The flames were catching hold now, and he smelled the first warm, cooking smell of his woman’s dead flesh. Like boar. He bit back the sudden rush of saliva in his moth. The smell would turn sour soon enough, as sour as the loneliness of his own hearth with no woman to clutch for warmth in the nights. He must take a new woman before the winter came, a young one, ready to make more sons. As soon as the ashes of the funeral pyre had cooled and been scattered by the wind and rain, he would talk to the Keeper of the Horses. Most of all, he must keep talking to himself, reminding himself, imposing that discipline upon his own imperious spirit, which might otherwise tear asunder the Keepers in division and rivalry. They must be guided, not commanded, gently steered rather than driven. Perhaps this was his woman’s last farewell to him, her last gift in death. The wisdom of her counsel, not the girl child he had yet to see, was how he would remember her.
He watched as the flames died, waiting until the ashes were just a glow, and turned to his colleagues on either side. The Keeper of the Horses and the Keeper of the Deer both nodded, and as he led the way uphill they marshaled into line the others who would be granted the honor of the cave. First the leaders of his own people, the flint man and the hunter, the waterman and the woodman. Then in courtesy, the Keepers of the other clans, almost humble at the knowledge that they were about to enter into a place far greater than their own caves. Then from each clan, a chosen leader. He looked back. Perhaps forty men, none of them young, were climbing the hill behind him, their way lighted by his apprentices carrying torches that had been kindled at the pyre.
When he reached the cave, the oldest apprentice scurried forward, using his torch to light each of the small stone lamps that the elders would carry. When they were ready, he stepped into the mouth of the cave and began his chant to the beasts, the song of supplication that sought their permission to enter and display their pride and strength to the men who would enter to worship. Once, as a young apprentice at another, lesser cave, he had stood with the torch as another Keeper made this same song, and a great bolt of lightning had crashed down from a clear night sky to strike and break a tree nearby. They had all fled the wrath of the beasts. That moment had always stayed with him. Even though he came to this cave each day, although he worked here and had made this place and the great bulls had grown under his own hand, he was reminded that this was their place even more than his. A power had been engendered here that had reached and grown far beyond his art and beyond his skill. And as he led the way into the darkness, and saw the first flickerings of the lamps begin to invest his bulls with life and power, he felt awe.
Deer, his arms folded across his hairless chest, watched grimly as the line of men disappeared into the cave, and the other apprentices, with whom he should have stood and held the torches, spread out into a line of sentries in front of the entrance. They could not see him, but he could not be part of the ceremony, could take no pride in the paints that he had mixed, the colors that he had applied, the first beginnings of what he knew would be his life’s work. He would be lucky if he were allowed back into the fold before the next festival. It would be midsummer, he calculated, the feast of the longest day. It would be up to the beasts themselves, he thought automatically. And then he examined that instinctive thought. Up to the beasts? No. Up to the old men who spoke and ruled in their name. His fate rested with the Keepers. With men.
He edged back deeper into the trees, and squatted, aware that his head was reeling with this strange, invasive idea. He had always been told that the beasts themselves were the governors of the cave and all the hierarchy and structure that flowed from it. His people were the people of the cave, the servants of the beasts, the blessed folk who had been chosen by their skill to breathe life and holiness into the bare rock and darkness. Did not all the clans along the river come this night to pay homage to the beasts of the cave that the Keepers had conjured from the skill? Surely they had.
But he shared that skill in abundance. He was touched by the beasts, infused by them with the skill that made him the most gifted of the apprentices. He knew that his colors were the purest, his work with the moss the most sure and precise, his touch the most assured of all those young men who stood now with their guttering torches outside the cave. And he was not among them because an old man had slipped and fallen from his scaffolding and blamed him for the tumble. The beasts had been silent. The old man’s petulance had shifted his life, forced him from the cave to work for the women, until such time as the Keepers judged his sin atoned, and summoned him back to the work.
How dare they block his skill in this way, these stubborn old men? Some of them had less skill than he, despite their life’s work. The bison in the cave were a disgrace. The deer were a strange fancy, antlers tangled like brambles-like the thoughts of their elderly Keeper who drank too much of the soured honey that sent men reeling. They had no place in the cave. They breathed no spirit into the rock. His own deer were better.
He closed his eyes, remembering the cave. The Keeper of the Horses was a worthy custodian of his beasts, a Keeper who could judge colors and form, from whose every line Deer knew he was learning some addition to the skill. And the Keeper of the Bulls was an artist touched by the very beasts he conjured, of a gift so rich and true that Deer marveled at the perfection of the memories in his mind. They were the very essence of bull.
