The wizened midwife stopped at the threshold of the lying-in room to search for evil shadows. Satisfied with the thoroughness of the lime wash, she traced a pentagram on the floor stones. “The moon is waning. A baneful hour, it is. She’d best give up the litter before midnight.”
“I did not bring you here to cast horoscopes,” scolded the Marquessa.
“A hen crowed this morn below my window.”
“You heard no such thing!”
The midwife traced her finger along the window battens to find cracks that might allow the insipid demons to enter and foul the birthing. “A hen turned rooster is an evil omen.”
“Cease your inane prattle before she hears you. It’s her first.”
The midwife nudged the door to the hall and found Roger waiting alone, evidence for the village gossip that the father may not have been Esclarmonde’s husband. “The succubi flock in droves to a bastard. My fee is doubled.”
“You delivered my daughter for a third of that!”
“A fatherless babe fights the world. Twice the trouble, twice the pay.”
Extorted by the ever-present sword of death that hung over a birthing room, the Marquessa had no choice but to wave the wily crone to the task.
The midwife commenced her preparations by spreading straw around the birthing stool and sprinkling it with wax, snakeskins, and herbs. In the center of this menagerie she set a miniature carving of St. Margaret, the patron saint of laboring women. She opened the cupboards, tightened the oiled linen curtains, and tossed pinecones into the hearth to sweat away any lingering spirits. The chamber soon became a stinking, oppressive oven. She clapped her hands to chase the flies and clucked, “In with the heifer.”
Phillipa led Esclarmonde to the stool at the foot of the bed. Loupe and Chandelle, both four years old, followed them a few steps behind. Esclarmonde’s stomach was distended and her turgid eyes were rimmed pink with pain.
The midwife wrapped Esclarmonde in the frayed birthing girdle that had been kept for generations in St. Volusien’s sacristy. She dropped a pebble and ordered her to pick it up in a test. “How close are the grippings?”
“I’ve lost count!” gasped Esclarmonde. “My God, I ache!”
“Her water is pallid,” warned the Marquessa.
The midwife measured the womb’s descent and shook her head woefully. “The belly rides high. The child should have lowered by now.”
“I’m suffocating!” cried Esclarmonde.
Phillipa pressed a wet compress to Esclarmonde’s blistering forehead. “Won’t you allow her to rest?”
The midwife thrust three magical stones into Esclarmonde’s palms and pulled her up from the stool. “She must stay on her feet. To the stairs. Avoid moving her in circles.”
Esclarmonde was marched up and down the tower staircase until she became so enervated that she could not stand without assistance. When that torment produced no results, she was placed over a heated cauldron to steam the birth opening. Throughout this torturous ordeal, she cursed Jourdaine for having found a way to continue his violence on her from the grave. Soon after leaving Gascony, her moon flux had stopped. She arrived days later in Foix racked by morning sickness. In the intervening seven months, she had grown increasingly despondent over the lack of news about Guilhelm and the prospect of giving birth to a child sired by the man she had detested.
When dawn arrived with no progress, the midwife resorted to more drastic measures. She allowed Esclarmonde to lay on the bed and required her to swallow scraps of cloth inscribed with the names of saints. Esclarmonde struggled to force the imitation hosts down her throat while the midwife chanted charms to speed the magic:
This be my remedy for hateful slow birth,
this be my remedy for heavy difficult birth,
this be my remedy for hateful imperfect birth.
Up I go, step over ye,
with living child, not a dead one,
with full-born one, not a—
The door flew open. Folques, draped in his red sacramental stole, invaded the room. “What pagan abomination of the Eucharist is this?”
Outraged by the trespass, the Marquessa covered Esclarmonde with a sheet for modesty. “You have no warrant here!”
“The Almighty has warrant against infanticide!”
“You believe I’d harm my own child?” cried Esclarmonde.
“You absconded before testifying at the murder inquest.”
Esclarmonde gasped, breathless from the piercing pangs in her lower back. “Give proof of my complicity!”
“The crime has already been solved,” said Folques. “The heinous deed was committed by the Templar Montanhagol.”
Bathed in sweat, Esclarmonde bolted up from the bed. “That’s a lie! You banished him to the Holy Land!”
Folques produced a confession signed in the Templar’s hand. Esclarmonde tried to focus her fractured thoughts. Guilhelm must have planted the evidence to exonerate her after she had fallen asleep that night in Gascony.
