Spook's Gold (40 page)

Marner let forth a grunt that he hoped conveyed the fact that he was in agreement. He had no intentions of travelling onwards in his current state, regardless of the urgency to do so.

Loic stood silently for moment thinking. “This is my last but one day with you. You know that. If you are not going to move today, then you might consider whether I could even set off back home now.”  Spit. Loic turned to move away; for him the subject was concluded but Lemele leapt up and shouted at him, “Just you wait! You promised to at least get us to the other side of this forest. If we carry on alone in here we are going to get disorientated and lost. It was your decision to lead us in here, so you can damned well lead us out.”  She took a step forward towards Loic, raising her hand to emphasise her point. Loic stumbled back, fearing that this crazy woman might actually be going to strike him.

“We agreed the deal, the contract!” he snapped back, confidence returning. “I work for you only for seven days. If you want me to take you to the north side of the forest, then he needs to move. Today.”  And this time he did turn and walk away, not waiting for a reply or further debate.

Lemele slumped down on the floor beside the table, wrapped her arms around her knees and leant her head on her forearms. She was desperately weary and wanted to go back to sleep. When she heard the sound of Loic come back in ten minutes later, assuming that he had returned to confirm his decision to leave, Lemele did not even look up. She was too fatigued to argue anymore. She acknowledged that, for the first time in the trip, apathy and despair had overtaken her. To hell with Graf and the whole bunch of them. She should just go back to Paris or, better still given the dangerous situation there, go to Dijon and throw herself upon the charity of her husband’s wretched, snobbish family. They might hate her, but at least she could wait out the remainder of this stupid war there. At least it would not be forever.

She became aware that it was not her that Loic had returned to talk to, to argue with. “This will help with the pain,” he was explaining to Marner. “It is a herb, grows all over the place.”

Lemele looked up to find Loic tearing tiny, fern-like pale green leaves into small pieces. He mixed them with a few remaining oatmeal flakes that he shook from the corners of the empty sack onto a tin plate, and then he poked his fingers into the bottom of the crude earthenware jar to extract the last smears of honey. Loic mixed it into a glistening golden paste with his finger tip, and Lemele decided not to question how clean his finger might be. Instead she asked, “What is that?  Is it safe?”

“Of course!” scoffed Loic, his voice adopting a jocular tone that was unfamiliar. She assumed that he was trying to make light of their disagreement of a few minutes ago. “This is a species of febrifuge, a standard country remedy for all types of aches and pains.”

“Shouldn’t you use the leaves to make a tea?” Lemele asked, failing to keep the suspicion from her voice.

Loic looked at her intently, alerted by the tone of distrust. “You only make it into a drink if you want to treat general body aches. Goes into the bloodstream and disperses faster that way. But for stomach or abdomen pains, you eat the leaves, let it act locally. Very popular with the women having a difficult time with their monthlies,” he winked. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll eat some, just to prove that it’s nothing poisonous.”

She held his gaze and the challenge and then shook her head. Marner was already spooning it into his mouth with his fingers anyway. “Yuck!” he groaned.

“Yeah,” laughed Loic, “Tastes frightful bitter, don’t it. That’s why I mixed it with some honey.”

When Marner had finished the paste Loic departed and Marner asked, “So am I going to die?”

“No. I already told you, it’s nothing serious,” she reassured him.

“I meant from the poison that the wicked wizard has just made me eat. I got the impression that you suddenly don’t trust him.”

Lemele shook her head. “I am just tired and grumpy.”

----

Marner was on his feet and looking sceptically at Le Votre thirty minutes later. He still had some peripheral aches in his abdomen, although these were from his muscles having been clenched and held rigid during the past few hours. Despite feeling intensely nauseous he was making a conscious effort not to vomit, trying to keep down whatever it was that Loic had given him. He led Le Votre over to a convenient rocky outcrop and used it to step up into the stirrup and then the saddle. Once installed, he urged the horse to circle slowly around, testing his fragile body against the motion of the old mare. No pains from his stomach; that had been quite some herb.

