Blue Flame by K.M. Grant

Author:K.M. Grant
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Young Adult, France, Romance, Fantasy, Cultural, Historical Fiction
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2008-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

11

The Bear Hunt

Fear compresses time, and fear now engulfed my town of Castelneuf and permeated throughout my lands and among my people. No longer could they pretend to live in a cocoon, immune to what was going on elsewhere. The world had come to my people and they had to decide how to respond. The fear they felt did not spread like a stain. There was no panic, such as comes with a natural disaster, just a leaden sense of foreboding interspersed with these jolts. People still went about their daily toil, but with heads bowed like nuns.

Girald’s “telltale” prediction came true. After Raimon had been forcefully paraded through the town, his yellow-crossed tunic hideously bright, Simon Crampcross sat in the small square in front of his church, wagging his finger and urging people to come forward and reveal the identity of all the Cathars in the town. His theme was very clear: if Raimon could help the inquisitor, they could too. He was very persuasive. Singly and in groups, people trickled up to the chateau; some dragging their feet, others walking with determined strides, the quicker to get their betrayal over with. They betrayed longstanding neighbors. They betrayed friends. Some betrayed those against whom they had a grudge. Others betrayed anybody at all because the very act of betrayal, they thought, would make their own families safe from the inquisitor. Slowly, the cellars, which had been used previously only for storage or children’s games, were transformed into prisons. Sicart and Adela disappeared and Castelneuf became a town of living ghosts, with Girald’s black shadow king of them all. There was still talk of the Flame, for scouts went out to search for it every day. But since it never showed itself, just surviving and getting through the days became the most important thing in the minds of the ordinary people. If they could just hold their breath, then sooner or later this would pass and life would be normal again.

Not for Raimon. Life for him would never be normal again. After he had been released, he threw his tabard into the river and ran back to the cave. As he neared it, he recited, to the pounding of his feet, “He must be there, the Blue Flame must be there.” He felt as though he had no one and nothing else. Pushing back the tree roots, he couldn’t see anything at first.

“Sir Parsifal!” he cried out, forgetting to be careful in his need. “Sir Parsifal!”

“Just Parsifal, please. Really, I shall have to put up a notice,” came a voice from behind him.

Raimon spun around. He could hold on no longer. “I shouldn’t have … it was … I said … they wouldn’t … I thought … I lost …” He stood, trembling in spasms that rocked him on his feet. Parsifal moved toward him tentatively. The boy’s need was almost intoxicating, but also a little alarming.

“Tell me everything,” he said, and remained quite still until Raimon’s flood had run its course and the boy was sagging, empty of everything.

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