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attempted to sit up, but he had no strength and fell back to the ground.
    ‘Spirits of the air,’ he muttered. ‘The number was ten thousand times ten thousand . . .’
    His eyes were staring at her. Pleading, suffering eyes, shot through with despair.
    ‘Don’t move,’ she said quickly, trying to sound calm. ‘I’ll get help. You need help.’
    ‘Tell Baillard,’ he whispered. ‘ Trouvez-lui. Dîtes que . . .’
    ‘I’ll fetch help,’ she said. ‘The police, we—’
    His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. Sandrine stifled a scream.
    ‘No police. Can’t trust . . . no!’ he gasped. ‘Tell the old man, tell . . .’
    ‘A doctor, then,’ she said, trying to prise his fingers from her skin. ‘You need help, I must fetch someone. You can’t—’
    ‘Tell him . . . it’s true. A sea of glass, of fire. Speak and they will come.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ she said desperately. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    ‘The spirits of the air . . .’ he whispered, but his voice was fading.
    ‘No, don’t give up . . .’
    A terrible rattling in his throat. A gurgling, then a snatching at the air. Every gasp of breath hard fought for.
    ‘Save your strength. Help is on its way,’ she lied, glancing up to the road again.
    ‘All true,’ he repeated, almost looking as if he was smiling. ‘Dame Carcas . . .’
    ‘It will be all right. Just . . .’
    But he was drifting away, his colour fading from pink to grey to white. Sandrine kept shaking him, trying to keep him with her. Her wet skirt was clinging to the back of her legs as she pushed against his chest, her feet muddied and cut from the stones on the riverbank.
    ‘Hold on,’ she said, trying to keep him breathing. ‘Help will come soon, hold on.’
    Then she felt a prickling on the back of her neck. Someone was there. Someone was standing behind her.
    ‘Thank God,’ she started to say, except something felt wrong.
    Fear, rather than relief, jabbed her between the ribs. She spun round, but she was too slow. A blinding pain at the side of her head, dazzling white and yellow and red light, then she was falling, falling, her legs buckling under her. The smell of the river and the reeds, rushing up to meet her. A hand on the back of her neck, pushing her face down into the water. The river, framing her face now, lapping into her mouth, her nose, the shimmer of shadow and light on the surface.
    For an instant, a whispering. A voice she couldn’t identify, a sound heard but not heard. Experienced somewhere beyond language, beyond hearing.
    ‘ Coratge .’ A girl’s voice, glistening in the light. Courage.
    Then, nothing.

Chapter 5
    THE HAUTE VALLÉE
    A udric Baillard stood in a clearing at the edge of a beech wood in the French Pyrenees. Rather than his customary pale suit and panama hat, he was wearing the nondescript clothes of a man of the mountains. Corduroy trousers, an open-necked shirt with a yellow handkerchief at his neck, a wide-brimmed hat. His skin was tanned, the colour of leather, and heavily lined. He was old, but he was strong, and there was a resolve in his eyes that bore witness to the evidence of his years.
    Beside him, mopping his brow in the heat, was a smartly dressed man in a black suit and iron-grey trilby, with a fawn trench coat over one arm and a leather valise. At his side, two silent little girls and a thin woman with dead eyes. A little apart stood a young man in country smock and boots. All around, the sounds of the forest. Rabbits, squirrels, wood pigeons calling one to the other.
    ‘Good luck,’ said Baillard.
    ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ the American, Shapiro, replied, pulling an envelope from his pocket. ‘I hope this is sufficient . . .’
    Baillard shook his head. ‘It is not for me, my friend. It is for your guides, the passeurs . It is they who take the risk.’
    ‘Didn’t mean to offend you, sir.’
    ‘I am not in the least offended.’
    The American hesitated, then put the envelope back in his