Straight away, the smell of long-hidden, undisturbed air surrounded him. It was cool and damp. He rummaged in his rucksack for a torch. The beam was weak, but it lit the area just in front of him. It sent the shadows dancing up along the jagged grey walls of the cave.
Freddie walked slowly. He felt the ground sloping down beneath his feet, gritty and uneven. Loose stones and small pieces of rock crunched under his feet. He was aware of the daylight getting fainter at his back.
Then, without warning, the path came to an abrupt end. Freddie stopped dead. He could go no further. A wall of stone, of rock, of wood blocked his way. Freddie shone his torch to the roof to see if there had been a rock fall, but there were no signs of it. In which case, he reasoned, the stones must have been put here by human hands. He had a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Marie had said the soldiers did not find them and, yet, she had also said no one had come home. The book, however, had explained how, hundreds of years ago, the soldiers had walled up their victims inside the mountain. Could they have used the same trick in the last war?
With a sense of urgency, Freddie began to dig. He pulled at the stones, using both hands. He worked hard, stopping only to drink water from his flask. But, although the pile of rocks on his side got bigger, the wall did not seem smaller. Soon, his hands were scratched and bleeding. His arms ached and his knees hurt from kneeling on the hard ground. But he was driven by a wild need to know what lay behind the rocks.
At the back of his mind, Freddie did know why this mattered to him so much. He was doing for Marie and her family what he had not been able to do for his own. He should have brought George home to England and laid his body to rest in the earth. The dead should be remembered by a name on a tombstone. His brother deserved no less. Marie’s brother and her parents deserved it too.
Finally, the wall began to give crumble. Freddie coughed and held his arm across his mouth as the dust filled the cave. Pieces of wood, stone and rock started to come loose. Within minutes, there was an opening as big as his hand. Freddie clawed at the gap until there was enough space for him to get through. He shone the torch into the darkness ahead, into the tomb.
Chapter Seventeen
On the far side of the wall, the air was colder.
Freddie put out his hand. Here the walls of the cave were damp to the touch. The surface beneath his feet was different too. It was no longer stone and gravel and dust, but smooth. It was slippery. More than once, he lost his footing and stumbled.
His unease grew with every step down into the endless darkness.
Finally, the tunnel came to an end. Freddie looked around him in awe. He was standing at the entrance to a huge cavern, like a cathedral hidden in the mountains. He shone his torch up and around in wonder.
‘A city in the mountains,’ he said.
That was how Marie had described their hiding place. Standing here, Freddie understood what she had meant. He took a step forward, then another. He no longer felt afraid. He no longer felt alone. He felt a sense of peace, quiet and calm. It was timeless, unchanging, far from the cares of the world.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something strange. Not rock or stone, but something man-made. Was it a pile of clothes or belongings? Freddie caught his breath. A grave? This was what he had come to find. But his legs were trembling and the beam of light jumped in his hands.
Freddie walked closer. Now, there was no doubt. People, lying side by side. From this distance they looked as if they were sleeping. He walked nearer, closer. His heart lurched. He could see clothes, material, heavy cloth.
The sound caught in his throat. Not people, skeletons. Bones. Dead sockets where once had been eyes. The skulls were a green-white in the pale beam of the torch. He felt his stomach lurch. He swallowed deeply and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief to hold over his nose and mouth.
As Freddie struggled to keep his nerve, he tried to work out what he was looking at. If he had found Marie’s family, how could their bodies have rotted so completely in so short a period of time? Even if they had died at the beginning of the war, in 1914, rather than at the end, would there not be some flesh left on the bones? In such conditions, away from the light and the wet and fresh air, surely the bones would not yet be picked clean by time?
He swept his gaze over the makeshift grave. He saw fragments of cloth, a clay bowl, the stump of a candle. These were the humble objects that the family had treasured as they waited to die. They were side by side, as if they had simply lain down together and gone to sleep.
Freddie stepped carefully between the bodies. There were two larger skeletons, then one much smaller. He assumed this was Marie’s brother.
Then a fourth.
Freddie’s legs started to shake. Marie said her mother and father and brother had taken refuge in the cave. She had not said anyone else was with them.
Now he noticed a sheet of paper on the ground. He took his handkerchief away from his face and held it in his fingers. Then he bent down and gently pulled the paper free. It was brittle to the touch, more like parchment than normal paper. Beneath, he could see there were many more sheets, scattered around the bones like fallen leaves in autumn.
Careful not to disturb things more than he had to, Freddie gathered up the individual sheets. The handwriting was the same on each, scratchy, uneven and black on the yellow surface. He did not recognise the language. Some words looked like French, others more like Spanish.
At last, only one sheet remained. It was held between the white skeletal fingers, as if the author was still writing when their final breath left them.
Freddie skimmed it with his eyes.
‘When all else is done, only words remain.’
His eyes jumped to the bottom of the sheet. There was a date. His stomach lurched. April 1328.
How could that be? If this was Marie’s family, and all the signs were that it was, then the date was six hundred years too early.
