What Happens at the Beach... (22 page)

Mark slowed and pulled off onto the rocky roadside of a hairpin bend, his eyes following her pointing finger. The castle, a squat, solid fortress, occupied an exposed position on a peak high above them. There was no doubt it would have made a formidable refuge. ‘So, was that here back at the time of the Cathars?'

Natalie nodded. ‘Yes, although there was no serious fighting here. The French king was about to lay siege to it in 1255, but the occupants slipped away before any hostilities could start.'

‘Probably just as well for both sides. I certainly wouldn't fancy climbing up there, especially if people were pouring boiling oil on me at the same time.' He turned towards her with a big smile. ‘Thanks for the information. You and I make a great team.' While she was still trying to process that remark, he pulled the car into gear and they set off again.

Just then Natalie's phone rang. She checked the caller ID and saw that it was Amy.

‘Hi, Amy.'

‘Hi, Natalie. What's that background noise I can hear? Don't tell me, are you in the car with lover boy again?'

‘Erm, yes, I'm with Mark and we're in the foothills of the Pyrenees.'

‘Has he still got those sexy shorts on?'

Natalie did her best to keep her reply studiously neutral. ‘The views are lovely up here.'

‘Good to hear. Listen, Natalie, I thought I'd better give you a ring. I saw David yesterday.'

This was a real surprise. David and Amy moved in totally different circles. ‘Really?'

‘Yes, he was waiting for me when I got home from work.'

‘Really?' It wasn't easy to keep this conversation going with Mark sitting beside her.

‘He's desperate to get you back, Natalie.'

‘He's what?'

‘He cried, Natalie. Honestly, he cried.'

‘Blimey.' Natalie didn't know what else to say.

‘You can't talk because you've got your man beside you?'

‘Precisely.'

‘And he really is wearing shorts?'

‘Yes, Amy.'

‘Are they tight?'

‘Erm, it's difficult to see into the valley from here.'

‘Tee hee. I'll give you a ring this evening.'

‘Please do. And thanks for the call, Amy. Bye.'

Mark made no comment but Natalie felt she had to say something. ‘That was Amy, my best friend from Cambridge.'

‘I remember her. She obviously senses when you and I are in the car together.'

‘Erm, yes.' Natalie's head was spinning once again. It was just minutes since she had discovered that Mark was not, after all, married, and supposedly not even sleeping with Hortense, and now this. She had never known David cry about anything in all the years she had known him, and the thought of him in tears resurrected all sorts of confusing emotions in her. Of course they were now broken up, but, all the same, she didn't like to think of him so unhappy and, apparently, about her. This outpouring of emotion from him was the first concrete demonstration of the depth of his feelings for her that she had felt in months, years even. It was very confusing. Back when they had first met, he had been very caring, very loving and she had felt the same way about him. Gradually, as his job became more and more compelling and had taken up more and more of his time, he had become less obviously caring. And she knew there was no disguising the fact that her studies had had pretty much the same effect upon her. Both of them had been pulled in opposite directions and their separation had probably been inevitable. And now this? She transferred her gaze to the surrounding mountains and did her best to concentrate on the countryside through which they were driving, rather than on David. It wasn't easy.

They drove on, over the col and over a series of smaller passes until they were in the next valley. Natalie returned to tour-guide mode and pointed out another magnificent castle up to the left of them on top of the ridge. A bit further on they came to a sign indicating
Accès au château
and she told Mark to turn off. This led them up to just below the magnificent fortress of Peyrepertuse, perched high above the surrounding countryside. As the car came to a halt, they could see row after row of hills and ridges stretching out all round them, most covered with dense forest, some just bare rock. He got out of the car and shivered, in spite of the summer heat.

‘God, it's an inhospitable area. Look out there. There's barely a farm or a village to be seen, all the way to the horizon. And up here, so close to the Pyrenees, I bet it gets very, very cold in winter. People living in these castles must have been a hardy breed.'

