The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [139]
It took them until almost dawn, heaving those heavy containers up the hill, the leather straps knifing into their shoulders as their hands groped for trees and branches and even spiked brambles as they fought to stay upright and maneuver the damn things through the undergrowth. The others cursed and groaned and sobbed with effort but never complained, carried along by the sheer assurance of his will. It seemed an inevitable part of the way his luck had turned that just as they laid the last container beside the tangle of roots, they heard the plod of horses’ hooves and there was Little Jeannot, in perfect time to take the empty cart back to the barn.
He went down first with François. The others took the straps from their aching shoulders and spat on their hands to take the straps in a firm grip and ease the containers down the sloping ramp of earth as if they were so many coffins being lowered gently into a grave. Pierrot and Florien came down to help them haul the containers up the tunnel. As the sky lightened and the first birds began to sing, Manners looked at the last container and stared for the first time at the stenciled markings on its side.
“Load D,” he breathed, as if in the presence of a miracle. Load D, the rarest and most marvelous of gifts. Load D, with its four bazookas and twenty-four rockets for each one. And 154 pounds of plastic explosive, 8 Bren guns, 10,000 rounds of ammo, and 234 field dressings with medical kit. He had six containers, which meant half a load. It was still a miracle. He opened the first container, took out the medical kit, and went off to look for his wounded.
CHAPTER 19
Time: The Present
Clothilde’s parents lived in what at first seemed to be a small house when they parked by the river and climbed up the narrow street of Limeuil. But the gate opened onto a broad and sunny courtyard where an old man sat reading Sud-Ouest and the sound of a radio and clattering pots came from a large kitchen. An elderly but still handsome woman came out beaming and wiping her floury hands on an apron as Clothilde kissed her stepfather. Lydia braced herself for a difficult encounter, but Clothilde had insisted that she come along. “If only to drive the car when I start crying,” Clothilde had said.
“I never knew there was so much money in what you do,” said Clothilde’s mother, when they were settled around the courtyard table with drinks and a plate of olives. “A million francs reward, they said on the radio, for one of those rock paintings of yours. Some announcement by the President.”
Lydia pulled out the photograph from her bag and showed it to them while Clothilde explained. Then she worked out the currency conversion. A million francs was about $130,000. Heavens!
“I looked up those things you wanted about the Resistance,” said her stepfather. He looked like a scholar, with wispy hair and clear blue eyes that twinkled over his reading glasses. “Not much about caves being used, except for Bara-Bahau and Rouffignac, and you know about them. But there’s a fair bit about these tensions with the Communists.” He opened a fat book at a page he had marked.
“This is Guy Penaud’s Histoire de la Résistance en Périgord, and he cites the Armée Secrète report on the Communists’ refusal to join the attack on Bergerac on June seventh: ‘The Communists of Bergerac would not move, and when several days later they were asked to return the weapons entrusted to them, they refused to give them up. I believe this defection was the result of an order from the Party, received at the last minute. The Communists, it cannot be doubted, sought to build an army under their own control …’ Blah-blah-blah … There’s quite a lot like that, of the Communists refusing orders, stealing arms and keeping them for their own purposes,” the old man went on. “There was one called Marat, who was a particular offender, according to the Armée Secrète. Your father was attached to one of the units he ran out of Périgueux.”
Clothilde