The Tenth Chamber Part 3

'I don't want to bond with you,' Hugo said irritably. 'I'm hot, I'm tired, my new boots hurt and I want to go home.'

'We've just started. Relax and enjoy. And did I tell you your boots are splendid?'

'Thank you for noticing. So what's the map telling you, professor?'

'Nothing yet. Like I said,' Luc explained patiently, 'once he's steered us to the general area by orienting us to the position of the abbey, the village and the river, the only landmarks are this peculiar tree and a pair of waterfalls. Since the tree's bound to be long gone, if we find waterfalls, then maybe we're on the right track. If not, we're probably going to come up empty. What do you say we keep moving?'

As the afternoon progressed, their trek became more difficult. Periodically, the ledge they were travelling on would taper and disappear and Luc had to find a new reliable ledge higher or lower on the cliff face. The ascents and descents weren't so difficult as to require anything remotely like technical climbing but he nevertheless worried about Hugo's abilities to keep his footing. On a couple of occasions he instructed his friend to pa.s.s his rucksack up on a short rope before Hugo would begin his search for foot and hand holds up the vertical face. Hugo grumbled and generally made a nuisance of himself but Luc lightly deflected his groans and kept them forging ahead on their slow, steady pace.

Down below, a group of kayakers, their boats, in bright primary colours like children's playthings, paddled downstream. A flock of black kites very high in the pale-blue sky swooped by in the opposite direction. The sun was getting lower and the rich flood plain was taking on the hue of good beer. Luc checked his watch. If they turned back soon they'd be able to make it back to the car in daylight, but he decided to press on for a little while longer. They were approaching a promontory. Once they got beyond it he was hoping they'd be able to get a look at a long stretch of rock face. That would be their go/no-go point.

Unfortunately, when they got to the promontory the ledge dwindled to nonexistence and the only way to progress was a scramble up a craggy ledge covered in scrubby bushes. It wasn't an easy decision. Hugo was irritable and tired and Luc knew that the extra climb would delay their return. But the adventurer in him always had to know what was on the other side, so he parked Hugo on the ledge, left his own rucksack behind and said he'd be back in a quarter of an hour or so. Hugo, no longer concerned about staying clean, moodily sat cross-legged on the trail and bit into an apple.

The climb wasn't too challenging but Luc was happy to have ditched his friend so he could move at at his own pace. The peak of the promontory was a flat expanse of limestone about three-quarters up the cliff face. The view over the valley was magnificent, almost demanding a photograph, but the sun was low and time was precious so he left his camera hanging around his neck and moved a little further downstream to get the lay of the land beyond.

Then he caught sight of something that made him let out an involuntary throaty sound of surprise.

Just below him on a broad ledge was a solitary large juniper tree growing out of the scrub. Its enormous dry and rough twisted trunk the colour of charcoal ash fanned out and gave way to a jumble of corkscrew branches that jutted out in every conceivable direction. Its greenery was minimal, a few coniferous tufts here and there, like an old dog with mange.

Luc scrambled down the slope as quickly as he safely could and ran to it. When he was close enough to touch it, he pulled the map out again, looked up into its impossible jumble of branches and nodded his head. The match was uncanny even after six hundred years! If any tree was going to live for centuries in this kind of barren terrain it would be the indomitable juniper, the ultimate survivor, with the odd specimen living for two millennia or more.

At that moment Luc decided they wouldn't be turning back.

He knew Hugo would complain bitterly, but it didn't matter. They were going to be camping tonight. If there wasn't a good spot further on, they could always come back and sleep under the protection of this ancient tree.

Hugo did complain.

It was certainly a tree, he agreed, but he thought it was an article of extreme faith that it was the the tree. He was sceptical to the point of being obnoxious. Finally Luc told him flatly that he was carrying on and if Hugo wanted, he could go back, take the Land Rover and find a hotel. tree. He was sceptical to the point of being obnoxious. Finally Luc told him flatly that he was carrying on and if Hugo wanted, he could go back, take the Land Rover and find a hotel.

Hugo had no appet.i.te for either course of action. He groused equally about sleeping rough and finding his way back to the car on his own. In the end he gave in and meekly followed Luc along the new ledge in search of, as he put it 'mythical waterfalls and unicorns.'

They were running out of daylight. The temperature was dropping and the sky had turned a dusky, rose-like pink. Hugo, resigned to spending an uncomfortable night under the stars, demanded a break for his aching shoulders. They stopped on a secure shelf and guzzled water. Then Hugo unzipped his fly and urinated over the edge. 'There's your waterfall,' he said without a trace of humour.

Luc had his rucksack off too. He leaned back and rested his head against the cliff, about to make a schoolboy comment in reply, when instead he said, 'Hey!' He felt the dampness on his scalp. He wheeled around and laid both hands on the rocks. They were wet. Stepping back as far as he could without going over the edge, he looked up and pointed at a wide dark stripe. 'Look! It goes all the way up. It's our waterfall!'

Hugo looked up too, unimpressed. 'If that's a waterfall, I'm the Pope.'

'It's been a dry summer. After a rainy spring, I'll bet it turns into a proper waterfall. Come on before we lose the light. If there's a second one, I'll buy dinner.'

