Blue Flame Read online

  The music died down only when Guerau grew tired and at the first drooping note, Gui, who had danced in spite of himself, ran back to his seat and sat trimming his nails. Yolanda collapsed, laughing, no longer a dryad or a flame, just a hot girl. She took a long drink. The wine had never tasted so good.

  “You will be here for my party, won’t you, Aimery?” She glanced sideways at Hugh. “And you too, Sir Hugh?”

  “I’ll stay if you ask me,” he said. “Are you asking me?”

  “Of course I’m asking you. We know how to be polite here in Castelneuf, you know. Let’s just pray that Uncle Girald doesn’t stay long enough to spoil it.”

  “But I am staying, little Yolanda, I am.” The voice was like stone crushing against stone and she swung around, feeling as though the hall fire had suddenly gone out. Her uncle had crept in behind her, his friar’s robe the color of dirty snow, his feet bare and bleeding, and the pilgrim’s scrip, which contained all his worldly goods, dangling from his staff. Thin and pale as a steel spike, he sucked all the joy out of the room.

  “Uncle Girald,” she stammered. Even though he was dirty himself, he made her feel dirtier. He had that unnerving ability.

  “Child.”

  She felt her father at her side and quashed the urge to hold his hand.

  “Girald,” Berengar’s voice was high and reedy. Though he had spent most of the evening preparing for his brother’s arrival, sternly lecturing himself that he was the count and therefore entitled to respect, he found himself, as always, amazed and disconcerted by his brother’s aura—not just of superiority, but of extreme importance. It was as if he breathed different air from everybody else, richer air, air that Berengar would never breathe, not even if King Louis were to hand him the crown of France. “Yolanda meant no harm. You are very welcome. Have you eaten? Jean, Jean, more mutton.”

  Girald turned on his brother. “Mutton, Berengar? Mutton? Does nobody at Castelneuf observe the Lenten fast? Do the sufferings of the Lord Jesus mean nothing to you?” His voice carried far, though he never raised it.

  Berengar put both hands to his forehead. “Oh my Lord!” he exclaimed. “Oh! The fish! I shall do penance, Brother. But come, sit. Have some water at least.”

  Girald’s feet, scraping over flag and rush, stamped out the dance and Yolanda edged away to the hearth and sat crammed up against the warm ashlar stones right inside the fireplace. Brees was there at once, a great shaggy barrier, and Gui and Guerau squeezed in beside her, one on either side. When Girald came past, they breathed in but Brees growled, causing Girald to bend down. He inspected the dog from his nose to the tip of his tail, but the thing that frightened Yolanda most was that although Brees’s teeth were showing, Girald never flinched.

  At last he passed on and drank from a barrel before allowing himself to sit down and accept a crust of bread. His teeth clicked as he chewed, for the bread was hard. Not that that mattered, for there was no pleasure in his eating. To him, food was not an evil, as it was to the White Wolf, but it was a weakness and during Lent it was only to be consumed to keep a body upright. As soon as the crust had scraped down his throat, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “You know why I’m here, Berengar.” His voice rasped and he pushed the thick gold band he wore on his fourth finger around and around. The ring was too tight, and as he turned it, it ground a groove, creating two swollen mounds of skin. He rejoiced in the pain. “I am come, Brother, to claim the Flame, which has appeared in time to welcome me in my new role.” He paused. His stomach was not good, and he wanted it to settle. It would not, so he went on anyway. “I come with God’s blessing, for with the recommendation of the cardinals in Rome, I am named as inquisitor for this area.”

  Berengar froze. “As inquisitor?”

  “Yes, Brother. This time of laxity is past. The blue dawn tells us that those who profess to belong to the one true Catholic church must now show their mettle. We can no longer tolerate the heretic Cathars in our midst. For the sake of the Occitan, we must find them and they must recant, or they must die. If we do not, the Flame will abandon the Occitan, and we will all be lost.” There was silence. “Have you nothing to say?” The ring ground around and around.

