The Caves of Périgord (17 page)

“Grand, I call it. What’s the point of coming to the home of the best food in France if we don’t enjoy it?”

They finished their liver, sat back and cleansed their palates with the mineral water, and then leaned forward to address themselves to the lightly grilled fish. Hearing a burst of laughter, Lydia looked casually around the room. There was a loud and jolly English family talking of plonk and fizz, some serious French tables concentrating on their food, a table of three businessmen talking in low voices, and a rather fetching pair of young lovers, their heads close together and eyes sharing secrets. The laughter had come from the English family. From behind her came a murmur of what might have been German, except for the constant sound of throat clearing. Must be Dutch. I wonder what they all make of me and Manners, she mused. Not lovers, certainly, but not married either. Friends, then, which is what she supposed they were becoming. Or allies, which is what they were. Or possibly, she smiled to herself, adventurers. What kind of adventure would be up to her.

And that, she told herself with a thoughtful glance at the rather appealing and likeable Manners as he tasted the Pomerol and pronounced it sound, was how it should be!

CHAPTER 8
The Vézère Valley, 15,000 B.C.

T
he great hunt was always the day after the sun and moon had appeared together in the sky the previous evening, in the time when the river waters were at their highest and the bears lumbered sleepily from their caves and the first flowers came on the trees that would give the sweet and tiny fruit. In the days of the ancestors, it had always been a hungry time, when all the men and boys of the tribe and all the younger women would take to the hunt at once. But now that the reindeer flocked so thickly on the hills and valley to the north and the fish danced in the rivers, there had been only three hungers that the
Keeper of the Horses could remember. He had never had to leave any of his own children out for the wolves, although he remembered that as a youth he had lost two sisters that way.

But he liked this time, the feeling that they were doing as their fathers and ancestors had always done, taking all the men of the tribe on the great hunt that would leave them all gorged with meat. He liked watching the boys taking their first turn in the long line of beaters, and the way they would all work together, the flint men and the fishers and the woodmen, shaping the stakes and bringing the stones that would force the reindeer to the cliff where they would tumble and fall onto the rocks below. Above all, he liked to watch the boys who were to become men dart down into those rocks and learn to kill, to mark the beast marks on their chest with the blood they spilled. He liked to watch the prouder, taller way they walked, even under the burdens of the long boughs with the reindeer slung upon them, as they marched back into the village as men. He felt like part of a river that always flowed. His father had done the same, and then taken him to the hunt to teach him the ways of it, and now his own father had flowed on down to the great sea. He would flow down too, one day. But now he was still part of the river of his people, flowing endlessly, the old going before, the young coming on behind.

They always began with the sacrifice at dawn before the cave. And because the Keeper of the Bulls made his sacrifice each day, it had become the custom that he led the sacrifice for this day of the hunt. It had not been that way when he was younger, thought the Keeper of the Horses. They had all done it together then. And now he felt a snatch of disappointment, as he stood in line before the cave with the other Keepers, while the Keeper of the Bulls took the sacrifice alone, and the chief hunter kneeled before him, and the leaders of the flint and fisher and wood men kneeled to the side.

Did it matter, the way the Keeper of the Bulls always pushed himself forward, always took the lead? Did it matter that he somehow took the
credit for the good hunting and the plentiful reindeer? Even for the fish. It did not matter much to him. He liked to stand to one side, looking at all the men of the village gathered together just for this rare occasion, all feeling part of a great family. But he found himself noticing for the first time the deference with which the chief hunter bowed to the Keeper of the Bulls, the look of awe and respect on the faces of the young men, the way the boys trembled as if something was being done that was far beyond their imagining.

The Keeper of the Bulls gave them something to be awed by, sure enough. He carried off the ceremony with a great and ponderous dignity. He took the wood chips from the woodman, the ax from the flint man, the long bone of the longest fish that the fishermen had caught and piled them before the great bull’s skull that loomed over the sacrifice fire. The chief hunter, still kneeling, his head still bowed, proffered a reindeer hoof in his two outstretched hands.

“That the game may not run from our spears, we burn this hoof to you, Great Bull,” chanted the Keeper of the Bulls, in a voice that carried far beyond the gathered men and the women at a respectful distance below. He took the hoof, and placed it on the fire. The chief hunter leaned forward and bowed his forehead to the ground before the bull’s skull. That had never happened before. As the stink of burning fur drifted among them, the Keeper of the Bulls placed his hand on the skull, between the two outstretched horns, and chanted, “The sacrifice is accepted.”

A great murmur of approval came from the gathered men. The Keeper of the Horses glanced sideways to see if any of the other Keepers were as startled as he. No. Their eyes were fixed on the ceremony, and they too were nodding in agreement and respect.

The chief hunter took a scrap of reindeer hide, bowed again, and proffered it to the bull’s skull. The Keeper of the Bulls took it, placed it on the fire. “That the hide of the game shall not keep out our weapons, we burn this flesh to you, Great Bull,” he chanted. Again the sacrifice
was accepted. Again the low roar of approval, louder this time. Then the chief hunter took from behind him a reindeer’s skull, the antlers still attached, and placed it on the top of his head. Shuffling forward on his knees, he bowed again to the bull’s skull, as if the reindeer were saluting the lord of beasts, as if some new hierarchy had suddenly been presented to the men of the village. And from their roars of approval, it had clearly been accepted.

