The Winter Ghosts Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  TOULOUSE - April 1933

  ARIÈGE - December 1928

  TOULOUSE - April 1933

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  About the author

  Teaser chapter

  ALSO BY KATE MOSSE

  Fiction

  Sepulchre

  Labyrinth

  Crucifix Lane

  Eskimo Kissing

  Non-Fiction

  The House: Behind the Scenes at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

  Becoming a Mother

  The Winter Ghosts

  KATE MOSSE

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Orion Books, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House, 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Mosse Associates Ltd 2009

  Translation of Occitan song © Mosse Associates Ltd 2009

  Illustrations © Brian Gallagher

  The moral right of Kate Mosse to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 1 4091 1229 7

  ISBN (Trade paperback) 978 1 4091 1562 5

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  ‘Known unto God’

  Rudyard Kipling

  (epigraph carved on the tombstones raised to the memory of unknown soldiers and airmen)

  Lo Vièlh Ivèrn

  Lo vièlh Ivèrn ambe sa samba ranca

  Ara es tornat dins los nòstres camins

  Le nèu retrais una flassada blanca

  E’l Cerç bronzís dins las brancas dels pins.

  Old Winter

  Pitiful old Winter has returned,

  Limping up and down our roads,

  Spreading his white blanket of snow

  While the Cers wind cries in the

  branches of the pine trees.

  Traditional Occitan Song

  TOULOUSE

  April 1933

  La Rue des Pénitents Gris

  He walked like a man recently returned to the world. Every step was careful, deliberate. Every step to be relished.

  He was tall and clean-shaven, a little thin perhaps. Dressed by Savile Row. A light woollen suit of herringbone weave, the jacket wide on the shoulders and narrow at the waist. His fawn gloves matched his trilby. He looked like an Englishman, secure in his right to be on such a street on such a pleasant afternoon in spring.

  But nothing is as it seems.

  For every step was a little too careful, a little too deliberate, as if he was unwilling to take even the ground beneath his feet entirely for granted. And as he walked, his clever, quick eyes darted from side to side, as if he were determined to record every tiny detail.

  Toulouse was considered one of the most beautiful cities in the south of France. Certainly, Freddie admired it. The elegance of its nineteenth-century buildings, the medieval past that slept beneath the pavements and colonnades, the bell towers and cloisters of Saint-Etienne, the bold river dividing the city in two. The pink brick facades, blushing in the April sunshine, gave Toulouse its affectionate nickname, la ville rose. Little had changed since Freddie had last visited, at the tail end of the 1920s. He had been another man then, a tattered man, worn threadbare by grief.

  Things were different now.

  In his right hand, Freddie carried directions scribbled on the back of a napkin from Bibent, where he’d lunched on filet mignon and a blowsy Bordeaux. In his left-hand breast pocket was a letter patterned with antiquity and dust, secure in a pasteboard wallet. It was this - and the fact that, at last, he had the opportunity to return - which brought him back to Toulouse today. The mountains where he’d come across the document held a strong significance for him, and though he had never read the letter, it was a precious possession.

  Freddie crossed the Place du Capitole, heading towards the cathedral of Saint-Sernin. He walked through a network of small streets, obtuse little alleyways filled with jazz bars and poetry cellars and gloomy restaurants. He sidestepped couples on the pavements, lovers and families and friends out enjoying the warm afternoon. He passed through tiny squares and hidden ruelles, and along the rue du Taur, until he reached the street he was looking for. Freddie hesitated at the corner, as if having second thoughts. Then he continued on, walking briskly now, dragging his shadow behind him.

  Halfway along the rue des Pénitents Gris was a librairie and antiquarian bookseller. His destination. He stopped dead to read the name of the proprietor painted in black lettering above the door. Momentarily, his silhouette was imprinted on the building. Then he shifted position and the window was once more flooded with gentle sunlight, causing the metal grille to glint.

  Freddie stared at the display for a moment, at the antique volumes embossed with gold leaf, and the highly polished leather slip casings of black and red, at the ridged spines of works by Montaigne and Anatole France and Maupassant. Other, less familiar names, too: Antonin Gadal and Félix Garrigou; and volumes of ghost stories by Blackwood and James and Sheridan Le Fanu.

  ‘Now or never,’ he said.

  The old-fashioned handle was stiff and the door dug in its heels as Freddie pushed it open. A brass bell rattled somewhere distant at the back of the shop. The coarse rush matting sighed beneath the soles of his shoes as he stepped in.

  ‘Il y a quelqu’un?’ he said in clipped French. ‘Anybody about?’

