He looked at her quizzically and smiled easily, the practiced grin of someone who had often been told that his smile was charming. “Perhaps you are right, Miss Dean. Your motives do you credit. My motives are scholarly, but I’m sure we can agree that were we to find where this rock of yours came from, it would enhance both our reputations. I think we have much in common. Perhaps we can work together, share the burden. Who knows-perhaps even share the glory, if we are lucky?”
He slid into the chair at the desk before her, opening a laptop computer and pushing the button that whirred the thing into life. “Let me tell you my thoughts,” he went on distractedly, as he waited for the screen to settle. “I thought I would make a timeline of the locations we know that Manners visited, plot them against known sites, interview any former Resistance people he worked with, and see if that leads anywhere. What about you?”
“Nothing so organized, I’m afraid. I imagine he was all over the Vezere and Dordogne valleys, where most of the known caves are to be found. But I had thought of asking his old comrades, although if they knew anything definite about undiscovered caves, I presume they would have been discovered by now.”
She found herself looking at the books by Horst’s elbow. There was one she recognized, Das Reich, the account of the Resistance battle to slow down the march of the German SS panzer division from Toulouse north to Normandy. Some photocopies of a dense German text peeped from beneath the book. She made out the initial Kr and the letters B-U-C-H. Kriegesbuch-the war diary of a German unit. He had been busy.
“Can I buy you dinner this evening, Miss Dean?” He casually scooped his books and papers into a neat pile.
“I’m sorry, Professor, but no. I have an engagement.” Obviously Horst didn’t know Manners was in the next room. No reason why he should, but equally, no reason to let him know that Lydia’s quest was serious enough to be accompanied by the rock’s current owner.
“Well, perhaps another time. And you must call me Horst,” he smiled. “I’m sure we will meet again on our treasure hunt. You said you were off to Perigord soon-doubtless we’ll run into each other in Les Eyzies. I’m staying at the Cro-Magnon Hotel. How about you?”
“I don’t know yet,” she said lamely. “Excuse me, Professor, but I really ought to start looking through this stuff-the sooner I’m done, the sooner you can have it.”
“Horst, please. Not Professor,” he said, turning back to his laptop. “But good hunting. To both of us.”
As she sat at the microfiche and inserted the first of the miniaturized films into the reader, Lydia began thinking about how soon she could pretend to go to the ladies’ room, and warn Manners not to come into the library. Secrets and intrigue already, Lydia. How silly, as if the Germans were the enemy again. She turned to the spare prose of Malrand’s military report, so different from the florid style of his memoirs.
“My theory is that we save money on hotels and spend it on food and drink. I never saw the point in paying for an expensive hotel room when all you do is sleep in it,” said Manners. Which is just the sort of thing a chap would say to lull a girl’s suspicions, thought Lydia, as he led her into the dining room of the Centenaire. Two Michelin rosettes; she was looking forward to this.
They had left Bordeaux and the kindly old curator at six-thirty, Horst having long before been shown to the door as just another member of the public to whom closing hours applied. Claiming to have drunk no more wine, Manners had taken the wheel and the Jaguar had raced past mile after mile of vines: Lydia had seen the signs for St-Emilion and Lalinde de Pomerol and her mouth was watering already. At one crossroads, delving into the glove compartment to find a map, she found a small leather pouch, which she recognized as a traveling chess set. Well, well, she thought to herself, he does have hidden depths. After consulting the map, they had driven to a tiny hamlet, not much more than a bend in the road, a small river, and a pretty miniature chateau. Their Hotel du Chateau was just across the park, and she had a view of the turrets from her room. It might not be expensive, but it was well chosen. Manners allowed her precisely ten minutes to wash and change and they raced the three miles into Les Eyzies, parked, and walked into the restaurant with a few minutes to spare before 9 P.M. He was wearing a rather jolly pink tie with his blue suit. Given no time to iron her clothes, Lydia was playing safe in black cashmere and her expensive gray flannels. The restaurant was full, and moderately noisy, the clientele too discreet or self-absorbed to break off their conversation to study the latest arrivals. Shown to a large table by the wall, they ordered two glasses of Kir Royale and began to study their menus in silence.
