Ysabel Read online

  He’d seen the boy appear at the open window upstairs, and then, a little later, watched him come outside, half naked, vulnerable and alone. The observing figure is amused by this, by almost all that has happened today, but he does think about killing him.

  It is almost too easy.

  Because of the day that is coming he holds himself in check. If you are in the midst of shaping something urgently awaited, you do not give way to impulses like this, however satisfying they might be. He is impulsive by nature, but hardly a fool. He has lived too long for that.

  The boy, he has decided, is random, trivial, an accident, not anyone or anything that matters. And it is not a good idea to cause any disturbance now, among either the living or the spirits, some of them already beginning to stir. He knows about the spirits. He is waiting for them, diverting himself as best he can while he does so.

  He lets the boy go back inside, alive and inconsequential.

  The impulse to kill is still strong, however. He recognizes it, knows why it is building. When that desire comes, it is difficult to put away unslaked. He has found that to be so over time and is disinclined to deny himself.

  He changes again—the skill he took so long in mastering—and goes hunting. Moonlight briefly finds his wings in flight, then they are lost again, entering the woods.

  CHAPTER IV

  When Ned came down to the kitchen in the morning, bleary-eyed from his disrupted sleep, the others had already gone into town. Second work session at the cathedral. There was a note from Melanie that said they’d be back by lunchtime. He’d neglected to put on a shirt and Veraclean, in the adjacent laundry room, smiled at him before pointedly glancing away. He’d forgotten about her. He quickly drank some orange juice and went back upstairs to dress.

  Then he phoned Melanie.

  Three rings.

  “Yes?” A really frosty tone for one word, he thought. Impressive.

  “Hi there!” he said cheerfully.

  “Ned Marriner,” she said, low and intense, “you are in so much trouble. You have no idea. You are pushing up daisies, meeting your Maker, joining the choir.” He heard her beginning to laugh, fighting it.

  “Damn!” he said. “I’m talented after all.”

  “Talented and dead. Sleeping with the fishes.”

  “But, Melanie!” he protested. “I’d thought you’d like it!”

  “‘The Wedding March’? ‘The Wedding March’ as a ringtone? We’re in a goddamned cathedral! Greg is in hysterics. He’s holding a pillar to stay upright. He is peeing on it! You will be made to suffer!”

  She sounded pleasingly hysterical herself. It was all very satisfying.

  “I’m sure. In the meantime, you might want to phone Steve and Greg when you get a chance.”

  She paused, lowered her voice. “Really? You got them, too?”

  “Got them, too. See you at lunch.”

  He hung up, grinning.

  On considered reflection, he decided to keep his new phone hidden away for the next little while. There wasn’t much he could do if she decided to short-sheet his bed, but he doubted she’d like garden snails in hers, and an offhand mention of the possibility might stave off retaliation. He thought he could handle Greg and Steve. Melanie was the challenge.

  He loafed around the house for the morning, energetically avoiding any thought of the papers he was supposed to be writing. He was still jet-lagged, wasn’t he? Who could possibly be expected to write an English or history essay while time-warped?

  Despite what Kate Wenger had said, he spent a bit of time online googling Celts+Provence, and scribbled a few notes. Then he went outside in the bright morning and listened to music on the terrace till he saw the van making its way up the hill to the villa gates.

  He took off the iPod and put it on the table. He had a premonition of what was coming. He sat up in the lounger and waved an enthusiastic hello to everyone. His father waved back from the driveway. Melanie stood by the van, hands on hips, trying to achieve a withering glare—which was hard when you were barely five feet tall, Ned thought.

  Greg and Steve, smiling benignly, came up to the terrace together. Still smiling, they grabbed Ned by hands and legs (pretty strong guys, both of them) and began lugging him down the steps and across the grass to the pool.

  “SpongeBob, spare me!” Ned cried, perhaps unwisely.

  He heard Melanie and his father laugh, which was pleasing, but by then he was flying.

  It was cold in the pool, it was really cold in the pool. Gasping and coughing, Ned surfaced. He knew what to say. There were time-honoured male ways of responding to this.

  “Ahh,” he said. “Very refreshing. Thank you so much, guys.”

  NED CAREFULLY MENTIONED snails, over lunch outside—how he’d heard they had a creepy habit of ending up in people’s beds here, especially in springtime.

