Citadel (21 page)
‘What about Laval?’ said Marianne.
‘That’s more likely. He arrived late, very late. Coursan was angry about it, though he didn’t say anything until the rest of us had gone.’
Raoul stopped talking, suddenly weary of it all. The guessing games, how much to reveal, how much to conceal. He had done what he could to persuade them he could be trusted. He’d given them names. If Marianne still didn’t believe him, he didn’t see what more he could say.
‘Mademoiselle Vidal, I accept you’ve only my word for any of this. And after everything, I can see how Sandrine turning up with me now, out of the blue, seems suspicious. I don’t blame you. I’d be the same.’ He glanced at Sandrine, then at Lucie and Suzanne, before letting his gaze come to rest on Marianne once more. ‘But I’ve told you the truth.’
‘I believe you,’ Sandrine said firmly.
Raoul looked at her, fighting his corner so fiercely, so doggedly, and felt the knot of anxiety in his stomach loosen a little more.
‘Darling,’ Marianne said gently, ‘you don’t know him.’
Sandrine got up and came to stand beside him. ‘I know enough,’ she said. ‘Raoul saved my life.’
Marianne placed her hands in her lap. ‘You’ve only got his word for that. He was there at the river yesterday when you were attacked – you say by someone else, but there’s no evidence it wasn’t him.’ She held up her hand to stop Sandrine interrupting. ‘Again, he turns up today precisely where you happen to be, first at the demonstration, then in the rue de la Préfecture.’
‘Are you suggesting he’s been following me?’ Sandrine said, her voice rising in disbelief. ‘That’s ridiculous. Why would anyone follow me?’
It was a simple question. That Sandrine asked it was, to Raoul, proof positive that she had no idea of what was going on. The blonde wasn’t in the picture either. But the fact Marianne had raised such a suspicion in the first place – and the look on Suzanne’s face – confirmed to Raoul once and for all that they were as involved as much as he was. He looked Marianne in the eye.
‘I understand why you might think that, but I give you my word, I didn’t know.’
‘Know what?’ Sandrine asked. She looked at her sister, then at Raoul, then back to her sister again. ‘Know what, Marianne?’
All the theories and counter-theories, words and speculations and justifications, seemed to hang in the air.
‘Marianne?’ she repeated, sounding less certain.
Raoul ran his hands over his hair, feeling the strain of the day and the hours spent in the Jardin du Calvaire in the ache of his shoulders. He stood up.
‘Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble. I don’t want to draw attention to the house. I should go.’
‘You can’t go now,’ Sandrine said. ‘If Raoul goes, I’m going with him.’ She linked her arm through his. ‘I mean it.’
Raoul felt the full force of Marianne’s eyes on him, summing him up. Everyone else was looking at her, waiting to see what she would decide. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece was deafening, suddenly, in the expectant quiet.
Finally Marianne sighed. ‘All right, he can sleep in Papa’s room. Only for tonight.’
Sandrine immediately rushed to her sister and threw her arms around her.
‘Thank you, I knew you’d come round.’
Raoul let out a long deep sigh. ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle Vidal.’
Marianne was still staring at him. ‘But you need to be gone first thing in the morning, Monsieur Pelletier.’
R
eluctantly, Sandrine followed Marianne upstairs. She stood on the threshold of their father’s room, while Marianne fetched clean linen from the airing cupboard. Even though there had been plenty of occupants in the past couple of years, the room still smelt of him. A mixture of hair oil and old books and his favourite cologne. She sighed.
‘Come on,’ said Marianne.
‘I don’t see why I’ve got to help,’ she said. ‘Marieta was happy to make up the bed.’
‘She’s seeing to supper,’ Marianne said calmly. ‘Put the slip on the pillow first, then the pillowcase.’
Sandrine pulled off the heavy white cotton pillowcase, tossed it on the bed and started again.
‘It’s rude leaving Raoul alone downstairs,’ she said.
‘He’s not on his own. Lucie and Suzanne are with him.’
‘It’s our house. He’s our guest,’ Sandrine said irritably. ‘One of us should be looking after him.’
Marianne handed Sandrine the corners of the sheet and they shook it out, letting the air hold it before it floated down to the mattress.
