Cathars

Carcassonne, South of France, 18th September 2005 (from ‘A Girl like Alice’)

In the ancient walled Cité, Bertrand Arnaud, head of IT at Aerospatialé Montcalm, waited for his contact. He had no choice but to mix with the tourist throng, whose ranks had been swelled in recent years, partly by the Citadel’s adoption, in 1997, as a World Heritage Site and partly due to a revival of interest in the Cathars. An unorthodox but benign religion, whose followers were hounded to extinction in the early 13th century during, what became known as, the Albigensian Crusade.

        Arnaud despised them all.

        ‘Heretics!’ he muttered to himself.

        To him, the Cathars had been justly put down by valiant soldiers of the one true faith. He would love to have been there. He would have revelled in the punishment meted out during the sack of the city of Béziers, when the entire population of 22,000 had been put to the sword.

        How glorious it must have been, to be a soldier of Christ during such a time. His eyes gleamed, behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, as he savoured the thought.

       However, it was some compensation to be able to carry the crusade into the present day and to have the opportunity to do God’s work, and bring divine retribution to one of the Devil’s own children. He almost retched when he thought of all the years that he had been forced to work for that creature, while he waited for yet another opportunity to rid the world of its abominable presence. Three times they had tried, three times they had failed. The bitch just would not die. He had been on the point of just walking into her office and shooting her, and then shooting himself, when it had occurred to him that, soon, there would be another... much better.... much more satisfying way.

        He almost jumped when a man with an American accent spoke softly in his ear:

        ‘Hi Bert, let’s go for a stroll.’

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