Paradise Red (9 page)

Since Ugly's burial, Cador is happier that Raimon likes Metta but is too observant not to see the attachment growing beyond the friendly. After the sleighing day, Raimon spends more and more time in her company and less and less in Cador's and in the evenings, which, since the sleighing, are more restless, he sees Raimon not only staring at the girl as though there was nobody else in the room but also, when she speaks of her faith, listening and nodding with much more care than he used to listen and nod at Sir Parsifal. Not that the boy utters one word of criticism and every evening, after Raimon has bidden him a distracted good night and he is warmly burrowed under his furs and blankets, he tells himself that soon Metta will be gone and everything will be just as usual again. But in the wakeful dawn, he wonders. Raimon hardly mentions Yolanda now, and if Cador brings up her name, his lips purse and his voice becomes tart. The question hovers over the boy's head. Can Raimon really be going to give up on Yolanda so easily? He scoffs at himself. Of course not! Giving up Yolanda would be as impossible as giving up Unbent. Yet now that the idea has taken root, he cannot get rid of it. And then
he panics. If Raimon can give up Yolanda, maybe he could give up Cador as well. After all, it would not be hard, among all the visitors, to find another boy, one better at his lessons with the sword, or one who can saddle Bors and Galahad without standing on a box. He throws off his bearskin and begins to polish Unbent yet again. Perhaps a brighter gleam will bind himself and Raimon irrevocably together.

Preoccupied, it takes Raimon a while to notice Cador's agitated dejection, but he also knows that if Cador believes in his attachment to Metta and his conversion to Catharism, others will be more inclined to believe too. Nevertheless, it is dreadful to him to see the boy so miserable. “Parsifal would be pleased with the way you keep the blade so sharp and clean,” he says as Cador wipes more invisible dirt from Unbent. “Do you miss him?”

Cador nods.

“I miss him too,” Raimon says. He kneels, takes a cloth himself, and spits on it. “We can't live in the past, though, Cador. We must look to the future.”

Cador stops polishing. “Does that mean forgetting everything—everybody—in the past?” he asks, with characteristic directness.

Raimon stares fixedly at the silver flame on Unbent's hilt. “Not forget, Cador, but we sometimes have to accept that things change.”

“You mean what you feel for people and what you believe? Those things change?”

Raimon tries not to wince. “Well, yes,” he says, and he rubs at the flame as though his life depends on it. “Sometimes, for instance, when we learn more about things, we find we were mistaken. Wouldn't that be a good reason to change?”

Cador now raises his head. “Is that what's happened to you about the Cathars?”

“I've listened to Metta and what she says makes sense. You've heard her too, Cador.”

“But what about the White Wolf? What about the Flame being the Flame not of the Cathars or the Catholics but of the Occitan? Was that all wrong?”

Raimon's cheeks tighten. He polishes and polishes. “As I say, Cador, things change. Now that the Catholics have burned the Amouroix and even Castelneuf itself, we can't just go it alone. We've got to take sides, and in a choice between the Cathar Occitanians and the Catholic Occitanians, I choose the Cathars. Don't you see that I have to be on one side or the other?” He drops his cloth and picks up Unbent. “The Flame would expect no less now that the last battle is in sight. Do you understand that?”

The boy takes a deep breath. “No, because you've always said there should be no division, that we are all just Occitanians.”

Raimon's heart leaps with joy. Cador will always hold true. But it also beats with sorrow that the boy's faith in the knight he has chosen to serve is being so sorely tested.

“I don't think Sir Parsifal would understand either,” Cador continues miserably.

There is a long pause. “I think Sir Parsifal would understand that I do what I think is right,” Raimon says shakily. He gets up. He can bear no more.

As he stumbles away, he feels the boy's arm tugging at his. “I just want to know one thing.” Cador's eyes are huge.

Raimon wants to stop him. “Cador—,” he warns, for he
does not know if he could lie to those eyes outright. But Cador's request is something quite else. “I just want to know that you'll never abandon me,” he whispers.

