Paradise Red (7 page)

“More fool her,” Raimon says more sharply than he should
have, then shouts for Cador. “Will you pull our sleigh back to the chateau? We're going to walk.”

Cador leaps up, nods, and shakes himself like a pony. Laila is running to the river, slithering down and jumping about. Raimon opens his mouth to shout a warning. Then he shrugs. Let Laila do as she likes.

Spears of heat force the blood to flow through Raimon's ears and lips, making them itch. He takes Metta's arm to make sure she does not slip and then uses the excuse of a narrow track to let go. As they walk in single file, he strides just a little too fast so that she must scurry to keep up. Her lack of complaint irritates Raimon more. He knows how unfair he is being, but for fully a quarter of an hour he cannot help himself.

The path soon vanishes in the pristine hush, and Raimon hardly realizes that they have walked straight over the wall and are in the Catholic graveyard. “Take care,” he warns Metta. “Don't fall over a tombstone.” He takes her arm again, and as suddenly as it arrived, his ill temper vanishes. How dare he snap. None of this is Metta's fault. He guides her around gently, their footfalls making deep indents, until, though there is nothing to see in the white flatness except some animal tracks, he is sure they must be in the separate place set aside for the Cathar dead. He halts. “My mother's buried in here,” he says.

“Oh,” Metta responds, at once full of sympathy. “You must miss her.”

“Every day,” Raimon replies and draws his dark brows together. Another lie and he surely need not lie all the time. “Actually, Metta, that's not true. There are days when I don't think of her at all. It's only when I hear the snatch of a song or
smell bread baking, then I wish I could just—could just—” He cannot go on. What he is saying now is not a lie yet is tainted by its use as another hook to draw Metta to him.

“I'd like to have met your mother,” she says after a while. “Do you think you're like her?”

“No,” says Raimon quickly. “She was not like me.”

Metta stands, waiting for him to take the lead as is her habit, and Raimon feels again that rush of resentment and now he welcomes it because it helps to harden his heart. “I wanted to be a good son to her,” he says, “but I failed her in the end.”

“Why do you say that?”

Raimon finds he has to walk on, picking up his feet and placing them carefully so as to make clean imprints. As he walks, he bows his head, swinging his hair over his face. “She wanted me to believe as she did. And I did try, Metta. I even took part in her consolation. It was just that the White Wolf—I told you, remember? He told her she couldn't eat. It seemed like murder.”

“It wasn't murder, but it was wrong,” Metta says, following in his footsteps.

“Perhaps I was too quick to believe the worst of the Cathar faith, and believe me, when my mother died, I wanted to believe the worst.” He stops when he thinks they are directly beside his mother's grave and turns. Metta moves until she is standing over his mother, a cozy angel in wool and fur. “But now?” she prompts.

Raimon takes a deep breath and does not draw back. “I don't know. These last days, talking to you—” He shrugs. “It's too late, though, isn't it.” He finally lifts his face to her.

Metta smiles her innocent smile. “It's not too late,” she says. “Many people come to our faith who have spent their lives denying it.”

“I suppose they do,” he says, and thinks “careful, careful” as he presses on. “Sometimes, when I'm with you, it does seem the only way to make sense of everything.” He feels two bright lying spots under his eyes. Yolanda would have recognized them at once. Metta puts them down to the cold. She clamps her hood tightly under her chin. She is a perfect model for a Madonna, Raimon thinks rather bleakly, because she is a girl without angles, a girl in whom a man might bury himself and find all the comfort in the world. His quicksilver resentment turns again to remorse. She does not deserve this.

“Come,” she says, conscious of a certain hollowness in his cheeks, “let's get back into the warmth.”

As they retrace their steps, snow from the branches above drops onto her head. “I've been talking to Cador.” Her voice is light. “He tells me you're the bravest knight he's ever served, and from the stories he tells, I think it may be true.”

“I'm the only knight he's ever served, and I'm not even a knight.” Raimon moves in front of her so that she cannot see the workings of his face. “Walk in my footprints again. That way your feet won't get so wet.”

Metta slots in. “It's an honor to be walking in the steps of the Knight of the Blue Flame,” she says happily.

