‘Marianne!’ she cried, running to meet her.
Her sister immediately put her hand up to the cut on the side of Sandrine’s head, staining the fingertips of her glove.
‘Whatever happened? Are you all right?’
Sandrine winced. ‘It’s not too bad. How did you know I was here?’
‘Lucie came to the Croix-Rouge to let me know what had happened. She told me she and Max had taken you home, but although your bike was there, Marieta said she hadn’t seen you. I put two and two together . . .’
‘But how did you know I’d be at the police station?’
‘Lucie said she’d persuaded you not to come,’ Marianne said drily. ‘Obviously, she didn’t succeed.’ She turned to the officer. ‘Is my sister free to go?’
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
Neither of the girls was aware of him watching them leave. Or that, as soon as they’d gone, Ramond tore up his notes and put the pieces into the rubbish bin.
Sandrine could tell Marianne was cross, although she wasn’t quite sure why. She kept glancing at her, kept waiting for her to say something, but she walked fast and in silence. It wasn’t until they had passed Artozouls, with its display of fishing nets, lines, rods and hunting equipment, and were standing outside the boulangerie next to the église des Carmes that Marianne spoke.
‘Wait here,’ she said, producing a coupon from her handbag and vanishing inside.
Sandrine was aware of the sharp eyes of an old woman in a first-floor apartment in the building on the opposite side of the street. She smiled, but la vieille stepped back behind her lace curtain.
Marianne reappeared holding a brown paper bag. ‘It’s still warm.’
Sandrine bit into the bun, which wasn’t too bad at all. Solid, but thick with dried fruit so it tasted sweet despite the lack of sugar.
‘You’d think they’d have a queue around the block if people knew she had these available so late in the day.’
‘They don’t,’ said Marianne.
Sandrine frowned. ‘Then how . . .?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said sharply.
‘Why are you so cross?’
Marianne ignored the question. ‘You’d better tell me what happened.’
‘Didn’t Lucie tell you?’
‘No, all she said was that you’d had an accident down at the river, that she and Max had found you and taken you home.’
‘She did try to talk me out of going to the police station,’ Sandrine said, ‘but I thought I should report it. Now I wish I’d listened to her.’
‘Why?’ Marianne said quickly. ‘What happened? What did they do?’
‘Do?’ said Sandrine in surprise. ‘They did nothing, that’s the point. Nobody took me seriously.’
Marianne’s shoulders relaxed a little.
Sandrine continued. ‘In the end an officer took a few notes, and that was that.’ She pulled a face. ‘I was an idiot, you don’t have to rub it in. I know.’
To her astonishment, Marianne grabbed her arm. ‘Do you, Sandrine? Really, I don’t think you have any idea. That you would simply waltz into a police station – a police station, of all places – and make a scene. Didn’t you even think about Max?’
‘I didn’t mention him,’ she said, stung by how harsh Marianne sounded. ‘I gave Lucie my word I wouldn’t, though I don’t understand why she made such a fuss.’
‘Max is Jewish, Sandrine. Don’t be so naïve.’
‘Yes, but he’s French. He’s got all the right papers, hasn’t he? He’ll be all right.’
‘No one is “all right”, as you put it,’ Marianne said. ‘If he’d stayed in Paris, he’d have been arrested by now.’
‘But Maréchal Pétain is protecting Jews in the zone libre, that’s what it said in the paper.’
Marianne gave a sharp laugh. ‘Every week the situation gets worse, can’t you see? And because Lucie goes about with him, she has to be careful too. She gets spat at in the street; someone painted foul comments on her front door.’
‘Oh,’ said Sandrine, the fight going out of her. ‘I didn’t know.’ She paused. ‘Is that why she’s worried about her father coming back?’
‘Lucie said that?’
‘Not in so many words.’
