Paradise Red (11 page)

The hall falls silent. Laila lets go of everything and sits, grinning.

“Really,” Metta says quietly, “it doesn't matter.”

But Sir Roger is standing now. “Another man's wife? What's this, Raimon?”

“I thought he would have told you,” Laila spouts piously. “He wears it for Aimery's sister, Yolanda, only she's married now to Sir Hugh des Arcis.”

“I've noticed the ring but that can't be true!” Sir Roger's fists are like haunches of beef.

“You tell him,” Laila says to Raimon. “Go on.”

Raimon swallows. “Lady des Arcis—Yolanda—and I grew up together,” he says, trying to keep his eyes unclouded. “You know that. And I—I—I freely admit that we were very fond of each other.”

Laila's voice grows harder and louder. “Oh, a little more than ‘very fond,' Sir Roger. Unless, of course, Yolanda is a liar. Let's ask Raimon. Was Yolanda lying when she told me she loved you, and you loved her?”

“Yolanda doesn't lie.” He feels as a man feels on the prow of a rocking ship.

“It really doesn't matter,” Metta insists. “He can wear her ring. After all, we're not betrothed or anything.”

But she is no match for Laila. “Betrothed in all but name,” she flashes. “You've been quite the clever miss. He's turned Cathar and is going with you to Montségur. Don't pretend you don't know that he's bound to you. If not for your sake, don't you think for Yolanda's that he should take off her ring? After
all, even Frenchmen know you shouldn't wear rings given to you by one person if you're in love with another.”

Raimon rises. “I mean no disrespect to Metta by wearing Yolanda's ring.”

But Sir Roger is dismayed. He looks from his daughter to Raimon and back to his daughter. “There's an easy way to sort this out,” he says. “Just take off the ring.”

“Father! I
really
don't mind,” protests Metta. “Raimon has not said he loves me.”

Her father turns on her. “But he has behaved as if he does and is that not what you hope and believe?”

Metta's lips tremble. “I—we—”

“I repeat. Has he not led you to believe in his love?”

“I believe he—I believe—”

“Enough!” shouts Sir Roger. He will not have his daughter made a spectacle. “Raimon, if you are a man of good faith, before our journey begins, take off that ring. The painted girl is right. You have courted my daughter, so what possible use is another girl's ring now?”

Raimon knows, without even looking, that Aimery has his legs outstretched, his arms folded, and is crowing silently.

Cador, standing behind Raimon, refuses to be silent. Though he longs for Raimon to throw Metta over, he leaps to his knight's defense as a good squire should. “He can just wear two rings,” he calls out. “He's got two hands, after all.”

Everybody laughs except Sir Roger, whose broad face has taken on a determined set. “My daughter is no man's second choice. It may be true that there's been no formal betrothal but I insist that you remove that ring. In fact, you should take it off and”—he tugs at a jeweled ring on his own hand—“wear this
instead.” His huge frame towers over Raimon, holding out his offering. “I repeat. Take that one off and take this as a sign of good faith.”

Raimon is motionless.

“Perhaps the leather one's too tight to remove,” Metta says, still trying to help.

This makes Raimon twist Yolanda's ring quickly for he senses Laila gathering herself up to grab him again. The ring shifts as the leather slides. He never knows quite how Laila's fingers dart, but in a second he is empty-handed. “I'll have it now,” she crows, stashing the leather ring down the front of her dress. “And I shan't betray it.” Her eyes flash victory.

Raimon's torture is not yet over. With Metta still watching, what can he do but take Sir Roger's ring? The jeweled band, flat and shining, covers the precious stain Yolanda's ring has left. Only when he sees it is firmly on does Sir Roger sit down amid some cheering, though nobody is quite sure what they are cheering about.

Raimon also sits, and the dinner continues around him. But he now notices nobody except for Laila. Though her voice is no louder than anybody else's, his ear picks it up all the time. Metta speaks to him. He answers mechanically. Her father's ring sits as heavily on his finger as Sir Hugh's sat on Yolanda's before she tossed it away. The worst thing is that he can see the slight bulge in Laila's bodice where the ring is lodged. It is so near. Occasionally, Laila's hand brushes against it. Raimon knows she is aware that he is following her every blink, and knows, too, that she is enjoying it. Yet he can do nothing until, finally, the food is cleared and she vanishes. Without a word to Metta, he at once grabs a flare and goes after her. She cannot hide from
him. He will have the leather ring back if he has to wring her neck to get it.

