"Ysabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER XVII

Sunrise, the first gift in the world. Promise and healing after the hard transit of night. After a darkness beset with beasts—imagined and real—and inner fears, and untamed, violent men. After sightlessness that could lead one astray into ditch or bog or over cliff, or into the clutch and sway of whatever spirits might be abroad, bent on malice.

Morning’s pale light had offered an end to such fears for centuries, millennia, whatever dangers might come with the day. Shutters were banged open, curtains drawn, shop doors and windows were unlocked, city gates unbarred, swung wide, as men and women made their way out into the offered day.

On the other hand (in life there was almost always another hand), daylight meant that intimacy, privacy, escape from the unwanted gaze, silence for meditation, the solace of unseen tears on a pillow—or of secret love on that same pillow before, or after—were so much harder to claim. Rarer coinage, in the clear light.

It is more difficult—much more difficult—to hide and not be found.

BUT SHE WANTS to be found. That lies at the heart of this. She is prepared to become angry that they have taken so long and she remains alone.

Unfair, perhaps, for she’s made this difficult, but they are supposed to love her beyond words, need her more than breath or light, and she has spent a second night outside and solitary, and it has been cold.

She is not unaccustomed to hardship, but neither is she immune to longing. Seeing them both at Entremont when she came through to the summons has kindled need, desire, memory.

She would not let them know this, of course.

Not yet, and only one of them, after. But these sensations are within her now and, lying awake, watching stars traverse the open space to the south, as if across a window, she has been intensely, painfully aware of them, of lives lived and lost.

And of the two of them, somewhere out there, looking for her.

She isn’t certain why she’d said three days. No need to have done so. A small hard kernel of fear: it is possible they might not find her in time. She knows herself very well, knows she will not back away from this. Is aware that having arrived now in this place she has chosen she will not go forth again. Will not make it easier for them, or for herself.

If one of them needs her enough he will be here.

Meghan Marriner, showing no signs of fatigue, had taken Greg to the hospital at first light. She’d said last night she was going to do it, was not the sort to back away from that. Steve drove them in the van.

Kate, briefed over breakfast, was at the dining-room table poring over Melanie’s notes and the guidebooks she’d accumulated. Ned, at the computer, was googling as fast as he could type and skim. He’d had about three hours’ sleep, he was running on adrenalin, aware that he was probably going to crash hard at some point.

They were looking for clues based on what his mother had realized by the car barrier last night. Kate had gone pale when she’d woken in the morning and they’d asked her about it. But she’d remembered the words exactly as he had.

Up at Entremont, setting the two men their task of finding her, Ysabel hadn’t just spoken of killing.

She’d said the loser would be sacrificed.

They had nothing else to go on. Had to treat this as what they needed it to be: a clue to what might be happening.

Ned typed a different search combination: Celts + Provence + “places of sacrifice.” He started finding things about f#233;es and fairy mounds and even dragons. Dragons. Not much help, though from where he sat he was a lot less inclined to dismiss all that than he would have been a week ago.

There really was too much junk online. Personal pages, Wiccan sites, travel blogs. Stuff about witches and fairies—folk beliefs from medieval days. He skipped past those.

Further back, it looked like the Celts had merged their own gods with the Roman ones. Right. Conquered people—what else were they going to do? Except they did believe in human sacrifice. In worshipping skulls. They hanged sacrifices from trees, he read—that didn’t help a lot. Trees were everywhere.

They performed rituals on hills, high places, which offered a little more, but not a lot. Entremont had been such a place, but they’d been back already, and Ned was certain Ysabel wouldn’t have returned to where she’d been summoned. There was that other ruined hill fort—Roquepertuse, towards Arles—but Kim and Kate had gone there yesterday.

He clicked and typed and scrolled. Earth goddesses linked to water, pools, springs—Ned had been at one of those, and so had Cadell, at Glanum. Nothing. Goddesses were associated with forests—all the deities were, it seemed.

Much good that did them.

