by K. M. Grant
“Your mother—”
“No, Yolanda. I can’t speak of her right now. Please, just tell me about the Flame.”
“Uncle Girald thinks it’s come for him. He’s setting up his inquisitorial court in the chateau. But it won’t come to anything, will it, Raimon? Any Cathars can just pretend they’re Catholics. Isn’t that right? That’s what your father and sister will do, if it comes to it? And the Flame will be used by us all together against King Louis?”
He wanted to reassure her. He wanted to tell her that she was right, that the Cathars would renounce their faith without a qualm, that nobody would take Girald’s court seriously, that King Louis would be beaten by an army of Occitanians in which there was no distinction made between Catholic and Cathar, and that life at Castelneuf would resume, unblotted even by so much as a cross word. Once, even a few days ago, he could have pretended. But no longer, not after what he had witnessed in his own home. And an added cruelty was that he couldn’t tell her about the White Wolf. For the first time, he would deliberately keep something from her. He hated the thought. Yet, though he had no experience with inquisitors, all his instincts told him that she must know nothing that she could be forced to reveal to Girald. It was not that he didn’t trust her; on most things he would trust her with his life. But in this case, trust was not enough. He must keep the worst thing in his life from her and bear it alone.
“Raimon?”
He had almost forgotten her question, and she had to repeat it. His answer was more clipped than he intended. “I don’t know, Yolanda.” At once, he began to get up, afraid that if she questioned him again he might crack, and then everything would come tumbling out.
It was more in an attempt to stop him from moving than for any other reason that Yolanda spoke of Aimery’s return and, before she could stop herself, of Hugh. Raimon looked quickly at her hair again, and so bleak an expression settled on his face that Yolanda could have bitten her tongue. Why hadn’t she been more careful? But he would hear about Hugh sooner or later. No stranger could pass without comment in Castelneuf. She tried to make Hugh sound as unimportant as Aimery’s new squire and she tried not to mention his name again but it didn’t work. Raimon asked where Hugh came from and though she told him, and even told him something of their conversation, thinking that this would somehow make things better, she knew she sounded insincere. After a bit, she fell silent and when Raimon made to get up again, she didn’t try to stop him.
“I think it’s you who should go home,” he told her, quite gently.
“I don’t want to go home.”
“Don’t be stupid, Yolanda. You must.”
“Can’t I stay here with you?”
“With me?” He gave a shrug that seemed to contain the despair of the world. “That’s all over now, I think. You must go home. Your uncle will be expecting you, and I daresay this Hugh as well. Once Girald has the Flame, as his niece you’ll be quite a catch for a knight and I’ve no doubt that Hugh will be very decorative at your party.”
He did not mean his words to cut. He just opened his mouth and out they came. But they had cut, he knew that, and he was too deathly tired to take them back or even to know whether he wanted to. She was standing now as well, both of them joined by one thing: the feeling of being infinitely older than when they had knelt down.
“Do you know when my mother’s funeral will be?”
“Jean didn’t say.”
“It will be tonight, I think.” He guessed that it would be done at the White Wolf’s convenience. The perfectus would be anxious to leave even if he would not go far from the Flame, but would feel it impolite to vanish before Felippa was buried. Yolanda waited for some further explanation, but none was forthcoming. Then, because he didn’t seem to want her there anymore, she turned and began to walk slowly away.
Almost at once, Raimon longed, above everything, to call her name; to tell her how he’d seen the Flame and danced, and of the arc of fire she’d flung at him in his dream and how it had welded them together. But he could not do it. His mother was dead—murdered, or as good as—by a man of God and Yolanda had brushed her hair for a knight. Such a little thing, Yolanda, he thought to himself, but oh, how significant. She was soon invisible in the downpour.
