Steeling herself, Sandrine reached out and touched him. Still nothing. She took a deep breath, then manoeuvred herself around so that she could get her hands beneath his armpits. She tried to pull. At first, nothing happened, he was held somehow on the rocks. But then his grip slackened and after a few more heaves, suddenly he came free.
Sandrine lurched and nearly collapsed under the sudden responsibility of his weight, but then the water took over and held him up. Feeling the squelch of mud between her toes, slowly she began to drag him back to the bank. She tried not to look at his pallid skin and lifeless features, his dark hair. She thought he was breathing, hoped he was. Tiny sounds seemed to be coming from his mouth, but she wasn’t sure. Every drop of her strength was focused on the task of getting him back to the safety of the shore.
As the water became shallower, he grew heavier in her arms. The last few steps were almost impossible, half dragging, half pulling, until his upper body at least was out of the water. With what little energy she had left, she managed to roll him on to his side before sinking to the ground on the grass beside him.
She took deep breaths, steadied her heart. A few moments later and she forced herself to look at him properly, at his bruised and lifeless face. There were rope burns around his wrists, red marks on his lower arms. Not the sort of marks he could have got from the water. She looked at his feet, seeing the soles were also bruised.
Sandrine swallowed hard. Not drowned. Rather, someone had tied him up, beaten him. She took another deep breath, fighting the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her, trying to work out what might have happened.
Without warning, the man’s eyes snapped open. He coughed, started to choke, as if the oxygen had suddenly started to feed into his lungs again. Sandrine leapt back, just as a stream of river water spewed from his mouth. He attempted to sit up, but he had no strength and fell back to the ground.
‘Spirits of the air,’ he muttered. ‘The number was ten thousand times ten thousand . . .’
His eyes were staring at her. Pleading, suffering eyes, shot through with despair.
‘Don’t move,’ she said quickly, trying to sound calm. ‘I’ll get help. You need help.’
‘Tell Baillard,’ he whispered. ‘Trouvez-lui. Dîtes que . . .’
‘I’ll fetch help,’ she said. ‘The police, we—’
His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Sandrine stifled a scream.
‘No police. Can’t trust . . . no!’ he gasped. ‘Tell the old man, tell . . .’
‘A doctor, then,’ she said, trying to prise his fingers from her skin. ‘You need help, I must fetch someone. You can’t—’
‘Tell him . . . it’s true. A sea of glass, of fire. Speak and they will come.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said desperately. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘The spirits of the air . . .’ he whispered, but his voice was fading.
‘No, don’t give up . . .’
A terrible rattling in his throat. A gurgling, then a snatching at the air. Every gasp of breath hard fought for.
‘Save your strength. Help is on its way,’ she lied, glancing up to the road again.
‘All true,’ he repeated, almost looking as if he was smiling. ‘Dame Carcas . . .’
‘It will be all right. Just . . .’
But he was drifting away, his colour fading from pink to grey to white. Sandrine kept shaking him, trying to keep him with her. Her wet skirt was clinging to the back of her legs as she pushed against his chest, her feet muddied and cut from the stones on the riverbank.
‘Hold on,’ she said, trying to keep him breathing. ‘Help will come soon, hold on.’
Then she felt a prickling on the back of her neck. Someone was there. Someone was standing behind her.
‘Thank God,’ she started to say, except something felt wrong.
Fear, rather than relief, jabbed her between the ribs. She spun round, but she was too slow. A blinding pain at the side of her head, dazzling white and yellow and red light, then she was falling, falling, her legs buckling under her. The smell of the river and the reeds, rushing up to meet her. A hand on the back of her neck, pushing her face down into the water. The river, framing her face now, lapping into her mouth, her nose, the shimmer of shadow and light on the surface.
For an instant, a whispering. A voice she couldn’t identify, a sound heard but not heard. Experienced somewhere beyond language, beyond hearing.
‘Coratge.’ A girl’s voice, glistening in the light. Courage.
Then, nothing.