Raimon lets out a deep breath and takes both Cador's hands in his. “I'll never abandon you,” he says. “Whatever happens, Cador, I would never, ever do that.” The boy scrutinizes him hard and then his face clears, although not entirely. Nevertheless, it is the best that can be done.

Raimon goes straight back into the courtyard, where the place is beginning to look busy again. Stripping off his jerkin, he steadies himself by brushing snow from the timber. Work begins again today on the great hall roof and in three days, four at most, the roads will be passable with care and real life will resume. When he has finished this job, he goes to the stables and speaks to the visitors' grooms about fodder for the journey. Leather is being oiled. Oats are being sifted. The smell is no longer of snow, it is of a household on the move.

Just as he is leaving, he finds Laila lurking in a corner next to Galahad's stall. “Anybody would think you were Aimery,” she says, “giving orders and treating the place as your home.”

“It is my home.”

“No it's not.” She pulls herself up so that she can straddle the partition. Galahad's ears flick back and forth. Laila kicks the boards from both sides. “You don't deserve to live here anymore.”

Raimon knows this tone. Though Laila's skin is unpainted today and her hair its natural red, she is in a dangerous mood. He strokes Galahad's nose and braces himself.

“One smile from that smug yellow corncob and you just forget all about Yolanda! How could you?”

“I've told you before. Don't call Metta names, Laila.”

“Why not?”

“It makes you look ugly.” He chooses the word deliberately and Laila flinches, which gives Raimon a moment of guilty satisfaction. Well, she should never have called her dog such a thing. In seconds, she has recovered and is off on a tirade against which, eventually, he blocks his ears, unblocking them only for her final flourish. “You set yourself up as a knight, Raimon, but you're just as faithless as a butcher's boy.”

“You may remember that it was Yolanda who chose to go with Sir Hugh,” he says coldly.

“What did you expect?” Laila sharpens a barb. “She's the daughter of a count, and you're only a weaver.” She drums her heels in triumph.

Raimon is ready for her. “If I'm only a weaver, what does it matter what I do?”

Laila leaps off the partition. “It doesn't matter to me, not one jot. But you see Yolanda's not like us. She's actually got a heart, the poor fool.” She jabs a finger in his face, and a multitude of bracelets jangle up her arm. “You could at least have been careful of that.”

When she is gone, Raimon leans his head against Bors's neck. He must either make his final move now or give up this idea. This is his moment of truth. He hesitates for only a second before finding Sir Roger and asking to speak privately to him. He wastes neither time nor words. “I think you know what this is about, sir,” he says. They are in the room in which Parsifal spent his last weeks, one of the few rooms to survive the fire intact. Aimery has this room now, but since he is busy, it is the room in which they are least likely to be disturbed. Raimon
tries not to look at the bed in which Parsifal died, now shoved untidily against the wall with its covers scattered. The rest of the room is piled high with discarded clothes and weaponry. Raimon takes a deep breath. “I want to come with you to Montségur.”

Sir Roger squints. “Do you, my boy?”

“Is it such a surprise?”

Sir Roger folds arms as thick as tree trunks. “I suppose not.”

“Will you be happy to have me riding in your company?”

“In my daughter's company, you mean.” Sir Roger's lips disappear into a cave in his beard as he scrutinizes Raimon more carefully than Raimon finds comfortable. “My daughter loves you,” Sir Roger says. “But you already know that.”

“We—we—we get on very well, sir.”

“Come now. You've made sure of more than that these past weeks.”

Raimon has to keep his voice very steady. He tries not to touch Yolanda's ring. “Metta has taught me many things. She manages to make sense of so much that before seemed senseless.”

“In what way?”

Raimon swallows. “Well”—he knows he is coloring, but he cannot stop now—“she's made me understand the Cathar faith.”

Sir Roger looks Raimon up and down. “And you like what you hear?”

“Very much, sir.”

Sir Roger pauses. “Enough to become one of us?”

Now Raimon has a moment of blind panic. Yet he does not
search for weasel words with which to comfort himself, nor does he cross his fingers as some would do. He just lies because that is the path he has chosen. “Yes,” he says.

Sir Roger hums for a few moments. “So—you would like to ride with us as a true Cathar, and take up your place at the last stand?”

