The Winter Ghosts

by Kate Mosse

I was tired, so very tired. Perhaps the sleeping draught she had given me was beginning to take effect.

  ‘When you feel strong enough, Michel Breillac, who knows something of motor cars, is at your disposal. He will help.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured, but she had already gone, leaving the door ajar. I listened to the clump of her sabots retreating along the passageway and down the stairs. The sound was strangely comforting, ordinary. I lay back against the pillows.

  Except for George, the idea of love to me always before seemed a question of submission. Of giving in to some powerful emotion, of losing control. Now love seemed a natural thing, something one did not even need to remark upon, like breathing or raising one’s face to the sun on a summer’s day.

  Fabrissa . . . Like a children’s nursery rhyme, her name going round and round in my head. Fabrissa. The word spinning and spiralling and winding my nerves tighter and tighter.

  ‘Where are you?’

  I realised I’d spoken it out loud, though it did not matter. There was no one there to hear me.

  ‘I will find you,’ I murmured, slipping into sleep with her name still on my lips.

  Madame Galy’s Vigil

  I slept all of that day and into the evening. Or rather, I drifted in and out of a twilight state. I was aware of comings and goings, shapes, blurred faces, the sound of kindling and a striking match, the maid laying a fire.

  I woke fully only twice. First, when Madame Galy placed a bowl of soup and bread beside the bed and waited until I had eaten it all. The second time, when she returned to administer a second draught of the bitter white medicine. Some kind of traditional remedy? I never knew and hardly cared.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Late,’ she replied, placing a cool hand on my forehead. Why she should take so much trouble over a stranger, I did not think to ask. She felt some kind of responsibility to me, I could see, as a guest in her establishment. Even so, this was over and above the call of duty.

  But Madame Galy’s maternal ministrations were not enough to stop the fever from taking hold. Some time in the evening, my temperature began to rise dangerously. Every muscle, every sinew flexed and tried to fight it, but my natural defences were too weak and I was powerless to do anything other than hope to ride the fever out.

  My skin was alternately burning and clammy with sweat. I tossed and turned in the bed, like flotsam on a storm-wracked sea, plagued by dreams and delusions. Angels and gargoyles, ghostly apparitions, long-since deserted friends waltzed in and out of my head, to the sounds of a fairground carousel, then Für Elise, then a ragtime step.

  For hours, so Madame Galy later told me, things hung in the balance as my temperature climbed higher and higher. Certainly, I oscillated between beauty and horror. A skeletal hand pushing up from beneath freshly turned earth, blossom dying on the bough. The backs of my parents’ heads, impassive and deaf to my need for them to love me. George smiling at me, in the orchard and by the stream, but then stepping just out of reach and turning away when I called out to him. Barbed wire and mud and blood, chlorine gas, a world of unimaginable pain.

  The fever broke at about three o’clock in the morning. I felt it slink away like a mongrel with its tail between its legs. My temperature dropped. I stopped shaking and my skin, sticky with fever, returned to normal. For the first time in hours, I found myself surrounded by the reassuringly mundane features of the everyday world. A chair, my trousers draped over a clothes horse, a table, the last lick of flames in the grate and Madame Galy snoring quietly on the chair beside me. Wisps of grey hair had worked their way loose from her severe plait, and I caught a glimpse of the pretty girl she once had been. I could think of no occasion when my own mother had taken such care of me. Without waking her, I reached out my hand and laid it briefly over hers.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

  Then a kind of peace fell over the room. In the still and sleeping house, I could hear the whirring and chiming of the clock in the hall downstairs. I placed my arms above the counterpane, a stone knight on a tomb, and turned to the window. I wondered if Fabrissa looked out into the same night. I wondered if she might have come to enquire after me. I had set at her feet what little of myself I had to give, ragged fragments, and yet hoped that she might love me. Had it scared her off? Was she lying awake now in the dark, thinking of me as I thought of her?

