by K. M. Grant
Her imagining is not a form of self-torture. What she really hopes is that all of these scenes will be quite impossible to imagine at all. Then she will surely know that Laila has distorted things. But it turns out that Yolanda can imagine the scenes only too well. After all, Raimon was so angry when they parted. No—worse than angry. He would not have discarded her out of anger. He was disappointed and hurt, a far more dangerous combination. How can she blame him, then, if he seeks solace from somebody more sympathetic?
The ring bites into her skin as she glares around the room in an effort not to cry again. She finds little comfort in what she sees. There is almost nothing of her past life left in here. What the fire did not destroy has been pushed around so much that were it not for the hearth and the windows, their shutters untidily half open, Yolanda would hardly know she was in the small hall at Castelneuf at all. The rushes on the floor have been swept out and, with the walls stripped bare, a chamber built for coziness is now just a chamber. What is more, the whole place smells quite different. It has lost, finally, any smell of her mother.
She rocks back and forth. This is the last straw. Raimon has gone, and her home is not even her home anymore. Somehow both have left her behind, caught up in events in which she seems to have lost her part. She never saw the fire here. She never saw Raimon fighting it, or him and Aimery together discussing the rebuilding. She never saw the Cathar visitors. Instead, she is the visitor—worse, she is a visiting stranger.
After the heat of the tears, a dismal bleakness descends. She draws her blanket closer and shuffles back to the hearth, where she sits with Brees on one side and Laila on the other, her mind quite blank.
Laila does not want to stare into the fire, so she gets up, gathers a heap of expensive-looking rags, and expertly begins to patch a bright green shift. She seems to have been busy. Her special chest is half covered in clothes in various stages of transformation. “In a perfect world, there’d be no men,” she says, watchfully conversational and trying to draw Yolanda in. “I really don’t care for them at all.” She finishes a seam, takes the poker, and stirs the fire into an ashy mess.
“What shall I do?” Yolanda asks, more of herself than of Laila. “Should I go to Montségur too?” She finds her teeth chattering again.
“Here. Wrap yourself in this.” Laila heaves Brees off an old wolf skin and drapes it on top of everything else that already engulfs Yolanda. She kneels and begins to rub Yolanda’s feet. “Look on the bright side,” she says. “Your toes are quite pink so they’re not likely to fall off from frostbite. Toeless feet are quite disgusting.” She rubs hard. “If you do go to Montségur,” she says carefully, “won’t that make you feel worse? After all, you’re not a Cathar and never will be, so they are hardly going to welcome you. Raimon himself might turn you away.”
Yolanda rubs her other foot. “Do you really think he’d do that?”
Laila scowls. She can still feel the bruises Raimon inflicted in the archer’s hole. “Who knows what he is capable of. And anyway, it wouldn’t be up to him. Metta Moonface’s father might do it, and I can’t think you want to be humiliated in front of her.”
Yolanda leans back and sees some shoes sticking out from behind the water barrel. “Did the visitors leave those?”
“What?” Laila follows Yolanda’s nod. “Oh, I hadn’t noticed it. I expect so.”
“Bring them here.”
“Why? They’re of no use to you.”
“I don’t care. Just bring them here.”
With bad grace, Laila collects the shoes. There are two pairs, one cloth pair with green ribbons to hold them on, and one sturdier pair, the leather once good quality but now hard, with the laces degraded and broken. “They’re hideous,” says Laila with heartfelt disgust. She thrusts them at Yolanda, who runs her fingers over them, noting the toe-shaped stains. “Were these hers?”
Laila pretends to inspect them. “No, no. They couldn’t be. She had bigger feet than that. Much bigger. Really pretty huge,” she says, endearingly unconvincing.
Yolanda flings the shoes at the fire and Laila pokes at them until they are ablaze before hurrying off to the far corner of the hall. “We pulled a barrel of wine in here,” she calls over. “You could do with some.” She scoops out a panful and brings it to warm. Soon the place is heavy with the aroma of grape and spices. Laila swills the wine around, pulls a vial out of her pocket, glances slyly at Yolanda, and tosses in the contents. The wine bubbles and gradually loses its acidity. “Drink this,” she urges, ladling a scoop into an unwashed, slightly mildewed pewter mug. “It’ll warm you all the way through.” Yolanda drinks and gasps and drinks some more. It coats the back of her throat like warm velvet. Laila drinks straight from the pan, making small squeals as she burns her lips.
