Malevil, Page 49

  “Milk.”

  “Do you want something to eat?”

  Hesitation. I asked again, “Do you want something to eat?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He spoke quietly. He had chosen milk in preference to wine. So he wasn’t a farmer, though I still wouldn’t place him too far from the soil.

  I signaled to La Menou. She poured him a bowl of milk and cut him a slice of bread. It was appreciably thicker than the one she had thrown at old Pougès. As I have said, she had a weakness for handsome young men. And our prisoner was handsome, with his black eyes, his black hair, and pointed beard. Hefty too, even though he was slender. La Menou also evaluated a man in terms of work.

  She spread some butter on his slice of bread and gave it to him. When the bread appeared in front of him, the prisoner half turned to look at La Menou, gave her a little filial smile, and said thank you with evident sincerity. My mind was made up by now, even though I still continued my show of cold suspicion. And from the glance Colin threw me I could see that he agreed, which strengthened me in my decision.

  La Menou served the rest of us, and we ate in profound silence. I told myself that if the smaller of the two, the one I’d shot, had given our prisoner the boost up, then he would be the one lying outside now with a shattered skull. An idiotic, futile thought of no use to anyone, and I dismissed it as quickly as I could, because it wasn’t exactly cheering me up. But it came back again several times during the course of the meal and ruined it for me totally.

  The prisoner had finished. He laid his hands flat on the table and waited. The food had done him good. There was color in his cheeks now. And bizarrely, he seemed to be happy to be there with us. Happy and relieved.

  I began to question him. He replied to all my questions without the slightest hesitation, without any attempt to hide anything. Indeed, he seemed actually pleased to be able to give me the information I asked for.

  We were much less so at hearing what we had to deal with: a band of seventeen men, commanded by a certain Vilmain, a former officer in a paratroop regiment, or so he claimed. The band was very rigidly structured into two classes, veterans and recruits, the latter being the slaves of the former. Ruthless discipline. Three punishments: flogging, solitary confinement without food or drink, throat cut in front of the troops. Vilmain was in possession of a bazooka and a dozen small shells for it, plus twenty rifles.

  Hervé Legrand—that was the prisoner’s name—told us how he had been recruited. Vilmain had attacked and taken his village southwest of Fumel. There had been losses during the attack and he needed to make them good.

  “So they rounded us up,” Hervé said, “René, Maurice, and me. They took us out into the village square. And Vilmain said to René, ‘Do you agree to sign on in my army?’ René said no. So the Feyrac brothers just threw him down on his knees and Bébelle cut his throat.

  “Bébelle? A woman?”

  “No. Well... no.”

  “Description?”

  “Five feet six, long blond hair, delicate features, slim waist, small hands and feet. Likes dressing up as a woman. You’d take him for one.”

  “And Vilmain? Does he take him for one?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the others?”

  “Oh, no!”

  “The men are afraid of Vilmain?”

  “They’re more afraid of Bébelle.” Then he added, “His skill with a knife is fantastic. He can throw better than any of the other veterans.”

  I looked at him. “When you’re a recruit, how do you get to be a veteran?”

  “I quote Vilmain: ‘Never by length of service.’”

  “How then?”

  “By volunteering for missions.”

  I said sharply, “And was that why you volunteered to reconnoiter Malevil?”

  “No. Maurice and I wanted to warn you and desert.”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  He answered without the slightest hesitation. “Because it wasn’t Maurice who was with me. It happened like this. This morning Vilmain asked for four men for two missions: one to reconnoiter Courcejac, the other Malevil. Maurice and I were the only ones to step forward. Both recruits. So then Vilmain bawled out the veterans and eventually two of them did volunteer. Vilmain detailed me off to go with one and Maurice with the other. At this moment, Maurice is reconnoitering Courcejac.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand. This morning Vilmain sent scouts to Courcejac and scouts to Malevil. Why didn’t he send any to La Roque?”

  A pause. Hervé just looked at me. “But La Roque,” he said slowly, “that’s where we are.”

