The Tenth Chamber

FOUR

H. Pineau Restorations had its offices on Rue Beaujon, off Avenue Hoche just blocks from the Arc de Triomphe. It was a high-rent district that Hugo had chosen for its prestige value. To keep costs manageable he leased only a small suite of rooms for his staff headquarters. He lived in the 7th arrondissement with an elegant view of the Seine, and on a nice day, he would walk to the company puffing away on a cigarillo. He encouraged clients to come by so he could show off his tasteful assortment of antiques and pictures, not to mention his stunning red-headed secretary.

As a purebred cosmopolitan, he couldn’t bear to be separated from the heartbeat of Paris for more than the briefest time and he always felt a little blue when he had to visit the guts of his operation, housed in a low-slung metal building on a drab industrial estate near Orly Airport. There, the company took delivery of all manner of paintings, fine arts, books and manuscripts from across western Europe and beyond, and it was there he kept a staff of thirty, busily employed, patiently and lucratively erasing the effects of flood waters, fire and other human and natural disasters.

Hugo sprang out of his office when he heard Luc’s baritone voice resonating in the reception area.

‘Right on time!’ Hugo shouted, gripping his friend in a bear hug. Luc was a head taller, muscular and tanned from vigorous outdoor labour. Hugo seemed pale and boyish in comparison, trim and effete. ‘There, you’ve finally met Margot. I told you she was beautiful!’ And then to his secretary he said, ‘And you’ve finally met Luc. I told you he was beautiful!’

‘Well, he’s managed to make both of us uncomfortable,’ Luc said, smiling. ‘Margot, you’re a strong woman to put up with this guy.’

Margot nodded saucily in agreement. ‘My boyfriend plays rugby so I’ve got some insurance against his bad behaviours.’

‘And this is Isaak Mansion, my head of business development and my right-hand man,’ Hugo said, introducing the man in a suit and tie who had appeared at his side, a fellow with short curly hair and a neatly trimmed beard.

Isaak warmly greeted Luc and said slyly, ‘You don’t know why you’re here yet, do you?’

‘Quiet!’ Hugo said playfully. ‘Don’t ruin my fun. Go away and make us some money!’

In his office, Hugo sat Luc down and made a show of opening a fresh bottle of bourbon and pouring generous measures into a pair of Baccarat crystal glasses. They clinked and sipped a toast.

‘The place looks good, you look good,’ Luc observed.

‘How long since you were here, five years?’ Hugo asked.

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s pathetic. I saw you more when you were living abroad.’

‘Well, you know how it is,’ Luc mused. ‘Never enough time.’

‘You had a girlfriend last time we met, an American.’

‘Things blew up.’

Hugo shrugged. ‘Typical,’ and then without missing a beat, ‘God, it’s good to see you!’

They talked for a while about friends from their university days and Hugo’s complicated social life when Margot knocked discreetly at the door and informed Hugo that the police were on the line again.

‘Shall I leave?’ Luc asked.

‘No, stay, stay. This won’t take long.’

Luc listened to one side of a conversation and when Hugo hung up he sighed. ‘It’s always something. We had a break-in at my plant last night. My watchman was beaten silly. He’s in hospital with a cracked skull. They ransacked the place.’

‘Anything stolen?’

‘Nothing. The idiots probably didn’t even know we restore books. What’s the last thing an ignorant crook is interested in? Books! And that’s what they found, lots of them. Poetic justice, but they made a mess.’

Luc commiserated about the stress his friend seemed to be under but finally raised both palms towards the ceiling and said, ‘So? What’s the deal? What’s so special I’ve got to drop everything and drag my ass to Paris?’

‘I need to pick your brain.’

‘About what?’

‘This.’

Hugo went to his credenza and picked up a small muslin-wrapped parcel. They sat together on the sofa. Hugo cleared a space on the coffee table where he made a show of slowly unwrapping the book. The leather looked redder and more lustrous than the day Hugo had first seen it at the abbey. The haloed saint on the cover was more vividly three-dimensional. The silver bobs, corners and endbands along with the dual clasps had a touch of their period shine. And of course, the book was much lighter now, bone dry. ‘I got this in a few weeks ago. It suffered a lot of water damage but my people sorted it out.’

‘Okay…’

‘It’s from the Dordogne, the Périgord Noir, your stomping ground.’

Luc raised his eyebrows in mild interest.

‘Ever hear of a little village called Ruac?’

‘On the Vézère, right? I may have poked around it once or twice. What’s there?’