Chapter 5
THE HAUTE VALLÉE
Audric Baillard stood in a clearing at the edge of a beech wood in the French Pyrenees. Rather than his customary pale suit and panama hat, he was wearing the nondescript clothes of a man of the mountains. Corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt with a yellow handkerchief at his neck, a wide-brimmed hat. His skin was tanned, the colour of leather, and heavily lined. He was old, but he was strong, and there was a resolve in his eyes that bore witness to the evidence of his years.
Beside him, mopping his brow in the heat, was a smartly dressed man in a black suit and iron-grey trilby, with a fawn trench coat over one arm and a leather valise. At his side, two silent little girls and a thin woman with dead eyes. A little apart stood a young man in country smock and boots. All around, the sounds of the forest. Rabbits, squirrels, wood pigeons calling one to the other.
‘Good luck,’ said Baillard.
‘I can’t thank you enough,’ the American, Shapiro, replied, pulling an envelope from his pocket. ‘I hope this is sufficient . . .’
Baillard shook his head. ‘It is not for me, my friend. It is for your guides, the passeurs. It is they who take the risk.’
‘Didn’t mean to offend you, sir.’
‘I am not in the least offended.’
The American hesitated, then put the envelope back in his pocket. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘I am.’
Shapiro glanced at his guide, then lowered his voice so the woman and children couldn’t hear.
‘But as a businessman, sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking what’s in it for you?’
‘Merely to be of assistance,’ Baillard said quietly.
‘Though you’re taking a chance too?’
Baillard fixed him with his steady, quiet gaze. ‘These are difficult times.’
Shapiro’s face clouded over. Baillard knew that this man’s family, French Jews, had been among the first to be rounded up in Paris. He had come over from America, thinking his money might save them, but in twelve months he had succeeded only in finding his brother’s wife and two of her four children. The others had disappeared.
‘You cannot blame yourself,’ Baillard said softly. ‘Because of you, Madame Shapiro and your nieces have a chance. We each do what we can.’
Shapiro fixed him with a look, then he nodded. Something in Baillard’s voice persuading him of his sincerity.
‘If you’re sure,’ he said again. He glanced once more at the passeur. ‘What about this guy, does he speak English?’
‘No. Very little French either.’
Shapiro raised his eyebrows. ‘So what am I looking out for? The landmarks, in case we get split up.’
Baillard smiled. ‘I am sure you will not, but in any case, the route is simple. Keeping the sun ahead of you, you follow the draille, these wide tracks the shepherds and goatherds use. You’ll cross several brooks, passing through open meadows as well as sections of woodland. The first lake you come to will be the Étang de Baxouillade. Keep the water on your left. You’ll travel through a pine forest and on further, until you reach the banks of the Étang du Laurenti. There, all being well, a second passeur will be waiting. He will be accompanied by three others who are making the crossing today. He will take you over the summit of Roc Blanc, ready for the descent to the border with Andorra.’
‘This guy’s not sticking with me?’
‘There are different guides for different s
ections of the mountain. I cannot say for certain, but I think it likely your second aide will be a Spaniard.’
‘That’s grand. I have a little Spanish.’
Baillard smiled. ‘At the risk of now offending you, monsieur, I would recommend you keep conversation to a minimum. Your accent will give you away.’
‘You could be right,’ he said amiably, acknowledging the comment with good grace. ‘How long do you figure the journey will take, sir? Give or take?’
‘With the children, perhaps four hours to the Étang du Laurenti, then another two hours to the summit of Roc Blanc. The descent will be easier.’
The passeur cleared his throat. ‘Sénher, es ora.’
Shapiro turned round, then back to Baillard. ‘What’s that he’s saying?’
‘That it is time to leave.’ Baillard held out his hand. ‘The passeurs know these paths, this mountain. They know where the risk of being spotted by a patrol is at its highest. Do as they tell you.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ said Shapiro, clasping Baillard’s hand and shaking it. ‘And if you’re ever in New York, you look me up. I mean it.’
