The Cave (6 page)

Freddie didn’t allow himself to question why he was doing what he was doing. Having decided on a course of action, he was determined to stick to it. He felt more alive than he
had for some time, as if he finally had a purpose, an interest in life again.

Why Marie should have confided in him, a stranger, he did not know. Could her family still be lying up there in the caves? Surely she would have had their bodies brought down long ago?

Freddie kept going as the sun climbed higher in the sky. The shadows shortened.

After nearly an hour, he reached a flat open area, like a glade, ringed by trees. The rocks were covered with grass and moss. And hidden by the branches of the trees, he noticed, at last, an opening in the rock. Then he saw another.

Freddie sat on a rock and drank water from his flask. He waited until he got his energy back then went to explore. Here, at this level, there were some five or six openings. To his untrained eye, they all looked natural rather than man-made. But from here, he could see that some were large enough for two or three people to stand inside at the same time. Others were small and narrow. Others again were long and flat, only just big enough for a person to get inside on their hands and knees.

Freddie peered inside each then moved on to the next. Some went back ten or twelve feet. Others led nowhere, no more than hollows in the rock.

The patterns on the rocks showed the passage of time. The wind and the rain had sculpted the
stone over thousands of years. It reminded Freddie of pictures of tombs in the Holy Land. Here everything was green and grey and brown, rather than the yellow of the desert, but the beauty took his breath away.

He spread out the map and fixed his position with his finger. He realised he would need to climb higher to find the caves he had seen from the road. None of these caves matched the description of Marie’s cave.

On the map, it looked as if there was another flat area a few hundred feet higher up. He checked the directions with his compass, then carried on further. The lack of sleep and the hard effort meant his legs felt like lead, but he did not give up.

Freddie glanced at the sky. It must be well after two o’clock. He was aware he must give himself enough time to get back to the village before darkness fell. He knew there were bears and wild cats in the mountains, perhaps even wolves.

He covered the distance quickly. At this next level, there were four caves. Each looked out over the valley below like dead eyes. The caves were reached by a narrow path that ran in front of the rock to the left-hand side. To the right was a sheer drop. The land fell away to nothing.

Freddie smiled. He was certain he had found the caves he had seen from the road earlier. Trying not to look down, he inched his way along the path. He leaned his shoulder against the rock to steady himself and tried not to think about what would happen if he fell.

But although each cave was large enough to provide shelter, still none of them matched Marie’s description. Then Freddie noticed a narrow path that ran up between two rocks. He looked at it more closely. With a jolt, he saw that the roots of trees had threaded themselves into a natural staircase.

Marie had talked of just such a thing. Freddie gave a sigh of relief. It was evidence he was on the right track at least. A few more steps, then he saw it. Right above his head was an opening the shape of a half moon. He scrambled up and clambered on to the ledge.

He had found it.

Freddie peered into the darkness of the cave.

At its highest point, the opening was about four feet high and five or six feet wide. The smell of wet, of earth, of the past was strong. Freddie turned over a rock with the tip of his boot. The damp soil was alive with worms and beetles exposed suddenly to the light.

Slowly, his eyes got used to the gloom. Velvet black gave way to grey. Freddie felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck. He felt a sense of unease. He didn’t believe in ghosts. And, after George’s death, he had learned that real horror lay in the acts of men, not in childish fears of the dark. But now, standing in so lonely a place, Freddie felt a shudder go down his spine.

He took a deep breath, then stepped inside.

Straight away, the smell of long-hidden, undisturbed air surrounded him. It was cool and damp. He rummaged in his rucksack for a torch. The beam was weak, but it lit the area
just in front of him. It sent the shadows dancing up along the jagged grey walls of the cave.

Freddie walked slowly. He felt the ground sloping down beneath his feet, gritty and uneven. Loose stones and small pieces of rock crunched under his feet. He was aware of the daylight getting fainter at his back.

Then, without warning, the path came to an abrupt end. Freddie stopped dead. He could go no further. A wall of stone, of rock, of wood blocked his way. Freddie shone his torch to the roof to see if there had been a rock fall, but there were no signs of it. In which case, he reasoned, the stones must have been put here by human hands. He had a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Marie had said the soldiers did not find them and, yet, she had also said no one had come home. The book, however, had explained how, hundreds of years ago, the soldiers had walled up their victims inside the mountain. Could they have used the same trick in the last war?

With a sense of urgency, Freddie began to dig. He pulled at the stones, using both hands. He worked hard, stopping only to drink water from his flask. But, although the pile of rocks on his side got bigger, the wall did not seem smaller. Soon, his hands were scratched and
bleeding. His arms ached and his knees hurt from kneeling on the hard ground. But he was driven by a wild need to know what lay behind the rocks.

At the back of his mind, Freddie did know why this mattered to him so much. He was doing for Marie and her family what he had not been able to do for his own. He should have brought George home to England and laid his body to rest in the earth. The dead should be remembered by a name on a tombstone. His brother deserved no less. Marie’s brother and her parents deserved it too.

Finally, the wall began to give crumble. Freddie coughed and held his arm across his mouth as the dust filled the cave. Pieces of wood, stone and rock started to come loose. Within minutes, there was an opening as big as his hand. Freddie clawed at the gap until there was enough space for him to get through. He shone the torch into the darkness ahead, into the tomb.

On the far side of the wall, the air was colder.

Freddie put out his hand. Here the walls of the cave were damp to the touch. The surface beneath his feet was different too. It was no longer stone and gravel and dust, but smooth. It was slippery. More than once, he lost his footing and stumbled.

His unease grew with every step down into the endless darkness.

Finally, the tunnel came to an end. Freddie looked around him in awe. He was standing at the entrance to a huge cavern, like a cathedral hidden in the mountains. He shone his torch up and around in wonder.