‘With a very good head for heights.' Natalie wasn't too keen on heights and she remembered the scary access to the castle from the last time she had been here.

They climbed up the steep path and rocky stairway into the ruined castle and made a thorough tour of it, Mark taking loads of photos while Natalie hung on to the end of Barney's lead in case he should decide to leap off into space. All the while, she was still doing her best to process the information she had received this morning. When they returned to the car Mark suggested a coffee break, but that was easier said than done. Down in the village below the castle there was no sign of a café, and they had to drive on quite some way along narrow, winding roads, mercifully apparently unaffected by the rain the previous day. Maybe this part of the region had been spared the worst of it. There were precious few houses to be seen and the whole area was, as Mark put it, not a good place for a breakdown. By the time they finally saw signs for a café, they were less than ten kilometres from Rennes le Chateau so they decided they might as well wait until they got there.

Natalie had been there before, but this was Mark's first time. As they climbed the road that curled sinuously round the hill, the view got better and better until they threaded their way through the narrow streets of the village and came out onto the open parking area right at the top. There were quite a few cars up here, but Mark managed to find a parking space and they climbed out, stopping to admire the view. A low stone wall marked the edge of the flat parking area and beyond it the ground fell away sharply. They were looking out across the Corbières to the mountains beyond. In spite of yesterday's rain, the whole area was burnt brown by the sun and there was little green to be seen, apart from the dark green of the tree-covered hills. Natalie looked across at Mark.

‘So, do you think this place will figure in your book?'

‘Definitely. And the castles back there as well. I knew the Pyrenees were massive, but I hadn't realised just how hilly it still is so far north of the high mountains.' He looked across to the right. ‘I seem to remember seeing a sign for a café as we came up the road.'

They found the café without difficulty and took a seat in the large garden area. The sky was clear and the sun hot as the time approached noon. They both ordered espresso coffees and, while they drank them, Natalie filled him in on the history of the place, glad to have academic matters to occupy her brain for a change.

‘The fact is that this village has come to occupy the same sort of niche in the mythology of France as somewhere like Glastonbury in England. There are any number of hippies living in the area, or coming to visit, who see Rennes le Chateau as being some kind of hub for all things weird and wacky. It's been described as everything from a major UFO base, a key intersection for ley lines, to a place of pilgrimage for the occult, to one author describing it as being the site of what he termed
The Tomb of God
. Pretty powerful stuff.'

‘But why?'

‘That priest you were reading about: Abbé Saunière. He's supposed to have discovered something of inestimable value here in the early years of the twentieth century. Nobody knows what it was, but he went from being a poor church mouse to very rich in a short space of time. For your book, you're concentrating on real treasure, but there are those who would have it that he discovered some deep, dark secret that could have been very embarrassing to the Catholic Church, and they paid him hush money. Who knows?'

‘And you believe that?'

‘As an academic, I've learnt only to believe what can be conclusively proved, and this legend, exciting as it may be, has very little grounding in fact. Yes, it seems pretty clear the guy suddenly came into some money and set about building the strange tower we'll go and see after we've finished our coffee, but that money could just as easily have come from some rich old lady on her death bed. Who knows?'

‘But for my book, it could very well be the treasure of the Cathars.' He finished his coffee and set his cup down, his expression animated. Natalie met his eyes and smiled.

‘Anything's possible, but this afternoon I'll show you another place where the rumours of Cathar treasure are even louder.'

‘Really?' She could see that she had him hooked now. ‘Where's that?'

‘Montségur.'

They got to Montségur at three o'clock, after a tour of Rennes le Chateau and then a brief stop for a sandwich in a café by the river in the little town of Quillan. Once they arrived at Montségur and parked the car in the car park at the base of the mountain, Mark pushed the door open and stared upwards in wonder.

‘Wow. That's one hell of a defensive position.'

