The Tenth Chamber

ELEVEN

They looked more like astronauts than archaeologists.

The ecosystem of a cave sealed for centuries was a finely tuned affair. The mélange of conditions – the temperature, the humidity, the pH and the gaseous balance of the chamber courtesy of the bats – all contributed to an environment that, in this particular case, had fortuitously yielded the excellent preservation of wall art.

The worst thing Luc could do was disrupt that equilibrium and start a chain reaction of destruction such as had occurred elsewhere. At Lascaux, years of unfettered access by scholars and tourists had led first to a scourge of green mould and more recently to white calcite patches, the result of excess CO 2, which now threatened the paintings. Presently Lascaux was sealed to allow the scientific community the opportunity to find solutions.

At Ruac, better an ounce of prevention from the start.

While Desnoyers, the bat man, was arguably the most popular team member, Luc considered the conservationist, Elisabeth Coutard, to be the most important. There’d be hell to pay for an early mould problem or other environmental catastrophe.

Just after dawn on Monday, Luc, Coutard, Desnoyers and the cave expert, Giles Moran, stood in single file on the cliff ledge beneath the cave mouth. They were poised to ascend the iron stairs that the engineers had sunk into the limestone face. Close behind, Luc’s grad students Pierre and Jeremy were laden-down with packs of Moran’s patented cave-floor mats, rubberised semi-rigid sheets designed to protect any delicate treasures that might lie underfoot.

Moran had a tough nubbin of a body, ideal for wiggling through the tightest cave passages. He’d be responsible, for not only the protection of the cave and safety of the explorers, but for the detailed laser-guided mapping of the chamber architecture.

Coutard was a statuesque, almost courtly woman who curled her long white hair into a practical bun. She back-packed several pieces of her most delicate electronic gear and Luc lugged the rest.

Desnoyers had an infrared light strapped to his forehead, night-vision goggles and when he walked, he rattled with assorted traps dangling from his belt.

They were clad in hooded white Tyvek coveralls, rubber gloves, miners’ hats and disposable respirators to protect against toxic gases and shield the cave from their germs. After the entry team posed for an archival photograph of them stretched out on the ladder like Everest climbers Luc unlocked the heavy gate and swung it open.

The expedition had officially begun.

The early-morning light softly illuminated the first few metres of the vault. Luc took immense pleasure watching Coutard’s reaction to the frescoes and when he switched on a series of tripod lamps, vividly illuminating the entire first chamber, she stopped dead in her tracks, like the biblical pillar of salt and said nothing, absolutely nothing. She simply breathed in and out through her mask, transfixed by the beauty of the galloping horses, the power of the bison herd, the majesty of the great bull.

Moran behaved more like a surgeon, glancing about quickly to get his bearings then setting to work on his patient, carefully laying the first ground mats. Desnoyers scuttled onto one of them. He trained his night scope on the ceiling. ‘ Pipistrellus pipistrellus,’ he said, waving his arm matter-of-factly at a few darting shapes overhead, but then he got excited and piped up, ‘ Rhinolophus ferrumequinum!’ and started to step off the mat to follow a larger flapping form into the darkness. Moran sharply admonished him and insisted he wait for the placement of more mats.

‘I take it he’s found something delightful,’ Luc remarked to Coutard.

She replied with a beautiful, heavy sigh, overcome with emotion, seemingly surprised at the effect it was having on her. Luc patted her shoulder and said, ‘I know, I know.’ The touch brought her back to the here and now. She collected herself and got to work deploying an array of environmental and micro-climate monitors: temperature, moisture, alkalinity, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and the all-important culture media for bacteria and fungi. Baseline readings had to be taken before the others could begin their work.

Drawing on lessons from the past, a protocol had already been established. The fieldwork would be limited to two fifteen-day campaigns per year. Only twelve people at a time would be allowed inside the cave and they would work in shifts on an alternating schedule. Those who weren’t inside the cave would have analytical tasks back at the base camp.

Much of that first shift was devoted to laying protective mats along the entire length of the cave and installing Coutard’s analytical gear at various points.

Moran used his LaserRace 300 to measure the linear length of all ten chambers of the cave at 170 metres, a tad shorter than Lascaux or Chauvet.