  A ribbon of moonlight made its way between the shutters and painted a line across the floor. I watched the moonbeams dance, slowly shift, as the hours passed and the world continued to turn. I thought of what I would say to her when I found her. Of the beauty of small things. Of the way a bird takes flight, its wings beating on the air. Of the blue flowers of the flax blossom in summer and a parish church decorated by plough and corn at harvest time. Of notes climbing a chromatic scale. Of the possibility of love.

  Later, I fell asleep. And this time, when I slept, I did so without dreaming.

  When I woke again, it was morning. Madame Galy had gone. The chair was back against the wall as if it had never been moved. Physically, I was done in, but I felt all right - in fact, better than I had for some time. And I was ravenously hungry.

  I sat up, debating whether to get up or wait a while longer. I wasn’t certain of the time. Just as I had decided that I would wash and dress, there was a light tap on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Madame Galy came into the room, my laundered shirt over her arm, and carrying a breakfast tray.

  ‘I have brought you something to eat,’ she said.

  I smiled and smoothed down the covers.

  ‘That’s kind of you. I seem to have quite an appetite this morning.’

  I was touched by the way she found things to busy herself with in the room, while surreptitiously checking that I ate every scrap. Toasted bread, salted ham and an egg sliced perfectly in two. When I tried to thank her for her long night’s vigil, she brushed my gratitude aside. But a pink glow suffused her homely features and I could see she was pleased.

  ‘Your letter was delivered to your friends in Ax yesterday afternoon, monsieur. The boy can go again tomorrow once you know how things stand with your motor car.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I wiped my hands on the serviette. ‘You said there was someone who could help?’

  She nodded. ‘Michel Breillac and his sons will be here at ten o’clock.’

  ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘It is nearly nine.’

  ‘Splendid. I can easily be ready within an hour.’

  Concern flashed across Madame Galy’s face when she realised I intended to accompany them.

  ‘I do not think it would be wise, monsieur, after what you went through last evening. It is barely above freezing. Better to give Monsieur Breillac directions and leave it to him. He is a capable man.’

  It seems extraordinary now that I would have contemplated an expedition after so serious a fever. But in truth, I believed the delirium had left me somehow stronger, restored. I felt invigorated, more complete in body and mind than I had been for some time.

  ‘I’m quite recovered,’ I said with a smile. ‘On top form, in fact.’

  She shook her head. ‘It would be better to rest for one more day. You should not overtire yourself.’

  ‘It will be fine,’ I said firmly.

  Supervising the salvage of my poor little saloon stranded up in the hills was not, of course, my primary concern. Madame Galy said she did not know Fabrissa, so I had to find someone who did. That could not be achieved by kicking my heels in the boarding house.

  ‘Very well, monsieur,’ she said, though I could see she thought me foolish. ‘Ten o’clock.’

  After she had left, I flung back the covers and got out of bed. The floorboards were chill beneath my bare feet, but the ground held steady. I splashed cold water on my face and did my best to smooth down my errant hair. I ran my hand over my raspy chin and regretted the lack of a razor, but did not want to seek out Madame Galy once more, for fear she would
renew her efforts to dissuade me from accompanying the Breillacs.

  I finished dressing and pulled on my Fitwells. The leather of the sturdy old boots had contracted in the heat from the fire, but they were comfortable enough. I rummaged in my trouser pocket and retrieved my cigarette case and matches, then threw open the windows and looked out at the white place de l’Église.

  I plunged my hand back into my pocket. Nothing. I balanced my cigarette on the sill. I frowned. After I had offered the yellow fabric cross to Fabrissa and she had refused it, I could have sworn I’d tucked it away. I tried the other pocket, but it was also empty. Just balls of fluff and a spent match.

  Had I mislaid it on the way home? Since I had no recollection at all of how I had made it back to my room, it seemed the likeliest explanation, though I was disappointed.

  ‘No matter,’ I said to myself, shutting the window.

  I was certain, you see, that I would find her.

  The Breillac Brothers

  As the last chime of the clock struck ten, I came downstairs to the reception area.

