Turtle Reader

II

Diane’s heart felt leaden as she prepared to leave. Each face she looked at, she knew she was seeing for the last time. As if she were dying and they all were going to live on. Oh, why must I leave? Now, when all of you are about to put on the martyr’s crown, how can you cast me out? I want to die with you. I do not want to go on, stumbling through this world alone.

For years these people had been her only family. When she was a child, her faith was preached and practiced openly all over the south of France. The crusade was already twenty years old then, but the perfecti still taught crowds of people in the streets of great cities like Toulouse and Beziers, still won converts away from the Church of Rome. From the lords and ladies in their castles to the peasants on the mountainsides, over half the people were Cathars. Now this year, one thousand two hundred forty-four, might come to be remembered as the year Catharism in France disappeared. From now on there would be nothing but a remnant in hiding, having to sneak about. No, she didn’t want to live that way. She longed to throw herself down and beg Bishop Bertran once again to let her stay. But duty pressed down upon her like a mail shirt. It was burdensome, but it protected her from error. She quietly made ready.

Before long, Diane and Roland were standing on the northeast wall amid a group of perfecti. From a family that had taken refuge on Mont Segur had come a red and green costume for Diane, the tunic and hose of a well-to-do boy, an equerry. They had cut her hair short and tucked it under a cap topped with a long partridge feather. They had sewn the red cross back on Roland’s black surcoat, and had made one for Diane’s tunic from a gentlewoman’s crimson scarf. A rope to form a sling was tied around her waist and another around her knees. Roland was similarly tied.

“I am as helpless as a baby,” he whispered to her with that one-sided grin she remembered so well.

Tears welled up in her as she looked at the black-robed men and women here to bid her farewell. Dear Bishop Bertran reached up to her. She bent, made awkward by the ropes, and kissed the back of his hand, her tears falling on his white skin.

“I do not want to leave you. I want to die with you.”

“Your death will come to you when it is time. May it be a happy one. Go with grace, my child.”

Diane felt Roland reach out and squeeze her hand. His firm strength comforted her. But his touching her was against the rule by which she lived. A new anxiety chilled her. She was in Roland’s care now. What would happen? What might being close to him do to her? She had loved him greatly. If he had not fled, become a faidit, she might never have taken the consolamentum. She had to be vigilant.

Roland tugged at the separate ropes that held them, making sure they were secure. Then he gave her a gentle push. She felt a choking fear. Whispering the Lord’s Prayer to hold her terror at bay, she stepped off into the emptiness beyond the mountaintop. She could see no lights below to show her where the bottom was.

Her life was in the hands of those above holding the rope and slowly paying it out. The rope cut into her waist and thighs. To ease its bite she pulled her body upward with her hands, thankful for the deerskin gloves that would save her hands from being rubbed raw. Her arms ached. She was fortunate, she knew, that she carried very little extra weight. Only a small pack strapped to her back for the plain gold chalice called the Holy Vessel. A most sacred object, it could be borne only by one of the perfecti.

She looked up and, against the torchlight cast from above, saw Roland descending with his weapons and his mail shirt and the large pack holding two big books. He must be in much greater pain than she. And what a dreadful weight, too, for those above to hold, with their starvation-weakened arms. She prayed they would not drop him. She prayed, too, for God to give Roland and her the fortitude to bear whatever might befall them.

As she swung farther down she could barely see Roland. She tried to stay close to him and called softly to him from time to time. She felt better whenever she heard his deep voice answering.

Gradually she could discern, outlined by a diminishing field of stars, the black shapes of other peaks surrounding Mont Segur rising over their heads. She felt as if she were being lowered into the pit of Hell itself.

She pictured herself hanging in midair, hundreds of feet above the forest in the valley, and her stomach clenched. Her body swung slowly from side to side, and she hugged the creaking rope with desperate terror. Stabbing pains in her wrists and arms made her doubt she could cling to it much longer.