Chapter V
The find
Oliver was appalled at their shabby treatment. They had been looked over like so much merchandise and obviously found wanting. The snivelling waiter with the black stare had shown them to a table near the lavatories, away from the main dining area and no where near any natural light. And to add to the unpleasantness, he mumbled some nonsense about nothing else being available when it was plain that there was not another soul in the restaurant.
“You would be forgiven if you thought that these people disliked us. They do not hate you, me or anyone else for that matter,” Felicity tried to reassure Oliver with yet another apology for the behaviour of the local folk. “It is that they are very suspicious by nature, and so behave sometimes with what looks to the entire world like duplicity but is really only awkward vigilance.” Felicity, always quick to empathize, tried to view garbage in such a way that it no longer smelled like the real thing.
They had arrived for lunch wearing the same clothes in which they had been rappelling that morning over the cliffs just outside Rocamadour. Where these were not streaked with the brown clay common to the area, they were worn and faded. Although Oliver did most of his schooling in Canada he had been born in the USA and retained some very American peculiarities; one such being that they did not dress to go to restaurants. They were customers and they could come as they liked, as long as they had money. But there was the rub, Oliver’s pockets were stuffed with lucre and the dignified treatment he felt his due had not materialized.
As Felicity explained, the French would be just as happy to take their money as their lives but they did always want to make sure that the money was there. Great emphasis was placed on appearances as a singular signal, and the strongest impression they gave was impecuniousness. The garcon had clearly put much strategic thought behind the table he had chosen for them. Not only would these two thoughtlessly grimy foreigners be invisible to any other patrons who on the very slim chance might yet show up but, above all, they would not be able to break for the exit if their intention was only to eat and run. This waiter knew foreigners were not to be trusted, particularly the run down variety.
“You see, Oliver,” Felicity continued, “the French have a long history, way back even before they were French, to the time of Gaul, of unspeakable suffering. The last two thousand years have not been a picnic for these people. If it wasn’t the Romans, then it was the gangsters disguised as nobles, or the invaders disguised as liberators, or the tyrants disguised as modernizers that kept the apocalyptic horsemen well watered and fed. I know you will be thinking that not near enough time has passed but I am convinced it was nothing less than natural selection which fortified the extant lines with those traits most likely to survive the exceptionally long periods of harshness through which these benighted folk needed to survive: suspicion, duplicity, callousness and let us not unfairly forget rampant hypocrisy. They’ll eventually get over it I suppose, inasmuch as they can remain at peace long enough. Wasn’t it Henry V who marvelled at the uncanny ability of the French to squander the best piece of real estate in all of Europe?”
Felicity was doing post-doctoral work on the Albigensian crusade, incited and organized by Catholic Rome to stamp out the Cathar heresy that had taken root during the high medieval period in what is now southern France. By the thirteenth century Christian domination in Jerusalem had come to an end, leaving suddenly no shortage of armed men across Transalpine Europe looking for opportunities to secure for themselves prime real estate. The remuneration, besides the usual eternal gratitude of the Almighty, for their diligent pursuit to keep Rome’s monopoly on Christianity in Western Europe, was ownership of all and any heretical lands they could seize. In their motivated zeal these stalwarts of civilized society perpetrated frightful atrocities and engaged in wholesale massacres that easily outdid much of what had passed for bad behaviour in the past. Historians would later record the progress of this crusade with hyperbolic adjectives to describe the orgy of bloodletting unleashed in the name of God.
Obscure texts Felicity had discovered in a remote Cluniac monastery convinced her that far from being isolated to the southern strip of modern day France, the heresy had spread further north, up to the winding Dordogne river. She had rented a small farmhouse in the area and Oliver, who had recently finished his residency requirements at the Montreal General Hospital, thought to take his vacation scaling cliffs and looking into caverns with his closest friend, Felicity.
Oliver Littlebridge ached for adventure. He had spent most of his life either in school or at summer camp. He had prepared to travel to remote dangerous areas with Doctors without Borders – North Ossetia, Djibouti, anywhere that might be fertile ground for hero building. But he could not, at 30, break the strong grip his mother had on him and his yearnings. She had only agreed to stop whimpering about being abandoned because she knew Felicity and felt that France did not pose any imminent danger to her only son.
