She said, “They would have caught her even if she had stayed in Paris. Hugues said the Inquisition knew of her there. And if they had caught her in Paris it could have been at your house.”

He clenched his fists. “I wish they had. Then I could have suffered with her. Then she and I would both be happily dead by now.

“I came here to help save you, Roland. Not to hear you talk about dying.”

He looked into her dark eyes, and they were fierce. How full of fire she is.

“Nicolette, for all the hurt I have done you, forgive me. Please. I know you condemn me for… for Diane, but I cannot help it.”

“I do not condemn you,” Nicolette said sadly. “How could I after what I have done? To you, to our son, even to Amalric. You did what you had to do. I did what I had to do. Would I have ridden here from Beziers if my heart was still turned against you? Love is our sovereign. We cannot alter Love’s commands.”

He felt greatly moved, and grateful to her in the midst of his agony. That they could still love each other seemed a small but precious gift in the face of the horror of what was happening to Diane.

But the thought of brutal hands on Diane, of flames destroying her…

“They shall not burn her!” he said, clenching his fist.

Nicolette put her hand to her mouth, staring at him. “Roland, you are not thinking of trying to rescue her. It is impossible. Amalric has a whole army at Beziers.”

“He had a whole army at Mont Segur.”

“I did not seek you out to summon you to your death, Roland. Leave here now. Go to Outremer ahead of the King. The Inquisition cannot reach you there.”

“Nicolette, they are torturing Diane. The viper Hugues even tried to rape her.” Speaking it aloud sent a shock of horror through him. For a moment he was unable to go on. A sob bubbled up in his chest, convulsing him. He choked it down.

“Think you,” he said then, “I can just turn my back and sail away?”

“But what else can you do? You cannot help her. No one can.”

He struggled to envision some plan, but his mind remained empty, maddening him. “I saved her once. I can do it again. There must be a way.”

“Amalric and Hugues may be hoping you will try, so they can capture you, too.”

He pressed both hands against the tree, his head hanging down.

“Do you not understand?” He wrenched the words out one by one. “I would rather die than feel this pain.”

“Do you love her so much?” Her voice seemed to him to come from a great distance.

He whirled and seized her shoulders.

“I love you, Nicolette. To have you come to me like this — to touch you again — is part of the pain. Knowing that love is still alive between us. Knowing that if I were to live I could sail with you to Outremer.”

“If you live!” Her eyes blazed at him. “You have got to live.”

Her hands gripped his arms so hard she was hurting him.

“I cannot abandon her, Nicolette.” He sighed deeply. “I could not go on living if I did.”

“You might as well kill yourself now,” she said, throwing herself against him.

He groaned. The thrill of holding Nicolette in his arms again made the hurt in his heart worse.

He pushed back her hood and pressed his lips into her hair.

“I must try to help her. There is nothing else I can do.”

Her shoulders slumped as she gave up trying to persuade him. “Roland, when they take Diane into the plaza to burn her, I will be there. I will be there to mourn you both, if that is how it falls out.”

She pushed herself away from him and stood staring at him, her face pale with grief.

“Have you talked to Queen Marguerite?” he asked her. “Will the King go to Beziers to attend the burning?”

“He does not wish to,” said Nicolette. “Marguerite says he has no desire to see eighty helpless people burned to death. He will use the excuse that he does not have the time.”

“No one will believe that,” said Roland, his affection for Louis making him smile in spite of his suffering. “He has found time to make dozens of stops on our march down here from Paris. Why, he has just spent the last three days here trying to persuade the Bishop of Viviers to stop coining his own money.”

“At least he will not be there to see you die,” she said, her eyes full of reproach.

He wanted to hold her again, but he fought down the longing.

“Promise me one thing, Nicolette,” he said grimly.

“Anything.”

“Do not take the boy to see the burning.” He could not bring himself to pronounce the name Simon.

