The Winter Ghosts

  The hall seemed colder and I felt the same sense of desolation when I’d first arrived in Nulle, except now the sadness was tinged with fear.

  At the far end of the room, an altercation broke out. Voices raised, the sound of a bench being overturned. At first, I assumed it was some kind of drunken brawl. It was late and the wine had flowed freely all night.

  Fabrissa turned towards the entrance. I did the same, at the precise moment the heavy wooden door was flung open. Two men strode into the hall.

  ‘What the Devil . . .’

  Their faces were concealed beneath square iron helmets and the candlelight glinted on their unsheathed swords, sending flashes of gold dancing around them like sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil.

  For a moment, nobody spoke. Briefly I wondered if this was part of the evening’s entertainment. Some absurd historical re-enactment of the original, long-gone fête de Saint-Etienne taken too seriously. Like the costumes or the traditional foods or the troubadour and his vielle.

  Then a woman screamed and I knew it was not. Panic took hold. My uncouth dining companion scrambled to his feet, shoving me with his elbow. I fell against Fabrissa and felt her heavy hair briefly touch my skin, a subtle scent of lavender and apple.

  ‘Freddie,’ she whispered.

  A small group of men was attempting to drive the intruders from the hall. Some brandished hunting daggers, drawn from their sheaths on their belts. Others grabbed at whatever makeshift weapon came easily to hand: pieces of wood, irons from the fire, even the heavy skewer on which the meat had been served.

  The blades jabbed and sliced the air, though never connected. It was an unequal fight for, although the soldiers had the advantage of heavier weaponry, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered. The crowd was shouting and pushing forward now in a mass of arms and legs. The cry went up to barricade the door. The mood was ugly, likely to escalate. I did not want Fabrissa to be caught up in it.

  And despite the exhaustions of the day, despite the fact that it must have been well past midnight, I felt suddenly alive. Purposeful. Adrenalin coursed through me. This time I wouldn’t funk it.

  I reached for Fabrissa. ‘We must leave.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Her tone was grave, as if my rather obvious suggestion held some significance beyond simple common sense. I took her hand. An intense heat shot through my veins, carried the singing in my blood to the base of my spine. I seemed to grow taller. I felt capable of anything.

  ‘Come on. Let’s get you away from here.’

  Did I manage to keep the smile from my face? Looking back, I’m sure I did not because, finally, my hour had come. All my life I’d been second best. Never the right man for the job. Not invincible.

  Not George.

  That night it was different. Fabrissa had put her trust in me. Had chosen me. It was a gift I’d never thought to receive. And even now, more than five years after the event, and in the light of everything that subsequently happened, the ecstasy of that moment will never leave me.

  ‘Is there another way out?’

  She pointed to the far corner of the hall.

  The soldiers had been driven back, but now there was fighting everywhere, between those marked out by a yellow cross and those not. I felt I was observing the scene from above, disconnected and yet at the heart of things. Holding on to Fabrissa tightly, I launched forward into the mass of bodies, swimming against the tide. We ran, she and I, clumsily hand in hand.

  ‘Through there?’ I said, raising my voice to be heard. I could see a small door set in the wall, partially hidden behind a pyramid of wooden chairs and a heavy wooden chest with a metal clasp and bands.

  She nodded. ‘It leads to a tunnel that runs beneath the Ostal.’

  With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I hauled the chest aside and tossed the chairs out of the way as if they were made of pasteboard.

  Was I scared? I should have been, certainly, but I don’t believe I was. Instead, what lingers in my memory is my single-minded determination to get Fabrissa to safety. I unhooked the latch and pushed at the door with the flat of my hands until there was a gap wide enough for us to slip through. We ducked under the low lintel and down into the darkness we went.

  The steps were shallow, worn away at the centre, and I held her hand even tighter to prevent her from slipping. In the hall above, I could hear women screaming and men shouting instructions and children crying. The sound of wood splintering and the clatter of metal on metal. Then the door thudded shut at our backs and we were plunged into silence.

