Paradise Red (5 page)

Henri harrumphs. Hugh glares at him. “It's too hot in here, that's all.” He walks to the shutters, forcing purpose into his shaking legs, and throws them open. Then he goes straight to the fireplace and smashes down the logs. They crack and roar and spark, making the room even hotter. Hugh keeps hold of the poker until his hands stop trembling. “I shall ride tomorrow,” he says abruptly.

“The apothecary says—,” Amalric begins.

“I said I shall ride tomorrow.”

Amalric catches Henri's eye. Perhaps a ride will restore their lord to his normal self better than any quack's preparation. “We can see what the hunting's like around here,” Amalric suggests. “The hawks'll be glad of an outing.”

Letting go of the poker, Hugh clasps his hands together behind his back until the very last of the tremors have ceased. He sits on a bench, out of the light, barely hearing a word that has been spoken. “What's the matter with me?” His heart quails. What happens if he begins to shiver and shake as he leads the knights in the assault on Montségur? Sweat prickles again, only this time it is cold.

Yolanda is still standing in the doorway.

“Leave us,” Hugh says to the two men. Yolanda turns, trailing her sage green night-robe. “Not you.”

Yolanda stops quite still, holding tightly onto Brees. Hugh gestures for her to come nearer to the fire, for though she is warmly wrapped, her face is pinched and drawn. The gauntness adds a certain distinction. She looks older than her fifteen
years, and she carries her left hand as though the wedding ring Hugh obliges her to wear is too heavy for her finger.

“Yolanda.” This is not the moment for what he has to say. It really is not. Indeed, in many ways there could not be a worse moment but he cannot wait. He stiffens his back. He is Sir Hugh des Arcis, and he is her husband. He touches the signet ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. He will speak, and he will get his way. “Yolanda,” he blurts out more briskly than he means to, “I want a son.”

He can tell that she heard him because her stillness alters in a heartbeat from mutinous to stunned. Even her dress no longer twitches in the draft. Brees whines and nudges her leg. Her only movement is a tiny pulse in the hollow of her neck. Hugh waits, and she keeps him waiting a long time.

Lots of men might say the same words to their wives, yet Yolanda had never, ever thought to hear them. Indeed, in the five months since their wedding, Hugh, bowing to her wishes, has made no attempt to force the issue. More than that. He has been kind to her. Until her home was destroyed and he would not let her go, she had learned to think of him as a friend. Though she had married more than unwillingly, she had learned to wear his ring without fear, which is why this declaration hits her like a stone, and she is surprised to find herself still standing.

Hugh is not looking at her. “If I die,” he says, “my family dies out with me, and I have lands, Yolanda, lands that need an overlord. Without a son, the king will give everything that's mine to whomsoever he chooses, and the des Arcis name will be forgotten. Why should that be when I have a wife?”

Silence.

“Can you understand, Yolanda?” He takes a candle and kneels before her. Brees sticks out his tongue. Hugh ignores him. “Look,” he says, and he holds the light near the white streak in his hair. “I'm growing old.”

She ignores what he's trying to show her, glances at the great unmade bed and then at the door. Should she run now? Should she scream? If he so much as touches her hem, she'll set Brees on him. They make a curious tableau.

He gets up slowly, making no move toward her, and puts the candle down. She begins to breathe again. A cool voice inside her head tells her to think before she does anything. After all, despite the shock he has just given her, she does know this man. They have traveled together. They have even shared a chamber and remained quite separate, and it is not his way to use violence against a girl. But then, and the cool voice becomes less cool, this man wants a son and that is a powerful want, more powerful, perhaps, than any other. That kind of want might well override ordinary scruples. To get a son a man might feel justified in doing almost anything.

She swiftly pulls an oak chair between Hugh and herself and clutches the back of it, unconsciously folding her skirts around her legs like armor. “I'm not your wife any longer. The bargain is broken.”

“We've been through that, Yolanda. You
are
my wife.”

