Red Letter Day #3
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.
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.