She turned her face away.

‘Fabrissa?’ I said urgently. ‘Was it you in the mountains, earlier, before the snow started? Was it? Did you see me? Fabrissa, please.’

Still she did not answer. I would have pressed her further, except I was suddenly aware the atmosphere in the Ostal had changed. The air was charged with anticipation, with tension.

I tore my eyes away from Fabrissa for a moment. While we’d been talking, everything else had receded. Now, like the lights coming up in the auditorium at the end of a concert, the world came back into focus. The white tablecloths, no longer pristine but covered instead with empty dishes, splashes of spilt wine and crumbs of bread, chicken bones and mutton grease.

The noise level had dropped. Like the low growl of an Easter tide sucking back from the seashore, the rumble of voices was constant, but muted. Everyone seemed to be speaking in hushed voices. Hooded and watchful eyes, no laughter now. For the first time since sitting down at the table, I felt uncomfortable.

I turned back to Fabrissa, but she had withdrawn into herself. And when I said her name she started violently, as if she had forgotten I was there.

‘Fabrissa,’ I repeated gently. ‘What is it? What’s happening?’

She looked at me, then, with an expression of such regret, such longing, that my breath caught in my chest. I forgot myself, instinct making me reach out to her and put my arm around her narrow shoulders. Beneath the heavy cotton of her robe, she was so thin, so fragile. Skin and bone, hardly there at all. But as I held her, I felt my heart sing, expand and soar free. Then she moved, as if my touch pained her, and although she did not ask me to, I withdrew my hand.

Then I felt something. A piece of rough material, different in texture from the rest of her gown. Gently, I lifted her hair and saw there was a crude yellow fabric cross, about the size of a man’s hand, stitched to the back of her blue dress.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

Fabrissa shook her head, as if it were too complicated to explain. Now I noticed what I had previously missed; namely, that several of the other guests had the same yellow crosses pinned to their tunics or to the backs of their robes.

‘Fabrissa, what do they signify?’

She did not answer, but I could see she was uneasy. The air felt heavy now, weighted. Everyone was waiting for something to happen, I could feel it. A shiver ran down my spine. I reached for my cup, forgetting it was empty.

‘Damn it.’

It was probably a good thing. Everything was a little blurry round the edges. I was half-cut already.

Then I heard, quite distinctly, the stomp of horses’ hooves outside in the street, and the rattle of harness. I frowned. Who would be out at this time of night and in such temperatures?

‘Nothing here can harm you,’ she said. ‘No one.’

After her long silence, her voice was startlingly loud, and I swung round in alarm.

‘Harm me? What do you mean?’

But her eyes had clouded over again. I was baffled. Didn’t know what to make of it, any of it.

I turned to my right. The man was still hunched over the remains of his meal, but he had stopped eating. Up and down the table, across the room, it was the same story. Anxious faces. Frightened faces. Those to whom Guillaume Marty had introduced me earlier: the timeworn Maury sisters and Sénher and Na Bernard, holding hands; widow Azéma, her old milky eyes looking into the middle distance. Again, I searched for Madame Galy, knowing the sight of her would be somehow reassuring, but still could not see her.

The hall seemed colder and I felt the same sense of desolation when I’d first arrived in Nulle, except now the sadness was tinged with fear.

At the far end of the room, an altercation broke out. Voices raised, the sound of a bench being overturned. At first, I assumed it was some kind of drunken brawl. It was late and the wine had flowed freely all night.

Fabrissa turned towards the entrance. I did the same, at the precise moment the heavy wooden door was flung open. Two men strode into the hall.

‘What the Devil…’

Their faces were concealed beneath square iron helmets and the candlelight glinted on their unsheathed swords, sending flashes of gold dancing around them like sparks from a blacksmith’s anvil.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Briefly I wondered if this was part of the evening’s entertainment. Some absurd historical re-enactment of the original, long-gone fête de Saint-Etienne taken too seriously. Like the costumes or the traditional foods or the troubadour and his vielle.

Then a woman screamed and I knew it was not. Panic took hold. My uncouth dining companion scrambled to his feet, shoving me with his elbow. I fell against Fabrissa and felt her heavy hair briefly touch my skin, a subtle scent of lavender and apple.

‘Freddie,’ she whispered.

A small group of men was attempting to drive the intruders from the hall. Some brandished hunting daggers, drawn from their sheaths on their belts. Others grabbed at whatever makeshift weapon came easily to hand: pieces of wood, irons from the fire, even the heavy skewer on which the meat had been served.

The blades jabbed and sliced the air, though never connected. It was an unequal fight for, although the soldiers had the advantage of heavier weaponry, they were overwhelmingly outnumbered. The crowd was shouting and pushing forward now in a mass of arms and legs. The cry went up to barricade the door. The mood was ugly, likely to escalate. I did not want Fabrissa to be caught up in it.

And despite the exhaustions of the day, despite the fact that it must have been well past midnight, I felt suddenly alive. Purposeful. Adrenalin coursed through me. This time I wouldn’t funk it.

I reached for Fabrissa. ‘We must leave.’

‘Are you sure?’

Her tone was grave, as if my rather obvious suggestion held some significance beyond simple common sense. I took her hand. An intense heat shot through my veins, carried the singing in my blood to the base of my spine. I seemed to grow taller. I felt capable of anything.

‘Come on. Let’s get you away from here.’

Did I manage to keep the smile from my face? Looking back, I’m sure I did not because, finally, my hour had come. All my life I’d been second best. Never the right man for the job. Not invincible.

Not George.

That night it was different. Fabrissa had put her trust in me. Had chosen me. It was a gift I’d never thought to receive. And even now, more than five years after the event, and in the light of everything that subsequently happened, the ecstasy of that moment will never leave me.

‘Is there another way out?’

She pointed to the far corner of the hall.

The soldiers had been driven back, but now there was fighting everywhere, between those marked out by a yellow cross and those not. I felt I was observing the scene from above, disconnected and yet at the heart of things. Holding on to Fabrissa tightly, I launched forward into the mass of bodies, swimming against the tide. We ran, she and I, clumsily hand in hand.

‘Through there?’ I said, raising my voice to be heard. I could see a small door set in the wall, partially hidden behind a pyramid of wooden chairs and a heavy wooden chest with a metal clasp and bands.

She nodded. ‘It leads to a tunnel that runs beneath the Ostal.’

With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I hauled the chest aside and tossed the chairs out of the way as if they were made of pasteboard.

Was I scared? I should have been, certainly, but I don’t believe I was. Instead, what lingers in my memory is my single-minded determination to get Fabrissa to safety. I unhooked the latch and pushed at the door with the flat of my hands until there was a gap wide enough for us to slip through. We ducked under the low lintel and down into the darkness we went.