PART I
July 1914
No one in the village had ever heard sounds like that coming from the hills. Wild, desperate sounds. The first shrieks rang out around midnight, distant at first, but moving closer and closer. Even the old people could not identify the source of the noise. It was as though some frenzied ritual were taking place up there in the woods, a savage brawl that seemed to be making its way towards them. At first the villagers thought it must be foxes or lynxes fighting over captured prey. The feverish sounds of these small, rabid beasts making their kills often disturbed their nights. Or it could have been the distinctive howling of local wolves, which pitched their cries to make the pack sound more fearsome. Previous attempts to keep them at bay by scattering the ground with strychnine had been unsuccessful, so tonight villagers young and old were roused from their beds to bang spoons against their pots and pans in the night air, a tried and tested method of keeping wolves away.
At night, the woods were alive with hidden sounds and rustling movements. Under cover of darkness, animals reclaimed their territory, free from human interference. In the village it was often possible to make out the sounds of unseen beasts hunting, mating or fighting. The night belonged to them, and this night more than any other.
‘It almost sounds like—’
‘Be quiet!’
As the hellish chorus rounded the hill, the sound became more distinct and the villagers were able to make out barking – savage, broken barking that could not have been a wolf and was too loud to be dogs. Only deer could make that kind of noise. It must have been deer that were heard that evening, high on buckthorn berries or driven wild by fear of an unseen predator. But this was the first time their shrieks had torn through the countryside with such demonic fervour. It was no use rattling their crockery now. There was nothing to be done but remind their children that at night deer are even louder than dogs and their barks are lower, more guttural and more frightening. During the rut, the bucks’ calls that seek to ward off their rivals seem also to reveal their own desperation. Something must have truly frightened them, however, to cause them all to cry in unison. No one in Orcières had ever heard so many of them at once. They seemed to be hurtling down towards the houses by the dozen. No one was scared of the deer, of course, but everyone felt troubled by the prospect of whatever it was that had caused them so much terror.
Panic spread quickly through the village that night, perhaps because for weeks now it had been haunted by a larger threat. Since the spring, the newspapers had been full of worrying headlines. This had already led some men to search in their cupboards for their carnets militaires, just in case they were needed. The silent fear that they would be called away from home circled ever closer around the sons and fathers of Orcières, as if they were a pack of frightened deer. Even in the furthest depths of the countryside, it was clear that the world was subject to the whims of a handful of royals most of whom were related to one another. Sovereigns pictured sailing or playing tennis in L’Illustré National were part of prodigious dynasties that linked the King of England to the Kaiser to the cousin of the Tsar and back again; these family ties were about to be torn apart in spectacular fashion. As the summer wore on, tensions rose. It was already unbearably hot, and fear cast a shadow over everything. Europe was a tinderbox; the armies stood waiting as the commanders squared up to one another, forming pacts, not through kinship but because they were preparing for the worst. Meanwhile, in the village, men and women would stay outside talking for as long as possible before going to bed, savouring the evening air as if this were their last chance to do so.
No one wanted a war here. In any case, war was surely an impossibility, especially in Orcières, hidden away at the furthest edge of the causse and several days’ journey from the nearest border. But that Friday even the calmest of spirits were troubled. The villagers wondered what was lying in wait for them up there, what predator had sent those deer running down the hill in terrified droves. Every summer they were newly surprised by the piercing cries of fighting bucks locking antlers and circling their rivals, but the barking had usually stopped in the time it took to roll and smoke a cigarette. The terrible sound persisted this time, until everyone in the village felt swirls of fear coil around their hearts and linger on their lips, like the stale end of a cigarette.
No one knew it yet, but on this late July night they were poised on the brink of war. In the little hamlet tucked away amid the hills, it was unthinkable that in just a few hours the sound of alarm bells ringing across the countryside would bring the summer swiftly and abruptly to an end. In a few days’ time, the war would start to devour their men by the trainload, and by its end, four terrible years later, it would have destroyed four empires and fifteen million lives. But in the early hours of this summer Saturday, what the villagers were most afraid of was the wave of terrified sound that descended on them from the hills. Groups of deer hurled themselves down into the valley in their dozens before disappearing westwards beneath the moon, which was hidden behind a shroud.
When, at last, it was quiet again, the villagers could hear the trudge of heavy footsteps coming from the woods. They were accompanied by the sound of clinking metal, indicating the approach of someone with an animal. The cloud had shifted and the moon was now shining brightly on the thickets surrounding the village, where something was moving through the undergrowth. Those with more active imaginations wondered if they might see a giant wolf emerging from the shadows, dragging a limp foot caught in a hunter’s trap, or even the infamous Champawat Tiger. In fact, it was a hooded, monk-like figure that came into view, accompanied by a weary-looking mule, bowls clinking on the haversack on its back. The adults crossed themselves as the children crouched behind them in fear. No one here had ever seen a pilgrim pass through the village. Walkers heading south from the Auvergne had once crossed the woods on their way to Spain, but it had been a long time since anyone had come through the village to reach Santiago. The appearance of this harbinger of doom should have alerted them to the fact that this night marked the end of an era. That this was their last evening in the old world and that the new day would herald the beginning of four years of suffering. The sight of the wandering stranger should have helped them realise that tomorrow they would wake up to the dawn of a new age which would be rung in with madness, gunfire, fear and, above all, blood.
Spring 2017
The advert promised an oasis of tranquillity, a simple gîte tucked away in the hills. It was hard to make much out from the three available photos, but they seemed to confirm this description. Zooming out on the map, the house was a tiny dot in an ocean of green, surrounded by peaks and valleys in the heart of the Causses du Quercy Natural Regional Park. Lise was convinced she had found a peaceful hideaway. Others might have said the back of beyond. According to the blurb the simple house at the top of a hill had been built in the nineteenth century. The nearest neighbour was ten kilometres away, the nearest town a twenty-five-kilometre drive.
Lise had come across the advert whilst browsing the internet. Most people would have clicked away from the page after reading the description, but in many ways the house provided exactly what she was looking for: nature, sun and isolation.
And it really was isolated. Lise noted with interest that the gîte came with far fewer amenities than the other houses advertised on the website. It seemed to have none of the conveniences of a normal holiday home: no swimming pool, no air conditioning, not even a television. There was also no telephone, which meant no Wi-Fi.