  Monsieur Breillac and his two sons were already there, and introductions were quickly made. Guillaume and Pierre Breillac were twins, of eighteen or nineteen or so, their faces all but hidden by fur hats tied beneath the chin. In any event, they looked so similar I found it hard to tell them apart, until it became evident that Guillaume spoke passable English, whereas Pierre did not. Monsieur Breillac said nothing, just nodded a greeting, and I detected the same sadness in his eyes that clouded Monsieur Galy’s, Madame Galy’s too when she thought no one was watching.

  She was still adamant I should not go, but when she saw I would not be deflected, found me a fur hat and muffler to wear as well as a pair of heavy men’s gloves.

  ‘Please thank Monsieur Galy for the loan,’ I said. ‘They’re a perfect fit.’

  ‘They are not my husband’s,’ she said quietly. I saw a look pass between the Breillac boys and their father, but nobody said anything, so I threaded my fingers into the soft fur lining without further comment and thought no more about it.

  Guillaume acted as interpreter, because although my French was adequate, it did not stretch to such technicalities as torque tube or running board. With a mixture of hand gestures and his blunt translation, we established where the car might be and what I considered the extent of the damage.

  We set off shortly after ten-fifteen under a blue sky, unbroken by clouds. As we crossed the place de l’Église, I felt my heart expand with the beauty of it; the same old world, but seen through new eyes. A white winter sun hung low in the sky and it was bright but cold.

  Monsieur Breillac put his hand on Guillaume’s arm and spoke rapidly in patois. I waited until he translated. His father suggested we should climb up through the woods rather than risk the charreton. A two-person cart pulled by a donkey, he explained in response to my raised eyebrows. His father said the road would be iced over and it would be slow and treacherous going. Whereas the woodland paths, protected by the trees, would be more secure underfoot. If I had the stamina for it, that was.

  Having been so wretchedly ill, you might wonder at my arrogance. Or stupidity, I suppose. Indeed, I wonder at it myself, even now. Looking back, though, I can only say that I knew I had the strength I needed. The fever had passed through me, leaving in its place a kind of nervous energy and a sense of purpose I’d been lacking for some time.

  I readily agreed to Breillac’s proposal. And I was excited, too. Sitting beside the dewpond, Fabrissa had invited me to come and find her. And it was in these mountains that I had first heard her voice.

  There had been no fresh snow overnight so, despite a hard frost, the going was not too bad. We walked at a fair pace and soon arrived at the bridge which I had crossed two days previously. As we tramped over it, the Billy Goats Gruff and I, the frozen water below glinted in the December morning like the surface of a looking-glass. Reeds and brown rushes stuck up through the ice like a line of tin soldiers, as if caught at the precise moment the winter took hold.

  We walked across the drab fields, the brown furrows crusted with snow, and were soon on the outskirts of the woods where the trees sparkled with frost.

  I pointed out the path by which I had descended and, in single file, we began to climb. It was steep, yet it seemed less taxing than previously. Breillac and his sons were easy company, and the sun and the lack of wind lifted my spirits. I kept my ears peeled for Fabrissa’s voice, but today there was no suggestion of figures in the mist or watchers in the hills.

  I held off asking the Breillacs if they knew of Fabrissa because I did not want my hopes dashed. The longer I delayed the question, the longer I kept the possibility alive that they could tell me where to find her.

  So on we went. I remember a bird singing high up in the barren branches of a tree. A hen blackbird, maybe a robin, oddly English sounds to hear in a French country wood, prompting the absurd thought that Fabrissa and I might, some day, walk hand in hand on the Sussex Downs. My plans were castles in the air, of course, dreams, imaginings of silver days we might spend in one another’s company. The countless dusks watching the sun sinking down into the earth. The nights in one another’s arms. And I smiled as I remembered her clever grey eyes and the pale turn of her chin and the drape of her hair across her shoulders. My heart ached to see her again.

  ‘I wonder, Guillaume, if you might know a girl by the name of Fabrissa?’

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head.

  ‘What about Pierre? Perhaps your father. Could you ask?’ He turned around and I, keeping my tone light, carried on chattering, shoring up my defences against disappointment. ‘We were introduced at the fête, a couple of nights ago. Like an idiot, I didn’t catch her last name. Be interested to know where she lives.’

