by Kate Mosse
‘Halten Sie! Halten!’
The Kommandant shouts the order to hold fire, then repeats it again in French. Discipline is restored immediately, but the hiatus is long enough for the hostages to scatter, as Marianne had told them to do, heading for refuge in the church, in the shaded undergrowth below the chemin de la Fontaine, the cellars of the presbytery.
Sophie does not move.
Now that the square is clear of civilians, Suzanne and Liesl launch the main assault from the ruins of the castle and the deep undergrowth that lines the rue de la Mairie. Bullets rake the ground. A grenade explodes instantly on impact with the war memorial.
Another order from the Kommandant, and the Gestapo unit divides into two. Some target the contingent in the hills, firing indiscriminately as they storm along the rue de la Condamine and out into the garrigue. The remainder turn towards the castle. Through the coloured smoke and the dust, Sophie glimpses the blue berets of the French Milice vanishing into the rue de la Peur and realises, with a sickened heart, that they do not mean to leave any witnesses alive.
She knows that she is outnumbered, at least seven to one, but she has no choice now but to show herself. Besides, she can see him, in plain clothes, standing with his right hand resting on the black bonnet of the car and his Mauser hanging loose in his left. He looks calm, disengaged, as the firefight rages around him.
Sophie drops the hammer on her pistol and steps out into the light.
‘Let them go.’
Does she say the words out loud or only in her head? Her voice seems to be coming from a long way away, distorted, a whispering beneath stormy waters.
‘It’s me you want, not them. Let them go.’
It’s not possible that he should hear her, and yet, despite the noise and the shouting and the ack-ack of the machine guns, he does. He hears her and he turns, looking straight to the north-east corner of the Place de la Mairie where she has positioned herself. Those eyes. Is he smiling, she wonders, or does it pain him that it should be ending like this? She can’t tell.
Then he says her name. Her real name. The soft music of it hangs suspended in the air between them. Threat or entreaty, she doesn’t know, but she feels her resolve weaken.
He says it again and, this time, it sounds bitter, false in his mouth. A betrayal. The spell is broken.
The woman known as Sophie lifts her arm. And shoots.
PART I
The First Summer
July 1942
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Codex I
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GAUL
THE CARSAC PLAINS
JULY AD 342
The young monk looked across the river and saw the outline of the town ahead on the hill on the far side. A fortified castellum, the low walls sharply defined in the shimmering light of dawn. A crown of stone set on the green plains of Carsac. The slopes surrounding the settlement were abundant, rich, fertile. Row after row of vines, spread out like a peacock’s tail. Silver olive trees and heavy purple figs ripening on the bough, almond trees.
In the east, the white sun was rising in a pale blue sky. Arinius drew closer to the water’s edge. A low mist floated above the silver surface of the river Atax. To his right, wooded glades of elder and ash. The reed beds shifting, swaying, in the breeze. The distinctive silhouette of angelica, with its hollow fluted stems standing like soldiers to attention, the leaves as big as his hand. The familiar bell-shaped pink flowers of knitbone. The splash of fish and snakes, water boatmen skimming their silent way across the mirrored surface.
For week after week, one month, two months, the young monk had walked and walked and walked. Following the sweep and flow of the great Rhodanus from Lugdunum, south towards the sea. Rising before matins each day, with the memory of the gentle murmur of his brothers’ voices in his head, he voyaged on alone. In the heat of the day, between the hours of sext and nones, sheltering from the sun in the dense green woods or shepherds’ huts. In the late afternoon, as the first stirrings of vespers echoed from the chapel in the community, he would rise again and fare forward. The Liturgy of the Hours marking the progress of the days and nights. A slow and steady progress from north to south, from east to west.
