Bristol House (37 page)

The woman again held out her hand. “
Très bien, c’est vous le riche Anglais. Donnez-moi l’argent
.”

“
Pas trop vite.
” Clary said. “
D’abord les documents.
”

Geoff had reasonable French, but they’d agreed that Clary would do all the talking. The woman, Clary assured them, spoke no English. “I called her a fat slut, and she didn’t blink.”

It was as good a test as any Annie could think of. Being called fat would definitely have gotten under the woman’s skin. “What are they saying?” she asked.

“She wants the money,” Geoff said, “and Clary wants the papers.”

The negotiation had apparently ended. The woman reached into the front of her blouse. The shelf yielded a single piece of paper, much folded. “
C’est tout ce dont vous avez besoin,
” she said.

“All we need, according to her,” Geoff said. “I have to see for myself.”

He was sitting back, sipping his wine, looking as if he did this sort of thing every day. Which, Annie realized, might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. They paid him well enough that he could put his hands on a substantial wad of cash in half a day—and not break a sweat at the idea of handing it over to a Frenchwoman whose name he didn’t know, in some out-of-the-way place neither Google nor MapQuest could come up with, though it showed on the infinitely detailed Michelin
carte d’Alsace.
Which, of course, Geoff had produced as soon as it was required.

Clary and the woman had resumed their argument. She still clutched her scrap of paper, and she’d taken a step back, as if afraid he might try to snatch it out of her hand.

Geoff reached into one of his pockets and brought out a stack of ten-pound notes secured with a rubber band. “There’s a thousand pounds here.
Mille livres.
The rest after I examine the document.”

Clary translated rapidly, but the woman seemed to have understood. She was staring at the money. Annie could actually see her trembling. After a few seconds, she snatched at the pile of bills. Geoff allowed her to take it. “
Neuf mille de plus,
” he said. “Nine thousand more, after I see what you have.” He held out his hand.

“
Après l’examination,
”
Clary said. “
Pas avant.
”

The warning wasn’t necessary. The woman had already given Geoff what he wanted.

The paper had been folded to a four-inch square. Open, it was standard European A4. The heavy stock, almost cardboard, was ruled with a series of lines and columns. From where she sat, it looked to Annie as if each column were headed with a date. That was all she could make out.

The woman said something to Clary.

“She wants me to explain what it is,” he said.

The woman meanwhile was staring at Geoff as if she had discerned the bulging pockets of his jacket. If so, she was the first to do so. Annie had worried about getting such a large sum over the border. Geoff had reminded her that these days there was virtually no border between England and France. They’d gotten on a train at London’s St. Pancras Station a little after five in the morning, made one change at Paris, and soon after noon French time—call it six hours’ travel time, as France was an hour later than Britain—Clary had picked them up in Strasbourg and driven them here.

Geoff continued to study the unfolded paper. The woman kept talking.

“She wants me to tell you,” Clary said, “that she risked her life to keep this document.”

“What is it exactly?” Annie asked.

“She’s a nurse,” Clary said. “Used to be a nurse. She was paid a small stipend by the government for offering basic health care in a rural community. To get the money, she had to fill in a monthly form stating what services she had performed. In March 1967 Louis Weinraub arrived at her door with his fifteen-year-old son. He wanted her to circumcise the kid. Because, he said, they were living in America where all the other boys were circumcised and young Philip was embarrassed because he was not.”

“Why didn’t they just go to an American doctor?”

“That puzzled her as well,” Clary said. “And she also wondered how it was, since Weinraub sounded like a Jewish name, the son hadn’t been circumcised when he was an infant.”

“Maybe,” Annie said, “he was going to convert to Judaism. He’d need to be circumcised in that case.”

Clary shook his head. “I checked. If that was it, he’d have been circumcised by a rabbi. That’s the only way it’s official.”

Geoff stopped looking at the paper the woman had given him and raised his head. “He’s right about that.” Then, nodding toward the woman: “What answer did she get when she asked?”

