Citadel (38 page)

‘Go through the village,’ he instructed, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘Almost out to the other side. Last house.’

A small white dog barked at them, then shot away as they drew up outside the house. The geraniums in the window box looked battered from the storm, their heads bowed and red petals scattered on the sill.

‘Funny-looking thing,’ said Pujol, pointing at the brass door knocker.

‘François Vidal told me it was modelled on one of the gargoyles above the north door of the cathédrale Saint-Michel in Carcassonne.’

‘Would have thought it put callers off,’ grunted Pujol. ‘But then perhaps that’s the idea.’

Baillard got out of the car and walked up the stone steps, lifted the brass knocker and rapped three times. He waited, his white panama hat in his hand, knowing Marieta would take her time, even if she was there. After a minute or so, he knocked again. Still nothing stirred in the little house. The dread that had been building in his chest all afternoon took on a life of its own.

He reached for the handle and turned.

Baillard saw Marieta straight away, sitting on the chair at the bottom of the stairs, her grey head bowed against the spindle and the bible on the floor at her feet. A still figure in black.

‘Pujol,’ he shouted, ‘in here!’

Baillard grabbed Marieta’s wrist and felt a flutter of relief when he found her pulse. It was weak and erratic, but there still. He looked at the blue tinge around her lips, at the jagged rise and fall of her chest, and realised what had happened. He loosened her collar and tried to help her to sit up.

‘Her heart,’ he said, as Pujol appeared in the hall behind him.

‘Is she . . .?’

‘No, but she’s very weak.’

Together they laid Marieta on the floor. Baillard put the heel of his hand on her chest, put his other hand on top and interlocked his fingers. Then, using the whole weight of his body, he began to press.

‘One, two, three . . .’

After thirty, he stopped. He tilted Marieta’s head back, lifted her chin, pinched her nostrils, then breathed into her mouth. He paused, desperately watching the movement in her chest, then started all over again.

‘She needs a doctor,’ he said urgently. ‘Madame Rousset, in the blue house on the corner of the rue de la Condamine. She will know.’

‘Got it,’ said Pujol, immediately leaving.

Baillard kept working. One, two, three, counting each beat of her struggling heart. His arms grew tired, his shoulders ached, but he didn’t stop. He thought of Harif, who, many years ago, had taught him to save a life this way. Ten, eleven, twelve. He thought of his grandmother, Esclarmonde, who had taught him how to dress a wound. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. Of Alaïs, the greatest healer the Midi had ever known. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Harif, Esclarmonde, Alaïs, he kept all three of them close at his side while his aching muscles worked and worked.

‘Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty . . .’

Finally Baillard felt Marieta’s breathing change. The rasping, tattered gasps yielded to a regular rhythm as her heart returned to normal.

‘
Peyre
. . .’ he muttered, sinking exhausted to the ground beside her. ‘Welcome back,
amica
.’

For a few moments Baillard sat quietly in the company of his friend, an old woman now. He realised that the wind had dropped. That there was no longer the sound of rain on the glass.

Finally he got to his feet and walked into the salon to open the shutters and let the daylight in.

Chapter 68

COUSTAUSSA

S
andrine and Liesl propped their bikes against the gate at the back of the house. It had taken them a long time to get back from Couiza in the wet. Even though the rain had stopped, the steep roads were slippery, covered with detritus and leaves and broken branches.

As they approached the house, Sandrine saw the shutters were un-secured at the back, banging open in the wind. She frowned.

‘That’s odd . . .’

She dropped her bike on the grass and ran up the path and into the house, Liesl following close on her heels.

‘
Coucou?
’ she called. ‘Marieta?’

Liesl flicked the switch. ‘The lights don’t seem to be working.’

‘The generator often packs up,’ Sandrine said, struggling to keep her voice calm. ‘It’s easy to fix.’

She heard a noise in the hall. ‘Marieta?’ she called with relief. ‘Marieta, is that you?’

Sandrine rushed into the corridor, then stopped dead. Marieta was lying on the floor in the hall, with a jowly, heavy-set man standing over her. Without thinking, she flew at the intruder.

‘Get away from her,’ she shouted, shoving him out of the way and crouching down beside the unconscious woman. ‘What have you done to her?’

‘Mademoiselle,
calmez-vous
,’ the man was trying to say.

‘Marieta, what happened?’

