Spook's Gold (38 page)

Gluck blinked. “Warm socks?”

“Yes,” smiled Marner. “Because we have been told that if we come back empty handed, we will be filling sandbags on the Eastern Front within the week.”

Gluck blinked again, mouth hanging open in an ‘O’, and then he doubled over laughing. “In that case, you had better be on your way. The nearest town is twenty kilometres away, if you want to buy those socks.”

The soldiers helped Marner and Loic to remount the horses and waved them on. Marner felt a cold trickle of sweat roll down his spine as they plodded away.

----

The encounter with the patrol was one of the few earthly signs that a war was still raging, that they were passing through disputed territory. The sky above was constantly filled with silent swarms of aeroplanes flying back and forth. Only very occasionally would one or two pass low enough that they could make out the markings on the underside of the wings. They were always American or British.

Here on the ground, removed from civilisation, Marner’s thoughts had turned from the international struggles of men and nations to more immediate and simple things. Such as keeping the minimum amount of skin exposed to the elements and to insects. He had caught a dose of sun-burn on the back of his exposed neck and now his collar chafed cruelly at it. The swarms of flies annoyed him incessantly. The worst were the persistent horse flies –
taons
. These would latch onto him and no matter how violently he swatted them away, the taon would simply circle around and come back at him from another angle. Even the horses detested them and would become extremely agitated, liable to kick if they sensed one droning around their legs or belly. Lemele taught him a simple trick to kill the taons; instead of batting them away, it was better to permit the vicious little bug to settle onto an exposed forearm. It would then become entirely docile and focussed on preparing to draw blood, enabling Marner to kill it with a slap of the hand. Which was fine when he could see them; numerous glowing itchy lumps on his neck and elsewhere attested to those that he had not seen or caught in time.

Attention became entirely focussed on scanning the countryside for animals, large and small, not soldiers. He knew not which protagonist held the land anyway; had it by now been liberated?  The beasts that he was looking for, in addition to the insects, were deer and sanglier. Sanglier were the wild boar that infested the countryside. He had seen his first one the previous day, a huge black specimen the size of a large Alsatian dog at the shoulder, with a massively deep chest and nasty looking curved horns on its blunt snout. The behemoth had stepped onto the path ahead and halted to look at them for a moment, before plunging on into the ferns, followed by its scampering litter of piglets. Loic had ordered them to stop for a minute, explaining that whilst sanglier would always avoid them if they could, a sow with young was very protective and would turn violent if she felt them to be threatened. With their bulk they were a very powerful and dangerous animal when enraged, one that would not hesitate even to charge at the horses.

Marner was tempted to ask Loic if there were any other dangerous wild fauna that he should know about. What about snakes for example?  Despite his curiosity, he felt that he had enough to worry about for the moment and so decided that ignorance was bliss.

Chapter Forty One

With the exception of their encounter with the patrol and the animal residents of the countryside, the days passed in a blur of trees and fields under a cloudless blue sky. It had become intensely hot and Marner had shed his tunic to ride in just his shirt and rolled up sleeves, in spite of the added exposure to insect bites and sunburn.

The relatively flat plains of dairy farmland and managed spruce woodland had evolved into rolling countryside, an ever changing mixture of arable land, open scrubland and natural, mature forest. Far in the distance they could see higher forested ground; it would be welcome, both as shade from the sun and as a place to hide. When they stopped for a quick lunch, comprised of apples plucked from an orchard that had run wild supplemented with some remaining oatmeal cakes from the previous evening, Loic estimated that they would reach the forest by nightfall.

By late afternoon the heat and pressure were oppressive and they could see the first edge of dark thunderclouds encroaching on the horizon. Descending a winding rocky path into a valley, the forest ahead was a dark impenetrable mass rising up on the far side. However, their attention was drawn more to the glimpses of shimmering emerald water at the bottom of the trail. They emerged onto the shore of a long narrow lake that wound unevenly along the valley floor and continued off into the distance. It was late in the afternoon and Loic, eyeing the cool water with the same enthusiasm as the others, agreed that they would stop early and spend the night there. So far he had pushed them onwards each evening for an extra hour at the end of what seemed to Marner to be an interminably long day in the saddle.

