Ysabel Read online

  She needs a taxi now. Finds a place where one stands waiting. But when she asks, it seems she wants him to take her too far, that she doesn’t have a sum that will make it worth his time. It is vexing at first, then amusing. She laughs aloud.

  When she does that, standing by his rolled-down window in sunlight, the driver changes his mind, agrees to take her where she wants to go.

  Later, on the long drive back to Arles alone, he’ll be unable to say why he did that—risking an illegal trip outside his licence zone, wasting a morning and half a tank of fuel on a one-way cut-rate fare—and not even talking to the woman. Just glancing at her in his mirror as she gazed out the window at Provence gliding by.

  He can’t say why he changed his mind. But he’ll dream of her for a long time. The rest of his life, in fact.

  They walked through Arles for two hours. The street market, the area around the arena, circling it again, standing outside the barred entrance with irritated tourists who hadn’t factored a holiday into their travel plans. Greg tugged at a few of the gates optimistically, unsuccessfully.

  They went over the theatre again. Ned remembered talking with Melanie here, two days ago. It was difficult, carrying such images, standing here again. He looked at the grass where she’d been sitting. It felt, for a moment, as if she were dead. It scared him.

  He didn’t say anything.

  They went on to the remains of the Roman forum on the central square. Everything was closed for the holiday. It was quiet. His father and Greg both kept glancing at Ned expectantly, like they were waiting for some light bulb to go on above his head or something. It could be aggravating, but he tried not to let himself feel that way. What else were they going to do?

  He didn’t see Cadell within himself again, or Phelan, or a woman who looked like a goddess with auburn hair.

  They had lunch at the only open café near the remaining columns of the forum. The Roman columns were embedded in the front of a nineteenthcentury building, weirdly co-opted as architectural support after almost two thousand years. That said something about Roman architects, Ned decided. Or maybe about nineteenth-century ones. The rest of the forum was under their feet, buried, like it was in Aix around the cathedral.

  Van Gogh had painted their café, apparently. Ned thought he remembered seeing reproductions of that. His father had insisted they eat a proper lunch, but the food was tasteless. Tourist fare.

  They phoned Aunt Kim from the table. The others were in Béziers now. Nothing. They were leaving soon. They would stop in Roquepertuse, a Celtic site like Entremont—skulls found there, too—then head home.

  Ned’s father paid their bill.

  “What’s left here?” Greg asked. He looked tired, too.

  “Melanie could tell us,” Edward Marriner said, with a sigh. “I’d say everything and nothing, if you know what I mean. We can go, I guess.”

  “The cemetery,” Ned said, suddenly. “The one Oliver told us about.”

  His father looked at him.

  IF THEY HADN’T LUNCHED with Oliver Lee earlier in the week, they’d never have gone to Les Alyscamps. Or even if they had done that lunch, but Lee hadn’t mentioned the ancient cemetery with its long history.

  Ned found that if he thought about things like that too much, the accident of it all, his mind started down unsettling paths. Like, what if he’d decided to stay in the villa after being sick on the mountain, the way the others had told him to? If he’d never met Kate in the café that afternoon, or Phelan, after she’d gone? If Kate had never mentioned the word Entremont to him?

  Well, she couldn’t have, if he hadn’t been there, right?

  And what if he’d gone shopping for music that first morning instead of thinking it would be sort of funny—a joke to email Larry Cato—to listen to Houses of the Holy inside a cathedral?

  Could you make a pattern out of any of this? Stitch together the seeming randomness into something that had meaning? Is that what life was about, he wondered: trying to make that pattern, to have things make sense ?

  And anyway, how did you make sense of a man turning into an owl to fly from you? Call it a computergenerated effect and give thanks to George Lucas?

  Les Alyscamps cemetery was a fair walk from the centre of town, along the ring road to the outskirts. It was empty when they got there, closed up, barred, like all the other monuments today.

  Ned put a hand on the bars, looking through. He swallowed.

  “She’s been here,” he said.

