‘Papa! Papa! How could you let him go when you know what you know?’
‘A man’s honour is his own business,’ her father says. ‘I trust my son’s instincts. Besides, Michel Monsard needs a good thrashing.’
‘But Olivier will be there too. They’ll gang up on Petit Christophe,’ Ti-Loup protests. ‘It won’t be a fair fight.’
‘They ganged up on me,’ Cap’s father says. ‘It wasn’t a fair fight. But here I am. Ti-Christophe’s strong as an ox. He’ll win. I’ll bet on that, if it comes to an unfair fight.’
‘It’s going to come to an unfair fight,’ Ti-Loup says.
‘Where is Chantal?’ Cap wants to know.
‘Upstairs, in the loft. She’s sleeping. I’ll keep her safe here.’
‘Where’s Ti-Christophe meeting them?’
‘Meeting him, meeting Michel, that’s what the boy said. Near the safe house, which means Michel has a sixth sense about that place and he’s trying to smoke out the location.’
‘Is that what he said? Near the safe house?’
‘Of course not. He said, By the old stone bridge. You are not to go there, Capucine. Ti-Christophe can look after himself. Trust me. Trust your brother.’
‘I trust you and I trust my brother,’ Cap says. ‘I don’t trust Michel Monsard or his father and I don’t trust Olivier.’
‘No more do I,’ her father says. ‘But Ti-Christophe can look after himself and he won’t thank you if you interfere. Chantal’s not what I would have wanted for him, but probably his mother and your mother were not what my own father would have wanted. We’ll have a quiet church wedding for my son and the butcher’s daughter in Chinon and we’ll throw a party when my grandchild arrives.’
Cap and Ti-Loup huddle under the bridge.
‘There’s Ti-Christophe,’ Ti-Loup whispers.
‘Shh.’
‘Is the entrance to the safe house somewhere here?’
‘Yes.’
‘This iron ring?’
‘Yes.’
‘You told me you made that up.’
‘I lied to you. Ti-Christophe told me to say I made it up.’
‘Ti-Christophe doesn’t trust me?’
‘Back then he didn’t. Now he does.’
‘Why didn’t he trust me back then?’
Cap stares at him. ‘Why do you think? Nazi officers used to sleep in your bedroom. Your mother dined with them every night. At the same table where we have dinner.’
‘Why haven’t you told me that?’
‘I thought you knew.’
‘I didn’t know anything about anything.’
‘Anyway, Papa says your mother saved him. Shh. Look.’
‘Michel and Olivier.’
‘Two against one. We knew that would happen.’
Cap and Ti-Loup are fifty feet from the confrontation. They cannot hear what is being said, though voices are raised, and then everything happens so quickly. Both Olivier and Michel flash knives and Ti-Christophe pulls his boning blade from his belt. There is a shimmer of steel, a gush of blood. Olivier falls. Ti-Christophe stands with one foot on Olivier’s body but Michel rushes him from the side. Ti-Christophe parries but is caught off guard and off balance. Michel stabs over and over, more times than the children will remember, though they will try for the rest of their lives to replay these minutes. Then Michel runs, crashing through the woods, leaving two bodies behind.
Neither Ti-Loup nor Cap can move. They cling to each other. Cap holds one hand over her mouth to mute the strange whooping sounds that rise from her throat. Ti-Loup vomits.
‘We should have stopped them,’ he says, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. His voice gurgles like a creek over stones. He sobs. He takes in oxygen in moist heaving gulps. ‘We could have.’
‘We couldn’t –’ Cap says, but she is sobbing too, and gasping, and her words flap about like fish in a bucket. ‘We couldn’t have –’
‘We could have. If they knew we were watching …’ Ti-Loup is choking on vomit. His lips turn blue.
‘Ti-Loup! Ti-Loup!’ Cap pushes him back against the ground. She pumps his chest with her hands. ‘Count to ten. Breathe slowly. Count. Count! One … two … three … four …’
‘We should’ve stopped –’
‘Breathe! Count!’
The shuddering of Ti-Loup’s body subsides. His breathing, while still ragged, slows down. ‘We should’ve rushed between them. I should have.’
‘Then you would have been killed. And Ti-Christophe would not have forgiven you.’
