“I can see that must have pissed off Rome. But surely the Cathars weren’t powerful enough to have any real influence?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘powerful.’ Their power base, if you like, was in southern France, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the people of that region embraced Catharism as a very real alternative to the Catholic Church, which most people saw as wholly corrupt. The contrasts between the two religions were enormous. The high-ranking Catholic clergy lived in the kind of splendor you’d normally associate with royalty or nobility. But the Cathar priests had no worldly possessions at all, apart from a black robe and a length of cord to use as a belt, and existed solely on alms and charity. When they accepted the consolamentum, the vow they swore on becoming priests or perfecti, they surrendered all their worldly goods to the community. They were also strict vegetarians, not even eating animal products like eggs and milk, and were absolutely celibate.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.”
“It wasn’t, but that regime was only practiced by the perfecti. Followers of the religion—they were known as credentes—were allowed a lot more latitude, and most only accepted the consolamentum when they were actually on their deathbeds when celibacy, for example, wouldn’t have been much of a problem. I think the important point is that Catharism became popular in southern France precisely because the perfecti were so devout and humble. Significantly, the ranks of the Cathars were peopled by members of some of the wealthiest and most important local families.
However you look at it, the mere existence of the religion was a real threat to the Catholic Church.”
“So what happened?”
“At the end of the twelfth century, Pope Eugene III tried peaceful persuasion. He sent people like Bernard of Clairvaux, Cardinal Peter and Henry of Albano to France to try to reduce the influence of the Cathars, but none of them had any real success.
Decisions by various religious councils had no effect either, and when Innocent III ascended the papal throne in 1198 he decided to suppress the Cathars by any means possible.
“In January 1208 he sent a man called Pierre de Castelnau, a papal legate, to Count Raymond of Toulouse, who was the then leader of the Cathars. Their meeting was very confrontational, and the next day de Castelnau was attacked by unidentified assailants and murdered. That gave Innocent the excuse he needed, and he called for a crusade against the religion. The Albigensian Crusade—the Cathars were also known as Albigensians—lasted forty years, and was one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of the Church.”
“All very interesting,” Bronson pointed out, “but I still don’t see what any of that has to do with a couple of inscribed stones cemented into the wall of a house in Italy.”
“Nor do I,” Angela said. “That’s the problem. But I’ve got a few more books to look at, so I might have some answers by tomorrow.”
As the light began to fade, they started looking for somewhere to stay for the night.
“Our best bet is a small, family-run hotel somewhere. We don’t want anywhere that we’d have to use a credit card.”
“Don’t they want to see your passport?”
“Those old French government regulations were abolished some time ago. These days the only thing that matters is whether or not you can pay the bill.”
Twenty minutes later, they checked into a small hotel close to the center of a village not far from Evreux.
They had a late dinner, then walked around the village and found a small cybercafé
with half a dozen computers.
“I’ll just check my e-mail,” Angela said, and bought an hour of time on one of the PCs.
Most of the stuff in her in-box was the usual dross that everyone with an e-mail account receives daily, and she swiftly ran down the list, deleting reams of spam. At the end of the list were a couple from the British Museum staff messaging system, and she opened those to read them. The first was just routine, reminding staff of a forthcoming event, but when she opened the second one, she sat back with a gasp of shock.
“What is it?” Bronson asked.
“It’s Jeremy Goldman,” she replied. “According to this, he was killed today in an accident, just down the road from the museum.”
For a moment Bronson didn’t say anything. “Does it explain what happened?” he asked.
“No, just that he was involved in a road accident in Montague Street and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.” She turned in her seat to stare at Bronson. “Do you think it was an accident?” Her face was white.
“No,” he said. “And neither do you.” He swore under his breath. “First Jackie, then Mark and now Jeremy. I’m going to hunt these bastards, and, by God, I’m going to bring them down.”
17
I
It was going to be a long day: they both knew that. Bronson wanted to reach the Hamptons’ house in Italy that evening, a journey of a thousand miles or so, which was just about possible if they stayed on the autoroutes. They got up at seven, eschewed the hotel breakfast, paid for the rooms and dinner in cash and then left.
When Bronson had gone to his room the previous evening, Angela sat up in hers, searching through the books she’d bought in Cambridge. She was tired, but the idea that had come to her while she’d been staring at the computer screen in the third cybercafe’ in Cambridge was now making more sense.
Now, while Bronson drove, she explained her theory, referring occasionally to a pocket book in which she’d recorded some notes in her small, neat handwriting.
“I think Jeremy was right,” she began. “At least part of this puzzle is about the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, though perhaps not in the way he imagined.
If we assume for the moment that the verses in the second inscription were written about, or perhaps even by, the Cathars, some of the references do begin to make sense. The most obvious example is the ‘safe mountain.’ That’s an unusual expression, and there’s no obvious reason why anyone should talk about any mountain as being ‘safe,’ unless you’re a Cathar. If you are, the words are immediately recognizable as a direct reference to the citadel of Montse’gur: the name actually means ‘safe mountain’ in Occitan. It was the last major stronghold of the religion, and it fell to the crusaders in 1244.
“If you look at the first verse of the inscription, not only do the words ‘safe mountain’ make sense, but the first two lines probably describe the end of the siege itself: From the safe mountain truth did descend, Abandoned by all save the good.
“We talked a bit about this last night, remember? There were two general categories of Cathar. The priests were known as parfaits or perfecti, and the believers were called credentes, but what’s interesting is that neither of them called themselves Cathars. In fact, there are some suggestions that the name—it’s thought to derive from the Greek
‘Katharoi,’ meaning ‘the pure ones’—was only used by people outside the religion.
The Cathars almost always referred to themselves as ‘Bons Hommes’ or ‘Bonnes Femmes’—good men or good women—so when Montségur finally fell, you really could say that it had been ‘abandoned by all save the good,’ because the parfaits never left—they were executed on the spot.”