They were out again the following day. Their two guides, Benoit and Aubrey Malvue, with climbing skills and a lifelong knowledge of the area, had by now led them to most of the grottos and small caves gouged into the cliff walls around Rocamadour. But Felicity could find none of the inscriptions she had hoped others would have missed. This was to be their last attempt, what looked to be an opening hidden behind a stunted tree growing from some soil in a crack between two solid sheets of rock. She would not listen to the guides who tried to explain to her that this was only an illusion created by the angle, the shading and a discolouration from underground water seepage. The worst that could happen, she reasoned, would be a wasted rappel, something she in any event enjoyed.
The routine was the same for each attempt. They bounced along in the Malvue van, more rolling scrap metal than motor vehicle, several times cited for safety violations, all patched with reliable duct tape, including a strip which seemed to keep the steering column from collapsing. There was only one real seat, a metal kitchen chair welded to the floor with a plywood slat duct taped to the frame. This, as one might reasonably have expected, was not for the driver but for Aubrey, the first born, who never drove. The Malvue were twins, but Aubrey slid down the channel first and so was given a name beginning with the first letter of the alphabet. The unlucky Benoit was thus doomed to a life of second best and hand-me-downs. He, along with the passengers, sat on unattached wooden crates held loosely in place laterally by the ribbing running along the floor and mostly by their own weight. Back support was provided by what looked to be a rusted bed frame cut to size, very aged sofa cushions tied to the springs, and all welded to the metal floor. Fully equipped guides were hard to come by at that time of the year. Besides, the Malvue were her temporary neighbours and landlords, her rented house on their property.
She had declined their offer of climbing equipment, having happily brought her own. Worryingly, she did have to trust them to provide safety backup when she and Oliver descended the steep cliff faces. It’s not that they would be deliberately mischievous, although that thought was always a small nagging presence, only that they were mostly negligent and needed constant minding. When not actively on the alert for opportunities to pilfer, they seemed inexorably drawn to arguing about everything and nothing, paying scant attention to the safety of their clients.
They were now running along a particularly devilish piece of road, more of a large rut with pretensions. Felicity already had several developing bumps and bruises and tried to avoid looking at Oliver, who was more than usually alarmed. She often teased, sometimes with regrettable cruelty, Oliver’s cautious approach to life, but this would not be a good time for such indulgence. Oliver worshipped her. Not as an object of sexual desire, although Felicity would certainly have qualified, but as a model of desirable behaviour. He often felt loathing at his own frailties and he aspired to the ease and serenity which Felicity brought to most any circumstance. Felicity was a leader. She was courageous and she was fair, seemingly untouched by base subjectivity. She was,
for Oliver the quintessentially moral person.
Then a jarring stop as Benoit engaged at once the foot and hand brakes, figuring at least one set would still be in working order. Running off the pretend road and up the embankment was more like insurance than necessity, on most occasions. By this time Felicity and Oliver were flirting with heat stroke, the unrelenting sun having baked what little air remained inside the dark van. They were also soaked through. The worst they had to endure, by far, was the acrid smell freely emanating from the twins’ vast stores of aging, caked perspiration. Oliver was the first to burst from the van, having lost some precious breathing time to disentangle the coat hanger which kept the doors from sliding open. Felicity was marginally more restrained, as befitted her character, and left the death trap as slowly as she thought dignity demanded, jealously gulping fresh outside air as soon as she had put a safe distance between her and the brothers’ malignant odour.
Felicity and Oliver hauled their equipment from the van. She wouldn’t accept the brothers’ help. She didn’t quite trust their inattention to common decency. She didn’t like to use extravagant language, but crooked is what most came to mind when thinking about the twins. They had been known to steal unattended articles when and wherever they came across them and she didn’t want to find a crucial clip, or worse, missing when hanging too many meters above the hard ground.
It was now past mid-morning, very much later than Felicity would have liked for their very first descent. The Malvue boys had had some chores to complete before beginning their guide work and when all was ready to depart their very early model Renault would not respond to either insult or injury and did not budge until given a shot of petrol. Without a working gauge, it had all been guesswork as to what ailed the long expired use-before-this-date machine.
The spot from which they would have to rappel to reach the cave, about two thirds of the way down, was overgrown with wild roses and their handmaidens, long sharp thorns. This meant heavier protective clothing if they didn’t want to be tending to multiple puncture wounds. Neither was there any respite from the pitiless heat as the sun approached its noonday zenith. Their ropes were anchored to two sturdy trees and the Frenchmen were at their positions. Felicity was to go first, to be followed by Oliver once she safely alighted in the cave.
