‘This is it.’
Raoul looked up at the log cabin. An idyllic location in the hills, perfect for hunting. A warm oil lamp glowed in the window.
‘He’s here,’ Bonnet said, quickly getting out of the car. He knocked on the door of the cabin, then came round to Raoul’s side to help him lift Sandrine out. She had lost consciousness and there was a slick of blood on the back seat.
Jeanne Giraud appeared in the doorway. Raoul saw distress flood her face at her first sight of Sandrine, but she kept her head.
‘Bring her through,’ she said.
‘Is Giraud here?’ Raoul asked desperately.
‘My husband’s washing his hands,’ she said.
Carefully, so as not to open any of Sandrine’s wounds, Raoul and Robert carried her into the cabin. A sturdy table had been covered with a rough woollen blanket in the centre of the single room.
‘Is there nowhere else? A bed?’ Raoul said.
‘This is what Jean-Marc needs,’ she replied calmly. ‘We’ll make her comfortable afterwards.’
Between them, Raoul and Robert laid Sandrine down on the makeshift operating table, on her side so the burn wasn’t in contact with the blanket.
Bonnet stood back. ‘I’m going to leave you, Pelletier. Get back to the Bastide and make sure Yvette and Gaston are all right.’ He glanced at Jeanne. ‘Someone will let me know? If you need me to come back later.’
‘She’ll be here for a few days,’ Jeanne said in the same calm and steady voice.
Raoul nodded his thanks. Moments later, he heard the engine start up and the car begin its careful descent down the rough track through the forest.
He looked around the cabin. There was one small window and a bookshelf on the far wall. In the corner there was a small table with a typewriter on it. Madame Giraud noticed him looking and covered up the papers lying on the desk.
‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am that—’
‘They are monsters,’ she said in a low voice. ‘They arrested my father-in-law yesterday.’
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise.’
Jeanne met his gaze. ‘They released him, but not before giving him a broken nose and a black eye. Sixty-five years old. He knows nothing.’ She poured him a large measure of brandy. ‘Anyway, drink this. You look like you need it.’
Raoul knocked the measure back in one go, then moved to stand closer to Sandrine’s head. She was very pale and her breathing was shallow, snatched, as if every gasp cost her more than she could spare. Raoul wanted to hold her hand or stroke her hair or rest his head on her shoulder, but everything about her was battered and torn.
The back door opened and a dark-haired, wiry man in his mid twenties came in, drying his hands on a towel. He didn’t waste time with niceties, but went straight to his patient. Raoul saw him blanch as he saw the extent of her injuries.
‘Will she be all right, Giraud?’
‘Did my wife say your name was Pelletier?’
‘That’s right.’
He looked at his patient. ‘And she is?’
‘Sandrine.’
‘Marianne Vidal’s sister?’
‘That’s right.’
‘She was a pupil of mine,’ Jeanne said. ‘She was the girl who helped on Bastille Day when the bomb went off at Saint-Michel, remember? Papa thought a lot of her.’
Giraud met Raoul’s eye. ‘Might I know her by another name?’
Raoul held his gaze. ‘You might.’
He said nothing more, but Raoul realised Giraud knew her reputation and hoped it would make him even more determined to save her.
He took an ophthalmoscope from his bag, lifted the less swollen of her eyelids and shone the light in her eye.
‘Mademoiselle Vidal? Sandrine? Can you hear me?’
There was no reaction. Giraud looked up at Raoul. ‘How long’s she been unconscious?’
‘She talked a little in the car at first, but not for half an hour or so.’
‘What happened?’
‘Gestapo. We managed to rescue her as they were transferring her from the route de Toulouse to the Caserne Laperrine.’
Giraud didn’t look up, but continued to examine Sandrine’s injuries. ‘How long was she with them before that?’
‘She was arrested at five o’clock this morning,’ he said quietly.
Giraud stopped. ‘She was there for six hours.’
‘Yes.’ Raoul hesitated. ‘Will she make it?’
