The Tenth Chamber

THIRTY-FIVE

They were in a cool windowless chamber the size of a primary school gymnasium or a town cinema. It was far too large to be the simple basement of one of the cottages. If they were still in the village, as Luc suspected, then the chamber had to be under the street, an excavation accessible from several cottages. It appeared that a number of corridors ran off from various points along its perimeter and he thought it possible that each might lead to a cottage.

The walls were the ubiquitous limestone block, but the floors were wood planks, smooth with age and covered with a patchwork of rugs, most of them large, fancy orientals in various shades of greens, blues, reds and pinks. The room was lit with cheap industrial fluorescent fixtures affixed to the plaster ceiling. Copper water pipes ran down the walls.

Luc and Sara were seated beside one another on wooden chairs up against one of the long walls. His right wrist and her left wrist were handcuffed to a couple of the copper pipes.

On the opposite wall a vintage phonograph was turning a vinyl record. The room was filled with tinny, old-time bal-musette – dance-hall, accordion music with an urgent tempo.

In the centre of the room there was a sturdy folding table. Bonnet and Dr Pelay were fussing over a huge aluminium pot on a large electric coil that glowed red-hot. The pot was the kind of model an army cook would use to make stew for two hundred men and the ladle was also out-sized. Steam was rising from the vessel filling the room with a sweet, almost fruity kind of fragrance.

Luc and Sara had smelled it before in the kitchen of their campsite.

Bonnet kept up a slow-paced monologue, talking loudly across the expanse of the room, over the music. The scene had the incongruous air of a chef doing a cooking show before a handcuffed audience.

‘I don’t have to tell you that these plants aren’t available all-year round,’ Bonnet said. ‘We have to harvest them when they’re abundant and store them for the winter months. It’s nice and cool down here so they keep well as long as we keep them dry. The berries and the bindweed, they’re dead reliable. Never a problem. It’s the barley grass that’s tricky. If they don’t have those black or purple lumps they’re no good. What do you call those lumps? I always forget.’

‘Sclerotia,’ Sara replied automatically, her voice dry with fear.

‘I can’t hear you. Speak up,’ Bonnet said.

‘Ergot bodies,’ Pelay told him.

‘Yes! That’s it, ergot bodies,’ he replied. ‘Without those, it’s rubbish. Unusable. So we’ve got to find the grass with the purple lumps on their spikes. Then we’re in business. You’ve got to cook it through and through but not to the boil. Simmer it, like a good cassoulet. You do it for as many years as Pelay and I have, you get a feel for it so it comes out perfect every time.’

Luc called out, ‘How old are you, Bonnet?’

The mayor stopped stirring and rubbed at his stubble. ‘I always have to think,’ he replied. Pelay chuckled at his show. ‘I’m not the oldest, you know. That fellow Duval, the pig farmer, he’s the oldest. I’m two hundred and forty-two but my wife says I don’t look a day over one hundred and eighty!’ Pelay found this hilarious and cackled like a woman. ‘I learned how to make the tea from my father, Gustave. He learned from my grandfather, Bernard. And he learned from my great-grandfather, Michel Bonnet, who, I’m told, was a monk in his younger days in Ruac Abbey before he left monastery life in 1307, the year the Templars were wiped out. That’s not bad, eh? Only four generations of Bonnets in seven hundred years!’

There was a plastic carrier bag on the table. Bonnet removed a red-leather book, the Ruac manuscript.

Luc shook his head at the sight. ‘Having trouble reading that, Bonnet?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes, except for the little Latin passage the fellow wrote in 1307, which goes with the family date I just mentioned. Maybe we’ll persuade you to tell us what it says. But never mind if you don’t. I think I know well enough what’s in it. The pictures tell a thousand words. This Barthomieu who was two hundred and twenty – I expect he and my great-grandfather were well acquainted.’

‘How often do you drink it?’ Luc asked.

‘Our tea? Once a week. Always late, in the middle of the night, when we won’t be disturbed by some idiot wandering through the village. Maybe we could take it less often but it’s a tradition and frankly we enjoy it. I’ve used it well over ten thousand times and it doesn’t get old. You’ll see.’

