Paradise Red Read online

  “The apothecary says—,” Amalric begins.

  “I said I shall ride tomorrow.”

  Amalric catches Henri’s eye. Perhaps a ride will restore their lord to his normal self better than any quack’s preparation. “We can see what the hunting’s like around here,” Amalric suggests. “The hawks’ll be glad of an outing.”

  Letting go of the poker, Hugh clasps his hands together behind his back until the very last of the tremors have ceased. He sits on a bench, out of the light, barely hearing a word that has been spoken. “What’s the matter with me?” His heart quails. What happens if he begins to shiver and shake as he leads the knights in the assault on Montségur? Sweat prickles again, only this time it is cold.

  Yolanda is still standing in the doorway.

  “Leave us,” Hugh says to the two men. Yolanda turns, trailing her sage green night-robe. “Not you.”

  Yolanda stops quite still, holding tightly onto Brees. Hugh gestures for her to come nearer to the fire, for though she is warmly wrapped, her face is pinched and drawn. The gauntness adds a certain distinction. She looks older than her fifteen years, and she carries her left hand as though the wedding ring Hugh obliges her to wear is too heavy for her finger.

  “Yolanda.” This is not the moment for what he has to say. It really is not. Indeed, in many ways there could not be a worse moment but he cannot wait. He stiffens his back. He is Sir Hugh des Arcis, and he is her husband. He touches the signet ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. He will speak, and he will get his way. “Yolanda,” he blurts out more briskly than he means to, “I want a son.”

  He can tell that she heard him because her stillness alters in a heartbeat from mutinous to stunned. Even her dress no longer twitches in the draft. Brees whines and nudges her leg. Her only movement is a tiny pulse in the hollow of her neck. Hugh waits, and she keeps him waiting a long time.

  Lots of men might say the same words to their wives, yet Yolanda had never, ever thought to hear them. Indeed, in the five months since their wedding, Hugh, bowing to her wishes, has made no attempt to force the issue. More than that. He has been kind to her. Until her home was destroyed and he would not let her go, she had learned to think of him as a friend. Though she had married more than unwillingly, she had learned to wear his ring without fear, which is why this declaration hits her like a stone, and she is surprised to find herself still standing.

  Hugh is not looking at her. “If I die,” he says, “my family dies out with me, and I have lands, Yolanda, lands that need an overlord. Without a son, the king will give everything that’s mine to whomsoever he chooses, and the des Arcis name will be forgotten. Why should that be when I have a wife?”

  Silence.

  “Can you understand, Yolanda?” He takes a candle and kneels before her. Brees sticks out his tongue. Hugh ignores him. “Look,” he says, and he holds the light near the white streak in his hair. “I’m growing old.”

  She ignores what he’s trying to show her, glances at the great unmade bed and then at the door. Should she run now? Should she scream? If he so much as touches her hem, she’ll set Brees on him. They make a curious tableau.

  He gets up slowly, making no move toward her, and puts the candle down. She begins to breathe again. A cool voice inside her head tells her to think before she does anything. After all, despite the shock he has just given her, she does know this man. They have traveled together. They have even shared a chamber and remained quite separate, and it is not his way to use violence against a girl. But then, and the cool voice becomes less cool, this man wants a son and that is a powerful want, more powerful, perhaps, than any other. That kind of want might well override ordinary scruples. To get a son a man might feel justified in doing almost anything.

  She swiftly pulls an oak chair between Hugh and herself and clutches the back of it, unconsciously folding her skirts around her legs like armor. “I’m not your wife any longer. The bargain is broken.”

  “We’ve been through that, Yolanda. You are my wife.”

  She manages to keep her head. He has always been susceptible to reason. “Perhaps I couldn’t give you a son.” She tries not to sound pleading. “Perhaps I would just have a daughter. Perhaps I couldn’t have a baby at all. Perhaps even if I did, they would all die, like they did with your first wife.”

  A faint shadow darkens Hugh’s face. “Perhaps,” he says quietly, “but that doesn’t alter the fact that I want a son and that you, as my lawful wedded wife, should be my son’s mother. If a daughter comes,”—he shrugs—“I will care for her, of course. But I need a son.”

