Citadel (53 page)
TARASCON
‘
W
e’re here,’ Sandrine whispered. Her stomach was a knot of nerves.
‘Wake up.’
Lucie’s halo of blonde hair bobbed away from the glass. She jumped at the sound of Sandrine’s voice, then quickly sat up straight.
‘Where are you staying, Mademoiselle Vidal?’
Sandrine stared at him, then, at the last moment, remembered the name of a hotel in the town.
‘We’re staying at the Grand Hôtel de la Poste,’ she said, ‘but actually I promised I would meet a friend in the Café Bernadac at the end of the afternoon. Thanks to you, Captain Authié, we’ve made good time. If you could let us out here, we can walk to the centre of town.’
‘You are staying there too, Mademoiselle Ménard?’
Sandrine glanced at her friend, worried that she might give the game away. Lucie gathered her thoughts and said the right thing.
‘I am. Just for tonight.’
‘You are both returning to Carcassonne tomorrow?’
‘I am,’ Lucie lied. ‘I can’t answer for Sandrine.’
The girls exchanged glances when the car didn’t stop. Sandrine leant forward and touched Authié on the shoulder.
‘Really, we can walk from here.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving you in this heat.’
‘If you’re sure,’ she said, struggling to keep the growing anxiety from her voice. ‘It’s in the Place de la Samaritaine.’
‘Do you know it, Laval?’
Sandrine turned cold. Sylvère Laval was the man who’d planted the bomb, who’d set Raoul up. Her eyes shot up and met his in the driving mirror. With a stab of fear, she knew he’d noticed her reaction to his name.
‘You’ve been so kind, Captain Authié,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. Her heart was thumping in her chest. Sandrine told herself to calm down. Everything had gone to plan, if ahead of time. She had to hold her nerve, not give herself away now.
Laval negotiated the narrow streets, then drove into the main square and pulled up outside the shadowed colonnades of Les Halles. Sandrine’s fingers were on the door handle and she was out of the car looking across to the awning of the café on the far side of the square. Behind the buildings, the boucherie and the tabac on the corner, the rise and fall of the Vicdessos and the Pic de Sédour were visible. Castles floating in the sky, she thought.
Authié also got out and looked at the tables outside the café.
‘Do you see your friend, Mademoiselle Vidal?’
Sandrine pretended to look. She shook her head. ‘Not yet, but, as I said, I’m awfully early. You don’t need to wait with us. We’ll be quite all right.’
She saw him hesitate. ‘When will you and your housekeeper be returning to Carcassonne, Mademoiselle Vidal? You didn’t say.’
‘After the weekend,’ she replied. ‘On Monday or Tuesday. It depends on the trains, of course.’ She held out her hand. ‘You’ve been more than kind, Captain Authié.’
He did not take it, but instead turned to Lucie. ‘And you, Mademoiselle Ménard?’
‘I told you,’ she said in a tired voice. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘So you did.’
Sandrine glanced at her. Under her powder, she looked grey and drawn, as if she might faint. There were beads of sweat on her forehead.
‘Come on, Lucie,’ she said softly. ‘Let’s find a seat.’
Still Authié didn’t go. Sandrine could do nothing but sit down at the nearest table and pray that he wouldn’t join them. He stood in front of her, blocking the sun. Then, to her relief, she saw Eloise Saint-Loup on the far side of the square.
‘There she is,’ she said, raising her hand to attract Eloise’s attention. ‘Eloise, over here.’
She saw Eloise take in the little group and immediately change direction and walk towards them. Sandrine leapt up and ran to meet her, talking in a loud, excited voice.
‘Thanks to Captain Authié, we are early to meet you here. I said you wouldn’t expect us yet.’ She turned to him. ‘Again, thank you for driving us back.’
Authié ran his eyes over Eloise. ‘And you are?’
‘Eloise Saint-Loup,’ she replied, meeting his gaze.
Authié glanced at his watch, then nodded to Laval.
‘If I need to talk to you again, Mademoiselle Vidal, I’ll call on you in Carcassonne.’
‘If you think it necessary,’ she said.
Authié gave a cursory bow, then got back into the car. Laval shut the door, then climbed in himself and they left.
