Paradise Red

by K. M. Grant

  And at first Brees was delighted, but when his mistress refused to move, he grew worried. Now he sits unhappily, his tongue furred from his own kind of hangover.

  Yolanda is curled with her arms around her knees, the side of her face crammed so hard against a cushion that its creases line her cheeks. Her back is crushed against the wall, and the only things that occasionally twitch, quite involuntarily, are her toes. Whenever this happens, Brees looks hopeful. Perhaps she’ll get up now?

  She does not, and eventually a full bladder has Brees whining at the door. It does not open, so eventually he looses a stream against the table leg. It does not please him, but there is nothing else for him to do. And it has one effect. Eventually, Yolanda has to rise to answer a similar need of her own. She checks carefully that the room is empty before she stumbles to the small corner urinal and then locates her heap of clothes. Ignoring their dampness, she pulls them on and gets straight back under the wolf skin.

  She can see nobody, speak to nobody. Most particularly she does not want to see or speak to Laila, because Laila will force her to remember and that she refuses to do. Her fists are clenched, and when they creep open, she clenches them again, tighter than before, as if they constituted some enormous bodily shield. When she can clench them no longer, she rises again, grabs a chair, and drags it to the water barrel, climbs up and plunges her head right in, soaking herself beyond her collar.

  The water’s icy skim is like sandpaper, filling her ears and scratching her neck. Nonetheless, she keeps her head dunked until she must gasp for breath. It has a momentary desired effect. When she pulls her head out, she can neither see nor hear anything. But as soon as the immediate hammer blow of cold subsides, shadowy memories seep in.

  There is no pain, not anymore, there is just a sawing ache that doubles her up, and behind the ache there is shame and fear and the worst thing of all, a halo of taint. A few hours pass. Gui and Guerau knock on the door, at first just the normal greetings of the day, but then increasingly anxious and afraid. She speaks only to tell them that she is perfectly all right and that Laila is not with her. The postern gate was open, they say. Somebody has been in. She reassures them, sends Brees out, and tells them to leave her alone.

  Just after noon, she longs more than anything for a bath, but she cannot have one without help, and for help she must go outside and find Laila, whose absence only now begins to concern Yolanda, except that her box of tricks is just where she left it, and she would surely go nowhere without that. Where is she, then? Another hour passes, and a tight band circles Yolanda’s heart. “Where is she?” Surely Hugh has not hurt her as well. He wouldn’t. “But he’s just hurt me.” She cries silently. “He could do anything.”

  “Perhaps she’s gone to Sir Aimery at Montségur,” Gui suggests, when at last Yolanda emerges. “There was a closeness between them.”

  “Why hasn’t she waited for me? And why hasn’t she taken her box?”

  “Perhaps she heard that Sir Hugh’s army is on the move, and she wants to get there before he does?” It sounds a feeble reason but at the mention of Hugh’s name, Yolanda doubles up. “Hugh’s not at Montségur,” she says, and Gui turns white as something of what has happened begins to dawn on him.

  Yolanda straightens herself. “Hugh must have made her go,” she says without any further explanation. “He must have threatened her.” She is determined to believe it. She’ll believe anything of Hugh now.

  She goes back to the small hall and locks the door again, but then, agitated, reemerges to demand that they ask the huntsman if he will help her empty the dog meal from the old leather tub that her father had made for campaigns he never fought and drag it into the hall. They manage, with some difficulty, and with Gui and Guerau banking up the fire, Yolanda throws herself wildly into the task of pumping water to heat. Only when every available pan, jug, and bucket is lodged in the hearth and the bath steaming and filled to the brim is she satisfied. Gui and Guerau exchange glances as she pushes them out. Before she closes the door, Gui lays a hand on her arm. She jumps back and slaps him smartly across the cheek. He gasps. She cringes. “Oh, God!” she cries, then, “go away! Please just go away!” They back off, their faces ashen.

