Paradise Red (19 page)

Time passes. The Flame and the oriflamme continue to flare at each other daily, the French soldiers occasionally rushing up the path only to be beaten back by the Cathar hermits. Hugh goes out with the mapping scouts himself but the sheer complexity of the mountain's leaf-canopied maze continues to conspire against him, leading him on, then suddenly presenting him with giddy drops or razor edges over which he cannot pass. Sometimes, following the trail of a sheep, a proper path between the trees is discovered. But it is of no use to an army. Nevertheless, Hugh maps it and sets up an armed sentry. Until reinforcements arrive, even such a tiny victory is better than nothing.

The day reinforcements do arrive is one for rejoicing. However, the rejoicing is only momentary. The numbers sent are far too small to make the difference required. The French knights are furious. Does nobody understand the difficulties they face? Hugh furrows his brow. There will be no more men. Now it is up to him.

Spring merges into summer, and sometimes, both to those
on the top of the hill and those camped around it, it seems as though Montségur is the center of the only universe that matters. Even the birds seem stuck here. Hugh could swear that the same five bone breakers circle endlessly around the same patch of sky. As the summer heat intensifies, his men abandon their armor and leave it in haphazard heaps for others to trip over. It becomes hard to blame the sentries for yawning and dozing, for he finds himself yawning and dozing himself. Yet this heat is their friend. With day after day of cloudless sky, water must be running short in the fortress. Without water, nobody can hold out for long. He also lets it be known in the village that anybody from within the fortress who wishes to parley with him will be granted safe passage. Nobody takes up the offer, but then, so Hugh says to himself, the water has not run out quite yet. If the rain holds off, all they have to do is wait.

High above, at the top of the keep and stuck between the Flame's grille and the suffocating wooden walls, a rope-bound Raimon can only sit silently, bolt upright, eating the food that is thrust before him, occasionally allowed to walk around the room-within-a-room and enduring the other humiliations of the captive. Every evening, when the White Wolf collects the Flame for the display, he tells Raimon how Metta is finding comfort in Adela's company and his own. As water becomes shorter, Raimon's ration is cut, along with his food.

Time stutters to a halt. The cisterns in the fortress are empty. Mothers raise cracked voices as their babies' mouths crust over. Then the sun at midday is not so hot. The leaves fade to an exhausted green. People wake in the night, suddenly wanting blankets. And miraculously, just as the fortress begins
seriously to parch, the rain comes. Hugh, woken in the night as it beats his tent, curses. Up in the fortress, they praise God and watch with childish excitement as the cisterns fill.

The rain galvanizes Hugh. If he is not to be here next year and the year after, he must adopt a fresh strategy. The southwestern path must be widened, the trees felled, and the crags flattened. It will be a huge job and both knights and soldiers will object to being turned into laborers. They will simply have to be persuaded, because there can be no more waiting and hoping. By the time the winter is through, serious progress must have been made.

From the top of the fortress, the noise of sawing, dragging, and rock breaking are easily audible. The White Wolf smiles. Soon it will be time for the ultimate sacrifice. God will be preparing.

The demolition also galvanizes Aimery because he senses that Hugh's new determination will not flag. However, Hugh cannot be allowed to get the Flame. It must be Aimery who takes it to Paris. Only then will the king understand that he is quite forgiven the burning of Castelneuf, as its count is still far more interested in a French future than an Occitanian past. Aimery sighs. He must stop being distracted by Laila, pleasurable as that is, and choose a moment likely to be more successful than Raimon's. He makes some preparations, hiding ropes in useful places and making sure his dagger and sword are fully sharp. He watches more carefully than he finds he has done for some months.

On the morning of the first frost, Hugh launches another sortie up the hill. This is not with any hope of success, but simply to reinforce the message sent out by the road building:
that, however long it takes, he will win in the end. The sortie, in military terms, is laughable and easily countered by the hermits with their slings. However, those within the fortress recognize something different in the demeanor of the French knights. They force their horses up farther and behind each knight lurks an archer. The hermits, taking French impotence for granted, carelessly descend too far, and one is pinned to a tree by an arrow. He is the first Cathar casualty and his dying screams elicit a shocked silence from the fortress. When another arrow narrowly misses another hermit, de Perella orders the stone guns that, until now, have been sitting gathering moss, to be rolled into position between the fortress's crenellations. The men manning the eastern barbican wipe down their armor and don helmets.

