The Caves of Perigord

by Martin Walker

  “For me, that is fine,” said Clothilde. “I think it is getting beyond just me and you. Lawyers and government officials and diplomats are already starting to get involved in this. And then the politicians cannot be far behind. Our President comes from this part of France and takes a personal interest in Lascaux. But you are right, let us wait and see what these officials want to do. In the meantime, I want to come to London tomorrow to see the piece. I can hardly give anyone a serious opinion from just your photos. I can get an early flight from Perigueux to Paris and be at your office before lunch. Will that be O.K.?”

  It was, of course. But then Lydia had to think about explaining this sudden international incident that she had unleashed to her department head, to the legal department, and probably to a director or two. And all of them would be glumly aware that none of this fuss and bother would have the least financial benefit to the auction house. Ten minutes with the legal department left her convinced that this could become an expensive mess for the company. There was no sale in view, only embarrassment.

  She rose, and then checked herself. That would never do. She would have to think positively. What was Clothilde saying about Horst suspecting that an undiscovered cave could be just the break he needed? Perhaps the break could benefit her and the auction house. After all, she had been the one who first identified the rock as a possible example of Lascaux art. The publicity department could certainly do something with it. She picked up the phone to call them, but checked herself again. She should at least call Manners. It was his rock. She looked at the card he had left her, with a country phone number that gave no reply. The London address was the Cavalry Club, and when she rang she learned that he was Major Manners, and he was summoned from the bar. He sounded pleased to hear from her.

  “It looks like the real thing,” she told him. “Two of the top experts in Europe are coming in this week to look at it on the basis of the photos I sent them. They both think it is from the Lascaux time and period. One suspects that it comes from an undiscovered cave. The other thinks it comes from part of a known cave that has not yet been fully explored. But I think you’ll find the French authorities very determined to recover it, since they are convinced it comes from one of their caves.”

  “You have been working fast, Miss Dean. I’m very grateful to you, and think I owe you that lunch I offered. But when you said the French are very determined, you sounded a touch ominous.”

  “Well, Mr. Manners, the French museum experts naturally told the Ministry of Culture, who are considering their legal position. They would have to show that your rock came from France, and while most experts would probably agree that it does, there must be some doubt about that so long as they cannot point to the cave from which it is supposed to have come. Then they have to show that it was removed from France at a time when it would have been against the law to do so. And if your father obtained it in 1944, there was then no such law in France. And as the Dordogne region was then territory under German military control, different courts might find that your father’s souvenir is legitimate war booty, or legally the property of the British Army. Our own legal department says it’s a bit confused. It is clearly in your hands, and you are equally clearly blameless. This is a case where possession is a large part of the law.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “I think you might want some legal advice. If you want to hang on to the painting, you’d find that fighting this kind of case could be expensive. But you may want a lawyer who can negotiate a settlement, or our auction house can act for you. If the French calculate the costs, they will find an uncertain legal action far more expensive than paying you a finder’s fee or an honorarium.”

  “What sort of sum might that be?”

  “Negotiable. But if the French are convinced that it is real and they want it, they may be persuaded to offer ten thousand pounds or so. Perhaps rather more.”

  “If you were to act for me, your commission would be what?”

  “The standard rate is twenty percent. But that would be the firm’s commission. It’s the firm’s expertise you would be hiring.”

  “What if I were to hire someone privately to act for me?”

  “Still twenty percent. I can give you the names of some good independent agents.”

  “I’ve got one. The deal is done. You are appointed my agent. I’m quite happy for it to go back to the Frogs, but the more they can be induced to pay, the better. And now you really must let me buy you lunch.”

  “Thank you, but probably not this week, which promises to be rather hectic. And I couldn’t just take off my company hat and act for you privately. It doesn’t work like that. Now, how do you feel about publicity? I think it might help. Sensational find, British war hero, that kind of thing. Since we both know that we want the painting to go back to France, what we want to do now is jack the price up, which is where publicity comes in.”

