It was young Frère Roby, the one they affectionately called simple, who’d first stumbled on the camp high up on the Alpine mountainside during one of his long contemplative rambles one morning in early October. The nineteen-year-old would later say that he’d been following a young chamois, hoping to befriend it, when he’d made his strange discovery.
The camp had been made in a natural hollow among the rocks, sheltered from the wind, out of sight and well away from the beaten track, only accessible along a narrow path with a sheer cliff face on one side and a dizzy drop on the other. It was like nothing Roby had ever seen. In the middle of the camp was a shallow fire pit, about two feet deep, over which had been built a short, tapered chimney made of stone and earth. The fire was cold, but the remains of a spit-roasted hare showed that it had been used sometime in the last couple of days. Nearby, almost invisibly camouflaged behind a carefully built screen of pine branches, was a small and robust tent.
That was where he’d found the stranger, lying on his side in a sleeping bag, with his back turned to the entrance. To begin with, Roby had been frightened, thinking the man was dead. As he dared to creep closer to him, he’d realised he was breathing, though deeply unconscious. The chamois completely forgotten, Roby had dashed all the way back to the monastery to tell the others.
After some thought, the prior had given his consent, and Roby had led a small party of older men back to the spot. It was mid-afternoon when they reached the camp, to find the stranger still lying unconscious inside his tent.
The men soon realised the cause of the stranger’s condition, from the empty spirits bottles that littered the camp. They’d never seen anybody so comatose from drink before, not even Frère Gaspard that notorious time when he’d broken into the store of beer the monks produced as part of their livelihood. They wondered who this man was and how long he’d been living here undetected, just three kilometres from the remote Carthusian monastery that was their home. He didn’t look like a vagrant or a beggar. Perhaps, one of them suggested, he was a hunter who’d lost his way in the alpine wilderness.
But if he was a hunter, he should have a rifle. When they delicately searched his pockets and his green military canvas haversack in the hope of finding some identification, all they came across was a knife, a quantity of cash, some French cigarettes and an American lighter, a battered steel flask half-filled with the same spirit that had been in the bottles. They also found a creased photograph of a woman with auburn hair, whose identity was as much a mystery to them as the man’s.
The monks were fascinated by the fire pit. The blackened mouth of the stone-and-earth chimney suggested that the stranger must have been living here for some time, perhaps weeks. The way it was constructed indicated considerable skill. They were themselves men who’d been used to a hard, simple existence close to nature all their lives, dependent through the harsh alpine winters on the firewood they’d gathered, chopped and seasoned themselves. They understood that the fire pit was the work of someone highly expert in the art of survival. That, as well as the green bag and the tent, made them wonder whether the stranger might at one time have been a soldier. A Wehrmacht infantryman had been found frozen to death not far from here in the winter of 1942, hiding in the mountains after apparently deserting from his unit. As far as the monks knew, there weren’t any major wars happening at the moment, down there below in the world they’d left behind. The stranger was dressed in civilian clothes – jeans, leather jacket, stout boots – and his blonde hair was too long for him to have belonged to the military anytime recently.
Whatever clues they could derive about his past, it was his immediate future that concerned them. Despite their isolated, ascetic lifestyle, the monks were worldly enough to know about such things as alcohol poisoning, and they were afraid that the stranger might die if left. The monastic tradition of helping travellers was just one of the many ways in which they were sworn to serve God. The question was, what should they do?
There’d been some debate as to whether to bring him back to the monastery, where the prior would know best how to help him, or whether to call for outside help. It hadn’t been a hard decision, as none of them possessed a phone to dial 15 for the SAMU emergency medical assistance service.
So they gathered up his things and carried him back along the winding, steep and sometimes dangerous mountain paths to their sanctuary, Chartreuse de la Sainte Vierge de Pelvoux, where the stranger had remained ever since.
That had been over seven months ago …
Acknowledgments
Of the various historical sources I was fortunate enough to be able to make use of in writing this novel, there is none to which I am more indebted than the late Thomas Gallagher’s 1982 book on the great Irish famine, Paddy’s Lament. This is a book that moved and inspired me many years ago, and The Forgotten Holocaust would not have been written otherwise. Thanks, Thomas.
About the Author
Scott Mariani is the author of the worldwide-acclaimed action-adventure thriller series featuring ex-SAS hero Ben Hope, which has sold over a million copies in Scott’s native UK alone and is also translated into over 20 languages. His books have been described as ‘James Bond meets Jason Bourne, with a historical twist.’ The first Ben Hope book, THE ALCHEMIST’S SECRET, spent six straight weeks at #1 on Amazon’s Kindle chart, and all the others have been Sunday Times bestsellers.
Scott was born in Scotland, studied in Oxford and now lives and writes in a remote setting in rural west Wales. When not writing, he can be found bouncing about the country lanes in an ancient Land Rover, wild camping in the Brecon Beacons or engrossed in his hobbies of astronomy, photography and target shooting (no dead animals involved!).
You can find out more about Scott and his work, and sign up to his exclusive newsletter, on his official website:
www.scottmariani.com
By the same author
Ben Hope series
The Alchemist’s Secret
The Mozart Conspiracy
The Doomsday Prophecy
The Heretic’s Treasure
The Shadow Project
The Lost Relic
The Sacred Sword
The Armada Legacy
The Nemesis Program
To find out more visit www.scottmariani.com
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London,SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
The Forgotten Holocaust (Ben Hope, Book 10) Page 36