The Orchid Shroud

by Michelle Wan

  “Well, at least explain how he comes into it.”

  “He was the one who told me about it. He’s full of odd bits of information, is old Didier.”

  They pushed off, Julian paddling stern, Mara in the bow. Wisely, they had left the dogs at home. Jazz had never been in a canoe, and Bismuth, according to Julian, would probably try to dig his way out through the bottom.

  “Are you supposed to do it like that?” Mara called over her shoulder, referring to something Julian called a J-stroke. She, rummaging deep in her Canadian Girl Guide past, was not so sure.

  “Do it like what?”

  “Well, flick your oar out of the water quite so hard.”

  “It’s called finishing the stroke.” The aluminum craft bonged hollowly each time his paddle struck the side. “The rental fellow showed me how. It’s what keeps us going straight.”

  “We’re wobbling.”

  “We’re not. We’re dead on course.”

  “Then how come we point left one minute and right the next?”

  “You must be overpulling.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Look,” said Julian in exasperation, because they were in fact zigzagging, “both of us have to work as an efficient, well-coordinated team.”

  After that they paddled silently, if somewhat jerkily. Eventually, they realized that the current was strong enough to let them drift at a leisurely pace downstream without any paddling at all.

  I think it must be around here,” Julian said, gazing up at the ridge towering above them, as if looking for markers. “In fact, that may be the spot we’re looking for, just up ahead.” The canoe slid slowly beneath a great, overhanging cliff.

  They beached on a narrow strip of shingle that in a drier season would have been a wide, stony shore. Julian jumped out and began exploring the base of the cliff, wading heedlessly in water up to his knees. He quickly found the opening of a cave, partly obscured by overhanging bushes.

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit wet,” he said. “The stream’s riding a lot higher than normal. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Er—no.”

  In fact, they had to walk through water for only the first few meters of the cave. The floor of it sloped upward, and they were soon standing dry in a dim, circular rock chamber. The air had a heavy, unpleasant smell.

  “Julian, why are we here? Are there bats in this cave?”

  “According to Didier, this place is called the Wolf Cave because it’s where, legend has it, loups-garous used to gather when the moon was full. Given you’re so into werewolves, I thought you’d be interested in seeing it.” He had a flashlight and was sweeping the beam of it across the cave walls.

  “I am,” she conceded. She looked up. The cave roof seemed to shift. Bats.

  “Aha,” he said. “Follow me. The thing I really wanted to check out”—he disappeared suddenly, leaving her in semidarkness with nothing but the echo of his voice—“is this tunnel, which apparently runs straight under Aurillac Ridge and directly up into the cellar of Aurillac Manor.”

  “It does what?” Mara hurried after him, slipping sideways through a narrow opening in the rock. The tunnel, picked out by Julian’s flashlight, ran blackly before her, piercing solid limestone.

  “That’s right. As best as I can make out, it’s at least a kilometer and a half long.” The flashlight bounced off sloping walls that gleamed with moisture. “During the Occupation, it was a hideout for Resistance fighters. But originally it must have been constructed for some other purpose.”

  “I think you’re right,” Mara affirmed, and told Julian of Aurillac’s Huguenot origins. “The Bonfonds, as they were called then, must have built it as an escape route. The Wars of Religion during the sixteenth century were pretty bloody, and Protestants generally got the worst of it.” She also told him Jean-Claude’s tale of the man bathing in the river who transformed into a wolf, and described Xavier’s supernatural ability to disappear at will and reappear in other places.

  “I wonder if this was how he moved about,” she speculated, staying on Julian’s heels to keep close to the source of light. She did not like the darkness and the way the tunnel walls leaned in on her. “If someone saw him and that dog of his outside this cave on a moonlit night, you can understand how the idea of a man transforming into a werewolf might have taken hold.”

  After another minute she said, “Julian, you don’t suppose Christophe used this tunnel as well?”

  “D’you mean when he disappeared? Not likely. His car’s gone. I think he just walked out of the house and drove away. Anyway, if he had, you saw for yourself he’d have needed a boat.” Fifty meters farther along he said, “Besides, he couldn’t have got past this.”