He found another site, read: “They usually began with a human sacrifice, utilizing a sword, spear, a sickle-like knife, ritual hanging, impaling, dismembering, disembowelling, drowning, burning, burial alive…”

He shook his head, looked away from the screen, over his shoulder. Kate had Melanie’s notes and books spread around her on the table, was scribbling like a student with a teacher lecturing. Ned turned back to the computer.

The Romans, it seemed, had been shocked and appalled by all of this. Had banned human sacrifice. Sure, Ned thought, the Romans who were so gentle and kind themselves.

He tried other word combinations, found another site. Read: “A Celtic oppidum must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it…”

He didn’t know what a Dayak was. Entremont was an oppidum. The word just meant a hill fort. They were back to that. He checked the top of the page for the source of this one. Some Englishman, in 1911. Well, what was he going to know? A cup of tea with his pinky extended and opinions on two thousand years ago.

Ned swore and gave up. This wasn’t his thing, it was making him nervous, and he didn’t have a sense it was leading anywhere. He scraped his chair back and went out on the terrace. His father and uncle were sitting there, coffee mugs on the small table.

His dad glanced up. He looked worn out. “Well?”

“I’m wasting time, there’s way too much. I mean, that’s what they did—sacrifices. So it could be anywhere.”

His uncle sighed. “Yeah, Kim thinks so too. Get yourself a coffee, you must be beat this morning.”

Ned shook his head. “I’m fine, I just want to get going.”

“Have to have destinations first, don’t you think?”

The glass doors opened.

“All right,” said Kate Wenger. “Here’s what I think. There’s no point checking every Celtic site in the books.”

“Tell me about it,” Ned said.

“I am, listen. If we’re right, this whole find-me thing instead of a fight is because Melanie’s inside Ysabel, right?”

“I still don’t know how that’s possible,” Edward Marriner said.

“It is,” Uncle Dave said. “Go ahead, Kate.”

Kate was biting her lip. “Fine. Well, my point is, if the search is happening because of Melanie, then the one thing we can do is focus on places she knows about. For Celtic sacrifices. Right?”

The three of them looked at one another.

“Google is not my friend?” Ned said.

No one laughed. “Only if Melanie googled something and made a note. That’s what I’m thinking,” Kate said.

She had his McGill sweatshirt on again, over her brother’s shirt, and jeans.

Ned’s father was nodding. “That’s good, Kate. It gives us something logical.”

“Were they logical?” Uncle Dave asked.

“Melanie is,” Edward Marriner said.

“And so’s Kate,” Ned said. “So what’s in her notes? About Celts and rituals or whatever?”

“I found two places we haven’t been to yet.”

“We have three cars,” Dave Martyniuk said. “Only two? Give me one more.”

Ned cleared his throat. “I’m going back to Aix,” he repeated. He’d told them last night.

“Why?” Kate asked, but softly.

Ned shrugged. “To the cloister. I’ll let you guys be logical. I need to go there.”

None of them said anything.

GREG, NOT EVIDENTLY THE WORSE for two rabies injections with more to come over the next while, courtesy of Dr. Meghan Marriner, found the name of one of the sites amusing.

“Like, if the Celts were illiterate or whatever, why’d they name something Fort Books?”

Ned’s mother was in a mood. “I’ll make the next shot hurt if you don’t cut the jokes, Gregory. And I know how to do it.”

“He called Pain de Munition, east of here, Painful Munitions,” Steve declared.

“Ratting me out?” Greg said indignantly, but he looked pleased to have it recalled.

Fort de Buoux, apparently, was about forty-five minutes north, a hilltop off a rough road, nothing near it, a walk and climb to ruins—with a sacrificial altar at the summit. It sounded like a place where you could take an impressive photograph. Or hide.

The other site was farther north and west, more touristy, starred in all the guidebooks—something called the Fontaine de Vaucluse. A place where water gushed out of a mountain cave at certain times of the year. Melanie had noted that Oliver Lee wrote a section for the book describing the place from ancient times, through the nineteenth century, up to how it looked today. Some Italian poet had lived there in medieval times, but it had also been a Celtic holy site.

That figures, Ned thought, having googled goddesses and springs of water, caves and chasms in the earth.

