by K. M. Grant
“I have no squire at all,” comes the regretful response. “I let him go some months ago. He was a good lad, though.”
“If he was good, why did you let him go?”
The knight’s breath turns cloudy. “Oh,” he says vaguely, “my wife thought it best. He wasn’t really one of us.” He stops.
“You mean he wasn’t a heretic?” Raimon is quick to accuse.
Sir Roger doesn’t want to answer but the silence forces him.
“No, he wasn’t,” he says. “He was a Catholic, so we didn’t think it safe to keep him, either for himself or for us. You know how it is.”
“I do not,” says Raimon haughtily. “I’m neither Catholic nor Cathar. I am an Occitanian.”
The knight regards Raimon with more attention. “I wish more of us had the courage to say that,” he says, somewhat to Raimon’s surprise. “Indeed, I wish I’d had the courage to say it to my wife, God rest her soul, and to my son before he left home. My wife was a Catholic, you see, and my son still is. We’re a divided family, I’m sorry to say. Perhaps if more of us were like you, King Louis would be thinking twice before sending inquisitors and his army to finish us all off.” There is silence. The knight leans back, his melon skin wrinkling. The bearskin sags.
“So, you’re going to Montségur,” Raimon says quickly. A big man deflating is a pitiful sight.
Sir Roger sighs. “Montségur will be our last stand, both as Cathars and Occitanians. This is what it’s come to.”
Raimon kicks at the snow. “You’ll meet the White Wolf there.”
“So I’m told.” Somewhat absentmindedly, Sir Roger begins to make a snowball of his own, rolling it between soup-plate palms. It is the size of Cador’s head.
“I’m surprised Metta had never heard of him. Is he not a Cathar hero?” Raimon watches the knight carefully.
Sir Roger packs his snowball tightly. “A hero to some, perhaps, but I’ve kept his name from Metta. She believes our faith to be a gentle thing, as do many others. But he’s our leader now and since he’s called us to fight, what can we do but answer his call? He has the Flame. He calls us in its name.” He pitches his snowball against the remains of a far gatepost.
“Well aimed!” shouts Cador. “Oh, well aimed, sir!”
Sir Roger gives a rueful smile and begins to gather up more snow.
“Why follow where he leads?” Raimon asks, his voice low and urgent.
Sir Roger pitches his new snowball gently and then holds up his hands in mock surrender at the volley of Cador’s returns. “Where else is there to go now? Who else is there to follow? We’ve made too many mistakes to recover. Everybody’s going to Montségur.”
Raimon shifts. “Don’t you wish to spare your family?”
A spasm crosses Sir Roger’s face. “Metta’s life is in God’s hands.”
The old knight’s tone has Raimon exploding like the snowball. “Don’t treat me as you treat your daughter! What’s the matter with you?” He raises his fists, and Cador raises his also.
The knight’s watery eyes peer out beneath his badgery eyebrows. “I love my daughter,” he says simply. “I treat her as she must be treated.”
Raimon drops his fists, conscious that it is the height of boorishness to raise them against a visitor. “I’ve been rude, Sir Roger,” he says, his contrition cold but genuine.
The knight holds up both palms to indicate acceptance and dismissal. “No need,” he says.
They all gaze at the snow.
“You know,” says Sir Roger, seeking something—perhaps justification for what he has chosen to do, perhaps some reassurance—“it could be worse. At the final reckoning at Montségur, I’m sure the French king will spare our women and children and those of us who die will die for God under the Occitan Flame.” He stamps a foot. “And you can never rule out a miracle, you know.”
“The Flame won’t save the Cathars.”
“You think not? What will it do, then?”
“I don’t know.” This admission emerges sullenly.
Sir Roger pauses. “Do you never wonder if it’s you who’s wrong and the White Wolf right?” He contemplates his ragged boots. “But it’s true what you say about Metta.” He gives a deep and troubled sigh. “I shouldn’t have brought her. She should be at the beginning of something, not the end. She deserves life and love and children, not to be stuck in some fortress while the world dissolves around her.” He shakes and a whole mountain of snow falls from him. He begins to roll another ball. “Now then, Sir Squire.”
“My name’s Cador, squire to Sir Raimon of the Blue Flame.”