‘I wouldn’t care. He’d still be alive.’
There is so much blood on Ti-Christophe’s body, so much on the ground around him, that Cap slips and falls when she tries to touch her brother’s body. Ti-Loup kneels in a puddle of red.
Ti-Christophe and Olivier are arranged in a weirdly graceful Gothic arc, right arms extended, fingertips to fingertips, touching.
‘What will we do?’
‘We have to tell Papa.’
‘We can’t tell him,’ Ti-Loup says. ‘Michel Monsard will swear Ti-Christophe was a killer.’
‘He won’t dare. We saw him kill Ti-Christophe.’
‘But he doesn’t know that,’ Ti-Loup points out. ‘He doesn’t know that we saw.’
‘Won’t matter. There’ll be too much evidence against him. The stab wounds will match his knife.’
Ti-Loup creeps into the bloodied space between the bodies. He nestles up against Ti-Christophe’s chest. He lifts Ti-Christophe’s lifeless arm and drapes it around his own shoulders. ‘I’m not going to leave him,’ he says.
Cap pulls him out of the bloody circle. They cling to each other and thrash about in the undergrowth in a passion of need and horror and fear. Afterwards they will not remember how much time has passed. They will only remember lying near the bridge, exhausted, looking up through the treetops at the sky.
‘We have to tell Papa,’ Cap says.
‘We can’t. We can’t tell him Ti-Christophe struck first. He wouldn’t believe it. He wouldn’t want to believe it. He could only accept using a knife in self-defence.’
‘You’re right. But it was self-defence.’
‘Except Ti-Christophe stabbed first.’
‘There were two of them,’ Cap protested. ‘He saw their knives. It didn’t even occur to Papa that there’d be knives. He thought it would be a thrashing. With fists.’
‘If we tell, the police will label Ti-Christophe a killer. No one will be able to prove who struck first. Michel Monsard will plead self-defence. What we say won’t count because we’re children in the eyes of the courts and because you are Ti-Christophe’s sister. Father Boniface will forbid Christian burial because Ti-Christophe killed and that will break your father’s heart. If we say nothing, nothing will happen until the bodies are found, and then it will be a great mystery. Michel won’t say anything. He’ll claim he knows nothing, saw nothing, and by now his knife’s at the bottom of the Vienne.’
‘We have to tell Papa that Ti-Christophe is dead.’
‘But we don’t have to tell everything,’ Ti-Loup says.
17.
‘Papa, we have something to tell you.’
‘Ti-Christophe?’
‘They killed each other, Papa.’
Christophe le Jardinier crosses himself and presses his forehead against the wall. ‘God disposes,’ he says, his voice breaking, ‘as He sees fit. It is no dishonour to die in an honourable fight.’
‘It wasn’t an honourable fight, Papa. It was two against one.’
‘Olivier was there too?’
‘You knew that would happen, Papa. They ganged up on him.’
The gardener shakes his head. He pulls a chair back from the table and slumps into it. ‘How do people with no shame manage their lives? I don’t understand. So Michel Monsard and Ti-Christophe are both dead, but Olivier is still alive.’
‘No, Papa. Michel Monsard is alive. Ti-Christophe killed Olivier in self-defence but then Michel stabbed
Ti-Christophe many times. Many more times than he needed. And then he ran away. He doesn’t know that we saw.’
‘Cap, come to me.’ The gardener holds his daughter fiercely close. ‘We are all that we have left,’ he says.
‘Papa, we have Ti-Loup also.’
‘Yes,’ her father says. ‘We have Ti-Loup also. Of course we do. Forgive me, Ti-Loup.’ He pulls the boy into the triad of comfort and they hold each other. They simply stand and hold each other.
After some time the gardener says: ‘So then. Take me to my son’s body.’
‘It was here, Papa. You can see the crushed grass. Both bodies were here. Someone has moved them. You can see where they have been dragged.’
‘They’ve covered up the blood,’ Ti-Loup says. He scrapes away leaves with his foot, making the circle larger and larger. ‘They scraped it off with shovels first. There’s no blood left.’
Christophe le Jardinier leans against a tree to steady himself. ‘They say lightning never strikes twice. But this is the third time.’ He covers his eyes with the back of his right forearm.
