Summer lingered longer in these southern climes and the September sun was still warm on her face, the garden ablaze with fragrant, flame-colored blooms, the harvest sky above her head a brilliant shade of blue, even bluer than the eyes of Toulouse’s troublesome count. Once she found a bench, her dogs sprawled happily in the grassy mead, and she wished she could live in the moment as they did. If only she could keep her fears at bay long enough to enjoy the peace of Adelais’s garden without thinking of her brother and what horrors awaited him if he fell into the hands of the French king.
Unlike Eleanor and Berengaria, Joanna had met Philippe, three years ago in Sicily. He’d seemed smitten, had paid her so much attention that some thought he might seek to make her his queen. She’d known better; Philippe hated Richard too much to want to wed his sister. Nor would Richard ever have agreed to the match. She smiled, remembering how relieved Richard had been when she assured him that she had no wish to wed the French king. No crown in Christendom could have compensated for having to share a bed with Philippe.
Her dogs drew her back to the present then, running to welcome a man approaching the garden gate. She sat up straight on the bench, tensing as she watched Raimond de St Gilles enter and walk toward her. “May I?” he asked, waiting until she nodded before seating himself beside her on the bench. Ahmer and Star at once lay at his feet and she wondered how he’d managed to win them over, too. He was holding a single scarlet peony, which he now presented to her with a playful flourish. “I have been hoping for days to find you alone, Lady Joanna. I wanted to thank you.”
“You’ve no need to thank me, my lord count.”
“I disagree, my lady,” he said, with a smile. “Just between us, Archbishop Berenguer and Viscount Pedro have not shown much enthusiasm for ridding Narbonne of the Cathars. Yet neither one spoke up when I found myself backed against the cliff’s edge. You were the only one to throw me a rope.”
Joanna wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she remained silent. He reached down to scratch Ahmer’s chest and then surprised her by saying, “I hope your lord brother realizes that he has a pearl beyond price in his wife. Did you know she apologized for drawing the cardinal’s wrath down upon me? I assured her that he was already convinced I am halfway to Hell.”
“And are you? Halfway to Hell?”
“To hear him tell it, I am doomed and damned,” he said cheerfully. “I do not share his zeal for burning heretics at the stake. Jews have witnessed a few of my charters, which he sees as proof that I am unduly familiar with them. I much prefer the company of troubadours to clerics. I am more interested in repeating carnal sins than in repenting of them. And I do not believe the Almighty could have created a world of such surpassing beauty without wanting us to glory in it and in all of its earthly pleasures.”
“You’d have flourished in Sicily, Count Raimond.”
“Like the green bay tree?” he asked with a grin, showing her that, for a man suspected of heretical tendencies, he was familiar with Scriptures.
She shook her head, for she no longer believed that he was one of the wicked. She was not comfortable having him so close—close enough to see that he had lashes a woman might envy and a razor’s nick on his chin—but curiosity won out over caution, and she said, “Tell me about the Cathars.”
“Well, to be begin with, that is not a name they use. They call themselves Christians, for they believe that theirs is the true faith and the Church of Rome has fallen into the Devil’s clutches. I said they were gentle souls who rejected violence, but I never said they were diplomatic or tactful, and their names for the Roman Church include the Great Beast, the Whore of Babylon, the Church of Wolves, and my own favorite, the Harlot of the Apocalypse.”
Joanna winced at that. She’d heard the smile in his voice, but his humor would have been lost on the papal legate. She was beginning to realize that Raimond enjoyed poking a stick into hives, just as her brothers had always liked to do. “But what do they believe?”
“They believe that the material world is the work of the Devil and must be rejected. They think that Jesus was an angel, not the son of God, and it was but an illusion that he came before men in mortal form. That being so, he could not die, nor could he rise up again. The Virgin Mary is an angel, too, not a real woman. They worship our God, but whilst He is good, they say He is not omnipotent and the struggle with the Devil is unceasing. They think that human souls are those of fallen angels. They believe that we endure our Hell here on earth, and when I see the suffering we inflict upon one another, I am not always sure they are wrong about that.”