Blue Flame Read online

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 Chalus Chabrol, in the Limousin, 1199

  2 Near My Town of Castelneuf, Amouroix, 1242

  3 In the Chateau

  4 In Which the Flame Shines Out

  5 The White Wolf Descends

  6 Sir Hugh des Arcis

  7 The Rain

  8 The Funeral

  9 Parsifal and Raimon

  10 The Trial

  11 The Bear Hunt

  12 After the Hunt

  13 The Dark

  14 The Theft

  15 The Party

  16 After the Party

  Author’s Note

  Also by the Author

  For Alice, in good times and in bad, with love

  Prologue

  The Greeting

  Last night, I thought I saw them again: Raimon, throwing out his arms to the wind; Yolanda, delighting in the clear water running between her toes; and Parsifal, sitting near Yolanda, polishing his father’s sword. I’m sure he was humming.

  And I did see them, I’m certain of that, for a place never forgets those who have loved it, and I am a place with a longer memory than most. I am the Amouroix—that’s pronounced a-more-wa (the x is silent, which is of no importance except to me)—set deep within the lands that roll off the mountains now separating France from Spain. That land is still known to some as the Occitan, or Occitania. The double c is pronounced x, making it ox-i-tan-ia. So I was A-more-wa in Ox-i-tan-ia. A pretty name, don’t you think?

  A map would be both useful and useless, for no map could show the Amouroix-in-Occitania that Raimon and Yolanda knew, and Parsifal too, of course. Maps have no interest in the winter ice and spring torrents, the sun-spangled noons and crisp evening chills, the engulfing cloud and the sharp, new-washed air that were my essence. No map salutes the stonemasons who, with rope and windlass, muscle and sweat, dotted my high crags with peerless, peering castles. Yet that’s the Amouroix that those who loved me carried in their hearts. It’s what matters.

  And then there is the Blue Flame. What map could tell of that? It is hard even for me to tell, for I only ever saw it once. Occitanians knew of it through stories handed down. They heard that it contained the soul of their land within itself and would one day appear. But though Occitanians sang of it and some even longed for it, they also had a certain fear of it, for when it came, if it was not used rightly it would exact a revenge, or so the story went. Who was to say what was right?

  I’m drifting, now, back to my town of Castelneuf, perched on a lumpy hill like a crown on the head of a tipsy lady. Raimon and Yolanda are there, and they are running. Raimon has lost Yolanda’s hand. Parsifal is there too, though he is very pale. There is a dog and there is smoke. But wait. If I am to tell my tale as it should be told, I must drift farther back and farther north, out of the Occitan at least for a moment, to show how the Flame came home, and what came with it.

  1

  Chalus Chabrol, in the Limousin, 1199

  Parsifal

  They were never going to give in quietly. Even as the knights fled into the round keep, their last refuge, they were shouting defiance. Even as they should have been praying, they were dragging heavy armor up the stone stairs with a clanking that should have raised the devil. Even as they passed through the chilly, cheerless chapel and crossed themselves in front of the dainty filigree box no bigger than a small candleholder, they were counting arrows. If Richard the Lionheart—king of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine—would not accept the terms of surrender they had offered, then blast him to hell, even if he was a heroic crusader. Their terms were unconditional, as befitted the terms of Occitanian knights, although, in the end, the terms were of course pointless, for whatever the knights said, whatever they did, it was quite certain that Richard would take the garrison. How could the ramshackle castle at Chalus Chabrol, in which they had taken refuge, withstand siege machinery built to reduce the very walls of Jerusalem to rubble? But the company, though it consisted only of fifteen knights, two archers, and a child, would make certain the Lionheart remembered it to his dying day.

  Only one knight, though brave as the rest, was not shouting. Instead, Bertrand de Maurand was speaking to his son, and the little boy’s cheery responses, even in the face of what he knew was to come, made the other knights smile their doomed smiles. What a knight Parsifal would have made had his mother not died and Bertrand given away his lands in a grand gesture to take the Crusader’s Cross, leaving his son in the care of monks. It showed such spirit that the boy had refused to stay there when he heard rumors of his father’s return, and had come instead, kicking the fat pony that was his special pet, to see if the rumors were true.