  The contrast between the brightness outside and the patchwork of shadows within made Freddie blink. But there was a pleasing smell of dust and afternoons, glue and paper and polished wooden shelves. Particles of dust danced in and out of the beams of slatted sunlight. He was sure now that he had come to the right place and he felt something unwind inside him. Relief that he had finally made it here, perhaps, or of being at his journey’s end.

  Freddie took off his hat and gloves and placed them on the long wooden counter. Then he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and brought out the small pasteboard wallet.

  ‘Hello?’ he called a second time. ‘Monsieur Saurat?’

  He heard footsteps, then the creak of a small door at the back of the shop, and a man walked through. Freddie’s first impression was of flesh; rolls of skin at the neck and wrists, a smooth and unlined face beneath a shock of white hair. He did not, in any way, look like the medieval scholar Freddie was expecting.

  ‘Monsieur Saurat?’

  The man nodded. Cautious, bored, uninterested in a casual caller.

  ‘I need help with a translation,’ Freddie said. ‘I was told you might be the man for such a job.’

  Keeping his eyes on Saurat, Freddie carefully slipped the letter from its casing
. It was a heavy weave, the colour of dirty chalk, not paper at all, but something far older. The handwriting was uneven and scratched.

  Saurat let his gaze slip to it. Freddie watched his eyes sharpen, first with surprise, then astonishment. Then greed.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘May 1?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Taking a pair of half-moon spectacles from his top pocket, Saurat perched them on the end of his nose. He produced a pair of thin, linen gloves from beneath the counter, pulled them on. Holding the letter gently at the corner between forefinger and thumb, he held it up to the light.

  ‘Parchment. Probably late medieval.’

  ‘Quite right.’

  ‘Written in Occitan, the old language of this region.’

  ‘Yes.’ All this Freddie knew.

  Saurat gave him a hard look, then dropped his eyes back to the letter. An intake of breath, then he began to read the opening lines aloud. His voice was surprisingly light.

  ‘Bones and shadows and dust. I am the last. The others have slipped away into darkness. Around me now, at the end of my days, only an echo in the still air of the memory of those who once I loved. Solitude, silence. Peyre sant . . .’

  Saurat stopped and stared now with interest at the reserved Englishman standing before him. He did not look like a collector, but then one never could tell.

  He cleared his throat. ‘May I ask where you came by this, Monsieur . . . ?’

  ‘Watson.’ Freddie took his card from his pocket and laid it with a snap on the counter between them. ‘Frederick Watson.’

  ‘You are aware this is a document of some historical significance?’

  ‘To me its significance is purely personal.’

  ‘That may be, but nevertheless . . .’ Saurat shrugged. ‘It is something that has been in your family for some time?’

  Freddie hesitated. ‘Is there a place we could talk?’

  ‘Of course.’ Saurat gestured to a low card table and four leather armchairs set in an alcove at the rear of the shop. ‘Please.’

  Freddie took the letter and sat down, watching as Saurat stooped beneath the counter again, this time producing two thick glass tumblers and a bottle of mellow, golden brandy. He was unusually graceful, delicate even, Freddie thought, for such a large man. Saurat poured them both a generous measure, then lowered himself into the chair opposite. The leather sighed beneath his weight.

  ‘So, will you translate it for me?’

  ‘Of course. But I am still intrigued to know how you come to be in possession of such a document.’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Another shrug. ‘I have the time.’

  Freddie leaned forward and slowly fanned his long fingers across the surface of the table, making patterns on the green baize.

  ‘Tell me, Saurat, do you believe in ghosts?’

  A smile stole across the other man’s lips.

  ‘I am listening.’

  Freddie breathed out, with relief or some other emotion, it was hard to tell.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, settling back in his chair. ‘The story begins almost five years ago, not so very far from here.’

  ARIÈGE

  December 1928

  Tarascon-sur-Ariège

  It was a dirty night in late November, a few days shy of my twenty-seventh birthday, when I boarded the boat train for Calais.

  I had no ties to keep me in England, and my health in those days was poor. I’d spent some time in a sanatorium and, since then, had struggled to find a vocation, a calling in life. A stint as a junior assistant in an ecclesiastical architect’s office, a month as a commission agent; nothing had stuck. I was not suited to work nor it, apparently, to me. After a particularly vicious bout of influenza, my doctor suggested a tour of the castles and ruins of the Ariège would do my shattered nerves some good. The clean air of the mountains might restore me, he said, where all else had failed.

  So I set off, with no particular route in mind. I was no more lonely motoring on the Continent than I had been in England, surrounded by acquaintances and my few remaining friends who didn’t understand why I could not forget. A decade had passed since the Armistice. Besides, there was nothing unique to my suffering. Every family had lost someone in the War; fathers and uncles, sons, husbands and brothers. Life moved on.