“The menu for me. The foie gras, the sandre, and the duck,” he said as the somber gentleman approached with the wine list under his arm and his badge of office, the small silver tastevin, gleaming on his chest. Lydia ordered the foie gras and the fish, chose lamb instead of duck, and in serviceable French Manners asked the sommelier which wine he would recommend. Did Monsieur know the wines of the region, unpretentious but charming? Only the Jaubertie and Pecharmant, said Manners. A thoughtful nod, a courteous inquiry whether Monsieur had considered a Pomerol, and business was concluded with a glass of Monbazillac for the foie gras, some Badoit water with the fish, and a Chateau Nenin. It had been competently done, thought Lydia, looking appraisingly at her companion. An extremely grand restaurant, and he had surmounted the hurdle of ordering the wine without showing off, and with a courteous consideration for the sommelier’s expertise. She approved.
“Well, our adventure is shaping up according to all the proper conventions,” said Manners, as the two glasses of champagne arrived, touched with rose by the cassis. Another waiter brought some amuse gueuls, a morsel of salmon, some black pudding, and a small sphere of foie gras topped with a black flake of truffle. “We have a Holy Grail to look for, a chateau to stay in, an extremely fair maiden, and an enemy.”
“I think the most you can say of Horst is that he is a possible rival.” She smiled at him, enjoying the thought of herself as a fair maiden. She had related the encounter with Horst as they raced through the flat-lands of Gascony.
“Point taken. No dragon. Still, he’s German, which is the next best thing.” He grinned. Lydia had a feeling that nobody had ever told Manners he had a good smile, or if they had, he hadn’t paid attention. Looking at the healthy way he was polishing off the tiny snacks, he’d probably been too busy eating.
“Old Morillon, the chap in the library, has given me three leads,” he went on, after a swig of his Kir. “Three old men. One is from the Berger network who lives near a tiny village called Audrix. There’s an old railway man from the Communist FTP in le Buisson who worked with them. I have their addresses. And then there’s Soleil himself, still alive, but his memory is not what it was. But at least we have his memoirs, which do not mention my father. Apparently he used to be some kind of Communist, but broke with the party after the war. I have his phone number, but he was always very cautious about who he sees, so Morillon is going to call him on our behalf, and see if the old chap still has enough of his marbles to be worth seeing. That’s about it. Morillon himself was never north of Cahors, and only knew my father during the Toulouse operation. But he did say one thing about the Berger network that I found interesting. They sometimes hid the guns and ammo from the parachute drops in the remote caves along the Vezere valley. Caves were good because they protected the stuff from the damp, and he said my father was always on the lookout for a good cave.”
“That seems obvious, but it’s a useful connection,” she mused, tearing her attention away from the elusive taste of the truffle. “He could well have found a cave with paintings-except how has the cave remained unknown ever since? There must have been some local Resistance people in on the secret, if only to carry the weapons.”
“I asked Morillon if the caves weren’t too dangerous. They make terrible traps if the Germans were on their heels. And then probably some of the German troops would have been stomping around the better-known caves for their
own interest. A lot of them apparently went to look at Lascaux itself, which was only discovered in 1940.”
“That reminds me. Among the microfiche I went through was something called the order of battle for Army Group G, under General Von Blaskowitz, in charge of defending southern France. It assigned him three armored divisions, one motorized and thirteen infantry divisions. How many troops would that be, Manners.”