Roland walked with Guido Bruchesi in the kitchen garden of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon outside Viviers. Around them rose a wall of square-cut gray granite, twice the height of a man. Before them was the Templars’ command post, a stone house with a peaked roof and massive round towers, one at each corner.

Guido looked more monk than warrior this evening, in his white linen robe with the splayed red cross on the shoulder. He held Roland’s arm as they circled the fish pond that provided the Templars, who rarely ate meat, with most of their suppers.

“Your sister is to be burned as a heretic?” Guido’s bearded face was full of distress and compassion.

“You know she is not my sister.” In his desperation, knowing how hopeless any attempt to rescue Diane must be, Roland had decided he had nothing to lose by confiding in Bruchesi.

Guido said, “And you know, Roland, that we Templars serve the Pope. The same Pope who has sole authority over the courts that send people to the stake. So why do you come to me?”

“Because you are my friend. A man loyal only to the Pope would not have done the many things you have for me. And, for what reason I know not, you Templars have never persecuted the Cathars.”

Guido gripped his arm tighter and turned him around. They stood facing the commandery with its four towers. One of the mysterious Templar symbols, a single eye within an equilateral triangle, was carved over the doorway.

“What would you have me do, Roland?”

Roland felt like a trapped animal, throwing himself uselessly against the sides of a pit.

“I am not sure,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought perhaps you would be able to tell me what I should do. I want to try to save Diane. I am not asking you to help me. I would not expect that. It is just that… I must try.” He searched Guido’s warm brown eyes for help as he talked.

Ever since the night when they had wiped out the highwaymen, Roland had loved and trusted this man. Guido, saying little, seemed to understand much. Even though, like all Templars, he was a monk bound by vows, he seemed to Roland to possess a unique grandeur of spirit. Next to Perrin, Guido was Roland’s closest friend in all of France, the only one he could turn to now.

Guido put his hand on Roland’s shoulder and smiled sadly. “I am grateful to you for not asking me to go with you. It would hurt very much to have to refuse you. My heart is with you, though. Please know that.”

Roland sighed. He had, in fact, harbored a faint hope that Guido would offer to come. He had even imagined that somehow with the Templar’s help he might actually rescue Diane.

What is the matter with me? How can I think of myself now, while that poor woman is…

The horror that she imagined made her want to scream.

Only one thing I can do. Warn Roland. I must warn him.

XVIII

“Knights, you will surely be saved
If you take the side of God
Against the Arabs and the Turks
Who have so dishonored Him.”

Singing, the long black cloak he had worn nearly three years ago at Queen Marguerite’s song contest thrown back over his shoulders, Roland stood before his black and white tent. Perrin and the nine men he had enlisted for the crusade had formed a circle around him.

At the sound of the music, men stood up and began to drift toward them from all directions, swords and spurs clinking faintly. The bright reds and blues of their tunics were dusty from weeks of slow travel.

As Perrin blew into the shawm, his cheeks puffed and reddened till they seemed about to burst. Martin, the son of Lucien and Adrienne, beat the drum fiercely in time to the rousing martial song. The listening men clapped their hands in time.

Roland surveyed the tents out beyond his audience. They covered the hills so thickly that grass and shrubbery were hidden: nothing was visible but miles of peaked tent tops — white, red, purple, orange — glowing in the late-afternoon sun. Hundreds of white banners with red crosses fluttered against the intensely blue sky. Six thousand knights and ten thousand men-at-arms were camped out there, the huge army Louis had brought together for the deliverance of Jerusalem.

The army had been camped outside the city of Viviers on the Rhone for three days. It had taken them a month to get this far from Paris. The dry summer of the south had set in, and Roland watched dust motes drift through the air, flecks of gold in the sunset.

What a hypocrite I am, he thought, singing crusading songs to amuse the men, when I still believe this is all madness.

With Nicolette and Diane both lost to me, I have nothing to live for. Except the promise I gave Louis that I would go crusading with him. One does not break a promise made to that man.