“I would.”

“And this has all come about because you love my daughter?”

“I can't deny the two are connected.”

Sir Roger takes long moments to make up his mind, but at last a slow smile spreads. “I'm not going to pretend that what you say doesn't please me,” he says. “I like you, and I think I'm a good judge of character. So, very well, Raimon. Ride with us. It will be our pleasure.” The old knight's handshake is almost the worst thing of all.

They are leaving the room when Sir Roger scuffs his boots. “Do you think there's somebody here who could mend these things before we leave? Your squire said they were a disgrace and they are.”

“I'm sure there is,” says Raimon.

Sir Roger does not really care about his boots. He has something more to say and eventually comes out with it. “Look,” he says. “I really do believe that you're a good man but let me also warn you. I'm not given to violence except in war, but if I find you're playing games with my daughter, do you see these hands?” He unfurls them slowly, for full effect. Raimon has seen smaller hams. “You'll find them around your neck.”

For the rest of the day, Raimon feels those gristly fingers around his windpipe and in early evening retreats to the
kennels where he knows a blanket of damp and uncomplicatedly doggy air will welcome him in.

The huntsman is feeding the brazier. He nods at Raimon and then goes to Farvel. The dog is doing poorly, and the dog-boys are sitting silently on their haunches in a circle around him. A few are gnawing at bones. Raimon hunkers down. “How is he?”

“Not good,” the huntsman says. He sits and takes the hound's head on his lap. When he croons, Farvel's ears twitch.

The dogboys shuffle up and pat Raimon's legs, encouraging him to make himself more comfortable. One offers him an old knuckle of pig, which he politely declines. The huntsman croons on and gradually the fingers around Raimon's neck disappear although a large stone in his stomach remains.

Then, in a blast of cold air, Aimery appears. “Ah, this is where you are, Raimon.” He pushes between two of the dog-boys. They know better, with Aimery, than to object. “I'm glad to find you,” he says, tossing aside the pig knuckle. He contemplates Farvel and frowns. “Will he recover?”

“He may. He may not,” says the huntsman without looking up.

“Are all the bitches ready to whelp?”

“Don't you worry, sir. Farvel will leave behind a fine crop of puppies.”

Aimery taps his fingers then turns to Raimon. “We need to talk.”

“I don't believe we have anything to talk about.”

“Oh, come on, Raimon. You know we do. We must talk about the Flame.”

Raimon stiffens. Aimery hauls him up and bundles him
into a corner, out of the huntsman's hearing. “Can I speak candidly?”

Raimon shrugs.

“You see, I know what you're doing,” Aimery says.

Raimon's face closes. Aimery jabs him in the ribs. “Let's put all our cards on the table here since we both want the same thing.”

“And what would that thing be?”

“To get the Flame for the Occitan, of course,” Aimery says, keeping his eyes fixed on Raimon's. “The last thing we want is either for King Louis to have it or for the Cathars to claim it as their own.”

“You've changed your tune.”

“Of course I have!” Aimery is beautifully affronted. “For goodness' sake, Raimon. The king has burned my home, and how could I ever believe that the Flame belongs to those damnable heretics?” He clears his throat. “Don't you see, we're just the same now, you and I. We are both Occitanians fighting for the Occitan, so”—he grins—“I'm going to do just what you're doing.” Raimon feels a cold thread run down his back. “Yes,” says Aimery blithely, “I'm going to turn Cathar, go to Montségur, and we can get the Flame together.”

The stone in Raimon's stomach turns to acid as Aimery waits, with some enjoyment, for him to respond.

“What do you mean, turn Cathar?” Raimon tries not to stammer. “Your uncle was an inquisitor, for God's sake.”

“Don't be so stupid, Raimon. I'm going to do just as you're doing and pretend, although I'll not stoop quite so low as to use some poor girl as a stooge. I'm going to brazen it out quite on my own.”

Out of all the things Raimon has expected, he has not expected this. He pulls at three long straws and begins to braid them. “So that's why you've been so nice to the visitors.”

“Didn't you guess?”