Citadel (45 page)
And yet.
Baillard took a deep breath. However impossible the legend of Carcas might be, the Cité itself never did fall to Charlemagne. What had saved Carcassonne? Could it be that, behind this schoolboy legend, lay a deeper and different truth?
‘And come forth the armies of the air.’
Now, in the smallest of spaces between one beat of the heart and the next, Baillard thought he could see the transparent imprint of those he had loved. Foot soldiers in the shimmering ranks of the ghost army as it began to breathe and take form. Viscount Trencavel and the
seigneurs
of the Midi. From Mirepoix and Fanjeaux, Saissac and Termenès, Albi and Mazamet. And further back in the serried ranks, the
cavaliers
alongside whom he had once fought.
He caught his breath. Could he see Léonie’s copper hair, like a skein of burnished cloth? The
chanson de geste
, earlier than the Song of Roland, earlier even than
la canso
of Guilhèm de Tudèla, a poem that Baillard himself had completed. And her? Might he yet see her? The girl in a red cloak and a green dress, for whom he had waited for eight hundred years.
‘Alaïs,’ he murmured.
Baillard spoke the words once more, but the atmosphere was different. The boundaries of what was and what might be no longer merged one into the other. A diminuendo, the voices fainter now, the outlines faded to grey.
He opened his eyes. He was left with the promise of what might be, nothing more. He understood. The fragments he had spoken were not enough, not sufficient unto the task. He clenched his fist. These times had been foretold by Ezekiel and Enoch. By Revelation. Of the seas turning to blood and the skies black, fish dying on the shore and the trees dead in the soil, mountains torn from earth in protest. In these modern times of the twentieth century, ancient prophecies of thousands of years ago were, finally, coming to pass.
Baillard knew he must find the Codex. Not only because it was the one thing that might serve their cause and change their present. But also because in it lay his only chance of salvation. If he found it and spoke the verses set down, not merely fragments of them, then the army would come. Alaïs might come. Baillard did not think he could carry on living without her.
‘Every death remembered . . .’
The minutes passed. The air became still. The land began to sing its usual song. Cicadas, the wind in the garrigue, the whistling of birds.
Little by little, Baillard returned to the present. No longer the soldier he once had been, but an old man again, standing in the fields beyond the Andrieu farm. The sun was sinking to earth now, setting the shadows chasing one another across the hills on the far side of the valley. He sighed, then turned his attention once more to the map in his hands. He didn’t think Sandrine or Raoul had noticed there was a rudimentary signature on the bottom left-hand corner. Seven letters and an icon, some kind of mark, after the name. He peered closer. It was a cross with four equal arms, a symbol that had more in common with Roman images of the sun and the wheel than the Christian cross.
Proof, surely, that the Codex had been smuggled from the great library of Lugdunum. Someone who was part of the community. He looked at the signature again, holding it carefully to catch the light and managed to read the name written in the corner of the map.
Arinius.
‡
‡
GAUL
AQUIS CALIDIS
AUGUST AD 342
A
rinius woke at dawn after a restless night. He knew he soon would have to leave his stone sanctuary. August was entering her final weeks, the temperature was growing less fierce. It was time for him to move on. He could not afford to stay any longer in these tranquil valleys.
For a week and more he had slept well. But last night the sweats had come once more and he had coughed and coughed until he thought his ribs might break. There were specks of blood on his clothes and a tight pressure in his chest. He was bone tired. A visit to the baths in Aquis Calidis, he hoped, might just keep the illness from taking hold.
The path down the hillside was pleasant, following the river on its meandering path through the valley through deep and ancient woods. Arinius felt his spirits lift. There was a breeze, and white wisps of clouds were veiling the face of the sun. There was no one about. He’d seen no one since Couzanium. No sign of bandits or trouble of any kind.
