Blue Flame

by K. M. Grant

  “No, she wouldn’t,” said Aimery hastily.

  Hugh gave another half-smile. “Aimery here tells me you like the knights of the Round Table. Which one do you like best?”

  “Parsifal,” Yolanda said at once. “He has a heart on his shield, which I think is the nicest device.”

  “Hearts are always nice if they’re in the right place,” Hugh replied, fixing her with a look. It was a line and a look he’d used many times before. He had never known it to fail and it did not fail now. He recognized the signs—the slight flutter of the eyelids, the tightening at the corner of the lips, the unconscious straightening of the shoulders. Women were very predictable. Yet this one did seem to have something different about her. For a start, though Aimery had described his sister as a scruffy bird in need of a good grooming, Hugh’s first impression was more of a dryad. That hair, tumbling about like leaves in a gale! What would it look like, he wondered, if it were clean? Those almond eyes! What man would not seek his reflection in them? And though she was certainly a trifle rough about the edges, it would not have been wrong for Aimery to claim that his sister had the potential to be quite a beauty. True, her face was a little thin and her features sharp, but that only made her more mysterious. And as for her mouth, Aimery had said nothing about that, but it reminded Hugh of a summer rose. Like Raimon, he too noticed the tiny chip in the front tooth. How odd that that should add to her allure! But it did, and had Hugh been a dog and Yolanda a joint of meat, he would have licked his lips. He leaned toward her slightly and suddenly it was dog he was smelling. Brees pushed in and his eyes were hostile. Hugh stepped back. It would be humiliating to be bitten. He eyed the dog but his smile remained. “I do know stories of Arthur and Merlin. I learned them when I was a page.”

  “Can we hear them tonight? You see, the Flame—”

  “Daughter, daughter!” Berengar remonstrated. “The poor man must be hungry and thirsty and we’ve a lot to discuss and you are already on about stories.” He patted the visitor’s shoulder, glad that at least the man wasn’t taller than him. “My daughter is a little impatient,” he explained, “and a little overexcited. Now come, everyone. Eat! Drink! I hope it will be satisfactory.” He ushered them all inside, with a sinking feeling that he should have sent for the fish.

  “I’m sure I can eat anything,” Hugh said, winking at Aimery and Alain as he threw his sword to the squire for safe keeping.

  Yolanda caught the wink and her smile grew uncertain. He could not, surely, be making fun of them? But then he tucked her arm under his and told her how he had looked up at the chateau from the valley and thought such a fairy-tale place must contain a beautiful sorceress, and that he had been right. She was charmed once more and proudly led him into the hall.

  And she had good reason to be proud. Usually the hall was dark, but under her guidance, for she had been hard at work since Raimon had left her, banks of thick candles revealed the chateau’s glory, a curved, vaulting roof resplendent with painted heroes slaying monstrous mythical beasts, their swords not steel gray but fabulous, impossible colors, and each sword reflecting the face of a maiden gazing over dewy mountains toward turreted castles beyond. Below flapped heavy tapestries on which hunting scenes had been painstakingly worked by generations of Castelneuf women, singing, dreaming, and gossiping in the lamplight. Usually, Yolanda scarcely noticed them and her preparation of the hall for a visitor would have been perfunctory, but since yesterday’s dawn, she had suddenly become aware of the details of her home, as if, like the Flame, it too might vanish. It was not just for Hugh’s benefit that she had counted trenchers with care and sent to Simon Crampcross to borrow silver bowls to make the table look smart, just as it was not entirely for Hugh that she now picked up a candle to highlight some of the finer embroidery. It was, however, with some embarrassment that she noticed some of the hunters’ colors were faded brownish yellow from the wood smoke, and at the bottom, among the embroidered ladies’ skirts, generations of dogs had marked their territory, often and repeatedly. There was a distinct smell of rot.

  There was also quarreling. As usual, Gui the Singer of Cavaillon and Guerau the Catalan were facing each other as if in the tournament lists, Gui brandishing his viol and Guerau waving his bladder pipe. They had been arguing all day about the exact meaning of the Blue Flame, and now, strutting like a pair of irritable peacocks, they were arguing about something else near to their hearts.