Packs of mats were lowered from the cliff top in a continuous line of student manpower, akin to sandbaggers at a levee. Luc was obliged to wait for each section of mats to be laid before he could revisit deeper chambers. In a way, he already missed the blissful freedom of his first day of discovery, when he could roam freely and let each wave of adrenalin carry him along. Today he was a more scientist than explorer. Everything had to be done according to protocol.

His head was swimming with a million technical and logistical issues – this was a monumental project, larger in scope than anything for which he’d previously been responsible. But seeing the paintings again, the elaborate bestiary and the bird man, all so fresh and richly coloured, so magnificently rendered, made thoughts about project details disappear like snowflakes settling on a warm upturned forehead. Alone in the Chamber of the Bison Hunt, he was startled by the sound of his own respirator-muffled voice. He was telling himself, ‘I’m home. This is my home.’

Before breaking for lunch Luc checked in with Desnoyers for an assessment of the bat situation. ‘They don’t like people,’ the small man said, as if he agreed with them. ‘It’s a mixed population but mostly Pips. Large colony, not enormous. I’m quite sure they’ll leave on their own accord and set up elsewhere.’

‘The sooner the better,’ Luc said and when the bat man answered with a stony face, Luc added, ‘So what do you think of the paintings?’

The bat man replied, ‘I hadn’t really noticed.’

In the early afternoon, the second shift assembled on the ledge in anxious anticipation. Then Luc led the rest of the principals and the Le Monde journalist on a guided tour, acting like an artist at his own gallery opening. Every gasp, every murmur, every cooing sent a pleasant ripple up his back. ‘Yes, it is extraordinary. Yes, I knew you’d be impressed,’ he said over and over.

Zvi Alon caught up with Luc in between the Chamber of the Bison Hunt and a passage they were calling the Gallery of the Bears, where three large brown bears with expressive, open mouths and squarish snouts overlapped one another. ‘Listen, Luc,’ he said excitedly, ‘I can’t buy your assertion this is Aurignacian. It can’t be that early! The polychromatic shading is too advanced.’

‘I’m not making an assertion, Zvi. It’s only an observation from a single flint tool. Look at the outline of these bears. This is charcoal, no? We’ll have radiocarbon dates soon enough and we won’t have to speculate about the age. We’ll know.’

‘I know already,’ Alon gruffly insisted. ‘It’s the same age or later than Lascaux. It’s too advanced. But I still like it. It’s a very good cave.’

Luc left Sara alone till the last of the tour. They were nearly at the end of the cave, the unadorned Chamber 9. He sent the others back to start their work but kept Sara at his side. Everyone else looked bulky and shapeless in their protective suits. Her extra-small Tyvek garment somehow fit perfectly. She looked incongruously elegant, not couture, certainly, but unaccountably stylish.

‘How’re you doing?’ he asked.

‘Well.’ Her eyes were starry from the art. ‘Really well.’

‘I’ve got a private tour for you. Ready to get on your hands and knees to see the tenth chamber?’

‘I’d crawl a mile for that. But just so I’m prepared, are there a lot of bats?’

‘No. They don’t seem to like it there. I’ll have to ask our friend Desnoyers why.’

She stole a glance at the undulating colony overhead. ‘Okay, let’s start crawling.’

Moran’s padded mats made the passage easier on the knees. He led, she followed and he was quietly amused she had to follow his rump so closely. They emerged in the tenth chamber and stood upright. Luc could tell that Sara was dazzled by the exuberant display of humanity on the dome-shaped walls. Stencilled hands everywhere, bright as stars on a moonless night. ‘I saw your pictures, Luc, but, wow.’

‘It’s a warm-up. Come on.’

The last chamber was rigged with a single tripod lamp giving off a stinging halogen flare. He saw her buckle and instinctively grabbed her around the waist for support. She pulled away whispering an irritated, ‘I’m okay,’ then firmed her knees. She slowly began turning with little foot movements, eventually making a full circle. She reminded Luc of a music-box ballerina his mother had when he was young, which pirouetted on a mirrored base to the sound of an oriental melody. Finally, she spoke again. ‘It’s so green.’

‘Beyond being the first depiction of flora in Upper Paleolithic, it’s the only known use of green pigment from this era. It must be malachite but we’ll have to see. The browns and the red berries are iron oxides, undoubtedly.’