  I heard Breillac repeat her name, but he was shaking his head, and so was Pierre. Guillaume turned back to face me. ‘No,’ he reported, ‘they don’t know of such a girl.’ Then he added, ‘My father says he didn’t see you, monsieur, at the Ostal.’

  My stomach gave an unpleasant lurch.

  ‘He didn’t?’ I paused. ‘Well, it was crowded. Hard to see anyone much. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of Madame Galy all night and it was she who’d invited me. The way of these things, I suppose.’ I paused. ‘Your father didn’t get caught up in the brawl?’ I gave a brittle laugh. ‘Do you know, I thought it was real to start with. Those swords and helmets, very convincing.’

  Guillaume’s eyes cut into me. ‘Brawl, monsieur?’

  ‘The fight, then,’ I said. ‘The punch-up.’ I stopped and looked at him. ‘You were there, Guillaume? The fête de Saint-Etienne?’

  ‘I was. We all were.’

  Guillaume was genuinely baffled and I, feeling I had somehow blotted the day for us all, said nothing more. But it preyed on my mind. Even admitting I was rather preoccupied at the time, it was queer that my recollection of the evening was so at odds with theirs.

  We walked on, barely talking as the path grew steeper yet. At last, I made out the junction where the two paths became a single track leading back up to the road.

  We stopped to catch our breath. It was then that I felt the familiar prickling at the nape of my neck, the same thickening of the air. I glanced up into the dense undergrowth to my left and, in the gloom, made out the gnarled roots of some ancient trees, vanishing into the mountain.

  ‘Like stairs,’ I murmured, hearing Fabrissa’s voice in my head.

  ‘Monsieur, it is this way, yes?’

  ‘What?’

  I realised my three companions had stopped and were waiting on me for further directions.

  ‘That’s right, yes. Straight on.’

  An Idea Takes Hold

  It was close to eleven-thirty when we emerged from the path by the wooden sign.

  We halted a while to rest. I offered my cigarettes, and Breillac senior passed round a canteen of a foul, aniseed-flavoured liqueur. Each of us took a swig, then wiped it off with o
ur gloves before passing it on.

  The atrocious weather conditions of two days ago, and my disorientation immediately after the smash, meant I couldn’t estimate with any accuracy how much further along the road I was when the accident happened. In the event, we walked for no more than five minutes before the yellow Austin came into view.

  ‘Voilà,’ I shouted, relieved to see that my motor car had not toppled over completely. ‘Voilà la voiture.’

  Half skating up the icy road, half walking, it took no more than a minute or two to cover the last couple of hundred yards. The four of us stared at the yellow car, Breillac and his sons talking too fast for me to follow.

  I watched Guillaume take the coil of rope from around his shoulder and tie it to the rear bumper. He then looped it around his waist, and Pierre followed suit. They braced their knees and began to pull, Breillac standing by and hollering like a barker at the fish market.

  With the scraping of metal on the hard ground and grunts from the boys, the car was slowly dragged back from the edge of the precipice until all four wheels were back on terra firma.

  ‘Splendid,’ I said, nodding to Guillaume. ‘Et à vous, Pierre, merci.’

  Guillaume untied the rope, then stood back to allow Breillac a clear view. He walked around the battered little car as if he were at an auction, shaking his head as he pointed at the axle, at the buckled front wheel arch, at some indeterminate piece of cable that hung down like a torn thread. His expression alone announced it was going to be difficult to fix.

  ‘Quatre, cinq jours, minimum.’

  ‘He says—’

  ‘Four or five days, yes. Can you ask him what he thinks we should do now? Is there a garage in Nulle? Or do we need to think about getting it towed to Tarascon?’

  Guillaume turned to his father to start up another lengthy discussion, so I removed myself a little way from their loud voices and sat on a rock. The sun had risen over the mountain and it was, if not actually warm, then at least not properly cold. There was the odd snatch of birdsong, and the air was filled with the smell of pine resin.