“Nothing, barely a toehold,” a frustrated voice echoed up the valley, telling Oliver that he needn’t bother. “There’s a little donkey path about 20 meters below. I’ll slip down there and walk to the road where you can pick me up,” wanting to shorten as much as possible the time she would need to spend in close proximity to the malodorous Malvue boys. Each time she touched the cliff wall the pulleys would momentarily stop squeaking only to begin again as she kicked off in a predictable rhythm of squeaking-silence-squeaking until the comforting pattern was abruptly broken. Instead, Oliver and the twins heard a last pattern of silence-squeaking-elongated squeaking-silence. Something had happened. Less than the 20 meters of rope, she would have needed to reach bottom, had played out.
Oliver looped the rope attached to the tree around his arm and leaned his long body over the edge far enough to see the small path to which Felicity had been heading. There was only a terrible emptiness. His disquiet grew when he was finally able to make out the rope, which seemed to end somewhere just above that path. A small cloud of dust hung defiantly in the still air just where it disappeared from view.
Oliver had very little French and could only make himself understood by manhandling Benoit – he wouldn’t dare touch Aubrey, the first born – towards the van and pointing over the cliff. It was probably due to his greater age that Aubrey was first to understand that Oliver wanted them to drive him down to the roadway below, from which he could easily reach the narrow donkey path. Once in the van, to show he fully appreciated the urgency of the matter, Aubrey pushed Benoit to heretofore unattained speeds – that they were heading downhill helped a great deal.
At the sharp angle where the roadway met the donkey path Oliver jumped from the van and ran to the spot above which he could see the rope. From his vantage it seemed to have been sucked into the cliff wall. He looked in vain for a way to climb the three meters up to where the rope end was lost to view, but it may as well have been three hundred meters for the lack of any visible hand holds. The van, he would need the van. The donkey track looked to be at least a couple of centimeters wider than the wreck. He would get them to drive to just under the rope and from there he should easily be able to get to it from the roof.
Aubrey immediately understood the plan but hesitated, gently caressing his faded treasure, while flashing the remainder of his crooked tobacco stained teeth. Oliver being American was baffled by such sign language; Aubrey would need to be much less subtle. He tried rubbing his thumb against his index and middle fingers with one hand and with the other he gestured first at the van and then at the donkey path; still to no avail. Oliver was by now overwrought with worry and took matters into his own hands. He ran to the truck. The surprised Aubrey did not move, as tough nailed to his spot, frozen halfway into one of his obscene gestures. Oliver leaped in and began maneuvering to drive up the donkey path. The brothers only just avoided being run down.
Oliver’s reckoning had been only slightly off, the van being marginally larger than the path. He would have to run close to the cliff wall, stripping at least one layer of rust from the vehicle. The greedy twins were close behind, but were helpless to stop him. When Oliver finally braked below the spot he needed to reach the boys opened the back doors, leaped in and made for him. Too late, he had already clambered out the door and onto the roof. From there he could make out a small opening in the cliff wall into which the rope had disappeared, with a lower ledge just within reach. The livid siblings were almost upon him when he gave a final tug and hoisted himself through the opening and over the rubble heap at the entrance. He then fell about a meter onto a gravel strewn surface.
The transition from brilliant sunlight to the still dusty and very dark surroundings inside the hole left him totally blinded. As he was adjusting his eyes to the intense darkness he detected a low pitched sound, towards which he very carefully groped his way. As he got closer to the source his eyes were quickly fine-tuning to the low light and he began to make out shapes, one of which coalesced into a body. It was Felicity. She was obviously alive, propped on one elbow, but Oliver could not tell how badly she may have been hurt. She quickly assured him that she had painless mobility in all her limbs. Nothing broken, nothing severed. He examined her head. No bumps or blood. All very encouraging. She appeared only to be shaken from her unexpected jolt. She sat up and took several deep breaths.
“Putain de bordel de merde, espèce de con,” and other meaningful communications were freely flowing from two very red faced Frenchmen. Until they saw Felicity. This placed these simple people in a pickle. Perhaps the American was justified in taking extraordinary measures, the lady needed to be rescued. They did not know and so did not want to just yet take any big chances. They would have plenty of time to exact retribution at a more propitious moment. They chose a low risk hovering strategy, just shuffling in the background.
