Englishwoman in France (29 page)

‘We know what has been ordered,' snaps Modeste. He turns to Serina. ‘Madam, say goodbye to your son and leave, else this condemnation taints you.'

Tib nods and looks towards Peter the seaman who is standing on the edge of the clearing. ‘Peter! Take my mother back to Good Fortune. Guard her every step of the way.'

Serina stands up straight, her face cold and hard. Tib reaches up and makes the sign of the fish on her forehead. ‘Blessings on you, Mother.'

She bows gravely to Modeste, then to me and to Lupinus before bending down to pick up Misou and following the seaman down the path towards the river. The curtain of soldiers parts to let her through.

The Centurion waits till she's out of sight then coughs. ‘Now, messires, madam. We must go to this village and show these ignorant people what happens to those who show no respect for our old gods.'

Modeste steps before him. ‘Centurion! The man of Aegyptus here is a slave of her Imperial Highness, sent with us from Nicomedia in gratitude when we cured her grandson. You will have heard of that? This man is no follower of the Nazarene. His name will certainly not be on your document. Let him go.'

The Centurion glances across at Lupinus, checks his paper and nods.

‘Go!' hisses Modeste.

Lupinus shakes his head.

‘Go!' echoes Tib. ‘What else can you do, Lupinus? Go!'

Lupinus frowns and shrugs, then slips away. Now it's just the three of us.

Modeste tries again. ‘And the woman! She's no follower of the Nazarene. I tell you! She's from another place. She believes in Mars and Jupiter and reads their messages from the heavens. She's not a follower, I tell you!' I so love him for the sheer desperation in his voice.

The commander shakes his head. ‘You're named Florence?' he says directly to me. His eyes are large and brown and set in a network of deep wrinkles.

‘I have two names,' I say, my voice trembling. ‘But one of them is Florence.'

He nods his satisfaction then glances at two soldiers standing near him. ‘Tie them! Take them!' he says.

Later, as I stumble down the path behind Tib and in front of Modeste, I see a coronet of bees buzzing around Tib's head. I can hear them buzzing around me. Bees are strange creatures. Even through all this helpless, numb misery I wonder what they're up to now.

The village, when we reach it, is crowded with pilgrims as well as villagers. The air is rent with shrieks and moans. The soldiers have to batter the crowds away with the flat of their swords as we make our way to the centre of the village. We have to step over a man who is lying in the path, moaning, foaming at the mouth.

In the village clearing, there are soldiers already piling brushwood in a pyre before Cessaro's crudely built little temple. The cry of ‘Shame! Shame!' is taken up by many voices. Then the crowd quietens as three soldiers haul a block of wood before the central wooden columns of the temple.

The Centurion reins in his horse, stops our little procession and watches two men roll a second block of wood and position it beside the first. ‘The gods will be well appeased today,' he says grimly.

His soldiers hustle us on towards the house of Léance, the biggest in the village. Now I can see my bees. They are hanging in a swarm, like a bundle of wool, from the steep overhang of Léance's roof. The bees in Léance's own hive will be none too pleased by their presence.

Inside the house the soldiers tie us to the central tree trunk post and leave us. There is no sign of Léance or his wife. ‘This is it, friends,' says Modeste quietly. ‘This is where everything is tested.'

‘There was so much more to do,' says Tib, his voice thready and so very young. ‘I don't want this, Modeste. What can we do?'

Oh, Tib! Oh, Siri, tied to another tree trunk, hundreds of miles and seventeen hundred years away.

‘We can do nothing, Tib,' says Modeste. ‘They'll ask you if you will make sacrifices to the old gods, to the God Emperors. If you don't, nothing can stop this thing here today.'

Tib laughs hysterically at this. ‘I would never do that.' He sounds so very young.

‘Then what happens today, dearest boy, will happen. It's our time. Don't we know that we will be there today at the side of our own Lord? In Paradise?'

Modeste's tranquil voice makes me angry and I shout, ‘Why don't we fight? Why don't we argue? Why do we just have to accept this? You make me sick! The pair of you.' I start to shiver violently.

