I pulled out my reporter’s notebook. It was well past the time I should have started taking notes.
“Do you mind?” I began jotting before he began answering.
“It’s 1244. The slaughter of the Cathars.”
“Yes. I know about that.”
“No, you really don’t. I would appreciate it if you would meditate on this tonight as you fall asleep,” he said, gesturing toward the tapestry. “The answer may come to you.”
“So then, let me ask you this: What does that odd-shaped yellow cross on red stand for?”
“Ahh, la croix Occitane—the Occitan Cross. Let’s see how to best explain this. In the Middle Ages, the Cathar yellow cross was a distinguishing mark—essentially a badge of shame—ordered by the Roman Catholic Church. Like the way the Nazis forced Jews to wear a yellow Star of David so that they could be identified and scorned. In some instances these were on a red background.”
“Weird that they would both use the same colors!”
“Not really. Herr Adolf was an occultist. He believed that Montségur was the site of the Holy Grail castle and sent archaeologist types to look for what he called the ‘mysterious blood.’”
“What mysterious blood?”
“The Cathar blood. Many of the Cathars were nobles who had chosen to give it all up and live as Jesus had. But their blood—and the blood of several of the Knights Templar, who had come to the village as hired mercenaries and ended up converting to Catharism—symbolized for Hitler the purest blood on earth. White, noble, warrior.”
“If Hitler didn’t believe in Jesus, what did he care about Christian blood?”
“The term Aryan derives from the Sanskrit word drya.” Yusef drew the word on a matchbook. “Meaning ‘noble.’ To Hitler’s way of thinking, you couldn’t get purer—or whiter—than that. He was looking for that blood, or at least that bloodline.”
“I’m astounded. Hitler sent people here?”
“It was reported and I believe it—on March sixteenth, 1944, the seven hundredth anniversary of the fall of Montségur, he had Nazi planes fly over Montségur in formations of the Celtic cross and of swastikas. It was his way of fulfilling a thirteenth-century prophecy that after seven hundred years ‘the laurel would be green once more.’
“We believe he thought the actual missing Cathar treasure was their bloodline. And he was almost right. It was blood all right—but it was the blood of Jesus.”
“And you know this … how?”
“On the eve of the mass burnings right here in 1244, four Cathar knights—two were female—rappelled down the backside of the sheer cliff face of Montségur.”
That’s what Maureen had been referring to!
“This, after a siege by the pope’s Crusaders and the king’s forces, numbering possibly ten thousand, that lasted about eleven months. Their brethren the next day walked willingly—women, children, men, and Cathar and Templar Knights alike—into the giant pyre.”
“Now I know why it’s the Pyre-nees.…”
He looked surprised. “What’s astounding is that these knights, under total cover of darkness, slipped away carrying that treasure. After the burnings, the troops sacked the village and found nothing much worth looting. For the soldiers, a very disappointing payday.
“The treasure, which they thought was the equivalent of Fort Knox, was nowhere to be found. Logic dictates that three or four people could not have rappelled four thousand feet down a sheer cliff in the middle of the night carrying chests of jewels and gold.”
“Agreed.”
“It had to have been small, unimportant-looking, and weightless—or nearly so.”
“Again, that’s true. So what could a group who divested themselves of all worldly things—”
“Even the Eucharist,” he said, jumping in.
“So then what could they have had that was so valuable that the pope’s and king’s Crusaders killed and burned and died for?”
“Nothing less than the blood of Jesus. The blood of the man on trial right now.”
“You mean, your son?”
“No, I mean the Son of the Son of God. I was only a guardian.”
“He carries your name.”
“But not my DNA.”
“Well, you should know better than me about that.”
“Yes. I do.”
I looked askance but he ignored me. “So you think they carried a chalice?”
“I never said that. What I believe, what we believe, is that something held an actual drop of the blood of Christ, but what it is no one knows.”