He went and crouched under an overhang. It was there he thought about the other thing that sat like a stone in his stomach. He had taken part in a Cathar consolation. With no knife to his throat, he had placed his hands on the Gospels and muttered the words the perfectus recited to him. He had done that and he would never deny it, for that would insult his mother’s memory. It did, however, change everything. He could now be branded an active heretic. Thus, in the space of only a few days, Castelneuf was finished for him. As soon as his mother was buried he would leave, offer his services to Raymond of Toulouse, and fight against the Occitan’s enemies until he was dead. Then, as if to seal his promise, he rose and held his face up to the rain. Standing like that, he could pretend he wasn’t crying; although Parsifal, watching from above, had a pretty shrewd notion that he was.
8
The Funeral
Aimery laughed at Yolanda when she got home, and Hugh smiled. “A mermaid,” he said.
“Hardly that.” Aimery was still laughing. “You’re as dirty as a puddle, Yola. Where’ve you been?”
Yolanda did not reply. Aimery would already know that she’d been over the river. He didn’t need to know any more. She sat with Brees in her room. It was not for some time that she noticed a new purse lying on her bed. With its rolled edging and mother-of-pearl clasp, it had all the hallmarks of a Parisian craftsman. She picked it up and passed it from hand to hand. Brees sniffed at it without interest. Yolanda put it down again. She also put away the comb that Hugh had given her the morning after his arrival.
There was no singing at supper that night. With Girald’s eye upon him, Berengar had forbidden singing and all meat until Lent was over. Yolanda sat stony-faced as Hugh cut up tiny pieces of fish for her and, when these were refused, cut up even smaller pieces of cheese. He never inquired what was the matter or demanded a response of any kind, not even an acknowledgment of his present, and for that she was grateful. Girald, chewing his crusts like a living corpse in their midst, was turning his parchments this way and that to get better light. The following day was designated for the first inquisitorial court and he was marking out his victims.
In such weather it was dark by vespers, and unable to concentrate on anything, Yolanda went back to her chamber. Her fire had gone out, for the servant who kept it up for her had already fled, and although Brees leaped up and draped himself over her on the bed, she was cold. She could not stop thinking about Raimon’s mother. It was true that she would most likely be buried tonight, for though such secrecy had never been necessary within my borders, it had quickly become the custom for heretics to be buried after dark. Yolanda had been to one or two such funerals before with her father. She rubbed her feet and Brees pressed himself more closely to her, as if he read her mind. An hour later, she was opening her chest and pulling out a pair of winter stockings. They were full of holes, but she rolled them on anyway and changed her dress, which had once been flame red, for one of deep blue, with holes only in the elbow. Brees waited until she began to tie on the ibex-skin boots she usually wore only when it was snowing, then he galumphed down. And just in case his mistress thought him sleepy, he began to leap about like a giant puppy. Yolanda hugged him.
“Come,” she whispered, throwing her thickest winter cloak over her shoulder, then, “no—not that way,” when he headed for the main staircase. Tonight she chose the smaller spiral steps that led almost to the roof of the chateau and made her way through the little-used upstairs rooms. Stacks of swords and piles of crossbows, together with spare rings for chain mail and quarrel heads for arbalesters’ bolts, had been stored in dusty chaos for a siege that never came. In the corner of one attic, a large iron wheel for knife sharpening was rusting away, leaking grain sacks humped aroun
d it, giving it the demeanor of the last man standing in a bloodless but devastating battle. Everything had been just the same as long as Yolanda could remember. Although occasionally, when the weather was too bad to do anything else, the armorer would gather up dogboys, pages, squires, and buckets of fine sand to give everything a bit of a burnishing while he bored them with tales of sieges past and told them how much braver and more noble people had been in those days. When Yolanda was little, she thought that as long as these rooms remained undisturbed, all was well. What a fool she had been, not to realize that danger can come from within as well as without.