The old woman shifted. ‘Léonie?’

‘It’s me, Sandrine.’

Marieta’s eyes were milky, unfocused. ‘Léonie?’ she said again.

‘Who’s Léonie?’ whispered Liesl, who’d come into the hall behind Sandrine.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is she all right?’

Only now did Sandrine notice that there was a pillow under Marieta’s head and a blanket covering her. Then, a quiet and reassuring voice at her back.

‘She will be, madomaisèla.’

Sandrine swung round to see a second man, in a pale linen suit, coming out of the doorway to the salon.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

‘Monsieur Baillard,’ Marieta was saying, trying to sit up. ‘I apologise, I should have . . . she doesn’t . . .’

‘Baillard?’

Sandrine turned back to Marieta, furious, now she realised she was all right, rather than terrified. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I told you not to do too much, and now look, look what’s happened. You’ve worn yourself out.’

Marieta’s face softened. ‘So you are the one to scold me?’

‘Madomaisèla,’ the man in the pale suit said in a steady, calm voice. ‘She’s given us all a scare, but all will be well. She is strong. It is not yet her time.’

Sandrine glared at him, at Marieta, then burst into tears.

‘She’s stable,’ said the doctor. ‘Is there someone who can sit with her?’

Baillard nodded. ‘We will all be here.’

‘Good.’ He began to pack up his bag. ‘She was lucky you were here, Monsieur Baillard, and lucky Geneviève Saint-Loup was worried and telephoned. It might have been a very different story if she’d been here on her own for very much longer.’

‘It was a heart attack?’

The doctor nodded. ‘A mild one, more of a warning. I can’t be sure without an X-ray examination, but I suspect Madame Barthès has been having symptoms for some time.’

‘What is her long-term prognosis?’

The doctor shrugged. ‘She’d be better in hospital, but no reason she shouldn’t make a full recovery.’

‘She has no time for hospitals,’ Sandrine said. ‘Nor doctors, come to that.’

‘These village types never do,’ he said drily. ‘Nevertheless, I’ll be in to check on her tomorrow. Do you have rations cards and so forth? Marieta certainly won’t be fit to travel for some considerable time.’

Sandrine nodded. ‘Our papers are in order.’

‘That’s one thing at least,’ the doctor said.

Pujol nodded. ‘I’ll drive you back to Couiza, doctor,’ he said.

Baillard watched the car pull away, then closed the door and came back inside.

‘And now, madomaisèla, if you are not too tired – and Liesl might sit with Marieta for a while – perhaps you and I should talk.’

‘She’s been overdoing it,’ Sandrine said, looking into the salon where Marieta was sleeping peacefully on the day bed. Her eyes were closed and her hands folded neatly above the sheet. ‘We’ve all told her, but she won’t listen.’

‘No, she never did,’ he said with a gentle smile.

Sandrine looked at him. ‘You’ve known her a long time, Monsieur Baillard.’

‘She told you so?’

‘Yes, though not much.’

Baillard put his head on one side. ‘Did Marieta tell you she sent for me?’

‘I knew she’d written to you – I took the letter to the post office myself three weeks ago – but not what she said. And ever since we’ve been here, she’s watched the letter box like a hawk.’

‘The missive did not arrive.’

‘No?’

Now Sandrine was looking at him properly, she realised Monsieur Baillard was even older than she’d originally thought from Marieta’s description. A halo of white hair, his face deeply lined, his skin translucent almost, though his eyes were quick and intelligent and clear.

‘No,’ he said in his quiet voice, ‘so it’s time you found out why Marieta was so disturbed by what happened. Shall we move somewhere quieter, so we don’t disturb her or your young friend?’

‘My cousin . . .’ she began automatically, then stopped. There seemed little point lying to Monsieur Baillard. She smiled. ‘A friend. Would you like something to drink?’

‘If you have wine?’

She led him to the kitchen. ‘My father’s cellar is still untouched,’ she said.

Choosing a bottle of red Tarascon wine, Sandrine poured two glasses, then sat down in the chair opposite him.

‘I am sorry to hear about your father’s death. He was a good man.’

She smiled. ‘I didn’t know you knew him, Monsieur Baillard.’

‘More by reputation than in person, I regret to say. We talked on one or two occasions. He had a profound love of architecture, buildings that tell the story of the past. A passion I also share.’ Again he fixed his steady gaze on her. ‘You miss him greatly.’

