Paradise Red (29 page)

“And what about the future?” Hugh thinks of Yolanda and his son.

“The future?” For once the White Wolf looks nonplussed. “The future must be the same as the past. That's what the Blue Flame tells us.”

Hugh stops fingering the box and looks directly inside, to where the flame sits dully in its drying oil, casting a shadow that even on this gray afternoon does not transfix. A cold thread begins to wrap itself around his heart. If the White Wolf is wrong and Raimon right, he is doomed. The king is a holy man. He will not be duped by a false relic. He raises the box
and brings it close to his eyes. It is just a box. It is just a flame. With jolting certainty, he finds he knows where the truth lies. He lowers the box in a sudden fury. “You've made a mistake that's going to kill us both,” he rasps. “Look at it, man, just look! Flames light the way into the future. The one you've been hanging on to is fit only to light the way to hell.” He stands up and throws the box back. “You fool. You're going to the pyre for nothing, and I have nothing to take to the king.” And now, inexplicably, he begins to laugh at the stupid, pointless pity of it all. He watches the White Wolf caressing the box as though it were alive. “There's something of an irony here, don't you think?” Hugh says.

The White Wolf's voice has no crack now. “There's no irony. I have the Flame.”

“You have your flame but not God's.” Hugh shakes his head. The inquisitors are muttering, wondering what Hugh is doing. He sits down and collects himself. “Look. If you must die for it, I can't stop you. But die by yourself and send all these others home. Do that one good thing.” The White Wolf smiles that demented, complacent smile. “Go to hell, then,” Hugh says violently and gets up again. “This is not the Blue Flame!” he shouts at the inquisitors. “The Flame is gone.” Then he steps away, leaving the White Wolf to carry his spent talisman into the place of no return.

Even with all the care that had been taken, the outside palisade takes some time to light. The wood is still damp and the wind light, so it is almost dark by the time patches of it can really be said to have caught in any way at all. In a slow cadence, the prayers of the heretics rise an octave, though as the smoke swirls they soon dissolve into coughs. They have spread themselves
through the rooms, holding hands as much as they are able. There is an eerie silence apart from the crackling of the brushwood with which the builders begin to line the outside walls in an attempt to hurry the fire along. When this, too, is not immediately successful, they begin to toss lit torches over the palisade to ignite the straw carpet. The house is too broad for any torch to reach the middle, so when it does begin to burn properly it is from the outside in.

Now there are cries as well as coughs, for the entrances to the rooms are narrow, and when a torch hits its mark, people are crushed in the scramble for a safer spot. Some perfecti panic and begin to scream, and once they have started find they cannot stop until those villagers who have gathered to watch, unable to bear the earaching and increasing volume, grab their children and flee. As the terrible chorus rises, even the horses, though tethered behind the French tents, grow restive and finally throw up their heads and break free, which gives many of the French knights just the excuse they want to rush after them and gallop away. The Cathars have to be punished, but they do not have to be witnesses.

Only the inquisitors remain apparently unmoved. Though their eyes begin to stream as the smoke becomes more brackish, their prayers continue. They gather on one side of the square and Hugh and Raimon on another, though not side by side.

It would be untrue to say that, visually, this reluctant bonfire is hideous. Rather, its size and careful construction confer an awesome beauty once the planks really start to burn and the brushwood to loose fountains of fiery confetti. Not that Raimon thinks so for one moment. It is not the smoke that has
him only able to breathe in short sharp snatches, it is the thought that he should never have let go of Metta. He lunges forward and is grabbed from behind. “That's suicide.” Hugh's arms are strong.

“I've got to get her out.” Raimon's teeth are chattering despite the heat that is now making him sweat. “She thinks she's dying for the Flame but she's not.”

“I know.”

Raimon twists. Their eyes meet. Raimon pulls away. “Leave me alone! You're as responsible for this horror as if you'd chucked in a torch yourself.”

“I do the king's work.” Hugh will not let go.

“That's a disgraceful answer.” Raimon is still trying to shake Hugh off.

Hugh shakes him back, then says abruptly, “If we're to get her, we must go now.”

A tiny pause. “You?”

“Call it my challenge.” Hugh finally lets go, and without even pausing to take off their swords, they rush toward the palisade together.

