Blue Flame Read online

  Beatrice laughed, closed her purse, and donned her dignity once more. “Don’t be silly,” she said, settling her skirts. “That would be a complete waste. The only scent you like is dog!”

  “It is not!”

  But Beatrice only laughed some more. “Dog and dung, Yolanda. That’s you! Don’t you agree, Raimon?” She flashed her eyes at him, hoping for an admiring look. “Dog and dung. That’s Yolanda’s scent.”

  Raimon gave her a look. It was not admiring. “I like the smell of dog,” he said carefully.

  “That’s because you’re still a boy,” retorted Beatrice, preening. She looked from Raimon to Yolanda, back and forth, her small round eyes missing nothing. “My bailiff has a man’s nose.”

  “Is that why it’s so big?” Yolanda made a shape with her fingers. Beatrice flushed. The size of her future husband’s nose was something she tried not to think about. Raimon grinned and pulled Yolanda on. She was happy to be pulled. Bea was never cross for long and she was a good sort, really. Soon they would spend an evening surrounded by silks and linens, wedding headdresses, and glosses for eyes, cheeks, and lips. It was not an evening Yolanda would discuss afterward with Raimon, particularly as Yolanda happened to know that Beatrice’s mother had bought the wedding shoes from Paris. The people to the north were their enemies, but they had fashions no girl could resist.

  They caught up with Brees, his head almost submerged in the horse trough as he drank. On impulse, Yolanda dunked her own head beside her dog’s and set to, scrubbing at her face and hands. When she stood up, sniffing at her fingers, her cheeks were pink and streaked. “Do I really smell of dog?” she asked.

  “You smell of Brees,” Raimon replied. She had a tiny chip in a front tooth he’d not seen before. It gave a very particular tenderness to her mouth.

  “Is it horrible?”

  His lips twitched. “Well, that depends. There’s wet Brees and dry Brees, and Brees after he’s rolled on a dead fish, and Brees when he’s been lying by the baking oven. Some Brees is nice, some …” He made a hideous face. She looked and found herself in his eyes. He took a deep breath. “Do you know what you really smell like, Yolanda?”

  “No.” Her irises were mottled pearls in the bright light.

  “You smell like the sky.”

  She was slow to respond this time although she never took her eyes from his. “The sky doesn’t smell.”

  “It does to me.”

  She gave him a smile that began somewhere deep in her chest and pursed her bottom lip so her chin wrinkled and the cleft became very pronounced. He saw the chip in her tooth again and quickly bent to pat Brees. They walked on.

  The chateau’s fortifications, which seemed mighty from below, were in fact more decorative than functional, for the land (which to its original builders had seemed quite solid) had begun to slide away. As the stones worked loose and caused minor collapses, the townspeople quietly gathered them into barrows to shore up their own houses. Stone could not protect them against the unwanted attentions of roistering men-at-arms who were drunken in victory or the pitiless predations of retreating soldiers who were bitter in defeat, but if your house was of stone, when soldiers threw fireballs at least something would remain. Since there had been no roistering soldiers in Castelneuf for fifty years or more, the solidity of the houses and the collapse of the chateau ran in natural, almost organized tandem, much to the townsfolks’ satisfaction.

  As they neared the gate, unconsciously reverting to a habit of their early childhood, Yolanda and Raimon tailored their steps to the rhythmic clangs from the farrier’s forge. It had always been their custom that if you missed a clang, you had to eat a spoonful of pig swillings from the kitchen bucket. Raimon wondered if Yolanda was remembering the time Aimery had deliberately tripped her up and then made her honor the forfeit. How he had felt for her, even as he watched her gag and retch, for Aimery would not be thwarted. Yolanda was not remembering. She had chosen to forget. Instead she was wondering, as she paced herself, if Beatrice’s perfume could possibly smell as nice as the sky.

  A sleepy sentry opened the heavy gates for them and Brees bounded in, causing the chickens to squawk like twittery nursemaids faced with an armed man. Yolanda ran after him, growling in her throat. Brees shut his mouth but resented it. Those chickens were enough to tempt a saint. One day he would come in here alone and teach them a lesson.

