The Tenth Chamber (18 page)

A beam of light stretched across the darkness of the Portakabin. Luc’s desk was in the corner, furthest from the door. The light moved up and down over the desk drawers and settled on the lowest one.

The side drawers couldn’t be opened until the centre drawer was unlocked. There was a coffee mug on the desk crammed with pencils and pens. They were removed and the mug was tipped upside down. A small key dropped out.

The key unlocked the centre drawer and when it was opened, the side drawer slid open too. Inside were hanging files, in alphabetical order, covering a myriad of administrative issues.

A hand went straight for the Ds and a hand parted the file labelled D
IVERS,
for miscellaneous items. Among papers was an unmarked envelope, closed, not sealed.

Inside the envelope was the duplicate key to the titanium gate which sealed and protected Ruac Cave.

Bernard strode back and forth inside his stone house, trying to outpace the black cloud hanging over his head. He couldn’t remember when he had been more troubled. The events of the previous evening had shaken him so deeply he felt he might go mad.

The only remedy was prayer and fasting, he was sure of that. He had already vigorously prayed in the church three times at Lauds, Prime and Terce, and in between prayer sessions he had marched straight back to his house and fallen on his knees for bouts of more personal prayer. He had avoided the others. He wanted to be alone.

He thought to ignore the knock on his door but his sense of comity would not abide that. It was his brother, Barthomieu, bowing his head. ‘Can we speak?’

‘Yes, come in. Sit.’

‘You did not have food this morning.’

‘I am fasting.’

‘We noticed your absence at breakfast and your demeanour in the chapel. There is anger on your face.’

‘I am most vexed. Are you not?

Barthomieu lifted his head to look at him squarely. ‘I am reflective. I am amazed. I am quizzical, but no, I am not vexed.’

Bernard raised his voice. He could not remember the last time he had shouted. ‘I believe you should be vexed! Last night you were powerfully turbulent. Do you not remember?’

‘I do remember,’ he chuckled. His knuckles were raw. ‘I hope it wasn’t you I struck, brother! Most unlike me, but it passed.’

‘You tried to strike Jean, for God’s sake, but you hit a cooking pot instead!’

‘Well,’ Barthomieu mused, ‘the good far outweighed the evil in my humble opinion.’

There was another knock on the door.

‘Good Lord, can I not be left in peace?’ Bernard exclaimed.

Jean and Abélard were both at the door, and the little stone house became crowded.

‘I was concerned about you,’ Abélard said.

‘We should all be concerned for our souls,’ Bernard answered acidly. ‘The Devil visited evil upon us last night. Do you have any doubt of this?’

‘I have thought of nothing else and I am certain all of us will brood in contemplation. But the Devil?’

‘Who else?’

‘God, perhaps.’

Bernard threw his arms about so wildly it seemed he was trying to cast them from his body. ‘God was not with us last night! God does not want his children to suffer such things.’

‘Well, I did not suffer,’ Jean insisted. ‘Quite the opposite. I found the experience . . . enlightening.’

‘I confess, I did not suffer either, brother,’ Barthomieu said.

‘Nor I,’ Abélard concurred. ‘Perhaps there were a few moments that might be construed as troubling, but on the whole I would say it was amazing.’

‘Did we, I wonder, have the self-same experience?’ Bernard cried. ‘Tell me what happened to you and I will tell you the same.’

Bernard always relied on prayer to firm his actions. He had done so when he had first decided to leave his comfortable life and commit himself to the Cistercians at Clairvaux and he relied on it again.

Following an afternoon of exhausting and contentious debate, Bernard ardently threw himself into Vespers prayers and in the echoing sing-song in the vaulted stone church he found his answer in Psalm 139.

Every time the words
wicked, evil
and
ungodly
fell from his lips he glanced at Abélard, Jean and yes, even his own brother, all huddled like conspirators on an adjacent pew, because he could not reconcile their views with his.

And with the same certainty that told him that Christ was his saviour, he knew that he was right and they were wrong.

He also knew he had to leave Ruac, because they had made their intentions known. They fully intended to partake again of the infusion which they lauded and he reckoned was a devil brew.

The following morning, he was off. For his safety and companionship, Barthomieu had persuaded him to have two younger monks accompany him on the long journey back to Clairvaux. One was Michel, Jean’s infirmary assistant, who had noticed residual tea and had been pestering his master with questions. Better to send him away for a while to cure his curiosity.

Bernard and Barthomieu hugged, though Barthomieu’s grip was the tighter.

‘You will not reconsider?’ Barthomieu asked.

‘Will you reconsider taking that wicked brew again?’ Bernard countered.

‘I will not,’ Barthomieu said emphatically. ‘I believe it is a gift. From God.’

‘I will not repeat my arguments, brother. Suffice it to say, I will take my leave and may God have mercy upon your soul.’

He kicked the flanks of the brown mare with his heels and slowly departed.

Abélard was waiting by the abbey gate. He called up to the rider. ‘I will miss you, Bernard.’

