The fortress gates do not shut again, though it takes until the next day before all the preparations are made. The knights’ wives busy themselves stuffing packs for their journeys home as their husbands decide whether the remaining animals should be either slaughtered or driven out. At last, an hour before noon and leaving a great mess behind them, the heretics begin to file down the mountain, the persistent perfecti moving like a black bruise at their side. Sir Roger rages impotently all the way: at himself, at his daughter, and at Raimon, who has stayed on the pog all night and now walks silently a little ways from Metta, taking Sir Roger’s abuse as a man takes a lash he knows he deserves. The White Wolf walks behind them all, and though the way is rough, he holds his flame shoulder high.
The inquisitors are standing in a huddle, condemning Hugh for presenting terms of surrender they consider far too lenient. As the Cathars pass, they make a great show of crossing themselves.
The women and children are sent away at once, but at the bottom of the pog, the knights are forced into pairs and file in front of Hugh, now seated on a regal chair. Though the oriflamme hanging behind him is mutilated, nobody witnessing this scene can be in any doubt that it is the French king’s justice that is being administered, or that Hugh des Arcis intends to keep his word. As each pair of knights kneels, they find that Hugh sticks closely to the letter of the treaty. They must acknowledge the sovereignty of the King of France but they are not required to surrender either their castles or their titles. Sir Roger takes the oath last.
You may feel, as the inquisitors certainly do, that Hugh has been weak, but I can tell you that he has been clever, for Hugh knows, as the king does, that magnanimity is a far more powerful weapon than subjection. Each knight will return home grateful for royal mercy, and his future behavior will be constrained by it.
It is different with the perfecti. Hugh has offered them all he can offer. They must surrender the Blue Flame, and those who will not renounce the White Wolf will die. There are no alternatives. He watches them coming toward him with some surprise. So many? He thought more would take advantage of the proffered escape. He sees Metta, so young and so misguidedly steadfast. Raimon lurks in the background.
The pyre is now virtually a complete though roofless house, with the fagots, some piled up to four feet high, marking out the inside divisions or rooms and a high palisade serving as the outside walls. The youngest and keenest inquisitors do not like this design, for it will block their view of the burning heretics and ruin the spectacle. The older inquisitors are wiser. Mass burnings—though even the most experienced of these men have never seen one involving the nearly two hundred souls now before them—are not spectacles, they are cataclysms to which nobody can tell quite how they will react. Better to herd the heretics inside and then hide them from view. They appease the younger ones by sending them off through the “door” to ensure that the straw “carpet” is layered thickly enough, and the builders have remembered to leave openings into all the internal “rooms,” whose walls will provide the essential fuel. When the enthusiasts emerge, few are still complaining about the spectacle.
The builders work steadily, and by midafternoon the monstrous palace is ready to receive its guests. There is no point in further delay, so as the last plank in the palisade is secured and with the inquisitors kneeling in public prayer, the victims, young and old, sick and healthy, are pushed unceremoniously inside. Raimon cannot bear it. Abandoning all self-control, he hangs on to Metta until, right at the door, she extricates herself and disappears inside. Sir Roger, roaring, tries to follow his daughter and is taken into custody by two French knights who are ordered to tie him to a horse and accompany him home.
The White Wolf is held back and brought before Hugh, who finds him neither frightened nor regretful, not for himself and not for those who will die with him. Only his oddly childish clutching of the Flame to his chest betrays any human chink in his armor of religious fervor.
“I’ll have the Flame,” Hugh says but does not reach out for his prize immediately. “You could save these people, you know. Why not tell them that you’ll bear the whole punishment for them. The inquisitors will be angry, but that won’t matter to you. Your perfecti will still be under sentence of death, of course, but I could refer the matter of their execution to the Pope, and that could take years.” The White Wolf just smiles. How little these Frenchmen know him. Hugh presses him again. “Do you want them all to burn? I can hardly believe that.”
“You can believe what you like.” The White Wolf is his usual mild self, his face pure as a child’s. “But we know what we believe. We are martyrs whom God will welcome into paradise with loving arms.”
“And what if you’re wrong? What if God views you as a murderer?” Hugh will not give up yet.
“Me? A murderer?” The White Wolf seems genuinely amused. “Who is building the house of death, Sir Hugh? Who will give the order to fire the straw? There are certainly murderers here but I am not of their number.”
Hugh tries one last time. “Save these heretics! Or at least save the young ones. They’ll listen to you.”