Giraud paused and looked up for a moment. ‘So long as no infection sets in, she’ll make it. Physically, at least, though she’s going to be pretty uncomfortable.’ He pointed at the suppurating burn on her shoulder. ‘But mentally? I don’t know. They did a job on her, Pelletier.’
Raoul forced himself to look at the burn properly, realising that it wasn’t a random shape at all, but rather something specific.
‘It’s some kind of crucifix, by the look of it,’ Giraud was saying.
Raoul felt the bile rising in his throat and took several deep breaths. ‘It’s the Cross of Lorraine,’ he said quietly. They had branded her with the symbol adopted by the Resistance.
Giraud peered. ‘Gestapo, did you say?’
Raoul thought about Authié staggering out of the car. ‘I’m not certain.’
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ Giraud said. His gaze moved down to the blood on Sandrine’s skirt and thighs. ‘If you want to wait outside, Pelletier,’ he said quickly, ‘Jeanne will assist me. No need for you to watch.’
‘I’m staying.’
Giraud held his gaze, then nodded. ‘Very well. I need to disinfect the burns, to prevent infection – that’s the challenge.’ He paused. ‘It will hurt.’
Raoul noticed that Jeanne was holding a jug of vinegar. ‘We haven’t got any antiseptic,’ she said. ‘This will have to do.’
‘Take this,’ Giraud said, thrusting a cloth into Raoul’s hand. ‘Fold it over. Make a wad.’
‘What do I . . .?’
‘Put it between Sandrine’s teeth when she screams,’ Jeanne said.
Raoul felt his stomach clench as Jeanne, gently, helped her husband roll Sandrine further on to her side. As Giraud dabbed the disinfectant on to the livid red weals, Sandrine let out a deep, wild howl, shocked back into consciousness. For a moment, Raoul was so relieved to hear her voice, to see she was awake, that he just stared down at her.
‘For God’s sake, man. The cloth!’
Jolted into action, he put the wad into her mouth, and Sandrine, despite the madness of the pain, understood what was required and bit down hard as Giraud cleaned, then dressed the wound.
‘That’s it, Sandrine,’ Jeanne murmured. ‘It will be over in a moment.’
Raoul saw the agony in her half-open eyes, but she didn’t cry out again. He felt her fingers reaching for his. Her grip was strong and he struggled to keep the tears from his eyes.
‘You’re so brave,’ he whispered to her. ‘No one more so.’
It took nearly an hour for Giraud to clean and dress every wound, sending Raoul out of the room to fetch water as he moved to the injuries further down. Raoul felt a coward for not wanting to know. When he came back with a pail from the stream, Sandrine was covered with a sheet from the waist down.
‘That’s the best I can do,’ Giraud said, as he wiped the blood from his hands.
‘Thank you.’
‘She shouldn’t be moved, but you need to think of where you can take her to recuperate. It’s going to be a good few weeks before she’s up on her feet again. And they’ll be looking for her. For you both.’
Raoul nodded. ‘There’s somewhere we can go, yes.’
‘Good. We’ll leave her to sleep a while. You could do with it too, by the looks of things. Let the painkillers take effect. I’ve given her an injection of morphine to take the edge off things, but it will wear off. The wounds are all clean, but it’s possible infection will set in. Internally, well, have to see. Tricky.’ He broke off. ‘
The burn on her back, that’s the one you have to keep an eye on. She needs to be kept as still and as quiet as possible.’
Despite everything, Raoul smiled. ‘Try keeping her still.’ Then he looked at Sandrine and his face clouded over once more.
Giraud’s professional expression faltered for a moment.
‘You can both stay here for the rest of today and tonight,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s safe up here, so far as anywhere’s safe. Tomorrow too, if she’s not well enough to be moved.’
‘There aren’t any other cabins nearby?’
‘One or two on the far side of the hill,’ he said. His expression grew grim. ‘And they’ve not found us yet.’
Raoul gave a long sigh. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Giraud. You too, madame.’
‘It’s an honour.’
‘She’s a brave woman,’ Jeanne said, putting a cushion under Sandrine’s head.
‘Sandrine would be thanking you herself,’ he said, glancing at her, ‘if she could.’
