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knocked at the door. She waited, but no one came. She knocked again.
    ‘Madame?’
    She went to the window and peered in. It was dark inside. Everything looked closed up. Sandrine was in two minds as to whether to leave the envelope – Marieta was careful about her belongings. In the end, she posted it through the letter box and decided she’d come back later to make sure Madame Quintilla had got it.
    Sandrine had intended to go straight home from Païchérou, but she’d heard rumours that refugees had set up a camp on the far side of the river. She was curious to know if it was true.
    She cycled towards the weir and the secluded pocket of trees that stood at the bend of the river, just below the cimetière Saint-Michel. A glade of pine and beech, elm and ash. This morning, though, it felt a little too secluded. Sandrine found herself glancing over her shoulder, with a prickling on the back of her neck as if someone was watching her. The flapping of a collared dove, then the slither and splash of a fish in the shallows made her jump.
    Sandrine stopped at the water’s edge and looked across to the far side of the Aude. She could see nothing unusual at all, nothing different or threatening or out of place. No tents, no gypsy encampment, no shadow city. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved.
    The sky was the colour of forget-me-nots. The bells of Saint-Gimer below the Cité began to ring seven o’clock, the sound floating across the mirrored surface of the water. Minutes later, they were answered by the bells of Saint-Michel and other churches of the Bastide. There had been a time, during the early days of the war, when the bells were silenced. Sandrine had missed them then, the familiar steady marking of each day. Now, though they rang again, she couldn’t help hearing a sadness in their voice.
    She laid her bike down, then sat on the bank and pulled at the grass with her fingers. Before the war, at about this point in July, they’d be getting ready to leave Carcassonne for their summer house in Coustaussa. Her and Marianne, their father. Marieta fussing and packing three times as much as they needed. Picnics on the banks of the river Salz in the deep shade of the afternoon with her oldest friend, Geneviève. Cycling to Rennes-les-Bains for supper at the Hôtel de la Reine in the evening. Playing ‘Docteur Knock’ in the kitchen for hour upon hour with the battered old playing cards.
    Sandrine leant back against the trunk of the tree and looked at the towers and turrets and spires of the medieval Cité, the walls of the Château Comtal and the distinctive thin outline of the Tour Pinte. Like a finger pointing to heaven. And, between the two Carcassonnes, lay the river. Still and flat and silver.
    Like a sea of glass.

‡
    Codex II
    ‡
    GAUL
    CARCASO
    JULY AD 342
    T he shimmering waters of the river Atax glinted bright in the early morning sunlight. The young monk crossed the wooden bridge, then followed the track that led up to the main gates on the eastern side of the fortified town.
    Ahead, Arinius could see the walls of Carcaso, not much more than twice his own height perhaps, but wide and solid. They looked strong enough to keep out any invaders. The foundations were large stone blocks, two or three deep, with a layer of mortar on the top. The façade was a mixture of lime and rubble. Spaced at regular intervals were horseshoe-shaped bastions, short squat towers on the northern section of the walls, curved on the outside and flat on the side facing the town.
    ‘A place of refuge,’ he said, praying that it would be the case. He was weary and intended to rest in Carcaso for a few days, to gather his strength for the final leg of his journey into the mountains. His throat was sore and his ribs ached from coughing.
    Pressing his hand against the dry papyrus beneath his grey habit – an action that was now as natural and unconscious as breathing – Arinius joined the early crowd waiting to gain