Folques enjoyed her discomfited reaction. “He will be apprehended in due time. And your assistance in the crime will be demonstrated.”
“Call my brother!”
Folques thwarted Phillipa’s attempt to leave the room. “The Count has been served with the decree ordering the child’s baptism.”
Esclarmonde was about to protest the illegality of that injunction when she was seized by another spasm. The midwife placed a sponge soaked in henbane under her nostrils, which were already inflamed by the pepper applied to induce sneezing. Her vital signs were so weak that the midwife dared not raise her to the birthing stool.
Unnerved by the shrieks and curses, Folques retreated a step, having been warned by his Cistercian brothers that a birthing chamber was particularly susceptible to attaching fiends. “Has she been bled?”
“I’m not running a plague charnel!” snapped the midwife.
Folques circled the bed with his crucifix hoisted for protection. “Heaven requires a predetermined number of souls be saved on Judgment Day. If she denies the child the salvation of the Church, she must be cut open.”
Esclarmonde lurched and convulsed. The midwife tried to assuage her throes with the palliative sponge, but Folques captured her hand.
“Desist from the medicinals!” commanded Folques. “Scripture forbids relief from the sorrows wrought by Eve’s sin!”
“The child is trying to come by the feet first!” said the midwife.
“What does that mean?” asked Folques.
The midwife spat a black wad of root chew at the monk’s sandals to curse the stupidity of men. “In most cases, a body follows!” While being sermonized on the travails required of woman, she escaped under the sheet to examine the womb. The fetus was unnaturally reversed and the cervix would not dilate. The harder Esclarmonde struggled to push it out, the more the infant resisted.
“Unleash it!” said Folques. “Holy Church commands it!”
Rattled by his threats, the midwife worked desperately to shift the breach. “I can’t deliver the babe without risking injury to the lady!”
Folques fumbled for the chalice in his traveling bag. He hurriedly performed the miracle of transformation and held the Body of Christ to Esclarmonde’s exerting face. “Surrender it! Or I’ll force the Eucharist down your throat!”
Esclarmonde turned purple from the exertions. “You darkened me with one of your damnable sacraments! You’ll not curse me with another!”
“It comes!” shouted the midwife. “Heat the canal with screams!”
The women elbowed Folques aside and wailed over the bed to raise the vibrations. Esclarmonde feared the infant was going to leave her dead. A roll of linen was forced into her mouth to protect her tongue. A piercing cry shook the room—the women suddenly ceased their shrieking.
“A boy!” announced the midwife.
Folques rushed up to pronounce the sacrament over the newborn and was stopped short by a horrific discovery. Denied a view by the arched sheet over her knees, Esclarmonde could not understand why the pain had not subsided. Why was the midwife still splitting her if the child was freed?
“Lord Christ protect us.” Ashen-faced, the midwife brought out a second fetus—a blue-faced girl whose neck was wrapped by the birth cord. “The lad has strangled his sister.”
Esclarmonde heard those words only vaguely. As if trapped in a distant dream, she could make no sense of the commotion swirling around her.
Phillipa took the infant girl from the midwife and frantically dug mucus from its clogged mouth. The tiny body hung limp. She swigged a mouthful of wine and sprayed the liquid into its throat, but the babe’s caked eyes remained closed. She placed a feather under its nose and prayed for movement, to no avail. With a crazed look, she forced the stillborn girl on Folques. “Will you baptize her? Where is your god for her?”
Folques recoiled from the mucous-slathered clump. “Take it away!”
Phillipa kissed the stillborn’s head and prayed for her return to the Light.
The midwife mumbled lamentations while measuring off four finger lengths on the birth cord. She doubled the ligature and powered it with crushed chervil, then lifted the bloodied Armor of Fortune to inspect the blackened caul for signs. When the surviving boy wailed in a demand not to be ignored, she looked down and saw a blue vein striating his temple—the infamous Artery of Death. She glanced ominously at Esclarmonde and muttered, “This one will kick at you for the rest of your days.”
Folques crossed his breast as an antidote against the malignancy. “The fouled birth is the result of illicit coitus!”
“Enough!” cried Phillipa.
Folques pointed an accusing finger at Esclarmonde. “The surviving child was sired by your dead husband, a fervent Christian! There is no mystery about the fornicator whose seed produced the dead one!”
