GAUL
COUZANIUM
AUGUST AD 342
Arinius rubbed his temples, trying to soothe away the headache pricking behind his eyes. He felt the storm getting closer all the time, like a living, breathing thing at his heels. The clouds were marching fast across an increasingly angry sky.
Another rumble of thunder, a growling in the hills, like an animal waking from its winter hibernation.
The road ran on out of sight. If the merchant had been right about the distance between Couzanium and Aquis Calidis, Arinius realised he was at risk of being caught out in the open when the storm hit. His earlier sense of contentment and calm had gone, chased away by the threatening voice of the thunder. There was nothing to fear from the storm, or so he told himself. Even so, he picked up his pace, all the time looking around for a suitable place to take shelter.
‘Our Father,’ the words keeping pace with the accelerated beating of his heart, ‘who art in Heaven . . .’
On his left, set above a low ridge of hills, Arinius noticed a number of small, plain dwellings. Roofs of thatch and branch, low stone buildings. It was impossible to tell from down below whether it was a village, another watch point to guard the road, or a temple. Here, in the green folds of this ancient river valley, his Christian faith had no hold. The old gods of the Romans and the Volcae before them still held sway. Temples and shrines to Minerva and Pyrène, to Jupiter and Abellios.
Arinius lifted his face to the sky. The day darkened from white to purple, purple to black. Another crack of thunder, then a golden fork of lightning split the black sky. Seconds later, the first drop of water fell, then another and another, patterning the cobbled surface of the road. He pulled his hood up over his head as the rain grew harder, more insistent.
He had to find shelter. Arinius stepped off the road and began to climb, as fast as he could, up towards the woods and the tiny collection of flint shepherds’ huts and villae half hidden in the trees beyond.
COUSTAUSSA
AUGUST 1942
Sandrine and Liesl helped Marieta clear the supper plates, a scratch meal of fresh vegetables and rice that Madame Rousset had brought for them, then retired to the salon. Low growls of thunder rumbled in the hills and the air had grown cooler.
‘Are you sure there won’t be a storm?’ Liesl said anxiously. ‘It sounds so close.’
‘This house has withstood Midi storms for a hundred years and will cope with a good few more. Try not to worry,’ Sandrine replied.
The evening passed quietly and at nine o’clock they turned in. Marieta was clearly exhausted, Liesl kept yawning and Sandrine herself was struggling to stay awake.
‘I can lock up, Marieta,’ she said. ‘You go to bed.’
‘I’m not having you running around after me, so there’s no cause to go asking.’
‘There’s nothing that won’t wait until the morning,’ Sandrine said firmly. ‘It’s been a long day. I don’t want you up all hours, banging about down here.’
‘I’ll be up in a moment, madomaisèla.’
She put her hand on the old woman’s shoulder. ‘All right. But don’t be too long,’ she said softly. ‘Come on, Liesl, I’ll show you to your room.’
She left Liesl unpacking her clothes and walked to her father’s room. After a deal of soul-searching, Sandrine had decided she would sleep in here. It could not be a shrine. She’d understood the moment she arrived that, if her memories of so many wonderful summers in Coustaussa were not to be permanently overlaid with sadness, no corner of the house could be out of bounds.
She took a deep breath, then pushed open the door and walked in. His summer jacket was hanging on a hook. She ran her hands over the chest of drawers, the counterpane on the bed, the collection of curios and ornaments gathered from his travels. A wooden walking stick propped in the corner, an old brooch found in the rubble of the castle ruins, a statue of Joan of Arc in papier-mâché she’d made at school . . .
She undressed and got into the unfamiliar bed. For a while she lay there with her eyes open, looking at the ceiling and listening to the silence. She missed the noises of the city, the rattle of trains and delivery carts, the early morning sounds of the péniches on the Canal du Midi.
The air cooled a little, the wind dropped and Sandrine slept. Tonight, the nightmares didn’t come. Instead her dreams were possessed by armies and war, women and men from antiquity, long hair streaming, swords and insignia gleaming, in a bright landscape that was neither familiar nor yet entirely unknown. Vivid shimmering faces of people she did not know: a woman in a green dress with a red cloak, a monk with a grey woollen cloak around his thin shoulders holding an ancient script in his hands, words like black birds, and a girl with copper curls tumbling down her back. Shadows, shades of people known and yet not known. The rattling of bones in the earth, the shift and movement of the dead awakening.
As the rumbling wind passed over and brought a smattering of light rain, Sandrine half woke and thought of Raoul. The same questions, always the same. Wondering where he was, if he thought of her as she remembered him. Hoping he was safe.
As the hours of night passed, finally the lullaby of the rain sent her into a deep and restful sleep.