The riders patiently permitted the hard-worked and sweaty horses to have first turn at the water. They were stripped of their saddles and burdens and the equipment placed under the shade of the trees on the bank and then the animals advanced down the shallow sloping mud bank to drink. When the horses had finally quenched their thirsts, they were tied up in the shade and the humans took their turn.

Disconcerted to see Loic strip entirely naked, wade and then hurl himself into the water, Marner paused, confused about the level of decorum or protocol that might be demanded for mixed bathing. Lemele resolved the conundrum for him by stripping to her knickers and camisole top. He took his cue from this, threw off his shirt, boots, socks and trousers and went in in his shorts and undershirt.

Whilst the others had lunged in, Lemele even letting out an indiscrete whoop that echoed along the valley, Marner advanced slowly and apprehensively as his feet sank up to the ankles into the oozing frigid sludge of submerged mud in the shallows. He was uneasy, wondering what reptiles or insects might be living below the surface. Finally, when he had waded out to waist-deep he plunged forward, glad to get his feet out of the slime.

The three of them were quiet, each relishing the cool refreshing water and glad to slough off the dust and sweat accumulated over the past days. There was no horseplay or splashing; each paddled and swam on their own, ever aware of the need for discretion and quiet in what was potentially hostile countryside. Loic was the most exuberant, flipping to dive from the surface into the depths, exposing for a moment his scrawny white buttocks or genitals, entirely deaf and oblivious to Marner’s tuts of disapproval.

Quickly chilled by and not comfortable in the murky water, Marner swam back to shore and waded onto the beach where he flopped down, irritated to find that his feet were once again covered in mud. He wiped them as best he could on the grass. Lemele was also coming ashore and he was alarmed to see that her underwear had been rendered transparent by the water and so quickly averted his eyes. Fortunately for him she had only come ashore to get a bar of soap from her bag, then return to the lake. She swam fifty metres further along the lake and proceeded to create a scum of white foam on the surface as she treated herself to a bath.

Marner lay back on the grass and closed his eyes, the sun burning red on the insides of his eyelids, heat seeping into his muscles and bones. He felt human again.

----

Whilst Lemele and Marner rested on the bank drying themselves and basking in the remainder of the summer evening, Loic slipped away to forage for food. When he returned, their supper turned out to be a number of small rabbits that he had caught. Up until then they had been using the provisions that he had brought with them from his farm; hard dried ham that was extremely salty but delicious, together with oatmeal cakes. Loic made the cakes each evening from dried oats and water, using a little honey to bind the paste together into patties that he fashioned by slapping them back and forth in his palms. These would be placed onto flat stones perched over the edge of the fire to bake and then eaten hot, with additional ones set aside to eat cold the next day. A little heat also helped to soften the dried ham, bringing the residual fat bubbling to the surface. This, together with fruit and vegetables foraged on the move or in the evenings had constituted their diet.

But on this evening Loic declared that there was no ham or oatmeal remaining and therefore he had been forced to spend nearly an hour catching the rabbits. As a seasoned city dweller, Marner was genuinely curious and not a little impressed that Loic was able to catch them without a weapon, but held his tongue. He knew that he would only receive scorn or monosyllabic answers if he asked for details of how it was achieved.

By the time that the rabbits had been skinned, gutted and cooked they were all famished and fell upon the food like savages, juggling strips of searing hot fatty flesh back and forth between scalded fingers. For the moment the rapidly dropping temperature, the rising wind and the insects were ignored.

