very careful. Forever.’ He gazed mournfully at David. ‘And yet…When I saw your face that day, when you came to the cottage…then I remembered my old friend Martinez and I wanted you to know the truth, as much as I could risk.’ The old man was sighing. ‘I felt you deserved to know who your grandfather was. A Basque. But you needed to be protected, as well.’
‘From Miguel?’
‘From Miguel. From many others like him. But especially Miguel.’
‘Did he kill my parents?’
The air was filled with the sounds of the downpour outside.
‘Yes…’
This reply seemed to wrench something out of José, who closed his eyes and shuddered. Then he looked away from David: he was staring at the broken window beyond his questioner’s shoulder. David spun, in sharp alarm – was that a shape in the woods beyond the garden?
The misty rain was deceptive: maybe it was just a pottok, one of the wild horses, drifting in that ghostly way, through the forest – but David couldn’t help imagining it was…Miguel. Scoping them out, whispering to an accomplice, the rain dripping off his cap as he cocked his gun.
No: that was impossible. No one knew they were hiding out here. No one even knew they were in Campan, let alone concealed in the cagoterie over the river. And the house was incredibly sequestered: you only knew it existed, behind its screen of firs, by the time you knocked your head on the ancient stone lintel, with its goose foot carved cruelly and brutally into the granite.
But that raised another question. How did José know about this house? It was the ancient home and refuge of the Cagots, not Basques. How did José Garovillo end up here?
And then a cold new possibility gripped David – a claw around his thoughts. If José knew about the house, why shouldn’t Miguel?
David sat forward. His interrogation needed some urgency. Maybe threats.
‘José, does Miguel know about this house?’
‘No. I never tell him, not the house. If he knew I would not be here! One day I knew I would have to run away from him, that I would need somewhere to escape, when he came looking, or when the police came hunting.’
‘But how did you know about a Cagot safe house?’
José quickly spooned a tiny morsel of elvers into his white-lipped mouth.
David gripped José’s other arm. Hard.
‘Tell me. What happened at Gurs? Why did Miguel kill my parents?’
A frown of pain. David gripped harder. José grimaced, and exuded an answer:
‘Because of what they were about to find out.’
‘You mean what happened at Gurs. Your treachery?’
‘Yes.’
David now realized, with an upwelling of contempt mixed with pity – that José was crying. Two or three tears tracked down the old man’s face, as he explained: ‘Yes I did something at Gurs. Things happened there. Miguel did not want people to know…’
‘José, what did you do?’
The old man mumbled a reply; David leaned forward, unhearing. José said again, ‘They torture us. You have to remember, they torture us.’
‘Who?’
‘Eugen Fischer.’
David shook his head.
‘I’ve heard him mentioned, by Eloise’s grandmother. Who is he?’
‘A Nazi doctor.’
‘And what did he do?’ David felt the tingle of a bittersweet excitement: he sensed he was getting closer to the tragic core of this mystery. He was far from sure he wanted to know the answers; yet he wanted the answers more than ever.
‘What did they do? José? How did they torture you?’
‘They tested us. Many tests of the blood. And the hair and the…the blood. Testing the blood.’
‘What else?’
‘There were other doctors. And then the Catholics, many priests.’ José was shivering. He was shivering like the oak leaves in the garden, pelted with cold mountain rain.
‘What did the priests do?’
‘They burned us. Some of us. Killed us.’
‘Why did they do this?’
José took one more mouthful of the cooling, greasy baby eels. And then he said, ‘They thought we were not human, they thought we deserved to be exterminated, like snakes. To die like pagans, or witches. Once they finished their blood testing…Eugen Fischer would hand some of us over to the priests and the criminals…’ José waved a hand, despairingly. ‘And they took us, and burned us. Many many people. In the swamps at the edge of the camp.’
‘But why did they torture you?’ David said. ‘Was it like the witch burnings? Zugarramurdi? The burning of the Basques?’
José gazed with a profound sadness at David. And said, ‘No.’
David’s shoulders slumped. The mystery still eluded him. He was angry now. Angry at himself for not working it