Sandrine stood until they’d disappeared around the corner of the square, then she whistled and slumped down on the chair. Her legs were shaking.
‘That was the longest few hours of my life,’ she said.
‘What was that all about?’ Eloise asked. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until Wednesday.’
Sandrine explained what had happened.
‘Which is why it was so lucky you came along when you did,’ she finished. ‘I was dreading Captain Authié would insist on escorting me to the hotel and ask to see the register.’ She sighed. ‘And his driver, Sylvère Laval, do you know him?’
‘I don’t think so, why?’
Sandrine shrugged. ‘I don’t know, he seemed to be looking at you. It’s probably nothing.’ She glanced at Lucie, who was looking more wrung out than ever. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’ve felt better, kid.’
‘It’s not surprising, it really is dreadfully hot,’ Sandrine heard herself saying. ‘You could do with a rest.’ She stopped, then smiled at the realisation she was sounding more like Marianne every day.
‘Our car is in Foix,’ she said to Eloise. ‘But before I think about how to get it back, I have to find Monsieur Baillard and tell him what’s happened. It’s terribly important. It’s all so much earlier than we’d planned.’
‘He’s staying with Inspector Pujol,’ Eloise said. ‘I’ll take you, if you like.’
‘Is anyone else with him?’ Sandrine said, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
Eloise smiled. ‘No,’ she said sympathetically. ‘Raoul stayed up at the site to keep watch. He’s fine. Everything went like clockwork. My husband’s acting as the messenger between him and Monsieur Baillard.’
Only now did Sandrine know for certain that Raoul had made it to Tarascon without being caught. That he was safe.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
‘He seems nice,’ Eloise said. ‘Mind you, he asked an awful lot of questions.’
Sandrine looked at her. ‘Questions about what?’
Eloise laughed. ‘What do you think? About you, of course.’
‡
‡
GAUL
PIC DE VICDESSOS
AUGUST AD 342
A
rinius felt he had reached the edge of the world, the heart of the mountains dividing Gaul from Hispania. For three days he had walked. He had no particular destination in mind, only that he had to find somewhere distinctive and sheltered, somewhere where the pattern of the ridges and crests might retain their shape for centuries to come. He had rejected a hiding place in the woods lower down the slopes. Forests might be cut down or burnt or drowned when a river burst its banks. Fire and sword and flood. Only the mountains stood firm.
He stopped to catch his breath before continuing. The last rays of the sun were slipping from the rock and sinking down behind the peaks. Arinius wondered if he should stop and continue in the morning, but he did not want to rest. It was the third day since he had been tested – his vision, as he had come to think of it – but he was still full of vigour. He was so close now.
The path was dry and slippery with dust and the foothills were steeper than he had hoped. It was hard going, but he had coughed little in the past days and there was a welcome breeze. He was weary of his mission, the responsibility, but he knew he was almost there. So very close now.
Finally, up ahead, he saw a sequence of caves, each facing west across the valley and set within the pines and oak, the deep ancient green of the forest. He climbed higher until he found what he needed. A single cave, set within a low range of rock and crevice. He smiled as he looked up at the natural sequence of dolmen and stelae, the way the light fell upon the mountain, casting the sign of the cross on the rock face.
‘
In hoc signo vinces
,’ he said.
He did not know if the Emperor Constantine had indeed uttered such words, as it was said, only that the symbol – the cross – that once had indicated persecution and exile had now come to symbolise strength. Even before the burning of ancient texts had begun, Arinius had feared the way in which the Church was changing. From persecuted sect to persecutor. He did not wish to see the restrictions and indignities once suffered by Christians – by good men and women, like his mother Servilia – turned instead on others. He did not wish to witness Jewish friends abused, wise men from the old tribes. His God preached peace and acceptance and love to all men, but yet he saw already how the plain and gentle words of scripture were being turned into weapons. Manipulated to suit the desires of those seeking power, rather than grace.
Arinius continued to climb. Now he was closer, he could see that the shadow cast by the scattered pink light was not merely a cross, but rather a double crucifix. A horizontal and a vertical line, with a second shorter horizontal arm beneath the first. He wondered how often was this phenomenon to be seen? At dusk only? In August only, or all summer long? Or was the configuration of land and wood and light so constant that, regardless of the season, the sun cast such a shadow on the mountains?