  All three made their way over to the wooden steps beside the armory, climbed up to the small plateau on which the bedraggled kitchen garden rambled, and then up again until they reached the outside steps leading into the great hall. These steps were now so cracked that Raimon felt justified in virtually lifting Yolanda up the final three. She could feel his arms, tight as wire, around her and when he set her down, they were close enough for his breath to warm her cheek.

  “I’m sorry about laughing,” she said quietly.

  “I know.”

  They were easy again and Yolanda happily reached into his hair to pick out a twig. She had to use both hands, for his hair was thick as a field before the hay harvest. He did not object, but when he felt her fingers so deft on his scalp, he swallowed hard, and quickly pushed her inside.

  They were plunged at once into darkness, for beyond the high, narrow windows the hall had only two torches lit, and they were at the far end where the count was peering, with some despair, at a long parchment. When he saw Yolanda, he opened his arms. “Daughter!” He did not see Raimon at first, for Raimon hung back as she ran for her welcome.

  The count kept Yolanda close for slightly longer than usual. Tall of stature, slightly bent about the shoulders, he walked with the deliberate gait of a man who has carried full armor, even though he had seldom carried it out of necessity. His face was craggy, as befitted his age, yet had he shaved off his curly beard, once golden but now faded to no color at all, his character would have been evident in his chin. It was a poor, receding affair, which the cleft he had passed on so attractively to Yolanda made poorer still. His position as count had come through accident of birth rather than feat of arms, the accident having made him the oldest of three brothers when either of the other two would have done a better job. And he had been unfortunate. His first wife, Aimery and Yolanda’s mother, a French woman who loved him, had died five years before. Two wives had followed in quick succession but neither had lasted. One, quickly and unmourned, followed his first wife to the grave. The next Aimery saw off after she had confined Yolanda to her room for a week—without Brees—for saving a litter of unwanted kittens from the drowning barrel. This, incidentally, was why Yolanda glossed over the pig swill. Aimery’s kindnesses were arbitrary and few, but since they mainly involved his sister, she forgave him much. The count, however, was frightened of his son. What had once been a small boy’s charming knack for getting his own way had turned, after his mother’s death, into something rather less charming.

  The count’s long embrace was not lost on Raimon. It troubled him. It was the kind of embrace his mother gave him when the weaving shed had more men than usual. It was a parent’s reaction to something troubling. He moved into the light. The count saw him. “Ah, Raimon,” he said. “Aimery’s on his way home.”

  Raimon did not pretend to share Yolanda’s pleasure. The only time Raimon felt like an intruder at the count’s table was when Aimery was around. Yet he understood her excitement. It was natural for her to love a brother who reminded her of a time when their family was whole.

  “And he’s bringing a friend,” the count added.

  There was a less neutral silence from Raimon.

  “What friend?” Yolanda asked.

  “A friend he’s made on his travels,” said the count vaguely, but Raimon could sense his discomfort. “Sir Hugh of somewhere and he’s got a new squire, Alain something. I’ve ordered sixteen ducks, a goose, and a sheep to be slaughtered. Will that be enough for the homecoming feast, do you think? Will Aimery think so?” He plucked at his beard.

  “Plenty, I should thin
k,” Yolanda told him. “When will they arrive?”

  “Before sunset tomorrow. Do you really think that’s enough? Oh! I’ve forgotten about fish. We must have fish. Should we have fish?”

  “There’ll be enough with the meat and fowl,” said Yolanda again, stroking her father’s arm. She hated his nerves. They made her nervous too.

  “And we will dine on the dais.”

  Yolanda paused in her stroking. They knew what that meant. When Aimery was away, the count sat among his household, with only a special platter and being served first to distinguish him. At these times, Raimon carved the meat and sat at his ease next to or opposite Yolanda. This would no longer happen. If Raimon ate in the hall at all, it would be below Yolanda’s feet.