The White Wolf glances toward the palisade, from which the prayers of his followers are rising in direct competition with the prayers of the inquisitors. “We Cathars do not want to be saved,” he says pleasantly. “As I have already said, what’s there to cling to on earth when God awaits us in heaven?”
“And I repeat, what if God doesn’t want the likes of you?”
“Oh, I’m prepared to take the risk.” Not a flicker of doubt crosses the White Wolf’s countenance, not a twitch of apprehension.
Hugh reaches out for the flame. Only now does the White Wolf blanch, finding that at this moment of greatest trial he does not want to lose it. His voice exhibits the tiniest of cracks. “You know that the Flame will be ours whatever you do with it, wherever you take it.” His fingers are tight around the box. “Long after we are all ashes, people will say ‘that was the Blue Flame of the Cathars.’”
“They will say it was the Blue Flame of the Occitan,” Hugh replies equally forcefully, “if, that is, they speak of it at all. Now give it to me.” The White Wolf takes half a step back, recovers himself, and hands the box over. “We do not need its physical presence,” he says with masterful loftiness, though his eyes linger on the salver. “God lit it for us, and He won’t forget that.”
“But did He?” Hugh fingers the box. “Raimon says that there’s another Flame, one that supersedes this one.” He speaks with a carelessness he does not feel, for notwithstanding anything the White Wolf might desire, his own future in the king’s service depends on this flame being the real Flame.
The White Wolf throws back his head. “What else do you expect a weaver to say?” His tone is now contemptuous.
Hugh wants to be convinced. “How can we tell?”
The White Wolf speaks slowly and very clearly. “I’m telling you, the Flame can’t change. It’s our anchor. It binds us to the past.”
“And what about the future?” Hugh thinks of Yolanda and his son.
“The future?” For once the White Wolf looks nonplussed. “The future must be the same as the past. That’s what the Blue Flame tells us.”
Hugh stops fingering the box and looks directly inside, to where the flame sits dully in its drying oil, casting a shadow that even on this gray afternoon does not transfix. A cold thread begins to wrap itself around his heart. If the White Wolf is wrong and Raimon right, he is doomed. The king is a holy man. He will not be duped by a false relic. He raises the box and brings it close to his eyes. It is just a box. It is just a flame. With jolting certainty, he finds he knows where the truth lies. He lowers the box in a sudden fury. “You’ve made a mistake that’s going to kill us both,” he rasps. “Look at it, man, just look! Flames light the way into the future. The one you’ve been hanging on to is fit only to light the way to hell.” He stands up and throws the box back. “You fool. You’re going to the pyre for nothing, and I have nothing to take to the king.” And now, inexplicably, he begins to laugh at the stupid, pointless pity of it all. He watches the White Wolf caressing the box as though it were alive. “There’s something of an irony here, don’t you think?” Hugh says.
The White Wolf’s voice has no crack now. “There’s no irony. I have the Flame.”
“You have your flame but not God’s.” Hugh shakes his head. The inquisitors are muttering, wondering what Hugh is doing. He sits down and collects himself. “Look. If you must die for it, I can’t stop you. But die by yourself and send all these others home. Do that one good thing.” The White Wolf smiles that demented, complacent smile. “Go to hell, then,” Hugh says violently and gets up again. “This is not the Blue Flame!” he shouts at the inquisitors. “The Flame is gone.” Then he steps away, leaving the White Wolf to carry his spent talisman into the place of no return.
Even with all the care that had been taken, the outside palisade takes some time to light. The wood is still damp and the wind light, so it is almost dark by the time patches of it can really be said to have caught in any way at all. In a slow cadence, the prayers of the heretics rise an octave, though as the smoke swirls they soon dissolve into coughs. They have spread themselves through the rooms, holding hands as much as they are able. There is an eerie silence apart from the crackling of the brushwood with which the builders begin to line the outside walls in an attempt to hurry the fire along. When this, too, is not immediately successful, they begin to toss lit torches over the palisade to ignite the straw carpet. The house is too broad for any torch to reach the middle, so when it does begin to burn properly it is from the outside in.
Now there are cries as well as coughs, for the entrances to the rooms are narrow, and when a torch hits its mark, people are crushed in the scramble for a safer spot. Some perfecti panic and begin to scream, and once they have started find they cannot stop until those villagers who have gathered to watch, unable to bear the earaching and increasing volume, grab their children and flee. As the terrible chorus rises, even the horses, though tethered behind the French tents, grow restive and finally throw up their heads and break free, which gives many of the French knights just the excuse they want to rush after them and gallop away. The Cathars have to be punished, but they do not have to be witnesses.