‘Papa?’ Cap rests her body against his and holds his left hand.
‘I never saw the bodies or the burial places of his mother or of your mother, Capucine. I didn’t think it could happen again.’ He shakes his head and butts his forehead against the tree. ‘I didn’t think that was possible.’
‘I will find him, Papa.’ Cap forages farther afield, beating at the underbrush with a branch. ‘Look. Truck tracks.’
They all study the marks of the tyres.
‘Michel Monsard and his father,’ Cap says.
‘But where would they take Ti-Christophe?’ Ti-Loup is still wide-eyed and disbelieving. ‘And why?’
‘We know why,’ Cap says.
‘Yes, we know why,’ her father says. ‘Collaborators have ghosts at their heels. But I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it that I don’t have my son’s body. I cannot bear it that I can’t at last have a requiem mass.’
‘We have evidence, Papa. We know what we saw. We can tell the police.’
Ti-Loup meets her eyes and holds them. ‘What can we tell the police?’ he asks. His eyes say more. There could be no requiem mass, his eyes say. Ti-Christophe killed a man. The police will brand him a murderer.
‘We tell them nothing,’ the gardener says. ‘We have no body. We have no proof of death. We have no way of knowing what deals the police made with the butcher back then. We have no way of knowing what deals they are making now. They can tell the police that my son murdered Olivier and fled. We tell them nothing. We wait for them to tell us or for them to ask and then all we can say is that Petit Christophe is missing. Of Olivier we say and know nothing.’ He closes his eyes. ‘Three times. Three times. Why?’
Cap whispers to Ti-Loup: ‘What are we going to tell Chantal?’
18.
‘My mother gave me this,’ Ti-Loup says. ‘A rosary! Pearls and jade. What sort of gift is that for a boy? It’s like having to wear a blue dress.’
‘She’s giving you everything that makes her feel safe.’
‘I hate it the way I hated my blue dress. I’m supposed to keep it under my pillow, which I won’t.’
‘I know this is a stupid thing to say,’ Cap admits, ‘but I believe it will keep you safe.’
‘What?! Even Father JG would be annoyed if he heard you. Superstition’s for peasants.’
‘I know. And I’m a peasant. And the rosary makes me feel calmer. Your mother, though … this means she is very afraid for you.’
‘I know she is. I’m supposed to come back each Christmas, but she’s afraid my father won’t let me.’
‘I’m afraid of that too.’
‘How can she be less afraid of losing me to my father than of having me work as a butcher right here in St Gilles where she could see me every day? It makes no sense.’
‘It makes sense to her,’ Cap’s father says quietly. ‘Be gentle with your mother, Ti-Loup. Behind her back, the village makes fun of her. A son who’s a butcher proves their point. She’d be a laughing-stock.’
‘Is that what you think? That she’d be a laughing-stock?’
‘In St Gilles, she will be. She is. I know where your mother’s wounds are. I know when they bleed. You’re not the only person who hurts or feels lonely, Ti-Loup, and nor am I.’
‘If I ever pray my mother’s rosary …’ Ti-Loup tells Cap. ‘But I won’t … But if I did, at every bead I would think of you and Grand Loup and Ti-Christophe.’
‘I’ll move back to the loft. I can’t leave Papa alone. But I shouldn’t leave your maman alone either. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Maman has chosen to be alone. She’s ordered it. Don’t waste your sympathy. And your father won’t be alone. Chantal is there now.’
‘Can anyone keep Chantal safe?’
‘Grand Loup will keep her safe. He wants to keep his grandson safe.’
‘But you are a son to him too. He’s lost Ti-Christophe. I’m not sure he’ll be able to bear it when you go.’
‘I’m going to write every day. To him and to you.’
‘And I’ll write back.’
It is the talk of the butcher shop, the baker shop, the markets and the village square, but Cap and Ti-Loup have to hear it from Pierre of the velvet pantaloons and from the countess herself.
‘Everyone knows your mother’s sending you away,’ Pierre tells Ti-Loup, ‘because you smell like a butcher shop. And everyone knows your own father doesn’t want you. He’s going to pack you off to a concentration camp the minute you get there.’
