Page 12 of The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales

Claire crouched down and picked them up. Blue for a boy. She wished she had thought to bring something of sentimental value to mark her passing. A photograph, perhaps. Too late now.

Resisting an urge to cross herself – she knew Cathars rejected such gestures – Claire stood up. Here, she felt the presence of the past all around her, benign ghosts who understood her purpose and had come to keep her company on her journey. In her mind’s eye, she could see images of the women who had stood here before her, who had lived and loved and died in the protective embrace of the mountain.

She followed the path over the grass, then into the woods at the bottom of the mountain, climbing up through the box and evergreen, following a narrow track covered in ice and fallen leaves and the last vestiges of winter. Everything was silent, quiet.

Peaceful.

As the path turned a hairpin, Claire suddenly was out in the open, above the tree line. Now, she could see the road far below, snaking through the winter landscape, and ahead, the great white wall of the Pyrenees that divided France from Spain.

The higher she climbed, the more history came rushing back and pushed out her own, small memories. Claire imagined how those medieval pilgrims might have felt looking down from the citadel after ten months of siege to see the standards and banners of the Catholic Church and the fleur-de-lis of the French King flying below. In the castle, a hundred defenders. In the valley, between six and ten thousand men. An unequal fight. She thought of the mothers and fathers choosing to die in their faith, surrendering their children to be cared for by others before walking into the flames.

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.