by Kate Mosse
She pulled a face. ‘I know, I look awful.’
‘I’ll get Marieta to bring some tea,’ Marianne said.
Lucie gave a wan smile, then noticed Liesl and her suitcase and became very still.
‘What’s going on? Why’s Liesl here? Where’s Max?’
‘Don’t you know where he is?’ Liesl said. ‘I thought – hoped – he was with you.’
‘What do you mean? He went straight home after the demonstration to have supper with you.’ Lucie turned to Marianne. ‘And why are you all sitting here like this? What’s going on?’
‘Let’s wait and see what Suzanne has to say,’ Marianne said. ‘No sense jumping to conclusions.’
‘What’s Suzanne got to do with it?’
‘We don’t know where Max is,’ Liesl said in a small voice.
‘Are you saying he didn’t come home?’ Lucie’s voice was rising. ‘Max is missing, is that what you’re saying? Max is missing?’
‘Come and sit down,’ Marianne said. ‘It won’t do any good to get worked up.’
‘I don’t want to sit down,’ Lucie threw back. ‘I want to know where Max is.’
‘We all do,’ Sandrine said, less sympathetically than Marianne. She put her hand on Lucie’s shoulder, who shrugged it off. ‘If you sit down, we’ll tell you what we do know. It’s impossible with you like this.’
For a moment, she thought she’d been too unkind. Lucie looked as if she was about to burst into tears. But then the hysteria seemed to go out of her and she crumpled into the armchair.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s got into me.’
‘It’s all right,’ Sandrine said more gently, sitting down beside her and taking her hand.
‘But will someone please tell me what’s going on?’
Still holding her hand, Sandrine told Lucie about what had happened at the apartment.
‘Oh my God,’ Lucie said. ‘It must have been awful.’
Liesl nodded.
‘So that’s partly, why Suzanne’s gone to the police station,’ Marianne said when she’d finished.
‘But Max must have had an accident,’ Lucie said, starting to stand up. ‘He was going straight home. We must ring the hospital. Not the police station.’ Then, seeing the expression on Sandrine and Marianne’s faces, her expression froze. ‘What, you think he’s been arrested, is that it?’ she said slowly. ‘But why, why would he be arrested? Max is careful. He’s always so careful, isn’t he, Liesl? He’d never go out without his papers.’
‘Never.’
‘There’s no reason for him to be arrested,’ Lucie said again, but the panic in her voice revealed how scared she was.
Sandrine caught Marianne’s eye and could see she was thinking the same thing. Given that Lucie was in such a state already, there was no point in continuing to keep their suspicions to themselves.
‘The thing is,’ Sandrine said carefully, ‘I think I might have seen him at the railway station earlier. He was a long way off and there was a woman in my way, blocking my view, but—’
‘The railway station?’ Lucie jumped in. ‘Why were you there?’
‘A group of prisoners were deported this morning,’ Marianne answered. ‘Sandrine thinks Max might have been one of them.’
The tiniest of cries escaped from Liesl’s mouth. The last vestiges of colour drained from Lucie’s cheeks.
‘He was a long way off,’ Sandrine said, feeling awful. ‘I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure it was him.’
‘It can’t have been Max . . .’ whispered Lucie.
‘Suzanne will be back any moment now,’ Marianne said. ‘Let’s wait until we know for certain. In the meantime, Liesl can’t go back to the flat, that much is obvious. The windows are broken and the door needs securing.’
In the hall, the telephone began to ring. Sandrine looked at Marianne, who got up and went to answer. In the salon, no one spoke.
Marianne came back into the room.
‘Was that Suzanne?’ Sandrine asked, feeling her heart speed up.
Her sister nodded.
‘Well?’ said Lucie, unable to keep the hope from her voice. ‘What did she say? His name wasn’t on the list, was it? It can’t have been on the list.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Marianne said quietly.
‘No . . .’ Lucie whispered.
Liesl caught her breath. ‘Where’s he been taken?’ she managed to ask.
