I shielded my eyes against the lacy glare of the white sun on the mountains and scanned the slopes below the road. There were no houses, no signs of human habitation that I could see. Guillaume confirmed it. Apart from the shepherds’ huts, deserted in winter, no one lived this high in the valley. It was too harsh an environment, too bitterly cold and exposed.
I lit a cigarette, thinking of what Fabrissa had said. The path along which she and her family had travelled was overgrown with box and . . . and what? I drummed my fingers on my knee, box leaves and . . . I got it.
‘Silver birch. Evergreen box trees and silver birch.’
Both were common in this part of France, but I could see both from where I was sitting. The distinctive silver and black markings of a cluster of birch trees and, a little to the right of them, the deep green of box shrubs. Confirmation, surely, I was on the right track?
‘And maybe where I’ll find her . . .’
‘Monsieur?’ said Guillaume, a quizzical look on his face.
I flushed. ‘Thinking aloud,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘What news? What does your father suggest?’
I tried to pay attention as Guillaume outlined Breillac’s plan, but my thoughts kept slipping back to the patch of earth below us.
‘ . . . if that is agreeable to you, monsieur. If not, we will find another way.’
I realised Guillaume had stopped talking and was looking at me.
‘Forgive me. I didn’t catch that. Could you . . . ?’
Guillaume began again in his slow, steady voice.
‘As my father sees it, there are two . . .’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move in the valley below. A flash of blue, perhaps. I couldn’t tell. I took a step forward and, using the tips of the bare branches of the silver birch as my sight-line, traced a direct line to the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. I narrowed my gaze and hit upon an overhang of grey rock, sheltered by trees. There seemed to be a shelf in the rock and, though it was hard to make out, perhaps an opening, in the shape of an eyebrow.
‘ . . . so given the damage to the chassis,’ Guillaume concluded, ‘my father thinks it is a job for a trained mechanic. An old colleague of his works chez Fontez in Tarascon, so he could get you a good price.’
‘Is it possible to get up over there?’ I pointed south-east at the opposite escarpment.
If Guillaume was offended by my inattention, he didn’t show it.
‘If you keep straight on this road, then drop down near Miglos. Though I don’t know why anyone would want to. There’s nothing there.’
‘What about from this side of the valley? From here? Is there a path up through these woods?’
‘If there is, I don’t know of it.’ He shrugged. ‘There was mining in that section of the mountains, before my time, to open up a new route south. Twenty years ago. It changed the shape of the land and the hills.’ He paused. ‘So it is possible there is a path, but it would be a hard climb.’
‘Yes, it would,’ I murmured, thinking of a courageous girl and a boy too ill to walk far.
Guillaume shifted his weight from foot to foot, impatient to get things set. ‘About the car, monsieur, should we take it to Tarascon? That is acceptable to you?’
Now I knew - suspected - Fabrissa’s cave was there, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I dragged my eyes away from the shelf of rock just long enough to tell Guillaume the proposal was fine.
He sighed and gave a thumbs-up sign to his father.
‘Pierre can wait here with the car while I go to Tarascon to make the arrangements. Father will guide you back to Nulle.’
I hesitated. ‘Actually, Guillaume, do you know what, I think I’ll stay here with the car.’
Guillaume’s eyes grew round. ‘But it will be a long wait, monsieur,’ he objected. ‘Pierre is happy to remain and keep watch. He is accustomed to the air up here. You should return to the village.’
‘No, I insist,’ I said.
‘But what will you do?’
‘I’ll find something to do to amuse myself. Read a book. I’ll wait in the car if the cold starts to get to me.’ I gave an impatient nod. ‘You go on. The sooner you get going, the sooner you’ll be back.’
Although far from happy, Guillaume realised there was little he could do. He explained to his father and brother. For the first time, Breillac spoke directly to me in the old language of the region, in a voice that resonated with tobacco and old age.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’
A look passed between the brothers, then Guillaume spoke again to his father, before translating for me once more.