Hugo proceeded to tell Luc about the abbey and its fire, employing a touch of drama and showmanship, purposely building to a storyteller’s climax. After he had finished with a boastful account of the excellence of his company at manuscript restoration he said, ‘I’d like you to thumb through it and give me a first impression, okay?’

‘Sure. Let’s have a look.’

Luc held the thin light book in his calloused hands, opened the cover, took note of the fourteenth-century date on the flyleaf and started turning the pages.

He let out a low whistle. ‘You’re kidding me!’ he exclaimed.

‘I thought you’d be interested,’ Hugo said. ‘Carry on.’

Luc paused on each page only long enough to register a first impression. Although he couldn’t read the text, he could tell the scribe had a competent, practised hand. The manuscript was done in a stylistically boxy script, two columns per page, employing a rust-coloured ink that retained a lovely coppery glint. There were prickings around the edge of the pages that had been employed to keep the lines straight and true.

But it wasn’t the text that interested him. What had him captivated were the bright and bold illustrations decorating the borders of several pages.

Particularly the iconic ones, the images which were his life’s blood.

The black bulls. The roe deer. The bison.

Wildly animalistic and beautifully rendered in blacks, earthy-reds, browns and tans.

‘This is unmistakable polychromatic cave art,’ he murmured. ‘Upper Paleolithic, very similar in execution and style to Lascaux but these aren’t from Lascaux or any site I’ve seen.’

‘And you’ve seen them all, I imagine,’ Hugo said.

‘Of course! This is what I do! But you know, what’s far more incredible is the date here: 1307! The absolute first credible mention in recorded history of cave art is from 1879 at Altamira, Spain. This is five centuries earlier! I’m not saying that man hadn’t laid eyes on these caves earlier than the nineteenth century but no one ever thought to write about it or reproduce any images. Are you certain this is really from 1307?’

‘Well, I haven’t subjected it to forensic dating, but the vellum, the bindings, the ink, the pigments all cry out fourteenth century.’

‘You’re sure?’

Hugo laughed and parroted back, ‘This is what I do!’

Luc buried himself back in the book. He sought out one particular page and rotated the manuscript for Hugo to see.

Hugo snorted, ‘I knew that would interest you. It’s quite the image, quite evocative! Ever seen anything like that before?’

In the margin was a primitive outline, a standing human form, not much more than a glorified stick figure rendered in thick black brushstrokes. Instead of a head the figure had the beak of a bird and at its midsection, a long slash of ink, a huge erect phallus.

‘Yes! I have! Not identical but very similar. There’s a painting in Lascaux of a birdman just like this. Some kind of mystical figure. Complete with the cock. Incredible.’

He flipped to another page and pointed at the marginalia, lavishly rendered in rich pigments – lush greens, earthy-browns and bursting reds. ‘And look at all these drawings! These plants.’ And another page. ‘These are vines of some kind.’ And another. ‘These are grasses. It’s like a natural history!’ And finally he turned to one of the last pages. ‘And this, for God’s sake, Hugo, this is a map!’

Along the margins of the page was a winding blue line snaking through a swathe of greens, browns and greys, some apparent topography. The landscape was dotted with small painted symbols: a tan tower, a meandering blue line – surely a river – a cluster of grey-roofed dwellings, a tree with crazily angled branches, a paired array of wavy blue lines against a grey background and near it, a tiny black X, unlabelled, floating without context.

Hugo agreed. ‘It struck me as a map too.’

Luc finished his bourbon but waved Hugo away when he tried to refill the glass. ‘So, now you’d better tell me what this says. You’re the Latin scholar. I never progressed much past veni, vidi, vici.’

Hugo smiled and replenished his own glass then said with theatrical flair, ‘Well, the inscription on the flyleaf says, “I, Barthomieu, friar of Abbey Ruac, am two hundred and twenty years old and this is my story.”’

Luc wrinkled his nose in puzzlement. ‘Go on…’

‘And the first line on the first page says, “In the everlasting memory of the greatest man I have ever known, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.”’

Luc ran his finger over the saint’s halo on the cover. ‘This guy?’

‘Presumably.’

‘Any relation to the dogs?’

‘As it happens, yes, they’re named after him, but as I’ve since learned he’s a bit more famous than that.’

‘So tell me the rest.’

‘I can’t.’

Luc was losing his patience. ‘Why not?’

Hugo was enjoying himself. ‘I can’t read it.’

Luc was finished with the game. ‘Look, spit it out and don’t be a jerk. Why can’t you read it?’

‘Because the rest of it’s in code!’