“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t do anything else.”
For a moment, she sucked lightly on her knee. “Mr. Hel—may I call you Nicholai?”
“Certainly not.”
“Mr. Hel. You’re telling me that you don’t intend to help me, is that it?”
“I am helping you when I tell you to go home.”
“And if I refuse to? What if I go ahead with this on my own?”
“You would fail—almost surely die.”
“I know that. The question is, could you let me try to do it alone? Would your sense of debt to my uncle allow you to do that?”
“You’re bluffing.”
“And if I’m not?”
Hel glanced away. It was just possible that this bourgeois muffin was dumb enough to drag him into it, or at least to make him decide how far loyalty and honor went. He was preparing to test her, and himself, when he felt an approaching presence he recognized as Pierre’s, and he turned to see the gardener shuffling toward them from the château.
“Good afternoon, ‘sieur, m’selle. It must be pleasant to have the leisure to sun oneself.” He drew a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of his blue worker’s smock and handed it to Hel with great solemnity, then he explained that he could not stay for there were a thousand things to be done, and he went on toward the garden and his gatehouse, for it was time to soften his day with another glass.
Hel read the note.
He folded it and tapped it against his lips. “It appears, Miss Stern, that we may not have all the freedom of option we thought. Three strangers have arrived in Tardets and are asking questions about me and, more significantly, about you. They are described as Englishmen or Amérlos —the village people wouldn’t be able to distinguish those accents. They were accompanied by French Special Police, who are being most cooperative.”
“But how could they know I am here?”
“A thousand ways. Your friends, the ones who were killed in Rome, did they have plane tickets on them?”
“I suppose so. In fact, yes. We each carried our own tickets. But they were not to here; they were to Pau.”
“That’s close enough. I am not completely unknown.” Hel shook his head at this additional evidence of amateurism. Professionals always buy tickets to points well past their real destinations, because reservations go into computers and are therefore available to government organizations and to the Mother Company.
“Who do you think the men are?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do?”
He shrugged. “Invite them to dinner.”
After leaving Hannah, Hel sat for half an hour in his garden, watching the accumulation of heavy-bellied storm clouds around the shoulders of the mountains and considering the lie of the stones on the board. He came to two conclusions at about the same time. It would rain that night, and his wisest course would be to rush the enemy.
From the gun room he telephoned the Hôtel Dabadie where the Americans were staying. A certain amount of negotiation was required. The Dabadies would send the three Amérlos up to the château for dinner that evening, but there was the problem of the dinners they had prepared for their guests. After all, a hotel makes its money on its meals, not its rooms. Hel assured them that the only fair and proper course would be to include the uneaten dinners in their bill. It was, God knows, not the fault of the Dabadies that the strangers decided at the last moment to dine with M. Hel. Business is business. And considering that waste of food is abhorrent to God, perhaps it would be best if the Dabadies ate the dinners themselves, inviting the abbé to join them.
He found Hana reading in the library, wearing the quaint little rectangular glasses she needed for close work. She looked over the top of them as he entered. “Guests for dinner?” she asked.
He caressed her cheek with his palm. “Yes, three. Americans.”
“How nice. With Hannah and Le Cagot, that will make quite a dinner party.”
“It will that.”
She slipped in a bookmark and closed the volume.
“Is this trouble, Nikko?”
“Yes.”
“It has something to do with Hannah and her problems?”
He nodded.
She laughed lightly. “And just this morning you invited me to stay on with you for half of each year, trying to entice me with the great peace and solitude of your home.”
“It will be peaceful soon. I have retired, after all.”
“Can one? Can one completely retire from such a trade as yours? Ah well, if we are to have guests, I must send down to the village. Hannah will need some clothes. She cannot take dinner in those shorts of hers, particularly considering her somewhat cavalier attitude toward modest posture.”
“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.”
A greeting bellow from the allée, a slamming of the salon porte fenêtre that rattled the glass, a noisy search to find Hana in the library, a vigorous hug with a loud smacking kiss on her cheek, a cry for a little hospitality in the form of a glass of wine, and all the household knew that Le Cagot had returned from his duties in Larrau. “Now, where is this young girl with the plump breasts that all the valley is talking about? Bring her on. Let her meet her destiny!”
Hana told him that the young woman was napping, but that Nicholai was working in the Japanese garden.
“I don’t want to see him. I’ve had enough of his company for the last three days. Did he tell you about my cave? I practically had to drag your man through it. Sad to confess, he’s getting old, Hana. It’s time for you to consider your future and to look around for an ageless man—perhaps a robust Basque poet?”
Hana laughed and told him that his bath would be ready in half an hour. “And after that you might choose to dress up a bit; we’re having guests for dinner.”
“Ah, an audience. Good. Very well, I’ll go get some wine in the kitchen. Do you still have that young Portuguese girl working for you?”
“There are several.”
“I’ll go sample around a bit. And wait until you see me dressed up! I bought some fancy clothes a couple of months ago, and I haven’t had a chance to show them off yet. One look at me in my new clothes, and you’ll melt, by the Balls…”
Hana cast a sidelong glance at him, and he instantly refined his language.
“…by the Ecstasy of Ste. Therese. All right, I’m off to the kitchen.” And he marched through the house, slamming doors and shouting for wine.
Hana smiled after Le Cagot. From the first he had taken to her, and his gruff way of showing his approval was to maintain a steady barrage of hyperbolic gallantry. For her part, she liked his honest, rough ways, and she was pleased that Nicholai had a friend so loyal and entertaining as this mythical Basque. She thought of him as a mythic figure, a poet who had constructed an outlandish romantic character, and who spent the rest of his life playing the role he had created. She once asked Hel what had happened to make the poet protect himself within this opéra-bouffe, picaresque facade of his. Hel could not gave her the details; to do so would betray a confidence, one Le Cagot was unaware he had invested, because the conversation had taken place one night when the poet was crushed by sadness and nostalgia, and very drunk. Many years ago, the sensitive young poet who ultimately assumed the persona of Le Cagot had been a scholar of Basque literature, and had taken a university post in Bilbao. He married a beautiful and gentle Spanish Basque girl, and they had a baby. One night, for vague motives, he joined a student demonstration against the repression of Basque culture. His wife was with him, although she had no personal interest in politics. The federal police broke up the demonstration with gunfire. The wife was killed. Le Cagot was arrested and spent the next three years in prison. When he escaped, he learned that the baby had died while he was in jail. The young poet drank a great deal and participated in pointless and terribly violent anti-government actions. He was arrested again; and when he again escaped, the young poet no longer existed. In his place was Le Cagot, the invulnerable caricature who became a folk legend for his patriotic verse, his participation in Basque Separatist causes, and his bigger-than-life personality, which brought him invitations to lecture and read his poetry in universities throughout the Western world. The name he gave to his persona was borrowed from the Cagots, an ancient pariah race of untouchables who had practiced a variant of Christianity which brought down upon them the rancor and hatred of their Basque neighbors. The Cagots sought relief from persecution through a request to Pope Leo X in 1514, which was granted in principle, but the restrictions and indignities continued to the end of the nineteenth century, when they ceased to exist as a distinct race. Their persecution took many forms. They were required to wear on their clothing the distinctive sign of the Cagot in the shape of a goose footprint. They could not walk barefooted. They could not carry arms. They could not frequent public places, and even in entering church they had to use a low side door constructed especially for the purpose, which door is still to be seen in many village churches. They could not sit near others at Mass, or kiss the cross. They could rent land and grow food, but they could not sell their produce. Under pain of death, they could not marry or have sexual relations outside their race.