Englishwoman in France (27 page)

‘Then the Governor's soldiers came to get you, even the woman, and we were very sad. So while you were away I prayed to our great god Taranus that you would be safe. While you were away two men came from Setus and asked for you by name. I showed them your camp and said you would return. They lodged the map with me and I put it in your box. I tell you, messire, when that map was brought from Setus I knew it was a sign. So I sacrificed again to Taranus and promised that if you returned safely I'd let you have the map and allow you to complete your quest.'

Modeste nods slowly. ‘I understand that, but what about today? Why do you come galloping up the hill to stop us?'

Léance smiles sheepishly. ‘It's hard, messire, to squeeze hundreds of years of custom from a man's thoughts. Despite my promise to Taranus I still doubted that I'd done the right thing.'

‘But now the cat is out of the bag,' I say. That phrase again.

Léance frowns a moment, then understands. ‘I don't know this, madam. I think that would only be so if you returned the cat to the bag. My ancestors promised to keep the secrets.'

Modeste reaches out to hug Léance and the old man wriggles free of his grasp. ‘Go back to your house, Léance,' says Modeste. ‘I thank you for your story but you should not be here.'

‘What will you do, messire?' asks Léance.

‘I'll do what is right but that will mean no betrayal to you. Your secret will remain.'

Léance nods, satisfied, and turns and climbs down the hill, using his stick only occasionally for balance. On his way down he passes Tibery and Lupinus, who are on their way up.

Modeste looks at me. ‘Now, Florence, we will begin!' he says.

W
e dig on through the morning, the four of us taking turns. We use the dug out stones and columns to support the trench so that it does not fall in on us. We're aware of being watched, from all sides, but we keep digging.

Tib and Lupinus lend an energetic hand, not questioning the task. When they arrived Tib told us that the villagers had sought them out, told them to come to this place. He eyes Modeste thoughtfully. ‘So this is what you've been searching for, Modeste? Ever since we came to Good Fortune?'

‘So it is,' says Modeste calmly. ‘Now I've found it, and now I must dig. So it's fortunate that we have four pairs of hands instead of two.'

‘And what will we find? Great treasure?' Tib's excitement is childlike, untroubled.

Modeste sits down and drinks the water they'd brought for us. I tell him the tale that Léance had told us.

‘So now,' says Modeste, ‘we must dig, to find out why Tiberius – your namesake, remember – had them build such a beautiful shrine.'

I thought it was curious that there was no talk between them of the Nazarene. Tib runs his fingers lovingly over the crisply carved outline of the fish but says nothing.

The steady rhythm of digging with the mattock leaves me room for reflection. Modeste has taken on so many different guises to fulfil this task. He was searching for this shrine in my waketime; he's been searching for it in this dreamtime. And probably in other times about which I know nothing. He's driven to find the shrine and name its contents. He's the perpetual unsatisfied scholar, the doubter who looks for truth and needs proof. Perhaps in his first incarnation his name was Thomas.

Odd then that Tib, Modeste's own convert, needs no proof. His faith shines from him; it is his fingerprint. It's as genuine as it is unquestioning. In him there is no doubt. His faith joins his intelligence to inform his kindness to people, his proven ability to heal. Tib lives in his present, not other people's past. Perhaps this is the sign of a very old soul.

And it looks now as though Modeste's search is reaching its end. Why now? Perhaps this is because in this time, in this place, he came across the boy Tibery? Perhaps it's because I, in my savage mourning for Siri, am here travelling with him, jumping from my own waketime to this dreamtime? It looks like the time and the place for the discovery of the shrine
has
to be here and now. The Cesseroneans are the key. They recognize Tibery and allow Modeste into their secret, which has no written record but must rely on the truth pulsing from generations of storytelling. Believing in gods much older than Rome or Nazareth, their craftsmen's pride ultimately means that it was they, not the Romans or the followers of the Nazarene, who possessed the secret of the shrine. And it's Léance who, in the name of his craftsmen forefathers, was the one to let Modeste into this old secret.

