Dear Reader,
It would be, perhaps in these times, best to grab you by the throat and strangle you into believing what I need to say. Unfortunately, for the moment, my pen must suffice, bless your throat. I cannot reveal where I'm headed, for my desperation to mingle with crowds can be directly related to the events at Montsegur, Carcassone...which, if you have not lost use of eye or ear, you will have encountered through hearsay. Noble and ignoble...
In most of these Catholic eyes, I am a Cathari, and barbaric French swords of the North have tended to treat me as such. Powerful armies under legates, of which there is one I shall forever hold in contempt - Amaury, march against defenceless peasants. I would have understood if there was even a modicum of decency behind these relentless fires, but I have forsaken hope when I could do naught but stand in tears as they slaughtered Beziers without regard for rank, religion or age. The fires of Beziers illuminate my hand as I write...but I digress terribly.
While de'Conti directs his pawns and his bishops, stretching long tenuous fingers like a grey serpent reaching out from its brood-lair in Rome, his name mocks him - Innocent, indeed! Yet, I'm afraid that events will serve to color my rendering of events in ways that I cannot correct without strenuous rewriting...and there is no time to edit. You will learn that I was taught a great many things that may draw surprise even in Albi. You will understand why I, being nominally Cathar, was as removed from it as the most far-flung long-crumbled religions of yore...though I may be wrong - I have always trusted Grey Turtle on these things...
To trust God is the ultimate trust. This I learnt...don't recall how far back, but it was the sentence I used where none other could serve. But with war in my own homeland, what can I do? I could engage those who threaten my home. But I am forbidden to do so. My - skills - and I hesitate to use that word, for vanity is not a luxury in the face of murdered friends - they are for another time. Another place.
If you are one of those whom I have sworn to enmity, it will do well to read what you face. If not, pray preserve this manuscript to the best of your abilities. On second thoughts, you may destroy it...better a burnt manuscript than another crusade.
I confess my inability to inform you of the frame in which I seek to fit my narrative, so far. Perhaps you are already aware of it, and for that I shall not apologise, for I have neither the humility or the pride left for it. I have killed my brother, and he lies dead not a mile from here.
I have begun a new travail, yet the old one would be incomplete without anyone to hear of it. With that...one more thing. If you are a historian, pray do not record my name as Iain Cross - I let go of it a score years ago.
Yours, etc.
Feral Hound