Only the inquisitors remain apparently unmoved. Though their eyes begin to stream as the smoke becomes more brackish, their prayers continue. They gather on one side of the square and Hugh and Raimon on another, though not side by side.
It would be untrue to say that, visually, this reluctant bonfire is hideous. Rather, its size and careful construction confer an awesome beauty once the planks really start to burn and the brushwood to loose fountains of fiery confetti. Not that Raimon thinks so for one moment. It is not the smoke that has him only able to breathe in short sharp snatches, it is the thought that he should never have let go of Metta. He lunges forward and is grabbed from behind. “That’s suicide.” Hugh’s arms are strong.
“I’ve got to get her out.” Raimon’s teeth are chattering despite the heat that is now making him sweat. “She thinks she’s dying for the Flame but she’s not.”
“I know.”
Raimon twists. Their eyes meet. Raimon pulls away. “Leave me alone! You’re as responsible for this horror as if you’d chucked in a torch yourself.”
“I do the king’s work.” Hugh will not let go.
“That’s a disgraceful answer.” Raimon is still trying to shake Hugh off.
Hugh shakes him back, then says abruptly, “If we’re to get her, we must go now.”
A tiny pause. “You?”
“Call it my challenge.” Hugh finally lets go, and without even pausing to take off their swords, they rush toward the palisade together.
The outside has well and truly caught now, and the fire-raisers have retired, their job done. The flaming brushwood helps Hugh and Raimon, for it has burned a hole in the bottom of the palisade through which, kicking the brushwood aside, they can push.
Inside, they find a bizarre scene. The rooms in and out of which the perfecti are surging in a kind of linear dance to the music of their screaming are still largely intact, and the straw underfoot lit only in patches. Were it not for the smoke and the rising heat, you could almost believe yourself to be in a circus maze. Raimon and Hugh join the dance, pushing and searching, the latter made far harder because most of the perfecti have covered their faces with their hoods. Then there are those who fall as the dance quickens. Should they help them, knowing as they do that if they do not find Metta before the straw really catches fire, it will be too late?
“Work your way to the middle!” Hugh cries, but this is easier said than done, for as the straw gradually erupts, it lights the fagots, and in trying not to be knocked over it becomes difficult to gauge in which direction they are going.
Now, through the smoke, comes the smell of roasting flesh, and suddenly the dance is full of figures the flames have caught directly. The straw is beginning to bubble like a cauldron. And then, like a singer waiting for his cue, the fire begins to roar.
At once, all vestiges of human dignity evaporate. As the fire fastens to hoods, hair, and sleeves, the perfecti are terrifyingly quickly transformed into half-naked creatures, yowling and hopping on all fours, crawling over and buffeting against one another in their hideous agonies.
Raimon and Hugh have to cling together to survive, batting out the flames that seize their legs and arms. “This way!” Hugh cries, and they batter their way through toward what they hope maybe the center of this vortex, where the straw and fagots may not yet be convulsed. It is a fearsome journey, much worse than Yolanda’s in the snow, but they are rewarded. In the very middle room, even through the wild and pullulating noise, there remains a semblance of calm. The White Wolf stands there, shifting his feet as the hem of his habit smokes. Though his beard is still white, his shoulders are speckled with ash. Uncannily tranquil in the apocalypse erupting around him, he is holding up his empty flame and reciting, like a mantra, “We are the Flame’s martyrs. Rejoice at how glorious we are! See how the Flame burns with pleasure at our sacrifice!”
But he is wrong. The flame is not burning with pleasure. It is barely burning at all. Nothing about it dances. Nothing about it inspires. In its battered box it looks like what it is, the insubstantial remains of an old icon whose time was glorious but has now passed.
Those around the White Wolf try to rally to his call, but all they can do is cleave to one another. The White Wolf shakes the box as his feet grow hotter. “The Flame! The Flame!” He is begging it—ordering it—to rise to the occasion, but instead it sinks lower still, not blue at all but the palest of reds. The White Wolf bites his cheeks. He shakes the box again, and then, as though heavenly music has just broken out, raises his voice in a triumphant shout. “Look at the color! Just look! Of course! Now is not the time for blue but the time for red! And not just any red! Rejoice, my friends! This is the red of paradise! Paradise red!”
Those around, half crying, now try to take up his call. “Paradise red!” they echo, but their hearts are not in it. Indeed, as the flames begin to flicker through the fagots, paradise red seems like no color at all.
