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.