“I’m still going into Aix,” he said again, as Uncle Dave and his father started sorting out who’d be in which car. He was beginning to come to terms—a little—with the fact that the others would listen to him and do what he decided.

More or less.

“Not by yourself,” his mother said.

“I’m not in danger, Mom. Brys is the one who was after me.”

“Not by yourself,” Meghan Marriner repeated, with a firmness that really was kind of impressive. It wasn’t a voice you could argue with; it didn’t actually occur to you to argue.

Ned ended up in the city with his mom and dad.

Dave was driving Kate and Steve to Fort de Buoux, Greg took Aunt Kim to the fountain. The idea, again, was to be in touch by phone, meet up if anyone found anything, or come back here for mid-afternoon to figure a next step if nothing happened.

It could actually have been funny in a different time and space, walking into town between his parents. Ned half felt like asking for an ice cream or a popsicle or a ride on the merry-go-round near the biggest of the fountains.

The cathedral was open but the door out to the cloister was locked. The guide who had the key and ran the half-hourly tours was coming in only after lunch. Ned didn’t even think of having his dad try to pick the lock. Not here. He wondered if his mom knew her husband could do that.

They went through the medieval streets back towards the main drag, the Cours Mirabeau. On the way they passed the caf#233; where he’d gone with Kate. He saw the chair he’d used to block the dog attacking him. He didn’t say anything to his parents about that. His father was looking stressed enough.

On the Mirabeau, lined with caf#233;s on one side and banks on the other, shaded by enormous plane trees, he stopped. The feeling was becoming almost familiar.

“She’s been here,” he said.

“How do you know that?” his mother demanded. His logical mother, exasperation in her voice.

“Jeez, Mom, I have no idea. I just do. Same way, sort of, that I knew Cadell was at the tower last night, I guess.”

“Why ‘sort of’?”

She didn’t miss a lot.

Ned fumbled for words, looking at the tourists sitting at small outdoor tables. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Why not? People dreamed of coming here, didn’t they? Of sitting at a caf#233; in the south of France in May.

“It isn’t exactly the same,” he said finally. “I don’t get her as an aura like the other two, or Aunt Kim. Or my own.”

“You can see your aunt, inside?”

He nodded. “If she’s close enough, and isn’t screening herself. Same with them.”

His mother sighed. “And…Ysabel?”

“Different. I just have a feeling she was here, like she was at the cemetery.”

“Why?”

“Jeez, Mom.”

She frowned. “I take it that eloquent phrase means we lack an answer?”

He nodded. “Yeah. We lack an answer.”

“Maybe because of Melanie,” his father said suddenly. “Maybe you’re picking up Melanie, not Ysabel.”

“Ed! You’re as bad as they are.”

His father still looked strained.

“Let’s have lunch,” his mother said, after a moment. Ned saw her looking closely at his dad. “We have to wait, anyhow.”

They picked a caf#233; near the end of the street. The inside looked flashy in an old-fashioned way, lots of green and gold, but on a day like this it was way nicer outdoors.

His father bought a newspaper next door. He found a report on the return of the skull and the sculpted bust. No details that seemed to matter. The police hadn’t any idea who had returned them, other than that it had been a man in a black leather jacket, on a motorcycle.

Grey, Ned thought.

“At some point,” his father said, mostly to himself, “I’m going to have to call her family.”

His mother looked at him again. Then she surprised Ned a bit by reaching out and squeezing her husband’s hand.

Aunt Kim called as they were finishing lunch. The Fontaine de Vaucluse was jammed with tourists on a Saturday morning in spring. It was theoretically possible (Ned’s father relayed) that Ysabel might be hiding in a tourist shop among lavender sachets and olive oil samples, but unlikely. Kim and Greg were heading back to the villa.

They phoned Dave. He reported that the three of them were still climbing about and around Fort de Buoux. No one else was there at all, it was windy, and there was a pretty compelling altar right at the top. As advertised. But the “no one else there” included any sign of a red-haired woman Kate was supposed to recognize if she saw her.

They were about to work down the steeper, wilder side of the hill, to see if there were any caves or recesses where she might have ducked out of sight, out of the wind. They’d head back after that.