‘The grasses,’ she marvelled. ‘They’re completely compatible with the dry steppes we’d expect in the Aurignacian period during the warm seasons. And look at this fantastic beaked man standing in the grass like a giant scarecrow.’

‘He’s my new best friend,’ Luc said drily. ‘What about the other plants?’

‘Well, this is what’s so interesting. The manuscript illustrations are more realistic than the cave paintings but there appear to be two varieties,’ she said moving first to her right. ‘This panel is a bush with red berries. The leaf pattern is fairly impressionistic and imprecise, see here? And here? But the bushes in the manuscript clearly have five-lobed leaves in a spiral array on the stem. I’d have to say Ribes rubrum if pressed. The redcurrant bush. It’s indigenous to western Europe.’ She moved to her left. ‘And these vines. Again, the manuscript has a clearer rendering. The long stems and the elongated, arrow-head-shaped leaves, Convolvulus arvensis is my best guess, but it’s only a guess. The European bindweed. It’s an awful bugger as far as weeds go but it’s got pretty little pink and white flowers in the summer. But, no flowers here, as you can see.’

‘So, grass, weeds and redcurrants, is that the verdict?’

‘Hardly a verdict,’ she said. ‘A first impression. When can I get to work on the pollen?’

‘First thing in the morning. So, are you glad you came?’

‘On a professional level, yes.’

‘Only professionally?’

‘Jesus, Luc. Yes. Only professionally.’

He awkwardly turned away and pointed towards the Vault of Hands. ‘You first. I’ll get the light.’

Celebration hung heavy in the air like the smell of gunpowder after fireworks. The air was chilly but as there was no threat of rain people were taking their meals on folding chairs and wine crates out in the open. Luc spent a last few minutes with the journalist, Girot, before the man departed for Paris. Before he left, they warmly exchanged business cards and Luc sought one more assurance the piece would be embargoed until further notice.

‘Don’t worry,’ Girot said. ‘A deal’s a deal. You’ve been great, professor. You can trust me.’

Alon sought out Luc and pulled up a chair. He had passed on the cook’s main course of rosemary lamb chops and roasted potatoes and opted instead for bread and butter and some fruit. Luc looked at his plate. ‘I’m sorry, Zvi, are we not accommodating your dietary needs?’

‘I don’t keep kosher,’ he replied, ‘I don’t like French food.’

Luc smiled at his bluntness. ‘So? The cave?’

‘Well, I think you’ve found one of the most remarkable sites in prehistory. It’s going to require a lifetime of study. I only wish my life span were longer. You know, Luc, I’m not an emotional man, but this cave moves me. I’m in awe of it, whatever its age. Lascaux’s been called the Paleolithic Sistine Chapel. Ruac is better. The artists here were masters. The colours are more vivid, which speaks to excellent pigment technology. The animals are even more naturalistic than Lascaux or Altamira or Font de Gaume or Chauvet. The use of perspective is highly advanced. These were the da Vincis and Michaelangelos of their time.’

‘I feel the same way. Look, Zvi, we have a chance to study this right and maybe make a breakthrough on the subject that you’ve written about so eloquently: why did they paint?’

‘You know I’ve had strong opinions.’

‘That’s why I chose you.’

Without a trace of self-consciousness, Alon said, ‘You made the right choice. I’ve been hard on Lewis-Williams and Clottes for their shamanistic theories, as you know.’

‘They’ve both commiserated with me,’ Luc replied. ‘But they respect you.’

‘I’ve always felt that they place far too much emphasis on observations of modern shamanism in Africa and the New World. This whole business of the cave wall being a membrane between the real world and the spirit world and the shaman being some paleolithic Timothy Leary with hallucinogens and a skin full of pigments – it’s hard to swallow. Yes, these people of Ruac and Lascaux were Homo sapiens, just like us, but their societies were in a continual state of transformation, not static like modern stone-age cultures. That’s why I can’t accept extrapolations from modern ethnography. There may not have been neurological differences between our brains and theirs but, by God, there were cultural differences which we simply cannot understand. You know where I stand, Luc. I’m old school, a direct descendant of Laming-Emperaire and Leroi-Gourhan. I say let the analysis of the archaeology speak for itself. Look at the types of animals, the pairings, the clusters, the associations. Then you can divine the common mythological stories, the significance of clans, try to make some sense of it all. Think about it, for a period of at least twenty-five thousand years, a huge span of time, they used a core set of animal motifs: horse, bison, deer, bulls with a smattering of felines and bears. Not reindeers, which they ate, not birds, or fish – okay, one here, two there – and not trees and plants, at least not until now. They didn’t paint whatever they fancied. There were reasons these motifs exist. But…’

He stopped speaking, removed his glasses and rubbed his rheumy eyes.