Felicity was soon on her feet, examining the new hole through which she had fallen. Where there had been only dust and dried rock, there was now a good deal of moisture. The solid barrier at this level seemed to have been weakened by underground water and it took no more than a hard thump for it to give way. She had stumbled upon a hidden cave. Her earlier disappointment at finding no proof for her theory about the northward migration of the Cathar heresy momentarily gave way to guarded optimism. She splashed the dark enclosure with electric light and scanned for any tell tale graffiti. As she moved closer to the far wall, opposite the entrance, intensely absorbed by every bump and indentation, lest they be purposefully made, she didn’t notice the smooth black surface onto which she was about to step. She let out more of an annoyed grump than an alarmed yelp, as she splashed into the gelatinous liquid.
H
ypnotized by the light traveling over the worn rock, neither Oliver nor the eternally scheming Frenchmen had seen the pool. Then there was only darkness and alarm. “I’m OK, calm down,” she whispered as her intense electric beam settled onto three surprised faces. She was sitting in what looked to be some black oily liquid about half a meter deep. Indeed, Aubrey slapped Benoit’s Zippo from his hand, thinking it might actually be oil. His eyes were wild with anticipation, as he rushed to the pool to touch and sniff what he believed to be his new found fortune. But it neither smelled nor felt like crude. Aubrey had been a roughneck on an oil rig in the North Sea and he knew what black gold should feel and smell like. Another “putain de bordel de merde,” which seemed to define the limit of Aubrey’s expressive vocabulary.
There was a distinctly fishy smell to the muck. Benoit received a sharp slap to the top of his head for pointing out the obvious to Aubrey; they were very far above sea level and large bodies of water were noticeably absent in the vicinity. As for Felicity, she was not faring any better than poorly treated Benoit. A sudden sharp piercing pain shot through her hand as she groped for support, sending her completely beneath the surface. To her small audience Felicity was unrecognizable as she emerged from the pool. Her hair and face were covered in the dripping ooze. Her apparent poor fortune notwithstanding, she would not stoop to impatience or childish petulance. She would sit there until calm and reason returned. No such luck. Another “putain de bordel de merde” broke her meditative posture. This time she was angry and was about to let Aubrey know it. But something about his leer gave her pause.
He was talking, which wasn’t surprising for him, but there was no sound. He was pointing at something to her right. It was conical and metallic and it was on its pointy end that Felicity had put her hand when she had tried to rise. They had missed this object in the first sweep, the muck with which it was coated not being a very good reflector. To Felicity this could be the find she needed to prove her thesis. She thought for a moment about any damage she might do to whatever it was laying in the muck and decided it would be best to take a chance. She stoically concluded that any harm to the submerged artifacts had already been done. As for her own well being, Felicity reasoned there was little cause for concern as the slime had neither corroded her clothes nor burnt her skin. She was already completely covered in the slop and any movement would, at worst, only redistribute it.
Kneeling before the object she carefully slid her hands down the conical sides, feeling for a base and a handhold. Her fingers made out a larger cylindrical shape with a rounded end to which the cone seemed attached. Using only light pressure she tried to move the submerged bulk but it would not yield. Leaning forward to bring all her weight to bear did not fare much better, resulting in a barely detectable movement. Was it attached to a deeper section? Was it heavier than suspected? She ran her fingers further along the cylinder sensing soon enough that it was attached to something larger. Following the outline, sometimes jagged, sometimes granular, whatever it was she reckoned the object stretched along for well over one and a half meters. She would need help.
Whereas Oliver was wired to jeopardize personal well being to vague notions of selfless sacrifice, the twins had crushingly overwhelming survival instincts, which were always particularly fired up when they were called upon to help others. This time was no exception. From long experience with such types, Felicity fully understood their struggle between self preservation and the potential for gain. She knew there was a price at which they would submit – she was looking for their cupidity index. She toyed with offering them her continued silence, for they were bit players in the stolen artifacts trade, but quickly jettisoned the thought. These were two basic people, for whom violence was stored near the top of their very small, crowded crisis management tool box.
Aubrey was clearly disappointed and it showed as he scowled at Benoit, who smiled with delight at the outcome. He felt resentful when Felicity accepted his first offer. He would have settled for half but now, in his hopelessly muddled mind, he added another black mark against Felicity’s name. She had clearly cheated him of the greater amount, whatever that may have been, which she had been prepared to pay for his services, had he only asked.
Reluctantly, the illegal dealers in artifacts waded into the muck and moved to either side of the submerged object. Oliver stood ready at the end opposite to Felicity. They each slid their hands under the heavy bulk and at Felicity’s signal they heaved in tolerable unison. But it was too solidly lodged. They would have to all stand to one side and roll it out. They were fairly close to the edge and all it took was two rolls and a last exertion to move it out of the muck.
