“OK,” Bronson conceded, “but I still don’t see how any of that helps us. The Hamptons’ house is in Italy, not France, and even if you’re right and the second inscription does relate to the Cathars, the other one is written in Latin and is maybe fifteen hundred years older. So what possible connection could there be between them?”
“Well, I have a theory. It’s a crazy idea, but it does answer at least one of our questions.”
“Try me.”
“First, we have to go back to 1244 and the end of the siege of Montségur, when the garrison of the fortress eventually surrendered. It had been a long, hard siege, but realistically there was only ever going to be one result, and everyone knew it. On the first of March that year, facing overwhelming odds and with food and drink reserves running low, the defenders finally capitulated.
“Now, this siege had occupied a significant number of men-at-arms for months, and had incurred huge costs for the crusaders. Plus, the Pope had initiated the Albigensian Crusade with the specific intention of completely destroying the Cathar heresy, and it was known that some two hundred parfaits had taken refuge in the fortress. In almost every other case, the defenders of towns and castles taken by the crusaders were slaughtered without mercy. So what terms do you think the crusaders offered?”
“Probably a choice between beheading, hanging or burning at the stake?”
“Exactly,” Angela said. “That’s more or less what any impartial observer would have guessed. Would you like to know what terms they actually offered?”
“Worse than that?”
Angela shook her head, and referred again to her small notebook. “Listen to this. First, the men-at-arms—that’s the mercenary soldiers and others employed as the bulk of the garrison at Montségur—were to be allowed to walk away with all their goods and equipment, and would receive full pardons for their part in the defense of the fortress.”
“Well,” Bronson said slowly, “I suppose they weren’t actually part of the heresy. I mean, they weren’t Cathars, were they, just people employed by them?”
“I agree,” Angela said. “Ever heard of a place called Bram?”
“No.”
“It was another Cathar stronghold that fell in 1210 after a three-day siege, and there was nothing very significant in that. But shortly afterward, when the crusaders under Simon de Montfort tried to—”
“Simon who?” Bronson asked.
“Simon de Montfort. He was the commander of the crusaders at the time, and was trying to capture the four castles at Lastours, just north of Carcassonne, but he’d met furious resistance. To persuade the defenders to give up the fight, Simon’s men took one hundred of the prisoners they’d captured at Bram and cut off their lips, noses and ears. Then they blinded them all apart from one man who only had one eye put out, so he could lead his companions in a bloody parade in front of the castles.”
“Dear God,” Bronson murmured. “Did the tactic work?”
“Of course not. It only made the defenders more determined to fight on, if only to avoid the same fate. The castles did fall, but not until a year later. That’s just one example of ‘God’s mercy’ as it was interpreted during the Albigensian Crusade.
“Or take the massacre at Béziers, where some twenty thousand men, women and children were slaughtered in the name of God and Christian charity. Before the attack, Bishop Arnaud Armaury, the Papal Legate and the Pope’s personal representative, was asked by the crusaders how they could identify the heretics, because there were believed to be only about five hundred Cathars in the town. His reply in Latin was recorded as: ‘C?dite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.’ That translates as, ‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’ And that’s exactly what they did.”
“I didn’t know any of this,” Bronson said. “It’s just unbelievable. Anyway, back to Montségur. The crusaders were lenient with the soldiers, but I presume not with the Cathars themselves?”
“Wrong again,” Angela said. “The parfaits were told that if they renounced their beliefs and confessed their sins to the Inquisition they would be allowed to go free, but they would have to leave all their possessions behind.”
“In other words,” Bronson interjected, “both the Cathars and their soldiers were handed ‘get out of jail free’ cards. But why?”
“You haven’t heard the best bit yet. The first anomaly was the leniency of the surrender terms. The defenders requested a two-week truce to consider the terms—terms that, if they’d been accepted, would have allowed the entire garrison to walk away from Montse’gur unharmed. That’s the second anomaly: you wouldn’t have thought they’d have needed more than two minutes to consider their options, not two weeks. Anyway, surprisingly, the crusaders agreed to this.” She paused.
“And this is where it gets really peculiar. When the truce expired on the fifteenth of March, not only did all the parfaits reject the surrender terms unequivocally, but at least twenty of the non-Cathar defenders elected to receive the ultimate Cathar vow—the consolamentum perfecti—so condemning themselves to a certain and horrendously painful death.”
“When they could have just walked away, they opted for death?”
“Right. At dawn on the sixteenth of March 1244, more than two hundred parfaits were taken out of the fortress and escorted down to the foot of the mountain. There, they were pushed into a hastily built wood-filled stockade and burned alive. None of them recanted their heresy, despite being offered every opportunity to do so.”
For a few moments Bronson was silent. “That really doesn’t make sense. Why would they reject the surrender terms after asking for two weeks to think about it? And, especially, why did the Cathars—and, from what you say, twenty-odd non-Cathars—decide their best option was to scream their way to death in the flames instead of simply walking away?”
“That’s the interesting part. It’s also worth pointing out that even when chained to the stake, the heretics were always given one last chance to recant.”
“And then they could walk away?” Bronson asked.
“No, not at that stage. But as I said before, they would then be garrotted as an act of mercy rather than be burned alive. So what made the Cathars so sure of their faith that they were prepared to die in just about the most painful way imaginable rather than repudiate it?”
Bronson rubbed his chin. “They must have had one hell of a reason.”
“There’s a persistent story—I’ve found references to it both on the Internet and in the books I’ve studied—that suggests there was a definite reason for the delay in the Cathars’ decision to accept or reject the surrender terms, and also for their willingness to perish in the flames. They were protecting their treasure.”
Bronson glanced at Angela to see if she was joking, but her expression remained deadly serious.
“Treasure? But how could the deaths of two hundred Cathars by fire possibly help protect it?”
“I think—and this really is conjecture—that the Cathars were prepared to sacrifice themselves as a kind of diversion. They thought that once they’d died in the flames, the crusaders would be less inclined to mount a proper guard on Montse’gur and that would allow a few of their number to escape with their most precious possessions.
“And I don’t believe we’re talking about a typical treasure. No gold or jewels, nothing like that. I think their treasure was some kind of religious relic, an object of undeniable provenance that proved the veracity of the Cathar faith beyond any doubt. That might be enough, not only to persuade the committed members of the order to accept death at the hands of the crusaders, but also to convince the twenty non-Cathars to join them.”
“So the treasure wasn’t really a treasure at all, in the usual sense of the word?” Bronson interjected. “It was probably completely worthless in intrinsic terms—just an old bit of parchment or something—but priceless in what it proved?”
“Exactly.”