  Interestingly, it was Steve who grew thoughtful, hearing that. Melanie pretended to treat it as a dubious piece of misinformation. It was hard to tell if she was faking or not.

  Ned’s father, in a surprisingly relaxed state, said he’d shot some potentially workable images in the baptistry, shooting towards the dome with soft flash bounces. They’d also done some of the columns in the cloister, and a zigzag pattern he’d noticed out there on the walkway. Ned hadn’t seen that, but he didn’t have his father’s eye, and he’d been just a bit unsettled the day before out there.

  “I really liked your Queen of Sheba,” his father said. “The colour’s gorgeous. Like amber from some angles. We’ll check the images later. But I think I’m going to want to have her. I’ll go back if I need to before we go home, maybe try late in the day, too. Two good calls, Ned.”

  He was meeting Oliver Lee at a café in town this afternoon, just the two of them, first actual encounter. Barrett, the art director, was coming over from New York next week and had wanted to be there, but both men had decided to get together without an intermediary.

  “I may or may not like him, but it doesn’t matter in the end. We don’t have to work together.”

  “And you know he’ll love you?” Ned grinned.

  The cold water had woken him up pretty effectively. Long-lost cure for jet lag: freezing pools.

  “Everyone loves me,” Edward Marriner said. “Even my son.”

  “Your son,” said Melanie, darkly, “is a terrible person.”

  “Really,” Greg agreed, shaking his head.

  Steve kept quiet, possibly thinking about snails in his bed. Ned decided he was going to have to do the snail thing at some point, and live with the consequences.

  IT TURNED OUT the three others were going to drop his father in town then drive east towards Mont Sainte-Victoire, which Paul Cézanne had apparently painted, like a hundred times. The painter had been born and died here. He was Aix’s main celebrity and he’d made the mountain famous.

  Ned remembered his father grumbling about Cézanne on the flight over, leafing through Barrett Reinhardt’s notes: how it was almost impossible to get a picture of that mountain that wasn’t a cliché or some sentimental tribute to the painter. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but Barrett had said it was simply not possible to be in Provence working on a book of photographs and not shoot that peak. Especially if you were Edward Marriner and known for your mountainscapes.

  “Simply not possible,” his dad had repeated on the plane, imitating the art director’s voice.

  This afternoon’s drive would be partly an outing in the country, and partly to check some places Barrett had marked on local maps as where they might set up. Ned’s father would make that call himself, but the others were good at eliminating locations they knew he wouldn’t go for.

  “You coming?” Steve asked Ned.

  “Ah, I have to be in town by five-ish, actually. I’m meeting someone.”

  “Who? What? How?” Greg demanded. “We just got here!”

  Ned sighed. “I met a girl yesterday morning. We’re having a Coke.”

  “Holy-moly,
” said Melanie, grinning.

  Greg was staring. “A date? Already? Jeez, the boy’s a man among men!”

  “Don’t rush him, or me,” Edward Marriner said. “I feel old enough as is.”

  “We’ll get you back in time,” Melanie said, checking her watch. “But change into running shoes, Ned, we may climb a bit. Sandals are no good.”

  “Okay. But will you tie my shoelaces for me?” Ned asked. Melanie grinned again. He was glad the subject had changed. This date thing was not something he was easy with.

  They dropped his father in Aix and then took the ring road around the city and headed into the countryside along a winding route Melanie said Cézanne used to walk along to find places to paint.

  It was a fair distance to the mountain if you were on foot. Ned thought about that: in the nineteenth century, the Middle Ages, Roman times, people walked, or rode donkeys or something, and the road would have been way rougher. Everything was farther, slower, back then.

  And at the beginning of the twenty-first century here they were, cruising these curves in an air-conditioned Renault van, and they’d be out by the mountain in twenty minutes or something and then back in the middle of town in time for him to meet Kate Wenger.

  Cézanne, or the priests who had paced the worn walkway of yesterday’s cloister, or those long-ago medieval students who’d prayed in the cathedral and then gone across the square to lectures, they had all moved through worlds with different speeds than this one—even if the students were late for class, and running. Ned wasn’t sure what all of that meant, but it meant something. Maybe he’d put it in an essay—when he decided to think about his essays.