And yet, and yet. They were all the same. Gigantic. Dominating by their very size. Each using the same tricks, the white space between limb and body, the different twists of the horns to hint of a turning, the outflung kick of the legs-he saw them all in his memory, recognized their worth as devices. But they were all the same. There was no balance, no variation of scale. There was simply the worship of dominance, expressing the greatness of bulls by sheer size. He squeezed his eyes tighter, remembering not just the bulls but the beasts around them, the context in which their vastness dominated. Were it not for the delicacy of the horses around them …
The Keeper of the Horses made them large and small, made them toss and browse, understood the horses he made as a herd and as separate, distinct beasts. Deer told himself that he must be honest here in his judgment, must even be cruel. There was no single horse that came close to the bulls as a single work. But it was in the numbers, in the use of them as balance and as artistic forms that lightened the great brooding weight of the bulls, that Deer felt he recognized the touch of a master. The bulls were power, the horses were grace. But the power of the bulls would be ungainly, even crude, without that lightness of the Horses. The Keeper of the Bulls was painting for himself, Deer suddenly thought, but the Keeper of the Horses was painting for the cave. As the thought formed, he expelled a great gust of air, without ever knowing that he had been holding his breath. He felt lightheaded.
Then, so unexpected that his skin seemed to jump, there came a touch on his arm. “My father said that I would find you here,” whispered Little Moon. He could barely see her, just the play of shadows from the torches outside the cave and the gleam of her eyes. “He wants you to wait here until morning, when they come out. He will come to see you then.”
“Why does he want to see me? Did he say?”
“Just that you should wait for him.” She made no move to go, kneeling quietly at his side, her eyes on the cave.
“Does he know that we talked, you and I, Little Moon?”
“I did not tell him,” she said. “I think perhaps my mother did. She asked me, after you had gone, what we had said. And she said that I should know you were disgraced, banished from the cave to work for the women.”
“Does your mother know that you are here now?”
He felt, rather than saw, the quick shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter. I am here on my father’s bidding. But I must go back soon.”
“Not yet,” he said, and ran his hand along the smoothness of her arm. She flinched back, and then relaxed.
“Do you remember what I told you, that you should wait until I am made a Keeper?”
&n
bsp; “Yes, I remember,” she whispered. “But this is for my father to decide.”
“He is a good man, Little Moon, and a great worker in the cave, Perhaps the greatest. His beasts love him, and stir with life at his touch.”
“You should not talk of this with me. The cave is not for women.”
“Every other cave of every other clan is for women,” he said. “There are women in other clans who do the work of the cave. I have seen them. It is only us who have this law, and only in this cave.”
“I should like to see it, someday,” she said. “My father says it is a place of marvels.”
“Then you shall, when I am Keeper. I shall show you. I want to show you my work.”
“But you are only an apprentice. They have not let you begin yet.”
“I had passed the last test of the apprentice. I had done my first work, not in the great cave, but far deeper in, where the passage narrows and the floor falls away. That is where the apprentices who are about to be made Keepers do the work that the other Keepers judge. That was where I made my work, my swimming beasts. There is a line of rock within the rock of the cave, a dark and curving line like a river that is in flood. And that was where I plunged my beasts, into this flood as you have seen them swim in the river after winter when the waters rush. They are part of the water, and the water is a part of the rock. They flow together-” His voice broke off. “They are good work, Little Moon, and I would show them to you, my swimming deer.”
She gasped in shock, her hand leaping to her mouth. “You named them! You must not-you named the beasts.”
“Only to you, Little Moon, and you will see them. You will see them and know what they are, and inside your head you will think that these are indeed swimming deer and this is indeed a river. And then you will think like me that naming them in your head is the same as naming them in your mouth, and wonder why we have this strange rule that says we only call them beasts or the work.”
“My father says …” she began, but he interrupted. “This is me speaking now, not your father. This is me, thinking that I do not like this rule that says the cave is not for women, and I do not like this rule of never saying the names of the beasts. And I do not understand the rule that says the work can show bulls and horses and deer and bison and bear, but we never work on the one beast that sustains the people. The reindeer that feed us, that clothe us, that give us their horns for the flint men to work with and the needles for the women to sew with and the hides that make our tents and keep us from the wind and rain, they are not honored in the cave. And this is strange. So many rules are strange.”
She rocked back on her heels, bewildered by his words, which challenged so many of the rules that she had grown up accepting as if they were as much a part of the laws of life as the heat of fire, the wet of rain. And then hearing the names of the beasts, and him telling her more of the cave than she had ever heard, and then saying he would show her. And the touch of his hand on her arm.
“I must go back now,” she said. But did not move.
“I say them only to you, Little Moon. Until this night, I have not even said them to myself.” He let go of her arm. “I will wait here for your father. And I will wait even longer for you.”
She rose, a sudden shiver on her skin although she felt warm, and looked down on him for a long moment before slipping silently back through the trees, and then darting back downhill to the tents of her family.
They came out of the cave at dawn, drawn and silent from the long night watch, to find the women waiting with water and cold meat. As they drank, the spell was broken. Men strolled off to the trees to piss, hawked the cave’s damp from their throats, cleared their noses and broke wind. The Keeper of the Horses paused on the patch of level ground before the cave, looking quickly to left and right, drifting across to the edge of the trees and standing so that he might be seen.
“I await you, Keeper,” came the soft voice. Good, the boy was being careful, still behind the tree. Little Moon must have been clever to have found him. He sidled around to join the youth, led him deeper into the trees.