“Be careful,” Ned’s father said to his brother-in-law. “Watch your knee.” He hung up.

“He can’t go clambering around rocks with that leg,” Meghan said.

Edward Marriner shrugged. “What am I going to do? If he can’t, he can’t.” Worry was written on his face. He looked older. Ned didn’t like seeing him like that. It made Ned feel fragile, somehow.

They went back to the cathedral. Ned walked into the dimness and past the baptistry on their right. He saw the grate covering the floor there. He didn’t stop. Nothing there now, nothing to see. It had been a trick, anyhow. Items borrowed from the museum, now returned.

The cloister door was open. There were three people outside, with a severe-looking guide. She had stopped in front of the squared corner pillar by the far door to the street. She was lecturing, and pointing. The visitors, holding cameras, looked bored.

Ned went left, away from them, towards Ysabel.

He was beset with complicated feelings. Too many associations. It was less than a week since he’d first come here.

The rose was gone. Not a surprise, but for some reason it disturbed him. He wondered who would have taken it. Maybe just the gardener? He wished, suddenly, he’d thought to bring flowers.

His father had a small digital camera and was taking snaps of the cathedral walls and the roof where it came down towards the cloister. A different sort of shot, about lines and light. Ned was glad to see him working. It was hard to see him so distressed, so obviously helpless. It made Ned feel as if he was the one who was supposed to make everyone else feel better.

His mom had gone over to the tourist information on the wall. She’d put her glasses on and was reading. Ned remembered: a diagram showing how the cathedral complex was laid on top of the Roman forum, another one identifying the figures on the columns here. Saint Peter at one corner, a bull, an eagle, David and Goliath. The Queen of Sheba.

He let himself slide slowly down, back against the wall, until he was sitting on the tile flooring in front of her. He looked at the sculpture. So little there, so much implied. A hint, an echo.

He knew what his mother was going to say. What else could she say, reading what was posted on the opposite wall? The Queen of Sheba, it said.

He watched her coming over, putting her reading glasses back in her purse, taking out sunglasses. Her hair was really red in the sunlight, darker when she crossed into shade. She came up and stood beside Ned and looked at the worn, pale sculpture in front of them. She shook her head, and sat neatly down beside him, legs extended, crossed at the ankles. She took off her sunglasses and looked some more.

“She was beautiful,” she murmured.

He swallowed. “Who?”

“Ysabel,” she said.

Ned began to cry.

She looked at him quickly. “Honey, what…?”

“You don’t…you don’t think it’s the Queen of Sheba?”

His mother handed him a Kleenex. “Ned, dear, with Melanie gone, and what I’ve seen in less than a day, I’m not going to doubt you here.”

“Honest?”

She made a face. “Don’t fish, child.”

Ned had to smile, even as he struggled for control. He wiped his eyes. “I…it matters a lot to me that you believe me.”

His mother didn’t smile this time. “Because I didn’t believe your aunt?”

“Partly that. Not all.”

She touched his cheek. “Someone still has to be logical here, Ned.”

“I’d volunteer,” his father said, coming up. The three tourists and the guide were still on the far side. “But I’m not sure where I parked my logic.”

“Well find it,” his wife said. “I mean, Ned may be using some kind of intuition or psychic thing here, but you and I can’t. We don’t have it. This can’t just be about oracular pigs, or reading bird entrails, like the Celts did.”

“Romans did bird entrails too,” Edward Marriner said. “A whole class of priests was trained in it.”

Ned saw his mother stick out her tongue at his father. He had never seen her do that. “Fine, be that way. But they didn’t do human sacrifice.”

“True enough. Other nasty bits.”

“I’m sure. But we still have to try to bring something to this, you and I. We have to think. Ned does his thing, whatever it is, or Kim does, and we—”

She stopped, because Ned had stood up.

He was replaying a phrase in his head, over and over like a tape loop: they didn’t do human sacrifice.

And then, like some kind of silent explosion in his mind, he locked onto the other thing his mother had just said.

Oracular pigs.

He felt himself starting to tremble.