He passed a clump of juniper bushes at the edge of the path, then made his way through an avenue of oak trees. Through the thicket and heavy undergrowth, until at last he stood on the plateau in front of the crucifix cave, as he had come to think of it. Arinius took a few moments to catch his breath. His fingers stole to the plain knot pin at his neck, a replacement for his mother’s brooch, lost when he had fallen on his way back from Aquis Calidis.
This close, the light fell differently, so the outline of the cross was no longer so clear. Instead, a slanted pattern of dark lines, intersected as if painted by the hair of a brush. The sky was slashed through with shards of pink and orange now, lilac behind it. The white wisps of cloud were melting into the grey rock face on the opposite side of the valley, gold in the setting sun.
Arinius looked back at the avenue of oak trees, at the ash and the beech, then up at the ring of stones seeming to frame the entrance to the cave, and knew it was perfect. It was a place that would serve.
‘A place of refuge,’ he said.
His weariness left him. He crouched on the ground and removed the bearing block, spindle and fireboard from his leather sack, all carried with him from Carcaso. He’d inherited his quick fingers from his mother, who, in the nine years he had walked beside her, had taught him a great deal. He pulled out his tinder bundle, a mixture of grass and dried hazel bark, and placed it in position ready to catch the embers created by the friction. Placing the tip of the spindle into the hole in the block, he wrapped the string around it, taut, so as to make sure it didn’t slip. He put his right knee on the ground, with his left foot on the board to keep it in place, then, pushing down with the handhold, began to turn the spindle. Twisting, faster, feeling the heat begin to warm his hands. Arinius still felt the strain of the muscles in his thighs, across his shoulders, but the pain did not hinder him. He kept going, building a steady and regular rhythm, needing to create a constant friction between the fireboard and the spindle. In the indentation in the fireboard, the dust was collecting. Finally, a glow, then a spark, and the smallest of flames.
Arinius blew upon it, the heat catching the dry tinder. It flared up. He began to cough, ash and dust sticking in his throat, but the light mountain wind helped him. Moments later, he was rewarded by the red glow leaping and starting to spread.
He sat back on his heels to rest his aching limbs for a moment, then he went back to work. He took the small torch from his sack, an old rag soaked in pitch, and wrapped it around a short wooden stick like a fist. He held it towards the fire. The material spluttered, then the rag began to smoke, then spark. The fire took hold.
He stood up. He took a last look at the beauty of the sky, here at the top of the world then, with the cedarwood box containing the Codex safe in the bag on his back, he turned and stepped into the darkness of the cave.
Holding the burning torch before him in his right hand, his left touching the wall of the cave to guide him, Arinius walked slowly forward. The ground sloped down and the passage grew narrower and narrower until he was forced to duck his head. He felt the chill of earth and the temperature dropped with each step he took, but the air was fresh. He knew that he was in no danger.
Presently, the passage opened into a small cavern. The flame sent shapes scattering over the uneven surface of the walls and ceiling, shadow dancers in the subterranean world. He stood still for a moment, then noticed an opening ahead of him in the ground. He went carefully forward and saw that it was a natural well, a tunnel down into the centre of the earth, no wider than the reach of his arm. He dropped a stone into the darkness, listening as it fell. Moments later, an echo reverberated around the cavern. A dry well, not water. This would serve his purpose.
In order to free his hands, Arinius collected a few larger rocks, stacked them in a small pyramid shape and wedged the wooden shaft of the torch into the gap. Once he was certain it was secure, he went back to the opening in the earth and knelt down beside it. He reached down into the hole, his fingers looking for somewhere to secure the box. There was nothing wide enough, so he lay down, chest down, and stretched further into the black. Now he found what he needed – a cleft in the stone large enough to hold the box on its side.
He pulled himself up, then took the box from his bag and rested it in his lap. The temptation to look upon the Codex one last time was overwhelming. But he was mindful of what had happened, the test he had barely survived, so instead he raised the box to his mouth and kissed it, then wrapped the cedarwood in his handkerchief. He did not know if a layer of cotton would make any difference, but he wanted to do all he could to protect the Codex from the passing of time.
