The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales (5 page)

And Something’s odd – within –
That person that I was –
And this One – do not feel the same –
Could it be Madness – this?

Poem 410
EMILY DICKINSON

It was a mistake to take the mountain road into the Pyrenees. On the map it had looked more direct and, having made up her mind, Claire wanted to take the quickest route, before her courage deserted her and she conjured up an excuse not to go. To put it off again.

This journey had been more than three years in the making. Claire didn’t want to cause any more distress and upset to those friends and family who’d done their best to look after her and help her get through things. It would get better, they told her. She’d never forget him, but it wouldn’t always feel this bad. Perhaps she’d have another child. Time, they said, was a great healer.

If anything, the passing of one year to the next had made her grief more acute, her sense of loss more profound. Memories of the tiny, lifeless body in his cot, the weight of her son in her arms, the look of him. She knew things would never get better. Her heart would never heal and nor did she want it to.

With that acceptance had come relief, then a sense of purpose. All she wanted was not to feel anything, not to think anything, to close her eyes and see only white space. There was no point going on.

The decision made things easier. The place had been harder to choose. Claire wanted it be somewhere away from her everyday life, so as not to burden her family and friends, and somewhere remote.

Then, it came to her. Years ago, they’d gone on holiday to south-west France, the Ariège, where her mother’s family had originally come from. Holed up in her tiny hotel in Carcassonne, guide book in hands, Claire had been captivated by the story of the Cathars. Had fallen in love with the tragic history of Montségur, the mountain citadel in the Pyrenees where a generation of rebels and heretics had made their final stand nearly eight hundred years before. One of her own ancestors among them.

Why not there?

According to legend, Montségur was the Holy Mountain of Grail legend. Or maybe the inspiration for Wagner’s
Parsifal
,
Munsalvaesche.
Or a blueprint for the Mount of Salvation,
Mons Salvationis.
A place of hope and revelation and salvation. A place to live and to die.

It was a place of myth, certainly. The ruined fortress perched impossibly high above the village of Montségur, three sides of the castle hewn out of the mountainside itself. Many different citadels, different strongholds had been constructed on that same inhospitable spot, their rise and fall testament to the turbulent history of the Ariège.
Mont Ségur
, the safe mountain. The spirit of place, however, remained constant.

The idea took root until Montségur was the only place Claire could imagine feeling at peace.

Today was Thursday, 16th March. She’d picked the date deliberately. It was the anniversary of the day in 1244 when the defeated inhabitants of the citadel finally came down from their mountain retreat. Two hundred Cathar believers – heretics in the eyes of the Catholic Church – had chosen death by fire rather than to recant their faith. Ordinary believers and their priests, men and women both. Their remaining friends and families were brought before the Inquisition to bear witness to the horror of the times. Forced to listen to the screaming as those they loved died, to see the poisonous black cloud rising from the pyre. Covered their noses and mouths to keep out the sickly sweet stench of burning flesh.

Claire shook her head. Today was not the day for such violent images, she’d lived with those long enough. Today was a red letter day, the sort of day to be picked out in gold leaf and crimson ink on parchment. Today, she would stand in the place where – in the poet’s words – prayer had been valid, and make her choice. Many times over the past three years she had pictured herself climbing the mountain, her feet steady on the flat slippery stones, her breath white in the chill air.

Time, now, to make the journey.

As Claire left Carcassonne, driving south towards the mountains, the air was soft and the dawn sky a gentle pink. A perfect spring day, though the hotel proprietor warned her that it would be winter still in the mountains. The clock on the dashboard of her hire care blinked out the time: 8:00.

She had headed first for Limoux – beautiful in summer with its central square and rocky river winding through the town – then on towards Couiza. The sun grew weaker, less definite. At Puivert, the pale spring mist turned to rain. Now, as she turned off onto the mountain road, following a signpost for Montségur, the rain was turning to sleet.