He does not have to go far. She is waiting. “Looking for me?” His flare gutters as he manhandles her up the chipped stones of the spiral staircase and into a tiny archer's alcove that bulges into the wall. “Give me back my ring,” he commands.

“No.”

“I'm not going to beg. Just give it to me.”

“You? Beg? It never crossed my mind.”

“For God's sake, Laila, just hand it over.”

“Why should I? You don't want it anymore. You've a much grander ring now.”

The dark in this alcove has a peculiarly rank quality about it, partly because the arrow slit lets in only a sliver of half-light and partly because generations of archers, unwilling to abandon their watch, have used it to relieve themselves. Laila feels the stickiness through her slippers and scrunches up her toes. Raimon makes a move and her hand flies to her breast. Less than two feet separate Raimon from his treasure.

“Give it to me.” He is begging, and he knows it.

“You don't deserve it. You've betrayed Yolanda.”

“I'll not take any lessons in betrayal from you,” he sparks back. “Your dog's eyes were barely shut before you were accepting presents from her murderer.”

There is a tiny silence. Then, “If you want it, come and get it,” Laila hisses, and though he can see so little, Raimon knows she is showing those white teeth again. His blood flows thick and dark as Laila curls away from him, her breathing short and sharp like a vixen in a trap. He could so easily smash her ribs. That is what he wants to do. But she is a girl. He half steps
back, reining himself in, then hears a faint, contemptuous purr. It is too much. He leaps and the air parts and closes as they claw at each other, Laila's nails raking Raimon's face, Raimon's fingers ripping Laila's shift. Neither makes any noise, not when Laila draws blood, not when Raimon cracks and bruises her shoulders. There is so little room in the alcove that they find themselves thrust together, rocking and shoving in their shared boiling fury, Raimon's superior height and weight equally matched by Laila's wild abandon.

I do not know what would have happened had Aimery not come past. Perhaps Raimon would have killed Laila. Certainly, he feels for her neck, wanting to snap it as you might snap the stem of a poisonous weed. Or perhaps Laila, with the knife she has concealed at her belt, would have killed Raimon. But Aimery does come past and sends a soldier to drag them out. Hauled into the light, Raimon at once feels ashamed, although Laila, her clothes in tatters, feels no such thing.

“Well, well.” Aimery leers, his face creasing with amusement. “A cat fight, if ever there was one.” He chucks Laila under the chin. Raimon is surprised that Laila doesn't kick him. Instead, through her panting, she purrs again, this time the purr of a coquette. It is too much. Raimon breaks away and disappears down the stairs. Behind him he hears Aimery laughing.

Unable to face anybody, Raimon sleeps in the kennels that night. Before he lies down, he removes Sir Roger's ring. Yet in the morning, when his breath is calm and his bruises cold, he replaces it. He was a fool to fight with Laila. It has achieved nothing. He must just trust that whatever Laila does or says, Yolanda will get his message. For himself, there is nowhere to go but onward toward the Flame. He washes his face in the
hounds' water trough, stares hard but with no admiration at his reflection, and pulls straw from his hair. In the courtyard, he finds Cador with Galahad and Bors. Despite their lack of exercise, the horses' coats shine. “They're ready for anything,” Cador says as he hands over Unbent.

Raimon nods and straps the sword to his back. “And we are too?”

“Certainly are!” Cador grins. A journey is always exciting, and today, for the first time, he has managed to saddle Galahad without standing on a box. He must be at least two inches taller than he was when the snow first fell. He has saddled the pony from whom he will lead Bors but Raimon stops him from mounting. At first Cador thinks he is going to be forbidden from coming. His mouth is already open in protest. But Raimon has made a decision. “Leave the pony,” he says. “It's time you rode a proper horse. Climb onto Bors.” The boy's look of delight is a timely gift, and Raimon keeps it in his heart for a long time to come.