Baillard smiled at the American’s confidence, hoping it was not misplaced. In the two years he had been helping smuggle people over the Pyrenees – exiles, fugitives, Jews, communists, those without an exit visa – many had ended up imprisoned in gaols in Spain or repatriated to France. Americans in particular did not understand that, in this war, money did not talk.
‘Pas a pas,’ he murmured to himself.
He watched the small party set off along the path. Like so many of the wealthy refugees Baillard had guided to the escape routes, they had brought too much with them. The American was not dressed for the mountains, the children would struggle with their cases and the woman looked defeated, someone who had seen too much to think she could ever be safe again.
Baillard sighed, wished them luck, then turned and retraced his steps to the village of Ax-les-Thermes. The air was fresh and clean, but the sun was hot and would get hotter, and he was tired. He had walked many thousands of miles through these mountains, and he accepted that the time was coming when he would no longer have the strength required for such arduous journeys.
He knew many of the secrets hidden in these hills, yet an explanation for the purpose of it all eluded him. He had published books – on folklore, on the bloody history of the region, about the citadel of Montségur and the caves of the Sabarthès and Lombrives and the mountain peaks of the Vicdessos – but still the truth of his continuing mission remained stubbornly beyond his comprehension.
He took one last look. His charges were specks on the horizon, five diminishing figures walking slowly uphill. He said a prayer for them, then turned and slowly began his descent.
It took Baillard nearly an hour to reach the outskirts of the town. There, he changed back into his usual clothes. He noticed a police car idling at the corner of the road and quietly changed direction. The police did not notice him. Or if they did, they had no interest in an elderly man in a white suit taking the morning air. But he took no chances, no unnecessary risks. It was why he had never been caught, not in this conflict nor in any other war in which he had been called upon to play his part.
He circled the town, walking slowly, with apparent lack of purpose, then came back in through the northern streets and went to the Café des Halles by the bridge, where he was to wait. The local doctor was due to visit a pregnant woman, expecting twins any day now, and had agreed to take him back to Rennes-les-Bains, where he hoped the package from Antoine Déjean would be waiting. Baillard allowed himself a moment of anticipation. If all was well, then there was a chance.
‘Come forth the armies of the air,’ he murmured.
Old words, ancient words, from a sacred text Baillard believed destroyed more than fifteen hundred years ago.
But what if the rumours were true? If it had survived?
He glanced at his watch. At least three hours to wait, if the doctor came at all. He ordered something to drink and eat. The café only had thin wine and ersatz coffee. No milk, of course. But Baillard didn’t require much. He ate a dry biscuit, dipping it into the tepid brown liquid, and sipped the rough mountain rosé.
He had seen many summers such as this, the gold of the sunflowers and the pinks, blues and reds of the mountain flowers fading into wine-coloured autumns as the leaves fell. Harsh winters following on behind, the passage of rain and mist to snow and ice. The endless march of the seasons. So many years, wondering whether each might be his last.
The sun rose higher in the sky. Baillard continued to wait and to watch the road, looking for anything, anyone out of place. There were spies everywhere, undercover rather than in plain view as in the occupied zone, but here all the same. Members of the Kundt Commission, the branch of the Gestapo operating in the zone non-occupée; SD and SS of course, but also Deuxième Bureau. Willing partners with the invaders whose aim in time, he had no doubt, was to subjugate all of France.
Baillard took another sip of wine. The uniforms were different in each age, the battle colours under which they marched changing as the centuries marched on. Boots and guns had replaced banners and horses, but the story was the same.
Men with black hearts. With black souls.
Chapter 6
CARCASSONNE
‘A sea of glass . . .’ she murmured, bright in the shimmering.
Sandrine knew it was her own voice she was hearing inside her head, but it seemed to be coming from a long way away. Shapes shifting, fragments of sound. An echo slipping in and out of conscious thought, as if underwater. Or through the clouded gaps between the valleys. She felt the hard metal of the chain in her pocket digging into her hip. She pulled it out, but her fingers didn’t seem to work and the necklace slithered to the ground.
‘Mademoiselle, can you hear me?’
Now she was aware of her hair being stroked gently off her forehead.