The sun has climbed to its height and Modeste, Tib and I stop to wipe our brows and cry thirst. Lupinus keeps digging. Tib runs down to the river to refill our flagons. Lupinus suddenly grunts and we look down at the earth beside his mattock. He rubs it with the sole of his sandal and we can see a pattern. He has hit a tessellated floor.

Tib jumps into the hole and trickles some water beside Lupinus' moving foot. I rub with my foot, then get down on my knees and rub the ground hard with my gown. The floor is black and white with touches of green and red: some kind of corner design with green leaves and dark red roses.

‘This gives us the direction,' Modeste says quietly. ‘We follow the pattern.'

We work on with a greater will now, using our shoulder sacks to hurl soil up out of the hole. Finally the low slant of sunlight shows us a round arch and we dig on. Then we use our hands to claw away the soil. Lupinus jumps up out of the hole to kick away the pile on the top so it doesn't tumble back in. Tibery is standing back watching as my hand keeps bumping into Modeste's as we scrabble away at the soil.

My hand finally hits something that isn't soil. ‘Modeste,' I say. He puts his hand over mine. It's a lump of greasy wood.

Lupinus jumps back into the hole. ‘Stand away!' he says.

‘Stand away!' he repeats.

We climb out of the hole and watch as he clears away the last of the soil from what now looks like a very large box and hauls it out from under the arch. The box is five feet long and two feet wide and is bound with what looks like heavily greased ship's ropes. From the way Lupinus grunts as he lifts it out of the hole it must be very heavy.

Now we can see it is made of what looks like blackened ship's timbers. And around us there is the faintest smell of the sea. Tib puts a hand on a rope and pulls it. It comes away, falls to pieces in his hands. Modeste peels another away, then another. I look up to see Lupinus pulling his hand down his face to get rid of his tears.

‘Now what?' says Modeste, his voice trembling. ‘What do we do?'

‘We open it,' I say firmly. ‘Open it, for goodness' sake.'

‘Open it, Modeste,' says Tib. ‘You've waited a long time.'

‘Open it, messire,' Lupinus' deep voice whispers.

Modeste pulls away the last of the rotten rope and looks across at me. That look contains all our time together: the talk, the laughter, the work, the lovemaking. ‘Help me, Florence,' he says.

I take one end and he takes the other and we both pull at the top. It doesn't budge. Tib and Lupinus come to help: now there are four hands on four corners. The lid creaks, and finally it moves. And falls to pieces in our hands. We look into the box and all we can see is pebbles. I sit back, disappointed. This seems very cruel. Have Léance and the Cesseroneans played a trick on us?

Then Tib leans forward and removes one pebble, then another. We all join in, scooping out the pebbles at random. My palm hits a carved wooden surface and we slow down, moving the last pebbles with great care. The object in its pebble bed is hard to make out in the shadowy depths of the hole.

‘Wait!' Lupinus puts a hand on my shoulder and on Modeste's shoulder and we stand back. He leans down and plucks a heavily carved box from its pebble bed. It is the size of a walker's backpack and smells faintly of salt and sandalwood. He walks backwards and places it on a piece of clear ground.

The afternoon sun is shining, the sky is Delft blue, and the land is still. There is no movement but still I can feel the watching eyes in the scrubland around us. We are seen. We stand around the box, paralyzed by fear, by delight.

At last Tib kneels down beside it, clicks two wooden levers and it opens. I kneel down beside him. Modeste kneels beside me. Lupinus towers over us all. Whatever is inside is covered by a small, perfectly preserved purple cloth embroidered in gold around the edge.

For a second the world slows to a halt about me. I see the midwife holding Siri, offering her to me that first time. The world starts up again and, when I lift the purple cloth from the casket, I'm the only one who is not surprised. Around me a chorus of groans greets the sight of a baby perhaps three or four months old. Perfectly preserved she's lying on cloth of gold, and wrapped in fine wool the colour of new cream. She has a topknot of black hair, an olive complexion and round smooth features. Beside her are miniature sandals, as beautifully wrought as the sandals given to me by the Empress. By her head is a little felt hat in red, the colour of Siri's hat in the attaché case at home: the hat Siri was wearing when we met Philip.

Behind me Lupinus sets up a continuous muttering. Modeste clutches my arm too tightly. Tib murmurs, ‘Hello baby!' in a voice without fear. I hear my own voice echoing his. This is – or was once – a real child.

