LOGIS DU MARTINET, LAGRASSE—TIME UNKNOWN
The front of Paloma’s dress dipped low, and a thin silver chain with a cross pendant hung from her neck: the Occitan cross, each blunt side adorned with three raised points. Paloma gathered the sleeping baby to her breast and cupped Lia’s cheek in one delicate hand. “Perhaps it’s vain of me to say so,” she said in a lilting Occitan, “but you are so lovely.”
“Where are we?” Lia felt wobbly and light-headed. “Is this heaven? Are there others?”
Paloma’s hand slipped from Lia’s face to rest on her shoulder. “We’re not always alone. But we don’t inhabit a place in the way that you think of as living.”
“Does Raoul know you’re here?”
“Oh, dear heart, there is no here.” Paloma swept her hand around the hollow space of the courtyard. Then she gestured to the grass. “Let’s sit for a moment. This child grows heavier every day.” Her smile drew Lia as a sunflower to the sun. They sat on the lush grass, dry despite the recent rain. The baby, swaddled so tightly in linen Lia couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, pursed its lips and sighed but slept on. Paloma followed her gaze.
“Her name is Beatriu,” she said. The Catalan version, but the same name as Lia’s mother, Béatris. Long ago, it had meant voyager, traveler. Lia wondered where this little girl had been and where she would go. The daughter Raoul had never seen.
“Why can’t you come into the present like Raoul?” Lia asked. “Why haven’t you and Raoul found one another in some other time?”
“The children and I are already home, Lia,” Paloma answered. “This is the only present that matters.”
Her beauty made Lia’s heart ache with a bittersweet longing. She was looking not only at Raoul’s past, but also his future. She nodded, unable to speak past the emotion burning in her throat.
“There are layers to the soul that peel away in death,” Paloma said. “At the very core of our beings is eternal life. Those whom death claims justly—when they have lived their natural, full lives in the glory of God—find peace. They are freed from the cycle of rebirth, from the bindings of a worldly existence.” Her voice was a balm, her words slow and deliberate.
“Some souls linger because they lived or died in violence. They are condemned to this in-between existence until the balance of life is set right. There is no hell for a Cathar. There is only perpetual grief on Earth. And so our Raoul and Lucas Moisset and Jordí Bonafé remain suspended.”
Our Raoul. As if she knew what Lia and Raoul had shared. Yet instead of contrition at loving Paloma’s husband, Lia felt embraced by the light and peace emanating from this exquisite woman.
“Why Raoul? What did he do that he needs to atone for?”
“Raoul was caught in a shadow of anger, doomed to the hell of rebirth. He believes we perished in the fire at Gruissan.” Paloma touched Lia’s hand, the connection softening the anguish of her story. “But he was wrong, for I lived to hold my children’s children. We fled Languedoc and lived our full lives with Raoul’s family in Catalunya. Then our souls found safe passage and eternal rest. Raoul has been searching for us since his own death, not knowing we were safe.”
“And Lucas? And Jordí?”
A cloud darkened her sweet mien. “Whatever God’s plan, He chose to bind these men to their fates in different ways. Jordí carries a burden of history for what he represents: his church, his faith. Waiting too long to speak of the crimes he witnessed. Lucas…” Paloma trailed off. “Lucas exists in a torture born of guilt and self-loathing.”
“But they entered my time, my Languedoc? Why? How?”
“Their souls found a split in the fabric of time and slipped through.” Paloma’s explanation was delivered calmly, as if Lia would understand how the fabric of time had woven the distant past into her present.
“This is beyond all comprehension.” The serenity that had come over Lia when she’d walked into this place of warm peace began to dissolve as she struggled to understand Paloma’s riddle. The pieces tumbled together without falling into place, and questions inserted themselves between the gaps. Why had she and Raoul fallen in love? Why was she not spared the pain of giving him back to his time and his family? “Who am I in all of this? Why am I in all of this?”
Paloma trailed a finger over Lia’s wedding ring. “You are the connection between the past, the world beyond the past, and the present.”
“Because of my research? Because of what I’ve discovered about Castelnau’s death? But Jordí has known all along. Why me? Why now?”
“Scholars such as you have kept our history alive,” Paloma said. “But these Cathar traditions and beliefs have become myth, even among those who know them best. You will find a way to show the world that history has not always honored the truth of our beloved Languedoc’s past.” She placed a hand on Lia’s arm. “But the past I speak of is yours, Lia. Past and present met on a summer day not so long ago, on a road near Arques. It was just a moment, a few heartbeats, and then crushing sorrow.”
Lia’s vision wavered. She saw a cyclist, broken and alone on a mountain road, and she cried out. Paloma drew her into her arms, Beatriu pressed gently between them.
“Gabriel,” Lia gasped.
“Your husband,” Paloma said, caressing her hair.