The boar. Seen below the villa, above it under the moon. He saw it again in his mind, turning away from him, rejecting him.

But no. Not away. Turning for him. The slow, calm movement, looking back both times at Ned, then ahead again, before moving off.

He took a deep breath. He looked at the sculpted column, at Ysabel, then down at his hands.

“We better get back to the house,” he said. “I know where she is.”

THEY WERE WAITING for him to speak, assembled in the villa again. Ned felt shaky; his hands were sweaty. This was too large, it felt massive. But he was also sure of himself. He was absolutely certain, in fact.

“Go ahead,” his father said.

Edward Marriner’s voice was quiet, his eyes calm. He didn’t look weary or worn down any more. He’d been like that since Ned had spoken in the cloister and they’d started back for the van, and home.

Ned does his thing, his mother had said. She was looking at him from across the dining-room table, hands in her lap, no notebook, just waiting.

He cleared his throat. “We were…we were really close to it last night. Mom was. When she reminded us of the word Ysabel used.”

“Sacrifice?” Uncle Dave said.

He was sitting in the armchair by the piano, leg up on a hassock, an ice pack on the knee.

Ned nodded. “Yeah. So we did the obvious thing and started thinking about Celtic sacrifice places that Melanie might have known about. And that was close to being right.”

“What did we miss?” Kate Wenger asked. She was still wearing his sweatshirt.

“One thing, and something else no one but me could have known. No one missed that, except me.”

He looked at his mother. Aunt Kim was leaning on the doorframe behind her, where her husband had been the night before.

“The Romans did at least one human sacrifice here,” Ned said.

“And Melanie knew it, because she told me about it.” He looked at Greg, and then Steve. “That time I was really sick? When you two went up to the ambush site to look for a photo spot?”

They both nodded, said nothing.

Ned took another breath, let it out. “That’s where she is. Ysabel, Melanie.”

“The mountain?” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Ned said. “She’s up on Sainte-Victoire.”

“It’s a big mountain, Ned,” his father said. “There’s a lot of ground to cover up there. And I—”

Ned held up both hands. “No, Dad. I know exactly where. Because all of this, all of this, is about Melanie now, I think. The changed rules, searching instead of a fight. They didn’t expect that. And she’s hiding in a place she knows I know about. We had to know, too.”

“We’re putting a lot in the idea that Melanie’s…spirit, whatever, is inside Ysabel,” Edward Marriner said.

“We can do that, Ed,” Aunt Kim murmured. Her arms were tightly crossed on her chest.

No one said anything for a moment.

“All right. Fine. You said you know the place, Ned. Where?”

His mother’s first words since they’d gathered back here. She was gazing at him, that calm, attentive expression he knew.

So, looking at her, he said, “She’s at some chasm. Melanie called it a garagai, it’s somewhere near the top.”

“And she’s there because…?”

It was almost as if this had become a dialogue between the two of them. She used to quiz him like this, for science or social studies tests, when he was younger.

“Because she told me about it. That’s where the Romans, Marius, threw the Celtic chieftains down a pit, a place of sacrifice after the battle, so they couldn’t ever be reclaimed to be worshipped and help the tribes.”

“Oh, God,” said Kate. She put a hand to her mouth. “They even talked about that, at Entremont, the three of them.”

Ned nodded his head. “Yeah, they did. I thought about that, too. Melanie knew we were there. I’d called her, remember?”

“Is that the second thing?” his mother asked softly. “You said there were two.”

“No. The garagai is in her notes. The other thing was entirely me. I…twice at night, I saw that boar when I was by myself, and both times it…both times I think it was signalling me. I didn’t get it, till just now. Till you said something in the cloister. I don’t know why it was doing that, but I’m pretty sure.”

His uncle sat up, shifting his leg. He had an odd expression on his face.

“What kind of boar?” he asked.

“Huge one. Almost white. Greg saw it when Brys stopped us on the road.”

Greg was nodding his head. “Really big,” he said. “I could have wrecked the van, hitting it.”

“Go on, Ned,” Uncle Dave said.