  She crosses her arms in front of her. Brees, sensing real fear, rolls a grumbling purr around his throat. “How could you even imagine I would agree?” She can feel the vibration on the top of Brees’s head.

  “A man can always hope.”

  She crunches her fingers through her hair and a lock snags on his ring. She tugs at it and then bursts out, “Please don’t do this, Hugh. You’re the king’s chosen knight, the Seneschal of Carassonne, the keeper of the oriflamme and the hero”—her voice is bitter—“of the destruction of the Occitan. You don’t need me. You can have anybody you want.”

  “I want you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  He is stung not by her anger but by her contempt. All her sweetness, the sweetness that first drew him to her, is turning sour. And suddenly he wants to hold her, to tell her that he loves her even though he knows that she will never love him. He wants to declare that though many women would be happy to give him a son, he wants her son and he wants that with every fiber of his being. He wants to ask why she cannot see how perfect their union would be, not just for himself but for the Occitan and for France. Together they could join north and south in love rather than bloodshed. They have been given the chance, as few others have, of creating something great because a child of theirs would be a beautiful and rare creature, a matter for rejoicing. Could not that make her forget Raimon and be happy?

  But he says none of these things because he has never spoken such words to anybody. How, then, could he find the courage to say them to somebody who does not want to hear them? Instead, he picks up a goblet from the table and is grateful when the wine makes him cough.

  Yolanda is trying not to shiver. Eventually she speaks again. “I didn’t think you were like other men,” she says, her voice surprisingly cool. “I didn’t think you would stoop to their standards. I didn’t think you’d treat me as part of your war of conquest.”

  Ah! She knows just how to hurt him. He takes another slug of wine. “As you observe, I am the keeper of the king’s oriflamme,” he says mechanically. “I have under my command two hundred knights and five thousand soldiers.” He stops. It occurs to him that if he is to do what he intends to do, he must actually do exactly as she says: he must think of her as part of his war of conquest. Indeed, he must suppress all thoughts of her as the girl he loves and wishes to protect from hurt and dream only of his future son, a honey gold child to warm his cold castle in Champagne. Once he has a son, he will let Yolanda go. Perhaps, in time, that will be enough to gain her forgiveness. He tips the last of the wine down his throat. “Do you know what Henri and Amalric and, I dare say, most of the other knights believe?” he asks.

  She does not move.

  “They believe you make me less of a knight than I should be. They believe you’ve turned my head. They believe you sap my resolve and cloud my judgment.” He pauses. This is as close as he can get to saying what he wants to say. He forces himself to continue. “They believe I should have had Raimon executed when I had the chance and that I should have taken you by force on our wedding night, as a proper husband would have done.” She reverses fast and flattens herself against the wall. He does not move. “Of course, had I done that,” he carries on relentlessly, “by now you might well be having a son, and we would not be having this conversation.”

  A log falls and he starts, feeling the panic rising again. The goblet fa
lls from his hand as he sinks down and grips the arms of his chair. The wave engulfs him, smothers him, then passes over. “Christ in heaven,” he says furiously. He glares at Yolanda.

  She is not glaring back. She has seen his weakness and is making one last attempt. “Nobody despises you. Your knights and servants admire you.”

  “Oh, don’t humor me.” He leans forward and wipes his brow on his sleeve. “You think that because their words are respectful I don’t see their expressions? I’ve led men for many years, Yolanda. I can tell what they think by the way they pull on their gloves.”

  Yolanda waits, then with sharp, determined movements, eases off her wedding ring and drops it. She has nothing more to say. She stands poised for a moment, then, when Hugh does not move to stop her, runs back to her own room. As she slams her door, the ring is still rolling.

