GAUL
AQUIS CALIDIS
AUGUST AD 342
Arinius walked quickly up through the woods. He was breathless and his chest was tight, but he didn’t slow his pace, despite the heat. He could see no one and heard nothing unusual, nothing more than sounds of the land – rabbits in the undergrowth, the occasional bird on the wing, the stridulation of crickets in the dry grasslands. Common sounds that somehow now carried a sense of threat within them. There was no one around, the hillside was deserted, but he felt he was being watched.
In the deepest part of the wood, he paused. Faint but unmistakable, he heard it. The crack of a twig, the sound of footsteps in the bone-dry undergrowth, the indication that there was someone – or something – on the slopes below. An animal, a boar or stag? A person? Arinius stood still, straining to hear, but the wood echoed silent around him.
After a minute or two more, he set off again, walking even faster. Turning round, looking into the ancient evergreen shadows of the wood. Breaking into a run, his own fear snapping at his heels.
Without warning, he felt himself flying backwards. His cloak wrenched hard at his neck and he felt the clasp on his mother’s brooch snap and fly off into the undergrowth as his feet went from under him. He started to fall, tumbling off the path into the thick undergrowth. Arinius threw out his hands to protect himself, trying to grasp at a root or the trunk of a tree to slow himself down, but he kept somersaulting down the slope.
Finally he came to a halt. For a moment he lay sprawled on the steep ground, looking up through the canopy of leaves to the blue sky, dazed and disorientated. Little by little the world came back into focus. He rolled on to his side, then got himself into a sitting position. He put his hand to his leg, and his fingers came back sticky with blood. His hands were scratched too.
He looked back up to where he’d slipped, and realised he hadn’t lost his footing, but had rather walked into a rope tied between two trees. A trapper’s net. At least, he hoped that was what it was. The alternative was more disquieting.
Then he heard the sound again. There was no doubt that someone was walking up the path, following the route he had taken, someone trying not to make any noise. A steady and careful placing of one foot after the other.
Arinius looked around in panic, then realised that in fact his fall might be the saving of him. Unless the person tracking him left the path and descended into the thicket of the slopes, they wouldn’t see him. Struggling not to make any noise that would betray his hiding place, he slithered into the narrow gap between the thickest of the laurel bushes, and pulled his cloak around him. He had a clear view of the path and, above and to his left, the trapper’s net itself.
The footsteps got closer, closer. Arinius held his breath, certain the frantic beating of his heart would give him away. He peered up through the veil of leaves. Feet, legs, a hand resting on the hilt of a hunting knife. Broad shoulders and back, a shock of grizzled grey hair. Even though he had been expecting it, it was a blow to find his suspicions confirmed. The man had followed him from Aquis Calidis.
Suddenly Arinius felt the familiar rasping in his throat. Desperate to prevent an attack, he swallowed hard, then again to stop himself coughing. He put his hand over his mouth, steadying his breathing as he had learnt to do, and gradually felt the irritation recede.
He crossed himself in silent thanks.
He watched the man bend down and touch the rope, as if he was hoping to see some indication that his quarry had passed this way. Then he straightened up, stepped over it and carried on up to where the path diverged. The left-hand spur led towards the shepherds’ settlement. The right-hand route doubled back towards the villages to the east of Aquis Calidis.
Arinius pressed his bag close to his side, grateful that he had left little of value in the camp.
Time passed. Arinius lost track of how long he waited, but still he didn’t move from the sanctuary of the deep evergreen. Still, the crack of arid leaves or a stone dislodged on the path. The footsteps grew more and more faint, until finally there was no sound at all.
He thought the man had gone in the opposite direction. He was certain of it, yet waited longer. The cut on his leg was stinging, but it didn’t really hurt. The shadows lengthened as the sun moved round, turning the leaves from gold to green once more in the changing of the late afternoon light.
Finally, when he was certain the threat had passed, Arinius came out of his hiding place. He stood up and stretched, flexing his muscles and bringing the life back into his fingers and his toes. There had been no sound at all for some time, but he was still careful.
He climbed back up to where he’d fallen and paddled his hands in the dry leaves, looking for his mother’s brooch. He couldn’t find it. Much as it pained him to leave it behind, he didn’t feel he could delay any longer. He had put his own wishes before his mission. He should never have stayed in the valley for so long.
When he caught his first sight of his stone dwelling, he stopped and cast his eyes around. He saw no signs the camp had been discovered, and when he cautiously went inside, everything was exactly as he had left it.
Already nostalgic for the time he had spent in this patch of land, he packed his few belongings. He left anything that was not essential for the final stage of his journey.
