Page 13 of The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales

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 – MONS SALVATIONIS – 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.