  “What!” I said. And at the same time, I don’t know why, I half rose from my chair. “You are in La Roque? Since when?”

  My question was meaningless. What did it matter when exactly Vilmain had moved in? The only important fact was that he was there. With his army rifles, his gang of killers, his bazooka, and his experience.

  I noticed that my companions had all gone pale.

  “We occupied La Roque yesterday evening,” Hervé said, “at sunset.”

  I stood up and moved away from the table. I was shattered by what I’d heard. At dawn the day before I had sent out scouts to reconnoiter La Roque’s defenses, and that evening at dusk La Roque had been taken, but not by us! And this morning, if I hadn’t taken it into my head just now to take a prisoner, against Meyssonnier’s advice, because he wanted to observe my idiotic regulations, this morning I would have presented myself outside the walls of La Roque with my companions and the certainty of an easy victory. Unfortunately I have a good imagination. I could see us there, out in the open, mowed down by the devastating fire from seventeen military rifles.

  I could feel my legs shaking under me. I put my hands in my pockets, turned away from the table, and went over to the window. I opened both sides as wide as they would go and took several deep breaths. I reminded myself that the prisoner was watching me, and I forced myself to calm down. Our lives had depended on a minute chance, on two chances in fact: one unfortunate, the other fortunate, and canceling out the first. Vilmain took the town the night before the day I was to attack it, and I took one of his men prisoner a few hours before setting out myself for the attack. Realizing that your life depends on such absurd coincidences, that’s something that makes for modesty.

  Face deliberately expressionless, I went back to the table, sat down, and said curtly, “Go on.”

  Hervé told us about the taking of La Roque. Bébelle had appeared outside the south gate at dusk disguised as a woman carrying a small bundle. The fellow guarding the tower—we found out later that it was in fact Lanouaille—let him in, and as soon as Bébelle had made sure Lanouaille was alone, he had slit the butcher’s throat. Then he opened the gate for the others. The town fell without a shot being fired.

  Meyssonnier then asked to be allowed to speak. I nodded.

  “How many of these .36 rifles do you have?” he asked the prisoner.

  “Twenty.”

  “And plenty of ammunition for them?”

  “Yes, I think so. It’s rationed, but not all that strictly. Vilmain’s principle is always to have twenty men for his twenty rifles.”

  At Meyssonnier’s request, Hervé then described the bazooka in great detail. When he had finished, I broke in. “There’s one thing I want clearing up. Are there twenty of you or just seventeen?”

  “In theory there are supposed to be twenty. But we’ve lost three since Fumel. So that leaves only seventeen. Well no, not seventeen. Now you’ve killed another it’s sixteen! And with me a prisoner fifteen!”

  There was no room for doubt. From the tone in which he spoke he was clearly very pleased to be there with us.

  After a moment, I said, “The Maurice who was recruited at the same time as you, have you known him long?”

  “I should say!” Hervé said, his voice suddenly bright and eager. “Ever since we were children. I was on holiday at his place when the bomb exploded
.”

  “He means a lot to you?”

  “Well, yes, of course!” Hervé said.

  I looked at him. “In that case, you can’t join us here and leave him there. It’s not possible. Can you see yourself firing at him if Vilmain attacks?”

  Hervé blushed, and I could read two conflicting emotions in his eyes. He was happy because I had entertained the idea of arming him and letting him fight on our side, but he was ashamed at having forgotten Maurice. I gave a little tap on the table with my hollowed palm. “I tell you what we’re going to do, Hervé. We’re going to let you go.”

  He started. Never can a prisoner have been less overjoyed at the idea of being freed. I was also aware, on the periphery of my vision, of mixed reactions among the others.

  I kept my eyes on Hervé. The blood had left his face again. I said, “Is there something wrong?”

  He nodded. “If you let me go without giving me my rifle back,” he said in a choking voice, “you might as well be condemning me to death.”

  “I’d thought of that. We shall give you your rifle back as you leave.”

