The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales (6 page)

Higher into the clearer air, leaving the world far behind. Now Claire could picture the enemy mercenaries scaling the vertiginous slope on the south-eastern side of the mountain, attempting to take possession of the
Roc de la Tour
, a spike of stone rising up on the easternmost point of the summit ridge. Catapult and mangonel, an endless bombardment. For those trapped in the citadel, the relentless noise of the missiles must have broken their spirit as surely as they battered the castle walls.

Higher still and higher, up through the clouds.

Claire was only a few dozen yards from the main entrance. Her breath tore in her chest and her red duffel coat felt cumbersome, but she kept going, head down, until finally she reached the Great Gate.

Having planned this journey for so long, now she was finally here, she was suddenly reluctant to break the spell and enter. She needed to savour the moment. She feared the voices would be too strong. Or, perhaps worse, that she would not hear them at all. She took one last look out across the Ariège spread out below her, a patchwork of bare fields and evergreen firs, and then she stepped through the low, wide arch and into the ruins of the castle.

It was all much smaller and more confined than she’d expected, longer and thinner too. There was no beauty here, no mystery, just an empty shell of stone and rock. Claire stood in the uninhabited space. She had hoped to feel an immediate sense of homecoming, proof that she had made the right decision, but she felt nothing. An absence of emotion, neither good nor bad. And though she’d passed no one on the path going up or coming down, she was nonetheless surprised to find herself alone. She had thought the anniversary of the fall of Montségur might have drawn others, pilgrims like her, in search of the spirit of the past.

Claire looked around to get her bearings. Immediately opposite the Great Gate was another smaller arch, more like a door than a gate, which hundreds of years ago she knew had led down to the medieval village. Slowly, she began to walk around, examining the walls as if she could see pictures in the rocks. She went first to the western tip, where the main hall had been, peering, looking for significance, for meaning, in the stone and finding none. She persisted, walking now along the northern wall until she came to a crumbling staircase that had clearly once linked the lower to the upper floors of the keep. When she tilted her head and looked up, she could see the holes in the rock walls where perhaps the joists had rested.

Only then did Claire see she was not, in fact, the only visitor.

Someone was standing on the very top of the outer wall of the citadel, looking out over the valley. It was hard to be certain, but it looked like a woman. She narrowed her eyes. A woman with black hair in a long red coat that reached almost to the ground.

Claire took a step closer, wondering how she’d failed to notice her before and how she had managed to get up to that section of the wall. There were so many broken steps. The lower flight presented no problems, but then it simply stopped. It was as if two different workmen, one starting at the top, one at the bottom, had failed to meet. She wanted to call out, but it seemed intrusive and she didn’t want to startle her fellow pilgrim. Even from this distance, Claire could see the top of the wall was narrow and it would be icy.

At the same time, she felt a fierce need to talk to her. She stepped up to the wall and ran her fingers over the handholds, looking for gaps in the stone, testing her weight. The woman’s outline was clearer now, silhouetted against the cold, bright sky. She was about the same height and build as Claire, although her clothes were oddly old-fashioned. A moss-green dress hung beneath the hem of the red cloak, not a coat at all. She had now pulled the hood over her head, obscuring her face. Even so, there was something familiar about her stillness, her patience, as if she was keeping vigil high on the ancient walls. As if she was waiting for something or someone.

Claire began to climb.

She thought she could hear singing. The harsh sound of male voices this time, not the sweeter tones of women.

Veni, veni
.

Claire pushed her fingers into crevices, forced her unwieldy boots into cracks in the rock, and pulled herself up. She did not fall.

Luck, determination, something carried her over the gap that yawned between the lower and upper levels, until, finally, she too was standing on the wall.

Claire took a step towards the woman.

‘I’m here,’ she said. ‘I’ve come.’

The woman was standing on the very edge of the wall, even though she didn’t seem to have moved. The edge of her dress skimmed the frosted ground. Claire sensed, rather than saw, she was smiling.

‘At last,’ the woman murmured as she stretched out a thin, white hand. ‘
A la perfin
.’

Claire took it. Together, they stepped out into the sky.

As they fell, the woman’s hood fell back from her face. Claire smiled at the sight of familiar features looking back at her. Was it her ancestor, long dead or, rather, her old self, eyes bright and singing with hope, the person she had been before grief took the life from her?

Claire was home. No more past or future now, only an everlasting present.

