The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

men to start telling their daughters about the life that awaits them, we’d wait forever. And what I have told her is to stay away from the bold young boys. But she’s your daughter—she never listens. Now you had better make sure she listens to you.”
    “You will listen to me, Little Moon,” he said. “You will not go to Deer again without my permission. You must not even think of him as a man until he becomes a Keeper. You will not go with any of the young men, but will stay by your mother all day and do her bidding. Do you hear me?”
    “Yes, Father. But it was staying by my mother that I met Deer, when you punished him by sending him to work with the women. So that must have had your approval,” she said boldly.
    No fool, his daughter. As quick of tongue as she was quick of foot. He smiled to himself; she’d be a handful for any man, just like her mother.
    “You know what I mean, Little Moon,” he said, leaning forward to dip the moss into the warm water and swab his face before he pushed the big log deep into the fire and crawled into the skins alongside his woman. “And there are many other men in the tribe beside Deer.”
    “But he is the best painter of all the apprentices. You said so yourself,” Little Moon said softly, almost to herself. “And he respects you most of all.”
    He gave no reply, easing himself alongside the curving, familiar warmth of his woman.
    “Now see what you’ve done, you old fool,” his woman murmured fondly, taking his hand to fold it to her breast. “Always meddling, that’s you.”

CHAPTER 6
The Audrix Plateau, Périgord, 1944
    T he elderly Lockheed Hudson ground through the night, the engines hammering so loudly that Jack thought every German in France must hear them. He was cold and he knew he was frightened, and wondered if he looked half as calm as François and McPhee had done as they pulled themselves easily into the plane ahead of him. McPhee was still cursing good-humoredly at the waste of all his parachute training. Expecting to drop into France, they learned at the briefing that they would land on a makeshift grass strip, then the aircraft would load up with a return group of passengers to fly back to RAF Tempsford. It felt too ordinary, Jack thought, to mark his first foray onto enemy-held soil. Well, the first in Europe, at least. He had been behind Jerry lines often enough in the desert, if anybody was ever really sure where the lines were.
    “Three minutes.” The curtain behind the cockpit was flicked back and a head came out to shout the warning. They had been flying for nearly four hours, as calmly and as quietly as if it had been one of those prewar flights from London to Paris. No sudden maneuvers, no hard turns or dives, and not a trace of flak. It seemed almost too easy. Slowly the plane tipped over onto one wing. That meant they were circling, looking for the lights of the landing zone. They had devices these days, he knew. S-phones that let the copilot talk to the reception team on the ground, and Eureka sets that brought the aircraft in precisely to a ground beacon. They were carrying two more Eureka sets on this trip, for delivery to the French, part of the cargo that was strapped down behind him. Guns and radio sets, ammo and grenades and plastic explosives. He knew the stuff was safe enough without a detonator, even in a crash. At least he knew that in theory, but his flesh still crawled at the thought of the potential explosion piled up behind him. Silly, really. In a crash, the cargo would crush him into a pulp long before any explosion. The plane leveled out and then turned again on to the opposite wing. The pilot must have seen the three landing lights, got the right recognition signal showing it was the Digger network waiting down there and not the Germans. The engine note fell back as they lost height and he felt the flaps go down, heard the grinding of the undercarriage as they prepared to land.
    “Jean-Marie, the dog has had three black puppies.” Jack bet that was theirs. Among all the usual lists of family messages and snatches of poetry that came with the news bulletins on the BBC French services, he suspected that was the one to prepare the reception committee for this night’s landing. He had felt some unconscious echo of recognition for Jean-Marie’s puppies. It was almost a tradition before the teams flew out, listening to the previous night’s radio messages and wondering which was theirs. He imagined the