by Glenn Cooper
Bernard always relied on prayer to firm his actions. He had done so when he had first decided to leave his comfortable life and commit himself to the Cistercians at Clairvaux and he relied on it again.
Following an afternoon of exhausting and contentious debate, Bernard ardently threw himself into Vespers prayers and in the echoing sing-song in the vaulted stone church he found his answer in Psalm 139. Eripe me, Domine, ab homine malo; a viro iniquo eripe me; Qui cogitaverunt iniquitates in corde, tota die constituebant praelia. Acuerunt linguas suas sicut serpentis; venenum aspidum sub labiis eorum. Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man; and preserve me from the wicked man; Who have imagined mischief in their hearts, and have stirred up strife all the day long. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent; adder’s poison is under their lips. Custodi me, Domine, de manu peccatoris; et ab hominibus iniquis eripe me. Qui cogitaverunt supplantare gressus meos. absconderunt superbi laqueum mihi. Et funes extenderunt in laqueum. juxta iter scandalum posuerunt mihi. Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the ungodly; preserve me from wicked men. Who are purposed to overthrow my goings: the proud have laid a snare for me. And they have spread a net abroad with cords; yea, and have laid for me a stumbling block by the wayside.
Every time the words wicked, evil and ungodly fell from his lips he glanced at Abelard, Jean and yes, even his own brother, all huddled like conspirators on an adjacent pew, because he could not reconcile their views with his.
And with the same certainty that told him that Christ was his saviour, he knew that he was right and they were wrong.
He also knew he had to leave Ruac, because they had made their intentions known. They fully intended to partake again of the infusion which they lauded and he reckoned was a devil brew.
The following morning, he was off. For his safety and companionship, Barthomieu had persuaded him to have two younger monks accompany him on the long journey back to Clairvaux. One was Michel, Jean’s infirmary assistant, who had noticed residual tea and had been pestering his master with questions. Better to send him away for a while to cure his curiosity.
Bernard and Barthomieu hugged, though Barthomieu’s grip was the tighter.
‘You will not reconsider?’ Barthomieu asked.
‘Will you reconsider taking that wicked brew again?’ Bernard countered.
‘I will not,’ Barthomieu said emphatically. ‘I believe it is a gift. From God.’
‘I will not repeat my arguments, brother. Suffice it to say, I will take my leave and may God have mercy upon your soul.’
He kicked the flanks of the brown mare with his heels and slowly departed.
Abelard was waiting by the abbey gate. He called up to the rider. ‘I will miss you, Bernard.’
Bernard looked down and deigned to reply. ‘I confess I will miss you too, at least the Abelard I knew, not the Abelard I saw two nights ago.’
‘Judge me not harshly, brother. There is but one road to righteousness, but many paths converge on that road.’
Bernard shook his head sadly and rode off.
That night, three men met in Bernard’s now-empty house, lit some candles and talked about their departed friend. Was it possible, Barthomieu asked, that Bernard was right and they were wrong?
Barthomieu was a man of simple vocabulary. Jean was more skilful as a healer and herbalist than an ecclesiastical scholar. It fell on Abelard to frame the debate. They listened to his elegant dissertation on good versus evil, God versus Satan, right versus wrong, and concluded that it was Bernard who was hide-bound and unseeing, not them.
Having satisfied themselves of their rectitude, Jean produced a crockery jug, pulled out the stopper and poured each participant a generous mug of reddish tea.
Abelard was alone in his room.
A single candle burned on his table, casting just enough light to write on parchment. For a week, a letter to his beloved had lain begun but unfinished. He reread the opening: My dearest Heloise, I have passed these many days and nights alone in my cloister without closing my eyes. My love burns fiercer amidst the happy indifference of those who surround me, and my heart is alike pierced with your sorrows and my own. Oh, what a loss have I sustained when I consider your constancy! What pleasures have I missed enjoying! I ought not to confess this weakness to you; I am sensible I commit a fault. If I could show more firmness of mind I might provoke your resentment against me and your anger might work that effect in you which your virtue could not. If in the world I published my weakness in love songs and verses, ought not the dark cells of this house at least to conceal that same weakness under an appearance of piety? Alas! I am still the same!