‘But?’ Luc asked.

‘But Ruac is disturbing me.’

‘In what way?’

‘I’ve become more of a statistician than an archaeologist, Luc. I’m up to my neck in computer models and algorithms. I can tell you more about the correlation between cave position and left-facing horses than any man on the planet. But today! Today I felt more like an archaeologist which is good, but also I felt like someone who knows nothing, which is unsettling.’

Luc agreed with him and added, ‘There’s a lot of ground-breaking material here. It’s not just you who’s going to have to reevaluate beliefs. Everyone is. The Chamber of Plants alone. And if it’s Aurignacian, which I accept you don’t buy into, then what?’

‘Yes, the plants, of course they’re something totally new. But it’s more than that. The whole gestalt of the place is getting to me. The bird men, particularly. One with the bison, one with the vegetation. I looked at them and that goddamn curse word, shaman, kept popping into my head.’ He slapped Luc’s knee. ‘If you tell Lewis-Williams I said that, I’ll kill you!’

‘My lips are sealed.’

Pierre trotted over and towered over them. ‘Got a minute, Luc?’

Alon’s knees cracked when he stood up. He raised up on his toes and steadied himself with an arm on Luc’s shoulder to whisper some hot-breathed words in his ear. ‘Would you let me go back to the cave tonight, alone, just for a few minutes? I need to experience it on my own, with just one small light, like they did.’

‘I think we need to stick to protocol, Zvi.’

Alon nodded sadly and went on his way.

Luc turned to Pierre. ‘What’s up?’

‘A couple of people from Ruac village are here to speak with you.’

‘Do they have pitchforks?’

‘They brought a cake.’

He’d seen them before. The couple from the café in Ruac.

‘I’m Odile Bonnet,’ the woman said, ‘and this is my brother Jacques.’

Odile clearly noticed the look of recognition on Luc’s face.

‘Yes, the mayor is our father. I think he was rude to you before so – well, here’s a cake.’

Luc thanked her and invited them to his caravan for a brandy.

She had the flashing smile and sultry looks of a golden-era film star past her peak, not his type, a little on the easy side and too much of the peasant in her, but definitely Hugo’s kind of woman. Even though it was chilly, she liked to show a lot of leg. Her blank-faced oafish brother didn’t seem as pleased to be there. He stayed quiet, a bit of a cipher, probably roped into coming along, Luc figured.

She sipped the brandy while her brother swallowed his in large gulps, like beer. ‘My father is not a modern man,’ she explained. ‘He likes the quiet old ways. He doesn’t like tourists and outsiders, Germans and Americans in particular. He’s of the opinion the painted caves, especially Lascaux, have changed the character of the region, with the traffic and the postcard shops and the T-shirts. You know what I’m saying.’

‘Of course,’ Luc said. ‘I completely understand his position.’

‘He reflects the views of the majority in the village which is why he’s been mayor for as long as I can remember. But I – my brother and I – are more open-minded, even excited about your discovery. A new cave! Right under our noses! We’ve probably hiked by it dozens of times.’

‘I can arrange a tour,’ Luc replied enthusiastically. ‘I can’t tell you how much I want the support of the village. Yes, it’s a national treasure, but first, it’s a local treasure. I think local involvement from the beginning will help shape the future of Ruac Cave as a public institution.’

‘We’d love to see it, wouldn’t we, Jacques?’ He nodded automatically. ‘We’d also like to volunteer. We can do anything you’d like: Jacques can dig or move things around – he’s strong as a farm animal. I can file, I can draw well. Cook. Anything.’