Arinius didn’t know precisely how long he had been travelling, only that the seasons were changing, spring slipping softly into early summer. The colours of April and May, white blossom and yellow broom and pink phlox, yielding to the gold of June and July. The green vineyards of the Gallia Narbonensis and the sweep of barley in the fields. The driving wind whipping over the austere salt flats and the blue of the gulf of the Sinus Gallicus. That stretch of the journey followed the Via Domitia, the Roman wine route, along roads of tolls and taxes. It had been simple for him to blend in with the merchants and traders heading for Hispania.
Arinius coughed and pulled the grey hooded cloak tight around his narrow frame, though it was far from cold. The cough was worse again, leaving his throat raw. Bunching the material at his neck, he re-pinned his brooch. A bronze fibula, in the shape of a cross, with tiny white enamel oak leaves decorating each of the four arms and a green leaf in the centre. It was the only personal possession Arinius had been unable, unwilling, to give up on entering the community. A gift from his mother, Servilia, the day the soldiers came.
He looked across the Atax to the walls of the town and gave thanks to God for his safe deliverance. He had heard that here, men of all faiths and creeds were given sanctuary. That here, Gnostics and Christians and those who adhered still to the older religions lived side by side. That this was a place of safety and refuge for any and all who would come.
Arinius put his hand to his chest, needing to feel the familiar single loose leaf of papyrus beneath his tunic. He thought of his fellow brothers in Christ, each of them also smuggling a copy of a condemned text away from the community. They had parted company at Massilia, where it was said Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea had first come ashore to preach the word of God. From there Arinius and his brothers set sail for Smyrna in Asia Minor. From there, one was bound for the Holy City of Jerusalem and the plains of Sephal, another for Memphis, the last for Thebes in Upper Egypt. Arinius would never know if their efforts had been successful, any more than they would hear of him. Each was destined – burdened – to complete his mission alone.
Arinius considered himself an obedient and willing servant of God. He was not a particularly brave man, nor a lettered one, but he had found strength in his conviction that the holy writings should not be destroyed. He could not watch the words of Mary Magdalene and Thomas and Peter and Judas burning. Arinius still remembered the crack of the flames licking the air, red and white and gold, as the precious writings were consigned to the pyre. Papyrus and vellum, the quires and scrolls, the blister of Greek and Hebrew and Coptic turned to black ash. The smell of reed and water and glue and wax filling the stone courtyard of the community in the capital of Gaul that had been his home.
The papyrus shifted beneath his tunic, like a second skin. Arinius did not understand the text; he could not read the Coptic script, and besides, the letters were smudged, cracked. All he understood was that it was said the power contained within the seven verses of this, the shortest of the Codices, was absolute. As great as anything in the ancient writings of Exodus or Enoch, of Daniel or Ezekiel. More significant than all the knowledge contained within the walls of the great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum.
Arinius had heard some of the lines spoken aloud by a fellow brother, and never forgotten them. An incantation, wonderful words sent free within the cool cloisters of the community in Lugdunum. It was an act that had precipitated the Abbot’s rage. Considering this Codex to be the most dangerous of all those proscribed books held in the library, he decreed it to be magic, a sorcery, and those who defended it were denounced as heretics. Enemies of the true faith. The novitiate was punished.
But Arinius believed he was carrying the sacred words of God. That his destiny, perhaps his entire purpose on God’s earth, was to ens
ure that the truth contained within the papyrus was not lost. Nothing else mattered.
Now, floating across the still waters to where he stood on the banks of the river Atax, the toll of a bell for lauds. A simple song calling him home. Arinius raised his eyes to the city on the hill and prayed he would find a welcome there. Then he grasped his staff in his right hand, stepped out on to the wooden bridge and walked towards Carcaso.
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Chapter 1
CARCASSONNE
JULY 1942
Sandrine jolted awake. Bolt upright, her eyes wide open, her right hand stretched out as if she was trying to grasp something. For a moment she was neither asleep nor awake, as if some part of her had been left behind in the dream. Floating, looking down at herself from a great height, like the stone gargoyles that grimaced at passers-by from the cathédrale Saint-Michel.