“We normally reckon about ten thousand to a division, but armored divisions tend be larger and an SS panzer division would have twice that number. Then there are the troops attached to corps and army HQ. At least two hundred fifty thousand troops, but that was to hold down the whole of southern France, which contained something close to twenty million people. Not all of the troops were Germans, as Morillon said this afternoon. And a lot of the German infantry units were composed of old men or convalescents from the military hospitals. They had entire battalions of ulcer sufferers-it made it easier to organize their diet. Even the SS panzer division was being filled up with Volksdeutsch, the ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Alsace-Lorraine. Some of them didn’t even speak much German. And the troops were spread out, guarding the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, controlling the big cities like Lyon and Marseilles, the industrial centers like Clermont-Ferrand, patrolling the railways. Bear in mind that Perigord was not terribly important to the Germans, except for the rail and transport links. Not much industry, no great population centers, just a handful of important factories. They had the Vichy police and paramilitaries to do most of the patrols-and the dirty work.”
Their foie gras arrived, just long enough in the pan to toast the outside and warm the flesh within, with a steaming portion of onion confiture on one side of the plate, and a tender bed of baby leeks on the other. She took some liver. It had the taste of luxury. She sipped her Monbazillac. Sweet gold.
“I think just one restaurant meal a day from now on, Manners,” Lydia said. “I don’t mind putting on weight in a good cause, but this is too princely.”
“Grand, I call it. What’s the point of coming to the home of the best food in France if we don’t enjoy it?”
They finished their liver, sat back and cleansed their palates with the mineral water, and then leaned forward to address themselves to the lightly grilled fish. Hearing a burst of laughter, Lydia looked casually around the room. There was a loud and jolly English family talking of plonk and fizz, some serious French tables concentrating on their food, a table of three businessmen talking in low voices, and a rather fetching pair of young lovers, their heads close together and eyes sharing secrets. The laughter had come from the English family. From behind her came a murmur of what might have been German, except for the constant sound of throat clearing. Must be Dutch. I wonder what they all make of me and Manners, she mused. Not lovers, certainly, but not married either. Friends, then, which is what she supposed they were becoming. Or allies, which is what they were. Or possibly, she smiled to herself, adventurers. What kind of adventure would be up to her.
And that, she told herself with a thoughtful glance at the rather appealing and likeable Manners as he tasted the Pomerol and pronounced it sound, was how it should be!
CHAPTER 8
The Vezere Valley, 15,000 B.C.
The great hunt was always the day after the sun and moon had appeared together in the sky the previous evening, in the time when the river waters were at their highest and the bears lumbered sleepily from their caves and the first flowers came on the trees that would give the sweet and tiny fruit. In the days of the ancestors, it had always been a hungry time, when all the men and boys of the tribe and all the younger women would take to the hunt at once. But now that the reindeer flocked so thickly on the hills and valley to the north and the fish danced in the rivers, there had been only three hungers that the Keeper of the Horses could remember. He had never had to leave any of his own children out for the wolves, although he remembered that as a youth he had lost two sisters that way.
But he liked this time, the feeling that they were doing as their fathers and ancestors had always done, taking all the men of the tribe on the great hunt that would leave them all gorged with meat. He liked watching the boys taking their first turn in the long line of beaters, and the way they would all work together, the flint men and the fishers and the woodmen, shaping the stakes and bringing the stones that would force the reindeer to the cliff where they would tumble and fall onto the rocks below. Above all, he liked to watch the boys who were to become men dart down into those rocks and learn to kill, to mark the beast marks on their chest with the blood they spilled. He liked to watch the prouder, taller way they walked, even under the burdens of the long boughs with the reindeer slung upon them, as they marched back into the village as men. He felt like part of a river that always flowed. His father had done the same, and then taken him to the hunt to teach him the ways of it, and now his own father had flowed on down to the great sea. He would flow down too, one day. But now he was still part of the river of his people, flowing endlessly, the old going before, the young coming on behind.
They always began with the sacrifice at dawn before the cave. And because the Keeper of the Bulls made his sacrifice each day, it had become the custom that he led the sacrifice for this day of the hunt. It had not been that way when he was younger, thought the Keeper of the Horses. They had all done it together then. And now he felt a snatch of disappointment, as he stood in line before the cave with the other Keepers, while the Keeper of the Bulls took the sacrifice alone, and the chief hunter kneeled before him, and the leaders of the flint and fisher and wood men kneeled to the side.