There were a couple of sharp raps on Luc’s caravan door and it swung open. Hugo was there, hoisting a magnum of champagne with a red bow around its neck. ‘Hello!’ Then, seeing Luc was with someone, he added, ‘Oh, sorry! Shall I come back?’

‘No, come in! Welcome! Remember that nice couple from the café in Ruac? Here they are.’

Hugo climbed in and immediately shifted his attention to the woman, and when it was established the man with her was her brother, he joked the champagne was for her. They chatted for a while then Odile uncrossed her legs and announced they’d have to be off.

‘The answer is yes,’ Luc said to her. ‘I’d welcome your help at the campsite. Cave work is going to be very restricted but there’s lots to do here. Come anytime. Pierre, the guy who showed you in, will set you up.’

This time her parting smile to Hugo was unambiguous. Luc felt the kind of humming sometimes experienced around a high-voltage line.

‘If I’d known she’d be here I would have come yesterday,’ Hugo said. He looked around the cramped caravan. ‘This is where the famous Luc Simard, co-discoverer of Ruac Cave, is staying? Not exactly Versailles. Where am I sleeping?’

Luc pointed to the spare bunk at the far end that was piled high with Luc’s laundry. ‘There. Have some brandy and don’t you dare complain.’

Zvi Alon button-holed Jeremy in the kitchen where the student had gone to brew a cup of tea.

The bald man blurted out, ‘Luc gave me permission to visit the cave on my own for a short while. Let me have the key.’

Jeremy was thoroughly intimidated by Alon and his tough reputation. His bony knees were practically knocking. ‘Of course, professor. Do you want me to go with you to unlock it? It’s tricky going down in the dark.’

Alon held out his hand. ‘I’ll be fine. When I was your age I was commanding a tank in the Sinai.’

Luc started filling Hugo in on the first day’s activities but as he was speaking, he sensed his friend was restless. Suddenly Luc stopped talking and demanded, ‘What is it?’

‘How come you’re not asking me about the manuscript?’

‘Has there been progress?’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a Caesar cipher?’

Luc impatiently shook his head.

‘Well, it’s a pathetically easy code that Julius Caesar used for secret messages. It practically requires your foe to be illiterate since it’s so easy to break, just a shift of say three letters to the right or left. Most of his enemies couldn’t have even read the plain Latin so it worked fine for him. Over time code breakers and code writers competed for rather more sophisticated methods.’

Luc was red-faced with testiness.

‘Okay, okay, well according to my guy from Brussels, one of the Voynich geniuses, our manuscript was coded with something called the Vigenère cipher which by itself is pretty remarkable since it wasn’t thought to be invented until the sixteenth century. It looks like our Barthomieu or a colleague was a few hundred years ahead of his time. I won’t bore you with the details but it’s a far more complicated variant of the Caesar cipher with an additional requirement of requiring secret key words for deciphering.’

‘If you don’t cut to the chase, I’m going to kill you with my bare hands,’ Luc shouted.

‘This morning, before I left Paris, my Belgian geek told me he was close to cracking a few pages. He thinks there are probably at least three sections, each with its own key word. He was crunching numbers, or whatever it is that computer people crunch, and he told me he’d email me when he had something definitive. Is there someplace I can check my mail?’

Luc practically grabbed him by his jacket. ‘The office. Let’s go.’

As they passed the camp fire, Luc pointed at a woman and said to Hugo, ‘By the way, that’s Sara.’

Immediately he wished he’d kept quiet because Hugo sprinted towards her and introduced himself as one of Luc’s oldest friends not to mention the co-discoverer of the cave.

‘I’ve heard of you,’ she sparkled. ‘I can’t believe we never met back when, you know, Luc and I…’

‘And I’ve heard of you too!’ Hugo exclaimed. ‘So lovely, so intelligent. Luc, come over here!’

Luc approached, shaking his head in anticipation of what was coming. ‘Don’t be making trouble, Hugo.’

‘Trouble? Me? It’s just that, well, Sara, I’ll be blunt. I met a lady tonight and I’d like to ask her out but a double-date might be less of a challenge for her. How about you and Luc joining us sometime this week? I’m only here for a couple of days.’

‘Christ, Hugo,’ Luc groaned.

‘I’d love to,’ Sara said, taking Luc aback but making Hugo smile knowingly.