  “Fine by me. It’s in your charming hands, Miss Dean. But take care of the dear old rock for me, and get the best price you can. And I’ll see you on Friday at twelve, and possibly your European experts too.”

  She rang down for a janitor to take the rock to the strong room, filled in the deposit slip, and where it asked for an estimated value, she boldly scrawled “ten thousand pounds.” She saw it removed and signed for, and then feeling far more confident than she had for some weeks, walked into Justin’s office without knocking to inform him that she might just have the publicity coup he had been looking for. Finally, after a busy half hour with Justin, a lawyer, the publicity manager, and two interested directors, she left them telling the janitor that they wanted the rock brought back up so they could all look at it, while Lydia went off to ring the Arts correspondent of The Times.

  Clothilde Daunier stood five feet tall, with an extra three inches for a splendid skein of auburn hair piled atop her head so carelessly that the cut must have been expensive, and she was dressed to match. She had a bustling manner, a wide grin, and despite some envy at her clothes, Lydia liked her at once.

  “I expected you to bring the French ambassador, the Foreign Legion, and half the lawyers in Paris,” she began, pouring coffee. Lydia’s tone was friendly and confident after the compliments she had heard from her colleagues that morning. One of the directors had come up to Lydia’s attic to congratulate her on the excellent publicity, so she was feeling highly confident about her job.

  “I am sure they will come if required,” laughed Clothilde, and rummaged into a deep Hermes bag to bring out a bottle and a small glass jar, sealed with rubber. “For you, some foie gras from Perigord, and a bottle of Monbazillac to drink with it. Forget your English rules about leaving sweet wines till the end of your meal and drink it slightly chilled with the foie gras.”

  She sat down, brought a thin file of photos and photocopies from the bag, lit a Marlboro before Lydia could explain about the No Smoking rule, and said, “You know I worked with Monique Peytral, the artist who reconstructed all the paintings at Lascaux?” Lydia shook her head. She knew the precise and life-size copy of the original cave, built to protect the original from the damaging microbes and carbon dioxide brought in and breathed out by an endless trail of visitors.

  “I was the technical adviser on the project, re-creating the Hall of the Bulls and the Axial Gallery. We did a good job, and half the tourists who come have no idea that they are seeing a very clever copy. But what this really means is that everything at Lascaux is engraved onto my brain. I know it very well, and your bull is a Lascaux bull. Your row of dots are Lascaux dots, from a common Lascaux design. This rock is probably from Lascaux artists. I would almost swear to it-except that the bull is so small. I have no idea where it is from. We surveyed that cave fully. There are no unexplored parts to it, and I know your rock does not come from the Lascaux cave. So it may be a copy, just like the ones Monique made, or Horst may be right and it comes from a cave we do not know about. That would be revolutionary. Or it comes from one of several caves nearby, which
would be very interesting to a few scholars, but a lot less dramatic. Unless, of course, your rock was surrounded by similar paintings and we have a whole new cave gallery we never knew about. All these things are possible, but first I must see it.”

  Lydia rang down to the janitors’ department, asked for the painting to be brought up, and in the meantime handed to Clothilde a copy of that day’s Times. There was a small paragraph on the front page, and then a much larger story on page 3, alongside one of Lydia’s photographs of the bull, and a headline that read MYSTERY OF FRENCH CAVE MASTERPIECE IN BRITAIN. Tucked into the middle of the story was an extremely flattering photo of Lydia, taken by the publicity department. Clothilde looked at the story, at the photographs, looked back more closely at Lydia and grinned, and then the janitor rang to say they didn’t have the rock. It had never been sent down again to the strong room after the directors called for it to be brought to them in the boardroom the previous evening.

  “Who signed for it?” Lydia asked, irritated.

  “Mr. Justin did, miss,” came the reply. “He just kept it up there, and it was never checked in here again last night. It must still be with him.”