He dipped his quill and began a new paragraph. Some days have passed since I wrote these words. Much has changed in a short time, though not my love for you which burns ever brighter. God has chosen to bestow a gift upon me which I can scarcely believe, yet its truth is manifest. Oh, though I fear writing these words lest their power should fade by the act of committing them to the page, I believe, dear Heloise, that I have found a way for the two of us to be together again as man and wife.
SIXTEEN
The last day of work at Ruac Cave came and went.
That final night, there was a celebratory dinner of sorts, though spirits were tamped down by the twin catastrophes that had befallen the excavation, a pair of accidents that sent tongues wagging about curses, ill fate and the like.
After Hugo’s funeral in Paris, Luc had returned to Ruac and thrown himself into his work like a whirling dervish, toiling himself into a state of anaesthesia, sleeping only enough to keep going. He became flat and detached, spoke only when spoken to, maintained a professional efficiency with his team but that was the extent of it. Hugo’s death had washed away his usual witty charm like waves washed away letters etched on a sandy beach with a stick.
Matters were made worse by the unannounced appearance at Ruac by Marc Abenheim who parachuted in from Paris, hell-bent on exploiting the tragedy. The weedy martinet arrived and demanded everyone leave the Portakabin so he could speak with Luc privately. Then, like an actuary, he challenged Luc on the odds of one excavation having two fatalities in one season.
‘What are you driving at?’ Luc had spat back.
Abenheim’s voice had an infuriating nasal tone. ‘Lack of discipline. Lack of management. Lack of good sense for inviting your friend to stay at an official Ministry dig. That’s what I’m driving at.’
It was nothing short of a miraculous act of self-restraint that Luc was able to send Abenheim on his way without a broken nose.
When the officious prat drove off, Luc started fuming openly. He’d kept a damper on his anger during Abenheim’s visit but now that he was gone he retreated to his caravan and slammed the door. The first thing that caught his attention was the dent in the wall he’d left the night after Hugo died.
He had a strong urge to punch it again, finish it off by putting his fist right through the blood-stained wall but when he curled his fingers he remembered this was a terrible idea. His cut knuckle had become infected, turned beefy and swollen, and there were red streaks creeping up the back of his hand. He didn’t have the time or inclination to find a doctor. One of the students had a bottle of erythromycin left over from a chest infection and Luc had started popping them a few days earlier. He unclenched his aching fist and kicked a chair instead.
As to Sara, if Luc had harboured any designs on restarting something with her, he had suppressed them, forgotten them, or maybe he never had them at all. He couldn’t remember.
She gave him space and didn’t compel him to deal with his loss. The more he withdrew, the more she rallied, scurrying around the edges of his life, fretting with Jeremy and Pierre about his health and well-being. She knew a little bit about clinical depression.
He’d given her a case once.
The autumn night was cold, drawing people to the fire much the same way that their prehistoric forebears would have gathered. Luc felt he had to address the group one last time, th
ough he didn’t have the appetite for much of a speech.
He thanked them for their tireless work and rattled through a list of their accomplishments. They had accurately mapped the entire complex from the first chamber to the tenth chamber. They had photographed every inch of the complex. They had a first radiocarbon date back from the charcoal outline of one of the bison and it confirmed the suspicion that the cave dated to 30,000 BP. They had begun to understand the geological forces that had shaped the formation of the cave. They had comprehensively excavated the floors of Chamber 1 and Chamber 10. In Chamber 1 they had found evidence of a fire pit and an abundance of reindeer bones and signs of a long occupation of the cave mouth. In Chamber 10 they found more Aurignacian blades and flakes, that lovely ivory bear and phenomenally, the fingertip of a human infant. Although it was the only human bone they had unearthed, it was still a miracle find that would be analysed intensively in the weeks to come. Sara Mallory also had a wealth of pollen samples to analyse over the winter. He said nothing of their plant-gathering and kitchen experiments. No one else needed to know about that bit of fringe work for now.
