Bonnet’s eyes were dull. He looked like a man who was tired and weary but determined to stay awake. ‘You’ll see.’
THIRTY-FIVE
They were in a cool windowless chamber the size of a primary school gymnasium or a town cinema. It was far too large to be the simple basement of one of the cottages. If they were still in the village, as Luc suspected, then the chamber had to be under the street, an excavation accessible from several cottages. It appeared that a number of corridors ran off from various points along its perimeter and he thought it possible that each might lead to a cottage.
The walls were the ubiquitous limestone block, but the floors were wood planks, smooth with age and covered with a patchwork of rugs, most of them large, fancy orientals in various shades of greens, blues, reds and pinks. The room was lit with cheap industrial fluorescent fixtures affixed to the plaster ceiling. Copper water pipes ran down the walls.
Luc and Sara were seated beside one another on wooden chairs up against one of the long walls. His right wrist and her left wrist were handcuffed to a couple of the copper pipes.
On the opposite wall a vintage phonograph was turning a vinyl record. The room was filled with tinny, old-time bal-musette – dance-hall, accordion music with an urgent tempo.
In the centre of the room there was a sturdy folding table. Bonnet and Dr Pelay were fussing over a huge aluminium pot on a large electric coil that glowed red-hot. The pot was the kind of model an army cook would use to make stew for two hundred men and the ladle was also out-sized. Steam was rising from the vessel filling the room with a sweet, almost fruity kind of fragrance.
Luc and Sara had smelled it before in the kitchen of their campsite.
Bonnet kept up a slow-paced monologue, talking loudly across the expanse of the room, over the music. The scene had the incongruous air of a chef doing a cooking show before a handcuffed audience.
‘I don’t have to tell you that these plants aren’t available all-year round,’ Bonnet said. ‘We have to harvest them when they’re abundant and store them for the winter months. It’s nice and cool down here so they keep well as long as we keep them dry. The berries and the bindweed, they’re dead reliable. Never a problem. It’s the barley grass that’s tricky. If they don’t have those black or purple lumps they’re no good. What do you call those lumps? I always forget.’
‘Sclerotia,’ Sara replied automatically, her voice dry with fear.
‘I can’t hear you. Speak up,’ Bonnet said.
‘Ergot bodies,’ Pelay told him.
‘Yes! That’s it, ergot bodies,’ he replied. ‘Without those, it’s rubbish. Unusable. So we’ve got to find the grass with the purple lumps on their spikes. Then we’re in business. You’ve got to cook it through and through but not to the boil. Simmer it, like a good cassoulet. You do it for as many years as Pelay and I have, you get a feel for it so it comes out perfect every time.’
Luc called out, ‘How old are you, Bonnet?’
The mayor stopped stirring and rubbed at his stubble. ‘I always have to think,’ he replied. Pelay chuckled at his show. ‘I’m not the oldest, you know. That fellow Duval, the pig farmer, he’s the oldest. I’m two hundred and forty-two but my wife says I don’t look a day over one hundred and eighty!’ Pelay found this hilarious and cackled like a woman. ‘I learned how to make the tea from my father, Gustave. He learned from my grandfather, Bernard. And he learned from my great-grandfather, Michel Bonnet, who, I’m told, was a monk in his younger days in Ruac Abbey before he left monastery life in 1307, the year the Templars were wiped out. That’s not bad, eh? Only four generations of Bonnets in seven hundred years!’
There was a plastic carrier bag on the table. Bonnet removed a red-leather book, the Ruac manuscript.
Luc shook his head at the sight. ‘Having trouble reading that, Bonnet?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes, except for the little Latin passage the fellow wrote in 1307, which goes with the family date I just mentioned. Maybe we’ll persuade you to tell us what it says. But never mind if you don’t. I think I know well enough what’s in it. The pictures tell a thousand words. This Barthomieu who was two hundred and twenty – I expect he and my great-grandfather were well acquainted.’
‘How often do you drink it?’ Luc asked.
‘Our tea? Once a week. Always late, in the middle of the night, when we won’t be disturbed by some idiot wandering through the village. Maybe we could take it less often but it’s a tradition and frankly we enjoy it. I’ve used it well over ten thousand times and it doesn’t get old. You’ll see.’
‘There’s no way we’re going to play along,’ Luc said.
‘No?’ Bonnet responded, shrugging. He dipped a finger into the pot and it came out red. He licked it clean and declared, ‘There, it’s ready. Proper Ruac tea. What do you think, Pelay?’
The doctor tasted some from the ladle. ‘I can’t remember a better batch,’ he laughed. ‘I’m sorry I have to wait.’
‘Well, you and me, old friend. We’re the keepers tonight. Special keepers for special guests.’ He looked around the chamber. ‘Jacques!’ he yelled. ‘Where the hell are you?’
His son appeared from one of the corridors.
‘We’re ready,’ Bonnet told him. ‘Let them know.’
Luc and Sara held each other’s free hands. Her hand felt limp and cold. There was little he could say to her except, ‘Everything will be all right. Stay strong.’ Soon, there was the muffled sound of a clanging bell. It persisted for no more than half a minute then ended.
The villagers began to arrive in knots of threes and fours.
None younger than twenty or so, by appearance. Mostly men and women well on in years, exactly how old, Luc could only guess. Odile arrived, looking guiltily at the handcuffed pair along the wall. There were maybe thirty or forty people her age. People tended to congregate with their peer groups, milling around, whispering, seemingly uncomfortable with strangers in their midst. All told, there were at least two hundred people but Luc lost count as the room filled.
Bonnet banged the pot with the ladle to get everyone’s attention. ‘Good people,’ he shouted. ‘Come and be served. Don’t be shy because of our guests. You know who they are. Don’t pay them any mind. Come on, who’s first tonight?’
They lined up orderly and each, in turn, received a paper cup, filled to the brim with hot red tea. Some sipped at it, savouring it as one might a good cup of ordinary tea. Others, especially the younger villagers, gulped it.
They struck Luc as some kind of ersatz parishioners queuing to receive holy communion. But Bonnet was no priest. He grinned and joked as he dolloped out the brew and seemed amused whenever he accidentally sloshed some onto the table top.
When the last villager, a heavy-haunched old woman with long grey hair knotted into a bun, had received her ration and whispered something to him, Bonnet replied loudly, ‘No, no. For me, later. I’ve got to do something tonight. But come with me, let me introduce you.’
Bonnet led the woman to Luc and Sara. ‘This is my wife, Camille. These are the archaeologists I told you about. Isn’t the professor a good-looking fellow?’
The mayor’s wife looked him over and grunted, and with that, Bonnet swatted her on the rump and told her to enjoy herself without him. He pulled up a chair and sat himself down, just beyond Luc’s reach.
‘You know, I’m tired,’ he sighed. ‘It’s late. I’m not as young as I used to be. Let me sit with you a while.’
Sara’s eyes wandered around the room. People were finishing their tea, tidily disposing the cups in a bin, all very neat and civilised. There was a din of conversation, some polite laughter, all very banal.
‘What happens next?’ she asked.
‘Wait, you’ll see. It takes fifteen minutes for some, twenty for others. Watch. It won’t go unnoticed.’ He called for Pelay who approached from the folding table with two more cups of tea in his hands.