The Frenchmen immediately brightened, a broad smirk sharpening even further Aubrey’s spear like nose. Business was about to improve. Apart from the ooze still sticking to the metal, Aubrey was quite certain what he was looking at. He had often enough smuggled these things out of the country for Americans, Asians and others willing to skirt the strict French laws governing archeological finds and patrimonial objects. This would be worth probably ten times the pittance the bitch had offered for his help.
Aubrey would have to be clever about this if he was to take possession. Aubrey tended to exaggerate when he was nervous and he was now very nervous. His opening gambit was to laugh so loudly as to alarm Benoit, who promptly drew a small handgun from his overalls. This unexpected turn distracted Aubrey away from his one act play, needing to quickly disarm his rather stupid sibling. After much brotherly shaking and yelling Aubrey returned to his clever little deception to convince Felicity and Oliver that they were staring at a worthless counterfeit.
This, he explained, gesturing with an exaggerated whirling of his arms to what appeared to be a complete, mint condition medieval suit of armor, is a fake. He had seen many and was somewhat of an expert. This was obvious, he went on, and one need look only at the visor arrangement to see that it was produced in a modern workshop and was all but valueless. While talking he walked over to the cylindrical helmet, which was still oozing the crud which had filled its cavity when they rolled it onto dry land. Pointing to the hinges, Aubrey let his attentive audience know that visors never swung up and down, but laterally like a door. With this he put his finger on the conical face plate and swung it up, as a last demonstration that his knowledge in these matters was infallible.
Aubrey had at his disposal a bottomless well of misunderstanding. The gawking, staring and pointing by his visibly affected audience only confirmed his utter and now unshakable confidence in his own cleverness. These foreigners, not to mention his witless brother, were no match for his fluid guile. Perhaps he was too good. His dazzling display seems to have caused some distress. The bitch had her hand on her undersized breasts. Was she going to be a nuisance with heart trouble? Why is he, Aubrey Malvue, always burdened with such poor luck? He was still deeply absorbed with this last bit of self-pity when he was pushed to the ground by the foreign shrew as she rushed to have a closer look at the helmet and face visor.
“Salope,” was all he could utter before it was the American Bastard’s turn to push him back to the ground as he also rushed to get a better look at the face plate. Benoit, however, was not as fortunate as the foreigners. He had only to think about taking a closer look to be slapped up the side of the head by a now deeply wary Aubrey.
“Mummified, probably,” Felicity opined in an almost reverential whisper. “Don’t touch it,” she now raised her voice, as Oliver tended his hand towards the bony, emaciated, ashen face. “What if it falls to pieces,” speaking again in the low voice which seemed most appropriate under the circumstances? They were staring at the ooze slowly seeping from the many joints along the length of the armor when Aubrey’s gravelly growl disturbed the hallowed aura that had settled into the cave. Guessing that these stupid foreigners had finally figured out his ruse to fool them about the value of this find and ever with an eye to profit he was opening negotiations. But he thought better of his timing when Oliver and Fel
icity both turned to glare at him.
The lips were only vaguely darker than the ghostly face and they were slightly parted, revealing a quantity of ooze that had penetrated into the mouth when they had rolled it. The nose was given great prominence as it soared from wasted flesh around the cheek bones. Much of the head and face were still hidden by the helmet. Nothing else was visible, the body being fully covered by either armor or chain mail. They did find it odd that everything appeared to be untarnished since the cave was actually quite humid. Their eyes were running over the length of the prostrate form, looking for clues to explain its presence in this previously sealed cave, when they again heard a gravelly growl. They both turned on Aubrey, only to find him chewing on a mouthful of baguette. Then they heard it again, but more of a cough than a growl.
This time it was Benoit’s turn to become hysterical. He dropped his long sandwich and mumbled a prayer to his favourite saint while rapidly and repeatedly crossing himself. Aubrey was a slow assimilator of new information that didn’t fit with his laboriously constructed realities. He simply squinted and tried to make sure that there was no chicanery afoot. Apart from Benoit, and he was not always above suspicion, others were not to be trusted, particularly the doubly damned – strangers and foreigners to boot.
“It’s coughing,” Felicity bellowed, much louder than she would have wanted. “Do something,” she barked at Oliver, the only person to her mind qualified to deal with medically distressed mummies in suits of armor!