Little Loupe latched onto Folques’s leg like a rabid pup. With the gnawing child in tow, Folques limped around the bed filling his scepter with holy water. Before he could dispense the baptismal sacrament, Phillipa rescued the newborn boy from the midwife and ran from the room.
Two weeks later, Almaric and Folques rode into Foix accompanied by a carriage and twenty armed men. The soldiers set up an inquest dais in front of the church. Almaric mounted the boards and announced to the gathered villagers, “The viscountess of this domain is to be interrogated.”
Roger emerged from the castle to confront the clerics. “Since when does the Cistercian General concern himself with the birth of a child?”
“The smallest seed can spawn a field of thistles,” said Almaric.
Roger assessed the mood of the townsfolk, but few appeared willing to support him in defying the monks. The Abbot’s gendarmes commandeered the women from the chateau. Punished by the hot sun, Esclarmonde feared she might pass out while she rocked her infant boy to sooth his choleric crying. The soldiers led her to a stool that had been placed below the dais. Folques entered the church and removed the small casket that held her stillborn daughter. He set it beyond the borders of consecrated ground.
Roger tried to put a halt to this base treatment of the child’s remains, but the soldiers forced him back. “My sister is not well. At least allow her to be questioned in the cool of the chapel.”
“She remains unchurched,” said Folques.
“I shall endure it,” said Esclarmonde.
Almaric took his seated station under the shade of the church lintel to satisfy the ecclesiastical requirement that judgment be rendered within sanctified confines. “Do you know why you have been summoned?”
Esclarmonde stood unsteadily to meet the indictment. “I presume it is because of my lack of good manners in failing to die during childbirth.”
“You are accused of withholding the sacrament of baptism.” Almaric turned to Folques. “I will hear from the defender of the soul.”
“Defender?” yelped the Marquessa. “I’d rather the Devil plead the case.”
Folques circled behind Esclarmonde to avoid the spell of her eyes. “The Devil is much invoked in these parts.”
Esclarmonde tried to turn and face him, but the effort proved too painful. Near fainting, she fell back onto the stool and found Folques staring at her bodice, which had become wetted by her lactating breasts.
Folques asked, “Have you ever uttered incantations?”
“You mean prayers?”
“I mean scriptural words falsely manipulated.”
She shuddered with alarm. Had the Cistercians somehow learned of her surreptitious study in Jourdaine’s chapel? No, that was impossible. She had been alone at all times and had told no one. “If that were a crime, you would have hanged by now. Every person here once heard you spew your poesy and seduce maids with words falsely manipulated.”
“You play with me, woman!”
The Marquessa shouted, “When it comes to mediating God’s mercy, you merit only playing with!”
“You may soon alter that opinion ... I call Margery de Santi.”
The villagers watched in confusion as a foreign-looking woman was led from the carriage and brought before the dais.
Folques asked the new witness, “Do you know this lady?”
The woman shot a vengeful sneer at Esclarmonde. “She was the wife of my dead lord, God rest his soul. I served as their laundress in Gascony.”
“Did you witness her activities when Lord L’Isle was away?” asked Folques.
“She bade me to leave her alone in the church on certain days. But I watched her from the sacristy window. I knew she was up to no good.”
“And what did you see?”
“She stole a book from the priest’s quarters and copied words from it. She wrote them on scraps and whispered them over and over.”
“And what did she do with those charms?”
The woman glowered at Esclarmonde with wicked satisfaction. “She threw them into the fire.”
Perspiration beaded on Esclarmonde’s brow, but she dared not swab it for fear that the act would be seen as a sign of guilt. “I can explain—”
“The playing has only just begun,” said Folques. “I next call Mary Peraud.”
The guards prodded up the Foix midwife. She cowered in terror under the stern inspection of the Cistercians.
“You delivered the dead infant?” asked Folques.
“And the living one!”
“Was it an unnatural labor?”
The midwife hesitated. “It was queered from the start.”
“Could the infant girl have been saved?”
“Only if I cut the lady open.”
“Was that remedy not proposed to the mother?”
“Yes, but—”
“And she refused? Placing her life before the salvation of the child?”
The midwife turned toward her fellow villagers to plead the case that she had done nothing wrong. “The viscountess was sufferin’ terrible.”
