The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

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.
    Moon was shrunk far back but defiant in the small cavern, a rock clutched fiercely in her hand, a smear of the Keeper’s blood still on her cheek. Her face eased as she saw him and then brightened. But she held the rock close, and he took his hand from his knife and squatted. Beside her were a small bowl of the dark earth and a thick stick of charcoal.
    “I will not go back. Not to him,” she said.
    “I know,” he said softly.