  I hurtled forward, but was forced to slow down. I couldn’t get the dimensions of the tunnel fixed in my mind. The air was dry at least, not damp, with a smell that reminded me of cathedrals and catacombs, of all those hidden places lying forgotten across the long and dusty years. A cobweb draped itself across my face, my mouth and eyes. I spat the filigree threads away, though the sensation lingered.

  ‘Shall I go ahead of you?’ Her voice was soft in the dark. ‘I have been this way before.’

  I squeezed her hand to let her know I was fine with things as they were, and felt her return the pressure. I smiled.

  ‘Where does the tunnel come out?’

  ‘On the hillside to the west of the village. It is not far.’

  The Yellow Cross

  We stumbled along in the dark. After our initial descent, the tunnel quickly flattened out for a while, before beginning slowly to climb again. My breath came in ragged bursts and sweat gathered on my temples and cheeks, making my cut sting.

  I concentrated on keeping my footing. I could see nothing at all. The roof of the tunnel seemed sometimes to skim my head, and the walls were close enough to touch, but I had no sense of where we were. Fabrissa, though, seemed unchanged. She appeared to be neither tired nor breathless in our claustrophobic surroundings.

  So we pressed on, on through the subterranean world, until the atmosphere began to alter. The path grew steeper still, and I felt a whisper of fresh air on my face.

  The ground suddenly veered precipitously upwards. The perspective ahead of us slipped from black to grey. Pinpricks of moonlight gleamed around what looked like a door blocking the end of the tunnel.

  I sighed with relief.

  ‘There is a brass ring,’ said Fabrissa. ‘It opens inwards.’

  I ran my fingers over the surface of the wood, like a blind man, until I found it. The handle was cold and stiff. I grasped it with both hands and pulled. It didn’t shift. I braced my feet apart, and tried again. This time, I felt the door straining at the hinges, though it still didn’t budge.

  ‘Could it be barred from the outside?’

  ‘I do not think so. It is probably because this particular escape route has not been used for a very long time.’

  There wasn’t time to wonder what she meant. I just kept at it, pulling steadily, then following it up with a series of sharp jerks, until finally there was a dull crack and the wood around the hinges splintered.

  ‘Nearly,’ I said, pushing my fingers in the gap between the door and the frame.

  Fabrissa put her hands below mine and together we tugged and wrenched until, suddenly, we were outside in the chill night air. Behind us, the door hung loose on its hinges, reminding me of the entrance to an old copper mine George and I had discovered one wet August holiday in Cornwall. He, of course, had wanted to go in, but I’d been too scared.

  Different times, different places.

  I turned to Fabrissa, standing so still in the flat, white moonlight.

  ‘We did it,’ I panted, trying to catch my breath.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, we did.’

  We were standing out on a bare patch of ground about halfway up the hillside, to the east of the village. The opposite side of the valley, I realised, from the direction in which I had approached Nulle the previous afternoon. I felt light-headed, intoxicated by the night air, by what we had achieved, by her company.

  Then I felt a stab o
f guilt I could not ignore.

  ‘I must go back. I have to do something. Help. People could be seriously hurt.’

  She sighed. ‘It is over now.’

  ‘We can’t be certain of that.’

  ‘All is quiet,’ she said. ‘Listen. Look.’ She pointed down at the village. ‘All is calm.’

  I followed the line of her finger and picked out the church spire, the patchwork of houses and buildings and alleyways that made up Nulle. The Ostal itself, white in the moonlight, was directly below us. Nothing was stirring. No one was about. No lights were burning. I could hear nothing but the enduring silence of the mountains.

  ‘It was all part of the fête?’ I said. ‘The soldiers, the fighting?’

  But much as I wanted to be persuaded there was no need for me to intervene, it had seemed too brutal to be mere play-acting.

  ‘Come,’ she said quietly. ‘There is little time left.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To a place we may sit and talk a while longer.’

