I walked in front, eyes peeled for the slightest mark on the soft soil, but I saw nothing. Nor did I really think it likely that any of the La Roque survivors could have known about the track and pointed it out to Vilmain, because the La Roque farmers were lords of rich plains and never used to set foot, or tractor tire, on the Malejac hills. Nor did the path appear on the ordnance map for the district, since it was some time since that had been revised and the shortcut was relatively recent in origin, having been cut by a forester in order to drag his timber out to the road. It was therefore unlikely that Vilmain ever used it. But I needed to be sure, as I explained in a low voice to Meyssonnier after we had been walking for about an hour through the oppressive silence of the wood.
I had seen nothing suspicious, no footmarks, no crushed plants, no snapped twigs—or at least none apart from those broken by Colin and myself as we rode back from La Roque, and they were all completely withered by now.
On the way back I left a series of markers that would enable us to be sure that no one else had used the track next time we came along it. They consisted of two flexible twigs, one from either side of the track, tied together by a length of the black thread at about hip height. The wind wouldn’t be sufficient to break the thread, but a man walking at any speed would be bound to do so without even noticing. When I was lucky enough to find a bramble bush alongside the path, I dispensed with the thread, selected the longest thorny arm I could, and pulled it over to the other side, where it promptly dug its thorns into some frail branchlet.
It was rather like a game back in our Club days, and Meyssonnier commented on the fact. The difference was that this time our lives were really at stake. But neither he nor I had any desire to make so melodramatic an observation. On the contrary, there was an unspoken agreement to stick to strictly everyday conversation. After two hours of walking we sat down for a rest on a few clumps of grass conveniently growing in a spot that looked down on the La Roque road. Anyone on the road would not be able to see us—even had we been on horseback—because of the thick undergrowth all around. See without being seen, as Meyssonnier would have said.
“I think we’ll pull through,” he said just then.
Except that he was blinking, and that his narrow face seemed even longer than usual because of the tension, he was as calm as could be. When I just nodded without saying anything, he went on: “I’m trying to envisage it, how it will go. Vilmain arrives with his bazooka. With the first shell he demolishes the palisade and comes through. Facing him, he sees the sandbags. He thinks the gate is the other side of them and fires again. He fires one shell, two shells, no result. He only has ten or so. So of course he’s not going to use them all. So then he gives the order to retreat.”
I nodded and said, “And that’s just what I’m afraid of. If he clears off, that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods. On the contrary, Vilmain is a trained soldier. As soon as he sees he’s bitten off more than he can chew he’ll go right back to La Roque and wear us down with ambushes and surprise attacks.”
“We can always catch him with counterambushes,” Meyssonnier said. “We know the terrain.”
“It won’t be long before he knows it too. Even this track, he’ll soon sniff it out. No, Meyssonnier, if there’s a war of that sort, then we have every chance of losing it. Vilmain has more men than us, and they’re better armed. Most of our popguns are no good beyond forty yards, and his rifles will pick off a man at four hundred.”
“And more,” Meyssonnier said. And since I didn’t speak, he went on: “So? What do you suggest?”
“Nothing at the moment. I’m thinking about it.”
As we came back onto the road the sun was westering, its light golden and horizontal.
“Thomas?”
“I’m here,” he called, raising one arm to disclose his hiding place on the bank above the road.
It was the serenest hour of day, but serene was the last thing I felt as I made my way up to Thomas, turning to give Meyssonnier a little farewell wave as he continued on up to the castle.
Thomas had concealed himself in a very well-chosen spot that gave him a clear view along at least a hundred yards of the road. His gun was beside him on two flat stones he’d covered with earth. I lay down next to him.
“It’s a filthy business, war,” Thomas said. “I could see you coming a long way off. I even took a bead on you. I could have sliced your heads off like daisies, the two of you.”
Thanks for the daisy, I thought. If I were superstitious it might have occurred to me that his remark was hardly a good augury for the conversation ahead.
