Labyrinth

  Noubel looked at her intently. ‘You saw the incident, Madame?’

  ‘Sure I did.’

  ‘Did you see what type of car it was? The make?’

  She shook her head. ‘Silver, that’s as much as I can say.’ She turned to her husband.

  ‘Mercedes,’ he said immediately. ‘Didn’t get a good look myself. Only turned around when I heard the noise.’

  ‘Registration number?’

  ‘I think the last number was eleven. It happened too quick.’

  ‘The street was quite empty, officer,’ the wife repeated, as if she feared he wasn’t taking her seriously.

  ‘Did you see how many people were in the car?’

  ‘One for sure in the front. Couldn’t say if there were folks in the rear.’

  Noubel handed her over to an officer to take down her details, then walked round to the back of the ambulance where Biau was being lifted in on a stretcher. His neck and head were supported by a brace, but a steady stream of blood was flowing from beneath the bandage wrapped around the wound, staining his shirt red.

  His skin was unnaturally white, the colour of wax. There was a tube taped to the corner of his mouth and a mobile drip attached to his hand.

  ‘Il pourra s’en tirer?’ Will he make it?

  The paramedic pulled a face. ‘If I were you,’ he said, slamming the doors shut, ‘I’d be calling the next of kin.’

  Noubel banged on the side of the ambulance as it pulled away, then satisfied his men were doing their job, he wandered back to his car, cursing himself. He lowered himself into the front seat, feeling every one of his fifty years, reflecting on all the wrong decisions he’d taken today that had led to this. He slid a finger under the collar of his shirt and loosened his tie.

  He knew he should have talked to the boy earlier. Biau hadn’t been himself from the moment he’d arrived at the Pic de Soularac. He was normally enthusiastic, the first to volunteer. Today, he’d been nervous and on edge, then he’d vanished for half the afternoon.

  Noubel tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. Authié claimed Biau had never given him the message about the ring. And why would he lie about something like that?

  At the thought of Paul Authié, Noubel felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. He popped a peppermint in his mouth to relieve the burning. That was another mistake. He shouldn’t have let Authié near Dr Tanner, although, when he thought about it, he wasn’t sure what he could have done to prevent it. When reports of the skeletons at Soularac had come through, orders that Paul Authié should be given access to the site and assistance had accompanied them. So far, Noubel hadn’t been able to find out how Authié had heard about the discovery so fast, let alone worm his way on to the site.

  Noubel had never met Authié in person before, although he knew him by reputation. Most police officers did. A lawyer, known for his hardline religious views, Authié was said to have half the Judiciaire and gendarmerie of the Midi in his pockets. More specifically, a colleague of Noubel’s had been called to give evidence in a case Authié was defending. Two members of a far-right group were accused of the murder of an Algerian taxi driver in Carcassonne. There’d been rumours of intimidation. In the end, both defendants were acquitted and several police officers forced to retire.

  Noubel looked down at Biau’s sunglasses which he’d picked up from the ground. He’d been unhappy earlier. Now he liked the situation even less.

  The radio crackled into life, belching out the information Noubel needed about Biau’s next of kin. He sat for a while longer, putting off the moment. Then he started to make the calls.

  CHAPTER 16

  It was eleven o’clock when Alice reached the outskirts of Toulouse. She was too tired to carry on to Carcassonne, so she decided to head for the city centre and find somewhere to stay the night.

  The journey had passed in a flash. Her head was full of jumbled images of the skeletons and the knife beside them; the white face looming out at her in the dead grey light; the body lying in front of the church in Foix. Was he dead?

  And the labyrinth. Always, in the end, she came back to the labyrinth. Alice told herself she was being paranoid, that it was nothing to do with her. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But no matter how many times Alice said it, she did not believe it.

  She kicked off her shoes and lay down fully clothed on the bed. Everything about the room was cheap. Featureless plastic and hardboard, grey tiles and fake wood. The sheets were over-starched and scratched like paper against her skin.