  She rang off and called Justin, whose line was busy. She went down the corridor to his office, suddenly aware that she was walking into some kind of crisis, and his usually impeccably dressed secretary was looking disheveled as she tried to speak on two phones at once. Lydia looked into the office. No Justin. She went back and stood squarely in front of the secretary, who mouthed at her “boardroom.”

  She took the stairs and found two uniformed policemen standing in the corridor. The boardroom doors were wide open, and she heard the sound of raised and angry voices. It was crowded with several people she did not recognize, two of the auction house directors, and messy with a great deal of paper on the floor. There were champagne glasses on a Regency table, a couple of empty bottles on the priceless carpet, and the smell of a party nobody had bothered to clear up. So there had been a celebration here last night to which she had not been invited. Typical Justin, she thought grimly. Then she saw the firm’s security officer standing over Justin, who was sitting at a disarrayed Georgian desk with his head in his hands. He looked up as she stood hesitantly at the door.

  “It’s your damned rock, Lydia,” he said over the hubbub. “It’s gone. Disappeared overnight. We’ve been burgled.”

  “What do you mean, burgled?” she demanded in the sudden silence. “Why wasn’t the rock put back in the strong room?”

  “The boardroom was locked, somebody forced the door. Your bloody rock is the only thing that has gone,” Justin said.

  “That’s not the half of it. The police are here, with more coming,” said the publicity director. “And we have half of Fleet Street and the BBC on the phone, all wanting to do their own versions on this”-he looked down at a copy of The Times-“this place that you call the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art.”

  “I didn’t call it that,” Lydia snapped. “That was the phrase used to describe Lascaux by the great French historian the Abbe Breuil. He was a churchman. I suppose we would have called him an abbott.”

  “I don’t give a toss about abbots. I do give a toss about the fact that The Times Arts correspondent is rather cheesed off that he was given only half a story. He only found out this morning that the late Colonel Manners who was the original owner of this chunk of rock was so highly thought of in Paris that the current President of the Republic came over two weeks ago for a private visit, simply to attend his funeral. This is going to be an even bigger story tomorrow. Thanks to you, we’ve got a very nasty scandal on our hands.”

  “In more ways than one,” Lydia snapped back, furious at this attempt to shift blame toward her. “I have a French expert from their national museum sitting in my office waiting to see this piece of prehistoric art. And I have an eminent German expert about to fly in to see what I believe to be the most important and unique work of art that this department has found in living memory. From the signs of celebration in this room, you seem to agree with me. And in the midst of guzzling your champagne, you gentlemen seem to have lost it.”

  “Not lost it,” groaned Justin, his nervous hands smoothing out the storeroom receipt that carried his signature and made him responsible. “Burgled.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The Vezere Valley, approximately 15,000 b.c.

  There was always mist in the mornings, hanging damply above the fast-flowing stream and spilling across to the limestone cliffs and the humped hills that shaped the river’s course. But even when the sun of early spring had burned off the mist, a fog of another kind still lingered in the valley and remained throughout the day, thickening as the sun sank each evening and the fires were heaped higher to keep the night chill at bay. This more stubborn mist was marked by a scent that kept the game away and forced the hunters to start each day with a long trek to reach the places where the reindeer herds might be found. The animals had always known that smoke meant fire and fire meant danger in the forest. Now they were also learning that the smell of smoke signaled the presence of man, and that this valley was wreathed constantly with his presence.

  The trees near the river had gone, cut down laboriously with flint tools to feed the fires. The river took strange courses, where stones had been heaped along the shallower stretches to make fords where man could cross. There was the smoke, and above all, there was the noise of man. He was the least silent of all living things. His young chattered and laughed and screamed in their play. His womenfolk called out constantly to their children and to one another, and chanted strange rhythmic dirges as they came down to the riverbank three times each day for water, and then slogged back up the slopes with their burdens. The men themselves roared in their triumph as they came back to the valley carrying the butchered reindeer, slung by their own sinews to poles borne on the hunters’ shoulders. And behind it all was the constant toc-toc-toc, like the sound of a vast flock of woodpeckers, as men chipped and chipped away at the flint stones to make their tools. Noise and smoke and the destruction of trees and the constant, hanging scent of their fires in the valley they had despoiled. That was the essence of man.