The narrow strip of tarmac twisted and turned back on itself until Claire felt carsick and dizzy and disorientated. As she climbed higher and higher, the temperature dropped.

Sleet turned to hail.

After three hours of driving, Claire reached the village of Montségur. Snow was hitting the windscreen and visibility was down to a few metres. The mountain, towering over the village, was half shrouded in a mantle of thick grey cloud, and the citadel itself was invisible.

Claire swapped driving shoes for her old hiking boots, the fur flattened by years of service, then got out of the car. Her feet crunched on the shards of ice on the ground. All other sound was muffled. She saw wisps of smoke winding out of one or two chimneys, evidence of the presence of others behind shuttered doors. She thought she heard a dog bark, although the sound was quickly swallowed by the billowing fog that prowled between the buildings. All she could be sure of was her own breath, white in the cold air, and her footsteps echoing through empty village streets.

Everything was closed. There were no other visitors and nobody local was unwise enough to be out. Whichever direction she faced, she seemed to be heading into a biting wind. Regretting her lack of hat and gloves, Claire pulled her red duffel coat tight around her. She always felt cold these days in any case. Friends thought it was because she was thin, but she knew the chill was inside her and that no amount of wool or fleece would make any difference to that.

She pushed her hands deeper into her pockets and walked on, drawn by the promise of a lighted window up ahead. The sign outside the restaurant was banging rhythmically against the wall, a monotonous thud of wood against stone.

It was too early for lunch, but the sign said ouvert and when she pushed the door, Claire found it was unlocked. She stepped inside. Warm air rushed to greet her, rubbing against her cold hands and cheeks. She stamped the snow from her boots, then paused.

Something didn’t seem right.

Claire stood still in the small entrance hall, until she realised what it was. There was no noise, nothing. No clatter of pans, or babble of conversation. There was no smell of food cooking.

‘Hello?’

Nothing but the echo of her own voice surged back at her.

Pushing her hood back from her head, Claire shook her dark hair free. For years she had worn it in a sharp geometric bob – blunt fringe, blunt edges resting just above her shoulders – every photo the same: school, graduation, wedding. Then, three years ago when everything ceased to matter, she stopped bothering. Her black hair was long now, lifeless.

‘
Il y a quelqu’un
?’

No one answered. She walked up a couple of steps, then paused and called out again:

‘
Allô
?
Vous servez, oui?
’

Now she was at the top of the stairs. Claire found she was standing in a large, pleasant dining room. Exposed stone walls and wooden beams and floors, a timeless room. It felt welcoming, friendly even, despite the fact it was empty. A fire burned fiercely in the hearth. To her left there was a long wooden bar, the bottles and glasses gleaming. The centre of the room was filled with rows of waxed refectory tables, each seating ten and laid for lunch. Knives and forks, bowls of salt, oil and vinegar. Earthenware pitchers of water up the middle of each table and small matching bowls, in place of glasses, face down at each setting.

‘
S’il vous plaît
?’ Claire said loudly.

Still, nothing. She went into the kitchen, peered through the glass in the door, and saw no one. She hesitated, then walked in to the deserted space. The oven was hot, though, and there was the lingering smell of cooking. Thyme, perhaps? Red wine and onions? Claire peered out of a small, square window to a stone yard below, but there were no signs of life there either. No footsteps in the snow, no prints of a cat or a dog. If someone had recently gone that way, they had left no evidence of their presence.

On the counter, she noticed a round wooden board containing
chèvre
, a generous wedge of
cantal
, thick slabs of cured mountain ham and tomatoes. Next to it was a wicker basket of bread. She picked up a piece, then pulled off a corner and ate it. Fresh,
pain du matin
rather than yesterday’s stale
baguette
. As if someone had known she was coming.

Claire looked at her watch and found it had stopped. She tapped the face, but the hands were stuck at ten past eleven, about the time she’d arrived in Montségur. She hesitated, then, like Goldilocks, she took the food and went back into the dining room. No doubt the owner had simply nipped out to run some errand or another. She would settle with him when he came back.