“None,” Clary said. “Her husband told her not to poke her nose where it didn’t belong—just do what she was supposed to do. He said they were being paid well.” He broke off and turned to the woman and asked something in French. She responded with a stream of impassioned talk accompanied by many gestures. “She says she never saw a penny of whatever Weinraub paid and doesn’t know exactly how much it was. That’s why she didn’t file her report that month, so the monthly stipend wouldn’t be paid. She did it to spite her husband. She never saw any of that money either.”

“Where’s the husband now?” Geoff asked.

“Died eleven years ago. And soon after that the government ended the program she was working for. Transportation had become good enough so it wasn’t needed. Even from out here in the sticks, anyone can get to a hospital. These days this place is her only income.”

“
S’il vous plaît,
” the woman said, nodding toward the paper. “
S’il vous plaît. Ça suffit? C’est l’information que vous voulez, non?
”

Annie thought she might be crying.

“She wants to know if it’s what you’re after,” Clary said.

“Tell her it is.” Geoff took the rest of the money out of his pockets and put the stacks of bills on the table. Annie added her stash. “Let’s get out of here,” Geoff said. They started for the door, but the woman wouldn’t let them leave until she formally kissed each of them on both cheeks.

Clary’s rented Peugeot was parked a few feet away. “Just the car to have when you want to keep a low profile,” Geoff said.

“Hey man, you’re paying. Besides”—he gestured to the lifeless single street with its array of small stone houses, all of which appeared to be empty—“this place is a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead. Not even a bakery anymore.” There was a shop across the road with a faded sign that said “Pain et Pâtisserie,” but it was shuttered and looked as if it had been for some time. “Who’s going to see us?”

“Why do you think she’s stayed here all these years?” Annie asked. Both men knew she meant the woman in the bar.

“Because she had no money to get out,” Geoff said. “At least here she had a roof over her head.”

Something, Annie realized, he knew without being told, because it was different from Maggie’s story, but not that different.

As if her thought had somehow conjured the connection, Geoff’s cell rang. He grabbed it and put it to his ear, mouthing “Maggie” in Annie’s direction. And after a few quick words, “I have to get back right away. My mother’s in hospital.”

On the train taking them back to London, he got a text from Agence Investigations Mme Defarge. When she first heard the name, Annie insisted it was a joke. Geoff wasn’t sure they read Dickens in Paris. This time she let it pass without comment. “What does she say?”

“A man named Étienne Renard was born in Avignon in 1900. Sounds like he could be the bloke we want. She’s checking for more.”

29

Dom Justin

From the Waiting Place

We had neither food nor water in the diabolical hole to which the Jew brought us, that pit which had so long exercised my curiosity. By the second day I would have given anything I possessed—more accurately, since I had nothing, any treasure in the poxed place—never to have encountered it.

The pit was at the bottom of a dry well, through a small opening into which we had to crawl on our bellies. We were then still in an antechamber too small for even Rebecca to stand upright, with barely enough room to contain the three of us. And all the while we huddled there in misery, we heard sounds above that made it apparent we were hunted like rats in a hole, which we indeed were.

I could see no evidence of any treasure where we were, nor any sign of digging, but sometimes the old man crawled through a second narrow opening. At such times the Jew never fully disappeared. I could see always the toes of his boots, and when he extracted himself from that hellish tunnel, his white hair was streaked with dirt. I guessed what he found in that cramped and filthy place to be the treasures of the Templars, exactly as he was originally sent to discover, but I had little curiosity about them. What worth did gold or silver have for us as we were then?

For my part, I wanted only more space. In what we had, my legs and the girl’s must intertwine when we were alone, and when her father rejoined us, she was squeezed full length against me. So I discovered Dom Hilary’s final blessing to have changed me in a way beyond my imagining. He had cured me of my lust for the Jew’s daughter. I felt only cramp and thirst, which was far worse than hunger, though I suffered that as well.