“He who goes with King Louis
Will never have to fear Hell.
His soul will go to Paradise
With Christ and His angels.”

He came to the end of the song and bowed his head to the applause. Several called to him to sing more, but he shook his head.

“I am tired tonight.”

I am not tired, I am sad, he thought.

The men drifted away. A figure in black mantle and hood stepped out of the shadows nearby.

“Roland.”

He could not believe he was hearing her voice. He stared under the hood at the beautiful oval face he had loved so much.

Nearby, he heard Perrin whisper, “God’s bones!”

He looked around. The other men had gone back to their own tents. No one else saw Nicolette.

He had told himself many times how much he hated her because of the boy. But he felt no hatred now.

“Why are you here, Nicolette?”

“I have terrible news. It means your life. Will you talk with me?”

He realized that she must have feared he would refuse to listen to her, send her away.

“Good God, yes, I will talk with you.”

How far had she come to see him?

He led her away from the city of tents to a huge, twisted olive tree at the edge of an orchard. He saw no one nearby.

Beneath the tree he turned and faced her, feeling a wariness. Had she come to deliver some new wound?

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded quickly. “It is not me. Roland, it is Diane de Combret. They have captured her.”

He staggered back a step as if struck by a stone. “Oh, dear God, no.”

But he had been expecting this.

When I saved her at Mont Segur, it was only a reprieve. I have known that for a long time.

“Is she… to die?” he asked. It hurt terribly even to ask it.

“It is worse than that, Roland. They are torturing her. They have been torturing her for weeks, and they will torture her right up to the day they burn her.”

A black vertigo engulfed him. He reached out to the trunk of the olive tree for support.

“Why?”

Nicolette shook her head. “I know what you must be going through, Roland. I would give anything not to be the one to bring you this news. Hugues and Amalric want to force her to tell them who has helped her, whom she worked with. And they are after you especially. They suspect you are linked with her. Amalric still wants to destroy you. They will torture her until she names you.”

The pain in his heart was unbearable. He struck his chest with his fists. She suffers because of me. I saved her from death only to bring her to a worse death.

“Hugues even tried to rape her,” Nicolette said.

He groaned, unable to find words.

“Roland, you know what they must be doing to her. She will end by accusing you. You must flee now. Beziers is not even a week’s ride from here.”

Roland stood like an animal that had been speared but had not yet fallen.

He had to force his voice through his tightened throat. “Why do you come to tell me this?”

Nicolette started, as if surprised by the question. “Strange, I never thought about why I was doing it. It seemed I must find you and tell you. I know that you love her. I wanted to help both of you.”

The pain weighed him down so, he did not know how he could stay on his feet. His mind kept edging close to images of what was happening to Diane, then veering away desperately.

He stared at the clusters of crusader tents spread out through the nearby fields and orchards. He thought, Help us? There is nothing you can do, Nicolette, nothing either of us can do.

He looked at Nicolette and thought how he had hurt her by concealing Diane from her. How he had parted from her at Beziers, hating her. Even in the midst of this crushing grief, he felt a small spark of joy at seeing her. I still love her, he thought. And she deserves a far better man than me.

“You are very good to come all this way to tell me, Nicolette.” He groaned. “This is all my doing. After we parted at Beziers and I thought Love was dead, I tried to win Diane’s love, and I drove her away. She left me, to go back to Languedoc and be tortured and die.”

“Do not blame yourself,” said Nicolette. She reached out, and he felt her touch on his hand, light as a butterfly’s wing. Quickly she drew her hand back.

She said, “They would have caught her even if she had stayed in Paris. Hugues said the Inquisition knew of her there. And if they had caught her in Paris it could have been at your house.”

He clenched his fists. “I wish they had. Then I could have suffered with her. Then she and I would both be happily dead by now.

“I came here to help save you, Roland. Not to hear you talk about dying.”

He looked into her dark eyes, and they were fierce. How full of fire she is.