  Fabrissa set off down the hillside without another word, giving me no choice but to follow. She walked fast, her long blue dress swishing about her legs. Beneath the swing and sway of her hair, I caught glimpses of the yellow cross. Without thinking about what I was intending to do, I hurried to catch up with her.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. With a sharp tug, I pulled the tattered piece of fabric from her back. ‘There. That’s more like it.’

  She smiled. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know. It looked wrong. Like it shouldn’t be there.’ I hesitated. ‘Do you mind?’

  I felt her grey eyes sweep across my face, as if committing every part of it to memory. She shook her head.

  ‘No. It was brave.’

  ‘Brave?’

  ‘Honourable.’

  While I was still pondering her choice of words, Fabrissa had set off again. I pushed the cross of fabric into my pocket and followed.

  ‘So, what do the crosses signify? I saw several of the other guests wearing them, too.’

  She did not answer and she did not slow down. The night air seemed to shift as she passed, and there was something about the translucent moon-shine that gave me the impression she was made of air or water, rather than blood and bone. I did not press her further. I did not want to disturb the delicate balance between us, and that seemed more important than any questions I might want answered.

  The path wound down through the frosted grass. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the mouth of the tunnel diminishing behind us. We were close to the village now, but rather than continuing down into Nulle, Fabrissa led me to a small dewpond halfway down the hillside and indicated we should rest. I sat down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree, grateful for the chance to take the weight off my feet. The soft-soled boots had begun to pinch.

  The sky was beginning to turn from black to inky blue. When I looked back up at the track, I could just make out the silver imprint of my footprints on the grass in the early-morning dew. Dawn was not far away.

  I thought for a moment of the strangeness of dew in December, then how queer it was that I was not cold, despite having abandoned my coat and hat in the Ostal. I felt curiously weightless, as though, having spent the night in Fabrissa’s company, I had taken on some of her qualities of delicacy and lightness.

  I looked down into the still surface of the water. My cheeks were hollow with lack of sleep and my eyes, rimmed with exhaustion, stared back at me in the uncertain daybreak. Fabrissa’s reflection was less clear. I turned, scared that she might have slipped away. But she was still there.

  ‘I feared you had—’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, reading my mind.

  ‘We don’t have to go back.’

  ‘There is still a little time left.’ She smiled. ‘I should like to tell you something of myself, should you have the heart to listen.’

  My heart leapt. ‘Anything you want to tell me, I would be honoured to hear.’

  I hadn’t smoked all night, I suppose because nobody else had. Hadn’t even thought about it. But now I fished in my pocket and pulled out my cigarette case and matches.

  ‘Do you mind?’ I said, taking one out and tapping it on the silver lid.

  Fabrissa leaned towards me. ‘What are they?’

  ‘Gauloise,’ I replied. ‘I’m a Dunhill man in the normal run of things, but they’re impossible to get down here.’

  I offered the case to her. She shook her head, but seemed transfixed by what I was doing. She watched intently as I put the cigarette in my mouth, then cupped it with my hand, struck the match and held it against the tip. Her eyes grew wide as a wisp of smoke wreathed up into the dawn air and she reached out, as if to wind it around her fingers like thread.

  ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ I laughed, charmed. ‘That’s one way of putting it, I suppose.’ I snapped my case shut, returning it and the matches to my pocket. ‘You’re remarkable. I can honestly say I’ve never met anyone like you before.’

  ‘I am no different from anyone else,’ she said.

  I smiled, thinking both how wrong she was and how delightful she did not realise it.

  Fabrissa’s Story

  We sat in silence for a while. I smoked. She fixed her eyes on the dark horizon, as though counting the stars. Were there actually stars? I can’t remember.

  Then I heard her catch her breath and knew Fabrissa had been arranging her story in her mind, as I had done. I crushed the remains of my cigarette beneath the sole of my boot and turned to listen. I wanted to know everything about her, as much as she would tell me, anything. Tiny details. Irrelevant, beautiful details.