Clearly the Jew was beset by the same misery. “The girl must go and find drink and food,” he said. According to my calculations, which were based on the light that came from aboveground, he spoke those words on the morning of our third day in hiding, adding, “We will all die here otherwise.”

It was no fair reproach to say we were fools for providing ourselves with nothing when we came to the pit. We were not three minutes in our cramped hiding place when we heard the first troop of horsemen thundering overhead. Had we stopped to gather provisions, we’d have been caught. Besides, at that time it was in my mind that Dom Hilary might have supplied necessities for a time of hiding. But when we were safe in the pit and the horsemen had passed, I opened the parcel he had given me and found it to be the clothes I had worn the day I first came to the Charterhouse. (And one other thing I will speak of later that, though as rare a treasure as may be found in Christendom, did not ease our bodily needs.) The clothes served as a pillow for my head but added little to my comfort.

“We must have something to quench our thirst and fill our empty bellies,” the Jew told Rebecca. “Go.”

“Why do you send me on this perilous errand?” she asked. “Will my flesh not singe and burn as readily as yours? Or do you imagine that when Master Cromwell learns of my condition he will relent?”

She touched her belly, which seemed to me to have swelled more in the few days we’d spent hiding, and looked not at her father but at me. It was however Giacomo the Lombard who said, “A woman has a better chance of passing unnoticed.”

“And you,” Rebecca said, turning to me, “do you also think it my place to go for what we need?” I nodded, and she again put her hand on her belly. “You do not fear for the life of your son, or perhaps your daughter?”

“The child was conceived in mortal sin,” I told her. “It may be fated never to be born.” I wanted to be kind, so I did not add that her role as temptress meant she bore the greater responsibility for the evil and thus should suffer the worse consequences.

She said nothing to that, only managed to disentangle herself from her father and me and crawl through the hole that led to the well. Soon we heard her using the ancient handholds to climb to the world over our heads.

I do not know how long she was gone. It seemed many hours, but perhaps not. However long it was, it passed with terrible slowness. Even though there was now a little more space, I could not sleep for thirst. As for the Jew, he did not say a word to me. Instead he stared into space, occasionally muttering to himself in some Jew’s-language I could not understand.

It was, I think now, the worst of the time we passed in the pit, but eventually it ended.

We heard her return before we saw her. Both of us, I think, feared for the first few moments that perhaps it was not Rebecca but the king’s soldiers who were clambering down to where we were. There was little logic in such suspicions. As soon as the child had started to grow in her belly, the girl had given up any bargaining power she might have possessed while she was a desirable virgin. Had she wanted to trade our whereabouts for her freedom, it’s unlikely she would have been able to do so. Still the thought crossed my mind, and I was sure it also occurred to her father.

Our fears were groundless. Rebecca crawled through the hole to where we were, then dragged a small bundle in behind her. It contained ale enough to quench our thirst, and bread and cheese to calm our hunger. Only when we had drunk and eaten did I see in the dim light that she had carried our sustenance in the distinctive black cloak worn by the plague women. I drew back and crossed myself, but Rebecca laughed. “Which do you fear more? Mortal illness or the flames?” she taunted, shaking the cloak to ring the bells that hung from its jagged hem. And when I did not answer, she said, “Never mind. Neither my father nor I sickened in the presence of this cloak, and I doubt you will either. It is many days since I clasped a victim to my chest while wearing it, and the plague women say the curse wears off after a time. Besides, the cloak is the means of our salvation. When I wear it, no one comes near me. I can go again to get what we need.”

“No,” her father said.

I was astounded that he would protest now, when she was not commanded but volunteered to serve us in this way, and when she had contrived the means to do so in some safety. He’d shown no reluctance earlier when she was without the protection of the cloak. “She speaks sense,” I said.

The Jew laughed. “You are as shortsighted as she is. How long do you think we can remain here, even with a bit of food and drink? A week? Two weeks? A month perhaps? Will we not then have lost the use of our legs for not having stretched them? Or might not the stink of our dung rise up and attract the attention of another troop of soldiers who are riding by and summon them to examine the dry well and so to find us?”