Modeste lifts a manacled hand, pulls my face closer to his and looks me deep in the eyes. ‘Have you learned nothing while you have been with us, Florence? An honest and true life must remain that till the end. And we know – you in your own pagan way know – that the end is not the end. There is no ending.' He repeats the words. ‘There is no ending.'

‘Modeste is right. That's the point, dear Florence,' says Tib softly, firmly now. ‘The end is not the end.'

I'm still shuddering and shaking. Tib hauls on his shackles, comes in close and all three of us stand in a circle, our arms around each other. Tib stares hard at me with those eyes too wide for life. Modeste clutches my hand. My mad panic fades.

Tib bends his neck and allows his fish amulet to fall into his hand. He catches it and throws it towards me. I duck and, awkwardly, manage to loop it over my head. ‘This will guard you, Florence. This will keep you safe.'

Then the door swings open and sunlight floods into the room. The three soldiers are black shadows as they move forward and untie us. Each soldier takes charge of one of us and marches us outside, through the shouting, screaming crowd to the square before the temple. At first all I can see are the soldiers, shoulder to shoulder with their backs to the hollow square, facing a grumbling crowd of Cesseroneans and pilgrims. Even in this dire moment I think how brave these people are, not to run away from these murderous men.

Brushwood is piled high around a newly erected post. Whoever built the pyre has left a space for access with crude steps behind and my soldier hustles me up these steps and ties me to the post. The pyre is placed so that I'm looking down on the two blocks of wood where now Modeste and Tib are being forced to kneel. Behind them, their appointed soldiers draw their swords from their scabbards and hold them loosely in front of them.

The Centurion's horse snickers and the bright sun glances off the shining sidepieces of his helmet. The bees are buzzing around his head, clambering from the metal leaves of his armour into the more comfortable fields of his flowing red cloak.

He calls out something to Tib and to Modeste, gesturing to the open doors of the temple. But here is a strange thing: try as I might I can't understand a word he's saying. And – worse – I can't understand the words of their response although their shaking heads tell me their meaning. It's gone, the gift of understanding that miraculously came upon me by the river on that first day at Pentecost.

Now, Modeste and Tib are kneeling and being told to bow their heads and they do so. The soldier behind Modeste turns his neck this way and that, settles his shoulders and grasps his sword firmly with both hands. His comrade follows suit.

My soldier goes off and returns with a long flaring torch. The soldiers behind Modeste and Tib raise their swords, two-handed, above their heads, the tips pointed dagger-like at the napes of Tib and Modeste. I can see the muscles in their forearms flex as they grasp their swords even more tightly. Someone in the crowd shrieks ‘No!' and the chant is taken up. ‘No. No. No!' At least I recognize this word.

At an order from the Centurion the soldiers facing the crowds in the square draw their swords, their armour creaking and rattling.

I look around in desperation. Somehow Léance and Lupinus have made their way inside the hollow square of soldiers and are standing beside my pyre. In their arms they are holding the great flagons Léance uses for his wine. Behind the cordon are more Cesseroneans with more flagons.

The Centurion sits on his horse, both hands raised and his legs pressed to the horse's flanks. He's ready to make some signal. Then the horse rears and the Centurion's hands come down to control it. Now I see him clawing at the neck of his jerkin, his face red. My bees are at work. Soldiers behind him run to his aid and people run through the cordon, flagons in their hands, and stand by Léance.

At last the Centurion roars an order strangled by a great bellow of pain. The executioners keep their hands above their heads and, with a glance into my eyes, the torch soldier kneels to light the edges of my pyre. The flames leap up as the smoke cuts the air. So although I can hear the half exultant, half despairing roar of the crowd I do not see the executioners' work. All I see is the red cloak of the Centurion flailing about as he fights my bees. I close my eyes and open them as the flames lick closer. I wish I could pray like Tib and Modeste but I can't.

Now Lupinus and Léance raise their flagons, and all the others do the same. All their movements become slow; every action is deliberate and elongated as Lupinus and the Cesseroneans shoot flagon after flagon of water over me: gallons of water slosh over my body, my head, my face, and my neck. I hear the flames sizzle. I cannot see. I cannot breathe: my lungs are full of steam and water is crashing over my face, in my eyes, in my mouth, into my nose.

