‘Faith, then?’ said Saurat, looking around at the book-lined shelves. ‘A belief in something more than this?’
‘Who’s to say? Life is not, as we are taught, a matter of seeking answers, but rather learning which are the questions we should ask.’
Saurat looked down at the antique letter, at the words he had so painstakingly translated for his English visitor.
‘Why did you wait so long?’
‘I needed to be ready to hear it.’
‘Ah.’
‘And to make an end of things.’
Saurat put his glasses down on the table and rubbed his eyes.
‘Perhaps also, because you knew what it would say? I had the impression nothing in it surprised you.’
Freddie shrugged again. ‘“We are who we are, because of those we choose to love and because of those who love us.” That’s what Fabrissa wrote.’ He smiled. ‘One does not need a translator to understand the truth of those words.’
Both men fell silent. Inside the bookshop, the clock continued to mark the passing of the day. In the street outside, the burst of a car horn, a woman calling to a child or a lover in an affectionate voice, the sounds of the modern city on an afternoon in spring.
‘What do you intend to do with the letter?’ Saurat asked after a while.
‘Nothing.’
‘I’d give you a fair price.’
Freddie laughed. ‘I don’t think it’s possible to put a price on such a thing. Do you?’
‘Perhaps not,’ Saurat conceded. ‘But if you should ever change your mind… ’
‘Of course, I’ll bear you in mind.’
Freddie stood up. He put on his overcoat, slipped the letter into the pasteboard wallet.
‘You’ll allow me to pay you for your time?’
Saurat held up his hands. ‘The pleasure was mine.’
Freddie pulled out a fifty-franc note all the same and laid it on the counter.
‘To donate to a good cause, then,’ he said.
Saurat acknowledged the gift with a nod. He did not pick it up, but neither did he attempt to give it back.
At the door, the two men shook hands, on the afternoon, on the story, on the secret they now shared.
‘And what of your brother?’ Saurat said. ‘In your travels, your work for the War Graves Commission, did you ever find the answer to the question you were seeking? Did you find out what happened to him?’
Freddie put on his trilby and slipped his hands into his fawn gloves. ‘He is known unto God,’ he said. ‘That is enough.’
Then he turned and walked back up the rue des Pénitents Gris, his shadow striding before him.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to all those who have worked so hard on The Winter Ghosts.
My agent, Mark Lucas, continues to be an inspiration, a wonderful editor, and makes it fun despite the absence of Post-it notes! To Mark, Alice Saunders, and everyone at LAW, thank you.
At Orion, a huge thank you to everyone in the editorial, publicity, marketing, sales and art departments, especially the editorial dream-team of Jon Wood and Genevieve Pegg, as well as Malcolm Edwards, Lisa Milton, Susan Lamb, Jo Carpenter, Lucie Stericker, Mark Rusher, Gaby Young and Helen Ewing; and to Brian Gallagher for the beautiful illustrations.
I would not have finished the book without the affection and practical help of family and friends, especially my mother-in-law, Rosie Turner; my parents, Richard and Barbara Mosse; fellow dog-walkers, Cath O’Hanlon, Patrick O’Hanlon and Julie Pembery and my sister, Caroline Matthews; Amanda Ross, Jon Evans, Lucinda Montefiore, Tessa Ross, Robert Dye, Maria Rejt, Peter Clayton, Rachel Holmes, Bob Pulley and Mari Pulley.
Finally, without the love and support of my husband Greg Mosse, and our children Martha and Felix, none of this would matter. It is to them, as always, that the book is dedicated.
Author’s Note
By 1328, the medieval Christian heresy now referred to as Catharism had been all but destroyed. After the fall of Montségur in 1244 and the fortress of Quéribus in 1255, the remaining Cathars were driven back into the high valleys of the Pyrenees. Many Cathar priests – parfaits and parfaites - were executed, or driven into Lombardy or Spain.
Despite this, the early fourteenth-century saw a remarkable renaissance of Cathar communities in the upper Ariège, principally around Tarascon and Ax-les-Thermes (then known as Ax) and key villages, such as Montaillou. The Inquisitional Courts in Pamiers (for the Ariège) and Carcassonne (for the Languedoc) continued to persecute and hunt down the heretics (as they were considered). Those taken were imprisoned in dungeons known as Murs. Principal in this was Jacques Fournier, a Cistercian monk, who rose quickly through the Catholic ranks, becoming bishop of Pamiers in 1317, of Mirepoix in 1326, a cardinal in 1327, and, finally, Pope in Avignon in 1334, as Benedict XII. It is an irony that Fournier’s Inquisition Register, detailing all interrogations and depositions made to the courts on his watch, is one of the most important surviving historical records about Cathar experience in fourteenth-century Languedoc. The last Cathar parfait, Guillaume Bélibaste, was burnt at the stake in 1321.
During the vicious final years of the extermination of the Cathars, whole villages were arrested – such as at Montaillou in the spring and autumn of 1308. There is evidence that entire communities took refuge in the labyrinth network of caves of the Haute Vallée of the Pyrenees, the most infamous example being in the caves of Lombrives, just south of Tarascon-sur-Ariège. Hunted down by the soldiers in the spring of 1328, hundreds of men, women and children fled into the caves. The soldiers of the Inquisition realised that, rather than continue to play cat-and-mouse, they could use traditional siege tactics and block the entrance, bringing the game to an end. This they did, entombing everyone inside in some kind of medieval Masada.
It was only 250 years later, when the troops of the Count of Foix-Sabarthès, the man who was to become King Henry IV of France, excavated the caves that the tragedy was revealed. Whole families were discovered – their skeletons lying side by side, bones fused together, their last precious objects beside them – and finally brought down from the stone refuge that had become a living tomb.
It is this grisly fragment of Cathar history that was the inspiration for The Winter Ghosts. [1] The village of Nulle does not exist.
For those readers who want to know more about the final days of Catharism, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s classic Montaillou, first published in 1978, is the most complete and detailed explanation of the complications of life, faith and tradition in fourteenth-century Ariège. De l’Héritage des Cathares (available in translation as The Inheritance of the Cathars) by the French mystic and Tarasconais Cathar historian of the 1930s and 1940s, Antonin Gadal, is well worth dipping into. René Weis’ The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars 1290-1329, Anne Brenon’s Pèire Authier: Le Dernier des Cathares and Greg Mosse’s Secrets of the Labyrinth are all excellent.
Kate Mosse Toulouse, April 2009
About the author
Kate Mosse is an author and broadcaster. Her best-selling books include, amongst others, Labyrinth and Sepulchre. Kate is the Co-Founder and Honorary Director of the Orange Prize for Fiction and in 2009 was invited to be an Ambassador for the Aude Tourist Board, the region of France where much of her fiction is set. Kate lives with her family in Chichester and Carcasonne.