‘No one’s stayed in here for a while,’ Sandrine said.
‘No.’
‘Why is that?’ she asked. ‘We used to have all sorts dropping by, but not so much now.’
Marianne didn’t answer. Sandrine looked at her sister, doubled over the bed. She looked so tired and was actually being pretty decent about having a last-minute guest sprung upon her. Sandrine suddenly felt guilty she was behaving so badly.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be foul-tempered,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I like him.’
Her sister straightened up, hand in the small of her back. ‘I know.’
Sandrine stared at her. ‘I mean, I really like him, Marianne.’
Finally, her sister’s expression gave a little. ‘Darling, that’s obvious.’
‘That’s the reason I was upset at you firing all those questions at him. I know you’re being careful, but I want him to like you too.’
‘Raoul understands,’ Marianne said quietly. ‘He understands how things are.’
Sandrine finished putting the second pillow in its case and dropped it on the bed.
‘What do you think, though? You do like him, don’t you?’
Marianne sighed. ‘I don’t know him,’ she replied, running her hand over the sheet to iron out any creases.
‘Don’t you believe what he said?’ Sandrine said quickly. ‘I thought you did.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘What then? I want to know what you think, Marianne.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
Marianne straightened up. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m not making a judgement on the rights and wrongs of the situation, so don’t jump down my throat, but the fact of the matter is that whatever the reason, he did run off and leave you at the river.’
‘But you can’t—’
Marianne raised her hand. ‘Let me finish. Raoul’s explanation of why he did that makes complete sense, I’m not saying it doesn’t, only you have to ask yourself, with a man like that, where do his loyalties lie? With the people he cares about, or with a cause?’
‘I don’t think—’
‘I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all,’ Marianne continued. ‘Love at first sight, it’s not real life.’
Sandrine took a deep breath. ‘I know you’ll say I’ve only known him a few hours – and that’s true, no time at all.’ She paused. ‘The thing is, it doesn’t matter what his motives are, I don’t care. It doesn’t seem relevant.’ She hesitated, willing her sister to understand. ‘Do you see?’
For a moment, Marianne didn’t answer. ‘There’s no future in it,’ she said in the end. ‘Raoul can’t stay in Carcassonne, he’ll have to disappear. There’s no chance of you being together.’
‘I’ll wait.’
‘It’s not a matter of waiting, Sandrine,’ she said wearily. ‘He’s got a murder charge hanging over him. He’s not going to be able to come back.’
‘He’ll clear his name.’
Marianne stared at her for a moment longer, then she sighed. ‘Just promise me you’ll be careful.’
Sandrine nodded. ‘I promise,’ she said. She straightened the pillows. ‘There, finished. Is there anything else to do up here?’
‘No,’ said Marianne, sounding even more tired.
‘Can I go?’
‘Of course. I’ll be down in a minute.’
Sandrine raced round the bed and hugged her. ‘Thank you for letting him stay,’ she said. Then she bounded out of the room and back down the stairs, to where Raoul was waiting for her in the salon.
‡
‡
GAUL
PLAINS OF CARSAC
JULY AD 342
A
rinius went to take his leave of the two soldiers on the night watch. A father and son, they had become friends during his time in Carcaso. They told him of their wandering lives, spent in fortified towns and garrisons. Marching from one side of the crumbling empire to another. He told them of his God, shared stories of mercy and grace and transformation. As they clasped hands one last time, the father gave him a pair of leather sandals for the journey south and warned him to be careful.
Arinius returned to his lodgings. He did not wish to leave, but he felt the broad hand of time at his back. He wrapped his arms around his thin frame, feeling the familiar crackle of the Codex against his skin, then settled his debt with the innkeeper and left.
The long journey from Lugdunum to the furthest reaches of Gaul had aged him. Every stone, every twist of the path, had left its mark on his bones, on the surface of his skin. But his time in the fortified town had restored his health. The blisters on his feet had healed and the cough that had plagued him since the salt lakes of the flat lands of Narbonensis, if no better, was at least no worse. More often than not, he slept through the night, no longer woken by fever or the sweating that left his bed drenched.
‘
Pater noster, qui es in caelis
,’ Arinius said, murmuring the comforting words of the Lord’s Prayer as he waited for the gates to be opened. ‘Hallowèd be Thy name.’