‘There’s no way we’re going to play along,’ Luc said.

‘No?’ Bonnet responded, shrugging. He dipped a finger into the pot and it came out red. He licked it clean and declared, ‘There, it’s ready. Proper Ruac tea. What do you think, Pelay?’

The doctor tasted some from the ladle. ‘I can’t remember a better batch,’ he laughed. ‘I’m sorry I have to wait.’

‘Well, you and me, old friend. We’re the keepers tonight. Special keepers for special guests.’ He looked around the chamber. ‘Jacques!’ he yelled. ‘Where the hell are you?’

His son appeared from one of the corridors.

‘We’re ready,’ Bonnet told him. ‘Let them know.’

Luc and Sara held each other’s free hands. Her hand felt limp and cold. There was little he could say to her except, ‘Everything will be all right. Stay strong.’ Soon, there was the muffled sound of a clanging bell. It persisted for no more than half a minute then ended.

The villagers began to arrive in knots of threes and fours.

None younger than twenty or so, by appearance. Mostly men and women well on in years, exactly how old, Luc could only guess. Odile arrived, looking guiltily at the handcuffed pair along the wall. There were maybe thirty or forty people her age. People tended to congregate with their peer groups, milling around, whispering, seemingly uncomfortable with strangers in their midst. All told, there were at least two hundred people but Luc lost count as the room filled.

Bonnet banged the pot with the ladle to get everyone’s attention. ‘Good people,’ he shouted. ‘Come and be served. Don’t be shy because of our guests. You know who they are. Don’t pay them any mind. Come on, who’s first tonight?’

They lined up orderly and each, in turn, received a paper cup, filled to the brim with hot red tea. Some sipped at it, savouring it as one might a good cup of ordinary tea. Others, especially the younger villagers, gulped it.

They struck Luc as some kind of ersatz parishioners queuing to receive holy communion. But Bonnet was no priest. He grinned and joked as he dolloped out the brew and seemed amused whenever he accidentally sloshed some onto the table top.

When the last villager, a heavy-haunched old woman with long grey hair knotted into a bun, had received her ration and whispered something to him, Bonnet replied loudly, ‘No, no. For me, later. I’ve got to do something tonight. But come with me, let me introduce you.’

Bonnet led the woman to Luc and Sara. ‘This is my wife, Camille. These are the archaeologists I told you about. Isn’t the professor a good-looking fellow?’

The mayor’s wife looked him over and grunted, and with that, Bonnet swatted her on the rump and told her to enjoy herself without him. He pulled up a chair and sat himself down, just beyond Luc’s reach.

‘You know, I’m tired,’ he sighed. ‘It’s late. I’m not as young as I used to be. Let me sit with you a while.’

Sara’s eyes wandered around the room. People were finishing their tea, tidily disposing the cups in a bin, all very neat and civilised. There was a din of conversation, some polite laughter, all very banal.

‘What happens next?’ she asked.

‘Wait, you’ll see. It takes fifteen minutes for some, twenty for others. Watch. It won’t go unnoticed.’ He called for Pelay who approached from the folding table with two more cups of tea in his hands.

Sara looked at them and began to cry.

‘No, you’ll really like it!’ Bonnet insisted. ‘Don’t make a fuss. Trust Pelay. He’s a good doctor!’

‘Leave her alone,’ Luc threatened. He rose from his chair and strained against his tether, causing Bonnet to reflexively lean back even though he was a safe distance.

Bonnet shook his head wearily and pulled out his pistol. ‘Pelay, hand her a cup.’ He stared at Sara and gave her a little lecture, as if he were a headmaster and she were a schoolgirl. ‘If you throw it down, I’ll shoot the professor in the foot. If you spit it out, I’ll shoot him in the knee. I’m not going to kill him because I need his help but I will spill his blood.’

‘Sara, don’t listen to him!’ Luc shouted.

‘No, Sara,’ Bonnet said. ‘You should definitely listen to me.’

She took the cup in her shaking hand and started to raise it to her shaking lips.

‘Sara!’ Luc cried out. ‘Don’t.’