  But not for me. As each green summer slipped into the copper and gold of another autumn, I became less able, not more, to accept my brother’s death. Less willing to believe George was gone. And although I went through all the appropriate emotions - disbelief, denial, anger, regret - grief still held me in its grasp. I despised the wretched creature I had become, but seemed unable to do anything about it. Looking back, I am not certain that, when I stood on the rocking boat watching the white cliffs of Dover growing smaller behind me, I had any intention of returning.

  The change of scene did help, though. Once I’d negotiated my way through those northern towns and villages where the scent of battle still hung heavy in the air, I felt less stuck in the past than I had at home. Here in France, I was a stranger. I was not supposed to fit in and nor did anyone expect me to. No one knew me and I knew no one. There was nobody to disappoint. And while I cannot say that I took much pleasure in my surroundings, certainly the day-to-day business of eating and driving and finding a bed occupied my waking hours.

  The night, of course, was another matter.

  So it was that some few weeks later, on 15 December, I arrived at Tarascon-sur-Ariège in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It was late in the afternoon and I was stiff from rattling over the basic mountain roads. The temperature inside my little box saloon was barely higher than that outside. My breath had caused the windows to steam up, and I was obliged to wipe the condensation from the windscreen with my sleeve.

  I entered the small town via the avenue de Foix in the pink light of the fading day. The sun falls early in those high valleys and the shadows on the narrow cobbled streets were already deep. Ahead of me, a thin, eighteenth-century clock tower perched high on a vertiginous outcrop, like a sentinel to welcome home the solitary traveller. Straight away, there was something about the place - a sense of confidence and acceptance of its place in the world - that appealed to me. A suggestion of old values coexisting with the demands of the twentieth century.

  Through the gaps between the window and the frame of the car slipped the acrid yet sweet smell of burning wood and resin. I saw flickering lights in little houses, waiters in long black aprons moving between tables in a café, and I ached to be part of that world.

  I decided to stop for the night. At the junction with the Pont Vieux, I was obliged suddenly to brake to avoid a man on a bicycle. The beam from his lamp jumped and lurched as he swerved the potholes in the road. While I waited for him to pass, my eye was drawn by the bright light of the boulangerie window opposite. As I watched, a young sales assistant, her coarse brown hair escaping from beneath her cap, reached down into the glass cabinet and lifted out a Jésuite, or perhaps a cream éclair.

  Much time has passed and memory is an unreliable friend, but, in my mind’s eye, still I see her pause for a moment, then smile shyly at me before placing the pâtisserie in the box and tying it with ribbon. The thinnest shaft of light entered the empty chambers of my heart, just for a moment. Then it disappeared, extinguished by the weight of all that had gone before.

  I found lodgings without difficulty at the Grand Hôtel de la Poste, which advertised a garage for the use of its customers. Although my yellow Austin Seven was the sole occupant, there was a service station, the Garage Fontez, a little further along the street and the sense that things in Tarascon were on the up. This was confirmed as I signed the register. The hotel proprietor told me how an aluminium factory had opened only a few weeks before. It would, he believed, bring prosperity to the district and give the young men a reason to stay.

  The precise details of the conversation escape me now. At that time, I’d lost the appetite for casual talk. Ov
er ten years of mourning, my ability to engage with anyone other than George had ebbed away. He walked beside me and was the only person to whom I could unburden myself. I needed no one else.

  But on that December afternoon in that little hotel, I saw a glimpse of how other people lived, and regretted I could not learn to do the same. Even now I remember the patron’s passion for the project of regeneration, his optimism and ambition for his town. It stood in stark contrast to my own limited horizons. As always at such moments, I felt more of an outsider than ever. I was glad when, having shown me to my lodgings, he left me alone.

  The room was on the first floor, overlooking the street, with a pleasant enough outlook. A large window with freshly painted shutters, a single bed with heavy counterpane, a washstand and an armchair. Plain, clean, anonymous. The sheets were cold to the touch. We suited one another, the room and I.

  La Tour du Castella

  I unpacked, washed the dirt of the road from my face and hands, then sat and looked down on the avenue de Foix as I smoked a cigarette.

  I decided to take a turn around the town on foot before dinner. It was still early, but the temperature had fallen, and the cobblers and pharmacie, the boucherie and the mercerie had already turned off their lights and fastened their shutters. A row of dead men’s eyes, seeing nothing, revealing nothing.

  I walked along the quai de l’Ariège, back to the stone bridge over the river, at the point where the white waters of the Ariège and the Vicdessos meet. I loitered a while in the dusk, then continued over to the right bank of the river. This, I had been told, was the oldest and most distinctive part of the town, the quartier Mazel-Viel.