  Berengar struggled and finally recovered himself. “It is an honor to have a brother chosen as inquisitor, dear Girald, but I really feel that we are too small, here in Amouroix, for your attentions. If what you say is true, you need a bigger, more important place than here. The city of Toulouse, perhaps? Or at least Foix or Pamiers?” He knew he sounded feeble. He wished Aimery would say something.

  Girald scrutinized his brother, then crumbled more bread. He wanted to eat it, but denied himself and dropped it onto the floor. No dog came near him to pick it up.

  “No, indeed,” he said. “The Flame has specifically chosen this place. It has been chosen because places like this need me most. You have allowed your people to grow careless, Berengar.” The servants who followed the Cathar creed began to sidle out and Girald raked each one with an eagle eye. “Yes,” he said. “You certainly need me and it should please you that I shall set up my court here in this chateau because by the time I am finished, Castelneuf and the whole of the Amouroix will be clean again. Won’t that be a good thing?” He went back to the barrel and washed his hands in it, sullying the water.

  Berengar was ashen-faced. “Brother, really. We live in peace here.” It was the best he could do.

  It was not good enough. Girald batted the objection aside as if Berengar, Count of Amouroix, were a small, irritating gnat. “I don’t doubt that. But peace and cleanliness do not go together. Can you deny that there are Cathar heretics in this town? Even in this chateau? Even in this hall? Can you swear on the Bible that everyone under your charge is faithful to the correct teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ?” His eyes roamed the hall again. “Do you not smell Cathars, Brother, those distorters of the truth? For I surely do.” At this, the rest of the servants, whether Cathar or Catholic, made for the door. Girald gave a colorless smile. “Guilt makes people run. But never mind. We shall dig out the dirt.” He scraped a long thumbnail into the wood of the table and his stomach rumbled.

  Aimery stood up. Berengar’s face lit with hope that was quickly dashed. “It is hard, Father,” Aimery said, “but we must accept what Girald says. We must consider what’s best for Castelneuf—and for the Occitan.” He avoided catching Hugh’s eye. “Even if it’s difficult, we must surely do what’s right.”

  “But haven’t we always?”

  “No,” said Aimery. “You’ve just muddled along, minding your own business.” The “you” was very pointed.

  “But we can do right without the inquisitorial courts! I beg you, Girald.” Berengar at last stood up and faced his brother.

  Girald stood too and fixed him with a special glare. “Are you happy to allow heretics to lead innocent souls to perdition on land you inherited from our devout father?”

  “Well, of course not, but—”

  “And are you suggesting that I, an inquisitor with the full weight of the one true church behind me, do not know exactly what needs to be done, unpleasant and uncomfortable as that task may be?”

  “I’m suggesting nothing but—”

  “Berengar,” said Girald, very slowly. “Are you denying an inquisitor of the Church his God-given authority? Are you saying that in matters of faith you, an ordinary man who cannot get to heaven except through a priest, know better than I?” Girald faced his brother, forehead to forehead, eye to eye. “Be very careful how you answer that.” Yolanda could scarcely breathe. “I’m waiting.”

  Guerau’s bladder pipe chose this moment to belch. It was a long, loud belch that trumpeted through the room in elephantine decibels. Who would have thought such a little bladder could make so much noise? But it cut through Girald’s menacing stare like a clown through a funeral oration. The mood of Berengar’s household began to shift. Somebody laughed, and when the bladder pipe belched again, they all joined in. It was mainl
y release of tension, but it was a laugh all the same.

  Girald pushed away from the table and grasped a torch. Pain stabbed his feet and legs as he walked swiftly back to the fireplace and thrust the torch so close to Guerau’s face that the troubadour’s hair fizzed and frizzled.

  “You scoff at me, sir?” He thrust the torch even closer, singeing Guerau’s eyebrows as well and making Brees bark loudly. Yolanda pulled the dog back as far and as fast as she could. “Shh,” she begged. She wished he was in the kennels. Girald should never have seen him.

  Girald was conscious of Brees but, for the moment, his interest did not lie there. “Tell me, troubadour,” he said conversationally, “have you ever seen a heretic burn?” Guerau’s breath was whistling through his lips. He couldn’t speak. Satisfied, Girald returned to the table.