“Thomas, I have to tell you something.”
“Tell away then,” he said, sensing my constraint.
I told him the whole thing. Or rather, no, I didn’t tell him the whole thing. Because I didn’t want to accuse Catie at all. My version ran as follows: Just as I was finishing my siesta, Catie came into my room, probably in order to tell me something. And it just happened. I couldn’t help myself.
Thomas gazed attentively at my face as I spoke. Then he said, “You couldn’t help yourself?”
I shook my head.
“Well there you are, then,” he said in the calmest possible tone. “She can’t be as bad as all that, can she? You’ve always underestimated her.”
And him too! I was completely staggered to find him taking it like this. I remained mute, eyes on the ground.
“You look disappointed,” Thomas said, scrutinizing my face.
“Disappointed isn’t quite the word. Astonished, yes. A little.”
“It’s just that my point of view has changed,” Thomas said. “And I hadn’t got around to telling you about it. Do you remember our discussion the evening you brought Miette back? One husband or several? I argued against you and defended monogamy. You were outvoted. And very cut up about it at the time.”
He gave a half smile, then went on. “Well, as I say, my point of view has changed. I think you were right after all. No one can claim exclusive rights to a woman, not when there are only two women to six men.”
I stared in amazement at his austere profile. I had assumed he was still as staunch a champion as ever of the monogamic cause, and here he was feeding me back my own opinions.
“And apart from that,” he said, “I don’t own Catie. She does as she likes. She is a free human being. She didn’t promise to be faithful to me, and it’s no business of mine what she was doing this afternoon.” And in a terse voice he concluded. “We won’t mention the matter again.”
Had it not been for that resolve not to mention it again, I might have believed that he was totally unaffected by what I’d told him. But he wasn’t. There was an almost imperceptible quivering around his mouth. Which meant, I was certain, that he had foreseen Catie’s infidelities and armed himself against them in advance with iron-clad inner arguments. Arguments borrowed from me. How well I recognized my Thomas now. Implacable logic, but never insensitive. And lying there beside him, eyes fixed like his on the road we were guarding, my feeling of friendship for him was overwhelmingly intense. Not that I regretted what had happened earlier. But there was no possible comparison, it seemed to me, between what I had experienced that afternoon and the emotion I was feeling now.
After a while, feeling the silence had gone on too long, I propped myself up on one elbow. “You can go back in now, if you like. I’ll take over.”
“Heavens no,” Thomas said. “You’ll be far more use inside than me. Peyssou will want you to check his wall, for one thing.”
“Yes,” I said, “you’re quite right. But all the same, don’t stay out here after dusk. There’s no point. We have the dugout for our nightwatch.”
“Who’s on duty tonight?”
“Peyssou and Colin.”
“Right,” Thomas said. “I’ll be in before dark.”
The only sign of tension discernible was the exaggeratedly normal way we were talking, our voices almost too offhand.
“See you then,?
?? I said as I walked off with what I felt looked like very fake nonchalance. And anyway, I’d never have said that “See you then” normally. We didn’t usually bother with such courtesies at Malevil.
I quickened my pace, rang the bell once, and waited till Peyssou opened the cat door for me.
“Well,” he said as soon as I was standing beside him, “it’s finished. What do you think? Can you see it’s a wall? And look, even if you walk right over by the graves, or over by the cliff, you can’t even see the edge. Good camouflage, eh? Not a pebble to be seen, just the bags. A nasty shock he’s got in store for him, that Vilmain.”
He was panting a little, bare-chested, still sweating slightly despite the cool evening air, and his great arms swollen with muscles were bent slightly, as though they were too stiff for him to straighten out. I noticed that his hands were red and blistered, despite his callused palms. But he was radiant with pleasure and pride.
“Well what a thing!” he went on. “A day! One day it took us! I’d never have believed it. It’s true the blocks were there ready cut. And there were six of us. Well, five. Plus the four women.”