  Gazing down the river, watching the smoke from more fires than he could count spiral and linger down the valley as far as he could see, the Keeper of the Bulls knew that there was more to his people than the sounds and signs of their presence. More than speech, more than communication, more than the skill at working in groups that kept the meat coming to the caves, there was the work that was worship. It glared and pranced and brooded on the walls of the cave behind him. The Keeper of the Bulls looked down at his hands, spread out the fingers, looking at the red and yellow clays that filled his nails and stained his skin. He lifted a hand to his mouth. He could smell the colors. Idly, he sucked, wondering for the hundredth time whether he could taste any difference between them. He fancied that he could, when he took the soft moss to paint the blackness of the bulls, smelling their power, tasting their darkness. He felt the familiar tug of the beasts’ presence, and took a deep breath to begin the chant that would prepare him for a new day of work, the song that he made to the bulls.

  As he sang, he knelt before the small fire glowing at his feet. To his left hand lay the feather, the most perfect and precise of his painting tools. To his right hand lay the moss, the most crude of them. Beyond the fire lay the small piece of dung from the holiest of animals. He had rolled it himself, mixed it, moist and warm and fresh, with the colors that he would use. Blowing on the fire as he chanted, he waited for the precise words to place at the fire’s heart first the feather, then the moss. He smelled the acrid burning of the feather, waited for the billow of smoke from the damp moss, and then he reverently placed one red and one yellow ball of dung into the flames. He stood, stretching his arms wide, ending the chant as the sun burned through the mists and sent glints of sparkling yellow fire along the river. Closing his eyes and bowing his head, he thought of the great haunches that he wou
ld paint this day, of their power and their solidity, feeling in his head the swelling shapes that he would use to portray their force. Awake, and purified, he dreamed of the bulls. But then came the voice.

  “Father, you must come.” The voice was high and piping, almost squeaky with nervousness. Or perhaps fear. The Keeper of the Bulls tried to think clearly through his shock, his anger that the boy would be foolish and disrespectful enough even to come to this place, which he had no right to see. At least the child had waited until the chant was complete. He understood that much of the ritual, although he could not take his place among the workers in the cave until he had grown to manhood and killed his beast. He was a good boy, the Keeper of the Bulls thought proudly, always scratching shapes and drawings in the mud with a stick, born to the work. “The women …” the boy squeaked on. “It’s Mother.”

  “Go,” shouted the Keeper of the Bulls, his anger suddenly overcoming his concern that the birth was going badly. “I cannot come now. I am purified. I must do my work. I will come after.”

  He heard a scurrying down in the rocks, and suddenly saw the boy’s back as he ran downhill toward the fire close to the river where the women gathered. Childbirth so often went ill. This was his second wife, who had given him two sons since his first wife died in childbirth. Now perhaps he might be able to take another. He turned and marched solemnly to the cave, ducking under the low roof of the entrance, and then standing motionless while his eyes became accustomed to the darkness. There were too many poles supporting the scaffolding to risk blundering ahead until his eyes adjusted to the light of the small lamps with their wicks of juniper. He heard the scuffling above him of other painters, crouched on the scaffolding as they worked, and the first sight that came to him clearly was the Keeper of the Horses, the other priest whose work he most admired after his own. The Keeper of the Horses had a young daughter, who would soon be old enough to wed. A girl, young and fresh, and awed by his status as the Keeper of the Bulls. He smiled to himself as his sight improved and the head of the greatest of the bulls began to emerge in the dim light of the lamps.