  Mara peered over his shoulder. The flashlight illuminated a rock fall. The way was entirely choked off by a wall of debris.

  They were shoving off into the stream again when Julian stood up suddenly. The canoe rocked dangerously. Mara gave a small shriek and grabbed both gunnels. Her paddle slid away. She made a lunge for it, causing them to dip even more precariously.

  “You made me drop my paddle,” she yelled, as she leaned out to retrieve it from the water. “Are you trying to sink us?”

  He sat down quickly. “Look.” He pointed to something green and leafy growing at the top of the opposite shore. “Aconite. Monkshood.”

  They were across the stream in a few swift strokes.

  “That reminds me—” Mara began, but he was already out of the canoe and scrambling up the rocky bank. Only his legs were visible as he investigated the plant.

  “No Devil’s Clog.” He slithered down again in a shower of stones. “No orchids of any kind. But Aconite likes stream margins. There may be more around here. I’ll come back and have a thorough look around another time. I’ll walk the Rauze end to end if I have to.”

  “I meant to tell you, Julian,” Mara resumed as he climbed back in the canoe. “I read something about another kind of Aconite the other day.”

  “Oh yes?” He resumed his bonging J-stroke. Their craft slid into the main part of the current.

  “This one has yellow flowers. Aconitum vulparia. Wolfsbane. In French, aconit tue-loup, because the plant was used to poison wolves.”

  He was silent for a moment, letting his paddle trail in the water. “Damn. I wonder if that’s what Didier meant. I’ll have to ask him. Trouble is, I don’t know my Aconite well enough to tell the yellow from the purple without the flowers, and they won’t bloom for another month. But if it was Wolfsbane and not Monkshood they planted wherever they found Devil’s Clog, that means Didier’s old ones must have somehow associated Devil’s Clog with wolves.” He stared into a waving bed of water weeds slipping away beneath them.

  “Maybe wolves liked it,” Mara suggested. “In the same way cats go for catnip.”

  “Hmm. I’ve been digging through my books, but I didn’t see anything like that. I found out that Cypripediums can cause a rash in humans. I also learned that they’ve been used medicinally for centuries to treat everything from neuralgia to cancer. Many species have a narcotic effect similar to opium.”

  “Do you smoke it?”

  “No, you take it as a tincture made from the dried roots. Apparently, it’s a powerful sedative, unless you overdose, in which case it can bring on hallucinations.”

  “Hallucinations?” Now it was Mara’s turn to stop paddling. She craned around. “Julian, what if Xavier and Hugo used your orchid as an hallucinogenic?”

  He snorted. “What, to enhance their werewolf transformations?”

  She gestured impatiently. “And why not? They could have heard about some kind of high you could get with it. Or they could have experimented with it themselves. Folk medicine is full of this kind of thing.”

  “But it sounds like a tincture of Cypripedium would be more likely to put you to sleep, or into a trance, not drive you to bite people’s throats out.”

  “You don’t know that.
Maybe Cypripedium incognitum acts like LSD. Now, if the Sigoulanese suspected the de Bonfonds were involved in the Beast killings, and if your orchid came to be associated with Xavier and Hugo—say, people caught them picking the plant under a full moon—then there’s your explanation for why it came to be called Devil’s Clog. It’s a pretty sinister-sounding name, when you think of it. And that could be your connection with Wolfsbane. It was the locals’ way of warding off evil.”

  Julian took this in. After a moment he said, “But if Cypripedium incognitum is Devil’s Clog and is associated with werewolves, why did Cécile embroider it on the shawl? I mean, wouldn’t it have been like going public with a dark family secret? And anyway, if people really thought the de Bonfonds were linked to the Sigoulane Beast, you’d think they’d have done something about it.” His paddle also hung motionless over the gunnel.

  “The de Bonfonds were a pretty powerful family, don’t forget. And maybe it was nothing more than a vague suspicion. Authorities scoffed at the idea that the Gévaudan Beast was a werewolf. They would have reacted the same way here.”