He concluded by reminding everyone that this was just the beginning, not the end. The funding had already come through for three additional seasons and they would meet again in the spring to compare notes they had made during the off-season. He reckoned they’d still be coming to Ruac Cave when they were old and grey, to which Craig Morrison interjected in his Scottish brogue that some of them were already old and grey, thank you very much!
Then Luc raised his glass to the memory of Zvi Alon and Hugh Pineau and begged them all to take care on their journeys home.
The team drank and chatted into the night but Luc withdrew to his caravan. Sara was looking for an excuse to go to him. Checking her email, she found it.
‘Hi,’ she said gently, when he opened the door. ‘Mind some company?’
‘Sure, come in.’
The was only one small light on. He hadn’t been reading, he hadn’t been drinking. It looked like he’d just been sitting and staring.
‘I’ve been really worried about you,’ she said. ‘We all are.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘No, I don’t think you are. When you get back to Bordeaux, maybe you should see someone?’
‘What, like a shrink? You’re joking.’
‘I’m not. You’ve been through a lot.’
He upped his volume. ‘I said I’m fine!’ But he saw her mouth was twitching so he continued, softer, ‘Look, when I get back to the university and I get into my usual routine I’ll be right as rain, as the Brits say. Really I will. And thanks for caring.’
She let them both off the hook with her news. ‘I got an email tonight from Fred Prentice, my contact at PlantaGenetics. They finished their analysis.’
‘Yes?’
‘It sounds like he’s pretty excited but he didn’t want to say anything by email – he said there were intellectual property issues and patent rights that needed to be sorted out. He wants us to come to Cambridge personally.’
‘When?’
‘He suggested Monday. Will you come with me?’
‘I need to close up the dig.’
‘Pierre and Jeremy and the others are quite capable. I think you should come. It’ll do you good.’
Luc mustered a chuckle. ‘If the choice is between a psychiatrist and a visit to the UK, I guess I’m in.’
Instead of sleeping, Luc broke his own rule and went to the cave for one last visit.
Director’s prerogative, he told himself.
Climbing down the ladder in the dark, his miner’s helmet illuminating the cliff wall, he had an unpleasant image of the moment Zvi slipped a rung and plunged to his death, but he shook it off and kept descending.
On the ledge, he put on his Tyvek suit in the dark, unlocked the heavy gate and hit the switch. The halogen lights made the cave bright and harsh, so different from the way it would have looked in prehistory.
He slowly walked to the rear towards his favourite place, the tenth chamber. The bats had all but departed and the cave was truly quiet now.
At the furthest point, he stood face to face with the life-sized bird man in the field of wild barley. He had a candle. He lit it with a disposable lighter then killed the electric lights. Zvi Alon had wanted to do this, to experience the cave in this natural way. It was the right instinct.
In the faltering candle light, the barley seemed to wave. The bird man’s beak seemed to move.
What was he saying?
Luc strained to hear.
What I wouldn’t give, he thought, to be able to stand beside the man who painted these images, to watch him, to understand him, to speak to him.
He blew out the candle to spend some moments in the most complete darkness he had ever known.
SEVENTEEN
Ruac Cave, 30,000 BP
The first spear glanced off the tough hide, angering the animal but doing it no harm.
The hunters circled.
The beast was a good-sized male. The fact they had been able to isolate it from the herd so easily, spoke, they believed, to its willingness to be sacrificed. The huge animal had certainly heard them chanting the previous night and had agreed to surrender itself to their purpose.
But it was too noble to go down without a fight.
Tal’s only brother, Nago, moved in for the kill.