  She took the Bushmills single malt from her rucksack. There were a couple of fingers left in the bottle. Unexpectedly a lump came to her throat. She’d been saving the last couple of inches for her last night at the dig. She tried again, but Shelagh’s phone was still on divert. Fighting back her irritation, she left yet another message. She wished Shelagh would quit playing games.

  Alice washed down a couple of painkillers with the whisky, then got into bed and turned the light off. She was totally exhausted, but she couldn’t get comfortable. Her head was throbbing, her wrist felt hot and swollen and the cut on her arm was hurting like hell. Worse than ever.

  The room was stuffy and hot. After tossing and turning, listening to bells strike midnight, then one o’clock, Alice got up to open the window and let some air in. It didn’t help. Her mind wouldn’t stay still. She tried to think of white sands and clear blue water, Caribbean beaches and Hawaiian sunsets, but her brain kept coming back to the grey rock and chill subterranean air of the mountain.

  She was scared to sleep. What if the dream came back again?

  The hours crawled by. Her mouth was dry and her heart staggered under the influence of the whisky. Not until the pale white dawn crept under the worn edges of the curtains did her mind finally give in.

  This time, a different dream.

  She was riding a chestnut horse through the snow. Its winter coat was thick and glossy, and its white mane and tail were plaited with red ribbons. She was dressed for hunting in her best cloak with the squirrel fur pelisse and hood, and long leather gloves lined with marten fur that went up as high as her elbows.

  A man was riding beside her on a grey gelding, a bigger, more powerful animal with a black mane and tail. He pulled repeatedly on the reins to keep it steady. His brown hair was long for a man, skimming his shoulders. His blue velvet cloak streamed behind him as he drove his mount on. Alice saw he wore a dagger at his waist. Around his neck was a silver chain with a single green stone hanging from it, which banged up and down against his chest to the rhythm of the horse.

  He kept glancing over at her with a mixture of pride and ownership. The connection between them was strong, intimate. In her sleep, Alice shifted position and smiled.

  Some way off, a horn was blowing sharp and shrill in the crisp December air, proclaiming that the hounds were on the trail of a wolf. She knew it was December, a special month. She knew she was happy.

  Then, the light changed.

  Now she was alone in a part of the forest she did not recognise. The trees were taller and more dense, their bare branches black and twisted against the white, snow-laden sky, like dead men’s fingers. Somewhere behind her, unseen and threatening, the dogs were gaining on her, excited by the promise of blood.

  She was no longer the hunter, but the quarry.

  The forest reverberated with a thousand thundering hooves, getting closer and closer. She could hear the baying of the huntsmen now. They were shouting to one another in a language she did not understand, but she knew they were looking for her.

  Her horse stumbled. Alice was thrown, falling forward out of the saddle and down to the hard, wintry ground. She heard the bone in her shoulder crack, then searing pain. She looked down in horror. A piece of dead wood, frozen solid like the head of an arrow, had pierced her sleeve and impaled itself in her arm.

  With numb and desperate fingers, Alice pulled at the fragment until it came loose, closing her eyes against the aching pain. Str
aight away, the blood started to flow, but she couldn’t let that stop her.

  Staunching the bleeding with the hem of her cloak, Alice scrambled to her feet and forced herself on through the naked branches and petrified undergrowth. The brittle twigs snapped under her feet and the ice-cold air pinched her cheeks and made her eyes water.

  The ringing in her ears was louder now, more insistent, and she felt faint. As insubstantial as a ghost.

  Suddenly, the forest was gone and Alice found herself standing on the edge of a cliff. There was nowhere left to go. At her feet was a sheer drop to a wooded precipice below. In front of her were the mountains, capped with snow, stretching as far as the eye could see. They were so close she felt she could almost reach out and touch them.

  In her sleep, Alice shifted uneasily.

  Let me wake up. Please.

  She struggled to wake up, but she couldn’t. The dream held her too tightly in its coils.

  The dogs burst out of the cover of the trees behind her, barking, snarling. Their breath clouded the air as their jaws snapped, drools of spit and blood hanging from their teeth. In the gathering dusk, the tips of the huntsmen’s spears glinted brightly. Their eyes were filled with hate, with excitement. She could hear them whispering, jeering, taunting her.