  He knew his voice sounded funny. “She may still be here, for all I know. I don’t know much.” His dad and Greg were staring at him. That look again. Could you get used to it, he wondered.

  It wasn’t like before, the feeling he had. Not from the mountain, not from the valley this morning. Here, it was as if a scent was in the air, drifting. Flowers, but more than that, or less. An almost-recalled memory. Something unsettling that could reach in, change the rhythm of your heart as you stood by iron gates.

  He knew there was nothing actually around them; the others would have noticed if there were. But he also knew what he knew, bone-dumb as that might sound, and Ysabel’s presence was here, disturbing and exciting. He swallowed again, his mouth dry. He wished they had a bottle of water.

  “Gate’s padlocked,” Greg said, yanking at the lock. “We could try to climb . . . ?”

  The iron gate was well over their heads, and railings ran both ways from it, same height, all along the street front.

  “Maybe you could boost me?” Ned said, looking upwards.

  “Not so you go in alone,” his father said flatly. “Don’t even think it.”

  Through the bars they could see trees and a long, wide walkway, splintered with light and shade. There was a church at the far end. A ticket office a little way down on the left was shuttered. Ned saw smaller and larger trees, stone benches, grey stone coffins lying about as if discarded. He assumed they were empty. He hoped they were empty. It was really quiet here.

  He stared through the bars, as if gazing could make her come to life in there. He pictured her walking towards him along that cool, light-and-shadow alley between trees and tombs.

  “Stand behind me,” his father said suddenly. “Watch the road. Let me see that lock.” And a moment later, as they obeyed, “This is easy. It’s been done before, I see the scratches.”

  “Jeez. You can pick locks?” Ned said.

  He was looking out for cars, but glanced back over his shoulder, eyes widening. His dad had taken out a Swiss Army knife.

  “You have no idea the things your old man can do,” Edward Marriner muttered, flipping open a blade. “Which is probably a good thing.”

  “I’m not gonna touch that line,” Greg said. But Ned could see that he was surprised too, and nervous. They were breaking into a major tourist site in broad daylight.

  When was daylight not broad? Ned thought suddenly. What made it broad? Could you break in more easily in narrow daylight? Kate might have laughed if he’d said that to her. Or maybe not.

  He wondered if the mayor of Aix was in the middle of her lunch party now. If she’d answer her phone again if they needed her. A Citroën went by, going too fast, and took the curve left towards town. The sun was high. It was windy, a few fast white clouds moving south. Ned heard a scraping of metal behind him.

  “Got it,” Edward Marriner said, satisfaction in his voice. “Inside, both of you, I’ll close it behind us.”

  “Hold on!” Greg said. They waited for a pair of cars to go past. “Okay,” said Greg. “All clear. Man, why do I feel like James Bond?”

  They slipped through the gate. His father came in last, pulled it shut and quickly fiddled through the bars with the padlock so it looked closed again.

  “Go on!” Edward Marriner said. “Out of sight of the road.”

  They walked past a stone coffin and the ticket office. It was cooler in the shade. To their right was a large monument. On the left, as they went ahead, Ned saw a locked-up tomb with an iron gr
ate in a heavy door. Steps led down, behind the door.

  Ahead, between them and the church, in sunlight, was an area of sunken excavations, roped off. “Those are the oldest graves,” his father said.

  Ned looked at him. “You’ve been here?”

  His father made a face. “No. I told you, I read Melanie’s notes.”

  Of course. You could almost laugh, except you couldn’t because she was gone. And then you couldn’t because you heard a sound behind you, in a place that was locked shut, with no one but them inside, and you turned, thinking it might be a security guard, and then you really didn’t feel like laughing any more.

  “I did tell you to leave this,” a cold voice said.

  Cold could make you shiver. It wasn’t a guard. It was the druid, standing between them and the gate that led back out to the world where cars took curves too fast, or honked when you slowed to park.

  Brys, who had almost killed Greg last night, was still wearing his white robe. Ned couldn’t tell where he’d come from, where he’d been hiding as they walked in.