Apart from La Menou, La Falvine, and Thomas, the whole of Malevil was there clustering around the wall and admiring it in the fading light. Catie, at the top of one of the ladders, was just putting the finishing touches to the top row of sandbags. She had her back to us.
“She’s got a fine figure on her,” Peyssou said in a low voice.
“Not as fine as her sister.”
“All the same,” Peyssou said, “that Thomas, you could say he hasn’t done too badly. And not standoffish. She doesn’t mind who she talks to. And affectionate too. Always kissing you. It even embarrasses me, you know, sometimes.”
Even in the half darkness I could see him blushing. He decided it was time to change the subject. “I wanted to ask you, Emmanuel. If we’re going to fight tomorrow, and there is a risk we might be killed, then perhaps we should have a communion this evening. It’s for me and Colin I say that.”
He was turning the cat-door padlock around and around in his great hands. He hadn’t thought to lock it back in place.
“I’ll think about it.”
But I wasn’t given time. A shot rang out. I froze.
“Open up,” I told Peyssou. “I’ll go. It was Thomas.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
“I said open up!”
He slid up the cat door, and as I crawled through I said curtly, “No one follow!”
I ran, rifle in hand. It was a long way, a hundred yards. I slowed down at the second bend and jumped down into the ditch and advanced more cautiously at a crouch. Then I recognized Thomas. He was standing in the middle of the road, a statue with a gun under its arm. His back was toward me. There was a pale shape lying at his feet.
“Thomas!”
He turned, but it was almost dark now and I couldn’t make out his features. I went up to him.
The pale shape lying in the road was a woman. I could make out a skirt, a white blouse, long blond hair. She had a black hole in her chest.
“Bébelle,” Thomas said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“You’re sure?”
Despite the growing darkness I saw him shrug.
“I recognized him right away from Hervé’s description. And from his walk. He thought no one was watching, he wasn’t bothering to walk like a woman.” He stopped and swallowed.
“And then?”
“I let him get past, then I stood up, leaned against that tree trunk over there, and I said ‘Bébelle,’ just like that, not loud at all. He whipped around as though a dog had bitten his leg. Then he clutched the little bundle he was carrying against his stomach and put his right hand into it. I said, ‘Hands on head, Bébelle,’ and it was then he threw his knife.”
“You dodged it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I dodged it or if the tree drew his aim. Out of habit. Because he must have practiced throwing at trees when he was learning. Anyway, it hit the tree an inch or so away from my chest. And I fired. Here’s the knife, so I didn’t dream it.”
I weighed the knife in my hand and with the tip of one foot pulled Bébelle’s skirt up to disclose his undergarment. Then I bent down, and in the last remaining glimmer of daylight I looked at the face. Very pretty features, delicate and regular, framed by long blond hair. Yes, from the face you could well have taken him for a woman. Well, Bébelle, I said to myself, your problems are solved at last. Death has chosen for you. We’ll bury you as a woman.
“Vilmain was trying to pull the same trick as he did at La Roque,” Thomas said.
I shook my head. “He isn’t anywhere near. He’d already have shown up.”
Better not to hang about though. Bébelle could wait for her burial. I ran back to Malevil with Thomas beside me. And I posted Jacquet on the ramparts to keep watch.
We were all gathered in the gate-tower kitchen, packed close around the table, our faces brightly lit by the oil lamp that La Falvine had brought down from the house. We looked at one another in silence. Our weapons were all stacked against the walls behind us, the pockets of our jeans and denims bulged with our ammunition. We only possessed two cartridge belts, and those had been issued to Miette and Catie.
Simple meal: bread, butter, ham, and milk or wine.
Thomas told his story again, listened to by all with profound attention and by Catie with an admiration that piqued me. It was the limit, that reaction. I did my best to repress it, but it wasn’t easy.