  “Well, I’m glad King Richard has refused our surrender,” Parsifal’s voice chirruped, echoing up the steps and then suddenly flattening out as he and his father reached the top platform of the tower, open to the skies. “He’ll have to take us now, Father, and I’ll be in a real fight.”

  His father was torn between shaking his son and kissing him. Perhaps it was as well that the boy had never seen a man hung, never seen the indignity of knights dying not in battle, using the full force of their strength, but lining up like beggars, their possessions reduced to the rope that would choke them. If Richard did spare Parsifal, as Bertrand had reason to think he might—for the king’s reputation, though bloody, did not include child-killing—he hoped the boy would be sent away before the executions began.

  A brother knight, an elderly fellow, had other concerns. Sending Parsifal to find an archer, he spoke gravely. “What are we to do, Bertrand?”

  Bertrand knew at once that his comrade-at-arms was not speaking of the child. It was not by chance that King Richard had journeyed at such speed into the Limousin, straight to this insignificant place, even though he had other, greater, battles to fight. Somebody had revealed their secret. Somebody had told him that the Occitanian treasure was on its way home. The identity of the traitor was of no import now. God would judge him soon enough. The only thing that mattered to Bertrand and his companions was whether to destroy the precious thing they had brought all the way from Jerusalem, or give it up. “Bertrand!” said the other knight urgently, even as he clumsily pulled on his armor. “We have so little time. I am resigned to dying, but if we are to give our treasure to Richard, let’s do so as men and not have it torn from us like babies.”

  Bertrand looked through the battlements. Richard’s camp was well set up, pennants flapping joyously over the tents as if victory was already theirs. Under thick, arrow-proof canopies men were oiling the joints of the siege engines ready for the next bombardment, a bombardment they clearly expected to be the last judging by the few stones lying about in careless heaps. They were not replenishing their stock.

  The besiegers’ warhorses were unsaddled and grazing, Sir Bertrand’s horses among them, for they had been taken by King Richard’s men as booty. Only Parsifal’s pony was standing loyally at the bottom of the keep. The besiegers had not wanted him. Parsifal had felt very insulted.

  On a hill pushing up through low trees, they could see Richard mounted on a fine bay stallion and surrounded by a gaggle of starstruck pages. He was personally supervising the erection of a line of gallows and Bertrand found his palms growing sticky. Only a fool or a saint can look at gallows meant for himself without his skin prickling, and Bertrand was neither. He turned back to his friend. “But if we do hand it over, Arnaud, will the Occitan survive?” Nobody could answer that question.

  Parsifal had wandered off and was now engaged in conversation with the arbalester, who, for wont of anything better to do, had handed over his crossbow and was teaching the boy to shoot a bolt. “Now crank up the ratchet,” he was saying. Bertrand could hear Parsifal grunting with effort
and found himself praying. “Dear God, spare my boy. Please spare my boy.” And as he prayed, he suddenly knew what to do. He turned back to Arnaud. “We’ll destroy it,” he said. “How can we let Richard have it? It would be like handing over not just the soul of the Occitan but our own souls too.”

  Arnaud held his helmet more firmly. “Shall I come with you?”

  “No. Wait here. I’ll be back before Parsifal notices.”

  “What does he know?”

  “Nothing.”

  Arnaud nodded. “Good. That’s good,” he said. “What he doesn’t know, he can’t tell. If the boy is spared, Richard will be left guessing what has happened to the prize he wanted so badly.” He laughed. “It will drive him mad. What sweet revenge.”

  Bertrand gave a grim smile, touched his friend’s hand, and descended into the keep again. He reached the chapel and could now clearly hear the rumble of wheels three floors below. Two men were calling to each other. At ground level, on the other side of the door of thick French oak, an iron-capped battering ram was being put in place, ready for tomorrow. No wonder King Richard was so successful. Everything was prepared in advance. Nothing was left to chance, nothing to the last minute.

