Ysabel Read online

  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 diningroom 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 fées 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 café 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 cafés 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 café 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 café 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.