A sensation of slipping out of time, falling from one dimension into another through white, endless space. Then running and running, escaping the figures hunting her down. Indistinct outlines of white and red and black, pale green, their faces hidden beneath hoods and shadow and flame. Always the sharp glint of metal where should have been skin. Sandrine couldn’t remember who the soldiers were or what they wanted, if indeed she’d ever known, and already the dream was fading. Only the sense of threat, of betrayal, remained. And those emotions, too, were slipping away.
Little by little, the room came back into focus. She was safe in her own bed in the house in the rue du Palais. As her eyes became accustomed to the dark, she could pick out the bureau of bleached mahogany against the wall between the two windows. To the right of her bed, the high-backed couch covered with washed-green Chinese silk and the bamboo plant stand. Opposite, beside the door, the low bookcase, its shelves filled to bursting.
Sandrine wrapped her bare arms around her knees, shivering in the chill of the early morning. She reached for her eiderdown, as if by touching something real she would feel less insubstantial, less transparent, but her fingers found only the cotton of her crumpled sheet. The eiderdown, kicked off in the night, lay on the floor beside the bed.
She couldn’t see the hands on the clock on the chest of drawers, but there was something in the quality of the light coming through the gaps in the shutters, the song of the blackbirds in the street outside, that told her it was nearly morning. She didn’t have to get up, but she knew she wouldn’t go back to sleep now.
Sandrine slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the room in her bare feet, trying to avoid the worst of the creaking floorboards. Her clothes were piled, raggle-taggle, over the arm of the cane-backed chair at the foot of her bed. She wriggled out of her nightdress and dropped it to the floor. Though she was eighteen, Sandrine still looked like the tomboy she had been, a garçon manqué. She was all arms and legs, there was nothing soft about her. Her black hair refused to be tamed and she had the deep complexion of a country girl, tanned from days spent out of doors. Powder made no difference. As she threaded her slim arms into the sleeves of her cotton blouse, she noticed a smudge on the inside of the wide round collar where she’d experimented yesterday with her sister’s face powder. She rubbed at it with her thumb, but it was stubborn and wouldn’t shift.
The skirt was too big, a hand-me-down. Their housekeeper, Marieta, had moved the hook and eye, taking in a good two inches at the waist, so even though it didn’t hang quite right, it was wearable. Sandrine liked the feel of the sateen lining against her legs, the way the chequered pattern shifted through squares of red and black and gold when she walked. In any case, everyone wore hand-me-downs these days. The sleeveless pullover was her own, a blowsy burgundy, knitted by Marieta last winter, that half argued with, half suited, her colouring.
Perching on the edge of the chair, Sandrine pulled on her écossaises, the precious tartan socks her father had brought back as a gift from Scotland. His last trip, as it turned out. François Vidal had been one of the many Carcassonnais who had gone to fight and never come home. After the months of waiting, seeing no action – the drôle de guerre, the phoney war as it had become known – he was killed on 18 May 1940 in the Ardennes, along with most of his unit. A muddle of orders, an ambush, ten men dead.
It had been two years. Although she still missed her father – and her nights were often broken by bad dreams – she and Marianne had learnt to carry on without him. The truth was, much as Sandrine hated to admit it, the outline of his face and his gentle smile were less clear in her mind with each passing month.
In the east, the sun was rising. Light filtered through the patterned glass of the arched window on the stairwell, casting a kaleidoscope of blue and pink and green diamonds on to the rust-red tiles. Sandrine hesitated a moment outside her sister’s bedroom. Even though it was her intention to sneak out, she had a sudden urge to check that Marianne was there, safe in her bed.
Sandrine put her hand on the ornate metal door handle and crept in. She tiptoed over to the bed. In the grey half-light, she could just make out her sister’s head on the pillow, her brown hair wrapped in complicated knots of paper and rollers. Marianne’s face was as beautiful as ever, but there was a spider’s web of worry lines around her eyes. Sandrine could just make out her shoes beside the bed. She frowned, wondering where she had been for them to be caked in mud.