“Nicolette, for all the hurt I have done you, forgive me. Please. I know you condemn me for… for Diane, but I cannot help it.”

“I do not condemn you,” Nicolette said sadly. “How could I after what I have done? To you, to our son, even to Amalric. You did what you had to do. I did what I had to do. Would I have ridden here from Beziers if my heart was still turned against you? Love is our sovereign. We cannot alter Love’s commands.”

Nicolette’s skin crawled, hearing Hugues speak of her so.

She jumped back as she heard a sudden, sharp crack from within the room.

“How dare you strike a priest?” Hugues shrieked.

“I dare because I have more respect for the priesthood than you do,” said Amalric. “Never join my wife and your lust in your thoughts again.”

“I am no threat to your marriage,” said Hugues. “And I may even have found a way to destroy the man who is. Then you may regret the way you treated me.”

“If she had the strength,” Amalric said, “to stop you from raping her, she probably has the strength to keep silent under torture.”

“She does not,” said Hugues. “She used a spell to stop me. But there is no human being made who can stand up under what the skilled torturers I have hired can do. They have already begun. In a few hours I shall go back and find out everything.”

“And if she does not say what you want her to say?” Amalric asked.

“Impossible. We have almost a month to work on her.”

Nicolette felt sick. Amalric might be furious with Hugues for attempting to rape Diane, but he thoroughly approved of torturing her.

“When will you hold the sermo generalis?” Amalric asked.

“Customarily we keep heretics as long as a year to give them time to recant,” said Hugues. “Since we must soon go adventuring with our foolish King, I want this lot we rounded up recently done away with before we leave. I have chosen July twenty-second. An appropriate date, think you?”

“Yes, we should be sailing soon after that,” Amalric said, “but what is special about that date?”

“That day, in the Year of Our Lord twelve hundred and nine, God delivered this city of Beziers into the hands of our crusaders,” said Hugues with glee. “Our own father was among the victors.”

When twenty thousand men, women, and children were murdered in one night, thought Nicolette. God protect us from men like this.

“By mid-July the King and his army should have arrived at Aigues-Mortes.” Amalric suddenly grew enthusiastic. “We can invite him to the last great burning before the crusade embarks. How will his delicate stomach stand the sight of rows of sizzling heretics?”

Hugues said, “Think how it would embarrass him if Diane de Combret, at the stake, named Roland de Vency, a royal enqueteur, as her protector.”

If only I were a man, thought Nicolette, I would cut both their heads off.

“Remember,” Amalric said, “a crusader receives amnesty for past crimes when he takes the cross. I have word that de Vency took the cross over a year ago in Paris.”

Thank God, thought Nicolette.

“To be sure,” said Hugues, “but the revelation of this crime would end the favor the King could show him.”

“How it galls me,” she heard Amalric saying just as she also heard footsteps coming up from the first floor of the citadel. Quickly she left and hurried to the steps leading up to the bedroom. Then she paused in the circular stairwell to listen again.

There was a knock. Guy d’Etampes identified himself.

Nicolette stayed on the landing to hear what he had to say.

“The King and his army have stopped to besiege the castle of La Roche-Glun,” said Sire Guy. “The King accuses the Sire Othon de la Roche of robbing pilgrims and merchants.”

“Even in his own castle a baron is not safe from this meddling King,” Amalric grumbled, standing in the doorway of his chamber.

Nicolette withdrew to their bedroom. The girls were asleep on a bed on one side of the room, Simon in his cradle. Nicolette undressed to her shift and climbed into the big bed she shared with Amalric, drawing shut the curtains that created a private space.

Goddess, how can I hope to fall asleep before he comes to bed? I will feign sleep.

That poor woman.

Guilt seared Nicolette’s heart like a red-hot iron. She turned from one side to the other in the bed, trying to get comfortable. Here I am in a soft bed, and she is being broken by torturers. Could it be my fault? What if she left Paris because I found her at Roland’s?