She looked at him, shook her head and drank it in a series of gulps.

‘Excellent!’ Bonnet said. ‘See, tastes pretty good. Now, professor, it’s your turn.’

‘I’m not going to do it,’ Luc said firmly. ‘Sara, if I drink this I can’t protect you.’

‘Look, this is tiresome,’ Bonnet said, turning the gun towards Sara. ‘Now I’m going to have to shoot her if you don’t cooperate. Just drink the tea and get it over with.’

Luc grimaced in his anguish. How did he know that Bonnet wouldn’t pull the trigger? He was certainly capable of violence. But if he succumbed and drank the tea, he’d be abandoning the only weapon he had, his mind. He cursed himself for coming without the gendarmes. It was turning out to be a tragically bad decision.

Sara reached for his free hand and he let her take it. She squeezed his fingers tightly and suddenly looked up as if startled by something. ‘Let me talk to him,’ she said to Bonnet. ‘I’ll persuade him. Just give us a moment alone.’

‘Okay, a moment. Why not?’ He got up and took a few steps back and stood next to Pelay who was leering at Sara lasciviously.

She leaned in trying to get as close to Luc as possible but whatever she said was going to be overheard.

‘What are you doing?’ Luc asked her.

‘Go ahead and drink it,’ she whispered.

‘Why are you saying that?’ he whispered back.

‘Do you trust me as a person?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Do you trust me as a scientist?’

‘Yes, Sara, I trust you as a scientist.’

‘Then drink it.’

Pelay crept close enough to hand Luc the cup and quickly backed away.

Sara nodded her encouragement and Luc threw his head back and chugged it down.

‘Okay, Pelay, go watch over the flock. I’ll stay here with our friends.’

He sat back down and Luc also crumpled onto his chair with a look of defeat on his face.

‘You know it’s funny,’ Bonnet said. ‘We had to force you to do something we do ourselves, willingly and gratefully. It’s a strange world, no?’

Luc was bristling with contempt. ‘What’s strange, Bonnet, is how you can pretend to be civilised when you’re nothing more than a murdering piece of garbage.’

The old man arched a brow. ‘Garbage? Me? No. What I do I do to protect my family and my village. I’ve lived a very long time, monsieur, and I’ve learned something important along the way. You take care of your own. If that means pushing others out of the way, then that’s the way it is. Ruac is a special place. It’s like a rare, delicate flower in a hot house. If the thermostat is disturbed, if the temperature goes one degree up or one degree down, the flower dies. You come here, with your scientists and your students and your cameras and your notebooks and really what you’re doing is turning the thermostat. If we let you do that, our way of life will die. We’ll die. So, it’s a matter of survival for us. It’s kill or be killed.’

‘Christ,’ Sara murmured in disgust.

‘These were innocent people,’ Luc hissed.

‘I’m sorry. From our side, each one was a threat. That one from Israel, he surprised us when we were checking to see what kind of locks you had on your precious cave. That guy Hugo, he had the balls to break into my daughter’s house and come down here on a tea night! What did he expect? And the ones at your camp ground last Sunday night? We had to take your computers and destroy your files. We had to blow up your cave to stop you people once and for all from coming to Ruac and we would have if that black bastard hadn’t killed my demo man.’

‘Pierre’s dead?’ Sara asked pathetically.

‘I’m sorry,’ Luc said. ‘And Jeremy. And Marie. And Elizabeth Coutard. And-’

She burst into tears and whispered, ‘Horrible, horrible,’ over and over.

‘And what was your justification for raping the women?’ From the look on Sara’s face, he wished he hadn’t said that. He told her the rest of the story, ‘The gendarmes said the rapists had immotile sperms.’

Bonnet did his usual shrug. ‘Boys will be boys.’

Luc simply said, ‘You’re a piece of shit.’

That only stoked Bonnet’s fires. He became animated, waving his arm. ‘Pelay said it would have been better if my men had flattened you two like bugs in Cambridge! I say what’s going to happen to you tonight is better.’

‘And the company?’ Luc asked. ‘You blew that up too?’

