staring wordlessly at some of the finest art they had ever seen.
Inside, they completely lost track of the hours; by the time they would return, Sext would be long over and they would be fortunate to attend the next service at Nones. By the light of hissing torches, they marvelled at the menagerie. Some of the animals such as the bison and mammoths seemed fanciful, though the horses and bears were realistic enough. The weird priapic bird man startled them and set their tongues clucking. And when they came to crawl through the spider hole at the rear of the cave they were dazzled by the red-stencilled hand prints that encircled them in a small chamber.
From the first moments, they had been discussing who the artist or artists might have been. Romans? Gauls? Celts? Other distant barbarians? Lacking an answer, they turned to the question of why. Why bedeck a chamber with hands? What purpose would be served?
Jean wandered into the last chamber and exclaimed, ‘Now, brothers, here are things I can better understand! Plants!’
Jean inspected the paintings with a keen eye. He was an avid herbalist, one of the most skilled practitioners in the Perigord, and his abilities as an infirmarer were unrivalled. His poultices, rubs, powders and infusions were legendary, his reputation reaching all the way to Paris. There was a long history of herbalism in the region and knowledge of plants and medicaments was carefully passed down from father to son, mother to daughter and in the case of Ruac, monk to monk. Jean had a particular gift at embellishment and experimentation. Even if a poultice for wheezing worked well enough, might it not work better with the addition of stalk of cranesbill? If loose bowels could be staunched by the usual brews, might the infusions be made more potent with the added juice of poppies and mandrake?
With his companions hovering over his shoulder, Jean pointed his torch at the paintings of bushes with red berries and five-sided leaves. ‘To my eye, that is the gooseberry bush. The juice of those berries is good for various lassitudes. And these vines, over here. They look to be in the family of possession vines which are said to remedy the ague.’
Barthomieu was inspecting the large bird man on the opposite wall. ‘Have you seen this creature, brothers?’ He poked a finger at the figure’s erect cock. ‘He is as felicitous as the other one. That said, even I know the type of vegetation surrounding him. It is meadow grass.’
‘I agree,’ Jean sniffed. ‘Simple grass. It is of limited value as a medicament although I will use it from time to time to bind a poultice.’
Bernard slowly moved around the chamber, inspecting the walls for himself. ‘I almost tire of saying it but I have never seen a place as singular in all of Christendom. It seems to me…’
There was a crunch underfoot and Bernard lost his balance. He fell, dropping his torch and scuffing his knees.
Abelard hurried over and held out his arm. ‘Are you all right, my friend?’
Bernard started to reach for his torch but retracted his hand as if a serpent was about to strike back and crossed himself. ‘Look there! My God!’
Abelard lowered his torch to better see what had so startled Bernard. Against the wall was a heaped-up pile of ivory-coloured human bones. He quickly drew the sign of the cross against his chest.
Jean joined them and began an inspection. ‘These bones are not fresh,’ he observed. ‘I cannot say how long this poor wretch has lain here but I believe it is no short time. And look at his skull!’ Behind the left ear hole, the back of the vault was crushed and deeply depressed. ‘He met a violent end, may God rest his soul. I wonder if he is our painter?’
‘How can we ever know?’ Bernard said. ‘Whoever he is, it is incumbent upon us to assume he is a Christian and give him a Christian burial. We cannot leave him here.’
‘I agree, but we will have to return on another day with a sack to carry his remains,’ Abelard said. ‘I would not wish to disgrace him by leaving some of his bones here, scattering others there.’
‘Shall we bury him with his bowl?’ Barthomieu exclaimed like a child.
‘What bowl?’ Jean asked.
Barthomieu stuck his torch out until it was almost touching the limestone bowl, the size of a man’s cupped hands, which was lying on the floor between two piles of foot bones. ‘There!’ he said. ‘Shall we bury him with his old supper bowl?’
Long after the bones were interred in the cemetery and a mass for the dead held in the church, Jean revisited the flesh-coloured stone bowl he kept on his reading desk by his bed. It was heavy, smooth and cool to the touch and cradling it in his hands he could not help but wonder about the man in the cave. He himself had a heavy mortar and pestle which he used to grind his botanicals into remedies. One day on an impulse, he retrieved his mortar from the infirmary bench and placed it alongside this man’s bowl. They were not so different.
His assistant, a young monk named Michel, was watching him suspiciously from his corner perch.
‘Do you not have work to occupy yourself?’ Jean asked irritably. The hatchet-faced youth was incapable of minding his own affairs.
‘No, Father.’
‘Well, I will tell you how to bide your time until Vespers. Change all the straw in the infirmary mattresses. The bed bugs have returned.’
The young monk shuffled off with a sour expression, whispering under his breath.
Jean’s cell was a walled-off space within the long infirmary. Usually, by the time he would slip off his sandals and lay his head on the straw, he would be asleep, oblivious to the snores and moans of his patients. Since the day he visited the cave, however, he had slept fitfully, dwelling on the images on the walls and the skeleton in the chamber. Once, in a dream, the skeleton rearticulated, rose and became the bird man. He awoke in an unpleasant sweat.
On this night he lay awake staring at the small candle he left burning on his desk between the two stone bowls.
A compulsion overtook him.
It would not be quieted easily.
It would not wane until he dragged Barthomieu, Bernard and Abelard out with him into the dewy meadows and succulent woodlands that surrounded the abbey.
It would not wane until they had collected baskets overflowing with meadow grasses, gooseberries and possession vines.
It would not wane until Jean had mashed the berries, chopped and ground the plants in his mortar then boiled the stringy pulp into an infusion.
It would not wane until the night the four men sat together in Jean’s cell and one-by-one swilled down the tart, reddish tea.
THIRTEEN
‘That’s it?’ Luc exclaimed.
Hugo had stopped translating. He closed the email attachment and turned his palms upward in a gesture of apologetic futility. ‘That’s all he’s decoded so far.’
Luc impatiently stamped his foot, shaking the portable building. ‘So they made a tea from these plants. Then what?’
‘Hopefully, our Belgian friend will have more for us soon. I’ll send an encouraging message. I’d hate for him to get distracted by something like a Star Trek convention and lose interest.’
‘There was a skeleton, Hugo, and artefacts! But now, no surface finds in the tenth chamber or anywhere else. What a loss!’
Hugo shrugged. ‘Well, they probably did what they said they were going to do. They gave the pre-Christian cave man a Christian burial!’
‘It’s like finding an Egyptian tomb cleaned out by grave robbers. An in situ skeleton from the period would have been of immense value.’
‘They left the paintings for you, don’t forget that.’