  Hugh sits for an hour staring at it, and only after he hears the bells calling the monks to early prayers does he pick it up, touch the band where it touched her, and lock it in a chest containing other precious things. Then he goes to the desk. Carefully he moves lamps into position on a large map, already spread, on which is drawn a fortress amid the detailed contours of a loaf-shaped hill. Above the hill, his clerk of war has painted the Blue Flame. Hugh finds a page in the passage and sends him for fresh ink. No matter what his own preoccupations, the king has issued his orders, and Hugh must calculate how best to carry them out. He traces the hill with his finger, then stops. In the guttering candle, the Flame has taken the shape of Yolanda’s face. Her expression is harsh and unyielding. If she is to bear his son, he knows he had better get used to it.

  4

  The Convert

  At dawn two days later, Raimon pulls on his boots. Stepping over Sir Roger, he tiptoes past Adela, asleep outside the warmth of the tender circle of women, and notes with sadness that though she is not yet twenty-five, suffering and self-righteousness have shriveled her features. Her lips, which always displayed a disapproving curve, are a little crusted, like those of an old woman. He looks carefully at Metta. She sleeps neatly, her arms clasped lightly together and her pretty lips slightly parted as if hoping for a kiss. Raimon wonders at the endless variety of women. Yolanda sleeps like neither of these two. She sleeps either curled like an animal, her head rounded into her chest, or with her limbs at odd angles and her hair an explosion. Is she sleeping now? His legs cramp. He steps outside. If he is to put into action the idea that now nags at him, he must begin the preparations today.

  The sky is gray and promises a bitter day. He rounds his lips and blows out, pulling his blanket closer around him and wishing he had a better pair of boots. He sees the huntsman coming out of the kennels amid a swirl of hounds.

  “They’re so beautiful.”

  He turns to find Metta beside him, her hair unbrushed and without a cloak. At once he unwraps his blanket and throws it around her. “Here. You’ll die of cold. You looked completely asleep a minute ago!”

  She smiles her thanks. “I woke when you passed. We should share,” she says, taking the blanket gratefully, “or it will be you who dies.” She opens the blanket without any coquetry. Raimon hesitates for a moment and then they are huddled together.

  The hounds are sniffing about, finding places to do their business. The dogboys who are, as their name implies, almost dogs themselves, and to whom the huntsman is both mother and father, follow with little shovels. Metta laughs. “Our kennels were not so close to our chateau,” she says, “and we never had boys like these.”

  “They’re mostly orphans,” Raimon tells her, “or boys people reckon are a bit soft in the head.” They watch two collide as they both dive for the same piece of dirt. “See?” He whistles down, and the dogboys stop and wriggle at him.

  “Some of the hounds are bigger than the dogboys,” Metta observes.

  “Yes,” replies Raimon. “The bloodhounds could eat one quite easily for breakfast. The huntsman sometimes threatens.” A look of such horror overtakes Metta’s round face that now Raimon laughs. “Don’t worry! He loves them!” He finds it easy to speak to her. This, and her unexpected presence beside him, makes up his mind. His plan is not mad. It is rich with possibility. Perhaps Sir Parsifal himself is behind it.

  Metta blushes. “Tell me the hounds’ names,” she says.

  And so it begins. Metta will be Raimon’s ticket of entry into Montségur. He will attach himself to her and her to him so that when the visitors leave, he will leave with them and when they get to Montségur, he can stride boldly through the gate at Metta’s side. To everybody at the chateau, Yolanda has abandoned him for Hugh. Why, then, should he not fall in love with this peaceful creature, tender as a peach, whose gentle voice would be perfect balm for any bruised heart?

  He runs through all the hounds’ names, adding little stories as Yolanda used sometimes to do. Metta is quickly entranced. He is just pointing out Farvel, the huntsman’s favorite, when Sir Roger appears. “Metta!” he says reproachfully, “it’s too cold for you out here.”

  “Yes,” she says, “too cold for all of us. But Raimon had a blanket and we shared it.”

  “Nevertheless, go in now,” her father admonishes her.

  She smiles and kisses Sir Roger’s horny cheek before slipping out of the blanket and back inside.

  “She was just asking about the hounds,” Raimon says with casual innocence, although he knows his face is red.

  Sir Roger grunts. Below the hounds sing when the huntsman brings out a horse and swings on. A falconer, already mounted, falls in behind, and two more men armed with nets and bows bring up the rear. They are heavily muffled, and the falconer is swearing as his horse tries to keep its feet.