‘He is anxious you should not stay. This is a bad place for you to be, he says. An unhappy place.’
‘Oh, come along.’ I smiled. ‘Tell your father I appreciate his concern, but I’ll be fine.’
Breillac stared at me with eyes as hard as buttons.
‘Trèvas,’ he growled, jabbing at me with his finger. ‘Fantaumas.’
I turned to Guillaume. ‘What’s he saying?’
He flushed. ‘That there are spirits in these mountains. ’
‘Spirits.’
‘E’l Cerç bronzís dins las brancas dels pins. Mas non. Fantaumas del ivèrn.’
Breillac’s words were vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place them. I turned again to Guillaume.
‘He says that although they sing of the Cers wind crying in the trees when the snows come, it is the voices of those trapped in the mountains.’ He hesitated. ‘The winter ghosts.’
A shiver crept down my spine. For a moment, we stood motionless, each wondering what the others might do. Then I clapped my hands together, as at the punch-line to a splendid joke, and laughed. The spell Breillac’s words had cast over us was broken. I refused to be scared by an old man’s superstitions. And Guillaume and Pierre laughed, too.
‘I’ll keep an eye out,’ I said, slapping Guillaume on the back. ‘Tell your father not to worry. You get off now. Tell him I’ll be here waiting, no question of it.’
Breillac fixed me with a hard stare and the intensity of it shook me a little, I don’t mind admitting. But he said nothing more, and after a moment, he turned and beckoned for his sons to follow.
I stood in the middle of the road watching as they grew smaller and smaller. Guillaume and Pierre, steady, sure-footed giants; their father a small, wiry figure walking between them, his shoulders rounded, as if bowed down by the years.
The sight of them moved me. It can’t have been regret, for one cannot mourn what one has never had. The Breillacs were a family. They belonged to one another. I had never experienced that. I’d been connected to my parents by a shared surname and an address, but nothing more than that. I couldn’t recall a single occasion when George, my father and I had done anything together, even taken a simple walk over the Downs from Lavant to East Dean.
George had been my family. He, alone, had loved me. I stopped as another thought marched into my mind. I smiled. Perhaps, in time, Fabrissa might come to love me. The idea shimmered for a moment, glorious and bright, then burst like a firework on Guy Fawkes Night.
Filled with renewed determination to find her, I strode back to the car. I leaned across from the driver’s seat and retrieved my rubber torch from the glove compartment. My Baedeker was still lying on the passenger seat, its pages swollen with the damp and snow blown in through the broken windscreen. I shook it out of the door to loosen the fragments of glass stuck in the crease of the spine, then studied the map. This time I found Nulle. A tiny dot on the map, the name was buried in the fold of the pages. It was hardly surprising I’d missed it before.
I located Miglos, the village Guillaume had mentioned earlier, and traced a triangle with my finger to fix my route. I frowned. The distances on the map, and what I could see with my own eyes, did not appear to match up. I realised why that might be. Guillaume said there had been mining in the area - quarrying, I presumed - twenty years ago. That would account
for certain differences. I flicked to the front of the Baedeker and found this edition had been printed in 1901.
Aware I was wasting time I could not spare, I decided to use the sun as my guide. Once I was on the far side of the valley, I had faith that the bright yellow paintwork of my Austin would mark my starting point.
What else did I need? I was warm enough in the borrowed fur hat and gloves, but my Fitwells were not designed for such terrain and I’d slipped many times on the climb up here. I twisted round and reached over the seat for my suitcase. I fumbled with the metal clasps until they flipped open, and hooked out my hiking boots. As I did so, my fingers brushed against cold metal.
Placing the boots on the ground outside the car, I turned back and thrust my hand in amongst the hotchpotch of clothes and paperback books until I found the revolver.
I leaned back in the seat and stared at the Webley. It wasn’t loaded and I had no ammunition with me. I could picture the squat cardboard box in the top drawer of my rented lodgings in Chichester. I wondered if it had been a gesture of self-preservation to leave the bullets behind, but now even the question seemed superfluous. The gun was no use to me and would only weigh me down.