  Now Yolanda climbed right underneath Brees for comfort and after a bit, though Girald sat in silence, she heard the knights begin to speak among themselves. Someone threw more logs on the fire. With warmth at her back, four legs tucked around her, and her head in Brees’s flank, some of her cheerfulness returned. Surely it was ridiculous to be so scared. If Uncle Girald did start rounding up all the Cathars in Castelneuf, they would just pretend they were Catholics. After all, how could God possibly care about that? And nobody would betray them. Girald could set up his court, but no one would be condemned. Soon he’d get fed up and go elsewhere.

  She sat beneath Brees until the meal was quite over, then she watched her father lead her uncle out of the hall, the lamps picking out the bones of Girald’s sunken cheeks. He carried not one ounce of spare flesh and the small drops of blood from his torn feet left red stains, like a skeleton who has stepped in a paint box. As she left the hall herself, however, she knew one thing with every fiber of her being. Girald must never get his hands on the Blue Flame. That, she knew instinctively, would signify the end of everything.

  7

  The Rain

  Despite Yolanda’s optimism, the atmosphere at the chateau altered at once. Now that Girald was there, scouting parties were sent out from dawn to dusk to find the Flame and Aimery spent hours closeted with his father as Girald set up his courtroom. Doors were closed in the chateau that had never been closed before. Aimery’s voice was loud, Berengar’s weaker and weaker. In the face of Catholic wrath, the count felt powerless. He didn’t want to go to hell, and this, so Girald assured him, would be his certain fate if he didn’t support the inquisitorial court. Nor did he want the Occitan to be lost to King Louis, which Girald assured him would also happen if the Cathar stain was not bleached out. Why was Louis coming in the first place? Girald constantly asked. As a Catholic Frenchman, he could not tolerate Cathar heretics on his doorstep. Aimery always looked at the ceiling at this point. Berengar, so unused to arguing, was outmaneuvered at every turn.

  Yolanda prowled about. She wanted to go to Raimon, but then she felt Girald’s eyes on her and became nervous. She had never really thought of Raimon’s family as Cathars before, but it troubled her now. Even so, it still seemed quite impossible to her, despite Girald’s arguments and his threats, that the inquisitor really was going to do anything but talk. That was our tradition, here within my boundaries. When necessary, the count issued a few warnings that were no sooner issued than ignored and forgotten. He would mutter for a day or two, then forget them too. That was his way and the way things had always been, so she hoped this atmosphere would last a few weeks at most and then Girald would move on.

  She managed to fool herself for several days, mainly because, though she missed Raimon very much, Aimery was being far more pleasant to her this time than on his other visits home. He even consulted her on household details, asked her to show Hugh the mews and the kennels, normally his favorite preserves, and sang with her in the evening. It was true that some of the servants disappeared and others were so jittery they constantly dropped things, but most remained in their posts, as inefficient as they had ever been. She did not like to think that this was because they had nowhere else to go.

  But then she learned from Jean that Raimon’s mother had died and the steward seemed unduly shocked. He’d heard she was getting better, but she’d died all the same. Forgetting everything else, Yolanda grabbed a shawl, and with Brees at her heels, hurried down the hill. She should have gone earlier! Now she must get to Raimon at once. She knew how much he loved his mother. This would be dreadful for him.

  She arrived at the Belot’s house with another mourner, which made Adela’s reaction all the more shocking and humiliating. Instead of being welcomed in, Yolanda found the door slammed in her face. Not only that, but as she walked slowly back to the main street, she met Beatrice making her way up the hill. They spoke, but Beatrice was so nervous that she didn’t comment on Yolanda’s newly combed hair, or say anything at all about the bailiff and her wedding. As soon as she could, she walked off and didn’t look back. Yolanda stared after her. Only now did she begin to understand that she had been living in a world of make-believe. Castelneuf’s innocence was already polluted. Girald’s very presence was causing poison to seep into the town like mercury down a well.