Tangled in the sheets, she clenched her fists. Fear gripped her. She broke out in a cold sweat.

Roland is in terrible danger. By the time she goes to the stake she will be mad. She will say anything they want her to.

I must warn him. How? Where are they? La Roche-Glun, north of Valence. Soon they will be near our lands at Lumel. Could I tell Amalric I want to take the children to see my sisters before we leave for the East? Leave Simon there and send the others to Chateau Gobignon. God only knows what the Turks will do to us in Outremer.

What is the matter with me? How can I think of myself now, while that poor woman is…

The horror that she imagined made her want to scream.

Only one thing I can do. Warn Roland. I must warn him.

“You disgust me,” she spat at him. “Filthy! Dirty!” All her rage and pain knotted her stomach, and she began to retch. There was nothing in her stomach but its own juices, and she vomited the burning liquid into the straw beside her head. The stench of her vomit mingled with the smell of Hugues made her sicker still. He was clawing at her skirt, dragging it up, pushing his knees between her legs. Coughing, choking, she began to pray, to give her strength as she fought him.

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven —”

“Be still, blasphemer.” His fingers were prying between her thighs.

“Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven —”

He tried to put his hand over her mouth. She twisted her head free.

“Give us this day our consubstantial bread —”

“Shut your damned Bougre mouth!”

“And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but —”

His hands left her legs. They were at her throat now. He was strangling her to make her stop praying.

She seized his wrists and with the last of her strength she broke his hold on her throat.

She screamed it: “Deliver us from evil!”

Almost as if her prayer were answered, he fell away from her.

Suddenly, gasping, she was released. Relief, and gratitude to God, flooded through her.

“What have you done to me?” There was anger and panic in his voice.

“What have I done to you?” She echoed his question, bewildered, her voice quavering. Her arms and legs were trembling violently. Her stomach was still heaving. She expected him to attack her again at any moment.

“I have done nothing to you,” she said after a moment.

“You took away my manhood,” he said fearfully. “You shriveled me. You cast a spell on me. You are worse than a damned heretic preacher. You are a witch!”

“Perhaps,” she said, sobbing, “you were more ashamed of yourself than you knew.”

“Monster! Witch! You will wish you let me have my way with you. You are going to suffer much, much more than you would have from taking a man between your legs.”

She heard him scramble up from the straw and fumble his way to the door. The heavy wooden door opened and slammed shut again. Then his fine preacher’s voice was raised in a shout for the torturers.

She shook violently with terror and curled herself into a ball to try to still her trembling.

They are going to hurt me and hurt me. Oh, God, please let me die before I tell him what he wants to know. Do not, oh, do not let me betray my friends. Do not let me betray Roland. Let me die first. Please?

Little Simon held his mother’s hand with a strong grip. Nicolette felt proud that he could toddle now, on his stout bare legs, down the halls of the citadel at Beziers. He was handsome, with a cap of hair black as a raven’s wing and bright blue eyes. Looking down at him, Nicolette thought, he has Gobignon eyes.

He had made Amalric enormously happy, this child he had named Simon, after Simon de Montfort, the first leader of the Albigensian Crusade.

It was Simon’s bedtime, and, as was now family custom, she was taking him to Amalric’s council chamber to say good night. As she approached the oak door she heard voices, Amalric and Hugues. They would not want to be disturbed. She turned to go back upstairs.

Then she heard Hugues say, “As soon as she admitted she was Diane de Combret, I brought her back here to Beziers, where we can better guard against any rescue attempt. She is perhaps the only Cathar perfecta to have escaped from Mont Segur. I have been looking for her ever since then.”

Nicolette stiffened with shock. The woman at Roland’s house. Hugues had captured her, then? Was Roland, too, in danger?