Lia pulled away, pushing the tips of her fingers into her temples to stop her tears. Her head throbbed with the impossibilities of Paloma’s explanation and the pain of what she was reliving. She stood and took a few shaky steps forward. She could just see past the opening in the wall to the wheat fields beyond, where the stalks swayed in a breeze, drops of rain dangling from their tips and glinting in the sun. Paloma joined her, still cradling the sleeping Beatriu.
“Raoul’s soul took purchase in your world at the moment of your husband’s death. His soul touched Gabriel’s and became connected to yours.”
“I don’t understand. What am I meant to do?”
“You have become Raoul’s only way out of this half life.” Paloma’s voice was gentle but insistent. “Do you understand, my girl?” She drew Lia in with her free arm for a brief, fierce embrace and then leaned back to gaze at her.
For an instant, Lia saw the Romani woman in Paris offering roses and the gorgeous Catalan whose table she shared at the Marché des Enfants Rouges. But, more than anyone, she saw herself. “What about Jordí and Lucas?” she said, though her voice now sounded as if it came from a great distance. “What am I supposed to do for them?”
But Raoul’s wife was speaking, pressing something into her hand, her words and touch fading into a pale blue light. Then Paloma disappeared.
GRUISSAN—DECEMBER 1208
Black streaks of char marred the outer walls of Saint-Maurice, and the wooden portico had been reduced to cinders. Thick pools of congealed tar and piles of soot-covered debris lined the perimeter facing the village square, and clouds of ash puffed in the light breeze. Raoul had seen this destruction before. He knew that piles of kindling and horse hair doused in pitch and sulfur had been lit below the wood-framed windows and at the solid oak doors at the entrance.
The interior of the church was shot through with light where slabs of stone had caved in and the plaster and timber frame had failed. Some walls were scorched, others left unscathed. Flames had chased through the wooden benches and railings, snatching at cloth tapestries and devouring the dry rushes spread across the floor. The extreme heat had turned the sacred space into an oven, roasting alive those not granted the mercy of dying from the thick smoke.
Fresh sea air poured in through gaping holes that had once been windows, mingling with the stench of burned flesh. The stained glass was now melted and hardened into lumps of muddled rainbows. Raoul waved and shouted at the crows perched on the altar and on the piles of charred and broken stone, and the murder rose as one with a thrashing of black wings, squawking in mocking protest. The birds quickly resettled, scuttling about on wiry feet and eyeing him with shining ebony pupils.
In fear and fury, he moved from corpse to corpse, trying not to gag as he pulled stone from crushed bone. Some bodies, overcome by smoke or flame, were entangled where they’d fallen. Raoul came across a man who looked to be asleep, his seated frame whole, covered only in a light dusting of ash and flakes of soot, his head dropped to one side, his eyes closed. But no Paloma. No Bertran or Aicelina. Or perhaps too many of them. Too many bodies scorched beyond recognition.
“Not everyone is here.” A small man in patched breeches and boots worn thin at the toes stepped into the church from a gap in the wall. “We’ve been moving the bodies since dawn, taking them to a grave just outside the village. I’m the carter. It’s my horses and wagon carrying the dead.”
“How many were there? Did you know everyone here?”
“Guess I did. I’ve lived here all my life.” The man gave a sorrowful glance around the destroyed nave. “We’re missing sixteen of our village. I’ve found many bodies, but whether they are sixteen complete, I couldn’t say.” He stopped, taking in Raoul’s fine clothing and well-made boots, the quality showing through the tears and stains of travel. “You’re not from the village. Did you know someone here?”
“I’m looking for my wife and children. Paloma Gervais; my son, Bertran; my daughter, Aicelina. Did you see anyone brought to the church?”
The man was shaking his head before Raoul could finish. “It was before dawn. We knew the soldiers were here. They came in the night before, taking over the inn. One of them, they say it was the sénéchal, routed a woman and two children from Duchesne’s home. Duchesne is—”
“Yes, I know who he is. Where is the sénéchal now?”
The older man ran a hand over his face, and his shoulders sagged with weariness. He spoke, but his gaze remained cast on the floor. “I don’t know.”
Raoul closed the distance in a few long strides. “I believe my wife and children were sent to this church.” He grabbed the carter by the front of his rough linen shirt and lifted him to the tips of his toes. “Why are there no mourners? Why is no one here to collect their dead? This happened just yesterday, yet this cursed village feels abandoned. Where is everyone?”
“We’re afraid, my lord. Who will risk being seen to mourn those branded as heretics?” The villager’s eyes bulged and he remained teetering, cowed by Raoul’s rage. “Most hide in their homes,” he rasped. “We’re just waiting for the soldiers to leave.”
Raoul released the carter and held him gently by the shoulders as the man coughed and regained his breath. “My good man, I’m sorry. I’m desperate to find my family.”
“We’ll mourn when we’re left alone. My son and I, we offered to take away the dead. We can’t wait for the rats and crows to do it. But whether your family died here, I cannot say.”