LAGRASSE—OCTOBER 1208
Paloma entered the suite of rooms at the west end of the longère. In the gracious study, leaded-glass windows set in tall frames of worked iron and polished walnut bloomed with a luminous blue as the moon chased down the last of the autumn day. Raoul sat at a massive oak desk that stretched across the window bays, and several dripping candles burned to give him light. His hand moved rapidly across a piece of vellum, his writing punctuated by frequent dips of the quill into the inkwell before him.
Paloma’s belly pulled tight. She feared she knew what he was writing. After the destruction of the cathedral in Cluet in midsummer, when dozens of Cathars and Catholics alike were burned alive, many Languedoc families prepared to flee across the Pyrénées to Spain or over the Alps to the northern provinces of Italy. The massacre had shattered any hope that the Church could be reasoned with. Men of God had abandoned the ways of mercy and love, choosing instead fear and destruction to save their property, while pretending it was the souls of their parishioners they cared for. As the reports of attacks throughout Languedoc increased, so had the frequency of Raoul’s correspondence and his trips away from the farm. She sensed tension in the air, like lingering smoke from the distant city. Her family’s days of peace in Lagrasse were coming to an end.
Her felt shoes glided noiselessly on thick wool carpets laid across the stone floors. Even so, Raoul turned before she’d taken half a dozen steps. His instincts were as sharp as the blade of the short sword that was sunk into a scabbard and sitting within arm’s reach on the desk. Smiling, he held out his arms, and Paloma settled her petite frame neatly in the bulk of his embrace.
“I don’t want to disturb you. You were writing so fiercely.”
“I heard you coming down the hall, little dove. I was rushing to finish before you walked in the door.”
“You certainly did not hear me coming down the hall!”
“Oh, but I did. You stopped Constansa to ask if she’d prepared your bath. Then you lumbered into the room,” he teased. Raoul pressed his lips to his wife’s neck, inhaling her scent of lemon balm mingled with the musky aroma of sweat. He flicked his tongue against her skin, and the salty tang made his mouth water. Her throat vibrated against his lips as she laughed.
“And did she? Did Constansa prepare my bath?”
“Can’t you smell the lavender oil?” he murmured. “Let me show you.”
As easily as if he were holding a child, Raoul stood with Paloma in his arms. She squirmed in protest, but he covered her mouth with his, their lips meeting in soft laughter. He carried her into their private rooms, past the bed, and into an alcove where a pool of marble had been set into the floor.
The room was an atrium that looked into a garden bound by a hedge of laurel and juniper. Raoul had seen the Moorish baths in southern Spain and constructed this haven for his wife, her one concession to luxury in their single-story longère. Carved from Italian marble, the pool was surrounded by a mosaic of tiles colored the cerulean of tidal pools, the green of sea foam, and the turquoise of the open sea.
“Should I leave you?” he whispered into Paloma’s hair as he lowered her feet to the tile.
“Don’t you dare,” she replied. “But you must sit there.” She pointed to a bench set against the wall, its seat covered by a cushion of lamb’s wool. He sat and watched as his wife kicked off her shoes and turned her back on him, motioning to the ties that held her overdress closed.
He loosened the ties, and Paloma pushed the dress to the floor. Raoul caught it and smoothed the soft wool before folding and placing it on the bench beside him. He removed his boots and belt, his stockings, sleeveless surcot, and leather breeches. Paloma watched and waited.
When he’d finished and settled back into place on the chaise, she raised a foot, resting it on his thigh. He slid his hand up her lower leg. It was covered by finely knitted hose, tied just above her knee. He pushed up her shift, and she giggled as his thick fingers struggled with the tiny knots. She flicked a delicate nail at the silken cord and lowered her leg to the floor. The hose puddled at her foot; she did the same with the other leg. Raoul kneeled at her feet and gathered the hem of her shift in his hands, pushing it to her waist as his head rose inside her legs. He kissed the mounds of her calves, solid from daily walks through the hills above Lagrasse and chasing after children; he ran his hands over the outside of her thighs, taut and shaped from riding.
Paloma pulled the shift over her head and let it fall to the floor. She gathered handfuls of Raoul’s hair and sighed as he braced her hips in his callused palms. Her young body scarcely showed the signs of a difficult childbirth three years before. A slight rise of her belly and the silvery strands of skin stretched tight on her breasts and thighs were marks of womanhood that Raoul loved to touch. He longed to see that belly become full again, her breasts swelling as they readied to feed another baby.
Paloma shivered, and her breath quickened as he flicked a tongue into the dark gold hair and licked the wet flesh between her legs. She arched her back, her hips pushing against him, and ran her hands up her belly to her breasts, kneading the flesh and catching her tender nipples between her fingertips. She tensed and cried out, burying her face in her hands as her body shook.
Raoul rose and lifted her. The bath no longer steamed, but the water was warm as blood, and he stepped down, his wife cradled in his arms. He settled her against a wide, rounded step and removed his under tunic, tossing it onto the tiles that lined the bath. He sat below her and pushed away from the step where she lounged, languid with pleasure.
“You are the most beautiful creature God ever made,” he said, pushing the soles of his feet against his wife’s.
“You don’t believe in God,” she laughed, flicking water at his chest.
“No, I don’t believe in priests,” he said. “But I most certainly believe in God. I have no other way to explain how blessed I am to have you. And the children.” He pulled her toward him, and she wrapped her lean legs around his waist.
“Oh, I believe in God,” Raoul said, his voice falling into a moan as Paloma sank onto him, laughing into his hair.
Before the water cooled, he carried her to bed, where they lay naked, warmed by the fire that heated the small chamber. Raoul traced circles on her hip and belly.
“Paloma.”
“It’s time, isn’t it?”
“Time for what, little dove?”