She sat down at the table closest to the window. She could see her hire car, a layer of snow already covering the windscreen. Even if she decided not to go through with things, she had no choice but to stay in the village for the time being at least. She had no snow chains and no snow tyres.

Claire helped herself to a glass of red wine from a
demi
-
carafe
on the table, amazed to realise she was properly hungry, hungry for the first time in three years. Normal sensations, feelings, were coming back. She smiled. It seemed appropriate that here, at the top of the world, at the end of the world, her emotions should be thawing and coming back to life. She felt she had come home.

She must have dozed, though she had no memory of laying her head down on her arms at the table. She woke with a start, not sure who or what had disturbed her, only that something had.

For a moment, she felt calm. Then, the familiar weight on her chest once more as grief tapped her on the shoulder. Today, though, there was a sense of purpose too as she remembered where she was and why.

A red letter day, yes.

Claire stood up. The fire had burnt a little lower, her glass and plate were empty and the light was different. When she looked out, she saw the weather had cleared. The snow, sleet and mist had gone and now white clouds were scudding across a piercingly blue sky.

Claire was keen to be gone now, before she lost her nerve. She was surprised the owner still hadn’t come back, but she left a twenty euro note on the table to cover her meal, then emptied the rest of the contents of her purse on the table. She had no more need of money and she wanted them to know – whoever
they
were – how much she appreciated their hospitality. That even in their absence, she had been made to feel welcome.

She hurried down the stairs and out into the cold, exhilarating air. Although still deserted, the streets were brighter and a pale sun cast shadows on the ground. Beyond the village, now Claire could see the citadel itself, high above the road, a grey castle set against the Pyrenean blue. She walked steadily, leaving the village behind her. Once or twice she thought she heard whispering, women’s voices carried on the wind, but each time she turned, there was no one there.

She paused, breathless, at the foot of the mountain, to gather her strength for the climb. According to her guidebook the summit was nearly four thousand feet above sea level, so she would need to take it steadily and slowly. After all, there was no need to rush. Not now.

Claire slowly approached the Cathar memorial on the
Prats dels Cremats
, the Field of the Burned, which marked the place where the hundreds of Cathars had walked into the flames. The stone monument, a small
stèle
, was less imposing than she’d expected. There was nothing defiant about it, rather a humble and modest memorial of haunting beauty. Small tributes had been laid at the foot of the column. Flowers, scraps of poetry, ribbons, personal offerings left by those who had been here before her. A pair of tiny knitted blue boots for a baby.

Claire crouched down and picked them up. Blue for a boy. She wished she had thought to bring something of sentimental value to mark her passing. A photograph, perhaps. Too late now.

Resisting an urge to cross herself – she knew Cathars rejected such gestures – Claire stood up. Here, she felt the presence of the past all around her, benign ghosts who understood her purpose and had come to keep her company on her journey. In her mind’s eye, she could see images of the women who had stood here before her, who had lived and loved and died in the protective embrace of the mountain.

She followed the path over the grass, then into the woods at the bottom of the mountain, climbing up through the box and evergreen, following a narrow track covered in ice and fallen leaves and the last vestiges of winter. Everything was silent, quiet.

Peaceful.

As the path turned a hairpin, Claire suddenly was out in the open, above the tree line. Now, she could see the road far below, snaking through the winter landscape, and ahead, the great white wall of the Pyrenees that divided France from Spain.

The higher she climbed, the more history came rushing back and pushed out her own, small memories. Claire imagined how those medieval pilgrims might have felt looking down from the citadel after ten months of siege to see the standards and banners of the Catholic Church and the fleur-de-lis of the French King flying below. In the castle, a hundred defenders. In the valley, between six and ten thousand men. An unequal fight. She thought of the mothers and fathers choosing to die in their faith, surrendering their children to be cared for by others before walking into the flames.