Tom Knox - The Marks of Cain

'Which means…?'

'Which means, Simon…' Sanderson was half laughing. 'Something happened to all these people…'

A tiny chill shivered through Simon, despite the autumn sun. He inhaled, quickly and deeply.

'Ah…'

'Got it. Someone gave them the loot — or they found it — in Occupied France.'

'You think it's something to do with the war, don't you?'

'Yep,' he answered. 'I'm thinking blood money. Or…' He paused, as if for effect. 'Or Nazi gold.'

The girl was shouting at them. 'Qui est-ce? Qui est-ce?'

David turned to Amy.

'Don't move. She has…a shotgun.'

Amy was pale and rigid but she spoke for them both, in French. David listened keenly, trying to understand. Amy called to the girl, giving their names.

Silence. David could sense neighbours peering out of windows, behind him. He was hyper aware of the gun, loaded, beyond the door: one blast of that would take down the door and maybe kill them.

They had to end the drama.

'I'm sorry,' he said, through the door — feeling absurd and very scared. 'Please. We just came to talk. Don't know if you can speak English but…I just want to know about my parents. They died here. They were killed here. Or we can go. We will just go?'

Silence.

He glanced Amy's way. A faint sheen of perspiration shone on her forehead; a lick of her blonde fringe clung to her skin. He repressed the urge to run for the car. The door swung open. The girl was standing there. Her shotgun was broken over her arm.

'I am Eloise Bentayou,' she said. 'What do you want?'

David stared at the Cagot girl. She was about seventeen or eighteen. A small silver cross around her neck was bright against her tawny skin and her nail varnish was vivid. The girl's complexion was notably dark, almost Arabic-looking. But her black hair had that Basque look, flat against the skull.

'We…' David struggled to explain things. 'We wanted to know about the Cagots.'

Eloise regarded him, her young frown tinged with suspicion.

'So you have come to look at the untouchables.' She gave them a despairing shrug. 'Ahh. What do I care. Come in. Come…this way.'

David and Amy stepped over the threshold. A wooden clock with a picture of the Virgin Mary ticktocked, in a lonely way, on a wall. Eloise escorted them into a living room where a big, slightly old-fashioned TV flickered in the corner. Watching it was an elderly woman, sitting on a sofa.

'Grandmere?' Eloise spoke briskly yet solicitously, in French, to her grandmother, but the woman barely moved, she was staring at the TV. The sound was off, but she was still staring at some French game show. Finally she looked up, glanced at Amy, then David, then returned her gaze to the television. She was wearing tartan slippers.

Eloise sighed. 'Since the…since the murders she has not been alive. Not really. Et…Grandmere? Une tasse de the?'

The woman kept staring at the screen; Eloise shook her head.

'Come into the kitchen,' she suggested. 'You want to talk about the Cagots? The last Cagots in the world! Before they kill the rest of us…' She walked to the door. 'I can make tea. English tea.'

The kitchen was as unprepossessing as the living room. It wasn't dirty, but it exuded neglect. A saucer of milk, set down for a pet, was beginning to congeal in a corner.

They sat at a bare wooden table as Eloise made tea. David looked at Amy, he didn't know what to say. He tried a compliment.

'You speak very good English.' Even as he said this, he felt pathetic.

'My grandmother taught me. She speaks English very well. She learned it at college…She was a tour guide…Many years before. Before it happened. Now she just sits there.' Eloise was gazing down at the mugs, now full of tea. She shunted the mugs across the table. 'Here. Earl Grey. There is lemon here if you want.'

They accepted the mugs. Eloise spoke: 'I am sorry about the gun. It was my father's before…before the deaths.'

Amy intervened: 'Eloise, do you mind my asking…about what happened?'

The girl flinched, very subtly. 'A month ago…my father and mother were killed.'

'My God,' Amy said.

'I'm so sorry,' David added.

The teenager's dark brown eyes gazed directly his way.

'That is why I let you in. Your story. It is very sad. I know how that feels. I sympathize.'

'How were they killed?'

'Shot.'

'By who?'

'The police do not find anyone. The police do nothing.'

'Nothing?'

'At all. They are…unemployed. Chomage! Two people killed and they find no one. It is incroyable.' Eloise was gulping her tea. David's was still too hot to drink. Eloise didn't seem to care. 'They were shot in the car. Just like that! Maybe because we are Cagots? We do not know why. You see why I am scared. Of everyone, even the police. The Cagots are being killed.'

The subject had been broached: the Cagots. David mentioned the website and the girl scowled.

'My father's idea! The stupid website! The last of the Cagots dot com. I told him it was dangerous to make that dangerous website! I told him it would attract attention. He and my mother, they said we Cagots should be ashamed no longer, that it was stupid for us to hide away. And because we were maybe the last, he wanted the world to know.' A shrug. 'He said someone had to record the fate of my people. Les Cagots! And so maybe my family died for it. N'est ce pas? Since then I have kept the shotgun. My father used it to hunt pigeons. I keep it all the time. They may come for us next. We are the last ones left, me and my grandmere. And I do not think my grandmother would care if they did kill her, it is like she is dead already.'

David felt hopelessly inadequate as he listened. What response could match this grief? He knew what it was like to be orphaned, as an only child; the unequalled isolation, the inner song of solitary despair. He wanted to help; he knew the girl could not be helped.

The girl nodded, with a demure sadness, at Amy's queries. Her youth and dark prettiness only made her grief more poignant.

'Yes, I can tell you…I do know the history. My father taught us since we were young, wanting to make us proud. Not ashamed.' She turned and cocked an ear, listening for something; maybe her grandmother; she looked back at David. 'This is what I know. This is what my father told me. We, the Cagots, we were…we are…a people. A unique race. We first emerge — is that the word? — yes, we first emerge in the documents around the thirteenth century. In this same region. Navarre and Gascony.'

David drank some tea. Attuned to her every word.

'By then we Cagots were already regarded as an inferior race. Pariahs!'

Amy interruped: 'Like outcasts? Untouchables?'

'Oui. In medieval times Cagots were divided from the…normal peasants — in many ways. We had our own urban districts: usually on the bad side of the river, the malarial side.' Eloise sipped tea, and continued. 'Traces of these ghettos can still be found in Pyrenean communities, if you search — like St Jean Pied de Port or…Campan.'

David nodded, eagerly. 'We saw! The old cottages and ruins in Campan.'

'Yes. The ghettos were known as cagoteries. Campan has one of the biggest.'

'What else?' said Amy. 'The doors?'

Eloise replied: 'You need to know the history, first of all. Vraiment. Cagot life was marked by apartness: we were separated from everyone else, hidden away, like a shameful secret. Cagots were forbidden to enter most trades or professions. We were forced to be the drawers of water and the hewers of the wood. So we made barrels for wine and coffins for the dead. We also became very good carpenters.' She flashed a sad smile. 'Which is why we built many of the Pyrenean churches from which we were sometimes excluded.'