The sun is strong and the branches dripping by the time the procession begins to wind its way down from Castelneuf. Laila, her eyelids heavily shadowed with green and her brown shoulders almost bare, stares after them from an upper window. Aimery has tried to persuade her to come with them, but to his surprise and disappointment, she has refused, so now he is riding with Sir Roger at the head of the party, talking loudly. He dissembles shamelessly and unnecessarily, telling Sir Roger that even before the firing of Castelneuf by King Louis, Catharism was stealing up on him. “I've always been a seeker after the truth, haven't I, Alain?” he says, molding his lips primly at his squire. “So if we're to make a stand under the Flame, I want to be part of that.” Alain nods. It is best always to agree with his master. Sir Roger waits until Aimery has finished and then hangs back.

Cador, of whom Bors is taking good care, finds himself congratulated by Sir Roger on his elevation from the pony and then sent on a silly errand so that Sir Roger can settle his own horse next to Galahad. He sees, with approval, that Raimon is still wearing his ring, and also notices that Raimon seems
surprisingly ill at ease in the saddle. “You usually ride bareback?” he asks. It seems a good way to crack through the awkwardness left by the previous evening.

“I prefer it.”

“I haven't ridden bareback since I was a boy.”

Raimon gives the faint smile he feels is expected.

“The girl Laila is not with us?”

“No,” Raimon answers.

“She's a strange one, and no mistake,” Sir Roger muses, “and I can't say I'm sorry to leave her behind.”

“Laila does what she likes,” Raimon says shortly. “She says she's going to go to Carcassonne, but she goes nowhere unless it suits her.”

“And nobody minds? Nobody forces her?”

Raimon fiddles with his reins. He does not want to speak of Laila.

Sir Roger presses closer. Though deeply concerned for his daughter, he feels, somewhat unaccountably, that the business of the ring was not well done. But this is not his only concern. “I was hesitant about bringing this up when the count has been so hospitable,” he says, his tone slightly overconfidential, “and I've no reason really to believe otherwise, but do you think he's quite genuine in his conversion?” Raimon looks straight between Galahad's ears. “I mean, perhaps it's just the way he speaks, but he hardly seems a natural Cathar and he doesn't listen to Metta as you do. I don't want to arrive at Montségur with a fraud in our midst.”

Raimon concentrates hard on the rhythm of Galahad's walk. “Aimery wouldn't open his heart to me,” he says in the end.

“But you've known him a long time.”

“You must ask the count himself.”

Sir Roger rolls a little, and his raw-boned, skewbald horse shortens its stride. “I've a bad feeling,” he says.

Under the pretext of correcting how Cador holds his reins, Raimon moves away.

The journey settles into an uneven pattern, half noisy chattering as spirits lift, half nervous whispering at the prospect of what is to come. While at Castelneuf, when Sir Roger's household spoke and sang of the Flame and Montségur, their hearts were full of romance. Now, as reality looms, the romance fades. The Flame may be at Montségur but under the fortress's craggy prominence many of their bones will whiten. Though, when the sun is out, they speak with bravado, when the sun sets, they are fearful.

Sicart, who did not try to dissuade Adela when she declared her intention to go to Montségur too, listens as she exclaims as usual about God and the White Wolf, but now adds her open desire for martyrdom under the Flame. “I'm going home!” she cries, glittering without warmth. Sicart forces himself to sit with her though she scarcely feels like his child. He feels the same about Raimon. Though both his children are within an arm's reach, he realizes with awful clarity that he has lost them.

The first evening beyond my boundaries, they set up camp on a plateau whose trees have been cleared for building. Beans and lovage grow in straggles, with a broken fence to keep out the pigs. Raimon leaves Unbent with Cador as he helps gather wood for fires. It is Metta who gets Adela momentarily to swap prayer for pottage. They eat and huddle together for warmth. Nobody sings or sleeps much.

The dawn hides the distant peaks in fog. The wagons get stuck, and all the men, whatever their rank, must put their shoulders to the wheels. When at last Raimon can swing back onto Galahad, he pushes forward, away from the main party. Today Sir Roger becomes a little overkeen on patriarchal confidences. The hours drag. Even with Unbent in his hand and the Flame burning in his heart, Raimon feels as lonely as his father. Much of the time he ignores Sir Roger and tries to pretend that Yolanda is riding alongside. Yet, without her ring, even she seems ghostly. Galahad, feeling his master's inattention, picks his own way.