The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

the Bulls repeated. And as he stopped, the chanting of the men died away, and a great hush fell. They stood in tension, the Keeper of the Bulls and his two attendants, equidistant from the childless widow and the Keeper of the Horses and his woman and daughter. They formed a triangle from which Deer felt suddenly excluded.
    “You have forgotten, old woman, that one womanless man remains,” said the Keeper. “And a womanless man takes precedence over a newmade youth.”
    The childless widow, her face light with anticipation, clutched one hand to her breast, and gazed fixedly at the imposing man. This was why she had refused the fisherman, Deer understood. There was an arrangement here, he told himself, clamping down on the knot of dread that gripped his belly.
    Moon looked in horror at the eagle’s head and at the beaked club that rose beside it. They seemed to blur and merge together, man and club, beak and beak, each as cruel and imperious as the other. Her throat blocked, she tore her eyes away to Deer, and then to her father.
    The old woman broke the moment, shuffling to the childless widow and taking her hand, and bringing her to stand between Deer and the Keeper of the Bulls. For the young woman, it was as if Deer had never existed. Her entire being was in her eyes and they were fixed upon the Keeper of the Bulls. Her hand kept twitching, as if rising to take him of its own accord.
    Turning to the Keeper, as if all this was now settled, the old woman led the widow toward him. He ignored her, and the great beak pointed steadily at Moon.
    Then he moved, two brisk paces and without waiting for the old woman or for her father or for anything but his own implacable resolve, he reached out and seized her wrist, and hauled Moon with him toward the fire.
    “No,” shrieked Moon, jerking and trying to free her hand as she was pulled half off her feet, and dragged to the fire by this birdman.
    “No,” shrieked the childless widow, clawing at her cheeks.
    “No,” cried Moon’s mother, her hands at her mouth in shock.
    “No,” cried Deer, advancing to free Moon until the chief hunter stepped into his path, his eyes cold and his bow drawn, an arrow pointing at his chest.
    “No,” shouted the Keeper of the Horses. “This has not my consent.” The chief woodman grinned and held out his beaked club to block the path.
    “No,” cried Moon, a firmer voice now, and she gathered her feet beneath her, ceased to resist. Then as the big man drew her close she darted her head down to sink her teeth deep into the muscled forearm of the Keeper of the Bulls. Her head moved like a fox worrying at a rabbit, and bright blood spurted and the man’s grip relaxed on her wrist as he doubled over in pain, the headdress tumbling from him. And she darted under his reaching hand and ran, swifter than a deer, sprinting away from the stunned, immobile villagers to leap the bull’s skull and vanish into the darkness beyond the fire.

CHAPTER 15
Périgord, 1944
    A s the spring days lengthened, Manners found himself experiencing moments of pure happiness, even beyond the snatched hours with Sybille. They came when he was alone, usually when he was cycling to a training session or meeting or just going to reconnoiter a likely ambush site, and they were always associated with a sense that he had been magically transported into a time of peace. This was not Sybille’s melancholy fantasy, he knew, but his own. It was composed of English folk songs rather than the chansons of Paris boulevards, of flat and bitter beer rather than rough wine, of Cheddar rather than goat cheese. He had never felt more English than during this time in France.
    Still, the illusion of a peaceful English countryside was as captivating as it was plausible in these quiet forest track ways and along grassy country lanes where lambs staggered to their feet and peasants sowed seed by hand now that there was no fuel for tractors. He was sleeping warm and dry in a borie, one of the circular stone huts with a thick slate roof that the shepherds and woodsmen had dotted through the remote countryside. Food was sufficient, if not plentiful, and the streams were no longer forbiddingly cold and his clothes were dry. Even in the old farmhouses on an evening, as he gave lectures on the art of organizing arms drops and the correct way to fold up the fallen parachutes, the placid faces of the old peasants over their pipes and glasses of pineau took him back to that distant time