Timeline - Michael Crichton [157]
But in what way? He wondered. The walls of La Roque were ten feet thick. A cannonball would never penetrate them.
The handsome knight gave a brief salute and said, “God bring you grace and safety.”
“God bless you and grant you increase,” Chris replied, and then the knight slapped the horses on their rumps, and they were riding off, toward La Roque.
:
As they rode, Kate told him about what they had found in Marcel’s room, and about the green chapel.
“Do you know where this chapel is?” Chris said.
“Yes. I saw it on one of the survey maps. It’s about half a mile east of La Roque. There’s a path through the forest that takes you there.”
Chris sighed. “So we know where the passage is,” he said, “but André had the ceramic, and now he’s dead, which means we can’t ever leave, anyway.”
“No,” she said. “I have the ceramic.”
“You do?”
“André gave it to me, on the bridge. I think he knew he’d never get out alive. He could have run and saved himself. But he didn’t. He stayed and saved me instead.”
She started to cry softly.
Chris rode in silence, saying nothing. He remembered how Marek’s intensity had always amused the other graduate students—”Can you imagine? He really believes this chivalry shit!”—and how they had assumed his behavior was some kind of weird posturing. A role he was playing, an affectation. Because in the late twentieth century, you couldn’t seriously ask other people to think that you believed in honor and truth, and the purity of the body, the defense of women, the sanctity of true love, and all the rest of it.
But apparently, André really had believed it.
:
They moved through a nightmare landscape. The sun was weak and pale in the dust and smoke. Here there were vineyards, but all the vines were burned, leaving gnarled gnome stumps, with smoke rising into the air. The orchards, too, were black and desolate, skeletal trees. Everything had been burned.
All around them, they heard the pitiful cries of wounded soldiers. Many retreating soldiers had fallen beside the road itself. Some were still breathing; others were gray with death.
Chris had paused to take weapons from one of the dead men, when a nearby soldier raised his hand and cried pitifully, “Secors, secors!” Chris went over to him. He had an arrow embedded deep in his abdomen, and another in his chest. The soldier was in his early twenties, and he seemed to know he was dying. As he lay on his back, he looked pleadingly at Chris, saying words Chris couldn’t understand. Finally, the soldier began to point to his mouth, saying, “Aquam. Da mihi aquam.” He was thirsty; he wanted water. Chris shrugged helplessly. He had no water. The man looked angry, winced, closed his eyes, turned away. Chris moved off. Later, when they passed men crying for help, he continued on without stopping. There was nothing he could do.
They could see La Roque in the distance, standing high and impregnable atop the Dordogne cliffs. And they would reach the fortress in less than an hour.
:
In a dark corner of the church of Sainte-Mère, the handsome knight helped André Marek to his feet. He said, “Your friends have departed.”
Marek coughed, and grabbed the knight’s arm to steady himself as a wave of pain shot up his leg. The handsome knight smiled. He had captured Marek just after the explosion at the mill.
When Marek had climbed out the mill window, by sheer luck he fell into a small pool so deep that he did not hurt himself. And when he came to the surface again, he found he was still beneath the bridge. The pool produced a swirling eddy, so the current hadn’t taken him downstream.
Marek had stripped off his monk’s habit and thrown it downstream when the flour mill exploded, timbers and bodies flying in all directions. A soldier splashed into the water near him, his body turning in the eddy. Marek started to scramble up onto the bank—and a handsome knight put a sword point at his throat and beckoned for him to come forward. Marek was still wearing the maroon and gray colors of Oliver, and he began to babble in Occitan, pleading innocence, begging for mercy.
The knight