“We heard rumors that Diane de Combret was among the Cathars in Paris after Mont Segur,” Hugues went on. “Indeed, we had set a trap for her in Paris, when for some reason she left there suddenly. We lost track of her for a time, until we learned that a woman preacher answering her description was active this past year in the county of Toulouse. What is most interesting is the possibility that she is connected with your mortal enemy, Roland de Vency, he who called himself Orlando of Perugia. When I spoke his name to her, she started like a frightened deer.”

Nicolette’s heart beat furiously. She gripped Simon’s hand tightly and crept closer.

“That man!” Amalric’s voice rumbled through the door. “He could have been at Mont Segur helping her to escape. Evil — he has the look of evil all about him.”

“The woman de Combret is a witch,” Hugues said in a voice so low Nicolette had to strain to hear him. “That I know for certain. “

“A witch?” said Amalric. “What do you mean?”

Simon started to giggle. It was funny to hear Papa’s voice coming through a door.

Nicolette pulled him away and hurried upstairs to the seigneur’s bedroom, where she and Amalric and their four children slept. She left Simon with his sisters and went back.

Even from a distance she could hear angry shouts.

“Do you not realize she could accuse you publicly?” Amalric cried.

“Who would believe her?” Hugues answered. “A condemned heretic.”

What are they arguing about? Nicolette wondered. And Roland, I wonder if he knows.

“Everyone would believe her!” Amalric bellowed.

The thunder in his voice made her nervous. Servants might be drawn by the shouting and find her eavesdropping.

Amalric went on, “Everyone knows priests are forever hoisting their skirts. That is why these damned heretics have made so many converts. I expected you to be above that. How can you risk your future by violating your vow?”

“What difference does that make to my future?” said Hugues. “Bishops, cardinals, even some popes take their pleasure with women. I have had dozens since I became a priest, and still I am grand inquisitor for Toulouse.”

Hugues could not have lain with Diane de Combret. If she would not lie with Roland, she certainly would never let Hugues touch her.

Roland. I do still love him, Nicolette thought. How can I not, when I see his face every time I look at Simon? How can I judge him after what I have done — taking his son from him and presenting the child to Amalric as his?

And now, what if Hugues finds out that Roland rescued Diane from Mont Segur and sheltered her in Paris?

“You will not be grand inquisitor for Toulouse much longer if your Dominican superiors find out you tried to rape a woman prisoner,” said Amalric.

Nicolette felt her body grow hot with rage. She could not help making a little sound of disgust in her throat.

But Amalric had said “tried to.” Then Hugues had not succeeded.

“I will not have you lecturing me on morals,” said Hugues sullenly.

“You will accept correction from me, Messire. I am head of this family, do not forget.”

“Oh, I can never forget that, Monseigneur,” Hugues said sarcastically. “By the luck of birth you get the title and all the land, and I must make my way as a priest. I am expected to deny my body’s needs, while you have a beautiful wife to go to bed with whenever you want.”

Nicolette’s skin crawled, hearing Hugues speak of her so.

She jumped back as she heard a sudden, sharp crack from within the room.

“How dare you strike a priest?” Hugues shrieked.

“I dare because I have more respect for the priesthood than you do,” said Amalric. “Never join my wife and your lust in your thoughts again.”

“I am no threat to your marriage,” said Hugues. “And I may even have found a way to destroy the man who is. Then you may regret the way you treated me.”

But how did Hugues know so much? Most of those she had contacted in Paris did not even know her name. Ah, but her appearance, that was harder to conceal. And if the friars’ records showed she was not burned at Mont Segur and they knew what she looked like, they could identify her from a description given by an informer in Paris.

“How did you contact your superior?” Hugues said again.

“I have nothing to say.”

“How long were you in Paris? Why did you leave?”

“I will not tell you.”

Again he stepped closer. “Where did you live in Paris?”

She did not answer. Her heart was thudding so hard that she thought — hoped — it might burst. That would be the greatest blessing ever.

Hugues said, “I will repeat certain names to you. You will tell me whether or not you know these persons. The first is Guillaume Bourdon, the bookseller.”

