The Caves of Périgord (37 page)

“Where did young François get the sulfa powder from? Where had he kept it?”

“He gave some of us a medical kit to carry with us. I remember Lespinasse had one, because he had to use it at Terrasson. Young François was using that Citroën car by then, the one he’d pinched from
the Milice in le Buisson. The old
traction-avant
with the running boards. It was a lovely car, that. He’d pile five or six of us in, guns and all, ammo in the trunk, and those medical kits he made up, and off we’d go. The mobile reserve, he called it. That was a joke, because the real Mobile Reserve was the Vichy one. Real bastards, they were. He always made sure we had some medicinal brandy in the back of the Citroën, brandy and cigarettes. He couldn’t do without his cigarettes, young François. That’s how we got to Terrasson, in that Citroën. We had to make a detour round Rouffignac, because the Germans had burned it.”

“Was the English
capitaine
with you at Terrasson?” asked Lydia.

“I don’t know, mademoiselle, I don’t remember seeing him. He didn’t come in the Citroën. He used one of the trucks we got from the Falange, a nasty bunch of North Africans. Sort of police, based in Périgueux, led by a real bastard called Villeplana, used to be a professional football player. We ambushed them and got one of their trucks.
Le capitaine
was off a lot around that time, attacking all the German petrol dumps so the Das Reich couldn’t refuel. He took us in the mobile reserve along on one attack on the big fuel bunkers they kept at the Roumanières airbase. That was just before Terrasson. He might have come along with us after that to Terrasson, but I don’t remember. Sorry. It was all a long time ago.

“Do you want me to show you the place where we hid, the camp the Germans found?” he went on. “It’s just down the track and through the woods, near the old entrance to the Gouffre, the one where they had the horse with the long rope that would let people standing in this giant bucket down into the cave. I think the people at the Gouffre are using it again, if you pay extra. No horse now, of course. An electric winch.”

He took them around to the barn, where a muddy Land Rover was parked. They drove down the road toward le Bugue for half a mile before turning off on a rutted farm track, and then into the woods along a track that Lydia could not begin to discern. The big car heaved and jolted, splashing through a thick stretch of bog, before Albert began
climbing again. He swung the wheel sharply to avoid a big oak tree and parked below a sudden outcrop of smooth limestone.

“This was it,” he said. “You see the borie over there.” He pointed to a low, circular stone hut, little more than a ruin now, its roof gone and saplings growing through it. “That’s where le capitaine slept, him and young François, and where they kept the ammo. Then we had the cave.” He plunged forward to the rocks, shouted to Clothilde to bring the torch, and began pushing through a tangle of bushes. Lydia looked with dismay at her clothes, saw Clothilde smile and shrug, and they followed the old man in.

With the torch, they could see it was more overhang than cave, no deeper than five meters, but about thirty meters long with a low roof and dry, gritty floor. The inner walls were smooth, and there were no gaps, only some curious scars in the rock. Clothilde moved forward intently, to see if they were ancient engravings, and Albert said, “That’s the German cannon.” Then he steered the torch to one side, where the cave wall and floor had been charred black. “Flamethrower,” he said. “They didn’t get us. We’d left by then. One of Berger’s rules. Never too long in the same place.” He stood in silence for a while, remembering.

“Were there any other caves you used, Albert?” Clothilde asked, gently. “I’m looking for one where there may have been some of the old cave paintings.”

“The big one at Rouffignac, of course, the one where they have the train. We used that a bit. And a couple of the ones near Les Eyzies, but only for the odd night because they were so well known. The Germans just had to use a tourist map and they’d had found us. We slept in Combarelles once, but never stored anything there. Young François took us to a couple near la Micoque, on the way up to Rouffignac, but they were like this, more overhangs really. I never saw any paintings.”

“Could you find them again?”

“Oh yes, I think I could, But you ought to ask young François. You and he were very close once,” he said kindly.

“He’s a busy man, Albert.”

“Sure, I’ll take you. But you’ll find no paintings.”

