surround was crooked, the brown wood was rotten, yet the door was somehow still firm. Resolutely shut. Shut for centuries.
David looked closer. The lintel was carved.
Urgently he ripped away the last coils of ivy and revealed the inscripted symbol in the centre of the stone.
‘Here.’ He was anxiously excited. ‘This arrow. I keep seeing it. The font, the doors, the arrows.’
Amy was shaking her head.
‘That’s not an arrow.’
‘What?’
‘I know that’s not an arrow.’
‘How?’
‘Because there’s one on a house in Elizondo. I remember walking past it with José, one day years back. I asked him what the symbol meant. He was evasive. Oddly evasive.’
‘I don’t –’
‘All I remember is this: what he called it, Patte d’oie. I remember distinctly because he used the French.’
‘Patt – what does that mean. Patt…?’
‘Patte d’oie. Goose’s foot. An ancient symbol.’ Amy brushed some more mud from the incised lines, so brusquely carved into the stone. ‘This is a goose’s foot, not an arrow. It’s a webbed goose’s foot.’
15
They were on the last leg now: heading for the last place marked on the map. Approaching the heart of the maze.
Navvarenx. Near to Gurs.
Navvarenx was north by a distance, so they pulled over at a garage for more fuel. David walked to the tiny shop, trying to work out what the doors meant. Smaller doors, smaller cemeteries, smaller fonts. Why?
It didn’t make sense. Why was everything duplicated in this eccentric, almost insulting way? Was it a kind of apartheid, like benches for black people in 50s Alabama? Like old South Africa?
Or was it something else? Could they be smaller doors for…smaller people?
But that hardly made sense, smaller people could use any door.
A bell jingled as he entered the garage shop; he went straight to the till and bought Amy a new sim card, and an entirely new cellphone – just in case. The garage owner was eating red saucisson and baguette as he totted up the bill. David stared at the sum on the receipt, trying to remind himself he didn’t have to worry about money.
Back in the car they were both pensive and subdued. And David felt the sadness tighten as they made the last drive. He thought of his parents. And the memories loomed in his mind, even as the mountains faded behind them in the mirror.
He was on his grandfather’s sturdy shoulders, his infant mouth clouded with pink cotton candy. The blue Pacific was sparkling and his mum was young and walking beside them, and his dad was there too, and laughing. When was that? What were they doing there? How old was he then? Five? Seven? Nine? It was a blur, too faint to discern.
And the torment was: he had no one to ask. That was the worst thing. He couldn’t ring his mum and say when did we do this, he couldn’t ask his granddad and say why did we do that. There was no one left to give him answers, to explain his childhood, to laugh about the funny stuff, to swap memories, to say remember when we went on that picnic. He had been left alone and behind by the others, and David yearned, with a wild sadness, to know why. Granddad had sent him here for a reason, the reason had to explain it all.
It had to.
David gripped the steering wheel tightly. The road into Navvarenx took them through the outlying village of Gurs, which seemed to be virtually a suburb of Navvarenx.
Gurs was straggly. The long French road was lined with parallel trees, whitewashed at the base. There was some kind of strange flat area to the south of town – adorned with a series of glass structures, somewhat like bus stops. David looked at it and looked away. An enormous black crucifix loomed over the flatness; he got an overwhelming urge to drive faster. The cross was so very black.
They drove straight on, straight past the village of Gurs, tucked off the main road, and a few minutes later they were seeing a sign saying Navvarenx.
At last Amy spoke.
‘You know, we don’t have to do this now…’ Her sadly traced smile was empathic.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We can wait. It’s been a long day already. Maybe we should wait.’
‘I’m OK. I’m fine. And if Miguel is after us I want to do this quickly.’
He wondered why he was saying this. He knew Miguel was after them. Probably in Mauleon right now, asking the hotel manageress. Leaning across the desk, tall and scarred and imposing. Which direction did the