Ysabel Page 39

  She smiled; it just about lit the mountainside.

  MELANIE WENT BACK inside to change clothes. Ned’s father was eyeing the view, all directions. Ned knew that expression, the appraising look.

  “Later,” Edward Marriner said, catching Ned’s glance. “I’ll come back.” He laid a hand on his son’s shoulder and squeezed.

  Melanie came out. Seeing her in her own clothes and running shoes was a kind of shock. This was entirely her now, his father’s assistant, hyper-organized ringtone warrior.

  Someone else even farther away now.

  It made him thoughtful. He let the others go down first. Said he wanted a moment to himself. His mother looked at him, then started back along the path with the rest.

  Ned found a boulder and sat down, his back against it, looking east to the sunrise, towards the last ridge he’d climbed yesterday. Up along it, then down to the right there was a cave.

  He took a deep breath. Was it all going to recede? Would what had happened slip and drift like memories did? Become something you thought of at times, and then less often as years went by? A story, your history, as you were carried forward into other stories and other moments that became your life. Other people.

  He heard a footfall, someone kicked a pebble.

  “You, um, sleep with her last night?” Kate Wenger asked.

  She came up beside him. She took off her sunglasses. Her expression was cool.

  “What kind of a question is that?” he said, looking up.

  “Obvious one, I’d say.”

  “No gentleman would answer that.”

  She waited.

  Ned felt himself flush. “No, of course I didn’t.”

  Kate smiled. “Good.”

  She’d brushed her hair out, was wearing Ned’s black Pearl Jam T-shirt this time, over jeans. She’d done that trick girls did, tying it at her midriff, for the climb. It didn’t look much the way it did when he wore it.

  “I prefer New York women, anyhow,” he said.

  She sniffed. “Don’t make assumptions.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She grinned suddenly. “I don’t mind if you dream of it.”

  Ned stared up at her, unable to think of anything to say. He looked away to his left again, beyond the ridge towards the Riviera, Italy, the sun. The land below them to the south had been a battlefield once. Probably more than once, he thought. It was bathed in a long, mild morning glory.

  Kate extended her hands. “Come on, we’ll get too far behind.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” he asked, looking up at her.

  She smiled again. “Nothing, I guess.”

  He gave her both his hands and let her help him rise.

  Never again will a single story be told

  as though it were the only one

  —JOHN BERGER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Laura and Sybil, as always, on both sides of the Atlantic.

  Ysabel was written largely in the countryside near Aix-en-Provence, and so it is proper to first note those who were of great assistance in our time there.

  Bethany Atherton offered Villa Sans Souci, pointed us to a ruined tower, and found the garagai one windy day’s climb up Sainte-Victoire. Leslie-Ellen Ray shared a professional’s approach to photographing Aix’s cathedral.

  At the University of Aix-Marseille, Gilles Dorival offered suggestions, answered questions, arranged access to the university library, and introduced me to the wonderfully generous Jean-Marc Gassend and Pierre Varène, architects of the Institut de Recherche sur l’Architecture Antique. I am grateful for their courtesy and enthusiasm, for their precise sketches of the cathedral and the history beneath it, and for a wonderful, evocative afternoon among the still-closed-off ruins of the newly excavated Roman theatre in Aix.

  Sam Kay was with me on a long note-taking drive around the mountain, came up to Entremont several times, pacing the terrain, and—with Matthew and Laura—joined me at, among other places, the Saint-Sauveur and Saint-Trophime cloisters, Les Alyscamps and the Roman theatre in Arles, and at Glanum. “You have to use this place in the book,” from both boys, became a motivating refrain. Sam also went back up the mountain again weeks after we all did, to further establish details of the route and the cave above the chasm. Matthew took photos everywhere. Sons becoming researchers marks a transition.

  I read too many texts on the Celtic, Greek, and Roman presences in Provence to be comprehensive in naming them here. Let me cite Theodore Cook’s Old Provence as memorable, along with S. Baring-Gould’s genuinely charming (and undoubtedly idiosyncratic) A Ramble in Provence. Jean Markale’s extensive work on the Celts was helpful, and so were Miranda Green, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, Nora Chadwick (again), and the prolific Barry Cunliffe. Cunliffe’s short book on Pytheas the Greek gave me a number of ideas that found their way into Ysabel. Philip Freeman’s War, Women, and Druids is a tidy, useful collection of primary sources on the intersection of the classical and Celtic worlds. Ecstasies, by Carlo Ginzburg, a historian I have long admired, was fertile ground for concepts and images.

  On the oppidum of Entremont, Fernand Benoit’s monograph, Entremont, about the history of the site and the excavations there, was immensely helpful. So, also, was the official website at www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/entremont/en/index2.html (in English and in French).

  I hope it is obvious that it does not fall to any of these writers to bear the least responsibility for the uses I have made of history and myth in shaping this fiction.

  I am grateful to Deborah Meghnagi (the presiding spirit of www.brightweavings.com) and Rex Kay for careful readings of the completed draft.

  Ysabel owes much to all of these people, and so does the author.