The Good Christians of Montségur

Lyrics

A yellow cross sewn on a ghost.
I trace the scar where the castle was.
A question made of smoke and frost.
What did you call yourselves before the loss?

You were the Good Christians. You were the Pure.
This world, you said, was the bad god's mistake.
A trap of flesh. A gilded lure.
Just one true sacrament for the spirit's sake.
The laying on of hands, a quiet breath,
the Consolamentum against the coming death.
You wore a cord beneath the cloth,
a simple knot against the coming wrath.

Then the crusade wind began to blow from the north.
July, 1209. The gates brought forth
a cry that echoed from the burning church:
“Kill them all,” he said, “God will know his own.”
And so the Good Christians died alone.
The ash fell soft on Béziers stone.

You had your books. You had your perfects, your rite.
You debated them at Pamiers in the light.
You drew a line between the dark and bright.
And for this, they came for you in the night.
Your names were entered on a list.
The houses of believers sealed and kissed
with fire. Your children’s children taught to fear
the gentle heresy that brought them here.

They came to obliterate the word
that named the other, better Lord.
But I speak your name, Esclarmonde, across the pyre's heat,
and for a breath, the consolamentum is complete.
I sing the path down from the peak of Montségur
in the cold March of 1244.
Two hundred souls, walking to the flame.
This song is the un-forgetting of a name.

The yellow cross fades from the cloth.
A residue of faith and wrath.
The wind, it does not know your tongue.
It only sings where you were young.
It only sings what was undone.