Metta is nearest to the White Wolf as the straw shifts, and, in this last redoubt, the fire blazes through. The screaming rises yet another pitch as the heat hits them in huge billows. Coughing and stamping and with one hand over his mouth, Raimon yanks at Metta’s sleeve and keeps hold when she pulls away in terror, as though expecting the devil. “You!” she cries. “Go away! Get out of here! You don’t have to burn. Let it be over! Just let it be over!”
“Nothing’s over.” Raimon hangs on grimly.
“I’m not leaving. I promised.”
“Are you deranged, girl?” Hugh is on her other side.
She is pleading. “I can’t give in. I’m not a coward! I won’t leave the Flame—”
Raimon lets go of her arm and roughly seizes her shoulders. Fiery tendrils are sneaking up their legs and he can feel Unbent hot on his back. They begin to choke. “Die if you must,” Raimon sputters, “but don’t die for a fraud. Look at the flame. Just look.” She looks. The White Wolf is holding it high, like some fantastical magician about to perform his best trick. “What do you see?” She shakes her head. “What do you see, Metta? Answer me! You must answer me!”
“I see nothing, nothing!” She sobs.
“Exactly!” Raimon shouts in her ear. “Nothing. But I have a flame that’s not nothing. It’s far from nothing. I have the true Flame of the Occitan.”
“Don’t believe them, Metta,” shrills the White Wolf. “What are they doing here, the Flame’s two enemies together! Get them out! Out! This is our moment.” He shakes the Flame some more. “Burn strong for us!” he begs. “Burn blue and white and paradise red!” But in answer, the wooden box collapses, and in seconds the White Wolf is left only with the salver, really just a tiny and very scratched silver plate. “No!” he shrieks as the flame shrinks into the oil. “No!” He clings to the salver as it scalds his fingers. There is a momentary lull, as though everybody is taking a breath, and then quite suddenly, in the midst of this furnace, the old flame goes out.
Now the White Wolf staggers like a man whose leg has been lopped off, but for Metta a chain has snapped. As the White Wolf loses every last ounce of self-possession and joins the screamers, she clutches at Raimon, sobbing and groaning, and then Hugh is hauling them both away from the collapsing walls and back toward the remains of the palisade.
The journey out is worse even than the journey in, for though the flames are leaping, the air is now so thick that every step is a step in the dark. They feel the White Wolf behind them as they struggle, all of them doubled over. But he is not trying to escape. He is still trying to pull Metta back. “Metta! Metta! Don’t desert me. We’ll go to heaven together. Together!” His eyes are rolling, his beard just a bristle, and the skin is peeling from the back of his head. “This is what God wants! Our suffering is his greatest delight. Don’t you want to please God, Metta? Don’t you? You disappoint me! You dis-a-ppoint me.” His words lengthen as he begins to disintegrate. He seizes her hood.
She turns. He is a repulsive sight. Now it is she who tries to pull him with her. “Come out. Come out of here, please. Let Raimon save you. I’m begging. How can dying like this possibly be God’s will?”
The White Wolf is almost completely on fire. He bares his teeth and pushes her away. “You question God’s will? You dare to? God knows his own, Metta. God knows his own. Perhaps I was mistaken in you. Perhaps you’re not one of his own after all.”
You think there is a limit to pain? Not for the White Wolf. His greatest torture comes as he draws his last breath, and the pain is not the searing sensation in his chest. It is a far deeper pain than that, for it is only when it is far too late that he sees something more appalling than any sight on earth. As he stretches what remains of his arms toward the starry comforts of heaven and begs God to gather him up, God slowly turns his back. The sight burns hotter than the hottest fire. It burns so hot that it burns away the point of him. His arms drop. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispers, but nobody hears him.
Raimon will not let Metta look or even think as he keeps her sandwiched between himself and Hugh. Kicking in front and behind, they beat their way back to the palisade, most of which is now just a hollow heap, and cry out with relief when they feel the flames behind them. Their relief is momentary. Instead of being met with cooler air, they are confronted with bristling swords.
Though there are not enough of them to form a complete chain, the inquisitors have fanned out like sentries to drive any escapee heretics back into the flames. To reinforce his authority, the chief inquisitor has also seized the oriflamme, which, with the wind now rising, is flourishing its six remaining tails as though they were flames themselves. It takes a moment for them to recognize Hugh as he appears before them, blackened and raw, but as soon as somebody shouts his name, the chief inquisitor cracks the oriflamme like a whip. “You? Sir Hugh des Arcis? You, the keeper of the oriflamme, presume to cheat God of his rightful revenge? You presume to save his enemies? Oh, Sir Hugh, you presume too much—far too much.” The man’s fervor almost lifts him off the ground. “Seize him!” he orders.