‘They hadn’t a record of it,’ Marianne said in a steady voice. ‘Suzanne said they wouldn’t tell her.’
‘Wouldn’t or couldn’t?’ said Sandrine.
‘We don’t know where he’s been taken?’ Liesl said, her self-possession finally cracking.
‘What are we going to do?’ Lucie wailed. ‘If we don’t know where . . .’
Marianne put her arms around Liesl’s shoulders and finally the girl allowed herself to cry. Liesl’s distress seemed to prompt Lucie to try to pull herself together. She reached out and took her hand.
‘Hey, kid. It’ll be all right.’
Sandrine looked desperately at Marianne, who gestured for her to follow her out into the hall and leave Lucie and Liesl together for a moment. Marianne gently shut the door.
‘What are we going to do?’ Sandrine whispered.
‘The whole situation is peculiar,’ Marianne said in a low voice. ‘Suzanne said Max was the only person without a destination recorded on the list.’
‘Why would they keep it secret?’
‘I’m not sure. Suzanne got the impression that the police didn’t actually know where Max was being sent.’ She looked at the closed door. ‘We have to think seriously about what to do with Liesl. She can stay here for now, but she can’t go back to the flat. Possibly not at all, not until we know why Max was arrested.’
‘But she’s only sixteen. Her papers are in order.’
Marianne shrugged. ‘So were Max’s papers. Honestly, I can’t begin to work out what’s going on. This could be to do with their father, or something else entirely.’
Sandrine thought for a moment, then an idea started to take shape in her mind.
‘What about Coustaussa?’ she said slowly. ‘Marieta’s desperate to go and see her Monsieur Baillard. Liesl could go with her. At least until we find out where Max has been taken and why. She’ll be safer away from Carcassonne, especially with Madame Fournier next door.’
Marianne shook her head. ‘It would be so complicated to arrange,’ she said. ‘Changing the ration books, coupons, travel documents, too much to organise. I’m worried enough about Marieta as it is. I can’t ask her to take all that on.’
Sandrine felt a spark of possibility. She’d told Raoul he could go to Coustaussa if he was stuck. Of course, there was no reason for him to take her up on the offer. He’d head for Banyuls or any of the other places where he had friends who could help. But what if he couldn’t get that far south? What if he had nowhere else to go?
‘Well, how about if I went with them?’ Sandrine said in a level voice, though her heart was racing. ‘I could sort things out with the Mairie in Couiza, so the responsibility wouldn’t fall on Marieta’s shoulders.’ She paused. ‘As for Liesl, you or Suzanne could get her some alternative papers, couldn’t you?’
Marianne stared. ‘Well, yes. It would take a few days, but yes, we could manage that.’
‘Well then. As soon as that’s done, the three of us could go. I’ll get them settled in, then come back. Simple. The country air would do Marieta good in any case.’
Her sister was still frowning, though Sandrine could see she was considering the idea.
‘Would you mind?’ Marianne said eventually. ‘It will be a lot of work for you.’
Sandrine smiled. ‘I wouldn’t mind at all.’
By ten o’clock, the girls had worn themselves out with talking and planning and discussing. Marianne had convinced Liesl she couldn’t stay in Carcassonne, Sandrine had persuaded Lucie to stay another night with them and leave it to Suzanne t
o find out where Max had been sent. The plan was straightforward – Marieta, Liesl and Sandrine would leave for Coustaussa at the beginning of August, just as the family had done in the old days, while Lucie, Marianne and Suzanne would stay put in Carcassonne.
It was well past eleven when Sandrine and Marianne turned in. Her sister looked so tired, Sandrine offered to lock up. As she checked the shutters in the salon, she thought about how, in a matter of three days, her entire life had been turned on its head. And as she double-bolted the back and front doors and checked the blackout was in place, she realised it felt as if a layer of skin had been stripped from her bones.
She walked slowly upstairs. She hesitated a moment outside her father’s room, hearing the sound of Lucie crying behind the closed door. She was on the point of going in, then stopped herself. Grief was a private business. She suspected Lucie would rather be left alone. There was no noise coming from the box room where Liesl was sleeping.