“Shoving me will get my attention, but it will not add to my capabilities,” he told her, speaking calmly but curtly. Oliver was convinced that he could never be fully composed in stressful situations, and this was arguably such a moment. A previously dead mummy was now in clear distress, trying to breathe through a mouthful of viscous muck. His head and chest were inaccessible, both well fortified by heavy armor. But in medical emergencies Oliver was not only calm, he was also given to sarcasm and a temptation to cruelly attack incompetence and those who would unnecessarily meddle in his endeavour. He had to consciously restrain these baser tendencies.
“Felicity, remove the helmet,” he ordered, firmly but respectfully. At the same time he unfolded from his pocket knife the large blade and busied himself cutting the leather straps which held the front and back sections of the armor around the torso. He knew he was about to take some risks, but his professional instincts had by now dominated all other considerations and he proceeded as he was supposed to. He did have a couple of nagging worries: it could have an incurable disease which he would undoubtedly contract when he began mouth to mouth, a matter in which he had no alternative; and to pump out the ooze, which had seeped into the open mouth, he might kill it if he pressed too hard on the frail body.
The helmet came off easily enough and the chest plate was also quickly removed. Oliver put his finger into the gaping, gurgling mouth to remove any debris and to open a passage which the tongue might be obstructing. He didn’t dare put all his weight into pumping, and he didn’t have to, a little pressure was sufficient to send gobs of muck streaming from the parted lips. He then forced himself to place his mouth over the revoltingly cadaverous bluish aperture, now silent, and to blow air into its lungs, if that is what it had. It did not take long before the coughing and sputtering resumed. Oliver stopped and began lightly to slap the flaccid cheeks. After a moment the breathing began to lose its frothy flavor and to settle into a hoarse but regular rasp.
“Merde, encore les Templiers,” Aubrey revealed to his captive audience. Early in the fourteenth century Philippe IV le Bel had ordered the round up and annihilation of the Templars and the public immolation of Jacques de Molay, their Grand Master, spawning a giant and ever growing conspiracy industry. One such bit of local lore has it that the Templars were not all killed. Some had evaded what still remains the greatest manhunt ever undertaken in France. They formed a secret society which to this day still carries out clandestine ritual burials in the old tradition, dressing the body in full armor. The actual coffin at the public funerals would invariably be filled with debris and, sometimes, even with missing people, usually drawn from among the homeless. Over the centuries, despite the odd investigation, nothing had ever surfaced to verify these rumors. This, however, did nothing to quell the twins’ ardour for the Templar conspiracy.
Oliver scoffed at the superstitious drivel which Felicity had translated for him and tended to the more pressing business at hand. He put his fingers against the carotid artery, bulging from an emaciated neck, to count out a pulse rate. “He needs to be in a hospital,” he pronounced, with medical authority. “I’d guess we have about an hour before his blood pressure plummets, he goes into shock and expires.”
“Arretez,” Aubrey growled, abruptly ending Oliver’s attempt to summon an ambulance. He was pointing a handgun at Oliver, who quickly understood that Aubrey wanted him to put away his phone. There followed a short, charged exchange between Felicity and Aubrey. “He wants the armor,” she translated and added, a little hesitantly, “and he wants us to leave him here to die,” looking all the while kindly but dispassionately at the soon-to-be corpse. She had not yet had enough time to dip into her unusually well stocked empathy warehouse. “He reasons, quite rightly, that no one will miss an already missing person and,” she continued, a bit more emphatically, “we could be in for an endless headache if we reported him. Knowing the French, they might even accuse us of somehow being involved in this wretch’s misfortunes. But we can’t just leave him. We’ve got to try and do something,” decency having finally trumped her fleeting dispassion.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” was all Oliver could say.
“We are prisoners of our circumstances,” was Felicity’s stoical response. “Let’s not make a huge fuss. Not only has he got the gun, but all indications to my untrained eye are that he is psychotic with more than a mere touch of psychopathy. Think hard what you might do with drugs we can get at the local pharmacy up the hill in Rocamadour, because that’s the only kick we are going to get at this can. Don’t stare at me as though I had artificial fluids running through my veins. Let’s get moving,” she ended, an authoritative edge to her usually collegial tone.