“I might find a midden, one of their old rubbish tips and latrines. You can find out a lot from latrines, Albert. Like what they ate, and what kind of tools they used. You can measure the pollen and tell what the weather was like.”

“Ice Age, wasn’t it?”

“Not all the time. The time I’m mostly interested in, when they were doing the cave paintings at Lascaux, it was pretty much the same climate as now, a thousand-year-long warm period between the cold spells. They had trees and brambles just like these.” She led the way back to the car, chatting about the tools they made from reindeer antlers until they reached the farm. He insisted on giving her a box of eggs and a bottle of his homemade
pineau,
and waved them off, calling, “See you at the market, and give my best to your mum.”

Manners’s face was brick red from his day in the sun, and Horst looked exhausted, when they found them on the terrace of the Cro-Magnon Hotel. They were drinking pastis, and nibbling olives, and Horst ordered them some drinks while Manners described the search pattern they had followed on the large-scale map. Clothilde leaned over the map and told them Albert’s story, of the flight down the track with the cart, and the row in the hollow by the road, and the booby-trap Manners’s father had set with the grenade.

“We also found out that Marat was not at Tulle, nor were his Spaniards,” said Lydia. “Wherever he was killed, it wasn’t there. And he had a big row with Malrand on the night of the German attack on the parachute site, about who was to get the guns and where to take them.”

Manners flipped open Horst’s research file. “Here we are. The night of May twentieth, acting on information received, a company of
Freiwilliger
—that’s
the Russians, they called them volunteers—and a squadron of armored cars broke up a parachute drop at Cumont, killed four Maquis, and captured the weapons. Casualties described as ‘light,’ except for one container that blew up. They brought in another company the next day to set up roadblocks, and two more to search the district. Nothing more found. Arrests, interrogations, three farms burned as reprisals. Hang on, there’s a cross-reference.”

Horst took the file, and thumbed through to the back, where stapled sheafs of photocopies were neatly labeled with differently colored tabs. “They set up a special unit, called the
Höhlegruppe,
the cavern team, for attacks on caves. They were equipped with Panzerfausts—that’s like your bazookas—and flamethrowers. They brought the
Höhlegruppe
in for the search, so they must have thought they were looking for a cave. A
Leutnant
Voss commanded it, and he reported no action that day.” He looked across the table at Clothilde. “The first thing I did was to check every cave Voss mentions. There’s not one that isn’t listed or marked on your maps.”

“There’s an easy solution to this, surely,” said Lydia. “We just ask Malrand. He must know what happened to the guns that night. But if he knows, then whatever cave it was won’t have any paintings. Malrand would have said.”

A long silence fell. “I wonder if he would,” said Manners. “He certainly hasn’t been much help on Clothilde’s project.”

“Remember what I said to you in Bordeaux, Lydia,” Horst added. “Malrand is a politician. He doesn’t want a scandal about his wartime partner stealing a cave painting. He just wants it back and put on display, with no questions asked. We have our own various reasons for wanting to find the cave whence it comes, but I don’t see that he does. And look at Clothilde—we already know that delving back into this wartime history is like lifting a stone—you never know what grief will come crawling out.”

“This business about Marat is very curious,” said Manners. “He has
a row about guns with Malrand, who hated Communists anyway. Then he disappears.”

“Not quite disappeared,” said Clothilde. “He was seen again after May twentieth. He was seen almost three weeks later, at Brive, just after D-Day in Normandy, trying to get the Gaullists and the rest of the Resistance groups to join this Communist uprising. Where he did not turn up was at the battle in Tulle, where you would expect him to have been, on the eighth and ninth of June.”

“Where was Malrand then?” asked Lydia.

“Trying to slow down a small army. Say a thousand tanks and twenty-five thousand men. The Das Reich division was one of the SS units, which were twice as big and far better equipped than the usual panzer divisions. After D-Day it was moving north from Toulouse to join the fighting in Normandy, and fighting Resistance ambushes all the way,” said Manners.

