with me today. I have an important patient to see. A quick assessment of her person brought forth a rebuke. You look like a slattern. Change your robe to something better and cleaner. And hurry.

Bräida had anticipated spending the day working in the house and garden and had worn an old and stained dress. She was happy to change into something clean but still serviceable and to remove the coif with which she had bound her hair and fasten it into a thick braid. She enjoyed going with her father, even if, sometimes, the condition of the patients was nauseating. Some of them spoke to her as if she had medical knowledge which pleased her and made her feel important.

Before leaving, while Foulques was waiting at the door, she cut a piece of the remaining bread, slathered it