‘Mademoiselle?’
A man’s voice, sweet, soft, and a scent of sandalwood. So close, she could feel his breath on her skin.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe now.’
‘Sleep,’ she murmured.
‘You shouldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘You must wake up.’
Sandrine felt his hands beneath her shoulders, then the warmth of his skin through his shirt as he held her against him. ‘Open your eyes,’ he was saying. ‘Try to wake up. Open your eyes.’
She felt herself growing heavy in his arms, slipping away again. Then, his lips on hers, the lightest of touches. Breathing life into her. A kiss. Sandrine felt something inside her stir, a shock, a jolt. Then he kissed her again. For a single, unique moment, her eyes fluttered open, but she couldn’t seem to see.
‘I . . .’ she murmured, as her eyes closed once more. ‘I can’t . . .’
Now his hand was cupping the back of her neck, cradling her head in his arms.
‘Wake up. Please, mademoiselle. Sit up.’
Sandrine was aware of the sound of an engine, a different timbre from the motorcycle she’d heard earlier. Louder, a car coming closer. She felt the man’s muscles tense, then she realised she was not in his arms any more. She was being laid back down on the grass, his skin no longer touching hers.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said.
Sandrine wanted him to stay. Wanted to ask him to stay, but the words wouldn’t come. The car was getting closer, the belch of an exhaust.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice fading. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t be found here . . . I’m sorry.’
Then he was gone. The air was still, empty. She could feel herself drifting away again. The smell of the riverside giving way to other scents, wild lavender and rosemary, the green and purple of the valleys around Coustaussa. Honeysuckle and the sharp tang of wood smoke in winter. Images now, cold reflections. The old wooden sign on the back road marking the way to the castillous, the arms crooked like a broken cross. In town, walking along
side her sister and her father beneath a red and yellow CGT trade union poster, a demonstration, before the war. Everyone singing for peace, for liberty, as they walked past the gardens and white balustrades and the marble angel statue in the centre of the lake in Square Gambetta.
‘Paix,’ Sandrine murmured.
Carcassonne had marched for peace in 1939, but war had come all the same. In 1940, defeat had come all the same. Their voices had counted for nothing.
‘Patz,’ she murmured again. ‘Peace.’
‡
Codex III
‡
GAUL
CARCASO
JULY AD 342
The young monk made his way through the crowds of people filling the narrow streets of the fortified town. Despite the air of trade and commerce, and the brave attempts of everyone to behave as if nothing had changed, Arinius detected a hint of unease, of watchfulness in the air. The same atmosphere that was spreading through all of Gaul since the death of Emperor Constantine. All around him, hands hovering ready to draw a knife from its hilt, eyes darting this way and that.
Arinius knew little of military strategy or the diplomacy of emperors and generals, but from stories overheard in the forum in Lugdunum or told by the merchants he’d met on the Via Domitia, he knew that the history of his country was one of invasion and counter-invasion. From century unto century, the imposition of a new set of values upon the old – defeat, then collaboration, then assimilation. The prehistoric tribes who once lived on the Carsac plains, the Celtic settlers who had come after them, the Volcae Tectosage three centuries before the birth of Christ, the armies of Augustus. Now, it was said, tribes were coming from the East to reclaim what Caesar once had ruled.
Arinius didn’t know how well or how often Carcaso had been called upon to defend her walls, but he could see they had been built to withstand siege and invading armies. The horseshoe-shaped watch towers in the northern sections were faced with courses of dressed ashlar and intersected by red brick. On the first floor of each tower, three semicircular windows were underscored by red-brick arches. The wooden walkway and the battlements, accessed by ladders set against the base of the walls, were guarded by foot soldiers in chain mail and silver helmets, some armed with a pilum, a weapon like a javelin, others carrying slings. Some were Roman, but many were clearly from local villages – typical of the limitanei, the frontier garrison troops who now protected even these outposts. Arinius wondered for whom these disaffected men on the walls would fight. For the failing Empire? For their neighbours and families? For God? He wondered if even they themselves knew where their loyalties lay.