They walked into the fading light for the better part of another hour. Now, instead of looking, Luc constantly touched the rock face to feel for moisture.

Dusk was overtaking them. Luc was about to call a halt when they both heard it at the same time: a trickle, like a running tap. A few paces ahead, the rocks were soaking wet and water was seeping onto the ledge, puddling and flowing down towards the river. It was more a water dribble than a waterfall, but as far as Luc was concerned they were on the right track. Even Hugo perked up and agreed to push on until the sun completely set.

Luc pulled out the map one more time and pointed to the two waterfalls and the X that marked the cave. 'If this part of the map is to scale then the cave is nearby, but it's impossible to know if it's below us or above us. I think we have about fifteen minutes of light before it's going to be pointless.'

They consumed the entire quarter of an hour, using Luc's small powerful LED torches to make up for the lack of natural light. There were good sightlines above them. To explore the rock face underneath, Luc would periodically drop to his belly and shine the light over the edge, sweeping the surface with the beam of his torch. Aside from the normal stratigraphy and fissures there was nothing remotely suggestive of a cave opening above them or below.

Now it was simply too dark to continue. They were on a broad enough shelf to camp for the night so they didn't have to backtrack which was just as well since both of them were hungry and tired.

Hugo crumpled and set his rump down hard on his pack. 'So, where's dinner?'

'Coming up. You won't be disappointed.'

In short order Luc produced an excellent meal on his portable gas stove: peppered fillet steaks and pan-fried potatoes, crusty bread, some creamy local chevre and a bottle of decent Cahors, which he reckoned was worth the weight he carried all day.

They ate and drank into the evening. The moonless sky slipped through the darkening shades of grey until it became a virtually sightless black. Perched on the ledge they seemed alone on the edge of the universe. That, and the full-bodied wine, moved their conversation to a melancholy place and Hugo, tucked into his sleeping bag for warmth, was soon morosely lamenting his life.

'How many men do you know,' he asked, 'who've been married to two women but divorced three times? When Martine and I got married again, I have to say, it was a moment of temporary insanity. And do you know what? I was rewarded for those three months of madness with another a.s.sault on my wallet. Her lawyer's better than mine but mine is my cousin, Alain, so I'm stuck.'

'Are you seeing anyone now?' Luc asked.

'There's a banker named Adele who's as cold as frozen peas, an artist named Laurentine who's bipolar, I think, and...'

'And who?'

Hugo sighed. 'I'm also seeing Martine again.'

'Unbelievable!' Luc half-shouted. 'You're a certified idiot.'

'I know, I know...' Hugo's voice drifted off into the night and he finished his wine then poured some more into his aluminium cup. 'What about you? Are you prouder of your record?'

Luc rolled out his foam mattress and laid his sleeping bag over it. 'No, sir, I'm not proud. One girl, one night, maybe two, that's been my history. I'm not wired for relationships.'

'You and what's her name, that American girl, definitely were a couple a few years ago.'

'Sara.'

'What happened?'

Luc slithered into his sleeping bag. 'She was different. It's a sad story.'

'You left her?'

'On the contrary. She dumped me, but I deserved it. I was stupid.'

'So you're stupid, I'm an idiot, and both of us are sleeping on a ledge one step away from an abyss, which pretty much confirms our intelligence.' He zipped up his bag and declared, 'I'm going to sleep now and put myself out of my misery. If I'm not here in the morning, I went for a leak and forgot where I was.'

In a remarkably short time, Hugo was snoring and Luc was on his own, trying to pick out a star or a planet through cloud cover and wine-induced mistiness.

In time, his eyes fluttered closed, or so he thought, because he was aware of swift black shapes moving above him, perhaps an incipient dream. But there was something familiar about the wild unpredictable zigzags, the jet-plane speed, and then it came to him in one sobering thought: bats.

He hurriedly unzipped his sleeping bag, grabbed his torch and aimed the beam overhead. Dozens of bats were darting around the cliffs.

He trained the light on the rocks and waited.

Then, a bat flew straight into the cliff and disappeared. Then another. And another.

There was a cave up there.

Luc woke Hugo and steadied the man as he struggled to get oriented and upright. As he stepped out of his sleeping bag Hugo was sputtering, 'what? what?' in total disorientation.

'I think I've found it. I'm going up. I can't wait till the morning. I need you to keep an eye on me, that's all. If I get in trouble, get help, but I won't get in trouble.'

'You're mad,' Hugo finally said.

'At least partially,' Luc agreed. 'Shine the torch there. It doesn't look too bad.'

'Christ, Luc. Wait till tomorrow.'

'Not a chance.'

He directed Hugo where to aim his torch and found a good handhold to start the ascent. The distinct strata of the rock face formed a staircase of sorts and he never really felt in imminent danger, but still he took it slowly, aware that night-climbing and wine were not an ideal combination.

In a few minutes he was at the spot where he thought the bats were disappearing, although he wasn't positive. There was nothing resembling a cave mouth or shelter in sight. He had a good enough purchase on the cliff that he was able to remove his own torch from his jacket pocket for a closer inspection. Just then, a bat flew out of the cliff and zoomed past his ear. Startled, he paused for a moment to catch his breath and make sure his foot hold hadn't slipped.