She reached the end of the rooms, fumbled her way down a straighter staircase, and emerged into the anteroom, where her mother used to sit in the evenings. In her day it had been specially lit with hundreds of candles so the needlework at which she excelled could be carried out in winter and summer, day and night. The intense light and happy industry had made this room, rather than the grander hall, the chateau’s heart, and to Yolanda it had always been filled both with music and the countess’s voice gently scolding the servants as she tried to teach them to read or to stitch. Yolanda brushed past the chair in which, just before every Christmas, her mother sat sewing a swan’s feather into a new surcoat for her father in a private whisper of love.
Apart from the chair, the room was unrecognizable now, for Girald, with his unerring instinct for particularly personal cruelties, had ignored his brother’s pleas for it to be left alone and had turned it into his courtroom. With a tall lamp at each corner, shackles and chains in heaps, and a large judgment chair—fortunately the countess’s had not been grand enough—there was nothing of either her or the gentle life left. Rather, the room was like the stage set that Yolanda, when hardly more than a toddler, had seen in Pamiers one Easter. A storyteller had pretended to put the devil on trial and when he appeared, she had screamed and hidden underneath her mother’s skirt. She fled again now, with Brees a heavy shadow behind her.
It was still raining outside, but she took no notice. Skirting around the wall, she came to a dense patch of garlic mustard, almost bouncing as the raindrops hit it. It was a useful patch since it covered an ancient hole in the wall. In a moment, she and Brees were through and away.
At the river, Pierre and Sanchez were dozing in their shack. The wooden gate they had erected was closed but had no padlock. Slowly and carefully, Yolanda slid back the bolts. The hinges creaked as she pushed Brees through, and she was almost through herself when two strong hands grabbed her. “Caught you, you rascal!”
“It’s me, Sanchez, just me!” Yolanda squeaked like a mouse, and then struggled to shush the dog. She couldn’t let him bark.
“You, Mistress Yolanda! Well, I never. What on earth are you doing out so late in this weather?”
“Nothing! Really nothing!”
“Nothing!” The two men laughed together. Sanchez let her go and went back inside.
Pierre sidled a little closer, holding his blanket above both their heads for shelter. “Nothing’s a funny thing to be doing at this hour.” Yolanda shook her head, smiling tentatively and lowering her lashes. Beatrice had taught her this trick; she said it never failed and she seemed to be right, even in this deluge.
“All right. Knock once and cough loudly when you come back,” Pierre said, “then we’ll know it’s you. We’re not supposed to let anybody out, but I don’t suppose you count as anybody.” He laughed at his joke and leered a little. “You girls! Nothing gets in the way of your love life, does it? Who cares about this rainstorm, the Flame, or King Louis when there are boys and gossip! Who’s the lucky one tonight? If he doesn’t turn up, I’ll volunteer.”
Resisting the temptation to slap him, Yolanda gave a passable imitation of one of Beatrices’s best simpers and disappeared over the bridge. It was slippery with mud and moss and the darkness coated her like treacle. She held tightly onto Brees.
The cemeteries were set on some flat land, just above the river. The Catholic tombstones, sticking up as they did like broken teeth, were somehow less menacing than the unmarked grassy humps of the Cathar dead who lay in their own cemetery, directly adjacent. A few years ago, she and Raimon had come here at midnight to try and send a message to Yolanda’s mother through the Messengers of Souls, but they had seen nothing and Yolanda had been very disappointed. Now she took refuge behind a large tombstone erected in memory of one of her father’s favorite huntsmen. Peering through the soggy veil of her hair, her skirts saturated and water filling her boots, she prayed that the funeral party would arrive soon. She would not allow herself to entertain the thought that Sicart might wait for better weather.
An hour passed and Yolanda grew more desperate as she grew colder. How long should she stay? She would count to a hundred, once in Occitan and once in the French she and the whole household had learned from her mother. If, at the end, there was still nothing, she would go home.
Barely had she begun when she sensed small movements. So quietly had the funeral party arrived that not even Brees had noticed. In her relief, Yolanda shifted and then wished she hadn’t, for now she could feel an icy snake of water trickling down her backbone, the only part of her that had been dry.