Ned looked at him. “I don’t know if anyone will believe me, but I think it was pointing to something, both times. It came out, waited for me to see it, then it turned around and faced the mountain and looked back at me. And then it went off. I didn’t know what was going on. And…and this is weird, but the first time was before Beltaine. Before anything even happened. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“Time can be funny in these things,” his aunt said.

“So you think she’s by this chasm,” Ned’s mother said calmly. “All right. Good. That’s our first stop tomorrow. We get directions and go look.”

Ned shook his head. His hands were trembling again.

“Mom, no. I have to go now. One of them’s going to figure this. They’ve had so much longer with her, with Ysabel. They heard her say sacrifice too. And they know that place.”

“Ned…” his father began.

“Dad, I’m really sure. I’m shaking with it, I’m so positive.” He held up his hands to show them.

His father looked at him. “That’s not what I was going to say. Ned, I believe you. There’s something else. You’re forgetting.”

“What?” Ned said.

It was Steve who answered him. “Dude, you can’t go up that mountain.”

“I have to.”

“Ned,” Greg murmured, “we saw you there. You looked like you were dying, man. I haven’t seen anyone throw up that hard since…since whenever.”

Ned stopped. He took a steadying breath. He swore. Neither parent said a word.

He had forgotten. Or, he’d half remembered because he knew he’d been sick when Melanie told him about the garagai, but he’d blocked out what it would mean to go back there. To climb.

Even the recollection made him feel ill, right here. He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. I have to try. I need to go, like, right now.” He was almost twitching with the need to be gone.

His father’s tone was gentle. “It’s past four o’clock, Ned. You can’t do it in the dark.”

“Won’t be dark. I’ll get my sweats and I’ll run. I’m a runner, Dad. I can do this. And maybe”—a sudden thought—“maybe I’ll be better when I get higher up? My problem was the battlefield. I think.”

He looked at Greg and Steve.

“And maybe you won’t,” Greg said, shaking his head.

“Dude—” Steve began.

“All of you listen!” Ned said. He heard his voice rising. “Melanie is gone if we screw this up. Look, I’ll take four Advil or whatever, and sunglasses, and my phone, and I’ll run. Please stop arguing. We can’t argue. We need to move. I have to know exactly where this place is.”

Kate Wenger, without a word, got up and went to Melanie’s maps-and-books file on the computer table.

Ned was looking at his mother. He saw something in her eyes that went so far beyond concern he couldn’t even put a word to it.

“Mom, please,” he whispered. “I need your help.”

“I know,” Meghan Marriner said. “I just don’t want to give it.”

He looked at her. She shook her head. “I can’t begin to tell you how little I like this. What do you plan to do when you get up there, if you get up there?”

“No idea.”

She let herself smile a little. “Well, that’s honest.”

“I’m being honest, Mom.”

Meghan looked at him another moment, then turned to her husband with a crisp nod. “Ed, get your two Veras in here, while Kate’s looking for maps. If they live here they may know.”

Her husband shook his head. “Let me try something else first.”

He crossed to the desk beside Kate and checked a phone number on Melanie’s corkboard, then dialed.

Ned found that he was breathing hard already—it looked, amazingly, as if they were going to help. But he was remembering the mountain now: Pourri#232;res, and the worst feeling of his life. That screen of blood, filtering the world, and the smell of it.

His choice here, no one else to blame. Sometimes, he thought, life was easier when you had people to stop you. Maybe that was something parents were good for.

His father said, “Oliver? Ed Marriner. Am I interrupting anything?” He waited for whatever reply he got, then said, “I won’t keep you long, before drinks.”

The Englishman answered something, and Ned’s father managed a fake laugh. “Well, if you have one already, I needn’t rush. But I have a question that’s come up…something to photograph, maybe. Do you know a place called the garagai? Up on Sainte-Victoire?”

Another pause, a longer one. Oliver Lee was launching into a story, Ned guessed. Ned could picture him, reading glasses on their chain over his chest, drink in hand, holding forth.

Edward Marriner opened his mouth to interrupt, closed it, then plunged in, “Well, yes, I’ve read a bit about all that, and I was thinking of going up to have a look.” He paused. “I know it is a climb. Yes, I’ve heard it gets windy. But…Oliver, do you know where it is, up there? Have you been?”