She manages to keep her head. He has always been susceptible to reason. “Perhaps I couldn't give you a son.” She tries not to sound pleading. “Perhaps I would just have a daughter. Perhaps I couldn't have a baby at all. Perhaps even if I did, they would all die, like they did with your first wife.”

A faint shadow darkens Hugh's face. “Perhaps,” he says
quietly, “but that doesn't alter the fact that I want a son and that you, as my lawful wedded wife, should be my son's mother. If a daughter comes,”—he shrugs—“I will care for her, of course. But I need a son.”

She crosses her arms in front of her. Brees, sensing real fear, rolls a grumbling purr around his throat. “How could you even imagine I would agree?” She can feel the vibration on the top of Brees's head.

“A man can always hope.”

She crunches her fingers through her hair and a lock snags on his ring. She tugs at it and then bursts out, “Please don't do this, Hugh. You're the king's chosen knight, the Seneschal of Carassonne, the keeper of the oriflamme and the hero”—her voice is bitter—“of the destruction of the Occitan. You don't need me. You can have anybody you want.”

“I want you.”

“That's ridiculous.”

He is stung not by her anger but by her contempt. All her sweetness, the sweetness that first drew him to her, is turning sour. And suddenly he wants to hold her, to tell her that he loves her even though he knows that she will never love him. He wants to declare that though many women would be happy to give him a son, he wants
her
son and he wants that with every fiber of his being. He wants to ask why she cannot see how perfect their union would be, not just for himself but for the Occitan and for France. Together they could join north and south in love rather than bloodshed. They have been given the chance, as few others have, of creating something great because a child of theirs would be a beautiful and rare creature, a matter for rejoicing. Could not that make her forget Raimon and be happy?

But he says none of these things because he has never spoken such words to anybody. How, then, could he find the courage to say them to somebody who does not want to hear them? Instead, he picks up a goblet from the table and is grateful when the wine makes him cough.

Yolanda is trying not to shiver. Eventually she speaks again. “I didn't think you were like other men,” she says, her voice surprisingly cool. “I didn't think you would stoop to their standards. I didn't think you'd treat me as part of your war of conquest.”

Ah! She knows just how to hurt him. He takes another slug of wine. “As you observe, I am the keeper of the king's oriflamme,” he says mechanically. “I have under my command two hundred knights and five thousand soldiers.” He stops. It occurs to him that if he is to do what he intends to do, he must actually do exactly as she says: he must think of her as part of his war of conquest. Indeed, he must suppress all thoughts of her as the girl he loves and wishes to protect from hurt and dream only of his future son, a honey gold child to warm his cold castle in Champagne. Once he has a son, he will let Yolanda go. Perhaps, in time, that will be enough to gain her forgiveness. He tips the last of the wine down his throat. “Do you know what Henri and Amalric and, I dare say, most of the other knights believe?” he asks.

She does not move.

“They believe you make me less of a knight than I should be. They believe you've turned my head. They believe you sap my resolve and cloud my judgment.” He pauses. This is as close as he can get to saying what he wants to say. He forces himself to continue. “They believe I should have had Raimon executed
when I had the chance and that I should have taken you by force on our wedding night, as a proper husband would have done.” She reverses fast and flattens herself against the wall. He does not move. “Of course, had I done that,” he carries on relentlessly, “by now you might well be having a son, and we would not be having this conversation.”

A log falls and he starts, feeling the panic rising again. The goblet falls from his hand as he sinks down and grips the arms of his chair. The wave engulfs him, smothers him, then passes over. “Christ in heaven,” he says furiously. He glares at Yolanda.

She is not glaring back. She has seen his weakness and is making one last attempt. “Nobody despises you. Your knights and servants admire you.”

“Oh, don't humor me.” He leans forward and wipes his brow on his sleeve. “You think that because their words are respectful I don't see their expressions? I've led men for many years, Yolanda. I can tell what they think by the way they pull on their gloves.”

Yolanda waits, then with sharp, determined movements, eases off her wedding ring and drops it. She has nothing more to say. She stands poised for a moment, then, when Hugh does not move to stop her, runs back to her own room. As she slams her door, the ring is still rolling.

