‘Our tea? Once a week. Always late, in the middle of the night, when we won’t be disturbed by some idiot wandering through the village. Maybe we could take it less often but it’s a tradition and frankly we enjoy it. I’ve used it well over ten thousand times and it doesn’t get old. You’ll see.’
‘There’s no way we’re going to play along,’ Luc said.
‘No?’ Bonnet responded, shrugging. He dipped a finger into the pot and it came out red. He licked it clean and declared, ‘There, it’s ready. Proper Ruac tea. What do you think, Pelay?’
The doctor tasted some from the ladle. ‘I can’t remember a better batch,’ he laughed. ‘I’m sorry I have to wait.’
‘Well, you and me, old friend. We’re the keepers tonight. Special keepers for special guests.’ He looked around the chamber. ‘Jacques!’ he yelled. ‘Where the hell are you?’
His son appeared from one of the corridors.
‘We’re ready,’ Bonnet told him. ‘Let them know.’
Luc and Sara held each other’s free hands. Her hand felt limp and cold. There was little he could say to her except, ‘Everything will be all right. Stay strong.’ Soon, there was the muffled sound of a clanging bell. It persisted for no more than half a minute then ended.
The villagers began to arrive in knots of threes and fours.
None younger than twenty or so, by appearance. Mostly men and women well on in years, exactly how old, Luc could only guess. Odile arrived, looking guiltily at the handcuffed pair along the wall. There were maybe thirty or forty people her age. People tended to congregate with their peer groups, milling around, whispering, seemingly uncomfortable with strangers in their midst. All told, there were at least two hundred people but Luc lost count as the room filled.
Bonnet banged the pot with the ladle to get everyone’s attention. ‘Good people,’ he shouted. ‘Come and be served. Don’t be shy because of our guests. You know who they are. Don’t pay them any mind. Come on, who’s first tonight?’
They lined up orderly and each, in turn, received a paper cup, filled to the brim with hot red tea. Some sipped at it, savouring it as one might a good cup of ordinary tea. Others, especially the younger villagers, gulped it.
They struck Luc as some kind of ersatz parishioners queuing to receive holy communion. But Bonnet was no priest. He grinned and joked as he dolloped out the brew and seemed amused whenever he accidentally sloshed some onto the table top.
When the last villager, a heavy-haunched old woman with long grey hair knotted into a bun, had received her ration and whispered something to him, Bonnet replied loudly, ‘No, no. For me, later. I’ve got to do something tonight. But come with me, let me introduce you.’
Bonnet led the woman to Luc and Sara. ‘This is my wife, Camille. These are the archaeologists I told you about. Isn’t the professor a good-looking fellow?’
The mayor’s wife looked him over and grunted, and with that, Bonnet swatted her on the rump and told her to enjoy herself without him. He pulled up a chair and sat himself down, just beyond Luc’s reach.
‘You know, I’m tired,’ he sighed. ‘It’s late. I’m not as young as I used to be. Let me sit with you a while.’
Sara’s eyes wandered around the room. People were finishing their tea, tidily disposing the cups in a bin, all very neat and civilised. There was a din of conversation, some polite laughter, all very banal.
‘What happens next?’ she asked.
‘Wait, you’ll see. It takes fifteen minutes for some, twenty for others. Watch. It won’t go unnoticed.’ He called for Pelay who approached from the folding table with two more cups of tea in his hands.
Sara looked at them and began to cry.
‘No, you’ll really like it!’ Bonnet insisted. ‘Don’t make a fuss. Trust Pelay. He’s a good doctor!’
‘Leave her alone,’ Luc threatened. He rose from his chair and strained against his tether, causing Bonnet to reflexively lean back even though he was a safe distance.
Bonnet shook his head wearily and pulled out his pistol. ‘Pelay, hand her a cup.’ He stared at Sara and gave her a little lecture, as if he were a headmaster and she were a schoolgirl. ‘If you throw it down, I’ll shoot the professor in the foot. If you spit it out, I’ll shoot him in the knee. I’m not going to kill him because I need his help but I will spill his blood.’
‘Sara, don’t listen to him!’ Luc shouted.
‘No, Sara,’ Bonnet said. ‘You should definitely listen to me.’
She took the cup in her shaking hand and started to raise it to her shaking lips.
‘Sara!’ Luc cried out. ‘Don’t.’
She looked at him, shook her head and drank it in a series of gulps.
‘Excellent!’ Bonnet said. ‘See, tastes pretty good. Now, professor, it’s your turn.’
‘I’m not going to do it,’ Luc said firmly. ‘Sara, if I drink this I can’t protect you.’
‘Look, this is tiresome,’ Bonnet said, turning the gun towards Sara. ‘Now I’m going to have to shoot her if you don’t cooperate. Just drink the tea and get it over with.’
Luc grimaced in his anguish. How did he know that Bonnet wouldn’t pull the trigger? He was certainly capable of violence. But if he succumbed and drank the tea, he’d be abandoning the only weapon he had, his mind. He cursed himself for coming without the gendarmes. It was turning out to be a tragically bad decision.
Sara reached for his free hand and he let her take it. She squeezed his fingers tightly and suddenly looked up as if startled by something. ‘Let me talk to him,’ she said to Bonnet. ‘I’ll persuade him. Just give us a moment alone.’
‘Okay, a moment. Why not?’ He got up and took a few steps back and stood next to Pelay who was leering at Sara lasciviously.
She leaned in trying to get as close to Luc as possible but whatever she said was going to be overheard.
‘What are you doing?’ Luc asked her.
‘Go ahead and drink it,’ she whispered.
‘Why are you saying that?’ he whispered back.
‘Do you trust me as a person?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Do you trust me as a scientist?’
‘Yes, Sara, I trust you as a scientist.’
‘Then drink it.’
Pelay crept close enough to hand Luc the cup and quickly backed away.
Sara nodded her encouragement and Luc threw his head back and chugged it down.
‘Okay, Pelay, go watch over the flock. I’ll stay here with our friends.’
He sat back down and Luc also crumpled onto his chair with a look of defeat on his face.
‘You know it’s funny,’ Bonnet said. ‘We had to force you to do something we do ourselves, willingly and gratefully. It’s a strange world, no?’
Luc was bristling with contempt. ‘What’s strange, Bonnet, is how you can pretend to be civilised when you’re nothing more than a murdering piece of garbage.’
The old man arched a brow. ‘Garbage? Me? No. What I do I do to protect my family and my village. I’ve lived a very long time, monsieur, and I’ve learned something important along the way. You take care of your own. If that means pushing others out of the way, then that’s the way it is. Ruac is a special place. It’s like a rare, delicate flower in a hot house. If the thermostat is disturbed, if the temperature goes one degree up or one degree down, the flower dies. You come here, with your scientists and your students and your cameras and your notebooks and really what you’re doing is turning the thermostat. If we let you do that, our way of life will die. We’ll die. So, it’s a matter of survival for us. It’s kill or be killed.’
‘Christ,’ Sara murmured in disgust.
‘These were innocent people,’ Luc hissed.
‘I’m sorry. From our side, each one was a threat. That one from Israel, he surprised us when we were checking to see what kind of locks you had on your precious cave. That guy Hugo, he had the balls to break into my daughter’s house and come down here on a tea night! What did he expect? And the ones at your camp ground last Sunday night? We had to take your computers and destroy your files. We had to blow up your cave to stop you people once and for all from coming to Ruac and we would have if that black bastard hadn’t killed my demo man.’
