Paradise Red (23 page)

“Why would I? Get out!”

But still Laila hangs on until, framed by the light and in a deadpan voice, she begins to recount something she swore to herself she had forgotten. Yolanda tries to push her away, but Laila clings to the doorpost. Her story does not take long. “And that's how my mother died.”

Yolanda is aghast. “But when we were in Paris, you said your mother was a princess. You said she sold you and your sister. You said that if we passed her in the street, you would spit at her. You never said she was dead or dead like
that
.”

“Well, that's the truth.” Laila thrusts her chin in the air.

“But why tell me now?” cries Yolanda, the globe rattling in her hand. “I don't want to know that
now
!”

“When would you want to know then?” Laila shouts back, her face dissolving in a maelstrom of emotions, none of which she wants to feel. “Exactly when?” Then she turns on her heel and runs, sending Cador, who has just returned, flying.

Yolanda stares after her as the boy picks himself and his booty up. He has bread and more wood for the fire. Yolanda eventually takes the fuel but motions the food away and says not a word. Disappointed and confused, Cador takes refuge with the horses and with the rough comb he has fashioned from a branch, begins quite methodically to groom them.

Yolanda spends five minutes dissecting Laila's story. Is it true or is it not? How can she know? She feels a lurch in her
stomach.
This
is true.
This
is what she does know. She holds the globe to the light. Its contents are sticky. She sniffs at the neck. There is no smell. Brees also sniffs it and turns away. Yolanda goes outside.

Cador is now hunkered down, his hair fallen over his face as he polishes Galahad's hooves with a cloth. He looks up. “I don't want to be disturbed,” she says. “Will you keep guard?” Her voice is shaky at the edges. He nods. She turns to go in, then turns again. “Thank you.” She shuts the door.

Night falls and passes. Dawn breaks. The place is silent save for the munching and sighs of the horses.

It is midday when Laila reappears, her box strapped to her back. The horses are dozing now, a crisp sun glancing off flanks shiny as a set of pewter plates. Cador lies near them, exhausted, for he remained awake all night. He sleeps deeply, as children do, with Unbent underneath him, its point sticking out below his feet. But he is not unconscious. When an adder slides silently over Unbent's tip, his eyelashes flutter. Laila is quieter than an adder. Cador sleeps on.

The girl does not know what she hopes to find in the hut but sees at once how things are. The globe is empty. Yolanda is sitting bolt upright, her face pinched and pale and her shoulders tense. For a second, she regards Laila with horror. “You haven't brought—”

“No, of course I haven't brought Raimon. I haven't even told him you're here. He thinks I'm away finding more food. I only managed to steal a tiny bit on the way back up the hill.”

Yolanda's shoulders sink a little. “How is he?”

“He'll live.” Laila's tone is sarcastic.

“I'm glad you're back. Why hasn't it started yet?”

Laila sits beside her. “You feel nothing?”

“Nothing.”

Laila opens her box, slowly shakes out two more potions, and pours them into a wooden bowl. “Perhaps I didn't get the mixture quite right.”

Yolanda drums her heels with frustration, but Laila takes no notice. She keeps hold of the bowl for a moment. “Are you still sure, Yolanda? Really sure?”

Yolanda gives the bowl an angry tug, almost spilling the contents. “Perhaps you forgot the spell last time.”

“I'm not a witch,” says Laila shortly.

“But you're a magician.”

“This isn't a magic trick.”

Yolanda is too busy gulping to answer. The taste is vile, but she drinks every drop.

“Now it will start,” Laila says, throwing the bowl on the fire, “though it still may take a few hours. It should be over by morning.”

Yolanda gives a tight nod. They wait. Occasionally the baby kicks but Yolanda resolutely takes no notice. It is toward evening when she crosses her arms hard against her stomach. Here come the cramps. After an hour, she is finding it hard not to cry out. She was braced for sharp stabs, but this is a dull monotonous thud, as though two strong men are wielding mallets. Thud, thud, thud, thud, and though she is clutching her stomach, the pain is actually farther back. She wants to get into a bath, feeling instinctively that heat would ease the bruising. However, even in her distress she rejoices. This is the end. This is it. After tonight, she will never think about Hugh again.