Hugh sits for an hour staring at it, and only after he hears the bells calling the monks to early prayers does he pick it up, touch the band where it touched her, and lock it in a chest containing other precious things. Then he goes to the desk. Carefully he moves lamps into position on a large map, already spread, on which is drawn a fortress amid the detailed contours
of a loaf-shaped hill. Above the hill, his clerk of war has painted the Blue Flame. Hugh finds a page in the passage and sends him for fresh ink. No matter what his own preoccupations, the king has issued his orders, and Hugh must calculate how best to carry them out. He traces the hill with his finger, then stops. In the guttering candle, the Flame has taken the shape of Yolanda's face. Her expression is harsh and unyielding. If she is to bear his son, he knows he had better get used to it.

At dawn two days later, Raimon pulls on his boots. Stepping over Sir Roger, he tiptoes past Adela, asleep outside the warmth of the tender circle of women, and notes with sadness that though she is not yet twenty-five, suffering and self-righteousness have shriveled her features. Her lips, which always displayed a disapproving curve, are a little crusted, like those of an old woman. He looks carefully at Metta. She sleeps neatly, her arms clasped lightly together and her pretty lips slightly parted as if hoping for a kiss. Raimon wonders at the endless variety of women. Yolanda sleeps like neither of these two. She sleeps either curled like an animal, her head rounded into her chest, or with her limbs at odd angles and her hair an explosion. Is she sleeping now? His legs cramp. He steps outside. If he is to put into action the idea that now nags at him, he must begin the preparations today.

The sky is gray and promises a bitter day. He rounds his lips and blows out, pulling his blanket closer around him and wishing he had a better pair of boots. He sees the huntsman coming out of the kennels amid a swirl of hounds.

“They're so beautiful.”

He turns to find Metta beside him, her hair unbrushed and without a cloak. At once he unwraps his blanket and throws it around her. “Here. You'll die of cold. You looked completely asleep a minute ago!”

She smiles her thanks. “I woke when you passed. We should share,” she says, taking the blanket gratefully, “or it will be you who dies.” She opens the blanket without any coquetry. Raimon hesitates for a moment and then they are huddled together.

The hounds are sniffing about, finding places to do their business. The dogboys who are, as their name implies, almost dogs themselves, and to whom the huntsman is both mother and father, follow with little shovels. Metta laughs. “Our kennels were not so close to our chateau,” she says, “and we never had boys like these.”

“They're mostly orphans,” Raimon tells her, “or boys people reckon are a bit soft in the head.” They watch two collide as they both dive for the same piece of dirt. “See?” He whistles down, and the dogboys stop and wriggle at him.

“Some of the hounds are bigger than the dogboys,” Metta observes.

“Yes,” replies Raimon. “The bloodhounds could eat one quite easily for breakfast. The huntsman sometimes threatens.” A look of such horror overtakes Metta's round face that now Raimon laughs. “Don't worry! He loves them!” He finds it easy to speak to her. This, and her unexpected presence beside him, makes up his mind. His plan is not mad. It is rich with possibility. Perhaps Sir Parsifal himself is behind it.

Metta blushes. “Tell me the hounds' names,” she says.

And so it begins. Metta will be Raimon's ticket of entry into Montségur. He will attach himself to her and her to him
so that when the visitors leave, he will leave with them and when they get to Montségur, he can stride boldly through the gate at Metta's side. To everybody at the chateau, Yolanda has abandoned him for Hugh. Why, then, should he not fall in love with this peaceful creature, tender as a peach, whose gentle voice would be perfect balm for any bruised heart?

He runs through all the hounds' names, adding little stories as Yolanda used sometimes to do. Metta is quickly entranced. He is just pointing out Farvel, the huntsman's favorite, when Sir Roger appears. “Metta!” he says reproachfully, “it's too cold for you out here.”

“Yes,” she says, “too cold for all of us. But Raimon had a blanket and we shared it.”

“Nevertheless, go in now,” her father admonishes her.

She smiles and kisses Sir Roger's horny cheek before slipping out of the blanket and back inside.