  ‘Hérétique, hérétique.’

  In that split second, the decision was made. If it was her time to die, it would not be at the hands of such men. Alice lifted her arms wide and jumped, commending her body to the air.

  Straight away, the world fell silent.

  Time ceased to have any meaning as she fell, slowly and gently, her green skirts billowing out around her. Now she realised there was something pinned to her back, a piece of material in the shape of a star. No, not a star but a cross. A yellow cross. Rouelle. As the unfamiliar word drifted in and then out of her mind, the cross came loose and floated away from her, like a leaf dropping from a tree in autumn.

  The ground came no nearer. Alice was no longer afraid. For even as the dream images started to splinter and break apart, her subconscious mind understood what her conscious mind could not. That it was not her — Alice — who fell, but another.

  And this was not a dream, but a memory. A fragment from a life lived a long, long time ago.

  CHAPTER 17

  Carcassona

  JULHET 1209

  Twigs and leaves cracked as Alaïs shifted position.

  There was a rich smell of moss, lichen and earth in her nose, her mouth. Something sharp pierced the back of her hand, the tiniest jab that immediately began to sting. A mosquito or an ant. She could feel the poison seeping into her blood. Alaïs moved to brush the insect away. The movement made her retch.

  Where am I?

  The answer, like an echo. Defòra. Outside.

  She was lying face down on the ground. Her skin was clammy, slightly chill from the dew. Daybreak or dusk? Her clothes, tangled around her, were damp. Taking it slowly, Alaïs managed to lever herself into a sitting position, leaning against the trunk of a beech tree to keep herself steady.

  Doçament. Softly, carefully.

  Through the trees at the top of the slope she could see the sky was white, strengthening to pink on the horizon. Flat clouds floated like ships becalmed. She could make out the black outlines of weeping willows. Behind her were pear and cherry trees, drab and naked of colour this late in the season.

  Dawn, then. Alaïs tried to focus on her surroundings. It seemed very bright, blinding, even though there was no sun. She could hear water not far off, shallow and moving lazily over the stones. In the distance, the distinctive kveck-kveck of an eagle owl coming back from his night’s hunting.

  Alaïs glanced down at her arms, which were marked with small, angry red bites. She examined the scratches and cuts on her legs too. As well as insect bites, her ankles were ringed with dried blood. She held her hands up close to her face. Her knuckles were bruised and sore. Lines of rust-red streaks between the fingers.

  A memory. Of being dragged, arms trailing along the ground.

  No, before that.

  Walking across the courtyard. Lights in the upper windows.

  Fear pricked the back of her neck. Footsteps in the dark, the calloused hand across her mouth, then the blow.

  Perilhòs. Danger.

  She raised her hand to her head and then winced as her fingers connected with the sticky mass of blood and hair behind her ear. She screwed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the memory of the hands crawling over her like rats. Two men. A commonplace smell, of horses, ale and straw.

  Did they find the merel?

  Alaïs struggled to stand. She had to tell her father what had happened. He was going to Montpellier, that much she could remember. She had to speak with him first. She tried to get up, but her legs would not hold her. Her head was spinning again and she was falling, falling, slipping back into a weightless sleep. She tried to fight it and stay conscious, but it was no use. Past and present and future were part of an infinite time now, stretching out white before her. Colour and sound and light ceased to have any meaning.

  CHAPTER 18

  With a final, anxious glance back over his shoulder, Bertrand Pelletier rode out of the Eastern Gate at Viscount Trencavel’s side. He could not understand why Alaïs had not come to see them off.

  Pelletier rode in silence, lost in his own thoughts, hearing little of the inconsequential chatter going on around him. His spirits were troubled at her absence from the Cour d’Honneur to see them off and wish the expedition well. Surprised, disappointed too, if he could bring himself to admit it. He wished now he had sent François to wake her.