Chapter Forty Two

For shelter from the coming rain, Loic advised them to improvise a cover with their groundsheets. Marner watched Loic lie on one half of the sheet and then pull the other half over the top. When Marner tried this, he made the mistake of setting up facing in the wrong direction and the gusting wind immediately flipped the sheet back off of him. He was obliged to get up and turn it all around, reforming this makeshift fold of waterproof sheeting, his blanket also wrapped around him for warmth against the cold. He reflected that it had been foolish to go swimming with the storm approaching. The relief from the stifling heat had been welcome, but going to sleep in his cold damp underclothes was not.

At some point close to dawn Marner was awoken by the realisation that he was incredibly cold and wet. But this was not residual damp from his clothes; it was raining and the hollow into which he had settled to sleep now held a puddle of water. He moved to stand under the relative shelter of a tree and pulled his wet blanket around him. As he listened to the raindrops clattering on the leaves above his head he pondered on the fact that, each time that he thought he had discovered all of the draw-backs of the countryside, something new and worse came along. Weary and chilled to his bones, he sank down on his haunches, leaned back against the tree and dozed off again.

Breakfast was a handful of left-over fruit. Loic was in a bad mood and pronounced that he was not inclined to try lighting a fire whilst it was still raining hard. He spat to indicate that the subject was closed and walked away to begin saddling and preparing the horses, cutting off any possibility of further discussion.

Almost as soon as they set off the rain eased to a fine mist, although the sky remained overcast with low grey clouds scudding across it. Marner was more intent on keeping the groundsheet wrapped around him in an effort to keep dry than in holding the reins. Fortunately there was to be no trotting today; Lemele explained that the ground was too slick for it, with a risk that the horses could slip and stumble on the wet mud and mossy stones.

By late morning Marner’s stomach was churning and rumbling with hunger, yet he knew that there would be nothing to eat when they halted for lunch. When he suggested that they should purchase food in one of the villages that they bypassed, this was quickly argued down by Loic. The group had continued to carefully avoid any contact with the local populace in the dwellings and towns, because they and the civilian population were potentially dangerous to each other. As well the general curiosity that any stranger would arouse in these remote villages, Loic knew full well that numerous open and covert collaborators lived amongst them. The travellers in turn would bring danger to anybody aiding them; the men would be publicly executed and the women and children deported.

As always, Marner could see the logic in what Loic stated but the man’s constant condescending tone, as if stating the obvious to a stupid child or idiot, never failed to irk him. Loic’s solution to the food problem was to forage on the move, at which he demonstrated himself to be adept. The problem for Marner was that, after hours of riding with only a few unripe apples for breakfast, he needed something more substantial than wild fruit, nuts and the bitter leaves that Loic declared to be edible.

At the end of the afternoon, thoroughly cold, wet and miserable, Marner proposed that they stop early. Loic spat before speaking, a sign that Marner had come to recognise and he knew that Loic was going to be especially sarcastic and argumentative. “I have to be back home in ten days for the birth of my baby. If you think that my wife was angry when we left, that will be nothing compared to how she will be if I don’t get back in time.”

Despite his foreboding about Loic’s demeanour, this was the first time that Marner had heard anything that could be taken as humour or irony from this taciturn man. He was just about to laugh, glad to relieve the hostility and tension, when Loic continued, “I have a maximum of two more days with you and then I turn back. With my horses. So you have two choices. Either we make the maximum progress each day and we eat late. Or we can spend one or two hours less per day in the saddle so that we can stop and find food in time for you to maintain your Parisian restaurant hours. I am just as happy to go with the latter option, since it means that I will have less distance to travel back. But you are paying and it is your choice,” he finished, voice heavy with the scorn that Marner had anticipated. Loic spat, turned Vesuvio around and continued on.

Marner looked at Lemele for help but her response was only to shake her head in exasperation which, he clearly interpreted, was aimed at him. Concerned by what Loic had said, he waved Lemele to hang back. “What did he mean by ‘two more days’?  I thought that he was taking us all the way!”

Pursing her lips, she responded, “That was the original plan. The reality is that we have made slow progress.”