While Felicity was motivating Oliver, Aubrey had pushed Benoit back into the muck to troll the bottom with his hands. “Putain,” Benoit’s usual growl replaced by a shriek. He had been looking for the sword Aubrey guessed should also be there and had inadvertently slid his right index finger against the blade, almost severing it. In his undamaged left hand he held a large broadsword, dripping ooze, and in his right hand a bloody finger tip, where it had been sectioned by the sword, clinging to the last joint by bits of pulpy skin. He extended it pleadingly towards Oliver, great gobs of blood dripping onto the cave floor.
Oliver did not have to worry about who to tend to first. Aubrey had already made that choice, motioning with the berretta towards his clumsy sibling. Oliver found satisfaction in small gestures of defiance against those who held power over him. He took solid hold of Benoit’s shirt pocket and with a firm tug ripped it away. This caused a momentary panic when Aubrey cocked his pistol. Felicity intervened here to calm the situation, explaining as though to a child that Oliver needed a bandage to stanch the blood flow.
With Benoit still staring dumbly at the crimson stain slowly spreading over the faded blue former shirt pocket Oliver returned his attention to the man in armor. He worked quickly, cutting the stays holding all the other metal together. He went on until there remained only a pile of faded cloth clinging to what looked to be lifeless sticks. Not much chance here he thought. He should try, though. Water. Must start re-hydrating. Anticipating the need, Felicity had been to the van to fetch a bottle, which she had already placed next to Oliver, along with a clean cotton t-shirt.
Oliver bunched the t-shirt and soaked it with water. This he squeezed over the pale, cracking, slightly parted lips, taking care not to let too much run into the mouth and down a throat virtually bereft of muscular control
. This brought an unexpectedly strong reaction, the lips parting further and a bluish tongue emerging like a large pustule. It roamed the surface of the quickly drying lips, desperately seeking the elusive, delicious moisture. Encouraged, Oliver increased the flow, rewarded by even more vigorous tongue action. Then it happened. His eyes began to crack open, only the thinnest of slits, but it was happening. In the almost dead body was a brain wired with an exceptionally powerful will to live.
Aubrey seemed to have calmed down and he could hear him in the background grumbling to Felicity, who responded with appropriately timed grunts of her own, not saying anything, as far as Oliver could make out with his non-existent French, just acknowledgement that she had heard him.
Oliver was prepared with a moist strip of clothe, laying it gently over the eyelids to block the light he worried might damage his sight. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but he guessed it was long enough for him to take the precaution. There was some barely perceptible resistance by the prone figure to being blindfolded, but no real movement other than spasmodic twitching. “Please tell Napoleon to stop waving his cannon in my direction and that we will not be leaving him here to die. We will have to move him to someplace where I can minister more adequately to his needs, whatever those may turn out to be.”
Another short exchange, another fistful of currency changing hands and Aubrey was swayed towards the more humane solution. He pocketed his pistol and then quickly pulled it out again to show he had not let down his guard and not to fool with the fastest gun east of America. Not that he trusted Felicity any further than he had a moment before, but he did need both his hands to haul his loot. He would eventually pay dearly for not having stuck to his initial base instincts to let the stranger die.
Benoit had by now returned with the field stretcher which Felicity always insisted on bringing along for rappelling expeditions. He had also brought with him, to transport the artifacts, a large recently emptied rucksack, suspiciously identical to the one in which Felicity carried her climbing equipment. Oliver and Felicity strapped the limp body to the stretcher and proceeded towards the entrance. Long as he was, he barely weighed 30 kilograms, not much for two people to transport, with a third to help move him from the cave down to the donkey path. Benoit was easily conscripted, having more heart – perhaps even more brain – than Aubrey, which still didn’t amount to a great deal. Luckily, since Aubrey needed to carry the armor and would not, in any event, have helped.
Should he survive the jarring drive, the plan was to stop at a pharmacy in Rocamadour, get enough glucose solution and intravenous equipment to keep him on IV for several days, and so try to avoid kidney and other internal organ damage. Oliver, as a licensed physician, would receive the same prescription privileges at a French Pharmacy as he would anywhere in North America.
They rattled through the narrow south gate into Rocamadour and about three quarters of the way through the town they came to the pharmacy. The roadways in these medieval towns were not wide enough for parking, people usually leaving their vehicles at the outskirts and going about their business on foot. They did not have that luxury. Aubrey, of course, had to watch both the foreigners so he accompanied Oliver and Felicity inside while leaving his sibling with the van. Oliver had prepared for the rampantly suspicious French with a story for the pharmacist about his afflicted aunt who could only be fed intravenously. There was some friction when he presented his prescription in the reviled Anglo-Saxon language, but this was quickly muted by Felicity’s excellent French.