It was drizzling and the chinks in the dense canopy of branches above showed no sunshine, just more dull grey clouds. Marner cast his groundsheet over and around his shoulders, using one hand to keep it secure at his throat; his cap would have to suffice to cover his head. The cough and cold that had taken hold of him during the previous day was now breaking out. He had hoped that it would be restricted to the runny nose that he had suffered yesterday, but now it seemed to have settled onto his chest. Every wheezing lungful of the cold fetid air took an effort as he listened to the phlegm rattling inside him.

Loic was astride the restlessly skipping and stamping Vesuvio and pronounced that they were ready. Again, Marner was suspicious to see that their guide actually seemed happy today, what might pass for a smile on his thin pale face. Perhaps the man was just content that he was nearing the end of his obligation to them and that he would soon be heading home.

Chapter Forty Four

In the afternoon they started to climb into denser, primeval forest. There were no real tracks or paths to follow and Loic was working from sense of direction alone. With no sun to be seen through the incessantly dripping trees crowding over them, Lemele enquired how he knew what direction to move in. He pointed to the pale green lichen growing on the tree trunks, only on the southern side.

Loic had explained that the Foret de Duault was an L-shape. They had moved westwards for two hours towards the corner of the forest and now he turned northwards. They began to ascend; not steeply, but enough to cause the horses to slow, to have to pick their way carefully across the slippery earth and granite. The taller, ancient trees had been replaced by smaller, deciduous ones with large dark green leaves; the breeze shook down droplets of water to add to the drizzle.

As they climbed further the bare earth forest floor changed to boulders and mossy stone. The horses were struggling with it and Marner had nearly been unseated once as Le Votre had begun sliding backwards. Grateful that he had somehow managed to stay on her, he had been impressed at the instant and unexpected athleticism of the old girl in maintaining her footing.

The lower branches crowded in on them and, together with the large obstructive boulders strewn haphazardly around, forced them to about turn on several occasions and tack east or west looking for a navigable pass through.

Huddled under his sheet, his head throbbing and chest wheezing, Marner was running a high temperature and close to passing into a feverish state. He was sweating profusely under his clothes, and yet he felt frozen. He felt, in his confused mind, to be lost in time, lost in a land that had become entirely detached from all that he knew. He had given up all hope of finding his way back to the real world. The rational side of his brain knew that he was only a few hundred kilometres from Paris, a plane ride from Berlin. But in his febrile mind he began to believe that they had somehow slipped from reality, as if through a crack in time and now it was impossible to return. That old existence was closed off, it was a fairy tale and this evil place was where he was doomed to live and die.

As the hunched and rain-drenched figures trudged on deeper into this seemingly endless and forbidden domain, Marner remembered the bizarre worlds and creatures that he had read about in his brother’s books by Tolkien. He had tried to read and like them but had found them to be deeply disturbing. After penetrating only a short way into the books he had retired, frightened and even traumatised by the strange lawless lands and beings that inhabited them. Even after replacing the books onto the shelf he would studiously avoid looking at them; as if, like the fabled ring, just to gaze upon the book’s cover would be to risk falling back under its spell.

Marner’s sense of foreboding was not helped by the number of menhirs that they were passing. He had already become accustomed to the sight of dolmen – groups of large boulders capped with a stone. Lemele had explained to him that these stone formations had been the frame of an ancient burial chamber that would originally have been covered with earth, but were now eroded back to the skeleton of granite. He had wondered how those ancients could have possibly moved such huge pieces, never mind raise and place on top the capping stone that weighed several tons.

The menhirs were just single standing stones, up to three metres tall, erected thousands of years ago with no apparent pattern or purpose in the fields and woods that they were trekking through. Lemele had told him that one superstition, in this land that was steeped in the English legends of King Arthur, was that these were ancient demons or rogue knights that had been turned to stone by Merlin the wizard. The legend said that these mythical monsters would return to life when great evil once more roamed these lands. Now these same inert lumps of granite, slick with rain and moss were spooking Marner’s near-delirious mind. Each time that he heard a sound amongst the trees he would flick his gaze to these ominous brooding monoliths, looking for any sign that they were changing form.