The burial party spoke not a word. She recognized Sicart’s shape, and Adela’s, and was puzzled that the third person was not Raimon but a stranger. Surely Raimon was here. Sicart and the stranger put down what Yolanda knew must be the shroud and dug fast, although it was hard since the soil had turned to slop.
Nevertheless, they were soon waist deep. Then, still without a word, they picked up their precious bundle and carefully lowered it in. Adela muttered something, but the hammering of the rain made it impossible to hear, and then she began to help scrape the soil back with her hands.
The burial was nearly complete when there was such a clanking and clattering that Yolanda thought the dead were casting off their chains. From behind her, like an army of raindrops, dozens of glistening shapes arose. Except they were not raindrops, for they were encased in chain mail and leather and their breath was heavy and foul. The inquisitor, as suggested in the list of instructions issued by the General Council and which he had read several times, had stationed soldiers at the Cathar burial ground. It was an excellent place in which to catch heretics rendered a little careless by grief.
Yolanda couldn’t keep silent. “Run,” she screamed as loudly as she could to Sicart and Adela. “Run, run.”
She tried to run herself, but there was nowhere to run to, and anyway, her feet were stuck in the mud. The soldiers came upon her from behind. Brees did his best to protect her, launching himself upward, legs splayed and jaw open, but he had no chance against so many. As Yolanda was knocked flat, her dog was seized and pulled away. At once she thrust out her hand, calling his name again and again, but instead of his familiar hairiness, her hands were caught by other hands, eager and rough, and she could not beat them off. Pressed to the ground, the soldiers had her at their mercy, leering at her and whispering in her ear terrible distortions of the words of love that in the light were sung to other tunes.
Through the thick horror, one hand stood out. Pale as moonlight, it reached down and pulled her through the maelstrom. There was no voice, but the soldiers fell away at the sight of it, for it was not one of theirs. Pulling mantles over their faces, for they were not unashamed of the license they had hoped to take, they fled, and the next Yolanda knew, she was at the bridge again, alone. Her cloak was gone, but she was unharmed.
At once she began to run back toward the cemeteries, from where she could still hear shouting. “Brees! Brees!” She couldn’t go home without him. Frantic, she called again, and again, and then very nearly called Raimon’s name, certain that he must be there and that he would come to her if he could. Just in time, she clapped her hand over her mouth. What was she doing? She mustn’t call for Raimon. She mustn’t call for anybody. They were living in the inquisitor’s world now, not her father’s. She fell to her knees, and Pierre, running to
ward the hullabaloo, virtually stumbled over her.
“Mistress Yolanda! For goodness’ sake, go home! Go home now! God knows, we shouldn’t have let you through in the first place.” He picked her up and forced her back over the bridge.
“Brees!”
“The dog’ll be waiting for you at the chateau. Sure he will. Go home. You’re bound to find him there.”
“No, don’t you see? They—”
“Mistress Yolanda, I’m telling you. You can’t go out again. Go home. Go home now.”
She was never going to get past him. All she could do was pray that he was right. Somewhere, Brees would be waiting for her. She stumbled up the main street, now almost a river itself, and got to the chateau gate. Brees was not there. She picked up her skirts and struggled to find the hole in the wall. He was not there. Panting with distress, she hauled herself through, across the courtyard, and back through the small door. She could hear the slap of the rain on the roof tiles and knew there would be a trickle to her right from a leak high above her. Were there paw prints up these steps? She couldn’t see because there was not enough light, but her bedroom door was ajar. He could be there, he really could! He was, he was, he must be.
She flung open the door. Yes, surely! That shape on the bed? That lump by the chair? That shadow by the window? But there was nothing, only her room, only her things, only Brees’s smell, his hair, old dirty paw marks on her coverlet—everything, in fact, but the dog himself. She ran to the window, dragging off the linen that kept out the draughts and cried out her dog’s name, again and again, like a ship’s siren in the fog.