  “I’m telling you, Guerau,” Gui, thin as a bowstring although not quite as bent, was insisting. “When a girl is fourteen, she wants a song of some sophistication, not a ditty whose chorus, so far as I can tell, exhorts her to roll among the flowers like a pig in a barley field.” He flourished a final chord.

  Guerau listened impolitely, then squeezed his pipe until it collapsed with the whining splurge that always made Yolanda and Raimon snort. “Sophistication might suit other girls”—Guerau always spoke at full volume—“but I write for Yolanda herself, just as she naturally is. She’d much rather roll around in the barley than sit like a nun on a misericord, as you would have her. But, my skinny friend, you’ve never had my talent for capturing character in a song. Perhaps it’s just your age. We must make allowances.”

  Gui bristled like an angry porcupine. He was five years older than Guerau and loathed to be reminded. “Like all Catalans, you’re quite deluded. Nobody wants to listen to a lot of random notes pouring out higgledy piggledy in no particular order. There’s no difference, so far as I can tell, between your songs and the mewing of the cook’s cat. And what’s more, you know nothing about women. What girl in her right mind wants to be seen as she naturally is? Girls want songs that depict them as goddesses.”

  This was not a new quarrel. Its beginnings were obscure and its end would never come. The two men had been quarreling since their first meeting, many years before, at the court of the Count of Barcelona, and they had continued to quarrel as they traveled together over the Pyrenees into the Occitan until quarreling was what they did most comfortably, particularly at times of stress. Since the blue dawn, their quarreling had been deafening, for each was anxious lest the other create the best new song about it first.

  The count wagged his head in mock despair. “Those two,” he said. “Sometimes I think I should send one packing. The noise is intolerable. And that’s just their arguing.”

  “No change there, then,” Aimery murmured to Yolanda. Yolanda felt a little disloyal, but she laughed. Gui and Guerau could make her cry with their lays and odes, but they were also funny and Raimon did a marvelous imitation of Guerau in a huff. She heard Hugh laugh too, but also saw him nod to the musicians, acknowledging their place in the household. That pleased Yolanda. Hugh was nice, she decided, and Aimery himself seemed different from when he had last been home. Not his face, which, even with his new beard, was a bit like one of cook’s puddings, flat and slightly grainy, but he had a new sparkle to him. Perhaps it was because he was wearing a silk surcoat with double-colored sleeves such as Yolanda had never seen before. Perhaps—and at this her chin dimpled—he had found himself a ladylove. She wondered if she might ask Hugh.

  The table on the dais was sparkling clean, and sweet-smelling rushes had been strewn rather patchily under the trestles. Berengar sighed when Aimery said nothing about this, only asked why—as the servants clattered platters of venison and mutton and boys ran in with chickens and ducks skewered from the spit—there was no fish.

  “I said we’d have enough with the meat,” Yolanda said. Aimery was going to scold until he found Hugh congratulating her on being such a practical housekeeper and then raised his tankard in her direction. The evening went with a swing. It was much later when Aimery, who had not stinted on the wine, pointed to the moth-eaten bear’s head hung over the double doors. Though it was long past its best, it was his father’s proudest trophy. Aimery leaned over. “Time for fresh blood,” he announced with pointed ambiguity. “Don’t you agree?”

  No one really wanted to answer, and Hugh, noti
ng Yolanda’s unhappy gasp, chose that moment to throw bones to the dogs. They all leaped up, and in the full-blown war that followed Aimery’s remark was left hanging.

  Yolanda, angry with Aimery and more glad than she could say for the interruption, launched into the fray with nothing more than a bucket of water and a torrent of orders. With trestles tipping and the servants shrieking, it was some time before order was restored, but finally, when most of the dogs had been hauled out, she called for Brees. He came reluctantly, a haunch of mutton still clamped between his jaws, and it was only with trembling unwillingness that he sat at her command and gave his treasure up. She took it, then returned it to him, reproaching him for his greed, and when she eventually sat down again, she found Hugh’s eyes appraising her. When he raised his tankard in her direction, commending her for bravery, she shrugged as if what she had done was nothing. But even though she told herself she cared nothing for what he thought, she couldn’t stop her heart from thumping giddily or her eyes from shining brighter than the candles.