Brees whines and pushes his head under her arm. Another spasm. She tenses hard and afterward pushes Brees away, fearing that she could hurt him. “Tie him up ouside,” she orders.

The real torture is the great wracking spasms that begin far apart and then run into each other. From somewhere beneath them, she vaguely hears Laila calling her name. A covered twig is pressed between her lips and Yolanda bites down so hard that her teeth puncture the leather. Now the pain is neither mallet nor spasm. It is a serrated sword twisting in her gut.

“God alive, Laila!” she suddenly screams, dropping the twig, “how can this be right? It's just a baby!” She sinks again, but the words bang around her head as she convulses. “Just a baby!” Did she not once say that Raimon was “just a weaver”? The pain changes. Now heat rises from her toes and descends from her scalp. She is certain that when it meets in the middle she will erupt like an earthquake, and the baby will be ejected like a missile. She finds herself looking for it, and then, in the panting space between spasms, at her arms. They are no longer clamped around her stomach. Somehow, without her noticing, they have raised themselves. But why? She tries to force them down but nothing obeys her. She is entirely at the mercy of her body. “I will not catch the baby,” she shouts out, absolutely convinced that it is about to hurtle into view. “I must not.” And surely here it is, rising in front of her. It should look like Hugh. After all, she's expelling Hugh. But it just looks like a baby, any baby. No. That's not true either. Another dagger twist. Her groans are low, like an old man's.
It looks like her baby.
Suddenly the heat drains away and there is nothing in front of her. She can see no baby at all—at least nowhere except inside her head. It doesn't vanish from there.

Her teeth begin to chatter and she is freezing despite Laila piling on blankets and banking up the fire. Is that her howling she can hear? No, no, it's Brees. Or is it the baby too? “No,” she implores, “please don't let it be the baby. The baby must die, but it mustn't suffer.” She can torture herself, but she does not want to torture it. She grabs Laila's arm. “Has it come? Has it come?” She cannot hear her own voice for the roaring in her ears.

Laila shakes her head.

Yolanda's spine contorts. She can feel such movement now, the movement of a thousand legs. The baby is fighting her, fighting her for its life. “Stop! Stop!” she begs it. “Don't fight! Just go quietly!” But it is marshaling its strength against her, and she is marshaling hers against it. “You're of the north, and I'm of the south. You're French and I'm an Occitanian. Don't you see? You tie me to Hugh, and I love Raimon.” She knows her mistake at once. She should not address this child personally. But how can she help it when its face keeps appearing? It's just a baby. A baby. Her baby. Yet it is too late now. It must be too late. The baby kicks again, and this time she seems to see it opening its mouth to cry. “No!” she shouts urgently, “don't do that. It's too late. Don't you understand? It's too late. You're gone.” But it kicks again, and suddenly it is she who is crying.

Laila is with her, holding her shoulders. “Don't die on me, Yolanda. Don't.”

“I don't want to die! I don't want to die. I don't want it to die.”

Laila crouches. “You don't want it to die?” She shakes her. “Is that what you're saying?” Cador is standing in the doorway, terrified. “Get out! Get out!” Laila bellows at him.

Yolanda is babbling. Brees is barking and barking to be let
loose. Laila cups Yolanda's face hard enough to crack her jaw. “Listen to me. Do you want it to stop?”

“No! Yes! I don't know!” Yolanda rolls over, curling up and moaning, yanking at the blankets. “I don't know anything. God help me!” She feels herself shoved flat back and then her head pulled up. “Drink this,” Laila orders her, forcing open her mouth. “Come on, Yolanda. Drink it.”

Yolanda flips her head from side to side. Laila rams the cup against her lips, brooking no refusal. Half the stuff slides down Yolanda's front and her stomach heaves to reject it, but Laila never lets up. For an entire dreadful hour, she forces her to drink and drink and drink. Now it is Laila who is shouting prayers and imprecations at her own dark gods, for Yolanda's struggles grow fainter until finally as dusk falls, she lies limp. There is nothing more to do.

Well after sunrise the following morning, Laila emerges, haggard and shaking. Cador is lugging a wooden bucket for the horses. She does not speak to him and at the sight of her, her curls flat, her hands red, and her legs dragging, he drops the bucket and rushes toward the shelter. Laila is in front of him in a second. “Don't go in there.”

“Why not?”