‘Monsieur Ménard is a brute, an unpleasant man at the best of times,’ said Marianne. ‘Unkind to his wife. To Lucie too. Belonged to a right-wing veterans’ organisation for years, long before the war. In the LVF now.’ She stopped. ‘I’m just saying we have to be careful. You have to be careful. You put people at risk otherwise, even if you don’t mean to.’
Sandrine felt a shiver go down her spine. On the surface, Carcassonne and its people looked the same, but her perception was shifting, changing, slipping. Suddenly, it was no longer quite the town she loved.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing,’ she said, now thoroughly miserable.
‘I know, darling,’ sighed Marianne, the heat going out of her voice. ‘But you don’t see what’s under your nose half the time.’
‘How can I?’ she protested. ‘You never tell me anything. Besides, you’re hardly ever home these days.’
‘That’s not fair, I . . .’
Sandrine stared at her, but whatever her sister might have been about to say, she’d thought better of it.
‘What?’
Marianne shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
They walked a little further in silence for a moment, then Sandrine pushed her hand into her pocket and pulled out the notes she’d written in the police station.
‘Here,’ she said.
‘What’s this?’ Marianne asked.
‘It’s what happened,’ she said. ‘I was intending to give it to the police, but . . . well, I didn’t get the chance. Anyway, you might as well read it.’
The sisters sat down on a bench beneath the plane trees lining the boulevard Maréchal Pétain. Sandrine watched as her sister turned the pages, but the expression on her face gave nothing away. When she had finished, Marianne leant back against the metal struts of the bench.
‘At least do you see why I thought I should report what happened?’ Sandrine said.
‘To tell you the truth, darling, I don’t know what to think.’ Marianne tapped the papers in her lap. ‘How much of this did you tell the policeman you talked to?’
‘Not much. I simply said I’d pulled a man out of the river and that I thought someone had hit me. When I came to, there was no one there, so I made my way to the police station.’
‘Did he believe you?’
Sandrine frowned. ‘I don’t know.’
Marianne paused. ‘You didn’t say anything about the . . . nature of the man’s injuries?’
She shook her head. ‘The thought of nobody knowing what had happened to him, after what he’d suffered, it didn’t seem right,’ she said quietly. ‘I wasn’t trying to cause trouble.’
At last, Marianne reached out and took her hand. ‘No. It must have been dreadful. Horrible for you.’
Sandrine was furious to feel tears pricking in her eyes. ‘You do believe me then,’ she said. ‘You don’t think I’m making it up.’
Marianne shook her head. ‘Even if you did bang your head, I can’t see you could invent all that.’
‘What do you think happened?’
Her sister thought for a moment. ‘Probably that the man, whoever he was, was being held nearby. Somehow he got away and made it down to the river. Perhaps he was trying to swim across. They came after him, saw you pull him out, were forced to put you out of action for long enough to retrieve the body.’
As much as anything, Sandrine was astonished by the matter-of-fact way her sister seemed to accept that such a thing could have happened in Carcassonne.
‘As for the rest,’ Marianne continued, ‘honestly I don’t know. It’s hard to square the business of a second man pulling you out of the water. You’re quite sure it wasn’t the same person who hit you?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘How can you be certain? Did you see his face?’
‘Why would he attack me first, then help me afterwards? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘True.’ Marianne thought for a moment more. ‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’
‘Maybe. His voice, certainly.’
‘What about the man who hit you?’
Sandrine shook her head. ‘He came up behind me. I didn’t see him at all.’
The girls sat in silence for a while longer. On the steps of the Palais de Justice opposite, a group of lawyers, like a murder of black crows, came flocking suddenly out of the court and down the steps to the cars waiting for them.
‘What do you think has happened to the man I rescued from the river?’ said Sandrine in a quiet voice.
‘Try not to think about it.’
‘I am, but it’s hard. I’ve never seen anything so . . .’
Marianne folded the papers and gave them back to Sandrine.
‘Put these away somewhere, somewhere safe. Better still, burn them.’
