Labyrinth (71 page)

He broke off. Her heart ached for him.

“You must not feel guilty any longer, Sajhe. Now you know what happened, you must forgive yourself.”

Alice could feel him slipping from her.

Keep him talking. Don’t let him go to sleep.

“There was a prophecy,” he said, “that in the lands of the Pays d’Oc, in our times, one would be born whose destiny was to bear witness to the tragedy that overtook these lands. Like those before me - like Abraham, Methuselah, Harif -I did not wish it. But I accepted it.”

Sajhe gasped for breath. Alice drew him closer, cradling his head in her arms. When?“ she tried to say. ”Tell me.“

“Alais summoned the Grail. Here. In this very chamber. I was twenty five years old. I had returned to Los Seres, believing my life was about to change. I believed I could woo Alais and be loved by her.”

“She did love you,” Alice said fiercely.

“Harif taught her to understand the ancient language of the Egyptians,” he continued, smiling. “It seems that some trace of that knowledge lives yet in you. Using the skills Harif had taught her and from her knowledge of the parchments, we came here. Like you, when the time came, Alais knew what to say. The Grail worked through her.”

“How…” Alice stumbled. What happened?“

“I remember the smooth touch of the air on my skin, the flicker of the candles, the beautiful voices spiralling in the dark. The words seemed to flow from her lips, hardly spoken. Alais stood before the altar, Harif with her.”

“There must have been others.”

There were, but… you will think it strange, but I can hardly remember. All I could see was Alais. Her face, rapt in concentration, a slight line between her eyes where she frowned. Her hair flowed down her back like a sheet of water. I saw nothing but her, was aware of nothing but her. She held the cup in her hands and spoke the words. Her eyes flew open in a single moment of illumination. She gave the cup to me and I drank.“

His eyelids were fluttering open and shut rapidly, like the beating of a butterfly’s wings.

“If your life was such a burden to you, why did you carry on without her?”

“Perque?
he said with surprise. Why? Because it was what Alais wanted. I had to live to tell the story of what happened to the people of these lands, here within these mountains and the plains. To make sure that their story did not die. That is the purpose of the Grail. To help those to bear witness. History is written by the victorious, the liars, the strongest, the most determined. Truth is found most often in the silence, in the quiet places.”

Alice nodded. “You did this, Sajhe. You made a difference.”

“Guilhem de Tudela wrote a false record of the Crusade against us for the French.
La Chanson de la Croisade,
he called it. When he died, an anonymous poet, one who was sympathetic to the Pays d’Oc instead, completed it.
La Canso
. Our story.”

Despite everything, Alice found herself smiling.

“Los mots, vivents,
‘ he whispered. Living words. ”It was the beginning. I vowed to Alais I would speak the truth, write the truth, so that future generations would know of the horror that once was done in the lands in their name. That they were remembered.“

Alice nodded.

“Harif understood. He had walked the lonely path before me. He had travelled the world and seen how words were twisted and broken and turned into lies. He too lived to bear witness.” Sajhe drew in his breath.

“He lived for only a short time after Alais, although he was more than eight hundred years old when he died. Here, in Los Seres, with Bertrande and me at his side.”

“But where have you lived, all these years? How have you lived?”

“I watched the green of spring give way to the gold of summer, the copper of autumn give way to the white of winter as I have sat and waited for the fading of the light. Over and over again I have asked myself why? If I had known how it would feel to live with such loneliness, to stand, the sole witness to the endless cycle of birth and life and death, what would I have done? I have survived this long life with emptiness in my heart, an emptiness that over the years has spread and spread until it became bigger than my heart itself”.“

“She loved you, Sajhe,” she said, softly. “Not in the way you loved her, but truly and deeply.”

A look of peace had come over his face. “
Es vertat
. Now I know it.”

“If…”

Another flurry of coughing overtook him. This time, specks of blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. Alice wiped them away with the hem of her robe.

He struggled to sit. “I have written it all down for you, Alice. My last testament. It is waiting for you in Los Seres. In Alais’ house, where we lived, which now I pass to you.”

In the distance, Alice thought she heard the sound of sirens piercing the still night of the mountain.

“They’re nearly here,” she said, keeping her grief in check. “I said they’d come. Stay with me. Please don’t give up.”

Sajhe shook his head. “It is done. My journey is ended. Yours is just beginning.”

Alice smoothed his white hair away from his face.

“I am not her,” she said softly. “I am not Alais.”

He gave a long, soft sigh. “I know. But she lives on in you… and you in her.” He stopped. Alice could see how much it hurt him to talk. “I wish we could have had longer, Alice. But to have met you, to have shared these hours with you. It is more than ever I hoped.”

Sajhe fell silent. The last vestiges of colour drained from his face, from his hands, until there was nothing left.

A prayer, one spoken a long time ago, came to her mind.

“Payre sant, Dieu dreyturier de bons esperits.”
The once familiar words fell easily from her lips. “Holy Father, legitimate God of good spirits, grant us to know what Thou knowest, and to love what Thou lovest.”

Biting back her tears, Alice held him in her arms while his breathing became lighter, softer. Finally, it stopped altogether.

EPILOGUE

Los Seres

SUNDAY 8 JULY 2OO7

It is eight o’clock in the evening. The end of another perfect summer’s day.

