The Winter Ghosts - By Kate Mosse Page 0,15

white of the mountain passes, there were the reds and copper of fallen leaves. In the hedgerows I could see tiny splashes of colour, flowers of blue and pink and yellow, like confetti scattered in a churchyard after a wedding. I even picked out broom, and autumn poppies growing tall. Bright red, like splashes of blood against the white frosted tips of the green grass.

The meadow gave way to an earthen track, wide enough for a cart or a car to pass along. Its surface was slippery and once or twice I felt my boots all but slide from under me, though I stayed upright.

Finally, I came to a small wooden sign telling me I had arrived in Nulle. I hesitated, looking back over my shoulder at the soaring mountains with their cloak of trees, sheer against the winter sky. I was suddenly reluctant to leave them behind me. The thought of having to find lodgings, explain my predicament once more, the effort required to organise the rescue of my car, all of it seemed beyond me.

And there was something more. I have gone over this moment many times in the past five years and, still, I have no idea why instinctively I knew there was some kind of cloud, some sadness, hanging over the village. That something was not quite right, was misaligned, like a picture askew on a wall.

I shook my head. I was in no position to find fault. I was cold and tired. There would be time enough, once I found lodgings, to consider the events of the day. I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets and walked into the village.

The Village of Nulle

The storm had clearly passed over the valley, leaving it untouched, for there was no snow at all on the road or the roof tiles.

I walked slowly, trying to get the measure of the place. I passed a handful of low buildings which looked like stores or animal pens. Drips of water had frozen along the guttering in rows of icy daggers pointing sharply down at the hard ground below. Notwithstanding the fearsome cold, the village seemed oddly deserted. No boys with delivery carts selling milk and butter. No post office vans. In the houses, I saw an occasional shadow move in and out of the slivers of light that slipped out between partially open shutters, but no one out and about. Once I thought I heard footsteps behind me, but when I turned, the street was empty. Other sounds were rare - a dog barking and a strange, repetitive noise, like the rattling of wood against the cobbles - and vanished into the mist as quickly as they had come. After a while, I began to wonder if I had imagined them.

I walked further. Then my ears picked out what sounded like the bleating of sheep, though I knew that was unlikely in December. I’d been told of the twice-yearly fête de la transhumance, the festival in September to mark the departure of the men and flocks to winter pastures in Spain, then again in May, to celebrate their safe return. Throughout the upper river valleys of the Pyrenees, this was a fixture on the annual calendar, a time-honoured tradition of which they were proud. More than once I’d heard the Spanish slopes described as the ‘côté soleil ’ and the French side of the mountains as the ‘côté ombre’. Sunshine and shadows.

The houses grew more substantial and the condition of the road improved, though still I saw no one. On the end walls of the buildings were tattered advertising boards promoting soap or own-brand cigarettes or aperitifs, and ugly telephone wires stretched between the buildings. Everything in Nulle seemed drab and half-hearted. The colours on the posters were bleached and dull, the paper peeling at the corners. Rust flaked from the metal fixings on the wall that held the wires in place. But there was something about the stillness of the afternoon light, the ambience of being down-at-heel, that I liked, like a photograph of a once-fashionable destination that had now grown old and tired. I felt oddly at home in this forgotten village, with its air of having been left behind.

By now I had arrived at the heart of the village, the place de l’Église. I tipped my cap back on my head - the snow had seeped through to the headband and was making my forehead itch in any case - and took stock. In the centre of