‘Marianne?’ she whispered.
Her sister was five years older. She taught history at the École des Filles on Square Gambetta, but spent much of her free time at the centre run by the Red Cross in the rue de Verdun. Quiet and principled, Marianne had offered her services as a volunteer with the Croix-Rouge after France’s surrender in June 1940, when tens of thousands of dispossessed people from the Occupied Zone had fled south to the Languedoc. Then, her work had been to provide food, shelter, blankets for refugees fleeing the advancing Nazi forces. Now, it was monitoring the condition of prisoners being held in Carcassonne’s gaol or being sent to internment camps in the mountains.
‘Marianne,’ whispered Sandrine again. ‘I’m going out. I won’t be long.’
Her sister murmured and turned over in her bed, but did not wake.
Considering her duty done, Sandrine stole back out of the room and quietly closed the door. Marianne didn’t like her going out in the early morning. Even though there was no curfew in the zone non-occupée – the zone nono as it was known – there were regular patrols and the atmosphere was often jittery. But it was only in the stillness of the early morning, free from the restrictions and tensions and compromises of everyday life, that Sandrine felt herself. She didn’t intend to give up these moments of freedom unless she had to.
Until she had to.
Sandrine carried on down through the silently sleeping house, trailing her hand over the warm wood of the banister. Diamonds of coloured light danced at her heels. For an instant, she wondered if other girls, in other times, had felt the same as she did. Confined, caught between childhood and the adult life to come. And in the air around her, the echo of all those stifled hearts, trapped spirits, fluttered and sighed and breathed. So many different lives, passed over centuries in the narrow streets of the medieval Cité or in the Bastide Saint-Louis, whispered and cried out to be heard. Sandrine could not understand them, not yet, though a certain restlessness moved in her blood, her veins.
For the ancient spirit of the Midi, buried in the deep memory of the mountains and hills, in the lakes and the sky, had long ago begun to stir. To speak. The white bones of those sleeping in the cimetière Saint-Michel, in the cimetière Saint-Vincent and in the country graveyards of the Haute Vallée, were beginning to awake. A shifting, a murmuring through the cities of the dead, words carried on the wind.
War was coming to the South.
Chapter 2
A narrow corridor with high ceilings led directly from the foot of the stairs to the front door. Sandrine sat on the bottom step to lace up her shoes, then went to the hallstand. Two umbrellas were wedged into the base. Six brass hooks, three on each side of the mirror, held a s
election of hats. Sandrine chose a plain maroon beret. Looking in the glass, she held her hair off her forehead and put the hat on, teasing out a few curls. Then she heard the rattle clatter of a pan and the bang of the screen door, and realised Marieta was already up and about. Little chance of getting out unobserved now.
Sandrine walked down the corridor to the back of the house. As little girls, she and Marianne had spent a good deal of time in the kitchen. Her sister loved to cook and was keen to learn. Sandrine was too impatient, did everything in a hurry. Perched up on the draining board beside the porcelain sink in Coustaussa to help strain the cherries for jam in summer when she was three or four. When she was six, being given the mixing bowl and wooden spoon to lick when Marieta baked cakes for the bataille des gabels to celebrate the fête de Saint-Nazaire in Carcassonne. At eight, sprinkling flour over the old wooden table while Marieta taught Marianne how to knead the dough for her pan de blat, the rustic wheat bread not available in the boulangeries in Couiza.
She paused on the threshold. Marieta grumbled that the kitchen was too small, but it was cool and well stocked and efficient. Metal pots and pans hung from hooks above the fireplace, where a modern gas cooker had been installed. A deep enamel sink with a large draining board, and a tall dresser so that the plates and cups were easily within reach. High windows filled the entire back wall. Even though it was early, all four were tilted wide open. Bundles of wild rosemary, dried tarragon and sprigs of thyme gathered at Cavayère hung from the wooden rack suspended from the ceiling.