  “Somehow,” he grumbled, “it always comes back to the de Bonfonds as a bloody pack of loups-garous, and that’s something I really can’t accept.”

  She gave him a long look. “You might. If they were the right kind of werewolves.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, not ready to try her untested theory out on him. “But I’ll tell you when I find out.”

  I know what you thought,” said Julian. “The other night.” They were back at Le Coquelicot, having returned the canoe, and now stood on the beach, looking out over the Dordogne. The sun, low in the sky, gave the water a heavy, undulating appearance, like flowing oil. “But I want you to know I never for one minute believed you had anything to do with Jean-Claude’s death. Or that you would have left him to die.”

  It was a minor lie, Mara judged, although entirely understandable. Julian had only been reflecting back her own uncertainty. She had wanted to forget the unpleasant episode, almost had, in fact. Now she wished he were man enough to speak the truth. Her eyes followed a pair of lovers as they drifted past in a red canoe. It was a romantic sight, two bodies stretched out in the bottom of the craft, heads together against the stern thwart, the woman’s arm trailing languidly in the glowing water. The pair seemed caught forever in an enchanted net of gold.

  She said, patching over the breach, “It was my fault. I overreacted.”

  “Well, no,” he insisted. “I could have been more supportive.”

  She strongly felt that was true. Friendships were about solidarity. Friendships ought not to admit doubts. She was very much in need of absolutes at the moment. The stern of the red canoe appeared to be circling about in an interesting pursuit of the bow. She said, “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “All right,” said Julian, momentarily distracted by the spectacle of a canoe running broadside to the current. Then, as he watched the frantic efforts of its paddlers to correct its course, he realized that he had not really been forgiven.

  The red light on her répondeur was flashing when Mara walked into her front room later that evening. She retrieved her phone mail: a message from a severe-sounding administrative secretary saying she had an appointment at one o’clock the following afternoon and to confirm by 9 a.m.; and another from Prudence: “When is that man coming back to do my walls? I’m growing old waiting.”

  Mara called Prudence back, but she was out. She left a message: “Sorry. I’ll get right on it.”

  She was exhausted, too tired for food or a shower. She fed Jazz, stripped, and fell into bed, lacking even the energy to warn her dog to keep to his side of it. But sleep, that deep, restoring oblivion, did not come. She drifted restlessly in shallow pools of semi-consciousness strung together by ragged dreams. “All legends have their roots in the reality of a people,” Jean-Claude had written. Had he known about the Wolf Cave and the tunnel?

  The phone rang. She fought her way to consciousness, fumbling for the extension on the bedside table.

  “Oui?” A split second later, she was fully awake. “Who is this?” she shouted into the silence. “Damn you, don’t think you can frighten—” The line went dead.

  In a fury, Mara slammed the receiver down. She switched on the light, snatched up the receiver again, and punched in 3131 for caller identification. This was no prank. It was nasty and frightening. It took a moment for the information provided by the automated voice to sink in. When it did, it hit her with an almost sickening force. The originating number of her last caller was her own cell phone. Whoever had called her had her portable. That person had taken it from Jean-Claude’s terrace. That person was very likely Jean-Claude’s killer.

  She keyed in 17 for the Gendarmerie, but swiftly killed the connection. An anonymous call from her own cell phone? It would be one more thing they wouldn’t believe. There had been no actual intimidation. No words had been spoken. But it seemed to her that the silence had been more implicitly menacing than an articulated threat.

  Christophe? Was he aware that she was digging for the truth about the de Bonfonds, and was he trying to frighten her, to warn her off? Where the hell was he? Then she realized that with a cell phone her caller could be anywhere. Outside her house at that very moment. She sat rigid in her bed, willing her breathing, her heart to slow to normal pace. Then she roused Jazz and, dragging him with her, went about checking and rechecking all the doors and windows of her house.