The room fell silent. Edward Marriner looked at his son, his brow furrowed. It never unfurrowed. “You haven’t? So you wouldn’t be able to give me directions?”

He looked over at his wife. “Yes, of course, we’ll chase down a topographic map, or I can call the mayor’s office. They’ve been helpful.” He stopped. Lee was saying something. “No, no, it is hardly a shocking confession, Oliver. My people told me C#233;zanne never climbed it either.” He paused again. “Yes, of course, I’ll give your regards to Melanie.” He looked at Ned again. “No, I think I’ll let you tell her that yourself, Oliver.” Another small, forced laugh. He said goodbye and hung up.

Ned looked across the room at his mother. She was gazing at him, staring at him, really, with an expression he couldn’t remember seeing before. As if he were a stranger. It bothered him. He tried to smile at her, but didn’t really succeed.

“Ned?” It was his aunt. “Two things. If you’re right, and there’s urgency here, it’s because one or both of them may get there first. And they may do that by tracking you.”

“They were going to Arles,” he said.

“Yesterday evening. Ned, they both seem to think you’re a key to this. You’ll have to screen yourself when we leave here. But you need to let it go at times, you can’t hold the screening too long.”

He hesitated. “I was kind of counting on the screen to help me with…my problem there.”

“I thought you might be. But you still need to let it go some of the time or you’ll make yourself ill.”

He cleared his throat. “Phelan told me that too, last night.”

“Kim, what if they’re watching us? From out there?’ Meghan gestured towards the windows.

Her sister frowned. “I don’t think…” She looked at Uncle Dave.

He shrugged. “Might be. They know where we are, they know we’re looking. Either they’re tearing around searching everywhere, or they’re checking us at intervals. Checking on Ned to see if he’s doing anything.”

“Could they have anyone watching for them?” Steve asked.

“Don’t think so,” Kim said.

“But we aren’t sure,” said her sister briskly. “All right, assume they are watching, what do we do? And first of all, how do we find out where he has to go?”

“I can tell you that,” said a voice from the kitchen door.

They turned.

Veracook, in her usual black dress, was standing there. She’d spoken in English.

“You…you speak our language?” Edward Marriner said. He looked a bit stunned, as if too many things were happening too fast.

Vera smiled a little. “The owners are American. I learn a little.”

“But you never…”

“You always speak French.” She shrugged.

Kimberly walked towards her. “Do you…do you understand what we’re talking about here?”

“Climbing the mountain?” A slight flicker of the eyes.

“That, and why.” Kim’s voice was direct. “Why we need to go up.”

Vera looked at her. Nodded her head. Her own voice was cold.

“Something happened on the Fire Night. I had rowans by the windows, to protect the house. She should not have gone out.”

“She had to,” Ned said. They were speaking French again. “It was my fault, but it was before sundown. It shouldn’t have been Beltaine.”

Veracook crossed herself when he said the word.

“How do you know about all this?” Meghan asked. She looked as unhappy as Ned could remember.

Again that shrug. “My grandmother. She told us stories. All of my family, we put out rowan on that night, and on the other night, in autumn.”

Another grandmother.

It was Dave who asked the question: “You said you can help. You know where this garagai is?”

Vera nodded. “But it is a bad place. And it is already late today.”

Ned’s father surprised him then. “It’ll be later if we hang around talking. My understanding is we need to get up there fast. Please tell us how.”

“It is the girl? Melanie?”

“Yes,” said Edward Marriner.

“She is gone? From the Fire Night?”

A hesitation. “Yes,” he said again.

Another sign of the cross. “You should not go inside this, then,” she said.

“We are inside it, Mme. Lajoie,” Ned’s father said. “Please, tell us what you know.”

“Who will go?” she asked.

“Me,” said Ned.

She looked at him. “You will take rowan for protection?”

“I’ll take anything you want me to take,” he said fervently.

She nodded, grim-faced. “For the girl, I will tell how you go. It is not far from the cross at the top, or the chapel. But you must be careful. It is easy to fall if there is wind.”