“But where exactly? Was he at that meeting in Brive of all the Resistance groups, the one where Marat was seen? And where was your father, Manners? Was he there too?”

“We know Malrand was at Terrasson,” said Clothilde. “Albert told us that. But he had a Citroën, he could get around fast.”

Horst checked his sheaf of archives. “June eleventh, Terrasson was cleared by units of the SS Das Reich division fighting their way along the road to Périgord, which they reached the next day. It was a busy time. That was the same day the Germans burned the village of Mouleydier, after Soleil’s group held the bridge across the Dordogne and beat off repeated attacks. There was another battle at an armored train that day, just outside Périgueux. The whole region was erupting.”

“The poor devils assumed that the Allies were about to send in an airborne division to liberate them,” said Manners. “They didn’t know they had two months more to wait before the Germans finally pulled out. Still, they did the job London wanted, delaying the Das Reich division.”

“We’re missing the point here,” said Lydia. “The chap who finished up with the rock was your father, not Malrand. So it is your father who is our connection to this unknown cave. It’s his movements we ought to be following. If we can.”

“Oh, quite,” said Manners. “But it’s interesting you used the word following. Horst and I rather got the impression we were being followed today, both here in Les Eyzies and then when we went tramping around la Ferrassie looking for a cave. More than just an impression, in fact, because I saw him twice, each time in a different car, and once he was wearing a beret to disguise his bald pate. What’s funny is that Malrand is supposed to be in Paris, and this chap told us that he always traveled with him. But I’ll take my oath that it was that presidential security man, Lespinasse, whose father was in the same group as Malrand and my pa.”

“More than that,” said Lydia. “Old Lespinasse was at the battle in Terrasson with Malrand on June eleventh, and drove around with Malrand in some special team he had.”

“So of the four key people who might know where this cave was, Marat and Lespinasse and my father are all dead. Which leaves Malrand, who doesn’t seem to want to find it,” mused Manners. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

CHAPTER 17
The Vézère Valley, 15,000 B.C.

H
e finally found her in the one impossible place, a chosen refuge he could never have foreseen. Deer had searched late into the night as the wind rose steadily, along the fringe of the woods and down along the riverbank, calling her name. Three times, he turned back to the village, to the glowing fire of her mother’s hearth where her parents sat feeding the flames with fresh wood, vainly waiting for Moon to reappear. Each time he looked at them in silent hope, and each time they shook their heads before he set out again. The last time, the wind gusting hard now and bringing the first lash of driven rain, he had gone to
his lonely tent, surprised to find Dry Leaf lying asleep in the old man’s buffalo robe. He collected his gifts, his new bag, and his lamp and ax and knife, and filled the bag with smoked meat. He put fresh tinder in the pouch, slung an old water skin over his shoulder, and felt ready for whatever the new day might bring. Lightning crackled in the sky, and the rumble of deep anger came from the heavens. There was cause enough for anger this night.

He only had this one night to find her. The chief hunter had seen to the bleeding arm of the Keeper of the Bulls, wrapping it with moss and bark and thongs, and promising to pick up the girl’s trail when the sun rose. The rest of the village was dark as he moved through it. The childless widow had sobbed herself to sleep. The hearth of the Keeper of the Bull’s sister seemed to simmer in angry silence. From tents here and there, he heard the laughter and whispers and warm cries of the newlyweds, and tried not to think of what he had lost.

Finally, less because he thought he might find her than because of the comfort its familiar feel and smell might bring him, he headed past the rain-dampened ashes of the long fire and into the cave. From long habit, he had lit his lamp on an ember pulled deep from the buried heart of the fire, and the dim gleam of his own lamp made him slow to realize that there was another glow, far back in the cave. His heart jumped. Of course she would be here! But no, perhaps the Keeper of the Bulls had come, to take new strength from his own beasts. Deer put his hand to the hilt of his knife, slipped the thong around his neck, and crept forward, past the ghostly bulls and down past the bend where the tumbling horse fell forever, and then down again toward the well where there was always water.