Did it matter, the way the Keeper of the Bulls always pushed himself forward, always took the lead? Did it matter that he somehow took the credit for the good hunting and the plentiful reindeer? Even for the fish. It did not matter much to him. He liked to stand to one side, looking at all the men of the village gathered together just for this rare occasion, all feeling part of a great family. But he found himself noticing for the first time the deference with which the chief hunter bowed to the Keeper of the Bulls, the look of awe and respect on the faces of the young men, the way the boys trembled as if something was being done that was far beyond their imagining.
The Keeper of the Bulls gave them something to be awed by, sure enough. He carried off the ceremony with a great and ponderous dignity. He took the wood chips from the woodman, the ax from the flint man, the long bone of the longest fish that the fishermen had caught and piled them before the great bull’s skull that loomed over the sacrifice fire. The chief hunter, still kneeling, his head still bowed, proffered a reindeer hoof in his two outstretched hands.
“That the game may not run from our spears, we burn this hoof to you, Great Bull,” chanted the Keeper of the Bulls, in a voice that carried far beyond the gathered men and the women at a respectful distance below. He took the hoof, and placed it on the fire. The chief hunter leaned forward and bowed his forehead to the ground before the bull’s skull. That had never happened before. As the stink of burning fur drifted among them, the Keeper of the Bulls placed his hand on the skull, between the two outstretched horns, and chanted, “The sacrifice is accepted.”
A great murmur of approval came from the gathered men. The Keeper of the Horses glanced sideways to see if any of the other Keepers were as startled as he. No. Their eyes were fixed on the ceremony, and they too were nodding in agreement and respect.
The chief hunter took a scrap of reindeer hide, bowed again, and proffered it to the bull’s skull. The Keeper of the Bulls took it, placed it on the fire. “That the hide of the game shall not keep out our weapons, we burn this flesh to you, Great Bull,” he chanted. Again the sacrifice was accepted. Again the low roar of approval, louder this time. Then the chief hunter took from behind him a reindeer’s skull, the antlers still attached, and placed it on the top of his head. Shuffling forward on his knees, he bowed again to the bull’s skull, as if the reindeer were saluting the lor
d of beasts, as if some new hierarchy had suddenly been presented to the men of the village. And from their roars of approval, it had clearly been accepted.
Another man came forward, the former chief hunter who was now the leader of the fishers. Too old and slow to keep up with the hunt, he had applied his great skill with the spear to the art of spearing the biggest fish that were too strong and wily to be caught by the fences of woven willows. He had learned the cunning way of the water, which always bent the spear as it broke the surface to send it foolishly past the fish that were the lords of the river. But the chief fisher had learned to use the river’s magic against its fish, and his thrust with the great barbed spear seldom missed. Now on his knees, a great pike in his outstretched arms, he shuffled forward to lay his offering before the skull.
The Keeper of the Bulls leaned down and took from behind the skull a great headdress, raised it to the skies and drew it over his head, settled it on his brow. Men and women alike drew in their breath with wonder at the monstrous shape. The long brown eagle feathers trailed down to his shoulders, and the smaller white feathers affixed in their scores to the curving wooden eagle’s beak thrust forward beyond the Keeper’s face. A man with the head of an eagle.
“The lord of the air salutes the lord of beasts,” he chanted from beneath the great beak as he bent his knee before the bull’s skull. “The beings of water and land and air salute the lord bull.”
The silence was absolute as the bull’s skull seemed almost to tremble-in the still air. The Keeper of the Bulls, suddenly in his mask become half-bird and half-man, rose and turned toward them, his arms outstretched like mighty wings. He looked up, and the eyes of the crowd followed. And from the rock outcrop on the hill above came a beating of real wings and a great eagle rose into the sky, cawing as it flapped and began to spiral upward above the assembled people.
The Caves of Perigord Page 12