He was jolted back to reality by Loic hissing at them to stop and be quiet. Marner looked up and around them. They were in a shallow, rocky valley and he could see nothing but glistening slimy black granite and deformed tree trunks. But above the endless clatter and hiss of the rain falling on the leaves he thought that he too had heard the harder sound of something scraping on rock. He looked at the ears of the horses but they showed no alarm, no awareness of another presence here in this stygian gloom. Eventually Loic seemed satisfied that it was safe to move on.

They arrived at a ravine that was entirely covered in smooth, circular boulders, some of them over a metre in diameter. It was as if some giant had taken a handful and rolled them like pebbles down this valley. Even Marner, in his poor spirits and condition, could recognise that this was a special sight. It was completely impossible for the horses to clamber over these and so Loic decided that they would have to go back to the previous cut in the hillside and try to pick a path up the valley there.

Once committed to the climb, they had to dismount and lead the horses in and out of the rocks, weaving their way up and around, slithering and sliding on the wet mud between. Marner’s breath was coming in short ragged gasps, each breath searing its way through his air passages. He staggered the last few steps to the top, hunched over nearly double in his effort to plant his feet securely and push upwards.

Finally, he stepped up onto flat level ground and would have collapsed there but for the awareness that Le Votre was trampling up close behind him. He moved on a few paces, through the gap between Loic and Lemele who had both stopped, immobile. Marner, still with his head down against the rain, peak of his cap pulled down low to shield his face, looked sideways at Loic, wondering why the man had stopped there. He was surprised to find that Loic was staring straight ahead, transfixed, hands held up above him. Marner swivelled his head up and forward to locate the source of his alarm and found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle. His eyes flicked left and right as his arms automatically came up to mimic Loic. He heard Loic say clearly in English, “Surrender! No shoot.” Puzzlement turned to an icy stab of fear in his stomach as he looked beyond the round ‘O’ of the muzzle of the rifle hovering level with his nose, to the soldier holding it, to the other soldiers, four of them pointing an assortment of rifles and automatic machine guns at them.

Loic was ordered to be silent in heavily accented French. Lemele tried to utter something but another soldier stepped forward and thrust his rifle menacingly in her face. “Shut up!” barked the owner of the gun, in a cold voice that would clearly accept only instant and complete obedience.

Marner took a moment to evaluate their captors. Two were wearing similar uniforms of indeterminate colour; they might be khaki but were soaked and stained near black. Their uniform insignia were in English. Another two wore similar uniforms but with a battalion unit identification in French. He did not recognise anything on the uniform of the fifth that would indicate his nationality, service or rank.

The French officer who was holding the rifle to Marner’s face suddenly lunged forward and tore the groundsheet from around his shoulders and then stepped back and stared. Marner was tempted to laugh; the soldier looked even more shocked than the three travellers. But his moment of amusement was terminated when he saw the frank and open hostility as the soldiers’ eyes swivelled to take in his uniform and insignia.

“A Nazi SS officer?  Stone me! Major Cardew is going to shit a fucking brick when he sees this!” laughed one of the soldiers in English and the others chuckled with him. Marner was certain that the accent was American. And now he really was confused by this rag-tag bunch of mixed nationalities. That they were here in France and this far from the Normandy invasion area was alarming. Perhaps they were the remnants of different army units that had been broken and scattered, were hiding and foraging here in the forest. This gave him some hope, but the fact remained that the soldiers outnumbered them and they were well armed.

Just as Marner was thinking about his own pistol, the French paratrooper seemed to read his mind; the rifle was jammed painfully into Marner’s neck and the soldier reached forward and un-holstered the Walther. The American, apparently more senior in rank, ordered his colleagues to split the three of them and perform a more thorough search for weapons.