  28

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, 14 MAY

  Shortly before one the following afternoon, Mara parked her car in the visitors’ bay outside the high stone wall enclosing the Midi-Pyrénées Psychiatric Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The wall was topped with multiple strands of electrically charged wire and equipped with closed-circuit cameras that tracked her approach. At the security checkpoint she pushed her driver’s license through a metal grille. An armed guard on the other side of the grille examined her identification, typed something into a computer, adjusted his telephone headset, and barked into a tiny receiver that wavered about on a stalk in front of his mouth. He stared impassively at her, running his tongue over his upper teeth while waiting for a response. His gaze shifted. He spoke again into the receiver.

  “Oui,” he said. “Oui. Oui.” He dropped her identification into a clear plastic bag and clipped the bag to a wallboard intended for the display of such documents. He slid something out through the grille, a coded visitor’s badge that he motioned for her to pin to her clothing. “Attendez. On vient.”

  She waited as instructed. Another armed guard appeared. The heavy steel gate slid open, and she was allowed to enter the hospital precincts. The guard led her wordlessly along a narrow cement walkway toward a large gray stone building. Its façade had an air of forbidding, institutional massiveness. Mara found it as grim as a bunker and deeply depressing.

  In the vestibule, she was again told to wait and left under the observation of a third armed guard. She looked around and saw that she was standing in a dim, echoing rotunda that rose to a shallow dome overhead. At the far side of the rotunda, people in faded green scrubs hurried back and forth, disappearing down hallways. Prison personnel, she wondered, or trusted inmates? Footsteps, coming from her right, rang out sharply. She turned.

  “Madame Dunn? Nathalie Thibaud.” A tall, slim woman with shoulder-length blond hair approached, hand extended. Mara took the hand in surprise. When she had phoned for an appointment, she had spoken not with the doctor but with the severe-sounding administrative secretary who had left the message. By extension, she had assumed the doctor to be a stern, forbidding, scientific type. This woman had the long look of a runway model.

  “I appreciate your seeing me,” said Mara.

  “I was intrigued by your request.” The doctor’s French had that rich throatiness that Mara, with her flat Montreal drawl, so much admired. “Et la chère Patsy Reicher? How is she?”

&
nbsp; “En bonne forme. She sends her best and asked after Bibi.”

  The doctor grinned. “My grandson.”

  Up close, Mara realized that Nathalie Thibaud was much older than she had first appeared, the champagne-colored hair shot through with silver, laugh lines deeply grooved, fine skin crinkled like tissue paper around green eyes. A well-preserved late fifties.

  The doctor glanced at her watch. “I’m afraid I have limited time this afternoon, but let’s make the best of it, shall we?” She led Mara at a brisk pace across the rotunda, down a corridor, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, and into a cramped office.

  “Please. Sit down. It’s spartan, I’m afraid, for budgetary as well as security reasons. I can’t even offer you a cup of coffee.”

  Mara shook her head. “No need, but thanks all the same.” She lowered herself onto a hard wooden chair placed squarely before a utilitarian desk. A metal filing cabinet, a crane-neck lamp, and a computer unit completed the furnishings. The only personal touch was a photograph of a little boy. Bibi, she assumed.

  Dr. Thibaud seated herself behind the desk. “Now,” she said, appraising her visitor, “before anything, why do you want to know about lycanthropes?”

  Mara was prepared for the question. “I’m interested in the link between lycanthropes and werewolf lore,” she said, liberally editing the truth. She added more candidly, “I’d also like to test a theory.”

  The other smiled. “Bon. As long as it’s absolutely clear that lycanthropes are real people with real, acute psychiatric problems. They are not werewolves.”

  “Of course.” Mara nodded.

  “At the same time, lycanthropes are what might be called delusional werewolves because they actually think they turn into wolves. Hence the term ‘lycanthrope,’ from the Greek lykanthropos, wolfman. It’s a rare disorder, although it’s been around for centuries, and it’s possibly what spawned the belief in werewolves. At one time lycanthropy was regarded as an acute form of melancholia. Nowadays it’s considered a form of depersonalization disorder involving a complex cluster of diagnostic entities that include acute schizophrenia, depressive psychosis, dissociative hysterical neurosis, and in some cases psychomotor epilepsy. The frequent involvement of hallucinogenics complicates diagnosis. You being an American—”