  Yolanda sent him a look of powerless regret, but the look he returned to her was startlingly direct. Could she not see? Raimon saw at once. The reason the count was uncomfortable was perfectly clear. He already knew that Aimery’s visit was not just a normal homecoming but was timed to coincide with Yolanda’s birthday. After all, at nearly fourteen, she was already older than some of her married friends. This friend Aimery was bringing doubtless knew that too.

  Raimon moved purposefully farther into the light. If Yolanda felt about him the same way he felt about her, she must say so right now. He cursed himself for that clumsy kiss, but surely she understood? Surely he didn’t have to spell it out? There was so much they had never said because they didn’t need to, like when they both avoided telling anyone where they were going because they just wanted to be together. She must know what he was thinking now, she must, and she must declare that whatever the intentions of her brother and whatever the hopes of this friend of his, her heart was already taken. This would not make things certain between them, of course, but it would make them possible. Her father would not want to see her unhappy. And her heart was taken, wasn’t it? She did see their future together, didn’t she? “Tell him,” Raimon urged silently. “Tell him.”

  Though she felt his wordless pressure, Yolanda remained silent. It was not because she didn’t love him. It was not because she didn’t want to be with Raimon. It was because she couldn’t help wondering, just for a second, if the love she felt for him was the deepest love she could ever feel. How could she tell, since she had met so few others? Certainly, her love for Raimon was far deeper than anything Beatrice felt for her bailiff. It was deeper than the love she felt for Brees, or the brief flutter she had briefly felt for Aimery’s first squire. Yet something in her shied away from so important a declaration, standing in the unlit hall with Raimon glowering at her. She knew he wanted her to speak. She herself half wanted to speak. But once a declaration was made she would start down a path, probably the path she wanted, but nevertheless a path with boundaries as paths must have, and she was not quite ready for that yet.

  So the moment passed. There was more conversation, but Raimon hardly heard it. When the count turned to domestic matters, asking Yolanda to scrub the dais table herself (since Aimery had been away the pages and grooms had been playing skittles on it using animal droppings for balls), he took his leave. Yolanda mouthed “tomorrow” at him, but he did not reply.

  He walked back to the lake alone, taking his time and kicking stones. Why was he such a fool? How could he ever compete with a warrior in jeweled armor boasting a warhorse and a squire? This Sir Hugh of somewhere would doubtless be here for Yolanda’s party. What kind of present would he give her? A personal slave from Egypt? A milk white pony from Arabia? He had nothing but a new dance to offer. The future seemed suddenly bleak. Their time together was over. Very soon, Yolanda would forget his existence, or worse, she would remember him with the same patronizing affection that he now bestowed on the wooden dagger and shield his grandfather had whittled for him one winter when they were stuck in a snowdrift. How he had once loved that dagger and shield and sworn he would never be without it. Now it lay in a chest and he occasionally came across it, always with pleasure but without real interest. When he got to the fat end of the lake, he skimmed a flint across. When it sank his face was stony.

  That night, although he was hungry, he didn’t go home. He couldn’t, he decided, for if he did, his mother would see at once that he was upset and he’d end up telling her why. It was not that he didn’t want to, it was just that he didn’t know how to. It would come out all wrong. She’d think he was ashamed of his home, and then she’d try and make him talk to his father. Sicart and Raimon did not get on. Raimon had no interest in weaving and Sicart had no interest in much else. And as for his sister, Adela, who was five years older than him, either she had been born ill-disposed or she had never forgiven her brother for surviving when all the girl babies before him had died. To her, Raimon was worse than a chore, for they both knew that their mother loved him best. Not that Felippa ever said so. She didn’t need to. It was obvious in the way she would sometimes just touch the top of Raimon’s head, or catch his arm when he was humming and they would dance for a moment or two. There were no similar moments with Adela. How could there be, he asked himself with all the irritable guilt of the favorite, when she was always so quick to find fault with everything?