“Have you learned your lesson now, apprentice?” he asked.
“The lesson of banishment for the fall of an old man that I did not cause? What is there to learn from this?”
“No, the lesson of discipline. The lesson of respect for your elders. The lesson that we must sometimes suffer things without a cause, but accept that suffering for a greater purpose. You have the gift, Deerrunner. Your place is in the cave, with the work, among us.”
“I have respect for my elders, for my teachers, for the workers such as you, or the Keeper of the Bulls. I have much to learn from you.”
“Listen, I want to bring you back into the cave,” he said, gripping Deer by the upper arm, shaking him slightly. “You should be a Keeper by now. You know that. Anyone who has seen your swimming beasts knows that. But I must be able to tell the other Keepers that you have learned the lesson of humility. That you respect the judgment of your elders. Do you hear me, Deer-runner?”
“I hear you, Keeper.” To himself, he said: I hear you, father of Little Moon.
“It is not just a company of workers that you join, a group of skills and talents. It is a group of men, with their own weaknesses and pride. And one thing to remember is that old men whose limbs are no longer sure as they climb the poles can be too proud to say that, and lash out at a young or nimbler person nearby. Men hate to blame themselves for their feebleness and faults, just as I see you not wanting to take the blame for your own impetuous pride. Do you hear this?”
“I hear you, Keeper. And I thank you for the lesson.”
“You will be humble before the Keepers. You will admit your fault to the old man. You will take the blame upon yourself. You will keep your head down and your voice silent, and if you trust in me and are guided by me, you will be a Keeper before the festival of the longest day.”
“Why do you do me this kindness, Keeper?” he asked, hoping that the man would say it was because Little Moon had asked him.
“Because of your swimming beasts,” said the Keeper, turning Deer toward him, gripping him by both shoulders to stare him in the face. “And perhaps because one day when I have gone and you see a young fool who has the gift but seems doomed to waste it, perhaps you can do the same for him.” He grinned at the youth, liking him for his clear gaze and the respect he showed. “Just as someone did for me, a long time ago.”
CHAPTER 3
Arisaig, Scotland, 1943
Captain Jack Manners was exhausted; sweating so much in the chill Highland rain that he thought the desert fever had come back. His pack was full of rocks. The absurd little Sten gun with its narrow strap was cutting into the side of his neck, and his feet were sopping wet inside the heavy boots. At least in North Africa they had worn comfortable desert boots of light suede. It never ceased to amaze him-the only part of the British Army actually fighting the Germans dressed like a bunch of holidaymakers, in beards and shorts and corduroy slacks, cravats around their necks to keep the dust out. Some chaps even swore by their silk shirts, cool in the heat of the sun, warm as the chill of the desert night made the hard ground as cold as the stern metal of their tanks. Yet back here in Britain they were playing at soldiers, demanding glossy boots and pressed uniforms and close shaves even though there were never any razor blades. And they weren’t even fighting! When the reinforcements came out to Egypt from England, it took them weeks to get ready to fight Jerry. Still, he thought with a fairness that had been bred into him so hard it had become instinctive, it had taken him and his Hussars at least a year, and some decent tanks and a decent general, to learn how to fight Jerry. And given the right ground and enough time to dig in against our air power, Jerry could still dish it out.
“You need some hate in a war such as this, Jacques,” panted the man beside him. “When the body fades, and the will fades, then must come the hate.”
Jack Manners did not respond. He slogged on to the top o
f the hill, bracing against the wind that whipped off the Irish Sea like a volley of cold knives, and plodded grimly down the next slope until the loom of a rock promised some relief from the weather. He nudged the Frenchman beside him, edging him across to the rock. Then Jack took out his compass, and checked the bearing again.
“Remember what they told us,” he said, speaking in French. “Five minutes rest every hour.” He knelt down, shuffled off his pack, and began kneading the calves and thighs of his partner, who had ducked his head inside his parka to light a cigarette. Jack had long ago given up trying to stop Francois from smoking on duty. Last thing at night, he stubbed one out, half-smoked, and woke in the morning to relight it. The Frenchman’s legs were trembling with the strain of the climb.
“I have never understood your English masochism. In all the war I have seen, in all the battles I have endured, I never once had to march. I took aircraft and stole cars, borrowed motorbikes and even a bicycle. But never marched,” said Francois. “You only make us do this to keep us busy, like you make your conscripts paint the coal white in the barracks and pick up all the matches from the parade ground.”
“Remember what we learned from Rommel-train hard, and fight easy,” said the Englishman, slapping Francois’s calf to signal the brief massage was over. “Your turn.”
Francois knelt and began rubbing warmth into the Englishman’s legs. It felt blissful, feeling his blood flow again. He wanted to close his eyes and savor it, but this was an exercise. He had to keep his eyes open. Christ knows when an instructor would jump out from behind a rock, stage a mock ambush, haul them in for another of the mock interrogations.
“Don’t talk to me about your bloody Rommel,” said Francois. “That’s the trouble with you English. You admire your enemies. The more they beat you, the more you worship them as honorary English gentlemen.”
The Caves of Perigord Page 5