The question is not Cador's. He has not spoken and the effect on the boy is electric. Giving a shriek almost as loud as Yolanda's, he launches himself at the figure slowly easing down the rocks. “Sir Raimon! Oh, Sir Raimon! I've been waiting.” He darts about, half wanting to get Unbent and half wanting to help.

It is the first time Raimon has ever seen Laila look frightened, and that is more frightening to Raimon than anything
else. “I knew you were keeping something from me. I followed you as long as I could, then lost you, but I saw smoke and heard barking. I knew it was Brees. I just knew it.” He is struggling to hurry, the Flame in his good hand while he flings the other arm out of its sling. All the wound's healing and more is ruined but he does not notice and would not care if he did. He will get into that shelter if he has to kill Laila. He holds the Flame before him as though it were a talisman.

Laila recovers herself. “If you go in, you'll regret it.”

“If you try and stop me,
you'll
regret it.”

Raimon is at the door now, Cador cowering behind him. They both blink, seeing nothing in the sudden shadow. Raimon fumbles forward through the arch into the back room.

The fire is burning low, and he can see no movement of any kind from the blankets heaped on the stone beds. He holds the Flame high. “Yolanda?” There is no response. His eyes fix on the box of tricks. He lowers the Flame and hears Laila come in behind him. “What have you done to her?”

“Only what she asked.” Laila tries to bypass him but he grabs her and thrusts her back through the arch. He does not want her here. “Yolanda?” Still nothing, except from outside Brees's noisy unhappiness rises and rises. Raimon stands above the blankets, stares down, and then grits his teeth before pulling them away.

Yolanda is lying on her back, her eyes closed. The Flame is superfluous for her face is so white that it illuminates itself. Her lips are half open so that he can see the familiar chip in her front tooth. Around her neck are the two rings they forged by the river to cement their love. He bends down, wanting so
much to touch her but not daring. “Is she dead?” His whisper is barely audible, but Laila hears it.

“She's unconscious.”

“Is she dying?”

“Maybe. I don't know.” Laila's voice is without expression.

Raimon spins around. “What's been happening here?”

Laila says nothing. “Cador! Cador!” Raimon shouts. The little boy comes running. He repeats the same question.

Cador's eyes are irresistibly drawn to Yolanda. He claps his hands over his mouth. “Lady Yolanda came,” he stammers, “then Laila came and now you're here.”

“Yolanda came with Hugh?”

“No. She came on her own, on the sorrel horse outside. I saw her and I was waiting for you, so we came here. Sir Hugh doesn't know she's here, at least I don't think so because if he did, he'd be trying to find her.”

“Was she hurt?”

Cador hesitates.

“Was she hurt, boy? Tell me!”

“I don't think so,” poor Cador offers, “but she was different.”

“In what way different?”

“She wouldn't really talk to me. She was like”—he struggled—“like one of those actors you see at fairs, who paint themselves and pretend to be marble. She seemed very sick.”

Raimon tries to calm himself. “Come, hold the Flame,” he says to Cador, and kneels down.

“That's the Flame?” This is not the reunion of which Cador dreamed. “It doesn't look like it.” But he takes the lantern all the same.

Raimon does not explain. He still cannot touch Yolanda for fear of finding her stiff and cold. He has no idea what he would do then. He gives a long shudder, his face almost as white as hers, then suddenly, unable to bear the suspense, he seizes her hand and holds it for a long, long moment. The fingers flex. He is suddenly squeezing it very hard. “Yolanda! Answer me!”

Only one cheek twitches, just a tiny twitch as if from a fly, but it is enough. He drops her hand and tries to pick her up. Laila darts forward. “For goodness' sake, Raimon, you'll kill her yet.”

He barks as loudly as Brees but lies her down again. “I'll save her from you.
What have you done?
”

Laila begins to hop from one foot to the other, tucking Yolanda in again. In her relief she lets loose a torrent of abuse. “So, Sir High and Mighty, what makes you think she doesn't need saving from
you
and not
me
? We wouldn't be in this mess if you'd really loved her. What sort of lover gallops off into the sunset in a huff, I'd like to know? If you'd stayed with her, none of this would ever have happened so I'll have none of this ‘what have you done to her' because if anybody's to blame for this mess it's certainly not me. I'm just the poor sap who's been forced to help her out of it.”