“Oh, wonderful,” said Meghan Marriner.

Ned ignored that as best he could.

Kate sat at the dining-room table with paper and pen and gestured for Vera Lajoie to sit beside her. She did so.

Then she proceeded to give extremely precise directions to the mountain chasm where Marius of the Romans had sacrificed a number of Celtic chieftains twenty-one hundred years ago.

NED WAS STUDYING the directions, in Kate’s very neat handwriting. He lifted his head, saw his mother looking at him. “This,” she said, “is hard for me. I really want to forbid you.”

“I know,” he said.

“Or I want to come.”

He smiled a bit. “I’ll be running, Mom. Uncle Dave has a bad leg. Steve can’t run. Greg for sure can’t.”

“I can,” said Kate.

“No!” said Meghan and Kim, simultaneously.

“Don’t even think it,” Meghan Marriner added. Kate bit her lip. Meghan looked at her sister. “Kim, can he even do anything?”

Aunt Kim had her arms folded across her chest again. “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t think either of them mean him harm.”

“But you don’t know.”

“We can’t know, Meg.”

“Even with what you…?”

Her sister shook her head. “I have next to nothing here. All I can tell you is that I do think Melanie’s gone if one of them finds her. And that Ned is inside this somehow.”

“I accept that. But I’m also his mother, Kim. You can’t imagine—” She stopped. Shook her head. “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

Kimberly’s eyes were bright. “Don’t be. I have no children, but I can imagine what it might be like to let him go. I’ve seen it done.”

“Let’s do this,” Ned said, as confidently as he could. He didn’t think he was fooling anyone. “Who’s driving me?”

“Hold it,” said Greg. “If they might be tracking you, we need to do this carefully.”

“I’ll screen myself,” Ned said, “starting now. And we go out in two cars. Even three?”

“But if they’re watching the house?” Steve asked. “Like Dr. Marriner said? They’ll see you leave. They don’t care about the rest of us.”

“Ned and I swap clothes,” Kate Wenger said suddenly.

They looked at her. She stood up from the table.

“What do you mean?” Ned said. “You aren’t wearing anything that belongs to you, anyhow.”

Kate made a face. “Don’t be funny. I mean we’ll hurry out to two cars, but I dress like you, you wear the McGill thing…”

“That’s my own sweatshirt.”

“But they’ve seen me in it, last night and today, if they have been watching. You wear my brother’s white shirt under it, I put on that uncool windbreaker of yours, and your baseball cap.”

“It isn’t uncool,” he protested.

“Hush. She’s right, Ned,” Kim said. “It makes sense.”

“All right,” said Dave. “One car goes west or north, somewhere—the one that looks like it has Ned in it—and the other takes him to the mountain.” He smiled at Kate. “Very good.”

“Good?” she said, tossing her head. “It’s heroic. I never wear baseball caps.”

Ned’s father sighed. He looked at his wife, then at Ned. “Oliver said the same thing as Vera, you know. It’s apparently dangerous off the paths, Ned.”

“Falling off a mountain is the least of my worries,” Ned said.

“As to that,” said Aunt Kim, “here’s one thing.”

She took off the only bracelet she wore, the silver one with the green stone. “I have no idea if this will help, but there’s a chance.”

“What is it?” It was Meghan.

Kim looked at her. “A gift, a long time ago. It connects to all this, I guess you could say. It may help with the sickness. Or not. But it won’t hurt.”

Ned took the bracelet and slipped it on. He felt nothing, though the metal was cool on his wrist.

He shrugged. “Let’s do this,” he said again.

Vera came back from the kitchen. She was holding leaves, a bunch of them, tied together. Gravely, she gave them to Ned.

“Thank you,” he said.

He wasn’t about to say no, was he? He looked down at his aunt’s bracelet. Made a face. “I mean, like, what would have been wrong with a machine gun, eh?”

No one laughed.

His mother was staring at him. That same expression as before. As if Meghan Marriner were looking at her child and seeing someone she didn’t quite know, or else she was memorizing his face.

“Mom…” he began.

She shook her head. “Go,” she said.