Sandrine looked out through the landing window to where the stars shone bright in the clear July night sky. The full moon sent diamonds of coloured light dancing across the wall. For a moment she felt something shift inside her. Hearing an echo of other hearts and spirits as they fluttered and sighed and breathed. A consciousness of other lives once lived in the narrow streets of the medieval Cité or in the Bastide Saint-Louis.
‘Coratge,’ she murmured. ‘Courage.’
The moment passed. Everything returned to normal. Sandrine sighed, then went into her bedroom and closed the door. The house fell silent.
Chapter 50
THE HAUTE VALLÉE
As soon as the broadcast had finished, Audric Baillard began to dismantle the wireless transmitter. Standing the small brown cardboard outer case of the receiver on the table, he wrapped the antenna in a lightweight jacket and pushed the headphones into the toe of a large woollen sock. He did not think the police would venture this high up into the mountains, but who was to say?
In between the usual code words and messages from the Free French to their colleagues in occupied France, Baillard had picked up news of yesterday’s Bastille Day demonstration in Carcassonne. The Midi was showing her true colours. He smiled for a moment, then went back to work.
He wrapped the four wire segments between the folds of an old copy of La Dépêche and put them at the bottom of a suitcase lying open on the chair beside him, then packed clothes on top of them. The smile slipped from his lips. If the news from Carcassonne was encouraging, the news from the North was the opposite. In the past months, whole families had been coming from Paris and Chartres to Ax-les-Thermes, in the hope of escaping over the mountains to Spain. From Spain to Portugal, then to England or America, even though America had closed her borders some time ago. Now, according to the wireless, there had been another mass round-up in Paris, this time involving thousands of police. Tens of thousands of Jewish men, women and children were incarcerated in the Vélodrome d’Hiver on the outskirts of the city. He hoped the rumours were exaggerated, though he feared they were not.
Baillard clipped shut the catch on his suitcase and put the case on the floor. He poured himself a glass of Guignolet and took it outside to watch the silver moon on the peaks of the Sabarthès mountains, as he had done so very many times before. Sometimes in the company of those he had loved and who had loved him. More often, alone.
He had intended to rest in Los Seres for a few days and gather his strength, ready to guide the next group of refugees to safety over the Pyrenees. But Antoine Déjean was much on his mind and the news on the wireless had caused him to change his plans. Baillard hoped that the demonstration was the reason Antoine had been unable to deliver the package as promised. He would return to Rennes-les-Bains. If there was still no letter, once he had taken the next group of refugees over the mountains to Spain, as he had promised, then he would go to Carcassonne and search for Déjean there.
Baillard had to act. He could not leave things to chance. Despite the propaganda printed by the collaborationist newspapers, Nazi victory was by no means assured. But if their enemies gained possession of the Codex, there would be nothing anyone could do to stem the tide of evil.
All of Europe would fall. And beyond.
Baillard stood a while longer, letting the alcohol warm his bones and the sight of the mountains calm his spirits. At midnight, he went back inside. He washed his lone glass and set it to drain beside the sink, then fastened all the shutters and locked and bolted the front door. Finally, with the weight of the heavy suitcase in his hand, he began the long, dark walk back down to the valley below.
Pas a pas . . . Step by step.
PART II
Shadows in the Mountains
August 1942
‡
Codex VI
‡
GAUL
COUZANIUM
AUGUST AD 342
Arinius waited until he could no longer hear the hooves of the horses before emerging from his hiding place. He stepped out into the silence. The air that moments earlier seemed to bristle with threat, settled gently back around him.
Caution had become habitual. It was not that he believed the Abbot would send soldiers after him to retrieve what was rightfully his. He had been gone too long, more than four months. But Arinius had been warned that bagaudes, bandits, roamed the countryside in the foothills of the mountains. Mostly gangs of soldiers deserting their commissions. He could not jeopardise the safety of the Codex, so he was careful, took no risks.