‘But what do you think we should do?’
‘Do? We should do nothing, nothing at all. Keep it to ourselves for now and hope nothing more comes of it.’
Chapter 18
THE HAUTE VALLÉE
The doctor did not arrive at the Café des Halles until late in the afternoon, so it wasn’t until after five that Baillard started the next stage of his journey.
He was heading for Rennes-les-Bains, a small town not far from Couiza and Coustaussa in the Salz valley. Baillard had lived there for some years in the 1890s, and continued to use it as his poste restante. He had been working on a book on the folklore and mythology of the valley. Gathering together antique stories of demons and ghosts and prehistoric creatures said to have stalked the mountains and hills before the Celts, before the Volcae, before the Romans. Before Christianity came and appropriated the old ways, the old shrines, for its own.
There wasn’t a breath of wind as they drove north and the sun was still fierce, so they kept the windows wide open. The journey passed pleasantly enough. The doctor was good company and an engaging conversationalist, his interests ranging from midwifery in the mountain villages to the promise of a good harvest this year. He was careful to express no opinions about either Pétain or de Gaulle, and Baillard did not prompt him.
They drove into the town as the shadows were lengthening. The single bell of the church of Saint-Celse et Saint-Nazaire was ringing for vespers. The doctor set him down in the Place du Pérou. It had a new name now, but Baillard still thought of it in the old way. In those days, Abbé Boudet had preached from the tiny pulpit of the church of faith and ghosts and superstition, of trapped spirits and souls that could not rest. It was in this square that the old families of the village had waved their men to war in 1914, to Belgium and the Western Front, to their deaths – Jules Bousquet, Jean Bruet, Pierre and René Flamand, Joseph Saint-Loup. Baillard too, watching those he loved walk away – Louis-Anatole, who had survived the slaughter to start a new life in the Americas, and Marieta’s beloved husband Pascal, who had not. A SES GLORIEUX MORTS read the inscription on the plaque in the church porch. Baillard knew, as did they all, that there was no glory in death.
For a moment he was tempted to climb up through the woods to see the old house that lived so vividly in his imagination, but the thought of gazing upon the burnt shell of the Domaine de la Cade saddened him. Nearly fifty years ago, but the memories were still sharp as glass. Too many people had died. Too many stories had changed their course. Here, more than anywhere else, Baillard felt the horror of that night in the landscape, the memory of ghosts and the earth torn open.
His thoughts returned again to the Codex. To the promise of those words, as well as the intimations of terror contained within them. Of what might be unleashed.
‘Las fantomas . . .’
Baillard walked more quickly through the familiar streets to the bureau de poste, where he hoped the package from Antoine Déjean would be waiting for him. The office was closed, but he tapped on the window. Seconds later, a young woman came to the door and looked out. He saw her take in his pale suit, his panama hat and the yellow handkerchief he wore in his breast pocket.
‘Monsieur Baillard?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘It’s Geneviève, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
‘I knew your grandparents,’ he said. ‘Your parents, too.’
‘Yes, my mother said so.’
‘Please pass on my respects to Madame Saint-Loup when next you see her.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Now, I am hoping you have something for me?’
The girl’s pretty face grew serious. ‘I’m afraid that nothing has come, Monsieur Baillard. I’ve been here all weekend and today, but nothing has arrived for you.’
Baillard felt the air go out of his lungs. Only now did he realise how very much he had depended on the package being there.
‘A message, perhaps?’
‘I’m afraid not, monsieur.’
‘No message,’ he said softly. ‘A pity, damatge.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Will you be here again tomorrow, Geneviève?’
‘Every day except for Fridays, monsieur. My sister Eloise stands in for me then.’
Baillard nodded. ‘I will be gone for a few days, but shall return at the beginning of next week. If anything comes for me, please keep it. Tell no one.’
‘Yes, monsieur.’