“It’s time for us to leave our home.”
“I should have sent you and the babies away weeks ago. It was selfish of me to keep you here when I’m away so often. Yes, you will go to Duchesne’s in Gruissan. I was writing to him when you came in tonight. He’s proposed his home for your safekeeping. He’ll soon leave for Paris, and from the outside, his house will appear sealed tight and empty. His stores are well-stocked and will hold you for weeks. I’m afraid you’ll have to live in hiding, but it won’t be for long—the winter, at most.”
“What if I sent the children with Constansa and stayed here? Or traveled with you?”
“No, it’s too dangerous. I would never put you at such risk. And those babies need their mother. You couldn’t bear to leave them behind.”
“I can’t bear to leave you behind, Raoul.” She kept her eyes fixed on the fire. “And those babies need their father. So does this one.” She moved his hand from her hip to her lower belly, where the flesh rose in a slight mound from her pelvis. She heard Raoul’s breath catch.
“Are you sure?”
Paloma brought his hand to her mouth and kissed his palm. “Of course. I haven’t bled for three months. Sometime early spring, you will have another son or daughter.”
LE PÈLERIN, MINERVE—TUESDAY EVENING
A log collapsed, dropping with a thud and the hiss of cinders, rousing Raoul from a light drowse. He pulled the blanket over his bare legs and rolled into the warmth of the woman beside him. Asleep, she sighed and tucked a knee between his. He propped up on an elbow and leaned his head into his palm to watch her as she slept.
Lia had changed since he’d first seen her the night of winter solstice. She was still lean but no longer thin or rigid with tension, as if one harsh word would snap her bones. Her ribs pushed against the fragile skin of her torso, but her belly had lost its concave impression. Raoul ran a featherlight finger from her navel up the hard line of her abdomen to the bottom curve of one exposed breast. It was full, as great as the span of his hand, high and firm on her chest. He circled the nipple, the petal-soft skin gathering and hardening as her body responded to his touch. The plate of her breastbone and the hard curves of her strong shoulders were peachy from the sun and sprinkled with freckles.
Her long curls spilled across the white cushion. The firelight played with the color of her hair; it was butter browned in a pan, wheat at harvest—a burnished tapestry woven through with golden thread. Here and there were strands of silver, evidence of a woman, no hint of a girl. Her face was smooth but for the faint lines between her eyes that deepened to furrows when she was angry or perplexed. The hollows under her eyes had faded, but he knew she wasn’t getting enough rest. He lifted his hand, leaving her be. Lia slept on.
Raoul rolled onto his back and joined his fingers underneath his head. He thought of his Paloma, whose skin was the color of clouds at sunrise, pale cream and pink, her face sheltered from the sun by a bonnet as she walked in her gardens or held the children in her lap as she told them stories of princesses and faeries. It seemed not long ago that he’d been a father and a husband with a life that had a clear beginning and ending.
His thoughts unrolled in the silence as he considered the step from one life to the next, across an eight-hundred-year chasm. On one side of that chasm was his past, filled with memories of his wife and children—so vivid he could see the silvery scars of childbirth on Paloma’s skin, smell the milky-sweet scent of his babies’ breath—and all the lives lost to a crusade against a people he loved and had sworn to protect.
On the other side was the present—the vineyards carved into the garigue, the curving black tarmac roads where once had been forest or plain, small villages that had grown into towns or disappeared altogether except for a ruined wall or a crumbling tower. He was returned to his land, land that had belonged to Raoul d’Aran, once of Catalunya, married into a Languedoc family.
And there was Lia, with her melted-sugar hair and honey skin, her eyes that flashed emerald in anger or passion or mellowed into the green of a forest floor when she was at peace. Lia’s eyes that were Paloma’s eyes. Lia’s body, stronger in some ways than his wife’s, yet more fragile for never having given birth in this lifetime. Lia, who looked so much like his Paloma he wanted to drink her in, to burrow under her skin so that he would never again be separated from his wife. Why did he tell her that he believed Paloma was lost to him forever?
Because he didn’t want Lia to look in every face that passed for her husband. He wanted his to be the only face that mattered to her.
Raoul straddled a chasm that held in its depths something much darker, memories that stirred his heart and brought back his anger. In the remembering came the name of the man who had once taken from him all that he treasured: Lucas Mauléon.
• • •
The doorbell chimed, and Lia started awake.
“What the hell?” she whispered, willing the intruder away. Raoul sat up, but she grasped his arm, holding back. “Just ignore it,” she insisted. The bell sounded again, and the visitor held down the button, demanding a response.
“Wait here.” Raoul gathered his clothes and dressed in haste, pulling on his shirt as he tiptoed to the front door to look through the peephole. “Short, round man in a hat, carrying a cane,” was his stage whisper from the foyer.
“What?” Lia scrambled for her underwear. “That’s Jordí Bonafé!”
“Should I let him in?”
“Don’t you dare.” She tugged on her jeans and yanked a sweater over her head. Stepping into the foyer, she waved Raoul back into the front room, holding a finger to her lips. Then she cracked opened the door just enough to see the priest.
“Jordí!”
“I’m sorry it’s so late, Lia. I didn’t put much thought into coming. I’m on the way home from Paris, and my car steered me here.”
“I’m so surprised to see you. Will you wait just a moment while I finish getting dressed?”
“Of course.”
Lia pressed shut the door and turned back to the front room. Raoul leaned against the sofa, and she entered his arms.
“I don’t know if I can trust him anymore,” she said. “I don’t want him to know that you’re here. Wait for me upstairs.”
“Take him into the kitchen, and I’ll stay in here. If you need me, I’ll be a shout away.” Raoul kissed her and whispered “I love you” into her open mouth.
She ducked back into the entryway and opened the front door.