  Or where the wolves had been that now padded up, seven of them, behind him. They sat on their haunches, watching.

  The quiet didn’t seem peaceful any more. Ned looked at his father. Edward Marriner stroked his moustache thoughtfully, taking his time. Calmly, he said, “I’m not quite sure why, but I feel a bit relieved to see you exist. You wouldn’t understand that, I suppose.”

  The druid said nothing.

  Ned’s father went on, in a conversational tone, “My understanding is that you have powers that can be used to harm us. You used them last night on our friend here.”

  Powers? Ned was thinking. Dad, pay attention! Those animals with the teeth! He doesn’t need powers.

  A week ago, a little more, he’d been doing a halfassed science project on tectonic plates with Barry Staley.

  He wasn’t sure what his father was trying to achieve. This might be stalling, but he had no idea what a delay would accomplish. Could they summon the Marines? What Marines?

  It occurred to him for the first time, with a clarity that almost buckled his knees, that they could die here in this cemetery among the looted tombs.

  “That one?” The druid looked at Greg. “Cadell saved his life. He fears drawing attention, bringing people into this.”

  “And you don’t?” Edward Marriner asked, still in his most relaxed tone.

  “I don’t have the time to pay heed to such things. I have very little time, when I return. Fear a single death? Have you any idea how many people have died in this?”

  “Over the years? I’m beginning to. Are you proud of it?”

  The small, grey-haired figure lifted his head. “Pride has nothing to do with anything. This one is insignificant. So are you. You do not matter.”

  “What does?”

  Ned saw Greg’s hand in his pocket. And finally he realized what this delay was about—and how pointless it was. Greg would be auto-dialing Aunt Kim, who was, like, two hours away or something. Or maybe he was calling the mayor of Aix at her lunch. Or whatever 911 was in France.

  James Bond would have had a bomb built into the phone.

  The druid was looking at Ned’s father, as if trying to decide what to answer. This one, too, Ned thought: he’s been part of this, or at the edges of it, all this time. The one who shapes the summoning.

  Maybe he didn’t want to stay at the edges.

  “She must be claimed by Cadell,” the druid said, his voice almost an incantation. “The stranger must be killed. Sacrificed. He must end. There may be ways it can be done, even now.” One of the wolves got up, shifted over a bit, and settled again. “Then the two of them, the man and the woman, must be made to understand that this is not just their story.”

  “What is it, then?” Edward Marriner asked.

  Greg had stopped fiddling in his pocket. Ned thought—couldn’t be sure—he’d heard a distant voice from the cellphone. Aunt Kim? Greg moved closer to Ned’s dad. Both of them were right in front of Ned now. He didn’t think that was an accident. The phone would be on speaker, whoever Greg had dialed could hear this. Maybe.

  If it mattered.

  Maybe it did, he thought suddenly. If they were killed here, the others would at least know why. And how else would they ever learn? His hands were shaking. He saw Greg murmur something. Ned’s father nodded, briefly.

  The druid said, “There was a world here once. A way of knowing the world. It was torn from us, and it can be reclaimed.”

  Ned saw his father straighten his shoulders. He crossed his arms on his chest, in a gesture Ned knew. “Is that it? That is how you see this? You want to roll back two thousand years of Greek and Roman culture? Can you possibly be serious?”

  Edward Marriner’s relaxed, chatty tone was gone. You could say his voice was as cold now as the other man’s.

  The druid’s expression flickered. Maybe he hadn’t expected such a response. Ned sure hadn’t, and he still wasn’t there yet, wasn’t getting it. He was trying to catch up, to understand what was being said.

  “They would be near to immortal,” Brys said. “More powerful than you can imagine, if this story were ended with that death. And if they understood their task, the need we have. Am I serious, you ask? A fool’s question. The world can change. It always changes.”

  Edward Marriner’s reply was quick, sharp with scorn. “A fool? I think not. I hear you. You just want to decide what it changes to. Aren’t you being just a tiny bit arrogant?”