‘I’ll be going to the school my father went to.’
‘It’s run like a concentration camp. Everyone knows that.’
‘Everyone knows what you do with goats,’ Cap tells him.
‘Everyone knows that your brother knocked up the butcher’s daughter,’ Pierre snaps back. ‘And everyone knows he ran away because he was scared shitless of her father and Michel.’
‘My brother did not run away.’
‘Where is he then? Why’d he disappear?’
Cap says with dignity and composure, ‘Ti-Christophe and my father are taking care of Chantal until the baby is born.’
Pierre laughs. ‘Everyone knows Monsieur Monsard sent for the gendarmerie in Tours to arrest your brother. Everyone knows your brother’s on the run. The butcher told the police he’s armed and dangerous.’
‘Armed with what?’
‘He stole all the butcher’s knives and cleavers. That’s why the police are taking Chantal back to her father.’
‘What? They can’t do that.’
‘They can. They’ve done it. It’s for her own safety.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Ti-Loup says.
‘You don’t have a clue,’ Pierre taunts, ‘about how much you don’t know. How much everyone knows except you.’
‘We know Ti-Christophe did not run away,’ Cap says quietly. ‘And we know Chantal is with my father.’
‘Not anymore. The gendarmes took her.’
Ti-Loup is disbelieving. ‘When?’
‘This morning. After you left. After you climbed back through the chateau window. You think we don’t know?’ Pierre laughs. ‘You think we don’t see? You think we didn’t tell your mother? Everyone knows.’
‘Pierre,’ the countess says from the doorway, ‘you may go now.’
‘Madame la Comtesse,’ Pierre says, bowing. He backs out of the room, step by careful backward step. ‘I thought they should know, Madame. I thought you would want them to know that you know.’
‘I will speak to your father,’ the countess says.
From behind the back of the countess, as he exits the room, Pierre makes an obscene gesture at Ti-Loup and Cap.
‘Madame la Comtesse,’ Cap says with a very sweet smile, ‘I believe Pierre has something further to say to you,’ though Pierre has vanished when the countess turns.
‘Mes enfants,’ she says. ‘I have very distressing new
s. It seems the butcher’s daughter has swallowed poison and has killed both herself and the child.’
‘Sometimes,’ Cap’s father says, ‘people come back long after you have given up hope.’
‘I will come back,’ Ti-Loup promises.
‘I will wait for you,’ Cap’s father says. Absent-mindedly he tousles Ti-Loup’s hair and strokes the boy’s face, almost as though he has gone blind and is reading Braille and committing a likeness to memory. ‘But they don’t come back from the dead,’ he says sadly.
‘Papa?’
‘They don’t go away either. They are always with you. Especially when there is no body and no funeral and no proof.’ With the iron lever, he lifts one of the cast-iron circles from the top of the stove and studies the flame intently. ‘They are all here,’ he says. ‘They all sleep in the loft now.’
‘He is somewhere else,’ Ti-Loup whispers to Cap.
‘Everyone is leaving me,’ Cap murmurs. ‘Don’t go.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘You could refuse. You could stay with us.’
‘And you’d stay in the chateau. You didn’t even have to climb out of a window.’
‘I didn’t have to but I did. I did tell your maman that I’d be staying with Papa tonight.’
‘You climbed out your window?’
‘I did. I waited until I saw you slide over your sill and then I slid over mine and followed you. You don’t have to go. You could refuse and you could live with Papa.’
‘I’d love to but what would I do? What do I know about farming? I’d be useless. Just another mouth to feed.’
‘This is the last supper,’ Cap’s father says suddenly, as though they have all just arrived. ‘Roasted rabbits and roasted potatoes. I prepared them myself. That was the first supper you had with us, Ti-Loup. You remember?’
Ti-Loup presses his lips together and nods. He cannot speak.
‘That was the first supper, and this is the last one,’ the gardener says.
‘Except I roasted those rabbits,’ Cap reminds. ‘For the first supper.’
‘Years ago,’ the gardener says. ‘Years and years and years ago.’ He looks back down the tunnel of those years and gets lost there, the serving ladle sliding from his hands. The spoon rests on the crisped browned body of a rabbit.
The Claimant Page 27
