Capcir Spring (12 page)

"When I arrived there this morning there was a line of holes right across the valley. It was almost as if someone was going to put a fence across the valley. But no one would want to put a fence there. I can't think of any other explanation. I've reported it to the Gendamerie."

"What was their reaction?

"They weren't very helpful. Said it was the problem of the national forest department. They could not see that a crime had been committed. I don't think that they really wanted to be bothered."

"Probably treasure hunters" suggested Edouard. "People with metal detectors can make a real mess of ancient sites these days if they think there is the chance of finding a few old coins or perhaps something more."

"The policeman didn't think anyone would take the old stories seriously these days. And anyway the holes were too regularly spaced to be the scrabblings of someone with a metal detector. And the holes were all the same size and shape."

He looked thoughtful for a moment and then asked, "Have you ever seen any of those new age travellers up there?"

"Well actually yes. I met one meditating there recently. He was called Andre something or other."

"I expect it was them. They go in for all sorts of pagan rituals. Animal sacrifices, dancing naked under the full moon and all that sort of mumbo jumbo. You want to watch out for them. They are weird and I wouldn't be a little bit surprised if not dangerous too. I expect they are all on drugs as part of their religious hocus pocus. Such groups are a refuge for criminals on the run from the law, teenagers who have run away from home and all sorts of perverts who would not be tolerated in decent society."

"Have you met them?"

"No but I have heard reports that they are camping in the forest above Formigueres. They have turned a beautiful glade in the woods into a rubbish dump. They live in old battered vans and coaches and caravans. They throw all their rubbish into the woods. They are an eyesore. I have asked the Gendamerie to move them on. But so far they have done nothing. The local police are a lazy lot. They amble along from one lost cat to another. I don't think that they would know a crime if it hit them in the face. We must get rid of these travellers before the start of the tourist season - it is only a matter of weeks now and the area will be buzzing with people down from the cities. Imagine what sort of impression our visitors will get if they come across naked hippies on some drug crazed pagan ritual when they are out for a walk in the woods. I must go and see the Gendamerie again. I may go to the district prefecture and by pass the local office. This latest evidence about the vandalism of an historical site in the forest is just the evidence that will put a rocket up the backside of those sleepy old country policemen."

"What do you recommend I do?" Mary asked, concerned about her safety. The description that Edouard had painted of the new age travellers was nearly enough to stop her returning to her isolated valley.

"Keep out of their way certainly. And leave dealing with them to the police and me. You finish off your research now. And let me worry about making these hills a safe place for our tourists to visit."

He rolled up the map and passed it back to Mary. A pity I can't borrow these and copy them. They would be such an asset to my local history library."

"I'm sorry. I have only got one copy. And they are all in a rough draft format. I will post you a full set and a copy of my final manuscript after I have completed it. I even promise to send you an autographed copy of my book when it is published. That would be far more impressive in your local history library."

A sudden idea hit her. She wondered if she should write her book in French rather than English and aim it for the tourists interested in the local history scene. It might even sell a few copies and make her some money, which is something that writing a learned academic volume in English never would.

Edouard smiled and nodded. He made his profuse thanks and she saw him to the door.

"Remember my warning. Beware of those travellers. Keep out of their way."

As she closed the door behind him and made her way back to the pile of open books on her table something was nagging at the back of her mind. For all his politeness or perhaps because of it she did not fully trust Edouard to have told her everything. Was he holding something back? She couldn't imagine what it could possibly be. There was something about him she couldn't put her finger on that didn't ring true and she shuddered. This place is really getting to me she thought, her rationality taking over from her instincts. I go into mystical reverie at the sight of a sunset and then a few minutes later I am thinking that the locals who have been as friendly as anything and helpful too are in some form of conspiracy to hide the truth from me. I must be cracking up. This is a sign of paranoia. All I need now are some unforeseen side effects from the sleeping drugs that I am going to be taking and them they will be scraping me up off the ceiling!

She shook her head and dismissed the idea of mental illness instantly. Mental illness may be transmitted genetically but I am not James' blood relation and it is not catching. She made a strong cup of coffee and sat down at the table. She relaxed almost immediately as she started reading through the thick bundle of photocopied sheets that Edouard had just delivered. They were good. A series looking chronologically at the various groups of peoples settling in the area with details of their social customs and organisation. There were sketch maps indicating where the various groups settled. Once more she became the competent academic.

As she read the photocopies she realised that Edouard must have consulted the same weighty reference books from the local library that she had been trying to plough her way through. It had been slow going as the French was archaic and densely written. In contrast Edouard's articles were written for a popular local magazine which took seriously its local history page every month. But she could see from the extensive footnotes that he had made a thorough study of all the original sources. For six months in a row he had written about some aspect of the history of the local area in a highly readable form. She looked in comparison at the laboured job she had been making of translating the heavy original versions.

She skimmed through the articles rapidly and decided that these were a very useful and also accurate summary of all the current thinking in French academic circles. All that would be required would be a quick translation. She took a deep breath.

This was a real bit of good news and would save her a lot of time. She would check the original sources and make some notes to add footnotes to give a scholarly air to her translation but this would save her many hours work in the local libraries. All at once, and quite unrealistically the end product, the reports and book seemed a lot closer.

She switched on the desk lamp and looked out across the valley at the last crimson shadows on the clouds as the sky darkened. At last things were going well, very well.