  Aimery passed by and bent down. “You’re flirting, Yola,” he whispered, “and it suits you.”

  “You must not be horrible to Father.” He made an apologetic face and she pretended to punch him. All of a sudden, she felt sharp and brilliant. It was the same feeling she had once, when she was walking along a thin, high wall, that made her suddenly skip.

  Aimery, back at his seat, delivered his news without any preliminaries, as if it were an observation about the weather.

  “Girald is coming,” he said.

  The count paled and dropped a duck breast. “Are you sure?”

  “Brothers do visit each other,” said Aimery softly.

  “But he’s always so busy preaching.”

  “He heard of the blue dawn and sent a messenger to me on the road.”

  “Oh dear. Will he be staying long?” Berengar tried not to sound anxious.

  “I hope not,” whispered Yolanda to Hugh. “My uncle Girald is like an icy wind”—she drew an imaginary shawl around her—“and my other uncle, Bernard, is like a great damp fog. Whenever either visits, everything is spoiled.”

  Hugh said nothing at first and Yolanda bit her lip. Perhaps that was what a child would have said. But then he was whispering in her ear. “I think nothing could be spoiled if you are there.” The compliment was pretty, although its reception was a little marred when her hair, bundled into a great knot behind her head, worked loose and swung into the gravy. She wished now that she had at least combed it. To divert attention, she lambasted the steward, an old man who had been in service with her father as long as she could remember.

  “Jean, we should have bowls of water for our fingers,” she exclaimed. “Can you make sure we do in the future? We are not savages here in Amouroix.”

  Jean opened his mouth to argue. Only yesterday, the young mistress had happily wiped her mouth on the hem of her skirt, just like everybody else. But he saw something new in her face, shut his mouth, and shuffled off, grumbling.

  Yolanda twinkled at Hugh, and as Aimery and the others began to talk about rebellion and the Flame—and Aimery began to castigate his father for not having already dispatched teams of men to search for it—their guest began to chat exclusively with her, telling her of his home among the vineyards and of the great fairs, where bolts of wools and fine linens formed multicolored walls and women exchanged patterns for fashionable gowns yet unseen—except, of course, in Paris.

  “But I am very dull at home in Champagne,” he said with a slow, self-deprecating sigh. “You see, I’ve nobody for whom to buy trinkets and treasures.” He looked straight into her eyes. “My wife is dead, and none of my children reached their second birthdays.”

  He saw her frown, but not about the deaths. “Champagne? I thought Arcis would have been in the Occitan.” She glanced at Aimery, but he was deep in conversation.

  Underneath his half-smile, Hugh’s eyes were watchful, missing nothing. “It’s not, I’m afraid, and that’s my misfortune.”

  “You’re French?”

  There was a little pause while he filled her tankard with wine. “Yes, I am, for my sins, although I know Raymond of Toulouse extremely well.” He took a sip of his own wine. “I spend a great deal of time in Paris. Have you been there?”

  Yolanda shook her head. Of course she hadn’t been to Paris!

  He went on smoothly, not rushing, his half-smile always present, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for him to be there. “We don’t have the glorious sky of the Amouroix, and we don’t have the mountains. How fortunate you are! But we have a few compensations.” He began to talk, always comparing Paris unfavorably with the Occitan, but nevertheless painting a lovely picture. Paris, he said, was a city of bells and arching stone, and boasted a river that was green and gold by day and blue and orange by night. She should see the great processions and the gatherings where women wore clothes too fabulous for a simple knight like him to describe. Did she like books? Paris was full of books that told stories not just with words and music as the troubadours did, but also through delicate pictures painted with ground gemstones. She was soon hanging on his every word, her mouth slightly open. It was only when Hugh told her that it was a city fit for a southern sorceress and that if she came to visit, it would fall at her feet that she grew flustered. She wanted to retort that it couldn’t be as marvelous as the Occitan, but the right words wouldn’t come.

  Hugh did not let the silence become awkward. He told her, in a matter-of-fact way, about the house he was having built, but in the middle of his description of the plumbing, she sprang up.