Alice walks over to the wide, casement window and opens the shutters to let in the slanting orange light. A slight breeze skims her bare arms.

Her skin is the colour of hazelnuts and her hair is tied in a single plait down her back.

The sun is low now, a perfect red circle in the pink and white sky. It casts huge black shadows across the neighbouring peaks of the Sabarthes Mountains, like swathes of material laid out to dry. From the window she can see the Col des Sept Freres and behind it the Pic de St Bartelemy.

It is two years to the day that Sajhe died.

At first, Alice found it hard to live with the memories. The sound of the gun in the claustrophobic chamber; the trembling of the earth; the white face in the darkness; the look on Will’s face as he burst into the chamber with Inspector Noubel.

Most of all, she was haunted by the memory of the light fading in Audric’s eyes - Sajhe, as she learned to think of him. It was peace she saw in them at the end, not sorrow, but it has not made her pain any the less.

But the more Alice learned, the more the terrors that held her locked in those final moments began to fade. The past lost its power to hurt her.

She knows Marie-Cecile and her son were killed by the falling rock, both lost to the mountain itself in the earthquake. Paul Authie was found where Francois-Baptiste had shot him, the timer detonating the four charges ticking relentlessly down to zero beside his dead body. An Armageddon of his own making.

As that summer turned into autumn, autumn to winter, Alice began to recover, with Will’s help. Time is doing its work. Time and the promise of a new life. Gradually, the painful memories are fading. Like old photographs, half remembered and indistinct, they gather dust in her mind.

Alice sold her flat in England and together with the proceeds from the sale of her aunt’s house in Salleles d’Aude, she and Will came to Los Seres.

The house where Alais once lived with Sajhe, Bertrande and Harif is now their home. They have added to it, made it suitable for modern living, but the spirit of the place is unaltered.

The secret of the Grail is safe, as Alais had intended it should be, hidden here in the timeless mountains. The three papyri, torn from their medieval books, lie buried under the rock and stone.

Alice understands that she was destined to finish what had been left unfinished eight hundred years before. She also understands, as Alais did, that the real Grail lies in the love handed down from generation to generation, the words spoken by father to son, mother to daughter. The truth lies all about us. In the stones, in the rocks, in the changing pattern of the mountain seasons.

Through the shared stories of our past, we do not die.

Alice does not believe she can put it into words. Unlike Sajhe, she is not a spinner of tales, a writer. She wonders if perhaps it is beyond words.

Call it God, call it faith. Perhaps the Grail is too great a truth to be spoken or tied down in time and space and context by so slippery a thing as language.

Alice puts her hands on the ledge and breathes in the subtle smells of evening. Wild thyme, broom, the shimmering memory of heat on the stones, mountain parsley and mint, sage, the scents of her herb garden.

Her reputation is growing. What started as a sequence of private favours, supplying herbs to the restaurants and neighbours in the villages, has become a profitable business. Now, most of the hotels and shops in the area, even as far away as Foix and Mirepoix, carry a range of their products, with the distinctive
Epice Pelletier et Fille
label. The name of her ancestors, reclaimed now as her own.

The
hameau
, Los Seres, is not yet on the map. It is too small. But soon it will be.
Benleu
.

In the study below, the keyboard has fallen silent. Alice can hear Will moving about in the kitchen, getting plates from the dresser and bread from the pantry. Soon, she will go down. He will open a bottle of wine and they will drink while he cooks.

Tomorrow, Jeanne Giraud will come, a dignified, charming woman who has become part of their lives. In the afternoon, they will go to the nearest village and lay flowers at a monument in the square, which commemorates the celebrated Cathar historian and Resistance fighter, Audric S. Baillard. On the plaque, there is an Occitan proverb, chosen by Alice.

“Pas a pas se va luenh.”

Later, Alice will walk alone into the mountains where a different plaque marks the spot where he lies beneath the hills, as he always wanted. The stone simply reads SAJHE.

It is enough that he is remembered.

The Family Tree, Sajhe’s first gift to Alice, hangs on the wall in the study. Alice has made three changes. She has added the date of Alais’ and Sajhe’s deaths, separated by eight hundred years.

She added Will’s name to hers and the date of their marriage.

At the very end, where the story is continuing still, she’s added a line:

SAJHESSE GRACE FARMER PELLETIER, 25 February 2001.

Alice smiles and walks over to the cot where their daughter is stirring.

Her pale, sleepy toes twitch as she starts to wake. Alice catches her breath as her daughter opens her eyes.

She plants a murmuring kiss on the top of her daughter’s head and begins a lullaby in the old language, handed down from generation to generation.

Bona nueit, bona nueit…

Braves amics, pica mieja-nueit

Cal finir velhada

E jos la flassada

One day, Alice thinks, Sajhesse might sing it to a child of her own.

Holding her daughter in her arms, Alice walks back to the window, thinking of all the things she will teach her. The stories she will tell her of the past and of how things came to be.

Alais no longer comes to her in her dreams. But as Alice stands in the lading light looking out over the ancient peaks and crests of the mountains and valleys that stretch further than her eye can see, she feels the presence of the past all around her, embracing her. Spirits, friends, ghosts who hold out their hands and whisper of their lives, share their secrets with her. They connect her to all those who have stood here before - and all those yet to come - dreaming of what life might hold.

In the distance, a white moon is rising in the speckled sky, promising another fine day tomorrow.

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