She felt as if she were hurtling down from a precipice. Oh, God, no! Not names. What if she recognized a name? How could she stop herself from giving it away? She dug her nails into her palms, praying that she would not betray anyone.

“No.”

He went on through a long list. Most were people she had never heard of. Some, to her horror, were members of her little secret congregations scattered about Paris. How did he know about them? His network of agents? Yes, he had said he had almost found her, too.

But why Paris? Was not Toulouse his territory?

To each name she answered no. He held the candle near her face, closely watching her reaction.

I am a fool to think I can best him. He is a master at this. She felt despair weakening her, draining away her last reserve of strength.

Then he said, “Roland de Vency, the troubadour. “

Involuntarily, her head jerked up and she found herself staring at him. Quickly she lowered her eyes and forced her face to relax. But he had seen, and when she looked at him again, he wore that triumphant grin.

Then the grin faded, to be replaced by another expression, almost like pain. She had seen that look on a man’s face before. More than once Roland had looked at her that way.

“You are a beautiful, intelligent, strong-willed woman, Diane,” Hugues said. “You are God’s creation, even if the Devil has twisted you to his purposes. I cannot help admiring you.” He moved forward and sat down beside her.

She shrank away from him along the curving wall of the chamber.

“Diane, a priest is still a man. And a perfecta is still a woman, eh?” He seemed to be trying to laugh, but it came out as a series of hoarse grunts. She saw sweat gleaming on his forehead in the candlelight. He was losing his composure.

“I know you are pure, Diane. But have you never loved a man? Wanted one? Wondered what it was like? You must have. I want you because you are so pure — so untouched. Will you let me do what I want? I can help you. Think of the power I have. I can say a word, and you will not suffer at all. If you are very good to me, I can even save your life.”

His voice was soft, serpentine. And she felt disgusted, nauseated, as if she had suddenly found a snake in the straw with her.

Why had his mood changed so suddenly? Had this lust been lurking all the time under his stern inquisitor’s manner? Or did he hope to learn more from her by threatening her chastity? Did he hope that if he succeeded in persuading her to break her vow, she would be so weakened that she would betray her faith and friends?

“Come, Diane,” he said insinuatingly. “You have kept away from men all your life for all the wrong reasons. For a person like you to discover the pleasure of the body would be a small sin. It might even bring you closer to God.”

His false reasoning made her angry.

“God did not create the pleasure of the body,” she said scornfully.

He stood up. “You Cathars sin against God when you say that the body is evil. That is why God will forgive me for what I do with you.”

He blew out the candle.

God help me, if this priest tries to rape me, do I have the strength to fight him off?

“Even if you think me in error,” she pleaded, “you know what a vow of chastity is. Can you not respect my vow?”

“Respect the vow of a heretic?” His voice came contemptuously from the dark. “You made your vow to a false God. I may do whatever I want to a heretic. God will approve.”

She heard the rattle of the prayer beads wrapped around his waist as he moved toward her.

“Truly your God approves of rape,” she said, no longer caring how she might provoke him.

As he threw himself at her and bore her down, she realized that if only she had remained quiet, she might have, for a time at least, evaded him in the darkness. The smell of him, of sweat, meat, and wine, was hideous, sickening. He pressed his damp face against her, the stubble of his beard rasping her cheek. He pushed her onto her back and rolled on top of her. She felt his distended member pressing into her thighs like a club. He was panting like an animal. She felt as if she had suddenly become entangled with a rotting corpse.

“You disgust me,” she spat at him. “Filthy! Dirty!” All her rage and pain knotted her stomach, and she began to retch. There was nothing in her stomach but its own juices, and she vomited the burning liquid into the straw beside her head. The stench of her vomit mingled with the smell of Hugues made her sicker still. He was clawing at her skirt, dragging it up, pushing his knees between her legs. Coughing, choking, she began to pray, to give her strength as she fought him.