The bison was backed against the bank of the swiftly flowing river, its hooves sinking into the mud. Its nostrils flared and steamed. It would have to charge. It had no choice.
This is how men died, Tal thought.
He was seventeen, a grown man, already the tallest in his clan, which made his brother suspicious, because for generations, the head man of the Bison Clan was always the tallest. Their father was still head man, but his broken leg had never healed. It stank like rotten meat. At night he groaned in his sleep. There would be a new head man soon. Every clan member knew something was destined to happen to one of the brothers. The smaller Nago could not be their leader if the taller Tal lived. The younger Tal could not be the head if the older Nago lived.
It was not their way.
Nago made sure the butt end of his spear was flush against the bone spear-thrower.
A man could hurl a spear without a thrower and kill a reindeer, but to take down a bison, one needed extra power. They took only two bison a year, once, like now, in the hot season and once in the cold season. It was their right, their sacred calling to do so, but to kill more than one at a time was forbidden.
A single animal gave them enough hide to mend their winter clothes and fashion new ones for the children. One animal gave them enough bones to make digging tools and flaking tools and spear throwers. One gave them enough meat to feed the entire clan for a long while before it became rank.
They had a reverence for the bison, and the bison, they were certain, had a reverence for them.
Nago screamed the kill shout and swung his arm forward.
His spear flew straight and low and struck the bison in the breast, squarely between its front legs but the flint tip must have hit bone because it did not penetrate far.
Shrieking in agony and fear, the animal leaped forward, lowered its head and planted one of its thick horns in Nago’s shoulder.
Tal’s cries for the other men to converge was drowned out by Nago’s howls. It was up to him to save his brother.
Running forwards, he slung his thrower as hard as he could and the spear found the bison’s flank. It stuck deep and true but he took no chances. He ran to the beast, grabbed hold of the spear shaft and pushed it deeper and deeper until the animal’s front legs buckled and it collapsed on its side, bleeding from the mouth.
Nago was on the ground gasping, his shoulder a mass of blood and torn muscle.
Tal kneeled over him and began to wail. The other men converged, pointing at the wound and whispering to each other.
Tal had seen horn wounds before. They did not close or heal
on their own. If Nago had been wearing a hide shirt, perhaps the wound would not have been so deep but owing to the warmth of the day he was bare-chested, his shirt tied around his waist.
Nago was the hunt leader but Tal had to take over as leader now. To slow the blood, he took Nago’s shirt and wrapped it as tightly as he could around the wound and told two cousins to carry him back to the camp.
Then he stood over the bison and thanked it for providing for their clan. He had never before been privileged to deliver the bison kill chant but he knew the words and delivered them with feeling. The rest of the men nodded their approval then fell upon the hot carcass to start the ritual butchering.
Tal peeled off and ran as quickly as he could towards the high grasses of the savannah. His father had taught him how to hunt and how to chant. Now it was time to use the knowledge passed to him by his mother.
His mother had been dead for two years. She left the world along with her newborn daughter after a tortuously difficult child-birth. She was not from the Bison Clan. She called her kin the People of Bear Mountain. As a young woman, she had been caught in a flash flood and separated from her tribe. Maybe they escaped or maybe they perished. She never knew. Tal’s father, then a young man, hunting with elders, came across her in the forest, cold and hungry and took her in. He liked her, and though it caused jealousy and conflict within the clan, he chose her for his mate.
Her people were healers and she was skilled in making poultices and had the knowledge what leaves, roots and barks to chew for various maladies. When Tal was young, he remembered a bitter leaf that stopped his gums from aching and a tasty bark that cooled his body when it was hot.
As soon as the boy could walk he would toddle after his mother, collecting specimens in the forest and grasslands and helping her carry them back to camp in pouches sewn from reindeer hide.
His memory had always been prodigious. He only had to hear a bird call or a clan chant one time to remember it for ever. He would smell a flower petal, see an animal track or a cluster of leaves just once, or listen a single time to an explanation of a phenomenon – and it would never leave him.