I am drowning.

C
harles shook hands with the man from the boatyard, who then set off again down the canal path on his dusty, heavy duty bike. The boat man's verdict had been final. The gearbox was kaput
.
He'd grinned. ‘In the old days you could have rowed or set up sail, Monsieur. But now a new gearbox of a special kind we must discover.' It would take a day to get the new gearbox from Beziers – if they had one – and perhaps another day to fit it.

The gearbox had been complaining crankily since Paris and although for a while it had responded to his tinkering, it had given up the ghost here at Agde where he'd come to witness the famous celebration of Pentecost.

He'd just been warming up the engine for his return journey when the grinding had come to a crescendo and then dissolved into deadly, irretrievable silence. He told himself not to complain. His narrowboat had done such good service, bringing him down the canals and rivers of England, then across the Channel with a volunteer crew who relished the risk of getting a boat with such a shallow draft across the Channel. Then, he was alone again and the narrowboat had chugged on and on down the rivers of France and finally here on to the Canal du Midi. So don't complain, Charles, he'd told himself in one of many conversations he'd had with himself on this long journey.

The boatyard man had shaken his head as he listened to Charles' travellers' tales. He'd wedged the air with his hands. ‘
Sûrement, monsieur, le projet de ce bateau est trop peu profond pour naviguer dans la Manche?
' The draft too shallow for the English Channel. Still, being a boatman himself the man had admired the boat's rather restrained decoration – dark green with a red trim and a painted castle in landscape. But he'd thrown up his hands in amazement when Charles explained that the castle had been built to house animals. ‘
Les Anglais, ils sont tellement très fous!
' he said. The English are mad. Very.

Now Charles watched the boatman's bike swerve on the canal path to avoid a couple walking along hand in hand. The afternoon had that baked feeling common this far south and he thought a walk by the river would cool him down. He locked up his boat, checked the padlocks on the chain that secured his motorbike to the deck, pulled on the linen jacket that he wore for its useful pockets and set off into the town and down towards the river.

He'd been right. The river was shadier and cooler than the canal and the walk was pleasant. He stopped now and then to take photographs of the light on the flat green water and the deep shadows of the undergrowth on the far bank. He stopped for a minute on a muddy boat landing to allow more exposure time to compensate for the deep shade. Standing very still, he became aware of some turbulence eight feet from the bank. Could be a turtle, he thought. He's seen a turtle swimming down the centre of the canal yesterday. But later, on his computer screen, the creature had been barely visible.

Now he lowered his camera and watched as the turbulence transformed itself into a hand, a shoulder, a black and white face that spluttered and coughed, spitting out water like a whale. He threw down his camera, threw off his jacket, sat down on the bank and slithered his way into the water. It was deeper than he'd thought and he had to swim a couple of strokes to reach the flailing woman.

When he got to her she shouted and fought, but finally he managed to get one arm under her shoulder and turn on to his back to haul her to the shore. She was a bundle of sodden black rags and smelled of the river and – curiously – of acrid smoke. He pulled her on to the landing place, knelt down and looked at her. She was younger than he'd thought. He leaned down to pull back the thick black hair that was plastered over her face. Sodden, withered flowers came away in his hands. Her face was black with soot and her mascara had run, giving her the look of a clown. Ah yes! he thought. The wild joy in the streets yesterday. Pentecost!

‘
Mon dieu!
' A voice came from behind him. ‘
Elle est morte?
' A diminutive woman had stopped and was standing with her feet astride her bicycle.

She had a straw hat on her head, a blonde pony tail and rope-soled sandals.

He blinked. ‘I don't think so, madame.' He leaned down again, felt the woman's throat and found a very faint pulse. Quickly, he turned her on to her side and thumped her back quite hard. Once. Twice. ‘Come on!' he said. ‘Come on!' Then she retched, her body arched and she spewed out what seemed like gallons of foul-smelling river water on to the ground beside her. Then she started to cough and splutter again. Again he could smell smoke and something like sour cheese.