  Bernard turned to the treasure and, as was his habit, knelt before it. He was not a man much affected by beauty but he had to admit that the wood of the filigree box was so finely carved it was difficult to imagine fingers delicate enough to have wielded the chisel. Then he rose and picked it up. The box was not heavy, for the treasure it contained had no substance whatsoever. It was simply a Flame, a perfectly ordinary looking Flame, except that it burned the most glorious shades of blue, and in it Bertrand could see reflected all the hope of the land of his fathers.

  Now that he had hold of the box, he wanted to crush it quickly, for he could not but feel it was a terrible thing he was doing. However, when the oil tipped in its fragile silver bowl and the Flame drew itself up, thin as heron’s leg, he hesitated and missed the moment. At once, he cupped the box in both hands and carried it out of the chapel, determined to drop it on the steps and stamp on it. He began to mount the steps. This one. Then perhaps this one. But still he held the box, with the Flame now shaped like a question mark. “Better to throw it from the top of the keep,” he told himself by way of an excuse. It would be some consolation if all Richard could gather up was matchwood.

  Bertrand climbed the steps more carefully now and when he reached the top, he walked over to the battlements, breathing hard. He held the box between his fingers, poised. But before he had quite let go, he heard a wild roar and, above it, a short, sharp squeal, like a falcon taken by surprise. The box rocked, the Flame wavered and turned turquoise, but Bertrand stayed his hand. The arbalester came running. “Parsifal,” he cried. “Parsifal!”

  Bertrand stood frozen, as if he were turned to stone.

  “Sir.” The archer was grinning so widely that his face nearly split. “Sir, Parsifal has shot the king!”

  Bertrand dropped the box, which was caught by Arnaud, ran to his son, and followed Parsifal’s eyes downward. The king, unmistakable in his surcoat of white and red, was still on his horse, but sat decidedly lopsided. Even from above, it was easy to see the crossbow bolt now lodged between his neck and hunching shoulder. Bertrand seized his son’s arm. “Did you do that?”

  “I didn’t mean to, Father.” The boy’s lips were trembling. “I never imagined I’d hit the king. I’ve missed everything else up to now.”

  “He has, he has,” nodded the arbalester, “but that was a sure shot if ever I saw one.”

  Parsifal could hardly take it in. “What will happen, Father?”

  Bertrand regarded his son as his world shifted on its axis, and then he held him as close as his hauberk would allow. It was a long moment before he let go and looked over the parapet again, leaning out to get a better view. “You’ve not killed him, Parsifal. Look! He’s still riding. He’s just injured.” Bertrand’s relief was palpable. To kill a king was a terrible thing indeed for a boy to have on his conscience. He and Parsifal watched together until they saw Richard order the panicking sentries back to their posts. Then, as he was attempting to pull the crossbolt out, he inadvertently snapped off the shaft.

  Only now did Bertrand gasp and wring his hands until his knuckles turned white. For knights well versed in injury, that snap of the shaft was like the crack of doom. The snap meant that the bolt head was still embedded in the flesh, and though nothing in Richard’s demeanor had changed, it sent a gangrenous shiver through Bertrand’s stomach. The bolt head would work like poison. Short of a miracle, the king would die. When he spoke again, his voice was quite different, almost as if he and his son were strangers. “Listen to me, Parsifal. Listen and obey. Don’t argue, just promise me on your mother’s life to do exactly as I say.”

  “I don’t …” Parsifal was still glancing back at the king.

  Bertrand shook him. “Never mind the king. Look at me.” There was no warmth at all in Bertrand’s eyes. The boy was terrified but Bertrand did not relax his grip. “If the king dies, the fate of the man who shot the bolt will be beyond imagining and I won’t, under any circumstances, allow that fate to be yours. When you have a son, you will know why.”