The outside has well and truly caught now, and the fire-raisers have retired, their job done. The flaming brushwood helps Hugh and Raimon, for it has burned a hole in the bottom of the palisade through which, kicking the brushwood aside, they can push.

Inside, they find a bizarre scene. The rooms in and out of which the perfecti are surging in a kind of linear dance to the music of their screaming are still largely intact, and the straw underfoot lit only in patches. Were it not for the smoke and the rising heat, you could almost believe yourself to be in a circus
maze. Raimon and Hugh join the dance, pushing and searching, the latter made far harder because most of the perfecti have covered their faces with their hoods. Then there are those who fall as the dance quickens. Should they help them, knowing as they do that if they do not find Metta before the straw really catches fire, it will be too late?

“Work your way to the middle!” Hugh cries, but this is easier said than done, for as the straw gradually erupts, it lights the fagots, and in trying not to be knocked over it becomes difficult to gauge in which direction they are going.

Now, through the smoke, comes the smell of roasting flesh, and suddenly the dance is full of figures the flames have caught directly. The straw is beginning to bubble like a cauldron. And then, like a singer waiting for his cue, the fire begins to roar.

At once, all vestiges of human dignity evaporate. As the fire fastens to hoods, hair, and sleeves, the perfecti are terrifyingly quickly transformed into half-naked creatures, yowling and hopping on all fours, crawling over and buffeting against one another in their hideous agonies.

Raimon and Hugh have to cling together to survive, batting out the flames that seize their legs and arms. “This way!” Hugh cries, and they batter their way through toward what they hope maybe the center of this vortex, where the straw and fagots may not yet be convulsed. It is a fearsome journey, much worse than Yolanda's in the snow, but they are rewarded. In the very middle room, even through the wild and pullulating noise, there remains a semblance of calm. The White Wolf stands there, shifting his feet as the hem of his habit smokes. Though his beard is still white, his shoulders are speckled with ash. Uncannily tranquil in the apocalypse erupting around
him, he is holding up his empty flame and reciting, like a mantra, “We are the Flame's martyrs. Rejoice at how glorious we are! See how the Flame burns with pleasure at our sacrifice!”

But he is wrong. The flame is not burning with pleasure. It is barely burning at all. Nothing about it dances. Nothing about it inspires. In its battered box it looks like what it is, the insubstantial remains of an old icon whose time was glorious but has now passed.

Those around the White Wolf try to rally to his call, but all they can do is cleave to one another. The White Wolf shakes the box as his feet grow hotter. “The Flame! The Flame!” He is begging it—ordering it—to rise to the occasion, but instead it sinks lower still, not blue at all but the palest of reds. The White Wolf bites his cheeks. He shakes the box again, and then, as though heavenly music has just broken out, raises his voice in a triumphant shout. “Look at the color! Just look! Of course! Now is not the time for blue but the time for red! And not just any red! Rejoice, my friends! This is the red of paradise! Paradise red!”

Those around, half crying, now try to take up his call. “Paradise red!” they echo, but their hearts are not in it. Indeed, as the flames begin to flicker through the fagots, paradise red seems like no color at all.

Metta is nearest to the White Wolf as the straw shifts, and, in this last redoubt, the fire blazes through. The screaming rises yet another pitch as the heat hits them in huge billows. Coughing and stamping and with one hand over his mouth, Raimon yanks at Metta's sleeve and keeps hold when she pulls away in terror, as though expecting the devil. “You!” she cries.
“Go away! Get out of here! You don't have to burn. Let it be over! Just let it be over!”

“Nothing's over.” Raimon hangs on grimly.

“I'm not leaving. I promised.”

“Are you deranged, girl?” Hugh is on her other side.

She is pleading. “I can't give in. I'm not a coward! I won't leave the Flame—”

Raimon lets go of her arm and roughly seizes her shoulders. Fiery tendrils are sneaking up their legs and he can feel Unbent hot on his back. They begin to choke. “Die if you must,” Raimon sputters, “but don't die for a fraud. Look at the flame. Just look.” She looks. The White Wolf is holding it high, like some fantastical magician about to perform his best trick. “What do you see?” She shakes her head. “What do you see, Metta? Answer me! You
must
answer me!”