He stops short and spins around. Has she guessed, or is she making fun of him? But she is incapable of either guessing or jesting. She is simply complimenting him in a way she knows will please him. Why this should be the last straw, he does not know, but it is. He cannot deceive her any longer. He will get
the Blue Flame another way. “Metta,” he begins, but it is hard. He is only used to revealing things to Yolanda.

She stands expectantly. “I'm listening,” she says.

Where to start? “I love this place,” he says.

“Yes,” she answers, “I know that.”

“No, you don't know, not really, not in the way I want you to know. I'd do anything to save it from harm. Anything. Do you understand that? Anything.”

“Yes,” she says again. “That's why Cador calls you the Knight of the Blue Flame.”

“It's more complicated than that. You see—” But he gets no further for a shriek has Metta clinging to him, and very quickly another shriek follows, high as a banshee so that the hairs on both their necks rise, and they begin to run as fast as the snow will allow, Raimon kicking great clods aside and virtually swinging Metta off her feet. They slither back across the bridge, still clinging together.

Downriver, a crowd has gathered. Dropping Metta, Raimon pushes through to the front, where he finds Laila, soaking and crying, belaboring Aimery. The pink dye from her hair has run into the chalk with which she has whitened her face, giving her a skinned look. Aimery's hands and clothes are also pink-blotted as he fends her off. “Jesus Christ, Laila!” he is shouting. “You're the very devil.”

Two men are carrying something between them. Dread sucks all Raimon's breath into an echoing howl. “Cador! Oh my God, Cador!”

But it is not Cador the men are carrying: it is a skinny, hairless dog. “Ugly!” Raimon exclaims. “Oh, for goodness' sake.” His relief fires his anger. “That poor brute. What did they do to her?”

“You knew it wasn't safe!” Laila is screaming at Aimery, “yet you still threw the bone into the river. Why were you even carrying one?”

Aimery finally grips her hands behind her back. Her petticoats flap, garish and dripping. “It was the end of my breakfast. I wasn't thinking about the dog when I threw it.”

“Why didn't you jump in to save her?” Laila is writhing, trying to face him, but he holds her too tight.

“I knew I'd be too heavy. Christ in heaven, you idiot! The ice couldn't even hold you.”

“You could have tried!” She ties herself into terrible, murderous knots.

“Like you did? What good did that do?” Aimery is puce for he almost cannot hold her, and the puce clashes with the pink as Laila's screams ricochet around the valley. “Let go of me! Ugly! Ugly!”

Raimon has reached the dog and is kneeling. Ugly's eyes and mouth are open, giving her a look of faint surprise. She is already stiffening.

“If I let go, do you promise not to hit me?” Aimery seems determined to turn this tiny tragedy into something of a joke. He lets go.

Laila kicks out at him, then rushes to Ugly and takes the dog's face between her blotched hands. “Wake up!” she orders. “Wake up at once, Ugly. Don't you dare ignore me. Wake up now this minute.” There is a click as she shakes the dog and the jaw closes. She repeats her order, her voice rising and rising until Raimon puts his own hands over hers. “She can't obey you, Laila,” he tells her flatly. “She's dead.”

For a long moment Laila remains still. Only Raimon can
see the struggle going on inside her and the tears she refuses to shed. Aimery will not have that satisfaction. Raimon grips her hands tighter as she shrinks into herself.

A large shadow is cast over the snow. “Well, I'm really sorry about the dog,” Aimery blusters, “but be honest, Laila, you never liked her much. You were always making fun of her. In fact, you treated her abominably.”

A tremor shakes Laila from head to toe. Raimon wonders if she is at last going to break down or whether she will conjure a dagger from nowhere and stab Aimery straight through the heart. Instead, however, she turns chilly as the river. Under the chalk, Raimon can almost see her skin stiffening like Ugly's. She leaves her hands for one more moment beneath his, as if gathering strength, then she whips them out and springs up. Aimery mockingly puts up defensive fists but she simply tosses her head. “Well, there we are,” she says breezily, hands on her hips. “There were already too many ugly creatures in the world.” She seizes a sleigh. “Come on! What are you all waiting for? Let's go!”

Cador creeps to Raimon's side. He is weeping unashamedly. “I was pulling the sleigh up the hill. I was too far away.” He sobs, bending over the corpse. “Poor dog!”