‘She can thank me when she wakes up,’ Giraud said briskly.
Raoul frowned. ‘Aren’t you going to move her somewhere more comfortable?’
‘Later,’ Giraud said. ‘Best to leave her be for now. Jeanne will sit with her, if you want to get a bit of rest yourself.’
Raoul shook his head. ‘I’m not leaving,’ he said.
Giraud and his wife exchanged a look, then Jeanne nodded.
‘I’ll fetch you a chair,’ she said.
Chapter 134
TARASCON
There was another burst of gunfire in the hills. Were they anti-aircraft guns? Audric Baillard could not tell at this distance. In the mountains, the sound was distorted.
Achille Pujol and Guillaume Breillac stopped alongside him. They had crossed into the restricted zone some half an hour ago. The Wehrmacht patrols were known to shoot on sight.
‘Do you wish to go on, sénher?’
In the distance, Baillard heard the faint sound of a plane. All three men looked up at the sky. A parachute drop for the Picaussel Maquis was due tonight but, in recent weeks, many of the Allied attempts to get weapons and provisions to the Resistance and Maquis had gone wrong. They either missed their target or, worse, maquisards arrived to find the Gestapo waiting.
Baillard nodded. ‘We should go on,’ he said quietly. ‘The disturbance sounds some way off.’
Breillac accepted the decision without argument. He knew the easiest route up towards the Pic de Vicdessos for his elderly companions. Baillard had not yet regained his full strength but, even so, he was finding the going easier than Pujol. His old friend had been determined to come with them, but he was breathing heavily and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.
‘There’s no reason why Authié should be able to find you, Audric,’ Pujol panted, ‘any more than I could. They’ll try Los Seres, I dare say, but you’ve not been there for so long, what can they find?’
‘That is true, my friend,’ Baillard said.
Pujol’s magpie network of police officers, working undercover with the Resistance, had done their work well. In the past twenty-four hours, news had come from a sympathiser in the Carcassonne Commissariat that Authié’s deputy, Sylvère Laval, had requested the police file on Baillard.
Pujol had taken the news badly. Since then, he had barely left Baillard’s side. But it was only what Baillard had expected. Saurat would have given the Gestapo his name. The SS in Lyon would have passed it on to de l’Oradore. It wasn’t important. It only meant that he had to act sooner than he would have chosen. He would have preferred to wait for Sandrine Vidal and Raoul Pelletier before going in search of the Codex. There was something about the young couple that made them central to his plans.
‘They don’t know you’re here, Baillard,’ Pujol said again.
Baillard put his hand on his friend’s arm. ‘Save your breath, amic.’ He gestured up the slope. ‘There is still some way to go.’
They walked on in silence for a while, Baillard listening for signs that they had company on the hillside, but hearing nothing to cause alarm. No more gunfire, no evidence that they were getting closer to a patrol, no sound of an engine.
‘Eloise tells me it is called the Vallée des Trois Loups,’ he said to Guillaume as the path levelled out. ‘The Valley of the Three Wolves. Do you know where the name came from?’
Guillaume took the bottle, slaked his thirst, then handed it on to Pujol.
‘Her family is descended from the early inhabitants of the area. Most of the oldest Tarasconnais families claim descent from the same three sisters who lived here in the fourth century. One of them was called Lupa – I don’t know what the others were called – which is where their surname, Saint-Loup, supposedly comes from. I don’t know why. She was never made a saint, to my knowledge. Perhaps they were named after the place, rather than the other way round.’
‘Names are important,’ Baillard said lightly.
Breillac continued. ‘Marianne and Sandrine Vidal are related to them too, through their mother’s side of the family.’
Baillard stopped. ‘Is that so?’ he said quietly.
Pujol stared at the changing expression on his face. ‘Is that important, Audric?’
‘I do not know,’ he said softly. ‘It may be. We will see, we will see.’
They went on in silence. The path was dry and slippery with dust, and although Guillaume kept a steady pace, both Baillard and Pujol took each step carefully. Soon Baillard saw a sequence of caves, facing west across the valley, cradled within the ancient pines and oak, the timeless green woodland. He could also make out a pattern, cast by the rays of the sun, on the face of one sheer wall of limestone.