‘A pretty good place to build a castle.' Natalie followed his gaze. He was dead right. It looked like something out of a kiddie's sketch book, when told to draw a mountain. It rose steeply up from the rolling foothills of the Pyrenees with near vertical sides like Marge Simpson's hairstyle. Perched right on the top they could see the outline of the castle, its white walls standing out clearly against the blue of the sky.

Mark glanced across at her. ‘Would I be right in thinking that the only way up is on foot?'

‘No cable car or lift here, Mark. It's a narrow, rocky path and it just keeps on going up.'

He grinned at her. ‘And here I was getting worried that I wouldn't get my marathon training today.' His eyes rose towards the sun. Even here in the mountains, it was very hot, although the air was slightly cooler than down on the plain. ‘Somehow, I think this T-shirt might be coming off partway up the climb.'

Natalie smiled back, rather looking forward to following his naked torso up the mountain. ‘I packed a couple of bottles of mineral water. It might be a good idea to take them up with us.'

He lifted his little backpack with one hand. ‘Great minds think alike. I've brought a big bottle of water and Barney's bowl. He'll probably be glad of a drink by the time we reach the top as well.'

It took well over half an hour of constant climbing to make the ascent. The path, little more than the width of his shoulders, was very steep, winding in and out of thorny bushes, often disintegrating into bare rock and, by the time they were halfway up, Natalie was rather wishing she could take off her own T-shirt. Mark was now stripped to just his shorts and she found herself fascinated by the movement of the muscles in his shoulders, thighs and legs, and the sheen of perspiration on his suntanned skin as he scrambled up the path ahead of her.

The dog coped easily with the rough bits, but Mark was careful to keep him close by, for fear that he might fall over a precipice. On the occasions when the going got really tough, Mark stopped and offered Natalie his hand. Although she had climbed up to the castle twice before unaided, she allowed herself to be helped, finding his touch and his strength very pleasing. Purely as an aid in making the ascent, she told herself; nothing more.

At last they reached the top and took a well-earned break, resting against a huge rock by the castle entrance. Mark filled Barney's bowl with water and put it down for him. They drank from their own bottles and watched as the dog made short work of draining his bowl. He then slumped down beside them, puffing and panting like a steam engine. Natalie stroked his back with her foot as she broke the news to Mark that this wasn't a Cathar castle after all.

‘It's not?' He looked at her with mock severity. ‘You mean you got me to climb this fecking great mountain for nothing?'

‘Think of your marathon training, man. Not many athletes get to climb a thousand-foot peak in the blazing sun.'

‘Mad dogs and Englishmen…'

‘Leave Barney out of it. Anyway, there's a very good reason for coming up here and that's your treasure.'

‘Ah-ha. There's treasure up here?' She could see that he was interested now.

‘No.' She saw the expression on his face and grinned. ‘The castle you see before you wasn't around at the time of the Cathars. There was another construction here before this one, and it was besieged and then destroyed by the King of France's troops.'

‘Not the easiest place to take by storm.' Mark was gazing up in awe.

Natalie followed his eyes. The castle itself was a huge stone fortress, rising out of the bare rock, with smooth sides and an entrance door set high off the ground, accessible by a wooden bridge. The mountain itself dropped away sharply on all sides and the logistics of constructing something so massive way up here were mind-boggling.

‘This castle was built on the ruins of the Cathar one but, anyway, the story goes that, some days before the fall of the old castle to the king's troops, three intrepid Cathars escaped using ropes, climbing down the steepest part of the mountain. It's said that, with them, they took the Cathar treasure.' She saw his eyes light up. ‘There are those who say this could have been anything from the Holy Grail itself, to proof that Christ didn't die on the cross. One thing's for sure; if it was real treasure, there can't have been much of it if they were carrying it on their backs.'

Mark grinned and reached down to the ground between his knees. He picked up a pebble the size of pea and handed it to Natalie. ‘The engagement ring I bought for my ex-wife had a diamond on it the size of this stone. I won't tell you how many thousands of pounds it cost. Three backpacks full of that sort of thing would be worth millions and millions. Absolutely perfect for my book.'