The Winter Ghosts - By Kate Mosse Page 0,12

my shoulders against the bitter cold, I ran my hand along the coachwork, trying to assess the level of damage. I’d bought the Austin earlier in the year with the modest legacy left to me after the death duties had been paid on Father’s estate. Its value was as much sentimental as financial. It was the last link between him and me.

The good news was that I was not seriously injured. And that the car had not gone over. The bad news that there was no possibility of getting it going again without assistance. Debris lay all around. Shards of glass crunched beneath the soles of my boots. The bonnet had buckled and the radiator had collapsed in on itself, like a broken ribcage. One of the front lamps had been snapped clean off and the other hung crooked, bashed up and attached to the body only by the thinnest of wires.

I knelt down in the snow. Metal and bits of pipe hung beneath the chassis. The torque tube had become detached and the running board stuck out at an angle, like a torn fingernail.

The cold was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was no longer snowing, but there was a swirling fog, growing thicker by the minute, that wrapped itself around me, insinuating itself into my nose, my mouth, my throat. It muffled all sound and distorted the landscape, giving the countryside a sinister character. Misshapen trees and rocks transformed themselves into mythical beasts.

I pulled my cap as low as I could on my head. Even so, the tips of my ears were raw. My tweeds below the hem of my overcoat were already damp and heavy against my calves. Fresh blood trickled down my cheek. I pulled out a handkerchief and held it to the cut, a starburst of red on the pale blue cotton. It didn’t hurt, but I knew from George that wounds rarely hurt straight away. Shock was Nature’s anaesthetic, he’d told me. Pain came later.

There was nothing I could do but leave the car and go for help. I couldn’t even risk trying to get things from my suitcase for fear of sending the car right over the edge.

I looked round to get my bearings. Where was I? Closer to Tarascon than Vicdessos? Visibility was down to a few feet in both directions. The route I’d driven had all but vanished in the fog, and the road ahead was swallowed up by a curve in the mountain.

Then I remembered noticing a wooden signpost by the side of the road, lit up by the final flash of lightning. Since I had passed no houses, and had no hope that I would find any if I went higher into the mountains, it seemed a sensible idea to try to find it. Perhaps it indicated a footpath, and a path had to lead somewhere. Even if it did not, it would be more sheltered in the trees than on the bare mountainside.

I locked the driver’s door, more out of habit than necessity, then, pushing the keys deep into my pocket, I turned up the collar of my coat, wrapped my scarf as tightly as I could around my neck, and headed back down the road.

I walked and walked, like Good King Wenceslas in the snow. The world had turned to white. Everything was stripped of colour, an absence of light and shade, not a bare patch of land in sight. The fog hovered motionless now in the branches of the trees, but at least the wind was easing a little. After the noise of the storm, it was all very still. Quiet.

Eventually, I found the sign. I brushed away the snow from the horizontal board, but there was no information on it, just an arrow pointing downwards. It didn’t look promising, but it seemed the only option was to follow it.

To wherever it goes . . .

Then I heard it again. The same light voice, shimmering, indistinct, carried through the chill air.

‘I am the last, the last . . .’

‘What the Devil . . . ?’

I spun round, searching for the source of the sound, but could see no one. I told myself that if snow and the mountains played tricks on the eyes, on one’s perspective, then why not on one’s sense of hearing, too? There was no one. And yet I knew I was being watched. The short hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

It came again, over the whistling of