  Despite the earliness of the hour, the streets were lined with people waving and cheering. Only the finest horses had been chosen. Palfreys whose resilience and stamina could be relied upon, as well as the strongest geldings and mares from the stables of the Chateau Comtal picked for speed and endurance. Raymond-Roger Trencavel rode his favourite bay stallion, a horse he’d trained himself from a colt. Its coat was the colour of a fox in winter and on its muzzle was a distinctive white blaze, the exact shape, or so it was said, of the Trencavel lands.

  Every shield displayed the Trencavel ensign. The crest was embroidered on every flag and the vest each chevalier wore over his travelling armour. The rising sun glanced off the shining helmets, swords and bridles. Even the saddle-bags of the pack horses had been polished until the grooms could see their faces reflected in the leather.

  It had taken some time to decide how large the envoi should be. Too small and Trencavel would seem an unworthy and unimpressive ally and they would be easy pickings on the road. Too large and it would look like a declaration of war.

  Finally, sixteen chevaliers had been chosen, Guilhem du Mas among them, despite Pelletier’s objections. With their écuyers, a handful of servants and churchmen, Jehan Congost and a smith for working repairs to the horses’ shoes en route, the party numbered some thirty in total.

  Their destination was Montpellier, the principal city within the domains of the Viscount of Nimes and the birthplace of Raymond-Roger’s wife, Dame Agnès. Like Trencavel, Nimes was a vassal of the King of Aragon, Pedro II, so even though Montpellier was a Catholic city — and Pedro himself a staunch and energetic persecutor of heresy — there was reason to expect they would have safe passage.

  They had allowed three days to ride from Carcassonne. It was anybody’s guess as to which of them, Trencavel or the Count of Toulouse, would arrive in the city first.

  At first they headed east, following the course of the Aude towards the rising sun. At Trèbes, they turned northwest into the lands of the Minervois, following the old Roman road that ran through La Redorte, the fortified hill town of Azille, and on to Olonzac.

  The best land was given over to the canabières, the hemp fields, which stretched as far as the eye could see. To their right were vines, some pruned, others growing wild and untended at the side of the track behind vigorous hedgerows. To their left was a sea of
emerald-green stalks of the barley fields, which would turn to gold by harvest time. Peasants, their wide-brimmed straw hats obscuring their faces, were already hard at work, reaping the last of the season’s wheat, the iron curve of their scythes catching the rising sun from time to time.

  Beyond the river bank, lined with oak trees and marsh willow, were the deep and silent forests where the wild eagles flew. Stag, lynx and bear were plentiful, wolves and foxes too in the winter. Towering above the lowland woods and coppice were the dark forests of the Montagne Noire where the wild boar was king.

  With the resilience and optimism of youth, Viscount Trencavel was in good spirits, exchanging light-hearted anecdotes and listening to tales of past exploits. He argued with his men about the best hunting dogs, greyhounds or mastiffs, about the price of a good brood bitch these days, gossiped about who had wagered what at darts or dice.

  Nobody talked of the purpose of the expedition, nor of what would happen if the Viscount failed in his petitions to his uncle.

  A raucous shout from the back of the line drew Pelletier’s attention. He glanced over his shoulder. Guilhem du Mas was riding three abreast with Alzeu de Preixan and Thierry Cazanon, chevaliers who’d also trained in Carcassonne and been dubbed the same Passiontide.

  Aware of the older man’s critical scrutiny, Guilhem raised his head and met his gaze with an insolent stare. For a moment they held one another fixed. Then, the younger man inclined his head slightly, an insincere acknowledgement, and turned away. Pelletier felt his blood grow hot, all the worse for knowing there was nothing he could do.

  For hour after hour they rode across the plains. The conversation faltered, then petered out as the excitement that had accompanied their departure from the Cite gave way to apprehension.

  The sun climbed ever higher in the sky. The churchmen suffered the most in their black worsted habits. Rivulets of sweat were dripping down the Bishop’s forehead and Jehan Congost’s spongy face had turned an unpleasant blotchy red, the colour of foxgloves. Bees, crickets and cicadas rattled and hummed in the brown grass. Mosquitoes pricked at their wrists and hands, and flies tormented the horses, causing them to switch their manes and tails in irritation.