  When Yolanda has locked the door again, she pulls off her clothes and without looking at any part of herself climbs heavily into the bath and lies down. The leather feels scratchy against her back and the tub is not quite long enough, so her knees stick up. The water should soothe, but at first it jangles, and she cannot bear it seeping through every pore, reminding her in its insidious way that some barrier within her has been broken, not just the physical barrier that her friend Beatrice once told her about in breathless detail, but some other barrier, much more intensely personal. From the breach, she feels everything beautiful about her is leaking away, leaving only a dried up and desiccated shell. Terrified, she touches her lips to make sure they have not disappeared, as old women’s do.

  The rim of the bath digs into her neck, but now the water is her friend and she wants to stay in this brown pool forever. Her reflection makes and unmakes itself and she stares at it as if she has never seen herself before.

  Brees sits beside the bath, occasionally sticking his tongue in. The warmth of the water, with its faint tang of Yolanda, intrigues him. He gets a terrible fright when she suddenly leaps out and flashes white across the room, her feet marking a wet trail. She has gone only to grab a small blanket, and this time, when she leaps back into the bath, she attacks her legs and thighs, pummeling them, gouging them, to remove any last trace of Hugh. She goes over every inch of skin in meticulous detail: the back of her neck, behind her knees, her nails, the palms of her hands, and between her toes. She dunks her head again and again, pulling at her hair, raking her fingers across her scalp. Finally, she turns to her stomach and by the time she is finished, it is scraped raw as a burned pan, but she is triumphant. No des Arcis son could lodge in there now.

  She uses the remaining jugs to rinse and after that the water is disgusting to her, so she climbs out and lets the fire dry her, raising her arms and turning around like a joint on a spit. She gets as close to the flames as she can bear, drawing away just before her skin scorches. Brees whines his concern, but the scorching, too, is part of the cleansing process. Eventually she lights a torch and rummages through Laila’s halfsewn garments, choosing not a dress but a loose tunic and some trousers that remind her of pictures of people from the east she once saw in a book. The colors are inappropriately gaudy but she hardly notices. Lastly she finds knitted leggings and hard-soled boots that have obviously been stolen from the visitors. No matter. She tugs them on. Her own clothes, the wet blanket, and all the other bedcovers, except for the wolf skin, she burns. The smell is vile and the smoke billows, yellow and greasy. She runs from it. Brees presses close to her until they get outside, then hunger makes him head for the kennels. She follows him for three paces and then stops. She has cleansed her body and before she speaks to anybody again, she wants to cleanse her mind.

  She stands quite still and forces herself to remember exactly what happened. Does that seem strange to you? It does not to me, for Yolanda knows instinctively that every time she relives her ordeal, it will lose a little of its potency. Only familiarity can rob nightmares of both their poison and their disconcerting ability to creep up unawares. However, though Yolanda takes a deep breath and braces herself, detailed memories elude her. The drugged wine Laila gave her, such a disabling enemy when Hugh arrived, now turns friend. All she can remember is Hugh’s shadow, his weight, and a long quaking shudder that might have been him or might have been her. Beyond that, nothing. She does not know whether to be grateful or not.

  The troubadours approach tentatively. Her finger marks are still red across Gui’s cheek. “Can you help me empty the bath?” she asks.

  “We’ve already done it,” they reply. She blinks. She had no idea she has been standing still for so long. The troubadours say nothing more, only guide her to the kennels a
nd sit with her in Farvel’s empty stall until, much later on, amid the normality of the hounds’ routine, she decalcifies like a melting stone and becomes Yolanda again. They tend her as carefully as a mother, never touching her, always announcing their presence, asking no questions, making no demands. She feels safer here and does not return to the small hall.

  Some days later, early in the morning, the huntsman smiles at her and places in her lap three mewling newborn hound puppies. At first she glares at them with dread, Hugh’s demand for a son rattling in her ears. Puppies! And what if? What if? She shakes her head and cannot speak.

  The huntsman is not abashed. “Farvel’s offspring,” he says in his careful way, “and the start of a new pack.” His eyes are bright. This is nature’s answer to loss. Farvel’s stall must belong to others now.