  This time the mixed reactions were even more marked. I pretended not to notice them. I went on: “So here’s what you do. You don’t say you were taken prisoner, obviously. You say that your companion was killed when he put his head above the palisade and that you fled under a hail of bullets. You will also say that you thought the shots were coming from the top of the keep.”

  I had no wish for Vilmain to suspect the existence, before his attack, of the little dugout on the Sept Fayards hill.

  “Remember that, it’s important.”

  “I’ll remember,” Hervé said.

  “Right. And then at the first opportunity, you and Maurice...”

  “Yes, you don’t need to draw me a picture,” Hervé said.

  “One last question, Hervé. Which way did you come to La Roque?”

  “Along the road,” he answered, rather puzzled. “Is there another way?”

  I didn’t answer. It was over. There was nothing more for us to say to each other. Hervé waited. He let his dark, sensitive, honest eyes wander around him. His little pointed beard suited him. It gave him distinction, made him look older. And he sat there looking at us, at La Menou—he had immediately sensed the soft spot she had for him—at the mullioned windows, the weapons on the wall, the vast fireplace. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed, and although he was putting a good face on it, I knew that this boy, because he was only a boy, was very moved. And that he had only one fear: losing the people who had already adopted him. Losing Malevil.

  I stood up. “It’s time then, Hervé.”

  He rose too as I went over to replace his blindfold. We all escorted him back as far as the main gate, but from that point on, only Meyssonnier and I went with him as far as the palisade. We opened the sliding cat door for him to crawl out. Luckily for him, the body of the veteran had fallen out toward the precipice, so Hervé wasn’t obliged to pass too near him as he emerged on the other side. I passed his rifle through after him, and as he stood up he gave us a big wave with one arm, accompanied by a broad childlike grin. I watched him through the Judas as he strode off down the hill.

  “We may have lost a rifle there,” Meyssonnier said in my ear.

  I looked around at him. “But we may end up with two more.”

  And more important still, with two more fighting men. Because with the dead man’s, we now had eight guns. Enough to arm Miette and Catie as well as our six men. No, it was men we needed most now. If Hervé and Maurice succeeded, then Vilmain would be reduced to fourteen. And our strength would be increased to ten. An important consideration, since numbers count for a great deal in a battle dependent mainly on fire power.

  I explained this at the assembly I called as soon as Hervé had gone. It was held in the gate tower, while Jacquet was digging a grave for the dead veteran outside the palisade, and Peyssou, a hundred yards farther on, hid beside the road, gun at the ready, to cover him as he worked. “And remember, Peyssou,” Meyssonnier had said, “keep under cover yourself. See without being seen!”

  Meyssonnier was our military expert. He was the know-all in such matters. Communist though he was, he’d done his military training. Presumably he felt that knowledge was always worth coming by, no matter what the source. So he explained to us at the start of the assembly that the .36 rifle was the rifle used by the French Army at the time of the Second World War. Better weapons had certainly been developed since, but the .36 was not to be sniffed at all the same. As for the bazooka, again according to Meyssonnier, that was almost certainly the bazooka brought out by the Americans in 1942 as an anti-tank weapon. Very accurate up to about seventy yards. There was no danger to the walls of Malevil, they were too thick. If Peyssou had been there he would have added, And built with good mortar. A mortar now more than six hundred years old and harder than the stone itself.

  “But the palisade, I’m afraid!” Meyssonnier said with a shake of the head. “And the main gate! And the drawbridge into the inner enclosure...”

  We looked at each other. I made haste to display an optimism that I wasn’t in fact feeling in the slightest. “No problem,” I said firmly. “The palisade, needless to say, we sacrifice. It was never intended as anything more than an early warning system and a piece of camouflage anyway. It will still fulfill its delaying role by forcing the enemy to destroy it and show himself. But the main gate is a different matter. I suggest we construct a protective shield in front of it, a dry-stone wall, say a good three feet thick and nine high. Just far enough from the bridge to allow a man on horseback to get around it, and then, well we have sand in the courtyard, we have sacks in the cellar, so we can make sandbags to pile up in front of the wall.”

