He stepped from the car.
He抎 dressed in hiking clothes. Nothing to indicate his rank or privilege. The jeans and boots he would wear occasionally when he took long walks in the countryside. It was important that he not be recognized. Thankfully, despite his exalted position, few outside the Catholic community readily knew his face. He wasn抰 sure what he was supposed to do next. So he simply stood in the fading afternoon sun and stared up at the pog and the citadel that crowned its summit.
He was not ignorant about what happened atop that needle of rock in March 1244. Fifteen years of revolt and repression ended when the Cathars there surrendered to the Albigensian Crusaders. Five terms were negotiated. Clause four provided that 揳ll persons in the fortress would remain at liberty, and would similarly be subject to light penances only, provided that they abjured their heretical beliefs and made confession before the inquisitors. Those who did not recant would be burnt.?Two hundred and twenty refused to recant. So the soldiers built a palisade of stakes and pales, heaping into it kindling, straw, and pitch. No time had existed to erect individual stakes. Instead, the defiant Cathars were simply shut inside the palisade, most walking in willingly, the sick and wounded carried to their fate. Fires were set at the four corners, which quickly raged. The only sounds were the crackle of the flames, the chink of weapons, the clergy chanting Psalms, and an occasional groan of misery.
Few cried out.
Nearly all of them left this world in silence.
The soldiers and executioners had backed away to avoid the heat and the pall of thick, blackish smoke. Those still remaining in the citadel high above had watched as the fires burned until there was nothing left but a raw, blackened mass, cindered to a crisp, the stench of burned flesh heavy in the spring air. Red embers lingered long into the night. How horrible that Christians could do that to other Christians simply because they disagreed on how to worship God.
But it happened.
Now bad things were happening to him, and something told him that the two events were connected.
He stood in the cool, late-afternoon air. From behind he heard footsteps and turned to see a younger man walking his way. Slim. Muscular. Black curly hair. Who stopped three meters away.
He decided to get to the point. 揑抦 here. What do you want??
揑 want nothing,?the younger man said. 揃ut he wants a great deal.?
A finger was pointed his way.
He turned to see a man emerge from the trees on the trail that led up over a thousand meters to the ruin. Between here and there was the open space that had come to be known as the Prat dels Cremats, the Field of the Burned. Where the slaughter had occurred.
The man stopped.
揌e抯 waiting,?the younger man behind him said.
Vilamur was becoming irritated, unaccustomed to being ordered about. 揥ho are you??
No reply.
揥hat am I expected to do??he asked.
揋o to him and find out.?
He turned back and stared at the figure standing about a hundred meters away.
With no choice, he started walking.
Bernat closed his eyes and allowed the ghosts that swirled around him to settle. He always felt different here. Though a lot of the stories about Monts間ur were more fiction than fact, embellished for the tourists, the reality was unchanged. Cathars died here on the authority of the Holy Roman Church. And though afterward the religion had not ended, it definitely diminished. It would take nearly eighty years before the last known Cathar Perfectus was executed in 1321. After that, no records of the Inquisition mention Cathars again.
They faded away.
Into the shadows.
Today, the entire Languedoc embraced them. But not as a religion. More a novelty. An idea. The word Cathar and its commemorative spirit seemed everywhere. On caf閟， shops, real estate companies, menus, wine, you name it. Strange, really. The whole belief system was effectively annihilated seven hundred years ago. No physical traces remained. No art. Monuments. Chapels. Writings. Little to nothing. What the church labeled a failed heresy and slandered, libeled, and distorted, modern society had transformed into a romantic legend.
In recent years the Catholic Church had apologized for the way it historically treated Jews, the repeated use of violence under the guise of religion, the Inquisition, the disrespect it had shown toward women and minorities, even the rampage of crusaders through Constantinople in 1204. But never had it explicitly stated open and sorrowful regret for the Albigensian Crusade. True, in March 2000 John Paul II issued a general apology for, as he said, all of the faults of the past. But no specific mention of Cathars was included. You would think the systematic extermination of tens of thousands of people, Christians killing Christians, would merit at least one mention.