  The druid’s mouth tightened. “Believe me, I have known change shaped by others. I lived it. All my people did. I am unlikely to forget. Arrogant, you say? And the Romans were not?”

  Ned’s father looked away, past the other man. It was, Ned thought, a hard question. He was remembering that arch this morning: Romans on horses, wielding swords, Gauls dying or dead or chained, heads bowed and averted. He thought of the smashed walls at Entremont, siege engines. Or the enormous arena such a little distance from here, a twenty-minute walk through two thousand years of power.

  Edward Marriner said, more softly, “The Romans? They were all about arrogance, and conquest. But yours is the greater, even so: the idea that two millennia can be run backwards. That they should be, whatever the cost.”

  “Cost? Measuring it out? A Roman thought.”

  Edward Marriner laughed aloud, a startling sound in that still place. “Maybe. Is it why they were able to destroy you? Because they worked that way? Weighed cost and gain? Thought about things?”

  He was asking a lot of questions, Ned decided. He was pretty sure his first guess was right: his dad was stalling. Was that what Aunt Kim had said to Greg, to delay? For what? He was thinking fast: maybe Kate was dialing on her phone, as they stood here. Maybe she was calling 911, or whatever, here in Arles.

  Something occurred to him.

  He stepped forward and said, loudly, “Enough of this already! What the hell? You guys think because this is a cemetery you can just add new bodies to the count? Is that the gig here?”

  Greg looked quickly over his shoulder at Ned, his expression stricken. I was right, Ned thought. They wouldn’t have known where we are! The Marines or the cavalry riding, nowhere to go.

  The druid’s expression, also turning to him, was bleak. “Have a care,” he said. He looked back at Ned’s father. “We need only deal with the young one. He matters. I don’t know why yet. You and the other are of no concern to me. I am content to have you walk away.”

  “Content? The young one is my son.”

  “Children die. All the time. You have others?”

  “None.”

  “Ill-judged on your part.”

  “Screw yourself,” Edward Marriner said, and added an even harsher string of words. The stalling part of this appeared to be over.

  Greg moved to stand closer to Ned’s father. They were right in front of him again. The druid made no movement at all, but the wolves stood up.

  Showtime, Ned thought. Three
wolves began circling wide, the others moved slowly forward.

  By the tower with Aunt Kim he had grabbed a branch. There were no branches on the swept-clean ground here. And there hadn’t been seven animals then, either. He remembered last night on their road, sweeping his hand, scything the horns from Cadell’s head. He didn’t remember how he’d done it, only the rage that had driven the motion. He tried to find that within himself. He knelt and scooped some gravel.

  “Keep them off your face,” Greg said quietly. “Punch in the throat if you can. Kick underneath. Then run past the guy. The gate’s unlocked, remember. Get to the road . . .”

  Punch in the throat.

  A wolf. Real good plan.

  “I say it again,” Brys rasped. “Only one of you matters. The other two can leave.”

  Greg said, calmly, “You heard the man. Screw yourself.”

  Gregory was actually ready to die here defending Ned, trying to save Melanie, and Ned realized he knew hardly anything important about the man. A wise-cracking, burly, bearded guy who owned a truly ridiculous bathing suit and mocked his own bulk by doing human cannonballs into a swimming pool.

  Ned’s my new hero, he had said the other day, because Ned was meeting a girl for coffee. Some hero.

  “She was here,” Ned said suddenly. “Do you know it?”

  The druid took a half-step backwards. He rattled a handful of quick words like pebbles; the wolves stopped. They sat down again, the flanking movement suspended.

  “Explain!” Brys said. “Do so now.”

  Ned stepped up beside his dad. They wanted him behind them; he wasn’t going to allow it. “Back to back to back,” he murmured. “When they come.”

  That was how they did it in movies, wasn’t it?

  He made himself take his time, even smile. Time was the whole point. He thought of Larry Cato, improbably: shit-disturber, professional pain in the ass. Times when that might be useful.

  He said, “You like giving orders, don’t you? Especially when Cadell’s not around. What would happen if he was here? Should I guess?”