“Well then, Cador, squire to Sir Raimon of the Blue Flame. I’ll bet you think I can’t hit the top of that post. Do you see the one? On the right near the pigeon loft?”
Cador squints. “I bet you can’t. It’s too far away.”
“Too far, eh? We’ll see. Off you go and shout when you’re ready.”
Cador has to take giant steps for the snow is deep.
The knight watches, flipping his snowball from vast hand to vast hand. When he throws it, the ball hits the gatepost with an enormous wallop. “See,” Sir Roger says to Raimon with childish delight. “Miracles do happen.”
Raimon says nothing.
The evening settles and a kind of coziness prevails in the hall. Outside, a night wind gets up but in here, everybody, including the dogs, basks in the glow of the hearth. Gratitude for shelter, squashed though the shelter is, soothes everybody’s jangles, and as the world outside crackles and freezes, the talk is not of war or inquisitors or perfecti but of past winters that have come late and stayed long, of the qualities of oak or ash for keeping hearthstones hot, and of the sighting of an unexpected early bud on the alders by the river. Even Adela’s habitual glower softens into something more dreamy as the voices drift, rising and falling, occasionally speared with flashes of laughter. Bowing to repeated requests, Gui and Guerau, the Castelneuf troubadours, gather themselves and begin to chant a winter tale so familiar that people only half listen. Eventually, their voices fall away. Then, Laila rises. Without a word, she breaks the sleepy spell, leaving Aimery shaking his head in disbelief and the visitors gasping.
The girl’s hair is stark white this evening, in honor of the snow, and her skin ice blue. She has painted Ugly silver and the dog shimmers beside her mistress, looking faintly shy. Laila, not shy at all, stands on a trestle and stretches her spiky arms, one up and one down, palms flat like a Hindu goddess. Ugly sits below and begins to lick herself clean, so that soon her tongue and teeth are as silver as her coat. She glances unhappily at her mistress. She’ll surely be punished for this, but Laila has forgotten all about her.
By the very force of her own silence, the girl forces silence on the hall and then begins to mime the story of a winter star who falls to earth and is trapped under a stone by a ponderous mountain god. The star pleads for her freedom, and the god says he will grant it if she will dance for him. But as she dances he is careful to keep one of her dainty feet shackled so that she cannot spin away. Bending and writhing, her body hypnotically sinuous and supple, Laila becomes the story and, mesmerized, the children of both resident and visitor creep closer longing to help the “star” in her agony. Laila waits until they are almost upon her then suddenly, her foot snapping free, she is transformed from fairy into hornet, buzzing and stinging. The children scream and rush back to their mothers, plucking at their arms, quite certain that they have been stung.
Laila growls contemptuously and then, like Ugly, the children are forgotten. Now she turns comical tease and has the men in the hall rocking with nervous laughter at her over-blown coquetry while their wives lower their eyes. Finally, she commands wild applause by descending from the trestle in a fountain of holly berries conjured up, apparently, from nowhere.
She accepts the adulation, her white hair fizzing, bowing more like a queen graciously accepting the homage of her subjects than an entertainer grateful for the applause. To his surprise and plea
sure, she reserves a tiny, special bow for Aimery. He doesn’t return it, but his eyes follow her until she vanishes through the hall door.
As soon as she has disappeared, Raimon, who stood throughout with his arms folded, moves forward. Now it is his turn, and Cador, who has been watching Laila openmouthed, finds Unbent taken from him. Cathar or Catholic, this may be the last gathering of Occitanian knights in an Occitanian hall. Gripping Unbent’s hilt, Raimon holds the sword high and begins to sing:
In Occitan there hovers still
The grace of Arthur’s table round.
Bright southern heroes yet fulfill
The quest to which they all are bound.
No foreign pennant taints our skies,
No cold French king snuffs out our name.
Though we may fall, again we’ll rise
No Grail for us, we burn the Flame!
The Flame, the Flame, the Flame of Blue,
Sweet Occitan, it burns for you.
His voice is not the rich voice of a troubadour. He has no skills, as they do, to inject subtle tints of melancholy or rejoicing. He simply sings the words and means every one. Sicart, slouched slackly with sagging jaw and closed eyes, sits up. Sir Roger, mountainously slumped, straightens his back, and the whole hall listens rapt.