  As he lay under the stars, however, the slight wind cooled his temper and blew in a little remorse. He should have gone home. His mother had been so ill lately. But then she’d been better yesterday, in her chair mending his cloak, with the usual loving impatience at his carelessness. He would go home tomorrow and collect it. He thought about that with pleasure. If he knew his mother at all, in the hem would be a poke of salt or a tiny horn bowl of paste for the cuts and bruises only she noticed. He rolled over, spreading out his limbs on the grass, wondering if she had felt well enough to bake.

  4

  In Which the Flame Shines Out

  Parsifal saw Raimon return, his gait slow and disaffected, and watched him settle in for the night. He also saw something that Raimon, deep in his own thoughts, missed. There were new plumes of smoke, and these were not on the horizon. They had crept nearer and were not fading away. Inside its box, the Flame curled over, hunched like a runner taking his mark. Parsifal scrutinized it closely. The Flame crinkled under his inspection, whether with amusement or worry, Parsifal simply didn’t know.

  He did not have a peaceful night, and just before dawn he gave up trying to sleep, left the cave, and started to climb farther up the hill. He could still see the smoke billowing in a random predawn air current, but was glad that it seemed no nearer. As usual, he had the Flame in its pouch in a sling over his shoulders and he climbed for another twenty minutes before he stopped to draw breath and look over the shrouded valley with Castelneuf sleeping at its neck. Quite unexpectedly, he became conscious of a patch of heat, uncomfortably hot, on his back. He twisted around. In all the miles he had traveled, the pouch containing the Flame had never flared up like that before, and at first he wondered if he had packed it badly.

  He changed its position and carried on climbing, but very soon was obliged to stop and take off his bundle completely to find that not only was the sack hot, it was so scorched it seemed likely to combust at any moment. There seemed little else to do but undo it and pull out the box. Parsifal expected it to be blackened, but it was not. The delicate filigree was untouched, though the same could not be said for the leaves that Parsifal used to disguise the Flame’s color. These were burned to gossamer skeletons and Parsifal had to watch, with increasing alarm, as their red flames quickly turned to blue. He tried to shield the conflagration with his cloak but the tiny Flame seemed too big for that. Instead of being absorbed by the dusk, the blue began to swallow the dark itself, until the dark became the Flame and the Flame became the dark and Parsifal could no more hide it than he could hide the sun. Helpless, he could see the blue spreading away from him, like a huge ink spill, yet the color was richer than any ink that even the best scriptorium would have in its store. He could not precisely say when the Flame sank back into itself. One moment it was everywhere and everything, the next it
was just a small tongue on a silver salver. Gingerly, he touched the box. It was cool, and when he folded up a new set of disguising leaves, they remained green and damp. But after reconsidering, Parsifal took the leaves out. They were not needed now. The Flame had chosen to show itself. It was not his place to hide it again.

  Raimon was woken by the glare, as was the whole valley. He got up very slowly, partly because the color seemed to thicken the air so he could hardly breathe and partly because he was afraid that if he moved quickly, it would disappear. He was surprised to find himself unsurprised. It was as if the whole of the day before had been leading up to something odd: the smoke, the kiss, the Knight Magician. And just as a hound knows the hunting horn even if he has never heard it before, Raimon knew what the glare was.

  At first it made him tremble, for he had never felt anything so demanding or irresistible. But Raimon did not want to call out, or even to run toward it. He wanted—and wanted urgently—to dance, and so he began, with no preliminaries, leaping and spinning, swooping and diving like an odd-shaped fish in an airy sea, every pore open to the blue, breathing it in and breathing it out. At the height of the dance, he closed his eyes and saw Yolanda. In her arms she held a looped rope of flame that she flung out, making it arch like a bridge between them, not to burn them up but to weld them together. Then she began to dance too. Raimon’s vision was so clear that when he crossed the fiery bridge and put out his hand to take Yolanda’s and there was nothing there, he was caught off-balance and fell over. Only then did he open his eyes. He had tripped on a tussock and the blue was vanishing, trailing its glory over the notched horizon like a comet. Then, quite suddenly, it was dark, much, much darker than it had been before, as if the light of the world had gone out.