After this, the mood on the pog turns very sober—too sober for the White Wolf's liking. He wants no despondency, for that might lead the knights to thoughts of a truce, and the White Wolf will not countenance that. Martyrdom is what God wants and the martyr's crown is what they all deserve. When the fortress falls, they must all fall with it, taking the Blue Flame with them.

He calls them together. “Why the long faces?” he cries. “Our brother monk is in paradise, seized by the arrow of God's love. Come now. We should be rejoicing that the autumn rains have blessed us and that the oncoming winter will see us warm behind these strong and doughty walls while our oppressors shiver in their drafty tents. De Perella!” Raymond appears. “It's time we had a celebration. We've plenty of food. Let's feast and afterward open our hearts and sing.”

He lights a spark and, after a little more persuasion, the
cooks make preparations. With the smell of food in the air and the promise of heaped plates, both knights and perfecti begin to relax, and eventually, even among the perfecti, a party atmosphere prevails. Having eaten and drunk more than usual, Aimery sees two of the brothers enter the latrine shack that overhangs the curtain wall at the back of the fortress. “Come on,” he whispers to Laila. “Now's as good a time as any.” For all his manifold faults, nobody could accuse Aimery of cowardice.

As the singing begins, they make their way together to the latrines. Aimery has a cursory look around and then they push their way in. When they are first interrupted, and even more when they see Laila, the perfecti are highly affronted. “Get out! Get out!” they bark. But when Aimery draws his sword, their bark turns into a twitter as their hands shoot out protectively and their bowels involuntarily empty. It is not difficult for Aimery to do what Raimon did and divest them of their habits. It is more difficult to know what to do with their victims. “Shove them through the waste hole,” Laila advises. “That's the easiest.”

Aimery hesitates. The drop onto the rocks below is immense. One of the perfecti begins to moan and the other, losing his head, yells for help. Aimery cannot afford to hesitate further. With a murderer's mercy, he cuts their throats before pushing them into the abyss.

Laila pulls on a habit but makes a face at the sandals. She'll not wear those if her life depended on it. She drops the hem of the habit over her own shoes, purple today, with heels. Her green eyes glint. “What now?”

Aimery grins. “I've been busy,” he says, and pushes over a
pile of stones to reveal one of his stolen ropes. “After we've got the Flame, we can tie this to these posts and let ourselves down until we find a ridge. The rope's long enough, provided it holds.” He covers it up again.

Both are thrilled by the danger, infected with a madness in which there is no room for caution. They pull up their hoods and slide out of the privy one behind the other, folding their hands inside their sleeves as is the heretic way. With the company still singing and full from the feast, nobody gives them a second glance. The only people sitting glumly are Sir Roger and Metta. “Naughty Raimon,” Aimery murmurs in Laila's ear. “Who'd have thought a weaver could break a heart?”

Laila's eyes harden, but she does not reply.

The two of them walk freely into the keep behind a cook carrying the last of a large garlic pie. Keeping their heads bowed, Aimery and Laila follow the pie up the stairs. When the cook turns onto the domestic floor, Aimery and Laila continue up. On the next floor, there are three perfecti sitting cross-legged, surreptitiously playing dice. When they see Aimery and Laila's hooded figures, they leap up like guilty schoolchildren. Aimery nods curtly, and both he and Laila pass through the door and then through again, finally finding themselves outside the room-within-a-room, where two more perfecti are sitting, empty plates beside them, half dozing.

Aimery and Laila pass around them, turn the corner, and settle themselves outside the glow of any lamps. They wait. The door to the inner room is opened from time to time as perfecti flow in and out. Laila leans very close to Aimery. “Why are we waiting?” she asks.

“I'm thinking what's best to do when we get inside.”