Arinius looked out over the garrigue, the grassland bleached white in the heat of the day, and wondered if he would return to watch the sun set over these hills again. He feared he would not. He put his hand on the stone, still retaining some heat from the day, imprinting the shape of it on the flesh of his palm. Then he took a final look around at the curved entrance and the flat plot of land behind it where he might, in a different story, have planted chard or carrots. Created his own garden.
With a catch in his throat, Arinius set out on the final leg of his journey. Bearing the Codex to its final resting place in the mountains of Pyrène.
BELCAIRE
AUGUST 1942
Raoul was sitting in the woods south of Belcaire. Knees drawn up, his jacket unbuttoned and the laces of his boots loosened at the top, he had his pistol in his pocket and his rucksack propped between his legs.
They had made good time. Geneviève Saint-Loup taking him across country through Quillan and Lavelanet, skirting around the road leading to Montségur, then on to Belcaire where he was due to meet her sister, Eloise, who’d guide him to the final destination.
‘Smoke?’ he asked.
The boy who’d come to tell him Eloise had been delayed had the same dark hair and dark skin of most of the people of the Tarascon valleys. He nodded, and Raoul passed him the cigarette. The boy took a couple of deep drags, then passed it back.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Hereabouts,’ the boy replied. He’d obviously been told not to give any information away. ‘You?’
‘Carcassonne originally.’
‘You’re a long way from home.’
‘It’s not really home any more,’ he said with a sudden flash of grief for Bruno. Grief, then guilt. He hadn’t thought about his mother for some days. He had considered writing, but he was sure the house would be under surveillance. He sighed. His mother wouldn’t read a letter anyway.
‘Where were you stationed?’ the boy asked.
Raoul brought his thoughts back to the present. ‘On the Maginot Line to start with, the secteur fortifié in Faulquemont. What about you?’ he added, despite the fact the boy didn’t look old enough to have fought anywhere.
‘Missed it,’ he said. ‘Making up for it now.’ He cast a quick look at Raoul. ‘You know?’
‘More important now,’ Raoul said, and saw the boy flush at the compliment. ‘After the first few months, I got sent to the Ardennes. March 1940.’
‘Did you see much fighting?’
‘Not much. Spent most of my time being posted from one place to another.’
‘What was the point of that?’
‘You tell me.’ Raoul shrugged. ‘None of it makes sense to me. Didn’t know what they were doing.’
The boy offered Raoul his canteen. Raoul took a swig, blinked as the rum hit the back of his throat, then wiped the neck before handing it back.
‘You got someone?’ he said. ‘A girl?’
The boy rummaged inside his top jacket pocket. He produced a cheap holiday snapshot and held it out to Raoul between dirty, nicotine-stained fingers.
‘Coralie,’ he said proudly. ‘We can’t afford to get married yet, but as soon as I’ve got enough for a ring – silver, something classy, you know – I’m going to ask.’
Raoul looked at the photograph of a gentle, plump girl holding an unwilling kitten. She looked the spit of Geneviève.
‘Pretty,’ he said, handing the picture back. ‘She’s a lucky girl.’
‘Thanks.’ The boy put the photo away. ‘What about you, are you married?’
Raoul shook his head. ‘Not married, no.’
‘Don’t want to be tied down?’
The simple innocence of his attempt at a man-to-man conversation made Raoul smile. He passed the cigarette across again. ‘No, it’s not that,’ he said. ‘There is someone.’
‘Got a picture?’
Raoul tapped the side of his head. ‘Up here, you know?’
‘Coralie and me have known each other since we were so high. Can’t wait to be married, she can’t. One of four sisters, all look just the same. It’s her oldest sister, Eloise, who’s coming later.’
Raoul smiled. ‘I’ve met Geneviève.’
The boy put the snap away again. ‘If you’re happy with your girl,’ he said, ‘I’d hang on to her.’
‘I intend to,’ he said seriously. ‘Maybe I should even take a leaf out of your book.’
‘Then why wait? I’m telling you, it’s all girls want. Marriage, a nice house to look after, a couple of kids.’
Raoul hid a smile, suspecting that Sandrine might want rather more than that. But the simple image caught at his heart all the same. The thought of her standing at the door, waving him goodbye as he went off to work in the morning, being there when he came home. A world that no longer existed.
He finished the cigarette, pinched the ash at the end, then put the stub in his pocket. He leaned back against the tree, looking around at the deep green of the woods and the mountains beyond, and waited for night to come. It was going to be a long wait.