‘Then it’s settled. All I need to do is ask this lady and we’re set. Luc will tell you what I think about the countryside. This should make it more palatable.’

Luc switched on the office lights. The floor of the sturdy little building was vibrating along with the rumbling generator. He logged onto the web and let Hugo enter his own email portal.

The dapper man puffed out his chest and proudly announced he had twenty new messages, several from female friends, then spotted the important one. ‘Ah, it’s our code breaker!’

He opened the email. ‘Fantastic! He says he’s got six pages done. The secret keyword for the section was NIVARD, whatever that means. He’s sent the deciphered passages as an attachment and says he’ll start working on the next section soon.’

‘What does it say?’ Luc demanded.

‘Hang on, let me open it. I don’t think he even read it. He’s only interested in the code, not the text! Besides he says it’s in Latin, which for our Belgian friend is just one more cipher, a boring one.’

Hugo scanned the document getting a feel for the language.

With Luc standing over his shoulder he slowly started to read on the fly. He soon cast off the dispassionate tone of a translator. The language was too volatile and Hugo began to ardently channel the old monk’s words.

I am certain to meet a horrible and painful death. Unlike a martyr who dies for his beliefs and piety, I will die for the knowledge I possess. There has been blood and there will be more. To lose a friend is not an easy thing. To lose a brother is terrible. To lose a brother who has also been a friend for nigh on two hundred years is unbearable. I buried your bones, dear Nivard. Who will bury mine? I am not a saint, O Lord, but a pitiful soul who loved his knowledge far too dearly. Did it crowd out my love for You? I pray not, but it is for you my God to judge. For my sins I will pay in blood. I cannot confess to my Abbot for he is dead. Until they come for me I will write my confession. I will conceal its meaning in a cipher devised by Brother Jean, a scholar and a gentle soul who I miss terribly. The knowledge contained in my confession is not meant for every man and when I am gone it will disappear. If it is ever found again, it is because Christ has seen fit to make it manifest for reasons known only to Him. I am a scribe and book binder. Should the Lord give me time to finish it, I will bind the book and I will dedicate it to Saint Bernard. If the book is burned so be it. If it is torn asunder so be it. If it is found by another man in its intended hiding place and the words untangled, then I say to that man may God have mercy upon your soul, for the price you will pay will be great.

Hugo stopped to blink and wet his lips.

‘Is there more?’ Luc asked.

‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘There’s more.’

‘Then for God’s sake, keep going.’

Alon drove his rental car the way he did everything in life: pugnaciously. He accelerated hard, braked hard and navigated the short distance from the camp in over-revved lurches. A gravel parking lot had been established near the top of the cliff and when he got there he braked aggressively, his tyres spraying up pebbles. Clouds blurred the edges of the crescent moon and the night sky had tendrils of black, like the veins on the back of one’s hand. The temporary guard shelter that had been erected before the gates were installed was long gone. The CCTV images and telemetry data from the cave entrance and chambers now fed directly to the camp office.

He locked the car and zipped his bomber jacket to his throat. Convections of chilly air rolled over the valley. He felt around in his pocket for the key to the gate of the cave. It was large and heavy, a satisfying implement, almost medieval. He would have preferred complete authenticity, a flickering oil-fed lamp, but the small flashlight in his hand would have to do. He aimed it at the path and headed towards the cliff ladder.

He was eager to spend half an hour on his own, wandering the passages in the minimal light. He’d apologise to Luc in the morning in his own way, plead temporary insanity, but he had to do this. Luc would officially disapprove but the incident would pass, he was sure. The cave was calling out to him. He needed to have a private conversation with it. He’d write about the night. It would shape his thinking, maybe even shake some long-held, stubborn beliefs.

‘Damn the shamans,’ he whispered out loud, the thought escaping his lips. Could I have been wrong?

He slowed his pace as he neared the ladder. It was a long way down and at his age he was no longer a mountain goat.

A flurry of footsteps! Running.

He startled and spun but never made it full around.

He didn’t see the log that bashed his head, never felt himself being dragged to the edge and at the last moment, at his passage through the membrane, he never heard the urgent fluttering of a pair of black-shouldered kites taking to wing, spooked by the sound of his body crashing through the oaks.