Engelmann had come to the edge of the willows. One of the dogs strained at the leash he held.
With a single shot, Kohler hit the animal in the chest, causing it to rear up suddenly on its hind legs and to fall back. Herr Max scrambled for cover.
‘Tell Gestapo Boemelburg I could have dropped that man had I wanted to. The rifle’s good but it pulls a little towards the top left quadrant. Hey, tell the boys I like dogs and hated to shoot them. They were beautiful animals.’
‘I’ll tell him and I’ll try to keep the other two back.’
‘Good.’
They watched as he walked down towards the brook. He held up his arms and spread them widely to signal that no one should do anything until he got there. Without a word, Kohler got up and together with Nana ran for cover behind the wall.
‘Now start filling me in on De Vries,’ he said, not letting her get free of him. ‘And don’t stop until I know how the son of a bitch will think and what he’ll do and have done.’
‘And Tshaya?’ she asked, her dark eyes registering dismay as he took the pistol from her. ‘She hates me. She’ll try to kill me. She can use explosives just as well as Janwillem but is of the Rom and knows their ways and these ruins, so will have the others at her beck and call.’
‘Look, just fill me in on the two of them and on this place.’
‘But … but I haven’t been here in years. I wouldn’t know where to begin. He’s crazy. There are so many places … He’s not the same as the man I once knew. He’s …’
She felt Kohler’s fingers gently touch her lips; his thumb, her tears. ‘Listen,’ he whispered.
It was Louis. Louis was calling to him. Louis sounded trapped and in despair but was a long way off.
‘He’s inside the ruins, in the great hall,’ said Nana sadly. ‘That is where the gypsies gathered to hold their feasts and the Kris Romani, the trials at which all serious offences and conflicts within the kumpania were settled by the elders. He’s found something and is trying to warn you of it.’
A trial … Ah, Christ!
The hall, where the monks had once dined, was long and huge, its ceiling high. And from where there had been leaded glass in more recent years, the grey light of day entered under the arcade outside to throw pale shafts across the littered floor.
Snow had been swept in by the wind. Rags, cushions, blankets, bits of tattered, faded carpet lay among scattered eiderdowns whose feathers were teased by the wind and whose carmine, beige or white silk coverlets, with a black embroidery of flowered designs, had been torn.
Overturned cooking cauldrons were beside the fourteenth-century fireplace. An iron tripod still stood over long-dead ashes. There was broken furniture, some of it still bearing ancient fabrics and leaking horsehair. There were carved oak chairs with no legs, chairs with two or three … Benches, a narrow wooden bed, a wicker chaise-longue, a broken card table … Scatterings of dresses, the skirts wine purple, deep red and brown, all voluminous, the blouses once white and loose and low-cut.
A faded yellow kerchief that would have been tied around a boy’s neck lay next to the diklo, the headscarf in magenta which had once covered the long and braided, glossy, blue-black hair of his mother.
There were broken wine bottles, kicked-over wooden water buckets, battered fedoras, old suit jackets, horseshoes, horse harness, tarpaulins, anvils, the leather bellows of a simple but effective forge …
Jars of pickled cucumbers, those of hot red peppers in vinegar.
‘August 1941 …’ St-Cyr heard himself sadly exhaling the words. ‘Tshaya, daughter of the horse trader Tshurkina la Marako who was deported to Buchenwald 14 September of that year with all members of his kumpania except herself.’
‘Jean-Louis …’ began Gabrielle only to hear him caution her with, ‘Wait, please. What have we come upon?’
The ancient leather trunks and suitcases, the wooden boxes, had all been opened and dumped in a mad search for gold coins. The men would have been herded to one end of the hall, the women and children to the other. Sandals, broken shoes, sabots, old rubber boots – all of it was here.
Stripped of their gold, the gypsies had been loaded on to lorries and taken from this place.
And now? he asked himself.
He picked up a photograph from among the scattered hundreds. The long, drooping moustache, heavy gold rings, gold coins hanging from the watch chain across the waistcoat, fedora, crumpled dark suit jacket, wide corduroy trousers and riding boots were those of a Rom Baro. ‘Tshaya’s father,’ he said. A sweat-stained silk kerchief of dark colour was knotted around the neck.
‘Did she turn them all in?’ he asked of Tshaya. ‘Did that husband of hers force her to tell him where her family was in hiding? Is this why the Spade was murdered in such a horrible fashion?’
He took a moment and then told them the worst of his thoughts. ‘Boemelburg must have known of the round-up and yet has said nothing of it to us.’ Instead, Walter had let him and Hermann believe the Gestapo and the SS had had no prior knowledge of this place or of what had happened here.
Some granular snow struck the shattered remains of a window, startling them. Suzanne-Cecilia found his hand to grip it tightly. Gabrielle moved closer.
‘There are no recent tracks,’ he said emptily. ‘Has no one been in here since it happened?’
‘The chapel then,’ said Gabrielle in a whisper. ‘Perhaps they are using it.’
‘For what!’ he asked, alarmed.
‘For her trial and … and as a last redoubt.’
‘But … but how is it that you know of this?’ he bleated.
‘I don’t. I’m only suggesting it.’
For two days he and Hermann had been absent from Paris. Gestapo surveillance of the reseau had been slack and had only been stepped up on their return. Had this given Gabrielle and the others an opportunity to travel unnoticed?
The Spade had been murdered; the Generalmajor had been given a cyanide capsule and told what? he wondered. The truth!
‘Where is the chapel?’ he asked, sickened by his thoughts. ‘Show me, please.’
Neither of these two resistants argued with him. In single file, with Gabrielle leading, they picked their way among the rubbish to a far portal. He did not know if Hermann and Nana had been killed, only that the shots they had heard had come from a rifle.
And now? he asked himself. What will we find?
Half hidden among the barren branches and undergrowth, and at a distance of perhaps 200 metres, the bleached grey ribs of six large caravans stared emptily at the sky. Tensely Kohler let his gaze sift questioningly over them, understanding only too well what must have happened. There had been no recent tracks in the overgrown orchard and gardens, no tripwires, not even snares for rabbits or signs of wood-gathering.
The ruins just beyond the caravans were quiet. The air was clean and sharp – there wasn’t a hint of hastily extinguished cooking fires nor of tethered horses.
Nana Theleme could not seem to take her eyes from the caravans. ‘There is scattered clothing,’ she said hesitantly.
They could go round the carvans, they could head for them. The belfry of the chapel was some distance to their right. She started for it. He heard her suck in a startled breath when held back by him.
‘Were the girls and young women raped?’ he asked.
Stiffening, she answered fiercely, ‘How could I possibly know?’
‘Let’s have a look at what’s left. Now start telling me about De Vries, like I asked. I want everything.’
‘He … he was always gentle and kind and had such a sense of humour but was mischievous. He … he loved Tshaya’s father as his own and was adopted by him.’