Yolanda leans back and holds out the mug again. Mouthful after mouthful flows sweetly down, and in no time at all her jagged edges are soothed and softened. She takes more salve for her lips and offers some wine to Brees. The dog sniffs, takes a polite slurp, and rubs his tongue against the stone like a child with a sour plum. Yolanda finds a laugh welling somewhere within the velvet. As Laila’s ladles begin to slop unsteadily, Brees, getting a taste for it, cleans up the spills. “I should have poisoned her,” Laila says confidingly, and Yolanda knows to whom she refers, “and I should have poisoned him. I hope they both rot like fish, from the head down, and while they’re still alive.” Yolanda wants to say something about poisoning Hugh, but it’s too much effort. Instead, she has another drink.
The days are still short and when the shadows darken, neither girl gets up to light the lamps. Though they are not asleep, a noxious kind of comfort has descended, and they drowse, leaning half against each other and half against cushions that Laila, what seems like hours ago now, has pulled from trestles jammed against the wall. Gui and Guerau have not reappeared, preferring to sleep in the kennels than near Laila, who is not a relaxing companion. Above the girls’ heads, the new wood creaks and settles amid the old wood’s sighs. There is a faint howl, maybe a wolf, maybe the hounds dreaming. The girls loll lower and lower onto the cushions. Their breathing slows. Moving even a leg takes a long time and a good deal of concentration. Water drips unevenly and forms a puddle somewhere they cannot see. The shutters rattle in the night wind. Doors bang, some quite close by. Yolanda raises herself with a supreme effort. “There’s nowhere ...” She subsides.
“Nowhere,” Laila agrees, her voice dragging.
Yolanda raises herself again, and again subsides. All the words she wants are blurry. “No … where.” Her eyes close.
“No,” Laila murmurs as her jaw slackens into sleep. Yolanda grunts.
Another door slams and a voice hurtles out of the gloom. “Yolanda?”
Yolanda is oblivious, but Laila tries to snap her eyes open. At first she fails and sinks down again believing she is dreaming. Only when she is shaken violently by the hair does she jolt and jerk and try to peer into the fuzzy dark. Deep inside her head, in the small diamond whose clarity, whatever the state of the rest of her, Laila keeps alert as a dog’s nose, she can hear her own voice berating herself for a fool. She and Yolanda are completely undefended apart from Brees, who is himself woozy with wine and even if he was not, is hardly a match for an armed intruder. “Stupid, stupid.” Now she is being dragged to her feet and finds she can barely stand. “Stop it! Stop it! Who are you?” She thinks that is what she says. It is certainly what she intends. The next thing she feels is a blast of freezing water. Her eyes fly open as her arms fly out.
“Wake up.” The voice hurtles at her again.
She senses Yolanda stirring.
“Hugh? Oh, God.” Yolanda’s voice is unrecognizable.
“Hugh?” Laila empties water from her ears.
“Were you expecting somebody else?” the voice asks.
“Expecting?” Yolanda can only repeat things as she rolls onto her knees.
Hugh fetches more water, aims it at Yolanda, hesitates, then throws it over
Laila. He takes a sliver of cloth from Laila’s pile, soaks it, and thrusts it into Yolanda’s hands. Automatically, she wipes her face and, through the wine fog, becomes aware that her clothes are in a pile just where Laila dumped them. Hugh moves about, cumbersomely clad in leather, felt, and steel against the twin scourges of the cold and bandit arrows. His shadow lies vastly across the floor.
Yolanda tries to pull her head out of the hole in which it feels stuck. She hardly knows where she is. Has she been whisked back to Carcassonne? “Why are you here?” she asks with a great effort. She cannot ask where “here” is.
“Why do you think I’m here?” Hugh knocks great clods of mud from his boots and claps his hands, spattering icy droplets. “Good God, Yolanda! You could have frozen to death in that storm. I had no word, no word at all. Nobody could find you.”
Vague memories of the journey flit through her mind. Brees groans. The wine is like manacles on his legs.