I put it back and closed the case. I changed my boots, then, armed only with my rubber torch, I got out of the car and shut the door.
I felt invincible and full of resolve, almost light-headed with it. Fabrissa had taken up residence in every corner of my mind and heart. She was present in every breath I took, in every thought. What I would do once I found the cave - if I found it - did not come into it.
Looking back, it seems ludicrous that I could have been so convinced by a glimpse of blue seen across the valley, but in truth it did not cross my mind that it could be anyone but Fabrissa. She had told me to find her and I would keep my word. Such naivety, such delusion.
But such wonderful hope.
The Cave Discovered
I made my way back to the signpost and entered the forest once more, feeling like a boy playing truant from school.
The atmosphere felt different. It was partly because there was no mist and the sunlight filtered down through the canopy of mostly bare branches, scattering patches of gold upon the path. But it was also because, thanks to its association now with Fabrissa, I felt at home. I felt part of the landscape, welcome in it, no longer an intruder.
Now I knew where I was going, I covered the ground quickly. Soon I was standing at the place where the twisted roots were visible beneath the scrub. I took a deep breath and began to pull at the undergrowth. It was dense and matted and the frost held everything in its sharp grip. But the fur-lined gloves, although cumbersome, provided good protection, and after a few sharp tugs I managed to pull back a branch, releasing the aroma of damp earth. Sure enough, it revealed a staircase of roots snaking up through the deep evergreen, just as Fabrissa had said.
Bracing my foot against the slope, I kept pulling, a lone contestant in a tug-of-war, until the branch came loose enough for me to duck underneath. I began to climb, hands on my thighs, locking my muscles with each step, like Mallory and Irvine on Everest, going for the top. The roots were slippery and unsafe, and I stumbled onto my hands and knees several times. The steps grew further and further apart, and steeper, too, until in the end it was more like climbing a ladder that twisted all the way up the mountain.
I began to tire. It was exhausting work, always bent double, and I could not imagine how Fabrissa and Jean had managed it in the dead of night and in fear of their lives. But they had. And so could I.
Just when I had reached the limits of my endurance and thought I could go no further, I found myself in the open. I straightened up and stretched my cramped shoulders and arms, then perched on a boulder for a moment to catch my breath and take stock of my surroundings.
I was in a glade, ringed by trees. Although it wasn’t the plateau I had spied from the road, it wasn’t far from it. I recognised the green circle of leaves and branches, like a May Queen’s crown. Behind me, I could just make out the splash of yellow of my motor car on the grey road. My base camp. And above me, like gaping mouths in the rock face, was a series of openings beneath the jutting escarpments.
I plucked a few stray twigs and branches from my coat, tossed them to the ground, then stood up and prepared to go on.
Did it worry me that there were no signs of human habitation? No wisps of smoke visible? Not even a shepherd’s hut? Certainly no evidence of a village or hamlet? I don’t think it did. At that moment, all I could think about was how I was going to make it to the summit in one piece.
I continued to climb, my thighs shrieking in complaint. Each step was purgatory, an act of endurance, but I found my rhythm and stuck to it. Head down, shoulders forward, knees braced. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck beneath the heavy fur hat, though I knew better than to remove it. My fingers were swimming inside the gloves and my toes were prickly inside my woollen socks and hiking boots. Everything hurt.
But I made it. Now I was directly below the cleft in the rock. From this vantage point, the caves looked to be natural, not man-made, though I was too far away to be certain. A few appeared large enough to harbour a man standing upright. Others only just sufficient for a child to squeeze inside on his hands and knees.
Once I got close enough to see it properly, the beauty of the place took what little breath remained in my lungs. The wind and the rain, the heat and cold, had sculpted the rock over thousands of years. At first glance, it reminded me of photographs I’d seen of tombs in the Holy Land, of the tragedy at Masada. But here in the Ariège, everything was green and grey and brown beneath the dusting of snow, rather than the yellow of the desert.