He smiled. The air might be less clear, pylons and buildings might scar the landscape, but the sun rose in the east as it ever had, and sank back to earth in the west. He put his hand to his pocket, where Arinius’ map lay folded, but he did not need to get it out. He could see it in his mind’s eye. In sixteen hundred years, the essential character of the land had not changed. And on the flat surface above the entrance to one of the caves, the mountain still cast a shadow much like the shape of a cross.
‘A place of safety,’ he said.
‘Is this it?’ Guillaume asked.
Baillard nodded. ‘I know the way now.’
Now Baillard led, fixing his gaze on the shadow cast by the scattered pink light. As they drew closer, the pattern changed. There appeared to be a second arm beneath the first, a double cross, much like the Cross of Lorraine. An ancient symbol, adopted now by the Resistance.
A cloud crossed the face of the sun and, for a moment, Baillard felt a jolt of horror, a fierce premonition of something dreadful. The shadow symbol transformed from a sign of strength to an image of burnt and scarred flesh. He could smell it, familiar from mass burnings he had witnessed at Montségur in days past. He could feel the victim’s agony.
Then the cloud moved on. The sun reappeared and the air was calm once more. He put his hand to his chest and felt how his heart was racing.
‘Are you all right, Baillard?’ Pujol asked. ‘Do you want to rest a while?’
Baillard shook his head. ‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘No.’
They passed a clump of juniper bushes at the edge of the path, went through an avenue of oak, up the hillside through the thicket and heavy undergrowth to the plateau in front of the opening in the mountainside. This close, the light fell differently so the outline of the cross was no longer so clear. Instead, a slanted pattern of dark lines intersected. The sky was slashed through with wisps of white cloud. Everything was as he had visualised it from the woollen map.
Baillard looked back at the avenue of oak trees, at the juniper, then forward to the ring of stones seeming to frame the entrance to the cave. He suddenly remembered the brooch Sandrine Vidal had told him about two summers before. Found in the ruins of the castle outside Coustaussa and given as a present to her father. He let out a long sigh. Sandrine was linked to this
place.
‘A place of sanctuary,’ he murmured.
Like Baillard, the monk Arinius had been a witness to truth, dedicated to the preservation of knowledge, not its destruction. In his long life, Baillard had found other allies. And in this single moment of understanding, he allowed himself to remember one in particular. Not Sandrine, not Léonie, though he admired them both. But the only woman he had ever loved. Loved still. The reason he had to keep de l’Oradore at bay.
‘Alaïs,’ he said.
He wondered if it was now too late to hope she might ever come back to him. If too much time had passed.
‘Is this the place, Sénher Baillard?’ Guillaume asked.
‘It is.’
Baillard held out his hand. Pujol passed him the torch.
‘Do you want me to come in with you, Audric?’
Baillard looked at his friend’s anxious expression, then at Breillac’s careful, thoughtful face. He wondered what the sisters after whom the valley was named could have done to be remembered with such respect and affection.
‘I shall go in alone,’ he said. ‘You keep watch. Should I need you, I will call.’
He depressed the button on the torch, then, in the beam of the pale yellow light, he stepped into the cave the map maker had found so many centuries before. To bring the Codex back out at last into the light.
‡
Codex XXI
‡
GAUL
TARASCO
AUGUST AD 344
July gave way to August. And although the stories of atrocities in the settlements in the valleys continued to be carried on the wind to Tarasco, still the soldiers never arrived. Arinius waited as the days tipped over, one into the next. The men grew less vigilant, more resentful of the lives they were being asked to live.
By the third week, they were restless. Some wanted to bring the women and children back down to the village, believing the threat had gone. Others wanted to muster as many troops as possible and head north to attack their enemy first. Only Arinius and a few stalwart allies held firm. He could feel evil stalking the valley like a living creature. He knew the time was coming and he was torn. He, too, made journeys up into the mountains to visit his family from time to time. His son, Marcellus, was growing stronger by the day. But Arinius always came back at night, to keep watch.