He looked at her, seeing the steadfast expression behind her calm exterior. The Saint-Loup girls were all the same, took after their mother. As alike as grapes on the vine.
‘Thank you, Geneviève.’
‘I’ve done nothing, monsieur.’
‘Ah, but you have, filha. You are here. That, in and of itself, is courageous.’ He smiled. ‘And for that, you have my thanks.’
‘Any of us would do the same, Monsieur Baillard.’
With the sound of Geneviève bolting the door at his back, Baillard walked back into the main street. He passed the Hôtel de la Reine, now down on its luck, so much less assured than it had been in the heyday of the spa town in the 1890s, when visitors from Paris, from Toulouse, from Carcassonne and Perpignan came to take the waters.
On the outskirts of the town, a farmer in a truck picked him up. Baillard was grateful for the lift. He was capable of walking great distances, even at his advanced age, but he felt burdened, particularly tired.
They left the village, following the cut of the river Salz. On the hills, jutting outcrops of rock kept watch over the valley. The glint of sunlight on water, the soft silver underside of leaves lifted by the breeze, yellow and blue and pink flowers clustering at the foot of fir trees and pines, juniper bushes and willow.
Unlike the doctor, his latest companion was a silent man, content to smoke and occasionally share a swig of red wine from the flask balanced on the dashboard in front of him, leaving Baillard at liberty to think. As the truck chugged its way through wooded valleys towards the tiny village of Los Seres, he wondered again what had gone wrong. He hoped that Antoine Déjean had only been delayed. That there was no cause for alarm.
As they drove higher into the mountains, Baillard thought about the Codex. A single sheet of papyrus between leather covers, according to contemporary records. Seven short verses, no more. Was it possible that so fragile a thing could have survived for so long? Fragments spoken, written down, words Antoine had seen? Enough for Baillard to hope they came from the Codex, but until the package arrived, he could not be sure.
Fanciful as it was, it seemed to him as though the story did not want to be told. A whispering, a trick of the light, hints and rumours, but the truth remaining stubbornly out of reach. He felt he was standing alone on a bare stage, with the characters waiting, invisible, in the wings.
Chapter 19
CARCASSONNE
‘At least let me carry the plates to the sink,’ Sandrine said again, after their evening meal was finished.
‘I
can manage,’ Marieta said firmly, shooing her away. ‘You should be resting.’
Sandrine’s hand automatically went to the large sticking plaster on her head, the smell of iodine and antiseptic catching in her throat.
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
Marieta huffed. ‘Well, I don’t want you under my feet in the kitchen.’
Sandrine went to find Marianne in the salon at the front of the house. The largest room on the ground floor, before the war it had been used for special occasions only. After their father’s death and the bitter winter of 1940 that followed, the girls had shut up the other rooms and set up camp here. Easier to heat just one room. By the time spring came, the habit was established. The dining room and their father’s study remained closed, and the salon was a working room, magazines and books everywhere, a pleasant muddle.
In those days, acquaintances of Marianne had often stayed for a day or two, though Sandrine had rarely seen them. In the morning she went to college, and by the time she got home, they’d gone. Now, the stream of visitors had dried up. They mostly had the house to themselves.
Two tall windows gave on to the rue du Palais, with long yellow curtains skimming the wooden floorboards. A fin-de-siècle fireplace of ornate marble, a little too large for the space, and a wrought-iron fire basket. Two oil paintings, one of their mother and one of their father, hung above the sideboard that smelt of beeswax and honey. Some time back, the plate and silver had been moved to the cellar for safe keeping, then left there even after the threat of bombing was over. In their place was a ceramic bowl with dried rose petals from the garden.
Marianne was reading on the sofa, with her legs curled up under her.
‘I offered to wash up,’ said Sandrine, throwing herself into the armchair, ‘but Marieta sent me away.’
‘Did you expect anything else?’
Sandrine shook her head. ‘No, but she seems so tired.’
‘She’s not going to change her ways now.’