I glanced at the sky. Counting back from the time at which Breillac and his boys had left me, I estimated it must be somewhere around one o’clock. Time enough.
I walked slowly along the ridge, peering into the hollows and battling down a seeping sense of disappointment. None of them could be the cave within which Fabrissa and her family had taken shelter. Most only went back a yard or two. Nor was there anywhere for her to hide now.
Then I noticed a ribbon of grass, winding up between the rocks. Leaning my shoulder against the side of the mountain to anchor myself, and trying not to think about what would happen if I fell, I edged towards it. Just a few more steps. Don’t look down, Freddie, don’t look down. And then I saw, directly above my head, an overhang of grey rock, like a protruding lip. Beneath it was an opening the shape of a half moon.
Dizzy with relief, I leaned against the broad flank of the mountain and allowed my heart to settle. I’d done it. I mustered my strength to cover the last few feet and, finally, I was there. Fabrissa’s cave.
What was I thinking then? Did I think she would be inside waiting for me, like a game of hide-and-seek at a party? Or perhaps, like a treasure hunt, that there would be secreted in the cave some kind of a clue as to where I should go next? I can’t remember. I can only recall my pride at having faced down the challenge and the exquisite anticipation at the thought of seeing Fabrissa again. For I did still believe she was there, somewhere, trusting me to find her.
‘Fabrissa?’ I called out, but only my own voice answered in the echo.
I peered into the darkness of the cave. At its highest point the opening was about four feet high and five or six feet wide. I turned over a stone with the tip of my boot. The surface was touched with snow but the damp soil beneath was alive with worms and beetles. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, the short hairs rose on the back of my neck. This was the right cave, I was sure of it. But I felt a sense of apprehension. One could say a premonition. Something was not quite right. I ignored it. I wasn’t going to turn back now.
I slipped the torch from my pocket. The beam was weak, suggesting the battery was low, but it cast a useful light. I lowered my head and stepped inside. It was cool and damp in the entrance but, if anything, a little warmer than outside. I shone the torch around, sending shadows dancing along the jag
ged grey walls as I edged slowly forward. The ground sloped down beneath my feet, gritty and uneven. Loose stones and small pieces of rock crunched beneath my boots. The daylight grew faint at my back.
Suddenly, I was forced to stop, unable to go another step further. A wall of stone and rubble, braced by a carapace of wood, blocked the passage. Holding the torch higher, I ran my eyes over the obstruction. Rubble held tightly in place by timbers. And, with a gnawing unease, I remembered what Fabrissa had said as we sat beside the dewpond, though it had barely registered at the time: No one came back. Not one.
I pulled at one of the struts of wood. I expected resistance, but it crumbled to powder in my hands. I pulled at another piece and it too came easily free, crumbling in my fist, eaten away by woodworm or termites. Beating down a rising sense of panic, I propped my torch on a stone ledge and attacked the wall. The gloves were too thick to get between the tiny cracks in the facade, so I tossed them aside, the hat, too, and clawed at the rubble with my bare hands.
I don’t know how long I worked, dislodging one stone, then another. The tips of my fingers were bleeding and my upper arms ached, but I was possessed by a wild need to know what lay behind the barricade. Dust billowed into the narrow passageway as I worked.
Finally, there was an opening as big as my hand. I kept going, using rocks as tools to chip away at the hole, then reached my arm in as far as my shoulder and heaved until it was wide enough for me to get through.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself, I suppose, to cope with whatever might be to come, then clambered into the prison of rock and stone.
Bones and Shadows and Dust
Straight away, the smell of air long undisturbed hit me, musty and expectant after its long confinement.
After a few paces, the tunnel curved a little to the left, then immediately opened out into an extraordinary, soaring cavern, the dimensions of a cathedral. In awe at the sheer scale of it, I shone the torch at the walls and up above my head. The beam vanished into the darkness.