  “Play something,” she ordered Gui and Guerau. “Play something now.” Why was she bothering with words? This was how Hugh should learn of the Occitan, of me—the Amouroix—and of Castelneuf.

  Gui needed no more encouragement. On a stool set amid the dogs, he tested his viol strings and then began to sing. He had a high, melancholy voice, well suited to his tale of glorious southern knights and their ladies, of sighs and favors, of unrequited love and a fallen world. He sang in time and in tune, and when he had finished, everybody applauded.

  Guerau did not wait for silence before he kicked over his stool and was on the table, standing jauntily between two large candlesticks and pumping up his bladder pipe. His song was an unashamedly lusty ballad of flowers coyly raising their heads through the frost, of lambs in the springtime, and of sun on bare skin. His voice was lively as game soup with a peppercorn kick and he had a way of banging his foot that made every leg twitch. When his last chorus was finished, he raised his pipe to his lips and Yolanda, who was already strung tighter than an arrow string, could contain herself no longer. Grabbing Aimery, she began to dance; and when Aimery, self-conscious in front of his new friend, was slow to respond, she lost patience and danced alone.

  To begin with, she danced as she usually did, with complete abandon, up and down the middle of the hall where the stone floor was free of its rushy carpet, her skirts twisting and her hair banging this way and that. But Guerau’s music was different tonight. His pipe, so often such a joke, found a new voice, a breathy, wistful melody, in a rope of blue smoke that might have curled from the Blue Flame itself. The rope did not tame Yolanda, but it bound her childish exuberance to its will. Now a different sort of abandon possessed her and she stretched out her arms for something or someone she could not yet see. The company fell silent and pressed their backs to the walls as she danced, as if they thought she might burn them as she passed. Though the beat pulsed, nobody clapped. And as the dance grew more intense, it was as if the Blue Flame itself was flaring in the hall.

  Under his beard, Aimery smiled secretly at Hugh’s expression. What a good arrangement he had made! Yolanda would have been too vital, too alive for many of the northern knights to whom he had considered offering her, but not this one. They would be well matched.

  Yolanda herself was no longer aware of anyone. The music possessed her entirely and she knew nothing at all exc
ept that she could not stop her lonely dance until it let her go, so she went where the music willed. Supple and light as a feather, she abandoned her shoes and leaped like a deer from trestle to water barrel, water barrel to trestle, all the way around the room, knocking over nothing, disturbing nothing. She closed her eyes. She was no longer Yolanda. She was just a strand of that flame-shaped smoky rope that held her in its mystical grip. And then her dance was no longer lonely, for loneliness was banished by happiness, a kind of happiness she had not felt before, a happiness that by its very strength overwhelmed and frightened her, for—while she could hardly bear to lose it—she knew it could not last.

  The rope snapped and the pipe’s music suddenly beat to an ordinary rhythm, jolting her back into the hall. Aimery began to clap as the spell broke and Yolanda staggered, breathing thinner air. She put out her arms, wanting Raimon. Then, when she realized he was not there, dropped them again.

  Hugh’s eyes were narrowed to an arc as he gazed at her. These Occitanian women really were shameless, but he had to admit that compared to them, northern women, even city courtesans, were bloodless and flimsy. The thought of Yolanda dancing such a dance in Paris made his head spin. With her hair brushed and a clean face, she would be a sensation—his sensation.

  Delighted with his sister’s success, Aimery at last lost his inhibitions and caught her around the waist. Yolanda blinked and responded automatically, for the movements were in her sinews and bones, and when she next flung out her arms, it was an invitation for everybody to join in. In moments the dance spread like a happy infection. The bolder servants grasped each other, while others beat time with ladles on cauldrons or window ledges. Even the woven tapestry figures flapped to the rhythm and Berengar, though too old for capering himself, waved his fingers, remembering when his first countess used to dance like this.

  Hugh tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to look as though tapping his feet came quite naturally. Even Yolanda could not persuade him to dance, so Aimery had to do, even though he had grown heavier in his time away and the music never really possessed him. Dancing with Raimon, she thought to herself, was like dancing with a story whereas dancing with Aimery was like dancing with a bear. Nevertheless, Aimery was fine for tonight. She tossed her head in Hugh’s direction. Once she had taught him, he would never refuse.