The Caves of Périgord: A Novel by Martin Walker

know this, which made it all the more important that he be seen to show them proper deference.
    He would miss this woman, lying dead before him, about to go into the flame. Not just her body or her care, but her counsel. She had understood his vision from the moment that the hunters had first entered the miraculous cave and summoned him to see the great white space of the walls, the perfect round of the ceiling where it narrowed. He remembered the sense of lust as he had first seen it, probing into the belly of the earth as he had later probed into the belly of his woman. She had understood that this could be the holiest cave of them all, and it was her counsel that made him raise the idea so carefully. She had told him to sound out the oldest Keepers first, to make it sound like their idea, while she had subtly worked on their women. He would miss that, miss her gentle reminders of the need to pay respect to their other Keepers, to praise the crude work of that fool, the Keeper of the Bison. He had only himself now to keep voicing the warnings, to bite down on the urgency that seized him when he saw how the cave should be, and to keep silent when his heart cried out in pain at the sad daubings others made as they carried out his vision.
    The flames were catching hold now, and he smelled the first warm, cooking smell of his woman’s dead flesh. Like boar. He bit back the sudden rush of saliva in his moth. The smell would turn sour soon enough, as sour as the loneliness of his own hearth with no woman to clutch for warmth in the nights. He must take a new woman before the winter came, a young one, ready to make more sons. As soon as the ashes of the funeral pyre had cooled and been scattered by the wind and rain, he would talk to the Keeper of the Horses. Most of all, he must keep talking to himself, reminding himself, imposing that discipline upon his own imperious spirit, which might otherwise tear asunder the Keepers in division and rivalry. They must be guided, not commanded, gently steered rather than driven. Perhaps this was his woman’s last farewell to him, her last gift in death. The wisdom of her counsel, not the girl child he had yet to see, was how he would remember her.
    He watched as the flames died, waiting until the ashes were just a glow, and turned to his colleagues on either side. The Keeper of the Horses and the Keeper of the Deer both nodded, and as he led the way uphill they marshaled into line the others who would be granted the honor of the cave. First the leaders of his own people, the flint man and the hunter, the waterman and the woodman. Then in courtesy, the Keepers of the other clans, almost humble at the knowledge that they were about to enter into a place far greater than their own caves. Then from each clan, a chosen leader. He looked back. Perhaps forty men, none of them young, were climbing the hill behind him, their way lighted by his apprentices carrying torches that had been kindled at the pyre.
    When he reached the cave, the oldest apprentice scurried forward, using his torch to light each of the small stone lamps that the elders would carry. When they were ready, he stepped into the mouth of the cave and began his chant to the beasts, the song of supplication that sought their permission to enter and display their pride and strength to the men who would enter to worship. Once, as a young apprentice at another, lesser cave, he had stood with the torch as another Keeper made this same song, and a great bolt of lightning had crashed down from a clear night sky to strike and break a tree nearby. They had all fled the wrath of the beasts. That moment had always stayed with him. Even though he came to this cave each day, although he worked here and had made this place and the great bulls had grown under his own hand, he was reminded that this was their place even more than his. A power had been engendered here that had reached and grown far beyond his art and beyond his skill. And as he led