As he finishes, Raimon wonders if now the knights will feel the same urgency he does and rise, drawing their own swords. But they do not. Instead, they seem content to shake their heads and wallow in the easy shallows of nostalgia. A feeling of utter loneliness engulfs him. He is the only one, it seems, who wants the Flame to burn in an Occitan free from the twin curses of the religious bully and the French. He and Cador. A weaver-knight and a self-appointed squire. Two among all these. As he gives Unbent back to Cador, he is aware of Aimery raising an ironic tankard. The count no longer seems the least bit impatient with his guests. Indeed, he now oozes such charm that Raimon wonders why the visitors do not find it as unnerving as he does. But then Aimery vanishes, no doubt sniffing after Laila, and Raimon’s attention is called elsewhere. More logs are piled into the hearth. Another cask of wine is opened. Metta tries to draw Adela nearer the fire. The stories go on.
It is a pity that such an evening has to end, but end it does. As everybody nods off, most not moving from their seats, Raimon settles himself on a pile of wolf skins and tucks Cador in beside him. The boy is soon asleep, but Raimon tosses and turns.
The arrival of the visitors has made everything more urgent. If Raimon is not to allow the Flame to perish with the White Wolf at Montségur, he cannot delay much longer. Yet from all he hears in the general gossip of the height and impregnability of the fortress, climbing in and stealing the Flame will be impossible. No—he corrects himself—not impossible. Nothing is impossible. There must be a way. There is always a way. He makes plans and discards them. Then something occurs to him that he does not immediately discard. He frowns and glances over at the snoring Sir Roger and then, farther back, to where Metta is sleeping rather more quietly behind a hastily strung-up curtain. He shakes his head, but hours later he is still fretting. It would be bold, so bold that it could work. Perhaps God is on his side after all.
He gets up and slips outside. After the mugginess of the hall, the cold hits him like a hammer. The snow clouds have been blown away and there is just black and white and indigo. Even the braziers the huntsman lights in the kennels for the hounds and dogboys are burning too low to shine through the window slits. Raimon breathes in and then out. “I’m coming for you, just wait for me,” he whispers to the Flame. Then he holds out his arms. He knows it is foolish. Yolanda can hardly materialize from the stars. But still, standing like that, he can hope.
3
At Carcassonne
Fifty miles away, Yolanda is sitting in a pool of lamplight biting her nails—a new habit she cannot remember starting—her dog, Brees, pressed close against her side, his large hairy bulk a protective bulwark between his mistress and the drafts from the shuttered window. Yolanda may call out Raimon’s name and long for Castelneuf, but Brees is perfectly at home, because his home is simply where she is. He yawns and scratches the blanket. It is too clean for perfection, but it will have to do. Yolanda stops biting her nails and buries her hands in his thick bristly neck. “I know you want me to lie down,” she says, “but I just can’t.”
Yolanda is not her husband’s prisoner. She is not locked in a dungeon, but neither is she free to go. Since she learned of the destruction of Castelneuf, Sir Hugh des Arcis has had to post guards outside his wife’s room because, as she reminds him unceasingly, she only married him so that I and all my lands would be safe, and though Hugh protests that he had nothing to do with the burning of the chateau and villages, she will not listen. To her, his promise is broken, so her wedding vows are dust.
She has often thought of escape, but it is not easy. The many-towered, proud city of Carcassonne over which King Louis’s oriflamme now flies may be an Occitanian city, but it is filled with Sir Hugh’s men. What is more, they have spilled beyond the long, castellated defenses. With Frenchman and Occitanian forced to rub shoulders, the atmosphere both inside and out prickles with suspicion.
Not that the French find it uncongenial in Carcassonne. Not at all. They have come as conquerors, which is always pleasant. If they are edgy it is because, though strong and mighty, they are permanently disconcerted. For a start, beyond its sturdy double walls and the two, purposefully disconnected, portcullises, the city is full of traps for the unwary: staircases leading nowhere, false floors, and gates opening not into the city proper but into slaughter yards from which the blood never entirely dries. Though the French knights set up clerks to draw maps and force local people to act as guides, they never feel they quite know where they are or where they may end up. Furthermore, the stone that in the sun glows so blindingly golden can, in a moment, turn dead gray. A visitor spying Carcassonne from afar would not know whether to rush through the gates in hope of welcome or creep past for fear of ghouls. Though they know they are secure, somehow the French intruders feel permanently threatened.