The confluence of salt- and freshwater rivers made Aquis Calidis a natural place for the Roman conquerors of the region to build a bathhouse. Hot, warm and cold springs, bristling with minerals, flowing naturally out of the ferruginous rock. Once, so he had heard in Couiza, visitors from all over Septimania had travelled the Via Domitia to the settlement. Senators, generals, the descendants of the families of the Tenth Legion, who had settled the land when Gaul had been absorbed by Caesar into Rome’s Empire. Times had changed. Now, most of those old spa towns were deserted, down on their luck, the once busy streets echoing with the footsteps of the past.
At the entrance to the town, Arinius stopped and looked at the buildings of the
thermae
with pleasure. Like the town itself, the buildings had seen better days, but there was nonetheless an elegance and a faded beauty in the Ionic columns and white marble caryatids and vaulted ceilings of the atrium. A row of arched windows and diamond-shaped openings, all perfectly in proportion. A classical building in the folds of the green hillside.
He peered into the gloom beyond. There was no attendant on duty and, not knowing the way things were run, he couldn’t tell if that was because he had come too early or because the baths no longer regularly opened. He could see no signs or smells of an
unctuarium
or gymnasium. The mosaic floors in the
tepidarium
were chipped and dull.
Arinius was disappointed, even though he had not expected much. The merchant had told him that few made the journey here any more and that local people – the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original inhabitants of the valley – had, little by little, turned away from the customs the Romans had imposed upon them and gone back to the ways of their ancestors.
Giving up on the idea of the bathhouse itself, he followed the signs to the hot springs, which were accessed via a narrow path leading down to the gorge cut by the flow of the water. He made his way along the riverbank on the far side, until he saw the hot spring at the side of the river. Arinius removed his leather sandals, left his cloak, tunic and undergarments folded on a rock, took off the bottle from around his neck. Then he climbed down into the hot, rust-coloured waters and settled himself comfortably.
With the water lapping pleasantly on his legs and feet, he looked up at the halo of green and wine-coloured leaves on the hillside that flanked the river gorge. He wondered what the archbishop of the community in Lugdunum would say if he could see him.
Arinius was aware that, in his months of solitude, he had travelled some distance from the strictures of the way of life in which he had been raised. He no longer saw privation as requisite, as essential for a greater understanding of God. Now he believed that God dwelt more in the natural world than in the confines of a building, a church, a shrine, anything made by men. He saw the hand of God in the stars at night, heard His breath in the birdsong and the music of the river. As he had become stronger, Arinius felt God moving in his blood, his bones, his muscles. This was the essence of his faith. Not in proselytising, not in the impulse that sought to subdue heresy, other faiths, but rather in a private and personal covenant. Arinius lay back in the water, a stone for his pillow, and closed his eyes.
He had no idea how long he had been lying there, only that the voice, when it came, was shockingly loud in the silence of the day.
‘
Salve
.’
His eyes snapped open. He looked up to see a man of middle years, a shock of grizzled grey hair on his head and chest, with broad arms and shoulders.
‘Mind if I join you?’
Arinius could not place the accent. He was immediately on his guard, but he gestured with his hand.
‘Of course not, please.’
The newcomer lowered himself into the waters with a grunt and a sigh. To begin with, he seemed content to sit in silence. From the scars and marks on his torso, the crooked line of his nose, Arinius suspected he had once been a soldier.
‘Where are you from, friend?’ the man asked.
Arinius didn’t believe the Abbot would still be hunting him after all these months, or so far south, but he blurred his answer all the same.
‘Carcaso,’ he replied. ‘A castellum some forty miles north.’
The stranger nodded. ‘I know it.’
‘What of you,
amice
?’
‘Tolosa,’ he replied.
Arinius recognised the name. He knew there was a large Christian community there. He looked at the stranger with a keener interest, wondering if he was of the same faith.
‘You are a long way from home,’ he said lightly.
The man looked directly at him. ‘As are you.’
Arinius nodded, but said nothing more. For a while longer they sat in awkward proximity, their feet nearly touching. Arinius glanced at the pile of clothes the man had placed on the riverbank, seeing the iron tip of a dagger in a leather sheath, resting on a heavy brown tunic. His sense of calm had left him and he was nervously aware that the Codex in its cedar tomb was in his bag. He had not felt he could leave it unguarded in his shelter, but the man had only to reach out a hand to find it. Arinius wanted to leave the pool, but he didn’t wish to offend his companion. Or provoke trouble.