When he had finished, the general opinion was that Vilmain and his band hadn’t been waiting anywhere near. Because at the sound of the shot, knowing that Bébelle had no gun, they would have rushed Thomas right away. Bébelle’s mission was not to slit the gatekeeper’s throat and open the gate, as at La Roque, but just to bring back information. Like the two sent that morning.
The conversation dwindled into a long anxious silence.
At the end of the meal, I announced, “As soon as the table’s been cleared, I’ll give communion, if everyone agrees.”
General approbation. Thomas and Meyssonnier silent. While the women cleared the table, Peyssou led me outside into the enclosure.
“The thing is,” he said in a low voice, “the thing is, Emmanuel, I’d like to make confession.”
“Now?”
“Well, yes.”
I threw up my hands. “But my poor Peyssou, I know them off by heart, all your sins!”
“There’s a new one,” Peyssou said. “A big one.”
Silence. A pity it was too dark to see his face at all well. We were about fifteen yards from the wall and I couldn’t even see Jacquet up on the battlements.
“A big one?” I repeated.
“Well,” Peyssou said, “quite big.”
Silence. We walked slowly over toward the Maternity Ward in the darkness.
“Catie?”
“Yes.”
“In thought?”
“Oh, yes!” Peyssou said with a sigh.
I weighed that sigh. We reached the Maternity Ward, and Amarante, who had scented me even though she could not see me, made a gentle pfff with her nostrils. I went over and felt for her big head so that I could stroke her. It was warm and soft beneath my fingers.
“Is she too affectionate?”
“Yes.”
“And she kisses you?”
“Yes, often.”
“How does she kiss you?”
“Well,” Peyssou said.
“Does she throw her arms around your neck and cover your face in little tiny kisses?”
“How do you know that?” Peyssou said in a stunned voice.
“And at the same time press her body against you?”
“Oh, dear,” Peyssou said. “She does more than just press it against me. She wriggles it!”
At that moment I suddenly had a very clear notion of what Fulbert would have done in my place. A good criterion that, as a general guide. Think what Fulbert wou
ld do in any particular situation and do the opposite. It produced the following:
“You’re not the only one, you know.”
“What?” Peyssou said. “You mean you as well?”
“Me as well.” Come on, a last little effort. Anti-Fulbertism to the nth. “And with me,” I went on, “it’s much worse.”
“It’s much worse?” Peyssou echoed.
I told him how I’d spent my siesta. I leaned against the partition wall of the box to tell my story, and Amarante laid her head on my shoulder. As I talked I was stroking her muzzle with my right hand. And without biting—because though she’ll kick things to death she never bites—she nibbled at my neck with her soft lips.
“So there you are, you see,” I said. “You came out to make confession, and I’m the one who’s done the confessing.”
“But I can’t give you absolution,” Peyssou said.
“That’s not what matters,” I said forcefully. “What matters is saying what’s on your mind to a friend and accepting the friend’s judgment.”
Silence.
“I’m not judging you,” Peyssou said. “In your place I’d have done the same.”
“Well, there you are, nicely confessed,” I said. “And me too.”
I omitted to tell him that it wouldn’t be very long before he was in fact “in my place,” as he put it. The thought made me jealous. Very well then, I would be jealous, that was all, and I would control my jealousy, like Thomas. One day or another we would have to move beyond such possessiveness if we wanted to go on living at Malevil in peace.
“Well, well,” Peyssou said. “You know, Catie and you, I’d never have thought it. I thought there was only Evelyne.” And since I said nothing, he went on: “Not that I was meaning anything, not like that, of course.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“No, no,” Peyssou said, “if you ask me, it’s more like father and daughter there.”
“Not that either,” I said very tersely.
He was silent. Poor Peyssou, always so genuinely gentle with others’ feelings, he was horrified at having ventured onto such thin ice. I took him by the arm, which he immediately tensed so that I could feel his biceps. Good old Peyssou. It was a habit he’d never lost from our Club days.