The young monk knelt down beside the river, feeling the dry corners of the papyrus poking into his ribs, and splashed water on his face. He cupped his hands and drank, the cold water soothing his raw throat. His cough was worse again, he didn’t know why. Although it was cooler by the water, the midges and mosquitoes and flies had bitten and sucked and irritated him all night long.
Another dawn, the sky clear and white, promising another day of fierce heat. This morning he was tired, but he picked up the pace once more, following the path along the tributary of the river, then climbing up out of the valley to the high land. Another of Caesar’s marching routes, the road ran due south and was lined on either side by trees.
As he travelled further from Carcaso, the settlements had become smaller and further between. The green river valleys of the Atax giving way to the gullies of the Salz, the red earth where iron ore was mined, the forests of trees with black bark, older than time itself. The forgotten communities of the rocks and the peaks, tribes who had survived each occupation of Celt or Roman, holding fast to their mountain traditions, their mountain ways.
Now here, in the high valleys, were tiny villages untouched by civilisation. Here older religions still reigned, mythologies, stories of Hercules and his lover Pyrène, Abellio and the spirits of the air, tales never written down but handed down from father to daughter, mother to son. Here they spoke no Latin, not even Iberian, but rather a strange dialect of the Volcae as grating to Arinius’ ears as the jackdaw chattering of the sailors at the port in Massilia.
He heard wheels behind him. He glanced round, to see only a cart driven by an old man with skin the colour of leather.
He raised his hand. ‘Salve, mercator.’
The man pulled up. ‘I only trade for money,’ he said immediately.
Arinius smiled. He had little to trade in any case. He reached into his bag and pulled out a denarius. The merchant jumped down and took it, bit it, then threw back the blanket covering his wares to reveal a selection of glass bottles and earthenware jars.
‘For that, I can do you a draught of posca. Or cervesa. You’d get more for your money.’
Arinius had been brought up to think cervesa vulgar, a drink fit only for the barbarian countryside. Nobody in Lugdunum would drink it. But during his travels he had grown to like the gritty, malt taste of the beer. If anything now he preferred it to posca, the watered-down wine and vinegar concoction so popular in Carcaso.
‘I don’t suppose you have true wine?’ he asked, holding
out another coin.
‘Won’t get much for that.’
‘I don’t need much,’ he replied.
He had not been lonely in Carcaso, but after two weeks of travelling alone on the open road, he had started to miss the community of his brother monks. The taste of wine on his tongue, he thought, would remind him of companionship.
The merchant rummaged through the dazzling and precarious pile of bottles and jars and mirrors, and extracted a small bottle. Fashioned from pale green glass, the hemispherical body was patterned with a beautiful blue-green iridescence on one side, like the eye of a peacock’s tail. It had a long thin neck and a stopper of soft wood, and a leather thong threaded through the top so it could be carried or worn around the neck.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Arinius, smiling at the trader.
The merchant shrugged. ‘Do you want it or not?’
Arinius handed over his money.
‘Thanking you, frater. Anything else for you?’
Arinius looked at the empty land all around. ‘If you could point me in the direction of the nearest settlement? Is there anything hereabouts?’
‘Couzanium’s not far,’ he replied. ‘About half a day’s walk.’
‘A town?’
The man shook his head. ‘No, just a few houses. But there’s a larger settlement to the east of Couzanium, Aquis Calidis. Some two hours’ walk, perhaps three. Hot and cold water springs, salt water and fresh, a proper bathhouse there. It used to be popular with soldiers from the garrisons past the Sinus Gallicus. Not much visited now.’
‘I might try it.’
The merchant threw the covering back over his wares, climbed up and tapped his animal on the haunches. The cart moved forward in a rattle of clinker and glass.
Arinius took the stopper from the neck of the bottle and drank, letting the heat of the rough wine soothe his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, replaced the wooden bung, then put the thin strip of leather around his neck and shoulder, already thinking of how welcome it would be to let the hot waters relieve his tired bones.
