Rodolpho's Lament - David Cragg - Bog

AS freedom flourishes in Southern France in 1208, Pope Innocent threatens a Crusade to crush the Cathars of Occitania, the people he sees as threatening the church's authority.Fearful of the Cathar sect's rising influence among the Languedoc's population, he dispatches one last emissary, the devout but ambitious Dominic, to try to turn the rebels back to the Catholic Church and so reassert feudal authority.But death will stalk Dominic's every move as others unconnected with his mission are drawn into the dangerous web his presence creates, and their fates will be sealed as the loyalty and ambitions of Pope and nobles clash in a cataclysmic battle for power between the Crusaders and the Cathar nobles.The drive for dominance by power-hungry ideologies clash and like a whirlwind suck in all those in its path. So the English knight Guy de Rocheford will find himself inextricably allied to the older French man-at-arms Etienne.Their mission to rescue an enslaved farmer's daughter, sister to a Catholic novice, will throw them all into the path of the rising storm and link their fate to that of Dominic and his lonely battle.Their futures will be decided as the Pope finally unleashes his full authority against the rebellious ruler of Beziers and Carcassonne, Raimond-Roger de Trencavel.Details have been altered to suit the narrative. This is fiction, not an historical record.