‘A city in the mountains,’ he said.

That was how Marie had described their hiding place. Standing here, Freddie understood what she had meant. He took a step forward, then another. He no longer felt afraid. He no longer felt alone. He felt a sense of peace, quiet and calm. It was timeless, unchanging, far from the cares of the world.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something strange. Not rock or stone, but something man-made. Was it a pile of clothes or belongings? Freddie caught his breath. A grave? This was what he had come to find. But his legs were trembling and the beam of light jumped in his hands.

Freddie walked closer. Now, there was no doubt. People, lying side by side. From this distance they looked as if they were sleeping. He walked nearer, closer. His heart lurched. He could see clothes, material, heavy cloth.

The sound caught in his throat. Not people, skeletons. Bones. Dead sockets where once had been eyes. The skulls were a green-white in the pale beam of the torch. He felt his stomach lurch. He swallowed deeply and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief to hold over his nose and mouth.

As Freddie struggled to keep his nerve, he tried to work out what he was looking at. If he had found Marie’s family, how could their bodies have rotted so completely in so short a period of time? Even if they had died at the beginning of the war, in 1914, rather than at the end, would there not be some flesh left on the bones? In such conditions, away from the
light and the wet and fresh air, surely the bones would not yet be picked clean by time?

He swept his gaze over the makeshift grave. He saw fragments of cloth, a clay bowl, the stump of a candle. These were the humble objects that the family had treasured as they waited to die. They were side by side, as if they had simply lain down together and gone to sleep.

Freddie stepped carefully between the bodies. There were two larger skeletons, then one much smaller. He assumed this was Marie’s brother.

Then a fourth.

Freddie’s legs started to shake. Marie said her mother and father and brother had taken refuge in the cave. She had not said anyone else was with them.

Now he noticed a sheet of paper on the ground. He took his handkerchief away from his face and held it in his fingers. Then he bent down and gently pulled the paper free. It was brittle to the touch, more like parchment than normal paper. Beneath, he could see there were many more sheets, scattered around the bones like fallen leaves in autumn.

Careful not to disturb things more than he had to, Freddie gathered up the individual
sheets. The handwriting was the same on each, scratchy, uneven and black on the yellow surface. He did not recognise the language. Some words looked like French, others more like Spanish.

At last, only one sheet remained. It was held between the white skeletal fingers, as if the author was still writing when their final breath left them.

Freddie skimmed it with his eyes.

‘When all else is done, only words remain.’

His eyes jumped to the bottom of the sheet. There was a date. His stomach lurched. April 1328.

How could that be? If this was Marie’s family, and all the signs were that it was, then the date was six hundred years too early.

His thoughts slipped back to the history book he had bought and read in the café, about the wars of the fourteenth century. Freddie shook his head. How could he explain how he, a stranger to the region, have stumbled on a grave dating back to the Middle Ages? It would have been found long before now.

Then again, if he had not known where to look, he would have assumed there was nothing there. A solid wall of stone and rock barred
the way. It looked like a dead-end. It was possible.

Freddie glanced back down at the name at the bottom of the antique paper. What he read next knocked the breath out of him. He shook his head in disbelief.

How could he explain this? He didn’t want to explain it. Now he noticed, for the first time, what lay around the skeleton. The bones were wrapped in a red cloak, grown ragged at the edges. Beneath, there were glimpses of a heavy green dress. He looked and saw the brown leather pouch, like a purse, attached to a belt.

Freddie’s head was spinning. The air in the cave seemed suddenly stale, old. He felt it in his mouth, his lungs, choking him. The clothes, the setting, the evidence, all matched what Marie had told him. Were these all coincidence? What other explanation could there be? How else could he account for the faded name written at the foot of the paper?

Marie of Larzat.

Freddie sank to his knees, still clutching the sheet of paper. And, for the first time since the death of his brother, he began to weep. For George, for Marie, for all those who lay forgotten in the cold earth.

Everything was white.

When Freddie opened his eyes he saw the anxious faces of his friends looking down at him. White faces, white walls, white sheets on the bed.

He struggled to sit up. ‘Where? Where am I?’

‘In the hospital, old chap.’ Brown used the formal voice he always put on when worried.

For a moment, Freddie couldn’t work out anything. He looked down and saw his hands were bandaged. There was a dressing on his head too. He could feel the tightness of the bandage. His throat was sore, as if he had been shouting.

‘How do you feel?’ asked Turner. ‘You were in quite a bad way when they brought you in. Feverish, muttering about ghosts.’

‘They found the address of our boarding house in Quillan in your pocket,’ Brown added. ‘That’s how they knew where to find us.’

‘Wasn’t like you not to turn up without a word. When we didn’t hear from you, we
telephoned your hotel. Lucky, really. The owner remembered you were intending to take the mountain road to meet us.’

Little by little, his memories started to surface. ‘Mr Galy? But he has no telephone.’

His friends exchanged a look. ‘We spoke to the hotel owner in Foix,’ Turner said.

Freddie didn’t understand. ‘No, that’s not right,’ he said. His voice was weak.

‘You’re getting muddled, old chap. You arrived in Foix on Sunday. Yesterday. Then this morning, Monday, you set off to drive to meet us in Quillan,’ Brown said. ‘But you never arrived. Don’t you remember?’

Freddie leaned back on the white pillows. Still Monday? This made no sense. He stayed in Larzat last night, not Foix. He had spent the night talking with Marie.

‘I remember the accident,’ he said slowly. ‘Car went off the road. That was Monday.’

‘Exactly,’ said Brown. He sounded relieved. ‘You crashed. It was awful weather. It seems you left your car to find help and somehow lost your way. You were found in the mountains.’

Freddie frowned. The action made his head hurt. The bandage pulled at his skin.