“Oh, I daresay we'll think of something.” She raises an eyebrow and begins to move.

“Laila!” But she has gone. To keep up with her, Aimery must move too.

The first thing they see is the grille around the Flame. The second is a perfectus kneeling in a corner, and the third, on the far side with his hands, as always, bound behind him, is Raimon. Gaunt now, his Cathar habit stiff with sweat and his hair as shaggy as Brees's, he is as pale as Aimery is flushed.

Laila quickly joins the black-robed figures processing around the Flame's table and Aimery has little choice but to do the same. The perfecti are usually silent, but today, in deference to the White Wolf's injunction to be cheerful, they murmur to one another and occasionally laugh. As he passes within Raimon's field of vision, Aimery raises his head so that his hood slips back a trifle. When Laila next passes, she does the same.

Raimon notices nothing at first. The third time she comes around, Laila kicks out. Raimon's head jerks up and he almost chokes. Two perfecti glance at him but pass on and then, with most of the others, pass back out the door. Aimery and Laila keep walking around for what seems like hours before just themselves and the kneeling perfectus are left. Aimery and Laila grin.

Having killed two perfecti in cold blood, Aimery finds it easier to contemplate killing a third, but another question bothers him. Should he kill Raimon as well? That would certainly show the king that the Count of Amouroix knows his duty, for Raimon is the most troublesome of the king's enemies. But he is uncertain how Laila might react, and anyway,
first things first. He moves fast, feeling for his dagger, but as he yanks back the head of the kneeling perfectus, Raimon bangs on his restraints and yells “No!” Aimery glances up, then down to see a well of sunken parchment into which a pair of colorless eyes have been carved. He can see no reason to stop. It is only as the hood falls completely away that he realizes the stringy neck he has just slit is a woman's. It is a second longer before he realizes he has killed Adela.

He drops her at once and makes for Raimon, unsure what he is going to do. But Laila is there before him, cutting Raimon's bonds and helping him to rise. Aimery pauses. Perhaps she is right. They should keep Raimon alive until they have gotten the Flame away. He is entirely expendable, and that might be useful.

Raimon does not want to lean on Laila for he can never forget their fight, but he cannot stand without her. He limps and stumbles toward his dying sister. “My God, Aimery! My God!” He can find no other words. Adela is lying facedown, breathing her last.

“She hated you,” Aimery said quite dispassionately, “and she wanted martyrdom. This is better than burning.” Nevertheless, he cleans his knife with unusual vigor before sticking it away. “Come, come,” he says, as Raimon sinks down and takes Adela in his arms. “She'd have killed you given half the chance.”

Laila is pulling at Raimon too. “You can't help her now,” she says. “Come on. We've got to get out.”

Raimon refuses and turns Adela over. In those seconds when life has gone but death has not yet taken its cold hold surely something about her will soften. Surely something of
the sister he knew as a small boy will reappear. It does not. She might have been dead for months instead of seconds. He puts her down very slowly. The White Wolf killed her before Aimery did.

Laila is now pushing as well as pulling. “The least you can do is hurry,” she says.

He swats her away. “I'm going nowhere without the Flame.”

“And you imagine we would?” Aimery is searching the room. “Don't flatter yourself that we came for you. Now, where's the key to this damnable grille?”

Raimon does not move. “The White Wolf has it,” he says. “He never lets it go.”

Aimery shakes the grille and tries to break the lock with his dagger. He groans with frustration. “What shall we do?”

Laila has found the ends of candles. “We'll light one of these.”

Raimon leans against the wall. “Don't be so stupid. The Flame's the Flame. It's not a toy to be shared.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” Yet he wants to get out, away from Adela, away from the White Wolf, away from here. The feeling is so strong. He goes to the grille. The Flame is still as glass. But he will never abandon it for it has not let him down. All these months, it is the only thing that has sustained him. Behind its grille, with unfailing brilliance, it has shone for him, keeping alive his faith in himself and in the Occitan when his soul and body ached in the gloom. He may die for it, but he would also have died without it. How can he leave it?