His thoughts slipped back to the history book he had bought and read in the café, about the wars of the fourteenth century. Freddie shook his head. How could he explain how he, a stranger to the region, have stumbled on a grave dating back to the Middle Ages? It would have been found long before now.
Then again, if he had not known where to look, he would have assumed there was nothing there. A solid wall of stone and rock barred the way. It looked like a dead-end. It was possible.
Freddie glanced back down at the name at the bottom of the antique paper. What he read next knocked the breath out of him. He shook his head in disbelief.
How could he explain this? He didn’t want to explain it. Now he noticed, for the first time, what lay around the skeleton. The bones were wrapped in a red cloak, grown ragged at the edges. Beneath, there were glimpses of a heavy green dress. He looked and saw the brown leather pouch, like a purse, attached to a belt.
Freddie’s head was spinning. The air in the cave seemed suddenly stale, old. He felt it in his mouth, his lungs, choking him. The clothes, the setting, the evidence, all matched what Marie had told him. Were these all coincidence? What other explanation could there be? How else could he account for the faded name written at the foot of the paper?
Marie of Larzat.
Freddie sank to his knees, still clutching the sheet of paper. And, for the first time since the death of his brother, he began to weep. For George, for Marie, for all those who lay forgotten in the cold earth.
Chapter Eighteen
Everything was white.
When Freddie opened his eyes he saw the anxious faces of his friends looking down at him. White faces, white walls, white sheets on the bed.
He struggled to sit up. ‘Where? Where am I?’
‘In the hospital, old chap.’ Brown used the formal voice he always put on when worried.
For a moment, Freddie couldn’t work out anything. He looked down and saw his hands were bandaged. There was a dressing on his head too. He could feel the tightness of the bandage. His throat was sore
, as if he had been shouting.
‘How do you feel?’ asked Turner. ‘You were in quite a bad way when they brought you in. Feverish, muttering about ghosts.’
‘They found the address of our boarding house in Quillan in your pocket,’ Brown added. ‘That’s how they knew where to find us.’
‘Wasn’t like you not to turn up without a word. When we didn’t hear from you, we telephoned your hotel. Lucky, really. The owner remembered you were intending to take the mountain road to meet us.’
Little by little, his memories started to surface. ‘Mr Galy? But he has no telephone.’
His friends exchanged a look. ‘We spoke to the hotel owner in Foix,’ Turner said.
Freddie didn’t understand. ‘No, that’s not right,’ he said. His voice was weak.
‘You’re getting muddled, old chap. You arrived in Foix on Sunday. Yesterday. Then this morning, Monday, you set off to drive to meet us in Quillan,’ Brown said. ‘But you never arrived. Don’t you remember?’
Freddie leaned back on the white pillows. Still Monday? This made no sense. He stayed in Larzat last night, not Foix. He had spent the night talking with Marie.
‘I remember the accident,’ he said slowly. ‘Car went off the road. That was Monday.’
‘Exactly,’ said Brown. He sounded relieved. ‘You crashed. It was awful weather. It seems you left your car to find help and somehow lost your way. You were found in the mountains.’
Freddie frowned. The action made his head hurt. The bandage pulled at his skin.
‘But today is Tuesday,’ he said. ‘I went to Larzat to find help. Mrs Galy arranged everything. The car is in the garage being fixed.’
This time, there was no mistaking the look of concern on Brown’s face. ‘They found the car at the side of the road, old chap. The front was all bashed in. Still there, for all I know.’
Turner took up the story. ‘You were lucky. Tree stopped you from going over. People go missing for days. As it happens, a local fellow came upon your car at about three o’clock this afternoon. No sign of you. He was trying to decide what to do, when he saw something up above the road. He couldn’t see if it was a man or a woman. Only that they were wearing a heavy red coat and were calling for help. He went up and found you inside one of the caves. You were out cold, with a nasty knock on your head. You were muttering something about a girl called Marie.’
A wave of memory washed through Freddie’s mind. He closed his eyes.
‘Bring us home,’ he murmured.
‘Rather grisly, though, as it happens,’ Brown was saying. ‘Of all the places to pick, you blundered into some sort of tomb. There were four bodies in there. Been there for some time. Hundreds of years, they are saying.’
Freddie remembered his lunch in the square. Surely that was Tuesday? He remembered climbing up and finding the rocks piled high in the narrow tunnel. He remembered seeing the four skeletons and the name on the parchment.
His eyes snapped wide open. ‘The papers?’ he said urgently. ‘Are they safe?’
‘Steady on, old chap,’ Brown muttered.
A nurse swept towards the bed. ‘If you upset my patient, gentlemen,’ she said in a sharp voice, ‘I shall ask you to leave.’
Turner held up his hand. ‘Of course, of course.’
‘Did you find the papers?’ Freddie hissed, not caring if she told him off. He had to know.
Brown glanced over his shoulder. ‘They are safe. You were hanging on to them for dear life, saying the girl’s name over and over. You kept on about some date, or so the fellow said.’