  She made straight for the lake. If Raimon was anywhere apart from his home, he would be there. At the town side of the river bridge, she found two guards had been set. It was troubling and reassuring in equal measure to find both were very familiar to her. Fat, burly Pierre, with his red face and ham hands, had served an apprenticeship with the Castelneuf armorer and Sanchez, leaner, with the look of a terrier about him, did seasonal work with the sheep. They greeted her, but they were busy cobbling a shelter together and showed no interest in where she was going. Nevertheless, once over the bridge, she ran until she was out of their sight, their very presence making her feel like a criminal.

  By the time she was out of the meadows and had broken through the trees into the valley proper, the day had turned into one of those where the clouds are a hanging blanket. It could have been winter again and she was glad of her shawl. It was not hard to find Raimon, but when she got near him, she found herself tongue-tied. From his disheveled appearance, it was clear he had not been home and she had no idea if he knew his mother was dead or not. He didn’t greet her and she held onto Brees tightly, suddenly afraid of Raimon—or for him, she was not sure which.

  He gripped his belt in a way she had never seen before. “Have you news?” His eyes flicked up and she knew that he had noticed her hair. She wished she had left it matted. She took a deep breath. “Do you mean about the Flame?”

  “No,” he said. “Not about the Flame. About my mother.”

  She clasped her hands together. “She’s gone, Raimon.”

  “Gone? You mean dead?”

  Yolanda dropped her eyes so as not to see his. “Yes, dead.”

  “Thank God.”

  Yolanda was shocked into looking at him straight. “You’re glad? How could you be glad?” Then her face cleared. “Was she suffering? I thought she just had the wasting disease. I didn’t know she was in pain.”

  He didn’t respond. He looked over her head, remote and unreadable. Brees jumped up and licked his cheeks. Still Raimon didn’t move.

  “Come! Come here, Brees.” Yolanda pulled him back but Raimon caught him at the same time, and sank to his knees, forcing Yolanda to hers. The grass was still soaking wet from early dew but she didn’t care. It hit her harder than anything had ever hit her before that over the last few days she had been playing games while his life was shattering. She hated herself. “Oh, Raimon, I’m so sorry.” It seemed such a hopeless, useless thing to say, even if she meant it from the bottom of her heart.

  He would not allow himself to weep. Instead, he pinched great hanks of Brees’s fur between his fingers while the dog beat his tail in a steady, sympathetic rhythm.

  The clouds grew heavier. It began to drizzle and then to rain. Yolanda’s face was awash with drops, not dazzling drops as they had been the day of the kiss. These were dull splashes, like poor-quality wax. Sometimes
the rain felt like that.

  “Raimon,” she said helplessly. It was hard to find any words at all apart from his name.

  He shook his head at her, a shake of such misery that Yolanda, quite instinctively, wanted to wrap her arms around him. But he did not invite it, so instead she wrapped her arms closer around Brees. Gradually his hand crept over the back of hers. She willingly turned hers over and when Raimon gripped it, she gripped his right back.

  “You should go home, Raimon. Your father and sister need you.” Her voice was close to his ear. “But you must be so careful. Uncle Girald has come and he’s been made inquisitor.” She felt him stiffen and held his hand harder because she didn’t want him to pull away and then look at her as Beatrice had done. “Did you see your mother before she died?”

  “I went home,” Raimon said. “I went home—” He found it hard to say any more.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’ve been through it too—at least—”

  “Yes,” she said, remembering the day her mother had died. It hadn’t made her cry for ages but it made her cry now. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, suddenly sobbing quite hard. “How can I be crying? I don’t want you to have to comfort me.”

  “That’s how it works sometimes,” said Raimon. He felt safe here, in this huddle, with Brees and Yolanda. Thank God for the rain. It made the huddle just a natural thing, washed away the awkwardness of that stupid kiss. Then his jaw tightened. Why was he thanking God? God didn’t deserve any thanks at all. He thrust away all images of the White Wolf, and all images of his mother as he had last seen her. He tried to imagine her only as she had been before she was ill, before the Cathar perfectus had cast his spell over her. The image wouldn’t come. He saw only her parchment skin, the dewy sweat, and that terrible, terrible smile of acceptance as the White Wolf pronounced her sentence. He held Yolanda’s hand so tightly that he knew he must be hurting her, but he couldn’t let go. “The Flame,” he said, rather desperately. “What are they saying about the Flame?”