There was a crack in the rock face. No more than a few centimetres wide. After he transferred the torch to his left fist he was able to slide his right hand into the crack until his fingers disappeared to the knuckles. He pulled down and felt a wobble. On closer inspection the wobble was coming from a flat rock wedged in the wall. In an instant it dawned on him. He was staring at a dry wall of flat stones installed in the cliff face, so artfully crafted that it simulated the natural strata.

He wiggled the stone out with some effort and when it came free he carefully placed it on its side on a narrow shelf, calling down to Hugo in warning to step aside in case it fell, for it was deadly enough, the size of a coffee-table book. The next several rocks came out more easily but he ran out of places to balance them so he started pushing them back into the widening opening instead. Before long he was looking at a hole large enough to ram his body through.

'I'm going in,' he called down.

'Are you sure that's a good idea?' Hugo pleaded.

'Nothing's going to stop me,' Luc defiantly replied before reaching over and wedging his head and shoulders into the gap.

From the ledge below, Hugo watched as Luc's shoulders disappeared, then his torso and finally his legs. He called up, 'Are you all right?'

Luc heard him but didn't answer.

He was inside the mouth of the cave crawling on all fours until he realised the vault was capacious enough to stand upright. He shone his torch ahead then swung it from side to side.

He felt his knees weaken and he almost lost balance.

Blood was rushing in his ears.

There was the sibilant fluttering of a bat colony.

Then he heard his own cracking voice rasp, 'Oh my G.o.d!'

SIX.

Luc was aware of motion.

He felt surrounded, in the middle of a pack, a stampede.

It was at once suffocating and disorientating, compounded by the way he was hyperkinetically moving his torch, bouncing angles of light off the tawny walls and stalact.i.tes in an effort to take it all in, flitting from image to image, creating a stroboscopic jumble in the black confines of the cave.

To his left was a charging herd of horses, huge beasts boldly rendered in charcoal that overlapped one another, their mouths open in exertion, their manes thick, their pupils piercing black discs afloat in pale ovals of unpigmented rock.

To his right were thundering bison with upraised tails and cloven hooves, all energy and menace, and unlike the horses which were done in stippled black, their ma.s.sive bodies were fully shaded in bold swathes of black and reddish-brown.

Above his head was a single giant black bull in full motion, running headlong into the cave, two legs off the ground in a full gallop. Its head was lowered, presenting its horns in aggression and its nostrils were flared and its s.c.r.o.t.u.m swelled.

Ahead, to his left and right, were ma.s.sive stags with racks of antlers half as large as their bodies, their heads turned up, their eyes rolled back and their mouths open in bellowing posture.

And there was more, much more, fantastic creatures he strained to see in the dimming reach of his torch beam a crush of lions, bears, roe deer, colour, so much colour, and was that the trunk of a mammoth?

Although there was a sense of velocity all around, his feet were firmly rooted to the ground. He must have stood on the same spot for an immeasurable length of time before he became conscious of the pleading shouts coming from below.

He also became aware that he was shaking febrilely and that his eyes were wet. This was more than a moment of discovery. This was Carter at the Valley of Kings, Schliemann at Troy.

In the mouth of the cave alone were dozens of the finest prehistoric paintings he had ever seen, nearly life-size animals done in a confident, masterful, naturalistic style. The great Lascaux Cave had a grand total of some nine hundred beasts. Within his limited sightlines he already saw nearly a quarter as many. And this was the tip of the iceberg. What lay beyond the limits of his torch?

Luc fully realised the weight of the moment this was potentially even more important than Lascaux or Chauvet. Luc had never shown any interest whatsoever in mapping out his future. He'd always let things just happen in his professional and personal lives. He let himself be carried along by the stream of fate. But in an instant both exhilarating and frightening, he knew he'd be spending the rest of his life here, in this cave on the outskirts of Ruac.

He stepped back towards the fresh air, stuck his head out and had to snap his eyelids shut when Hugo's beam hit him full-on.

'Thank G.o.d you're okay!' Hugo shouted. 'Why didn't you answer me?'

All Luc could say was, 'You need to come up.'

'Why? What have you found?'

'This is Barthomieu's cave!'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, it has to be. Climb the same route I took. Carefully. And think about this: your life, my friend, will never be the same again.'

SEVEN.

Time became a curious commodity.

At once it crawled to a dead stop and raced ahead at warp speed. That night was both the longest and the shortest in his life and in the future, when Luc spoke about it, people would wrinkle their brows in non-comprehension, which would prompt him to say, 'Trust me, that's what it felt like.'

He had given Hugo stern instructions to stand still and keep his hands in his pockets while he twice made the climb down to the ledge to retrieve their rucksacks. When he finished, he aimed his torch over his head to provide a reflected cone of light and delivered a solemn little speech. 'This is now an archaeological site, a national treasure. We have a responsibility to science, to France and to the world to do this right. We don't touch anything. You only step where I step. You don't light any of your foul cigars. If you don't know what to do, ask.'