“Tabernac”, Aubrey bellowed, as quietly as he could, a profanity he had learned from a French Canadian he had once mugged. He was pointing, not with his finger but, rather, with his sharp chin towards the van. They had been in the pharmacy far longer than expected, having had to endure the medical counsel French pharmacists felt compelled to dispense as to the best way to set up the intravenous mechanism. In France Pharmacists are relied upon a great deal for basic medical and drug advice.
The gendarme was strutting slowly around the van, noting not only the license number but, as well, the general disrepair of the vehicle. Benoit was at the driver’s side door working very hard at his nonchalant posture, with head tilted back as though he had not a care in the world, cigarette dangling from his lips, leaning against the van door. He was so engrossed with his efforts to appear carefree that he did not respond to the gendarme’s demand to look inside until he was shoved and almost fell to the ground. At this point Aubrey had already reached the unfolding drama and finished the gendarme’s work by knocking his younger brother onto the pavement.
“Fils de chien, con,” he roared, sending the gendarme into retreat. Felicity and Oliver had come close enough to be able to hear the exchange but not that close as to attract any further attention from the law. Felicity translated for Oliver. Aubrey was explaining to the gendarme that it was alright to be kicking Benoit because he was stupid and had not obeyed his older brother’s order to properly park the van. This did not go over that well and the gendarme intervened to put an end to the beating. Appearing now somewhat uncomfortable dealing with an evident lunatic, he also stopped insisting to see inside the van, Aubrey’s distraction having had its intended effect. He quickly finished writing the ticket, which he ripped from his notebook and gruffly handed to Aubrey.
“By my reckoning,” began Oliver, in flat, calm tones, belying the recent near career-ending events, “we are now accomplices to a crime, which in itself is worrying, but it is having these two sociopaths,” looking at the twins, “as our accessories, that is truly frightening.” In the everyday world of dull events and routine life Oliver spent a great deal of his time worrying about small things, losing sleep over the mundane and proffering gloomy predictions about the insignificant. But it now seemed that when dropped into real danger his mind has extra gears and becomes suddenly an orderly place, structured to think swiftly and effectively, meticulously accurate in its assessments, solutions and execution of plans. Until today he thought that this ability to deal serenely and articulately with sudden crises was confined to medical emergencies, the only type he had ever experienced.
“100,” Aubrey grumbled to Felicity, showing her the ticket with one hand and extending the other for Felicity to reimburse him. Aubrey did not like loose ends when there was someone else about to anchor them in place, particularly when it came to money. Knowing that this village idiot would wait there all day, risking another encounter with the local constabulary and not caring a wit whether the mystery man lived or died, Felicity did not betray the least surprise at this outrageous demand, and handed him the money.
They were on their way again, Oliver hunched over the wasted figure, keeping a steady flow of water dripping onto the parched lips. The breathing was still audible, but erratic and scratchier than before. All his urgings to the contrary, Benoit drove faster than usual, exaggerating the effect of each blemish in the roadway. Oliver tried as best he could to shelter the frail head from too much movement and from being bashed about at every bump. He had wedged it into a pile of rags, something the van had in great supply. It was all he could do, knowing full well that Aubrey didn’t have even the slightest care as to the man’s well being.
Felicity was a wellspring of empathy. She was mentally wired to become fully immersed in the misery of strangers and this distressed individual was by now almost family, having been with her nearly two full hours. When they left the small, but paved tertiary road and started up the loose gravel and very uneven approaches to the farmhouse, she sidled up to Oliver and without warning took the gaunt figure into her arms and hugged him closely. “He’ll be smashed to pieces on this gravel,” she offered by way of explanation.
It was only a matter of minutes, once inside, to move the stretcher up the narrow stairs and into the empty bedroom, arrange the intravenous stand and to set nourishing liquid flowing into the exhausted body. Now they could do no more than wait to know whether they would need to dig a grave or prepare to care for
a complete stranger. For Felicity and Oliver, concern and misgiving crept into their thoughts, momentarily free from the demanding minutiae of crisis management. There came the realization that they were now deeply involved with something whose bounds were well out of sight, even if the stranger died. The evil twins had disappeared with the armor and sword, doubtless already counting their unexpected windfall, but their machinations and scheming would have unimaginable consequences for Felicity and Oliver.
*
The Perfect Human: An Abelard Chronicles Book Page 7