suddenly that she was startled into calling out. She had recoiled from a smell and a sensation so extreme, that she’d had no control over her response to it. It had been entirely involuntary. She gasped, ‘What in the name of God was that?’
He cocked an eyebrow at her as if to underline his earlier warning. ‘Carbonic gas. A by-product of fermentation. It’s not poisonous, but it’ll kill you in the blink of an eye.’ He took a cigarette lighter from his pocket, lit the flame, and then lowered it slowly into the neck of the cuve. As he did so, the flame detached itself from the lighter, but continued to burn until the separation between the two was nearly ten centimetres and it was finally extinguished. ‘No oxygen, you see.’ He stood up and offered her his hand to help her to her feet.
She got up, and they stood for what seemed like a very long time, still holding hands, until he was overcome by self-consciousness and took his back. She desperately wanted to ask him about Petty, about his reviews of La Croix Blanche wines, but the words wouldn’t come. And the longer they stood in silence, the more tense they both became. She started to be aware, for the first time, of how dark his eyes were, how long his lashes. And almost as if he knew what was in her mind, he averted his black eyes.
He said, ‘About twenty years ago there was a lake somewhere in Africa that released cubic tons of the stuff into the atmosphere.’
She was taken aback by his sudden digression. ‘Cubic tons of what?’
‘Carbonic gas. The lake was in an old volcanic crater, and the gas must have come up from the volcano below. Probably over hundreds of years. It dissolves in water, you see.’ He pointed to the grille-covered channels that ran through the concrete floor of the chai. ‘We flush water through those gutters to collect and take away carbonic gas from the fermentation. It’s heavier than air, so it sinks to the floor and dissolves in the water.’
Nicole followed the line of the gutter out into the yard.
‘Anyway the gas must just have been lying on the lake bed. Then, during a storm of some kind, there was a huge amount of rainfall, and they think that cold rainwater dropped to the bottom of the lake, displacing the carbonic gas and forcing it to the surface.’ He shook his head, visualising it. ‘Must have looked like the water was boiling. Except that it was the middle of the night, so no one would have seen it.’
Nicole was wide-eyed, imagining the scene as Fabien described it. ‘So what happened?’
‘The lake was way above sea level. So because the gas is heavier than air, it just ran down the valleys, engulfing all the villages in its path. Most of the villagers were asleep in bed. Thousands died from asphyxiation.’
‘Oh, my God, that’s terrible.’ Nicole was still wide-eyed, transfixed by the horror of his story, impressed by the breadth of his knowledge. It was not what she would have expected of a farmer’s boy who made wine.
He fixed her again with his dark eyes. ‘That’s why you don’t ever come in here on your own. Understand?’
She nodded mutely.
As they crossed the yard towards the house he said, ‘So why were you looking for me?’
She was glad he couldn’t see her face. She was not a good liar. ‘It’s just…you weren’t there when I got back tonight.’
‘There were cops crawling about the place all day. I got behind with things.’
As they passed beyond the security sensors, the lights went out, and Nicole saw the wash of moonlight over the hills that rose out of the river valley to the north, the silhouette of the old church starkly outlined against a jewelled jet sky.
‘Is it still in use?’ she asked.
He followed her eyeline. ‘No, it’s all boarded up. Which is a shame. It’s a beautiful old building.’
‘Why did they build a church way up there, anyway?’
‘It used to serve the castle. Then the castle was destroyed during the Albigeoise Crusades against the heretics of Cathar.’ He looked at her. ‘You know who the Cathars were?’
She shook her head with a growing sense of inadequacy. She was the university student, after all. Surely these were things she should know? ‘I know they call this Cathar country. But I don’t know why.’
‘The Cathars were a religious sect in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They combined Christian and Gnostic elements. The thing that the Roman Catholic church regarded as heretical was their belief that the resurrection was a rebirth, rather than the physical raising of a dead body from the grave. So the Cathars were slaughtered in their thousands and driven out of towns and villages all over southwest France.’
‘How do you know all this?’ She gazed at him in wonder.
He shrugged. ‘I read a lot. It’s interesting. Though it was the legend of the source that first caught my imagination. Forbidden love. A Cathar princess from the castle, and the son of a Roman Catholic knight who was intent on destroying the heretics. They met secretly at the source, up there in the woods, until the night the crusaders marched on the castle and destroyed it. Both their fathers died in the battle, but according to the legend the young couple escaped to the north, where they married and raised a family.’
‘And lived happily ever after?’
‘Who knows? Does anyone?’ She saw the moonlight catch the crinkles around his eyes as he smiled. ‘But the source became regarded as a place where star-crossed lovers could change their luck. All the kids around here go up there at some time.’
‘Did you ever go up there with someone?’
‘Once. A long time ago.’
‘It didn’t change your luck, then?’
‘Oh, yes it did. I had a narrow escape. She’s married now with four kids and makes the poor man’s life hell.’
They both laughed. But their voices seemed inordinately loud in the quiet of the early morning, and they quickly stifled their mirth.
They stood for a minute or more staring up at the church, which seemed to shimmer in a haze of warm, silvered air, before walking back in silence to the house. And it was with a slight chill of apprehension that Nicole realised it would take someone with very specific local knowledge to know that a body left up by the source would be discovered sooner rather than later.
III
Enzo selected “send” from the toolbar, and a sound like a soft jet engine passed from one speaker to the other to signify the despatching of his e-mail into the ether. He put the laptop to sleep and folded down the lid. As he stood, he stared out from the pool of lamplight around the table to the reflected light on his whiteboard and those mysterious groupings of letters and numbers that made no sense. He glanced up towards the mezzanine and heard the gentle purr of heavy breathing. Sophie and Bertrand were asleep. He turned out the lamp and crossed the room in the dark to the open door and the candlelight on the terrace.
Charlotte looked round. ‘You want a glass?’
‘If there’s any left.’
‘There’s plenty.’ As he sat down she poured him a glass from a bottle of Chateau de Salettes Vin des Arts and refilled her own. ‘Who were you writing to?’
‘A guy called Al MacConchie. I was at university with him in Glasgow. He went off to the States about twenty-five years ago and is now a bigshot wine consultant in California.’
‘Wine? What was his major?’
‘At university?’ Enzo laughed. ‘Chemistry. He believed that the problems of the universe could be answered by chemical analysis. And statistics. Now he’s applying his philosophy to the making of alcoholic beverages.’
She turned eyes filled with curiosity in his direction, waiting for further explanation. But he just shrugged.
‘I need a favour from him.’ He was too weary to go into it now. He took a sip of the Vin des Arts. It was freshly acidic, with soft tannins, and filled his mouth with the taste of raspberries. ‘Nice wine. Must get a case of it.’
They sat for some minutes, sipping the fermented juice of red grapes and gazed out over silver grass wet