Bernard looked down and deigned to reply. ‘I confess I will miss you too, at least the Abélard I knew, not the Abélard I saw two nights ago.’

‘Judge me not harshly, brother. There is but one road to righteousness, but many paths converge on that road.’

Bernard shook his head sadly and rode off.

That night, three men met in Bernard’s now-empty house, lit some candles and talked about their departed friend. Was it possible, Barthomieu asked, that Bernard was right and they were wrong?

Barthomieu was a man of simple vocabulary. Jean was more skilful as a healer and herbalist than an ecclesiastical scholar. It fell on Abélard to frame the debate. They listened to his elegant dissertation on good versus evil, God versus Satan, right versus wrong, and concluded that it was Bernard who was hide-bound and unseeing, not them.

Having satisfied themselves of their rectitude, Jean produced a crockery jug, pulled out the stopper and poured each participant a generous mug of reddish tea.

Abélard was alone in his room.

A single candle burned on his table, casting just enough light to write on parchment. For a week, a letter to his beloved had lain begun but unfinished. He reread the opening:

He dipped his quill and began a new paragraph.

The last day of work at Ruac Cave came and went.

That final night, there was a celebratory dinner of sorts, though spirits were tamped down by the twin catastrophes that had befallen the excavation, a pair of accidents that sent tongues wagging about curses, ill fate and the like.

After Hugo’s funeral in Paris, Luc had returned to Ruac and thrown himself into his work like a whirling dervish, toiling himself into a state of anaesthesia, sleeping only enough to keep going. He became flat and detached, spoke only when spoken to, maintained a professional efficiency with his team but that was the extent of it. Hugo’s death had washed away his usual witty charm like waves washed away letters etched on a sandy beach with a stick.

Matters were made worse by the unannounced appearance at Ruac by Marc Abenheim who parachuted in from Paris, hell-bent on exploiting the tragedy. The weedy martinet arrived and demanded everyone leave the Portakabin so he could speak with Luc privately. Then, like an actuary, he challenged Luc on the odds of one excavation having two fatalities in one season.

‘What are you driving at?’ Luc had spat back.

Abenheim’s voice had an infuriating nasal tone. ‘Lack of discipline. Lack of management. Lack of good sense for inviting your friend to stay at an official Ministry dig. That’s what I’m driving at.’

It was nothing short of a miraculous act of self-restraint that Luc was able to send Abenheim on his way without a broken nose.

When the officious prat drove off, Luc started fuming openly. He’d kept a damper on his anger during Abenheim’s visit but now that he was gone he retreated to his caravan and slammed the door. The first thing that caught his attention was the dent in the wall he’d left the night after Hugo died.

He had a strong urge to punch it again, finish it off by putting his fist right through the blood-stained wall but when he curled his fingers he remembered this was a terrible idea. His cut knuckle had become infected, turned beefy and swollen, and there were red streaks creeping up the back of his hand. He didn’t have the time or inclination to find a doctor. One of the students had a bottle of erythromycin left over from a chest infection and Luc had started popping them a few days earlier. He unclenched his aching fist and kicked a chair instead.

As to Sara, if Luc had harboured any designs on restarting something with her, he had suppressed them, forgotten them, or maybe he never had them at all. He couldn’t remember.

She gave him space and didn’t compel him to deal with his loss. The more he withdrew, the more she rallied, scurrying around the edges of his life, fretting with Jeremy and Pierre about his health and well-being. She knew a little bit about clinical depression.

He’d given her a case once.

The autumn night was cold, drawing people to the fire much the same way that their prehistoric forebears would have gathered. Luc felt he had to address the group one last time, though he didn’t have the appetite for much of a speech.

He thanked them for their tireless work and rattled through a list of their accomplishments. They had accurately mapped the entire complex from the first chamber to the tenth chamber. They had photographed every inch of the complex. They had a first radiocarbon date back from the charcoal outline of one of the bison and it confirmed the suspicion that the cave dated to 30,000
BP.
They had begun to understand the geological forces that had shaped the formation of the cave. They had comprehensively excavated the floors of Chamber 1 and Chamber 10. In Chamber 1 they had found evidence of a fire pit and an abundance of reindeer bones and signs of a long occupation of the cave mouth. In Chamber 10 they found more Aurignacian blades and flakes, that lovely ivory bear and phenomenally, the fingertip of a human infant. Although it was the only human bone they had unearthed, it was still a miracle find that would be analysed intensively in the weeks to come. Sara Mallory also had a wealth of pollen samples to analyse over the winter. He said nothing of their plant-gathering and kitchen experiments. No one else needed to know about that bit of fringe work for now.

He concluded by reminding everyone that this was just the beginning, not the end. The funding had already come through for three additional seasons and they would meet again in the spring to compare notes they had made during the off-season. He reckoned they’d still be coming to Ruac Cave when they were old and grey, to which Craig Morrison interjected in his Scottish brogue that some of them were already old and grey, thank you very much!