  To my great relief, Meyssonnier approved these suggestions, and after the technical explanations he had provided earlier his approbation carried great weight.

  Before we set about these tasks, I had a few more words to say. I had insisted on the night watch being maintained the previous night against general opposition. It was as well I had. I didn’t want to overdo it, but nevertheless it had to be stressed: that resistance had in fact constituted a latent threat to discipline. As was also, and to an even more serious extent, Catie’s protest when I detailed her to keep watch on the walls during the prisoner’s interrogation. And there I lashed out a little. “That kind of thing is no longer tolerable from now on! When I give an order I expect it to be obeyed. And I do not expect to have to waste my time discussing it with thoughtless little troublemakers!”

  I stood up. The meeting was over, and it had lasted less than ten minutes. The days of our earlier marathon discussions seemed a whole world away.

  Catie hadn’t spoken, but she had thrown me a very odd look. A look of hate? Of resentment? Not in the slightest. It seemed to be saying something much more like Oh, so I’m a thoughtless little troublemaker, am I? Well just you wait and see! And yet that “just you wait and see!” was in no way a threat. If I had dared, I would have described it as more like a promise.

  When the grave had been dug and the body duly buried, I recalled the indispensable Peyssou from his guard duty out beside the La Roque road and replaced him with Colin. Because I had no wish to be caught unprepared by a daylight attack while we were all unarmed and at work, even though I thought such an event highly unlikely. I divided us into two gangs. The first, with Peyssou as foreman, had the job of providing him with the stone he needed to build his wall. This had to be brought out from the first enclosure, where there were considerable piles of already shaped blocks readily available. The second gang, consisting of the four women and Evelyne, was detailed off to fill the sandbags, tie them, then bring them down to the edge of the moat ready to be piled into position later. And our two iron wheelbarrows were kept more or less constantly on the move all the rest of the day.

  In order to keep everyone down near the palisade, thus saving precious time, I had decided that for as long as the
state of alert lasted we would all take our meals on a rota system in the gate-tower kitchen, and that they would consist simply of cold cuts, since La Menou and La Falvine had plenty to do without cooking.

  Before Peyssou began laying his first course, I had our two carts brought out—my adapted trailer and the one from L’Étang—and parked alongside the moat in the part of the old parking area we had left free of traps. They would not restrict our line of fire there, and they would not be imprisoned inside by the new wall: important, because I had decided that it should remain as a permanent feature of our fortifications. Because if we were attacked again in the future, even by a band without a bazooka, the big main gate, being made of wood, was still Malevil’s weak point. The enemy could burn it or smash it in. So it would always be in our interest to impede his access to it.

  It was soon borne in upon me that medieval masons didn’t stint the dimensions of their building stones. The ones we were handling had come from the ruins of the old hamlet built in the outer enclosure (in the days when there was a resident judge in Malevil), and they were of a weight to command respect. It was no small matter lifting them off the heap, then resting them on the front of one’s thighs as one straightened up sufficiently to be able to let them fall, with great relief, into the barrow. Some of them took two of us to lift. I had sent Colin out to keep watch outside precisely in order to spare him a task requiring so much brute strength. But Thomas, despite his excellent physical form, seemed to me to be having trouble. Meyssonnier was streaming with sweat. Only Jacquet, with those gorilla’s arms of his, seemed to be perfectly at ease, effortlessly lifting blocks for which I would have had to ask his help.

  As for myself, I was disappointed by my performance, and as usual in such situations, instead of thinking to myself, as I would have done at thirty, that I was tired and off form, I told myself that I was getting old, and I sank into despondency. Not for long though, because then I suddenly remembered that I’d had very little sleep the night before, and that I’d certainly had my share of tension and anxiety in the past few hours. Though this realization didn’t exactly fill me with renewed strength, it certainly improved my morale, and I found I was able to stand the pace, the sweat streaming off me in the hot sun and the heavy close weather, fingernails broken, hands aching, lower back growing steadily stiffer.