Another man came forward, the former chief hunter who was now the leader of the fishers. Too old and slow to keep up with the hunt, he had applied his great skill with the spear to the art of spearing the biggest fish that were too strong and wily to be caught by the fences of woven willows. He had learned the cunning way of the water, which always bent the spear as it broke the surface to send it foolishly past the fish that were the lords of the river. But the chief fisher had learned to use the river’s magic against its fish, and his thrust with the great barbed spear seldom missed. Now on his knees, a great pike in his outstretched arms, he shuffled forward to lay his offering before the skull.

The Keeper of the Bulls leaned down and took from behind the skull a great headdress, raised it to the skies and drew it over his head, settled it on his brow. Men and women alike drew in their breath with wonder at the monstrous shape. The long brown eagle feathers trailed down to his shoulders, and the smaller white feathers affixed in their scores to the curving wooden eagle’s beak thrust forward beyond the Keeper’s face. A man with the head of an eagle.

“The lord of the air salutes the lord of beasts,” he chanted from beneath the great beak as he bent his knee before the bull’s skull. “The beings of water and land and air salute the lord bull.”

The silence was absolute as the bull’s skull seemed almost to tremble-in the still air. The Keeper of the Bulls, suddenly in his mask become half-bird and half-man, rose and turned toward them, his arms outstretched like mighty wings. He looked up, and the eyes of the crowd followed. And from the rock outcrop on the hill above came
a beating of real wings and a great eagle rose into the sky, cawing as it flapped and began to spiral upward above the assembled people.

“The sacrifice is accepted,” called the birdman.

Who had devised this unprecedented ritual? The chief hunter and fisher and the Keeper of the Bulls must have arranged it, even rehearsed it, among them. The Keeper of the Horses dragged his eyes back to the rock outcrop whence the eagle had appeared and saw a flash of movement. Human, he was sure. It would be simple enough to catch an eagle by digging a man-sized hole, covering it with brushwood, and placing a lure on top. A dead rabbit or bird would do. And then as the eagle stooped, the hunter in his hole could quickly draw tight the looped thong that would imprison the eagle’s talons. He had seen it done. And it was no great trick to release the bird at a certain, well-timed moment. A trick, but a clever one, he thought.

But what was its purpose, this carefully planned ritual? It had been as dramatic as it was curious, even moving in its way, he thought. But it made him uncomfortable, as though the river of the tribe’s life in which he took such comfort had suddenly been diverted into a different path, its flow broken and disturbed by the plunging splash of a great stone. He shivered. Still, it must be over now and the hunt could begin.

All around him, the men were stamping their feet and cheering. The boys were dancing with excitement, strutting and thrusting their feeble spears forward as if facing a real enemy. He glanced again at his fellow Keepers, caught the watery old eye of the Keeper of the Bison, who shook his head slightly, leaned forward and spat. At least not everyone was caught up in the madness. He looked again at the cheering men, all their eyes aflame, and turned to the Keeper of the Bulls, who stood with his arms outstretched above the fire, his eagle’s head almost ghostly in the smoke.

“Let the great hunt commence,” he chanted.

They came upon the herd while the sun was still climbing in the sky. The band of men was stretched out now, the two best hunters scouting far off ahead and out of sight. The older men were trailing badly, the boys all clumped together at the front of the line but with sense enough to be silent. The sign the scouts had left was a forked stick, thrust into the ground, with three twigs placed in the shape of an arrow to point the way. The chief hunter picked up his pace from the steady lope he had maintained since they left the village, sprinting uphill to the next ridge, and then dropping to squirm forward and keep his body from suddenly appearing on the skyline. He came back to the main body, and in another unusual feature of this strange day, went up to the Keeper of the Bulls, as if telling him alone where the herd was placed and where the beaters should go. The Keeper of the Bulls nodded his approval.

The Keeper of the Horses knew this place. He had hunted here before as a young man. There was a river valley ahead of them, and some distance to the left a steep drop to the water. He watched the hunters take the boys off to the right to form the line of beaters. The hunters would anchor each flank of the line, and then race forward to make the line into a curve, using their bows against the reindeer on the sides of the herd, less to try for a kill than to drive the herd in the desired direction.

With the rest of the grown men, the Keeper of the Horses began loping toward the riverbank, to set the jaws of the trap that would force the game over the drop. This was the real test of the chief hunter’s skill, less to find the herd than to coordinate the movements of so many boys and men so that they would all be in the right place at the best time. Chief hunters who closed the tribe upon an empty trap did not last long. There were always keen young hunters eager to take over. The Keeper of the Horses found himself hoping that the trap might be empty this time. The tribe would miss a feast, might even go hungry awhile, but another chief hunter might not be so ready to fall in with the strange new rituals of the bull’s skull.

There was still no sign of the herd when the men reached the cliff above the drop to the river. This was a good place. On this nearer side where they approached, thick trees gave way to a jumble of rocks before the cliff edge. The herd would avoid the trees and the rocks could be held by just a handful of men. The rest of them ran swiftly along the cliff edge, looking for the place to set their fence. Every man carried three poles, each one almost as tall as a man and lashed together at one end with sinew. They spread out the other end of the poles to form a tripod, and then placed each tripod perhaps ten yards apart, from the cliff edge up toward the direction from which the herd would come. They lashed skins to each tripod, to make it look like a solid shape, a small teepee, flimsy but appearing solid enough to dupe the reindeer. Each man then sat behind his tripod, waiting for the time. Some of them tossed blades of grass into the air, testing that the breeze still came toward them. The Keeper of the Horses ambled across to the cliff edge and looked into the drop. It was the height of three or four men. It would serve.

“So we are now all worshipers of the bull,” grunted a voice behind him. He turned. It was the Keeper of the Bison, looking ancient and leathery. He had done well to keep up with the pace of the hunt.