Raimon is taking off his cloak. He wraps Ugly in it and picks her up. “We can't bury her until the ground thaws.” He looks around. Laila is slithering up the hill as fast as she can go, talking nonstop. Her voice is shrill. She does not look back.

Cador, Metta, and Raimon set off back over the bridge, Raimon in front carrying Ugly, Metta in the middle, and Cador behind. The sun's rays are still dancing. Why not? The sun does not care about a dead dog. But the burial party are all huddled,
thinking of the cold and the river and the knocking of a small, desperate head against unyielding ice. They bypass the graveyards and find a small clearing in which a completely circular drift of snow has settled. Raimon lays the bundle down and he and Cador scrape out a hole. When it is as deep as they can get it, they lower the corpse while Metta offers a simple, heartfelt prayer that the dog's spirit may be at peace. When the prayer is over, Cador stares at the misshapen bundle, his grief giving way to incomprehension. “How can she be dead, just like that? She was so happy this morning. It doesn't seem possible.”

Raimon casts a glance at Metta and is aware that his earlier desire to unburden himself has vanished. He will stick to his plan. “Perhaps it's for the best,” he says, noting, and not to his credit, a new piety in his voice. “At least Ugly now has eternal life that can't end in death.”

Cador frowns. “Are dogs granted eternal life?”

Metta answers. “Well, we believe that a dog cannot take the consolation and become a perfectus, but a dog is a living thing and every living thing is important to God. When animals I love die, I always tell myself that if Christ cares even for the sparrows in the air, he'll certainly care for something bigger, so I'm quite certain that he'll have a place for Ugly.”

Cador looks more cheerful as they pile the snow over the dead dog until, in the end, only a last leg sticks out in final supplication. Raimon covers it up as Cador sculpts a lumpy headstone. “How do you write ‘Ugly'?” he asks.

“Letters are quite hard, aren't they?” Metta has the virtue of never sounding disapproving.

“Do you find them hard too?” Cador asks. “I did know them, but I've forgotten.” Like Laila, he does not like Raimon's
attachment to Metta, but unlike Laila, he has made no comment, and he certainly could not complain that she is unkind. When she takes his finger, he is quite willing that they should scrape out Ugly's name together.

Once they are back over the bridge, they stop and look at the water. Already a thin sheet has formed over the murderous hole. Metta shrinks deep into her cloak. “Poor Laila.”

“Why do you say that?” Cador juts an angry chin. “She just ran off. She didn't seem to care at all.”

“Oh, she cared,” Metta replies. Cador remains disbelieving.

Half an hour later they reach the chateau gates. Sir Roger is waiting. “Thank goodness you're back,” he booms. “Everybody tells me there's been some kind of accident with a dog.”

“There was, sir,” Raimon says, “but Metta's safe.”

Sir Roger looks at Raimon, then at his daughter, and then back to Raimon again. “I hope so,” he says, and Raimon's heart lurches as, without a smile, Sir Roger takes her inside.

Yolanda is crouched by her bed, her lips bared in a snarl that only gradually subsides. Hugh has left her, although his presence still reverberates. He came to her, as he warned her he would, then left without laying a finger on her. She did not snarl when he was with her. This snarl came after, from the animal part of her, the part she does not want him to see because if he thinks of her as an animal, it will be easier to treat her like one. When he was here, hard-eyed and grim, she stood, forbidding Brees to move, matching him look for look. Not a word was spoken until finally he had blinked first and retreated. Only then did she crouch, and now she must get up. He will be back, and that tactic will not work again. If only Laila were here, she might poison him. She must get out.

She crawls over to the door and puts her ear to it. One of the guards is leaning against it. She can hear the creak of his leather jerkin. He is sighing with boredom as he tosses dice, but how can that help her? She tries to clear her mind. Hugh has still not locked her in—he would not stoop to that—but if she emerges, the guard will follow her like a shadow. She goes to the window and throws it wide. Here there is more possibility if
she thinks herself agile enough to find footholds in the stone. If she slips, however, she'll be smashed to smithereens in the courtyard below. And she would have to leave Brees behind. She slams the window shut, and Brees's paws scratch behind her as she paces back and forth.