“Run, Metta, run!” Who knows who shouts? It might be Hugh, it might be Raimon. All that matters is that she finds herself stumbling obediently away, trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and the hell from which she has been rescued. There is no such relief for Hugh and Raimon, for within seconds the French knight and the Occitan weaver are fighting side by side. Hugh will not be taken without a struggle, and Raimon cannot leave Hugh to struggle alone. “The other is a heretic too,” the chief inquisitor bawls. “Never mind bringing them to me! Push them both back into the fire. I’ll answer to the king!”
Though Raimon thrusts and parries like a cornered jackal and Hugh lunges like a stag at bay, little by little they are forced to retreat. The chief inquisitor edges nearer and tries to hit Raimon with the oriflamme but instead finds himself grappling with Hugh and forced to let it go. The inquisitor pulls out a sword and lunges. Hampered by the banner, Hugh cannot defend himself. Raimon immediately pushes Unbent between them and the inquisitor turns on him too, raising his blade for the killer blow. With two simultaneous giant leaps, Hugh and Raimon catapult themselves back into the furnace where they know neither soldiers nor inquisitors will dare to follow.
The fire has consumed everything in its wake—fagots, hair, bone, flesh, and cloth, and is roaring with less intensity. Now it is the smell that is unendurable. Raimon gags as it invades every vein, every muscle, every pore. It is the smell of pure evil. Underfoot, through an all-pervading viscous slime, unidentifiable splinters push between his blistered toes. This mulch is all that remains of the two hundred human beings who, hours before, had been part of God’s creation. Hugh is not moving well, and at last he falls, the oriflamme slapping down hard beside him. Raimon wrenches him up and feels a sudden gush. For a moment he cannot tell whether the gush is from himself or from Hugh.
Hugh supplies the answer. “Get out of here as best you can.” His breath is uneven. “The inquisitors can’t be everywhere. Find Metta and get her back to her father. That’s what you can do for her. It’s what you must do.”
Raimon gazes around wildly. How can he leave a dying man in this devil’s cauldron?
Hugh’s eyes are wide and the pupils already glazed. “I’m afraid there’ll be no single combat now,” he whispers, “but I still have a challenge for you.”
“Come on, get up!” Raimon pulls at Hugh’s legs. “Get up!”
Hugh groans loudly. Raimon tries to force him, but Hugh is a dead weight. He tries again. Hugh struggles to hold on to Raimon’s arm but finally gives up. “I’m done,” he says. “I’m done.” He is gasping. “But here’s my challenge, Raimon.” He searches for Raimon’s eyes. He wants to say something about Yolanda, Raimon knows it. He does not want to hear it. He will not meet Hugh’s eyes.
Hugh’s gaze begins to dim. He can hardly see Raimon at all. His chest heaves as, instead, he gathers himself to speak slowly and clearly. “Take my sword to my son and look after him for me.”
Raimon claps his hands over his ears. “Don’t ask such a thing! I won’t take it! I don’t want him!”
“You must take it. You must have him. You must.”
“No! Aren’t you listening? Never. Not your son. Why do you ask something so impossible of me?”
Hugh gives a faint, exhausted half smile. “What a silly question,” he murmurs. “Why do you think I ask?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
“Oh yes, Raimon, you do.” His cheeks spasm. “I ask you because Yolanda loves you. I ask you because you’re a brave man. But most of all”—the words come urgently now, and not just because his lungs are filling—“I ask you because I’ve nobody else to ask.”
Raimon roars and bends over Hugh, sometimes holding him, sometimes shaking him, until Hugh’s eyes roll and he gives a last faint and wistful sigh as death rattles his throat.
Years later, Raimon is glad about what he does next, though at the time he has no idea why he does it except that it is suddenly unthinkable to leave a man, any man, to the unforgiving mercy of the elements and the inquisitors. Placing Hugh’s sword to one side, he smoothes out the oriflamme and swiftly rolls his enemy’s corpse into it before binding it up as tightly as he can. Then he runs for a flaming plank and sets the banner’s edges on fire. Hugh will have his own pyre. He waits, holding his breath, and only when the fire is white hot does he exhale, and even then he waits a moment longer, trying to find some fitting words of valediction. But what should they be? He has no idea. In the end, he simply seizes Hugh’s sword, plunges it into Unbent’s scabbard, and makes once more for the palisade. Behind him, the oriflamme loosens and the folded tails flutter, before, scorched and torn but freed from all constraint, they stream in one red silken salute straight up to heaven.