the villagers shouting at her, throwing stones, with mangy dogs barking and snapping. He could hear the frightened peasant children, sobbing in the dungeon…Denouncing their parents. He could see the black-hooded priests, stripping the women naked, searching for the Devil’s claw-marks…
He tried to clear his mind, focussing on the route. Now they were descending into the foothills, the sun had begun to burn through the thinning clouds; soon enough the clouds were gone. Blue autumn skies reigned over the green hills and valleys of southern Gascony.
‘He was cutting trees when I met him,’ she said.
David looked across the car, jolted from his reveries.
She repeated her words. Her speech was a monologue, a very necessary monologue.
‘When I first saw Miguel. It was at a Basque fair. The Basques have these rustic sports. They call them la force Basque. Herri Koralak. Trials of rural strength.’ Her fringe lifted in the soft freshet of breeze from the open car window. ‘He was throwing boulders, and chopping logs, and winning the tug of war. You know, he was like this…legend. The Wolf was already a legend, everyone talked about him, the giant from Etxalar, son of the famous José Garovillo, this guy with inhuman strength. A jentilak from the forest of Irauty. He was bare chested when I saw him and I was twenty-three and it was purely physical. I’m sorry. Sorry. So fucking sorry.’
He wondered why she was apologizing; he wondered who she was apologizing to. He listened to her as she talked and talked, her words blurring into the noise of the engine and the strobing of the woodland sun.
‘Then I realized he was clever, but…but, you know, a killer, truly brutal. And the strength, this famous tall guy, the jentilak, it was…tainted, it was married to a pure cruelty. But the sex was good, at first. That’s the truth and I’m sorry. He used to tie me up. I bit him. He cut me once, on the scalp, with a knife. We had a sex game, with a knife. I came when he did it.’
She was staring straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the horizon of hills. ‘Then I began to feel sick. Quite soon. With the sex, the taint of violence. And he was seriously troubled, mentally, emotionally, every way. Pathologically. Whenever we had really passionate sex, he always fell into this deep, deep sleep, almost comatose. What is that about? I don’t know.’
Now she looked at him. ‘So there it is. That was the only way I knew…to give us a chance. He was surely going to kill you. Maybe me too. So I let him fuck me, as I thought that might save us. Sorry. You can stop the car now if you want and leave me here. I can hitch.’
Her face was a picture of resisted tears. David felt the anger abating, it was replaced with a voyeuristic sympathy, a shared and unseeing terror of what she must have been through. So she had done it to save them; it was rape. A kind of rape. Maybe not rape. But she had saved his life.
‘You don’t have to talk about it any more,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to talk about it ever again.’ And he meant it. But she shook her head, her mouth trembling, as she surveyed the rolling Gascon dales, green and mellow, through the car window.
‘I want to talk about it. I knew as soon as he walked in the cave he would want to do…something like that. The same hungry smile. He liked sex in the open, the risk of being caught, being seen by others. We did it in the witch’s cave before. That’s how I knew where we were. He was always ravenously sexual, like he was starved.’
‘I’m so sorry, Amy.’
‘Don’t be. It wasn’t rape. It was just disgusting. I did love him once and I can never forgive myself for that. But he was going to kill you. He was probably going to torture you. And so.’
‘Is he…’ David didn’t know how to phrase it. ‘Is he ill? I mean he’s obviously a bastard but it feels like more than that.’
‘Who knows. Psychotic maybe. The facial tic always made me wonder. And the sleep and the inexorable libido…He used to want sex five or six times a day. Anywhere. With lots of…’ She grimaced, and continued: ‘Like I said. Tying up. Biting. Cutting. And worse. You know.’
‘OK…’
He reached out for her hand; he touched it, blindly, his eyes on