He sat, uneasy, uncomfortable, conscious of the man watching him, until he could bear it no longer. Then he smiled, and excused himself. He got out of the hot waters, walked a little way along the bank to dry and to dress then, as quickly as he could manage, and without making it obvious, he retraced his steps back up to the road.
Only when he had climbed up out of the gorge and was standing close to the
thermae
did he turn around. He was disquieted to see the man was now nowhere to be seen.
‡
COUSTAUSSA
AUGUST 1942
D
awn. The first of the birds were beginning to sing. Light was giving shape back to the room. The heavy dresser, the objects collected over a lifetime.
Sandrine and Raoul were lying side by side in her father’s bedroom at the back of the house. A mirror image of one another, his dark hair and hers, his suntanned face and arms and her shoulders, lying bone to bone, skin against skin.
‘Are you frightened of what might happen?’
‘Not any more.’
‘No, I’m serious,’ she said.
Raoul smiled. ‘So am I.’
Sandrine sat up. They were lying on top of the sheet, almost dressed, a layer of innocent cotton and silk still between them. She looked towards the open window, the shutters left open to let the new day in, pinching herself. She was astonished that she didn’t feel the slightest bit self-conscious or awkward. She glanced at him, then away. She didn’t know if he had spent the night with a girl before; she assumed he had.
‘Are you all right?’ he said, sensing the shift in her. ‘You don’t want me to go?’
‘No. Stay.’
A small voice in her head wondered what Marianne would say, what Marieta would say, but she didn’t feel guilty. Nothing about it felt wrong.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he asked again.
Sandrine wrapped her bare arms around her knees. ‘Just thinking.’
‘That way madness lies.’
‘Yes.’
For a little while, they were quiet again.
‘Do you think Monsieur Baillard’s plan will work?’ she said eventually.
‘We’ll find out soon enough.’
‘You can’t be seen in Tarascon,’ she said. ‘The posters are everywhere now.’
‘I’ll be all right. I’m more worried about you,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re the one taking the risk.’
‘Monsieur Baillard will be there. And Geneviève and Eloise.’
‘I’m not happy. I don’t like the idea of Coursan – whatever his name actually is – being anywhere near you.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, echoing his words. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘You can’t blame me for wanting to look after you.’
‘I don’t, it’s just . . .’
From downstairs, the sounds of breakfast being prepared floated up the stairs, intruding into their private world.
‘We’d better get up,’ she said.
She dressed in a pair of shorts and a sleeveless shirt, then ran downstairs to the kitchen. Marieta was sitting in the armchair darning a tea towel. Liesl was reading a book on photography, which Sandrine recognised from her father’s study. Monsieur Baillard sat at the table. If any of them realised that she and Raoul had spent the night together in the same room, nobody said anything.
Sandrine poured herself a cup of ersatz coffee from the pan on the stove, then joined Monsieur Baillard at the table. She looked at the sheet of paper, which had been transformed into a heavy yellow papyrus, the texture veined and covered with sharp black geometric letters.
‘Are you making progress, Monsieur Baillard?’
‘The age of the paper will not deceive an expert – it is many centuries too recent – but with what we have done, I believe it should be sufficient to deceive an untrained eye. For a short time, at least.’
‘What language is it?’
‘Coptic. Many of the early Christian texts, although originally in Greek, were translated into local languages. In Egypt, in this time period, Coptic was the language of theology and thought.’
‘Monsieur Baillard speaks and reads many ancient languages,’ said Marieta. ‘Hieroglyphics even, medieval Latin and Arabic, Hebrew . . .’
‘Now, Marieta,’ he said softly, raising his hands in embarrassment.
Sandrine grinned at the pride on Marieta’s face, relieved to see she was ever more like her old self. She heard footsteps, then Raoul appeared in the doorway. She felt Marieta’s eyes on her and suddenly worried she might guess, as she always did, what was going on.