Freddie sighed. He remembered: 1328.
‘Turns out to be rather a coup, in fact,’ Brown carried on. ‘They will do tests, of course, but it seems the skeletons are very old indeed. It appears that during the wars of the Middle Ages, around here whole villages took shelter in the caves. Many of the bodies were never found. Those papers might turn out to be a hugely important find. The author had recorded the names of all those who fled to the mountain, and all those who stayed behind to defend the village.’
‘The Galys, Michel Auty and his sons, the Marty sisters,’ murmured Freddie. He could not explain it, but he was beginning to understand. None of them existed, although once they had. All those living and breathing people had been dead for some six hundred years.
‘And so, here we are,’ Turner said brightly. ‘You were brought to the hospital. They found our names and address in your pocket and got in touch. We drove here as soon as we could.’
Freddie let out a deep breath. ‘And it is still only Monday, you say.’
‘Coming up for midnight.’
‘We should leave you to get some sleep,’ Brown said.
Freddie heard the concern behind his words and was touched by it.
‘Don’t worry about a thing. We’ll square it with the garage. We’ll take care of things. You just think about getting back on your feet. You can’t be too careful with a bump on the head.’
The nurse was hovering in her crisp uniform and stiff white cap. ‘That’s enough now, gentlemen.’
They stood up. Brown slapped him on the shoulder. Turner went to shake his hand, then thought better of it.
‘We’ll be back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘See how you’re doing.’
Brown leaned down. ‘And this girl, this Marie, the one you kept talking about.’ He looked awkward. ‘If you need me to help in any way, money, anything.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Just say the word.’
Freddie smiled. He realised Brown thought he had got himself mixed up in some difficult love affair. In his clumsy way, he was trying to be a good friend.
He shook his head. ‘Not to worry,’ he said softly. ‘She’s long gone.’
‘Jolly good.’ Brown sighed with relief. ‘Good. Very wise, very wise.’
The door swung shut behind them. The nurse returned a few minutes later to tuck him up for the night. Then she, too, left.
At last, Freddie was alone.
Around him, he heard the sounds of the hospital. The squeak of wheels somewhere in a distant corridor. The rubber-soled shoes of the night nurses going to and fro.
He knew he would never speak of this day. No one would believe him. Freddie did not know how it had happened. Nor why it had happened. He only knew that, for a moment, he had somehow slipped between the cracks in time. And in that instant, between reality and shadow, Marie had come to him. She had sought his help and he had given it.
Was she a ghost?
Perhaps. He thought of the way he had felt hidden eyes on his back as he walked through the woods. He closed his eyes. Marie had asked him to bring their bodies home. She had led him to the cave.
He had kept his word.
Six months later
October 1928
An English country garden in October. It was a late summer of warm sun and long days. The world was bathed in the colours of autumn, gold and copper, the deep green of the fir trees.
Wine-coloured leaves were scattered over the grass. Freddie stood with his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed. His parents stood beside him. Their local parish priest, an old family friend, stood a little to one side.
Freddie had motored down to his childhood home the evening before. He was due back in town later to meet an editor at a leading publishing house. After his return from France, Freddie had started writing short pieces on French history and travel articles for the newspapers. From time to time, he wrote something more hard-hitting about war or grief or death. The editor had written last week and suggested Freddie might like to put them together into a book.
On the strength of it, Freddie had handed in his notice at the school. He was no longer content to spend his life in a job he didn’t much like. Since his experiences in France, he was a new man. He wanted to do things, to make his time matter.
Freddie turned to his parents in turn and smiled. All that, a new career, writing, a break with the past, belonged to tomorrow. Today belonged to George. It was
20 October, George’s birthday. He had finally persuaded his parents to accept that George would never be found. But it did not mean they could not remember him.
In front of them stood a simple headstone carved out of grey marble. Shining, bright, the sun glinted off the surface and sent rainbow patterns on to the thick grass. They had chosen the place where George had played as a boy, beneath the trees where the robins and the blackbirds made their nests.
The lettering was plain, giving George’s name, his date of birth and the month and year of his death. They had never known exactly when he fell. Beneath that, carved in block capital letters, was a simple message.
‘We shall not forget.’
At a nod from Freddie, the priest stepped forward and said a few words. He told stories of George as a boy, and described the courage with which he had gone to war and the tragedy of his death. Beside Freddie, his mother sobbed. He reached out and took her hand.
The priest made the sign of the cross and said the final words of blessing.
‘Amen.’
He stood back. Freddie looked to his father, who gave a brief shake of his head. His mother looked up at him and nodded. He squeezed her hand, then let go.
As he stepped forward, he was thinking of Marie’s gravestone and those of her family in the tiny cemetery in France. Their names, too, would now not be forgotten. History is words carved on stone so that we should remember. Words endure when memories fade into dust.
‘Welcome home, George,’ he said.
In the branches of the tree above his head, the robin began to sing.
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