The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

grenade.
    Manners dove to the ground at his side, expecting the grenade to ignite the rockets, or more gunfire from the Spaniards in the cave. There was no cover. He hugged the ground, his hands over his head and the grenade went off with a muffled crump. Then silence. One more short burst from a Sten. Then silence.
    “You weren’t much use,” said François.
    Manners rolled over and looked at him. He was standing over the body of Marat, his gun still aimed down. Lespinasse changed magazines.
    “You’re insane,” Manners said, and scrambled to his feet to look for McPhee. His torch still glowed on the ground. He picked it up and looked at the carnage. Marat was dead, the back of his head shot away. That must have been the last burst he heard.
    McPhee and the Russian were tangled in the tree roots, both dead. And below them was a mass of tree limbs, shredded by the grenade. Manners plodded dully across to McPhee’s body, his mind a jumble of horror at an accident and suspicion of deliberate murder, at the hatreds of French politics, and the Spanish girl and human jealousy. The American lay on his back, his head drooping into the hole that led to the cave. Blood had spread across his face and over his shaved scalp. Sickened, he turned to François, his voice thick and tired, but he had to ask. “Was this politics or Mercedes?”
    “Don’t be a fool. This had nothing to do with women. Lespinasse, help the capitaine clear that mess away,” said François, as calmly as if he were ordering dinner. “We need those bazookas.”
    Manners hauled McPhee’s body clear of the tree limbs. The burst had caught him across the top of his chest and throat and the American’s head dangled. The Russian had been shot in the back, and Lespinasse helped pull him aside. François took the torch, and shone it down into the cave mouth. Lespinasse hauled on an arm, and it was Florien. Manners helped pull the body clear.
    “Our little traitor,” said François.
    The two Spaniards beneath Florien were jammed in the cave entrance. Lespinasse went down but couldn’t tug them free.
    “Try pushing them down into the cave,” said François.
    His back against the big taproot of the tree, Lespinasse began pushing with his feet, grunting with effort. Manners coughed with the stink of cordite, and then turned aside and retched. Down in the cave something gave, and Lespinasse called something cheerful as the tangle cleared. He crawled into the passage, and then shouted back, “It’s O.K. There’s room to stand here.”
    “Let’s get our rockets,” said François. Manners just looked at him, still incapable of speech.
    “I’m sorry about McPhee,” said François, as he clambered down into the cave. Then he stopped and added, “He just got caught in Lespinasse’s burst. It was an accident of war, Jacques. I liked McPhee, you know that.”
    Wearily, Manners picked his way down the tree roots and into the passage he remembered. Lespinasse was dragging the dead Spaniards into the big cave, and François’s torch picked out the parachute containers, the latches still open as Manners had left them. Then the torch lifted at something on the wall, and François said, “What the devil …?”
    It was a bear on the passage wall, a big and prowling black bear. The torch moved on to a brown horse with a black mane, one of its legs disappearing into a fresh bullet scar on the rock. Manners moved forward to look more closely and something crunched heavily beneath his feet. It was a slab of rock, sliced off the wall. He kicked it out of the way, nearly losing his balance as his feet slid on wet blood.
    François had gone on into the main cave, and the torch picked out a big stag, its antlers down, and its feet churning up turf as it pawed the ground ready to charge. A doe with an arrow in her throat stood beside it, and below that, a pathetic fawn collapsed on its rump, with the silhouettes of two human figures behind. One was drawing a bow. The other, female, crouched, holding a spear.
    “Another Lascaux,” said François, and turned the torch to the far wall. “This is better than Rouffignac, better than Font-de-Gaume. It’s better than anything I have ever seen.”
    A great landscape unfolded before them in the dimness of the torch. It was recognizably this same countryside of Périgord, the smooth, curving rock of the cliffs, that swirl of river and line of trees, that wide evening sky with the pinks of sunset, but a landscape that