Hugh fumbles for a flint, lights three lamps, and pulls off his helmet. His hair sticks to his scalp, and Yolanda can tell, from the way he scrapes his hand across his chin, that he is unshaven. His scar is livid where his helmet has rubbed against it and his eyes are puckered. She has an idea of time passing and the need to say something more. “There’s nothing for you here. Nobody and nothing.”
“Don’t tell him that there’s nobody here!” Laila has added to her soaking by dunking her head in the water barrel. Now she tosses it like a pony and glares blearily. “You’ll get no food here either, neither you nor your men.”
“I came alone.” Hugh throws his gauntlets down.
His words clang ominously in Yolanda’s head. “You’re alone? Where are Amalric and Henri?” she says, though she has some difficulty with the names. “You don’t go anywhere without them.”
“They’re with the army, on their way to Montségur.” Hugh’s voice is very clipped in comparison with the girls’. “Why is there nobody here?” Laila and Yolanda stand close together in silence. “Has Aimery sent everybody away?”
“No.” Laila sucks air into her lungs and grips her hands together. “Everybody’s gone because Aimery’s gone.”
Hugh bends to stoke the logs. “Aimery’s gone where?”
“To Montségur of course!” Laila slurs. Is Hugh stupid, or what? “Isn’t that where everybody’s going? He’s gone with Raimon.”
Hugh turns quickly and Laila can see his genuine surprise. “With Raimon? You mean they’ve gone to fight at Montségur together?” He pauses as he tries to make sense of it. “Raimon does not belong at Montségur. He is not one of them.”
“That’s about it,” Laila says, and congratulates herself on speaking perfectly clearly.
“Raimon’s gone to get the Blue Flame,” Yolanda interrupts, although she has to repeat herself before Hugh can understand what she is saying.
“That’s not really it at all. He’s gone with a girl,” Laila contradicts, with alcohol’s conspiratorial candor. “She’s called Metta, and she’s a scheming simpleton. He didn’t wait for—” She gestures at Yolanda and shrugs.
Hugh discards his cloak and the bag slung around his waist. Though he keeps his dagger close, he also unstraps his baldric, and without his sword, his shadow lessens, although had Yolanda been entirely herself, she would have recognized the demeanor of a man who has discovered an opportunity. As it is, she is alert to nothing.
“Raimon left you here because he understands that you’re my wife,” Hugh says carefully, addressing her directly. “He’s accepted it and has found somebody else to love. I admire him for that.” He sees the pan of wine, tastes it, and at once spits into the fire. “For the love of heaven, girl,” he says sharply to Laila, “what have you put in it? Your tricks will kill somebody one day.”
She wants to curl her lip at him but cannot find the right muscle.
Yolanda rocks on her haunches, holding on to Brees. This is just a dream. It must be. Nothing about it is real.
Hugh tips out his bag, unwraps a hunk of bread, some salted meat that has turned almost to leather, and a round of cheese. He lays them on a table, out of Brees’s reach. “You should both eat,” he says. Neither girl moves. He brings the food over and tries to make them. Laila refuses point-blank, and Yolanda is like a rag doll, her head too heavy for her body. Hugh lays her back down, eats a little bread, and then sits, spreading his legs to the fire. Steam rises from his clothes. An hour passes. The night deepens. As Yolanda sleeps the sleep of the drugged, Laila watches Hugh. When he shifts, she shifts too. Eventually Hugh gets up and taps his foot. “Go and find yourself another place for tonight,” he says. “Yolanda and I have things to discuss.”
“Are you joking?”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
“She’s asleep.”
“She’s more than that, thanks to you. But I’ll wait and I want to wait alone.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Shall I throw you out?”
“I’m not leaving Yolanda alone with you.”
He sighs. “I could pick you up and pitch you through the door, and that dog too, but wouldn’t you rather leave in a more dignified manner?”
Laila does not have to be entirely sober to be crafty. “And why would I do that?”
Hugh takes a small pouch out of his bag. Laila fixes her gaze on it. He shakes it, holds it, and shakes it again before, from a height, tipping it up. Into his waiting hand drips a starry waterfall of multicolored gemstones set in a cascade of silver scales. Lastly falls the clasp, an emerald dragonfly with milky, opal-studded wings.