Folques reclaimed her attention by pounding his fist on the dais. “Did you mock the Eucharist and draw pentagrams in the birth room?” He nodded ominously in a warning that she had best answer with caution for her own soul.
“I was taught the way by my grandmother.”
“Was the boy infant offered the mother’s breast?”
“He was.”
“And did he take it?”
The midwife glanced helplessly at Esclarmonde. “He refuses her milk.”
“A damning portent!” shouted Folques. “The innocent babe recoils from the tainted nourishment of a murderess!”
Almaric forced Esclarmonde to suffer the full impact of that mark of culpability. “What say you to this evidence?”
Starved for sleep, Esclarmonde tried to respond, but her mind was slowed. She had suffered recurring bouts of memory loss during the past weeks. The ravages of the difficult labor and the many blows from Jourdaine’s hand had taken a cumulative toll, dulling her senses and slowing her reactions. She closed her eyes in an effort to marshal her thoughts. “The God I love would not consign innocents to a pit of isolation and abandonment.”
“All mortals must be baptized by water before they are allowed entry into Heaven,” said Almaric. “All are stained by the sin of Adam and Eve, even children. God’s laws allow no exceptions!”
“Where in the Scriptures is that stated?”
“Holy Writ is beyond the understanding of the laity,” said Almaric. “The Holy Father clarifies and mediates God’s Word.”
“And bends it to his designs,” said Esclarmonde. “This monk who questions me was once a laymen. He took no schooling in theology. How is it that he suddenly gained such insight into God’s opinions?”
“Blasphemy!” Almaric turned to his notary. “Record it!”
“Christ never condemned unbaptized children,” said Esclarmonde. “Where is it written that He baptized any children?”
Almaric glared the murmuring crowd to silence. He had expected insubordination from these primitives, infected as they were by the vilest of beliefs. The heretics taught that only those who fully understood and accepted the teachings of Christ should receive the Holy Spirit. He had been warned that Esclarmonde would attempt to turn the inquest into a debate on scriptural justification. Yet he could not back down now in such a public forum. “Father Augustine affirmed that such infants are relegated to Limbus. There they share the common misery of the damned and are denied the beatific vision.”
“Did Jesus not say that he who is baptized and believes shall be saved?” she asked. “Infants have not developed the faculty for belief.”
Cornered, Almaric moved to end the proceedings before she could stir the crowd further. “Summarize the evidence!”
Folques was forced to shout over the protests. “This woman conspired by magical means to remain barren! Her conjuring with the Devil cause her to become seeded with the perverse state of duality!”
“Rome was founded by twins!” cried Phillipa. “Does all evil then come from that city?”
Folques spun on Phillipa with an accusing finger. “This woman, a known heretic, conspired with the accused to prevent the baptism!”
Phillipa saw Esclarmonde stumble and falter. She broke through the cordon of guards to brace her and prevent the child from being dropped.
Almaric stood and took a halting step on his deformed leg. “It is the finding of this tribunal that the accused—”
“She must be allowed rebuttal witnesses!” demanded Roger.
Almaric turned his fearsome glare on Loupe, who stood at her father’s side. “Has this child been baptized?”
Esclarmonde silently begged Roger to say no more lest he place Loupe in danger. At Phillipa’s insistence, their daughter had not received the Catholic sacrament. For once, Roger acceded to his sister’s better judgment.
Almaric held no illusion about his chances for proving a charge of heresy against Esclarmonde at a full tribunal in Toulouse. But he wielded another cudgel of punishment, one that would admirably serve his purpose this day. “The unbaptised stillborn is denied burial in sacred ground. The son of the deceased Jourdaine of L’Isle will be taken into this church and christened in the true Apostolic Faith. He shall then be remanded as an oblate to the wardship of the Order of St. Bernard.”
Esclarmonde rushed the dais. “You’ll not take my child!”
Folques forced her back. “The baptism will proceed! Or your brother’s child will also be taken into custody!”
Mad with despair, Esclarmonde fell to her knees shrieking and crying. “I’ve not named him!”
Folques stole the wailing infant from Phillipa’s fighting grasp. “His surname has been chosen by the Abbot. He will be called Otto L’Isle, after his paternal grandfather.”
Esclarmonde clawed to break past the guards. “The son must also take the name of the mother’s lineage! It is the law of our people!”