  “But you said—”

  “Never mind what I said.” Bertrand peered over the battlements again, more cautiously this time. Richard, swaying slightly, had dismounted and was retreating to his tent. Bertrand could see the apothecary hurrying over, and the farrier with pliers, and they could all hear the young pages squawking like chickens. At news of the king’s plight, everything else was forgotten. Stacks of spears were left unguarded, piles of shields uncovered, and tent flaps open. The grooms had left the warhorses, who moved uneasily on their tethers. Even the pack animals, sensing calamity, raised their heads from their endless eating. Only Parsifal’s pony took no notice. It simply looked up at the tower and whinnied, as it had been doing since daybreak. It was missing Parsifal’s treat-filled pouch.

  Bertrand was still holding his son when Arnaud appeared. Both men were thinking the same thing. “It might be possible,” Bertrand murmured. Arnaud nodded. “We must try.”

  Bertrand put one hand on each of Parsifal’s shoulders. The boy could feel the weight, as if his father’s whole presence was pressing down on him. “My son,” Bernard said, and his voice was even deeper than usual, “I’m going to tell you something of very great importance, but before I do, I want you to promise me something.”

  “Anything, Father,” the boy whispered. It seemed the right thing to say.

  “Very well then. You must promise me that whatever happens, if anybody asks, anybody at all, you will say that it was I who shot Richard, not you. That is what you say. You say that I, Sir Bertrand de Maurand, your unfortunate father, fired the crossbolt that hit the king. Do you understand?” His grip was as tight as a vulture’s. He repeated again, “I took the crossbow from our archer friend here, and I shot it. Now you repeat that. Repeat it, I order you.”

  Parsifal did not want to, but the weight of his father was too much. It came out as a breath.

  “Not good enough. Repeat it again, louder.”

  Parsifal repeated it again.

  Bertrand’s hands were a vise for a moment longer, then they softened. “Dear Parsifal,” he said, “now for the other thing. It’s very important. It’s also dangerous, but the king’s injury makes it perhaps possible. I think you can escape and there’s something you must take with you.”

  “But if I can get out, couldn’t we all?”

  “We couldn’t, my son. A small boy might get through Richard’s camp in this confusion, but not a knight. So, you see, this is a mission I can entrust to nobody else but you.” The father knew just how to appeal to his son and even in his fear, Parsifal felt a thrill. A mission! He would be like King Arthur of old. He stood taller under the weight of his father’s confidence. “What is it, sir?”

  Bertrand let go of his son’s shoulders, walked swiftly away
, and returned with the box. “This,” he said.

  Parsifal looked very disappointed. “That old box?”

  “This old box, as you call it …” He stopped. How could he thrust such a responsibility onto a boy not yet even big enough to carry a sword? He had to collect himself before he carried on. “This box contains the Blue Flame of the Occitan.”

  Parsifal peered at the box from all sides. “But the Blue Flame is supposed to be big. It can’t be inside there.”

  “Look,” said Bertrand, and he knelt so his son could see.

  Parsifal peered into the box again, and when at last he raised his face to his father’s again, his voice had almost vanished. “The Blue Flame of the Occitan! Can it be?” he whispered.

  “It is.” Bertrand was patient. This was too important to hurry. “We were taking it home.”

  “But I thought it lived in Jerusalem, in the tomb where Jesus was buried, so he would remember the Occitan and God would give us his special protection.”

  “It has been in the tomb, Parsifal, for many years. When the first Occitanian knights went on crusade, they took it there and we have been guarding it in Jerusalem ever since. But I was asked to bring it back, for the Occitan has caught the eye of the king of France. Even now, his armies are rolling toward her.” He paused. “The Flame must go home to save our lands and someone must take it there.”

  Parsifal relaxed. “I’ll come with you.”

  Sir Bertrand shook his head gently. “I shall not be going now. My son, the journey is yours. You must take it.”

  Parsifal paled. “Alone?” The Flame’s blue eye seemed to wink at him not warmly, as a friend, but coldly, like his grandmother used to when he forgot to kneel with her serving dish. It was not going to be a comfortable companion. “Why can’t I stay here and someone at home can light another one?”

  “Parsifal, Parsifal,” his father admonished. “Could your hero King Arthur use just any sword?”

  “No.”