This is not good for Yolanda, whose guards, in their anxiety, are sharp eyed and so rigidly dutiful that she cannot even go to the water closet without detection.
Tonight, in the next-door chamber to hers, Hugh is also wakeful, pacing under a domed stone roof that he sometimes fancies is descending slowly to trap him, as he once trapped a spider in a vase. When they arrived here just before the winter set in, Hugh was wounded and sick, so the place has become heavily overfurnished with tables and chairs and chests of medicines. The large bed, in which, though brought from his house in Paris, he finds it so hard to sleep, sits opposite a hearth that could heat a room double the size. A writing desk has been placed wherever space could be found and on a large round table, squashed between bed and door, are several empty pitchers, a quantity of discarded goblets, and twists of paper bearing the blotchy hand of an apothecary. Occasionally Hugh finds the soles of his boots glued to the rugs by the remains of unidentifiable meals. He hates this room.
He is not thinking about the room now, however. Nor, though it should be, is his mind full of King Louis’s plans for the Occitan, or even of the Blue Flame that he must capture. As he paces, he fingers the long scar on his forehead, the remains of the wound that nearly killed him, and thinks of his wife.
He repeats “my wife,” the phrase which she utterly repudiates, as he pushes irritably past the two knights who have kept watch over him since he was carried in here. After eleven years in his service, lean and ambitious Amalric and swarthy, loyal Henri recognize his moods, yet they do not know what is troubling him now. He glances at his reflection in a silver dish that has found its way onto the writing desk. Below the scar, a grave face stares back through fading blue eyes just emerging from bruised pouches. He turns one way and then the other. His chin is smooth. The barber has shaved him well, carefully tracing around the burn on his right cheek that will also fade in time. He opens his mouth.
He still has all his teeth. He bends and as his hair falls notices a white streak amid the blond. He peers more closely, hoping it is a trick of his imagination, and his heart sinks when, on closer inspection, he sees that the streak is broad and the white well established. When did this happen? He moves his hand from scar to scalp, as if a touch might bring back his natural color, but then drops his hand and braces himself.
Oh God, here comes another. When will they stop, these awful rushes of panic, which, since he was wounded, have begun to creep from behind, like burglars. The wave that is about to hit him is so dense he is surprised Amalric and Henri don’t see it and leap to his defense. He sways away from the desk and steadies himself on a chest, his legs buckling slightly. He knows he is being stared at and tries to beat the weakness off and stand straight. If he can just hold on, the feeling will pass. It must. But it does not and he begins to sink.
Amalric seizes a lamp, and Henri grabs Hugh’s shoulders and tries to heave him onto the bed. On the way, he grabs one of the dirty goblets. “Quick, Amalric, stick a posset in here.” Amalric untwists a paper and swirls the powdered contents around, but when he tries to force the drink on Hugh, Hugh bangs his hand upward and sends the goblet flying. The knights exclaim loudly. Hugh begins to rage. The knights drop him. They have no idea what to do. Amalric runs next door and only when Hugh hears a voice that is neither Amalric’s nor Henri’s does the panic begin to recede.
“What do you want? What’s going on?”
He wipes the sweat trickling onto his collar. Yolanda is in the doorway, one hand resting as always on Brees’s head, her face masked by a long mess of uncombed brown hair. He coughs to test that his voice will not squeak. He can take nothing for granted. “I don’t want anything, and nothing’s going on,” he says when he can trust himself.
Henri harrumphs. Hugh glares at him. “It’s too hot in here, that’s all.” He walks to the shutters, forcing purpose into his shaking legs, and throws them open. Then he goes straight to the fireplace and smashes down the logs. They crack and roar and spark, making the room even hotter. Hugh keeps hold of the poker until his hands stop trembling. “I shall ride tomorrow,” he says abruptly.