It was a statement rather than a question. Sandrine nodded.

‘It’s better, of course, less painful. But here, it’s hard to believe I won’t see him sitting in this chair, reading one of his local history pamphlets, a glass of whisky by his side.’ She laughed. ‘He developed a taste for it after he’d been to Scotland. Filthy stuff, Marieta called it.’

For a moment, they sat in silence. Sandrine wasn’t sure what to say, how to begin. If she was supposed to begin. Time passed, marked by the ticking of the clock on the wooden shelf above the big open fireplace.

‘So you don’t know why Marieta wrote to you?’ she said.

Instantly the atmosphere in the room seemed to change, shifting from the memories of old friends and family to something else.

Baillard placed his glass on the table beside him. ‘I think, perhaps, it would be better if you told me what prompted the letter in the first instance.’

Sandrine was soothed by his old-fashioned way of talking, by his formal and precise language and calm, steady tone. She felt the knot in her chest begin to loosen.

‘So much has happened since then.’

‘Stories shift their shape, change character, madomaisèla. They acquire different complexions, different colours, depending on the storyteller.’ He shrugged. ‘Why not simply tell the story as it comes back to you.’

She took a mouthful of wine, then drew a deep breath. ‘It was the day before the demonstration in Carcassonne. Monday the thirteenth of July . . .’

Chapter 69

I
n the world outside the window, as Sandrine talked, the sounds began to change. Cicadas, nightingales, scuttling hares, mice. In the fields beyond the village, mountain foxes. All around were the light scents of the countryside after a storm, the green perfume of wild rosemary, mint and thyme. The
martinets
were beginning their nightly courtship, feeding, swooping, spiralling and spinning like dancers in the air. On the outskirts of the village, the beech trees and laurel, wet in the fading day, threw long shadows.

When Sandrine had finished, she took another mouthful of wine and looked at Monsieur Baillard. He did not move and he did not speak.

‘Everything’s happened so fast, one thing after the other,’ she said. ‘Finding Antoine in the river, meeting Raoul, learning what Marianne and Suzanne were doing, trying to keep Liesl safe. So fast.’

Baillard nodded. ‘I am afraid to tell you that Antoine Déjean has been found.’

‘Alive?’ she said, though she had no hope of it.

‘No.’

‘No.’ She sighed. ‘Where?’

‘In the mountains not far from Tarascon.’

‘It was dreadful,’ she said quietly. ‘The moment when he opened his eyes and stared at me, and I realised I could do nothing. I felt useless, quite useless.’

Baillard nodded. ‘There is an intensity of connection between the living and the dying so powerful, that it makes all that has gone before insignificant. The ancients called this gnosis – knowledge – a single moment of enlightenment, dazzling. For an instant all things are clear, the perfect, ineffable pattern revealed in the time between the sighs of a beating heart. Truth and the spirit, the connection between this world and the next.’

‘He’d been tortured.’

Baillard did not answer. Sandrine exhaled, aware of the heavy beat of her pulse, the thrumming of the blood in her ears.

‘This young man, Raoul Pelletier,’ Baillard said. ‘He came to your rescue at the river and you gave him shelter. You helped him get away. Yet he stands accused?’

‘He was set up.’

‘Do you trust him?’

‘I do. Marianne couldn’t understand how I was so sure. It’s true that I know little about him and I don’t know where he is now. But, yes. I do trust him.’

‘Completely?’

‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation. ‘With my life.’

Baillard stared at her for a moment, pressing the tips of his fingers together as he thought.

‘It is an old and distinguished name he carries. A very old name.’

Sandrine watched him, waiting for him to speak again. He sat so still, looking out over the dark garrigue beyond the window and the outskirts of the village, as if he’d forgotten she was there.

‘Monsieur Baillard,’ she whispered. ‘Why was Marieta so scared? I tried to find out, but she wouldn’t tell me.’

‘No.’

She waited a few moments more. ‘Why was Antoine murdered?’

He sighed. And it seemed to Sandrine that single sound contained all the knowledge of the world, of civilisations, of everything that had been and was yet to come.

‘Antoine was killed in his attempt to find – and protect – something of great power, of great antiquity,’ he said. ‘Something that is capable of changing the course of the war.’