  “There’ll be no need of a new pack here,” Yolanda says in a low voice.

  “No new pack?”

  “No. You must know that it’s all finished for us. Aimery’s gone and Raimon’s gone. They’re not coming back.”

  “Is that right?” says the huntsman.

  One of the puppies begins to scramble blindly up Yolanda’s tunic, and she sits without moving until its paws paddle with increasing desperation and finally, to stop it from falling, she has to put out a hand. Brees takes a fatherly interest, and as more puppies arrive, Yolanda forgets her dread in the pleasure of seeing them wriggle and hearing the dogboys squeal with delight. The huntsman is right about one thing. There will be a new pack.

  A week later, she is restless. “I’m going down into the town,” she says. “We need to know who’s left.”

  “You’re not going back to Carcassonne, then?” Guerau asks. He is balancing four brindle bitches on his bull-like chest, and enjoying the jealousy that Gui, on whose chest only two puppies can fit, is trying unsuccessfully to conceal.

  “No. Never.”

  “Nor to Montségur?”

  She hesitates. “Do you think that’s really where Laila went?”

  “I don’t know where else she’d have gone,” Gui says, plucking up a tricolored puppy and allowing it to bite his ear. “She’ll be after Sir Aimery, though. Those two are as thick as thieves.”

  Yolanda does not want Aimery to know what has happened to her. She leans down and returns one of Guerau’s puppies to its mother. “I don’t know what good I could do at Montségur, and anyway, I’ve no horse.”

  “No,” the huntsman says, “although the charcoal burner’s got a sorrel on the other side of the valley.”

  Yolanda shakes her head. Her desire to go into the town dissolves. She can decide on nothing.

  In the end, as so often happens, something is decided for her. Six weeks after Hugh’s visit, heralded by a muted chorus of bells and ritualistic chanting, a group of three inquisitors finally wends its way slowly up the disintegrating road to the chateau. After the snow, they spent Easter at Mirepoix before traveling farther south, and because producing a trail of smoke, human ashes, and misery takes time and effort, they are tired. Moreover, having been led to believe that the chateau would be rich hunting grounds for Saviors of Souls such as themselves, their exhaustion is compounded by the disappointment of learning that only a girl, two troubadours, a huntsman, and some ridiculous dogboys are in residence. All that stony way just for this thin haul? These straight-backed, hollow-faced men of God feel a sense of anger on their redeemer’s behalf. Where are all the heretics? They chant more loudly, as if this might draw out sin as venom is drawn from a snake.

  Yolanda greets them in the courtyard, with Gui and Guerau behind her. The huntsman locks the dogboys in the kennels to keep them out of harm’s way. Only when the mules have stopped and the bells around their necks have settled are the inquisitors’ servants allowed to sink down and rest, although they never sit at ease for their masters’ probing eyes are always upon them, boring into them, seeing thoughts they would rather keep secret.

  The inquisitors seem startled by Yolanda’s appearance, about which she has almost forgotten. They mutter between themselves at her multicolored tunic and rough workman’s trousers. They cannot place her at all.

  The youngest inquisitor dismounts and begins to walk about, his arms crossed in stern disapproval. The oldest one speaks. “And where is Count Aimery?” he asks Guerau. “We’ve heard he is now dedicated to the Cathar cause.”

  Yolanda answers. “How should we know?”

  Both the mounted inquisitors lean forward, their feet pushing against the stirrups. “Who asked you anything, insolent girl?”

  Yolanda draws herself up to her full height. “I should be careful if I were you.”

  “Careful? Oh really?”

  The dismounted inquisitor picks up a stick.

  Yolanda is not sure how she is holding herself so steady, but she turns around very slowly, removes the stick from him, and breaks it in half. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  All the inquisitors at once are wary. They look at her more closely.