His fingers wrapped around his mother’s brooch. She was the wisest, kindest person he had ever known. Arinius knew she would have understood his mission, would have been proud of his fortitude. He felt her beside him, encouraging him on.
‘
Et dimitte nobis debita nostra
,’ he recited. ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’
Arinius pulled his cloak around him and walked reluctantly through the streets that he had come to call home. He knew it was unlikely he would ever pass this way again. In the silence of the morning, for an instant he heard the voice of God speaking to him. A whispering, a sibilance on the wind. It was, he felt, a moment of grace. A sign.
‘Amen,’ he whispered. ‘So be it.’
He joined the crowds at the main gates. The sound of the wooden bars being removed, the creak of the metal hinges as the night watch pulled open the heavy gates and opened the castellum to the world once more. The movement and surge of men’s feet shuffling forward.
Ahead on the plains of Carsac, the Atax glinted brightly in the early morning sunlight. Arinius prayed that God would give him strength, would guide him safely to the mountains that divided Gaul from Hispania.
Step by step towards the mountains of Pyrène.
‡
CARCASSONNE
JULY 1942
T
he sun was rising over the fortified city of Carcassonne. Filigree rays pierced the clouds and dappled the stone face of the Narbonnaise towers, catching the shards of red tile in the Roman section of the walls and painting the Cité amber and bronze in the shimmering light of dawn.
The river was still in the hazy morning air. On the far side of the Aude, the shops and offices of the Bastide were beginning to stir. The house in rue du Palais was still sleeping. Marianne and Marieta were in their own beds, Lucie was curled up under the pink day blanket on the settee and Suzanne was asleep in the armchair, her arms crossed and her head resting on her chest. Wine and the adrenalin of the previous day – and the sense that it would be better not to be out on the streets – had kept the women there together.
Sandrine and Raoul were sitting on the terrace at the rear of the house, where they had been all night. Close together, her cardigan and his jacket serving as bedclothes, his head upon her shoulder. They had dozed a little, resting arm to arm. Mostly, they had talked. Shared fragments of autobiography, their stories. Occasionally touching each other’s hands, arms, the lightest of movements before a shy retreat, a dance every bit as complex as the skimming of the swifts over the surface of the river and up, higher and higher, into the sky.
Sandrine glanced at Raoul’s sleeping head, then back out over the garden once more. It was the same sun that had greeted her on Monday and on Tuesday, but it rose now on a different world. Everything had changed, for both the better and the worse, revealing a world at once more perfect and more treacherous. The blue of midday, the white heat haze of the early afternoon, the shifting of light and the purple dusk, setting the shadows to flight. Sandrine had felt she lived lifetimes in the space of the past two days.
Raoul stirred and sat up, stretched.
‘Good morning.’ She smiled at him.
He rubbed his eyes, turned and looked straight at her. ‘Sandrine.’
‘I wish I had coffee to offer you, but . . .’
‘I know.’
‘We have tea?’
‘Thank you.’
Sandrine got up and ran into the house, resenting the time it took the kettle to reach the boil on the stove. She returned a few minutes later with a tray, a metal teapot and two cups. ‘I found some biscuits. They don’t look too bad.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Early still.’
He took a mouthful of tea. ‘This is the time of day I always like best,’ he said. ‘After I was demobbed, I lived down on the coast near Perpignan. We helped refugees, escapees, over the mountains up to the border. We left at three or four o’clock in the morning, when it was still dark, and used to get back to Banyuls-sur-Mer just as the sun was rising. The relief at not being caught, every time . . .’
‘I like this time of day too,’ she said. ‘No one about.’
Raoul put his cup down between his feet and took one of the cigarettes Suzanne had given him from his pocket. ‘It was generous of her to give me these,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘How come she has tobacco?’
‘She claims her father’s ration, I think. He doesn’t smoke.’
Sandrine took another mouthful of her tea. Thick with sugar, hot, after their long night of talking it tasted wonderful.
‘Why did you go to Banyuls in 1940, rather than coming back to Carcassonne?’
‘Bruno.’
Sandrine frowned. ‘But by then, wasn’t he . . .’