Laila’s hand shoots out. Hugh dangles the jewel. She creeps forward. “This necklace is priceless,” Hugh observes.
“Nothing is priceless.” Laila’s answer is automatic. Her eyes are huge and hungry.
Hugh makes the necklace swing back and forth so that it dances and taunts in the firelight. He draws in his cheeks. “Nothing that you know of,” he says. There is a long pause. “Take it,” he says.
Laila’s arm twitches. “And in return?”
“Leave Yolanda and I alone for an hour, and take Brees with you.”
She shakes her head, but without conviction. The dragonfly is brilliant in the glow. Then it is gone, hidden back in the pouch. Laila almost cries.
“I’ll just keep it and and throw you out then.” Hugh advances toward her. Yolanda sleeps on.
Laila skips back, her breathing quick. “Don’t touch me. You’re not my husband.”
“No,” says Hugh wryly. “God has some mercy.”
Laila cannot stay still. She darts about, toward Yolanda and then away. Her neck aches for the necklace, for its weight and glamour. She can feel its coolness against her skin. She can hear people sighing with envy. And after all, as Hugh says, he can pitch her out anyway. Indeed, that is just what he intends to do. A king’s ransom for an hour he is going to have no matter what she does. And he is Yolanda’s husband.
She says not a word, but Hugh already knows he has her. He has barely pulled the necklace out again when fingers flash and briefly brush his as she snatches it away, seizes Brees, and is out the door. Hugh closes it behind her and she hears the key turning in the lock.
At once, Laila beats against it, though not very hard. “Don’t you dare hurt her,” she cries, cradling the necklace so as not to damage it.
Hugh does not hear her. In the swirl of conflicting desires, half determined to force his way and half ashamed that he has to, he is already bending down toward Yolanda. He speaks her name, low and urgent. Her lips part in an involuntary response. She has no idea who is speaking. Perhaps it is Raimon. Hugh will not allow himself to hesitate, not now. He picks her up in his arms with rough tenderness. Only then does he look around, just briefly, to make sure he really is alone. As Laila’s hammering ceases, he stops only to shrug off the covers before taking his wife away from the hearth, to a place where the fire’s light does not shine.
Outside, Laila pushes Brees into the gre
at hall, still roofless. She tries to put the necklace on, but her fingers are shaking too much to fasten the clasp. Eventually she sits, holding the necklace tight. The moon appears from behind a cloud and the necklace winks at her, the rubies glistening like drops of blood. With a tiny cry Laila’s hand flies to her mouth in sudden revulsion at what she has done. But the dragonfly is so beautiful. She tosses it from hand to hand, sliding the silver scales over the curve of her chin. The weight and the even roll of the stones reassure her. She is not a bad person, she is just herself.
When she thinks an hour is up, she creeps back to the small hall. The door is still locked. Then she hears movement and, for the first time in her life, loses courage. She cannot keep the necklace and face Yolanda. Which is it to be? Almost without thinking, she begins to slide furtively away, like a burglar taking advantage of the dark. Seizing an abandoned cloak, she sets off for the postern gate and then stops. Her box of tricks is still in the small hall. Is she really going to leave that behind? She paces back and forth. Surely she can still look Yolanda in the eye. She can do anything. Yet she finds herself pushing the gate open and flicking her hair with too much self-conscious vigor. Then she finds her excuse. She has unfinished business with Aimery. For the moment, she decides with her own kind of bravado, she will focus exclusively on that.
10
Waking Up
Though the dawn chorus is long past, it is still dark in the small hall. It is also very cold because the fire has gone out. Two shapes are humped in the corner under the window.
Brees has been lying by his mistress since Hugh departed, forced out by the knowledge that an army without a commander very soon turns into a rabble. As he dressed, Hugh toyed with the idea of taking Yolanda with him and found strange how little thought he had given to what was to happen afterward before he came to Castelneuf. But now it was obvious. The battlefield would be no place for his wife, particularly not a battlefield on which Raimon and Aimery would be fighting. Yet he cannot force her to remain here or spare men to take her back to Carcassonne. So in the end he left her in God’s hands—and Laila’s, except that she was not lurking outside, as he expected. In the end, fretting about the time but unwilling to shout out Laila’s name, he told Brees to keep good watch and sent the dog in.