She worked on for about a couple of hours until she looked up again and saw the scene in front of her was total blackness. She saved the document she had been typing onto her hard disk and then made a back up copy onto a floppy disk as she always did when she was closing down for the night. She was always afraid of loosing her valuable data and notes and making a copy on a separate floppy disk gave her reassurance that if the computer mysteriously crashed then she still had, in her underwear drawer, a copy of all her most valuable material. She had heard horror stories of people loosing months of work because they had been lazy in backing up their work.

As she tidied away the desktop she realised how very tired she was. She rubbed her eyes and stared at the open page of the latest edition of the Journal Histoire Du Midi. There was a footnote at the bottom of the article by Daniel Lebreve on Medieval History of the Pyrenees. It referred to the pioneering work that had been carried out and written up by Andre Laporte, and following this comment there was a reference to an obscure paper published by a provincial university on pre Christian religious cults in the midi and Pyrenean foothills. But what struck her was the name Andre Laporte. That had been the name of the seemingly weird traveller who had been sitting meditating in the chapel. It had been him who had come into the surgery with a nasty gash on the head. Now could it be that the Andre Laporte who wrote this was the same man? But then she wondered if she was remembering correctly. Had he said his name was Laporte. Her intuition told her that it was indeed him but then she didn't trust her intuition. At the same time her rational self told her that she was an incurable romantic hoping for coincidences. It is a million to one chance for Andre Laporte is as common a name in France as John Smith is in England. There must be hundreds of them. She hadn't really been concentrating on remembering his name on that encounter in the chapel ruins. That he had said Andre though she had no doubt.

Why had she immediately thought of him though. It was a too big a coincidence. She must be very tired to be thinking like this. If she saw him again it wouldn't do any harm, to ask him to confirm what his surname was. I bet it is Dumas she thought. Edouard's warning came back to her. Would Andre be dancing naked in the moonlight after sacrificing small animals in some ritual to placate ancient pagan gods? He had seemed harmless enough, but then so had her husband! She had lost her faith in religious people being wholly sane. There was something unbalanced about them that could so easily tip over into obsession or manic behaviour of some sort.

Her rational mind told her she was being silly, drawing conclusions when she was too tired to think straight, yet something deeper than her rationality led her to thinking confidently of this strange new age traveller as indeed the author referred to in the footnote.

She packed in her work for the night and quickly got into bed. As she was settling between the sheets she suddenly remembered her sleeping draft. She emptied the sachet into a glass of mineral water and drank the effervescing liquid down quickly. It was not unpleasant having hardly any flavour at all.

She closed her eyes but tired as she was, sleep did not come instantly. She lay awake conscious of feeling very tired.

The sleeping draft was only mild she remembered. She felt as if she was drifting, drowsy but was still quite awake. She lay still her body seemingly frozen to the bed and incapable of movement but her mind was fully conscious. It was as if she was paralysed.

*****

My eyes seemed to be staring open. I couldn't blink. The mock hessian wallpaper faded before my eyes and in its place there were grey stone walls hemming me in on all sides. I looked down and the floor was made of stone flags and was strewn with straw.

The bed had vanished. Instead I seemed to be lying on a rough, lumpy, scratchy pallet of straw. All was dark and dingy. I was revolted by my surroundings but I could not seem to summon up the energy to move beyond looking around where I lay. Where am I? It looks like some kind of cell, perhaps a dungeon... where...why... Am I dreaming? No I feel fully awake. I haven't gone off to sleep. I tried to move but was paralysed on the pallet of straw.

All at once a heavy wooden door opened abruptly. It was to one side of me but in the darkness I had not noticed it before. There is a flash of a brighter light for a second or two. Two large men were silhouetted against the light. I looked directly at them but they appeared featureless and colourless, dressed in something simple and certainly dark coloured clothing but then everything looked dark in that cell. They came across the room towards me and they moved so that one was on either side of me. They lifted me up. Rough hairy hands griped firmly my upper arms and dragged me up off the pallet. One muttered crossly at me but it was a guttural sound that I could not interpret.

It seemed as if the thick guttural monosyllable was a request to try to walk. But I cannot. My legs just don't seem to want to work. I can't feel that they are connected to my body. I cannot move anything. They dragged me across the room and through the door, slamming it behind them. I am aware of my feet dragging across the stone slabs and then they start up a stone flight of steps. Oh my ankles and feet. I wanted to cry out in pain as they bumped harshly over the sharp edges of the stone steps. The pain is intense and I was sure that if I could look down my legs would be a mass of bruises and cuts becoming infected dragging along the dirty floor. They then dragged me along a flat corridor. Rough wooden boarding. Must be splinters but smoother to be dragged along, at least after the stone steps. I was like a sack of vegetables for I couldn't move. All I could see is the floor sweeping along underneath me and feel the rough vice-like hands gripping me tightly. The passage we are travelled along came to an abrupt end. There was a large door ahead. They stopped.

There was an exchange of gruff deep voices. It seemed as if my ears have become stuffed with cotton wool. All the sounds are mumbled. It was bad enough finding myself not able to walk but loosing all my other senses as well was just too much of a nightmare to comprehend.

The door was opened inwardly and I was hit by a bright light coming straight towards me. Perhaps it wasn't so bright but I had been in semi-darkness for what seemed a long, long time. They half carried half dragged me across to a bench and sat me on it, facing the windows through which the evening sunlight was streaming straight into my face.

Between the window and me are shadowy figures in silhouette, seated at a table. There are four, perhaps five men there but all anonymous because of the direction of the lighting. The sun's rays are coming straight towards me. I closed my eyes and squinted and cowered away from the penetrating, dazzling sunlight.