“I see nothing,
nothing
!” She sobs.

“Exactly!” Raimon shouts in her ear. “
Nothing
. But I have a flame that's not nothing. It's far from nothing. I have the true Flame of the Occitan.”

“Don't believe them, Metta,” shrills the White Wolf. “What are they doing here, the Flame's two enemies together! Get them out! Out! This is
our
moment.” He shakes the Flame some more. “Burn strong for us!” he begs. “Burn blue and white and paradise red!” But in answer, the wooden box collapses, and in seconds the White Wolf is left only with the salver, really just a tiny and very scratched silver plate. “
No!
” he shrieks as the flame shrinks into the oil. “
No!
” He clings to the salver as it scalds his fingers. There is a momentary lull, as though everybody is taking a breath, and then quite suddenly, in the midst of this furnace, the old flame goes out.

Now the White Wolf staggers like a man whose leg has been lopped off, but for Metta a chain has snapped. As the White Wolf loses every last ounce of self-possession and joins the screamers, she clutches at Raimon, sobbing and groaning, and then Hugh is hauling them both away from the collapsing walls and back toward the remains of the palisade.

The journey out is worse even than the journey in, for though the flames are leaping, the air is now so thick that every step is a step in the dark. They feel the White Wolf behind them as they struggle, all of them doubled over. But he is not trying to escape. He is still trying to pull Metta back. “Metta! Metta! Don't desert me. We'll go to heaven together. Together!” His eyes are rolling, his beard just a bristle, and the skin is peeling from the back of his head. “This is what God wants! Our suffering is his greatest delight. Don't you want to please God, Metta? Don't you? You disappoint me! You dis-a-ppoint me.” His words lengthen as he begins to disintegrate. He seizes her hood.

She turns. He is a repulsive sight. Now it is she who tries to pull him with her. “Come out. Come out of here, please. Let Raimon save you. I'm begging. How can dying like this possibly be God's will?”

The White Wolf is almost completely on fire. He bares his teeth and pushes her away. “You question God's will? You dare to? God knows his own, Metta. God knows his own. Perhaps I was mistaken in you. Perhaps you're not one of his own after all.”

You think there is a limit to pain? Not for the White Wolf. His greatest torture comes as he draws his last breath, and the pain is not the searing sensation in his chest. It is a far deeper
pain than that, for it is only when it is far too late that he sees something more appalling than any sight on earth. As he stretches what remains of his arms toward the starry comforts of heaven and begs God to gather him up, God slowly turns his back. The sight burns hotter than the hottest fire. It burns so hot that it burns away the point of him. His arms drop. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispers, but nobody hears him.

Raimon will not let Metta look or even think as he keeps her sandwiched between himself and Hugh. Kicking in front and behind, they beat their way back to the palisade, most of which is now just a hollow heap, and cry out with relief when they feel the flames behind them. Their relief is momentary. Instead of being met with cooler air, they are confronted with bristling swords.

Though there are not enough of them to form a complete chain, the inquisitors have fanned out like sentries to drive any escapee heretics back into the flames. To reinforce his authority, the chief inquisitor has also seized the oriflamme, which, with the wind now rising, is flourishing its six remaining tails as though they were flames themselves. It takes a moment for them to recognize Hugh as he appears before them, blackened and raw, but as soon as somebody shouts his name, the chief inquisitor cracks the oriflamme like a whip. “You? Sir Hugh des Arcis? You, the keeper of the oriflamme, presume to cheat God of his rightful revenge?
You presume to save his enemies?
Oh, Sir Hugh, you presume too much—far too much.” The man's fervor almost lifts him off the ground. “Seize him!” he orders.

“Run, Metta, run!” Who knows who shouts? It might be Hugh, it might be Raimon. All that matters is that she finds herself stumbling obediently away, trying to put as much
distance as possible between herself and the hell from which she has been rescued. There is no such relief for Hugh and Raimon, for within seconds the French knight and the Occitan weaver are fighting side by side. Hugh will not be taken without a struggle, and Raimon cannot leave Hugh to struggle alone. “The other is a heretic too,” the chief inquisitor bawls. “Never mind bringing them to me! Push them both back into the fire. I'll answer to the king!”