“He will take the Christian name of his father.” Folques lorded his revenge over her as he cradled the infant to ease its crying. There was justice in God’s wisdom. This child should have been his firstborn. He would raise it as if it were his own.
Esclarmonde reached Montsegur several hours after midnight. Despite the debilitation of her illness, she climbed the crag with her swaddled dead daughter strapped to her back, forced to stop every few steps to gather strength. She finally reached the approach to the summit and found the small dolmen where she and Guilhelm had first kissed. The moon’s crescent seemed to dip in grief as if to confirm the destined spot. She knelt there and dug a hole with a knife. Coughing back tears, she placed the tiny body into the shallow grave. “The Church does not permit me to give you a name. Forgive me.” She heaved with sobs as she covered the grave with dirt and stones.
A few steps away, the cliffs fell off sharply. She looked down at the welcoming darkness. What blessed relief it would be to walk away from this world. The night would make it easier. She would be eternally damned, for all suicides were denied Heaven. But at least her baby girl would not be alone. She came to the edge and tried to push off. Do it, coward! Eyes closed, she released her hold on the boulder and—
Two hands pulled her back.
“Preparation for death takes a lifetime.” A hoary old man dropped the hood of his black robe, revealing a flowing white beard.
She fought against his restraint. “Let me die!”
He held her in his embrace until she calmed. “To seek release from this world is the mark of wisdom. But only if accomplished in the manner that allows one to avoid returning to the flesh.”
“Who are you?”
He smiled sadly. “You don’t remember me?”
The old man’s face suddenly came back to her memory—he was the Cathar bishop she had encountered years ago in Lombrives. “My God ... How did you know I was coming here?”
Guilbert de Castres led her from the precipice. “There is much suffering in this cracked world. You incarnated into this life to show others the way back to the Light.”
“My life is in ruins. How could I show a way to anyone?”
“Our people are prisoners trapped in a dark cave,” said Castres. “Like you, they are disheartened and blinded. Do you offer them a torch and leave them to their blindness? Or do you show them how to strike the flints?”
Esclarmonde sifted her fevered mind for an answer to the riddle. “The torch would soon go out. They would only be lost again in the darkness.”
“The Church of Rome begrudges us a few sparks and commands us to be satisfied with the dimness of our existence. The true god, the God of Light, would have us break the bondage to these priests who monopolize the spiritual sun.”
“What kind of God denies an innocent child entry to Heaven?”
“The God of Darkness,” he said. “The God of Rome.”
“How do you know the God of Rome isn’t the beneficent one?”
“The Master said the Almighty created us in His image. Would a loving father send his son to a brutal death to rectify his own misbegotten creation?”
“My babe is doomed to Limbus!”
Castres pressed his palm into the fresh dirt. “No, this precious one has been called home. Be thankful she did not suffer long.”
“She was sent here to die? Without even taking a breath?”
“If not for her sacrifice, would you have come to this crisis in your faith?”
Esclarmonde flushed with hope. If the heretic bishop spoke true, her daughter had not been consigned to perpetual darkness after all. Perhaps the babe’s suffering had not been in vain. As she looked back on her own life, she saw that everything taught by the priests of the Roman Church had caused her only pain and despair.
“Our sole means of escape from the cycles of incarnation is the gnosis that rids us of ignorance,” said Castres. “Rome insists that blind belief alone will offer us salvation. The Pope spawns sacraments for every occasion and demands remuneration to build his towers of Babylon. But his dogmas and creeds are designed to keep us enslaved.”
“These mysteries you teach ... Can they give me back my life?”
“They will bury your old life, not revive it. Our way leads to the ineffable joy sought by the Magi since the beginning of time. But its ascent is difficult and fraught with dangers.”
Esclarmonde looked toward the rocks, thousands of feet below. Had it not been for this holy man’s intercession, she would be dead. Here, on this pog, her mother had chosen the same path now being offered to her. “My life was meant to end here, on this night. That’s the only thing I know with certainty.”
“Then end it.”
“But you said—”
“Die and be born again in the Light.”
“How do I do that?”
“The first step is always the most difficult. You must cast aside the chains of desire and attachment.”
Esclarmonde hesitated. “There is a man I love.”
Castres took her hand and led her down the pog. “A greater love exists. I will help you find it.”