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.
He hesitated for a moment, then, with the glass bottle tapping against his hip, Arinius continued on the Roman road towards the green valleys of Couzanium.
CARCASSONNE
AUGUST 1942
Sandrine stood with her arms resting on the open window of the second-class carriage. She was wearing one of Marianne’s travelling outfits, a green jacket and pleated skirt. With her black curly hair pinned and set back off her face, she looked older. She felt older.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Marianne said.
Sandrine patted her pocket, checking again that she had all the tickets and papers, then looked back to the knot of women standing on the platform waiting to see them off. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop her gaze returning to the far end of the platform, where three weeks ago she had witnessed the police herding prisoners like animals on to the train. Max among them, though she’d not realised in time to be able to do anything to help him. Suzanne had been unable to find out where he had been sent or why he had been arrested. César Sanchez and Antoine Déjean were also both still missing. No one had heard anything, no gossip, no rumours. And because they didn’t know why Max had been arrested, they had kept Liesl out of sight, in case the police came for her too.
Every knock at the door had put Sandrine’s nerves on edge. And every morning since Raoul had left, she checked the mat the instant she heard the sharp metal click of the letter box. For a letter, a postcard, anything. She knew he wouldn’t write, he couldn’t risk writing, but hope was stronger than common sense. She had kept busy. At first she tried to identify the words she’d heard at the river, the words that had so frightened Marieta, but that had led nowhere. The municipal library was shut for the summer – in any case, many books that could have been useful had disappeared from the shelves – and Marieta refused to discuss it. The only indication the conversation had ever happened was the fact that Marieta, too, checked for a letter every morning. Sandrine had even visited the cathedral in the hope of speaking to Abbé Gau, but he was nowhere to be found. As July had tipped into August, the days seemed to drag. It had been an uneasy, unnerving few weeks, and Sandrine longed to be gone from Carcassonne.
Even though it was late morning, the station was as quiet as a Sunday night. The lingering consequences of the Bastille Day demonstration and the fierce August heat kept everyone indoors. There were still large numbers of police d’occasion on the streets, and regular checks and roadblocks. And although the broadcasts from London gave news of Nazi setbacks, there had been a flurry of rumours that Hitler was preparing a new offensive. Against whom, no one was certain, but the bobards were widespread and the atmosphere in Carcassonne brittle.
‘I wish you were coming with us,’ Sandrine said, suddenly reluctant to leave now the moment had come.
Marianne smiled. ‘You’ll be fine. Telephone from Couiza to let me know you’ve arrived safely.’
‘I will,’ she said.
The guard’s whistle shrilled. Sandrine blew her sister a kiss, waved to Suzanne and Lucie, then ducked back inside the carriage as the train began to move off.
‘That’s that, then,’ she said.
Liesl sat reading and cradling her precious camera on her lap. Marieta claimed the opposite seat, looking rather grey and breathless. Her hair was neat beneath a black felt hat. She had dressed her light grey summer coat with a spray of red glass beads at the lapel. Her sturdy feet were planted firmly on the floor, outdoor shoes rather than her customary wooden clogs, and she was darning a pair of socks that would not be needed until winter. The strand of grey wool swished and flicked like a kitten’s tail as the thick needle went in and out of the heel.
Sandrine set her eyes on the landscape outside the window, yellow and brown and green, and tried to ignore the fluttering of expectation in the pit of her stomach. She leant her head against the glass. The train rattled its lulling song along the metal tracks, at first running parallel to the river. Beyond the smeared carriage window she caught glimpses of Maquens, Leuc, Verzeille, Roullens. Familiar names, but places she had never visited.
In September, the fields would be alive with farm workers and labourers, children as young as eight or nine helping their parents to bring in the harvest. Wheat and barley in the plains, vines for as far as the eye could see. The air would bristle with tension and expectation as the vendanges tiptoed closer, closer, everyone waiting for the moment when the wine harvest began. Now, the fields were mostly deserted. From time to time, a man in corduroy trousers and checked shirt pushing a bike along a straight, featureless country road. Pairs of women in wide-brimmed straw hats with baskets, making the long walk from the omnibus to farms in the folds of the countryside. In small market gardens beside the line, goats and chickens grazing, scratching. Fields of yellow sunflowers, their faces tilted to the sun. A wooden cart and a white delivery truck, the unchanging pace of the countryside, war or no war.
In the zone occupée, Sandrine knew, soldiers patrolled the trains, particularly those passing close to the demarcation line. At least things here were not that bad.
Not yet. Not quite.
The train stuttered to a halt.
‘Limoux. Limoux. Cinq minutes d’arrêt.’
Marieta’s eyes fluttered half open, woken by the station master’s announcement, then shut again.
‘Do you want to get out and stretch your legs, Liesl?’ Sandrine asked.
The girl shook her head. She seemed composed and her features were calm, but Sandrine knew better. She tried not to pry.
Sandrine stepped down to the platform, looking at the colourful summer dresses and two-pieces, the headscarves and shallow-brimmed straw hats with bright ribbons. All along the platform doors opened, were propped back, then slammed shut. Leave-takings and greetings, the songs of summer.
The guard blew the whistle, Sandrine climbed back in and they were off once more, the train climbing higher, slower, into the hills, the first view of the mountains. The air changed. Even Liesl stopped reading and was looking out of the window.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise.’
As the train pulled out of Alet-les-Bains, Sandrine felt the familiar tug at her heart. They left behind the sunflowers and began the steady climb into the Haute Vallée. The solid grey stone of the railway bridges over which the train jerked, hauled, heaved its carriages. The countryside became steeper, less forgiving. Birch trees and beech, holm oak and hazel. Through the open window slipped the remembered scent of cedar and laurel, the damp air of the deep woods.
The train emerged from the green shadow of the wooded banks of the crystal river, blinking into the light. Sandrine caught her first glimpse of the limestone hills and jagged crests, rock and fir trees on the plateau of the Salz, and the sharp ridges of the foothills of the Pyrenees beyond.
She thought of the times in the past when she had done this same journey to and from Carcassonne, looking out over these fields and skies and rivers, almost sensing the ghosts of fellow travellers heading south into the Corbières. The bustle of the railways, the antique hiss of engine and whistle.
The whispering of generations past.