  “Oh dear!” Sir Roger exclaims as the horse slips and bangs its knees. “I suppose they’re going out for extra food. We’re causing a good deal of trouble.” He gazes anxiously at the sky. “I hope they get back before the weather closes in again.”

  Raimon, glad that Sir Roger has ignored his blushes, tries to reassure him. “They’ve an hour or two yet. I’m afraid you’ll not be going anywhere for a while.”

  “No,” says Sir Roger, a worry line parting his eyebrows. “I suppose that would be madness.”

  “Mad and dangerous,” says Raimon and wonders when Sir Roger will guess that, for Metta, the danger is in remaining here. His conscience twists, but he must get to the Flame, he must.

  Typically, it is hawkeyed Laila who first notices how much time Raimon and Metta spend together. “What do you see in that simpleton?” she asks him on the third evening. Snow has been falling since before dusk and now lies in a second or even third lumpy blanket over the ice packed below. Everybody totters gingerly, as if temporarily disabled.

  “She’s not a simpleton,” Raimon says. “She’s good and kind.”

  Laila snorts.

  For many days following, the sky, low and thick, wraps Castelneuf in a luminous cocoon of half light that gradually blunts the visitors’ impatience at the delay to their journey. There is food, there is comfort, there is Laila and her tricks, and, of course, there are always stories. Most beguilingly, in the fog of this half-ruined aerie, they feel beyond the reach of the ordinary world. Only Raimon is still as watchful as ever.

  “She’s not a simpleton,” Raimon repeats the following week when Laila again badmouths Metta. “She may not toss balls in the air and wear pointed heels, but that doesn’t mean she’s not just as clever as you.”

  Laila humphs. “Yolanda would find her very dull.” Their eyes clash. Laila’s lashes are splashed yellow, like a tiger’s.

  “Yolanda isn’t here,” Raimon says curtly.

  The girl grimaces. “When she returns she’s going to find things a bit different.”

  “You mean, she’ll find you as Aimery’s countess?”

  Laila does not even blush. “Why not?”

  “You don’t even like him.”

  “You don’t know what I like.”

  “You like making trouble.”

>   “You like making trouble!” She pouts and imitates his voice. It is all he can do not to shove her out of the way. “And you’re so perfect?” She throws back her head and her curls dance. “Why not admit it, Raimon. You’re just as bad as the rest of us, calculating your own advantage. I can only think that the ninny-girl’s father has offered you money to take her off his hands.”

  Raimon lunges but she easily evades him and skips off to find Aimery in the courtyard. Raimon does not follow. Instead he kicks at the snow because, as is her gift, Laila has struck hard where she knows it will hurt most.

  Yet he must continue his courtship. The Flame needs him and he cannot think of another way to save it. So he avoids Laila and allows himself some satisfaction as the pieces of his plan fall easily into place. Already, Metta seeks him out. Already she trusts him. Already their names are spoken in the same breath. Yet this, Raimon begins to realize, while it may ensure him entry to the fortress of Montségur, may not get him to the Flame itself. If he is to pass as the White Wolf’s friend rather than his enemy he will have to go further. Under Metta’s guidance and the canopy of love, Raimon will have to pretend to convert.

  The very thought makes his skin crawl and he spends hours wondering whether, after so many public and forceful denigrations of Catharism, any conversion is plausible. And even if it is, how will he cope with the snide remarks about having eventually “seen the Cathar light” he has spent so much time and energy denouncing? Will he be able to bear the look in Cador’s eyes or the gossip and sideways glances? Yet a conversion, which the White Wolf would be obliged to welcome, is a more certain key to the Flame than even Metta.

  He persuades himself. Metta’s Catharism, after all, is a gentle thing, quite unlike the evangelical implacability of the White Wolf’s. She never speaks of starving people to death or of leaping voluntarily onto funeral pyres. Though she might believe the world to have been created through evil, Metta’s God is not an arrogant seeker of revenge and punishment. Rather, he is the God of Love. If anybody, therefore, was to lead him to a new understanding of the Cathar faith it would be her.