  “I am married to Sir Hugh des Arcis,” Yolanda says, making her voice imperiously commanding. “Do you know Sir Hugh, the chosen champion of Louis IX of France, the keeper of the king’s oriflamme, and a man whose career is of interest even to the Pope? You must know him, surely? And you’ll know where to find him, too, because even now he’s at Montségur, reclaiming the Blue Flame from the heretics.” She regrets throwing away Hugh’s ring. At this moment it would have been good for something.

  However her announcement is enough to startle and the inquisitors’ foreheads crease. Of course they know Sir Hugh, and they have no quarrel with him, nor do they wish for one. Indeed, the Pope has ordered them to pray every night for his success in capturing the Blue Flame and obliterating the last of the Cathars. Had they known Castelneuf was in the hands of Lady des Arcis and not Count Aimery, they would never have come here. Somebody will pay for this error.

  The young inquisitor, less judicious than the others, will not be thwarted. This is his first inquisitorial tour, and so far, he has exterminated a heretic in every place. He does not want to spoil his record. He stabs a bony finger at Gui, Guerau, and the huntsman. “What about these three? They have the heretic look about them.”

  His seniors flush with displeasure. The boy is assiduous and keen. He does not flinch when the heretics scream, and he is imaginative, highly imaginative, when it comes to the extraction of answers. But he takes too much upon himself. One tries to silence him but Yolanda is already staring directly into his eyes. “They are part of my household,” she says.

  “But were they not also part of your brother’s?” The young man clicks dirty teeth.

  Yolanda regards him as she might regard a rat. “I was part of my brother’s household once,” she says. “You must keep up if you ever wish to become as efficient an inquisitor as my uncle Girald d’Amouroix.”

  Even this young man starts at that name. Inquisitor Girald! He who was murdered so horribly! Why, he is almost an inquisitorial saint! It is hardly believable that this creature is his niece, but nevertheless, he backs away a little.

  The older inquisitors are not unhappy at their younger friend’s discomfiture. “Knocked him off his perch, and not before time,” one murmurs to the other. The young man knows better than to retort.

  Yolanda gestures around. “As you see, we can offer no hospitality,” she says. “You’ll have to apply to my husband for that.”

  “And we’ll be sure to do so when we get to Montségur ourselves,” comes the answer. “Now get these servants back on their feet and mount up, Brother James.” Whips are flicked.

  The young inquistor climbs resentfully aboard his mule, snagging his habit so that a very hairy bare leg is exposed. At once, with casual impudence copied from Laila, Yolanda unsnags the tunic and smoothes it down the leg, making the young man snort at unwanted sensations that erupt like fireworks. His leg flies backward, his hands fly up, and when he is thoroughly discomfited, Yolanda smacks his mule lightly on the bottom.
“There now,” she says, with unimpeachable innocence. “You’re decent again. What’s your name? James, isn’t it? I’ll be sure to tell my husband to look out for you.”

  After they leave, she is violently sick. “Relief,” she says to the huntsman. Though she knows as well as anybody the link between sickness and pregnancy, she will not allow that thought to take root anywhere.

  Four weeks later, when the late winter surge is long over and the bitches are basking with their puppies in the early summer sunshine, Yolanda runs down the steps, and this time her eyes are filled with disbelief and terror. “I was sick again this morning,” she says blankly. The puppies mewl. “It can’t be,” she cries to the huntsman. “It just can’t be. I scrubbed everything away. There was nothing left of Hugh, nothing, not anywhere.” The huntsman takes her hands. She cannot say any more, for she knows that what cannot be, is. And she knows that she has really known it ever since her mouth began to taste salty and her body to feel like a stranger’s. Hugh has had his way and got his way. She is having his baby. “I want that sorrel mare,” she says abruptly.

  The huntsman does not move. “Send for the sorrel mare,” she says.

  “Where will you go?”

  “To Montségur. To Laila. I know there’s something in her box that can help me, but I can’t tell what. I’ve got to find her.”

  “The troubadours should go with you.”

  Something in Yolanda snaps. “There’s only one horse,” she shouts, “and don’t you see, I’ve got to hurry. Brees will protect me.”