‘Nothing to do with us,’ Bonnet shrugged. ‘A happy coincidence. We were after you. What do we know about blowing up buildings? Pelay persuaded me we had an opportunity to get rid of you before you could do us more damage. If it happened in another country, it wouldn’t track back to us. So I said, why not? When they failed and the two of you split up the next morning, we decided to take her to get you to come to us. What a load of trouble you’ve caused us!’

Luc wasn’t sure if he believed him about their lack of involvement in PlantaGenetics. His water-tight theory was leaking.

‘And Prentice? You didn’t kill him?’

‘Fred’s dead?’ Sara cried.

‘I’m sorry,’ Luc said. ‘He died in hospital.’

‘I don’t know anything about that either,’ Bonnet barked, ‘but you know what?’ he continued. ‘None of your people would have died if we’d shot you and your chum Hugo the first time you set foot into my café. Just like we did when two jackasses found the cave for the first time, back in 1899.’

Sara curled her mouth into a smile of pure contempt. ‘You’ve got another secret, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes? What’s that?’

‘You’re infertile, aren’t you? All of you men are infertile sons-of-bitches.’ She laughed at his hurt expression. ‘Luc, it’s got to be a side-effect of the tea. They all shoot blanks!’

Luc managed a smile too. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen children in Ruac. How many children are there?’

Bonnet stood up, spouting a look of discomfort. ‘Not many, not enough. It’s a problem, it’s always been a problem. The men make the tea for a year or two and our little fish stop swimming. But we get by. We make it work.’

Luc thought for a moment. ‘You’re matrilineal, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘We’re what?’ Bonnet challenged, as if someone had insulted his mother.

‘The men can’t reproduce,’ Luc said. ‘Your bloodlines go through the women. So you’ve got to bring in outside males to keep the maternal bloodlines going. Who fathered your own damned children, Bonnet? Do you use stud service, like horse breeders?’

‘Shut up!’ Bonnet shouted. He pulled his gun again and waved it at Luc.

Luc taunted him; he had nothing to lose, ‘Does your little pistol shoot blanks too?’

Bonnet was shouting now, drowning out the incessant musette rhythms. The villagers stopped talking, turned, and watched him. ‘You think you’re so damned clever. You come from Paris, you come from Bordeaux, you come to our village and try to destroy our way of life! Let me tell you what’s going to happen to you tonight!’ He pointed his gun at Sara. ‘My son is going to screw this bitch good, then he’s going to put a bullet in her head! And she won’t even care because she’s going to be in love with the tea in a few minutes. And you, you’re going to be the stallion. You’re going with Odile. You’re going to be high as a paper kite and you’re going to give me a grandchild, thank you very much. Then I’ll personally put a bullet in your head! Then I’m going to march up to the top of the cliffs and set off the charges we planted tonight. With all the fancy new gates and locks and cameras they installed we can’t get inside it but that doesn’t mean we can’t blow the cliff up from above and collapse it into the cave! And then I’m going to burn this goddamned manuscript! And then no one else is going to ever know our secret! I don’t believe you wrote a letter to anybody. It’s a stupid bluff. No one else will ever know! And then I’m going to go back to my café and my fire brigade and my pile of Nazi gold and my quiet village and my tea and my good times and I’ll keep on living for so long I might forget that you bastards even existed!’

He was blue from the tirade, puffing and wheezing.

But Luc wasn’t looking at him, he was looking at the villagers. It didn’t matter whether they were young or old. They were beginning to ignore their mayor’s rant. They were gyrating to the music, grinding themselves against each other, pairing off. Clothes were shed. Moans and grunts. Rutting sounds. Older couples were heading into corridors, away from the main room. Younger ones were falling to the carpets, laying into each other with abandon out in the open.

‘That’s what we do,’ Bonnet said proudly. ‘And we have done it for hundreds of years! And, Professor, look at your friend!’

Luc looked over and shouted, ‘Sara!’

Her eyes were rolling. She was limp in her chair, making short breathy moans.

Bonnet unlocked her handcuff and pulled her upright onto unsteady feet. ‘I’m taking her to Jacques now. By the time I come back you’ll be ready for Odile. Make me a granddaughter if you’re able. Then go to hell.’