Each of us in turn touches that cold, exquisite face: we offer her a kind of greeting. ‘Who are you, baby?' says Tib. ‘Who are you?' Modeste touches the black hair, smoothes it across the fontanelle. Lupinus starts to hum a strange, gruff lullaby.

How long we have been here I don't know. But suddenly the sun has lost its daytime heat and I shiver. Someone, probably Léance, has lit a fire under the trees and left wine and bread. He's also left us torches – bundles of sticks tied with rag and dipped in beeswax. He intends us to work on into the night.

‘We will eat,' announces Modeste, carefully drawing the cloth across the baby's face and closing the lid of the carved box. ‘We should eat.' He nods at Lupinus, who stands up, lifts the casket, puts it safely under his arm and heads for the tree. Tib leaps to his feet and follows, and Modeste and I follow him, our hands joined.

We sit around the casket and eat, breaking the bread and drinking the wine in silence. The bread tastes of nuts and sunshine; the wine tastes of earth and roses. Finally Tib wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Now, dear Modeste,' he says. ‘What have we here?'

Beside me I can feel Modeste shake his head. I sense his disappointment. ‘It's not clear to me at all. I've searched for it through many ages. My mission was to find it. I thought it might be . . .' His voice trails off. ‘But I am not sure.' His gaze moves across to the hole in the hill, the tumbled stones and columns, the rash of pebbles, the detritus of our desperate digging. Now Tib stands up and holds out his hands, one to me, one to Modeste. We all stand up and now Lupinus is between Modeste and me holding our hands, completing the circle around the casket. They start to say their prayers, familiar to me now. Lupinus' deep tones join their lighter ones and I close my eyes. Behind my lids I see again the baby's round dark face. Her eyes blink open and widen in – what? Appeal? Recognition? They are very dark with violet just around the iris. I've seen those eyes before. Then the fragile eyelids close again and I open my own eyes to find the four of us standing there around the casket, staring at each other.

Now I know why I am in this dream. ‘This baby should be left here,' I say firmly. ‘No one knows who she is. She may be a child from your story. Or she could be something to do with the emperor who built the shrine. If we bring her out and talk about her she'll be the plaything of idiots.' I turn and look Modeste in the eyes. ‘She is some mother's child and we should leave her in peace. Believe me, you and Tib may be the wisest of souls, but I know about this thing. She is some sad mother's child. We should leave her in peace and let her stay undisturbed. We should not hold onto her.'

Modeste sighs as he looks around our little circle. ‘Florence is right. Perhaps she herself is here with us now just to show us this truth. We could force the baby into our legend and weave stories about her for our own virtuous ends. But we have raked her out of her last cradle and we should return her there. Any other way has no honour. I see now that my search is over.' Despite the authority of his words his tone is very sad.

‘Poor baby,' says Tib. He looks at me and in his eyes I see twin reflections of Siri with her cloud of black hair. ‘Let her go.'

Let her go. Let this baby go. As I must let Siri go. I see now that my grief has clung to Siri, not allowed her to go. In my heart I forgave – or at least understood – those boys who killed her but I could not forgive her for dying, for going from me.

We all stare down at the sandalwood box. Then I kneel down and open it again. My nose twitches and I want to sneeze. The sandalwood smell has gone. It has been replaced by something more bitter – earthy and acrid at the same time.

I lift the purple cloth and gasp. The others mutter in surprise. The fresh pink bloom on the baby's cheek has turned grey. ‘This is it . . .' I search for the right words in my head. ‘This is it. Why we had to find her. It can't be right that a baby's body stays intact, remains uncorrupt . . .'

Modeste joins in. ‘She was halted on her way, imprisoned still in her body. Her preservation in the shrine prevented . . .'

Now Tib: ‘We can see now why you had to find her, Modeste. You had to free her to go on her journey.' He nods. ‘So now we've freed this little one. Now her body will decay and she'll be free to go on. We have touched her and she is ready to go on.'

I pull the cloth back across the blackening face of the little girl and close the lid of the box. ‘We have to put her back there into the hill.'