  ‘I was born on an afternoon in spring,’ she began. ‘The world was coming back to life after a hard winter. The snow had melted and the streams were flowing again. Tiny mountain flowers of blue and pink and yellow filled the fields of the upper valley. My father used to say that on the day I was born, he heard the first cuckoo sing. A good omen, he said.

  ‘Our neighbours came with a loaf they had baked, white flour, not coarse brown grain. Others also brought gifts: a brown woollen blanket for winter, furs, an earthenware cup, a wooden box containing spices. Most precious, salt wrapped up in a piece of cotton, dyed blue.

  ‘It was May. Already, the shepherds and their flocks had returned from their winter pastures in Spain and the village was full of life and sound - the women chatting in the square, the wooden treadles of their looms clattering on the cobbled stones.’

  She paused. I was happy to wait. I wanted to let her tell her story at her own pace, in her own way, as she had allowed me to do. Besides, the pleasure of listening to her voice was such that she could have recited a laundry list and still it would have rung like music in my ears.

  ‘My birth was seen as a sign that things might be changing for the better,’ she said. ‘And my mother and father were well liked and respected in the village. They were loyal, honourable people. My father wrote letters on behalf of those who could not read or write. He explained the ways of the courts to those who needed representation or his help. Each fulfilled the role most suited to his character.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, though I did not.

  ‘After years of violence and denunciation, it seemed our enemies had set their sights elsewhere and, for a while, we were at peace. There were, of course, the usual struggles, disagreements common to communities living in the shadow of war. But they were isolated incidents, not part of a systematic reprisal. And although we all knew someone who had been taken, most people were released with no more than the punishment of wearing the cross.’

  Instinctively, my hand moved to my pocket. I took out the scrap of material and laid it across my knee.

  ‘This was a way of marking people out?’

  I looked down at the tattered piece of cloth, the yellow faded and sour. I had heard of the Germans inflicting penalties on civilians - The Times had written of it - but nothing like this.
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  ‘It was intended to humiliate, certainly,’ she replied. ‘But when so many were branded in the same way, it became a sign of good character.’

  ‘A badge of honour.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Realising now it might be a symbol of her survival and that, therefore, she might wish to keep it, I held it out.

  ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have taken it.’

  She shook her head. I hesitated, then returned it to my pocket. It was hardly an orthodox love token, but it was all that I had.

  ‘The raids became more frequent. Whole villages arrested, or so it was said - men, women, children. In Montaillou, little under a day’s walk, everybody over the age of twelve was taken before the court in Pamiers. The interrogations went on for weeks. People talked of it in hushed whispers, behind hands and closed doors. Even so, we hoped our village was too small to matter to anyone but us.’

  For the second time in so many days, my school-master’s dusty words came back into my mind.

  ‘A green land soaked red with the blood of the faithful,’ I murmured.

  The effect of my words on Fabrissa was immediate. Her eyes lit up.

  ‘You know something of our history?’

  ‘Very little, I’m afraid. Only that this region is no stranger to conflict.’

  ‘You will know, then, of the endless years spent fearing those we loved would be taken from us in the night. Never knowing whom to trust, that was the worst of it. Seduced by promises of safety and wealth, there were those who became spies. Who betrayed their own. I feared our enemies, but did not hate them.’ She hesitated. ‘But those who turned away from who they were and joined the fight against us, it was hard not to despise them.’

  I nodded. In the early days of the War, I suppose it must have been during George’s first leave home, I’d overheard him and Father talking through the study door, left ajar. I remember him explaining how he bore no hatred towards the ordinary German soldier, the men like him who fought for their country, fair and square. Father nodding, ‘yes, yes’, and the air thick with cigarettes and whisky. But for those who would not fight, the Conchies, or those who spied for the other side, he had nothing but disgust. And as I listened in the hall, excluded from this man’s world, I heard the admiration in Father’s voice. And, God help me, I was jealous.