The hire car was found a few days later, half buried in the snow. No one understood how she’d managed to reach the village in the first place. The blizzard had been one of the most sudden and the worst in living memory, shutting all roads in and out of the village from late on the evening of 15th March until early on the 19th.

Claire’s body was never found, though they searched for weeks. After all, she had no further need of it.

Her diary, however, was discovered beneath a table in a local restaurant, lying open on the page for Friday 16th March. Since the owner and his wife had been away all winter, no one could explain how it came to be there. Not a suicide note, but the signs were all there. The unexplained death of her baby son in his cot: the not-knowing-why and the loss. The guilt. It was a grief that would never leave her, a loneliness that would never let go.

There were only two words written on the page –
M
ONS
S
ALVATIONIS
–
but the date was ringed in red.

Author’s Note

In 1989, we bought a tiny house in the shadow of the medieval city walls of Carcassonne in the south-west of France, a region known as the Languedoc. The area is the inspiration for my trilogy of novels –
Labyrinth
,
Sepulchre
and
Citadel
– as well as various stories and essays.

This is one of the earliest stories I published. Written during 2003, the inspiration was my first visit to Montségur in the Pyrenees in the 1990s. My husband, two-year-old daughter and I left Carcassonne in a blaze of spring sunshine, yet found ourselves in the mountains in the grip of a blizzard.

We found a seemingly deserted restaurant, though there was a burning fire and food laid out on tables. In real life, of course, the owner had popped out and came back soon enough, but for some time we were the only people there.

In a story, things are different . . .

The title comes from the practice of illuminating manucripts where significant or important days are picked out in red, known as rubrics. The first Council of Nicaea in 325 CE decreed which were to be Saints’ Days, Feasts and other Holy Days, which came to be printed on medieval church calendars in red. The term – a ‘red letter day’ – came into wider usage with the publication of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, in which the calendar showed special holy days illustrated in red ink.

The story was first published in an anthology called
Little Black Dress
edited by Susie Maguire.

THE DROWNED VILLAGE

The Quibéron Peninsula, Brittany
November 1912

The Drowned Village

The sea has many voices,
Many gods and many voices

from ‘The Dry Salvages’,
Four Quartets
T. S. ELIOT

It was mid-November. Autumn was already stripping the trees, though winter had not taken a grip on the land. Farms and market gardens were still laden with fruit and vegetables. The seas were calm enough for even the most careful fisherman to put out on the tide.

In school it was the week allotted for the award of scholarships. Only once or twice in living memory had a child from the Three Villages gained a bursary to go and study at the secondary school in the city nearly twenty miles away.

Gaston made his way to the front of the hall. The teachers lined each wall, all eyes upon him, as he climbed the three steps onto the stage. Choked by nerves, he could barely raise his head.

The headteacher spoke. ‘This day, the twenty-second of November 1912, is a very proud day for the Three Villages and our school.’

There was an immediate round of applause. It was Mme Martin who began it, Gaston was sure. She was his favourite teacher, strict without being unkind, keen on nature and science though she taught literature, considered and fair.

The headteacher held up his hands for quiet.

‘Gaston, I believe you have something to say.’

Gaston looked round at the sea of faces. Children from the age of four up to his own classmates, eleven years old, at the top of the school. With the teachers, about sixty people waiting for him to say something important. He hesitated. All he could think about was his clothes – the shabby trousers with the let-down hems and his father’s patched summer jacket, far too big but the only garment his mother said would do for a day such as this.

Then, at the back of the hall, there was a commotion. All heads turned and, to his mortification, Gaston saw his mother and father tottering in and trying to slip into the back row of chairs. His mother was trying to put on powder even though she had her arm threaded through her husband’s, and her headscarf was crooked. They were both flushed, eyes a little too bright, in the way Gaston recognised and hated.

He could think of nothing to say.

Mme Martin firmly turned back to the stage and raised her hand. ‘We are all very proud of you, Gaston.’

Gaston gave a small smile. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

She quickly moved to help get Gaston’s parents seated. Silence surged through the hall. To Gaston each second lasted for ever, but though they fussed and were clumsy, finally they were seated and looking at the stage too.

‘Gaston,’ said the headteacher. ‘You have something to say?’

Gaston remembered the piece of paper – Mme Martin had suggested he should write something down rather than rely on memory – and quickly pulled it from the pocket of his hand-me-down trousers.

‘I am very grateful to everyone. My teachers helped me to study and, because of that, I was able to win this scholarship. I will do my best to make everyone in the Three Villages proud.’

He bit his bottom lip, folded the piece of paper and twisted it in his fingers.