  It was a brilliantly bright afternoon; they were all wearing sunglasses. Melanie’s were enormous, hiding half her face; Steve’s blond hair and tiny round shades made him look like a Russian revolutionary. Greg looked like a nightclub bouncer.

  Ned, on impulse, took his shades off. He decided he wanted to see this landscape the way people had seen it long ago. He felt a bit silly, but only a bit. He thought about that round tower yesterday above the city, men on watch there, looking out this way.

  He didn’t know what they’d have been gazing east to see, squinting into a rising sun, but someone had feared danger from this direction or they wouldn’t have built the tower there, would they? A more dangerous world than today’s, he thought. Unless you were in the Sudan, say.

  He looked out the window, trying to keep his mind here, not let it drift that way to Africa, across the Mediterranean. Not so far away, in fact.

  Beside him in the middle row of the van, Melanie leaned over and whispered, “Your dad was really pleased with your two ideas, you know. He spent a lot of time getting the baptistry shots.”

  “He always takes his time,” Ned said. “Don’t try to flatter your way out of doom, woman. This is war. Think about snails in your bed.”

  Melanie shrugged. “I like escargot. And actually, if I compare the prospect to some of the men I’ve dated . . .”

  Ned laughed. But then he felt kind of young, again. He also thought, not for the first time, that women could be awfully strange. If the men had been so dorky, why’d she date them, why sleep with them? He looked sidelong at Melanie, almost asked her. If they’d been alone he might have; whatever else you could say about her, Melanie wasn’t evasive. She was funny and direct. And she didn’t actually treat him like a kid, just as part of her job. She’d have answered, he guessed. He might have learned something. He was getting to an age where a few things needed to be figured out, one way or another.

  “There we are!” Steve said, pointing. “Target acquired.”

  Their first clear glimpse of the peak, the upper part of it, above the pine trees between. The road curved again, they lost sight of the mountain, then got it again at the next switchback. Greg pulled over, put on the flashers, and they sat and looked. The triangle of the western face of the Sainte-Victoire rose commandingly above the plain and trees.

  “Well, this is a ‘Cézanne Was Here’ kind of shot,” Melanie said dubiously. “We could probably get permission from the owners of one of these houses to set up on their property.” They’d passed a number of villas on the road.

  “Okay, so, yeah, we know we can do this. What else is there, if the Man wants to go another way?” Greg said. He didn’t sound excited either.

  “That’s why we’re driving,” said Steve.

  Greg pulled back onto the road. After another few minutes winding back and forth they approached a village and saw a dead-straight double row of trees along another road meeting theirs from the right. A sign said “Le Tholonet.” There was a chateau on their left. It looked like a government building now, with a parking lot in front.

  “Stop a sec,” Steve said. Greg pulled to the side. Steve put his window down, took off his own sunglasses, eyeballing those trees.

  “Plane trees,” Melanie said. “They’re all over down here, to protect the fields and vineyards from the wind.”

  “Ze mistral ! Ze mistral !” Greg cried, in mockhorror. “She has nevair been zo bad as zis year, mes amis! And ze wolves . . . !”

  “Paradise has curses,” Melanie said. “The wind is one of them here. And that is a terrible accent, Gregory.” She was laughing, though. She had a nice laugh, Ned thought. Nice smile, too. But they were still at war. Mercy was for wimps.

  Melanie leaned towards Ned’s side, looking out his window. “Steve, what are you thinking?”

  “Long shot from the top of that straight road? They’re pretty gorgeous. Barrett didn’t mark any of these, did he? Move us up a bit, Greg?”

  After Greg did, Steve took out a pocket camera and ripped a couple of fast digitals. Quality didn’t matter in these, Ned knew; they were just to let his father have a glance at what they were talking about.

  Steve said, looking back at Melanie, “You say there are others like this? Maybe we check some out later? Ask around, where the best ones are. Is there anywhere the sun might set or rise along them? That might be—”

  “Uh-huh,” Greg said. He had pulled right off the road again, to where they could look along the double aisle of green. “Good thought. East-west, most of these. The big wind’s north.”

  Ned, impressed, reminded himself that his father’s people were always going to be competent, really good at their jobs, even if they might wear ridiculous swim trunks or write notes in green ink, with smiley faces at the bottom.

  The line of plane trees marched away from them, evenly spaced, framing the road on both sides, the spring leaves making a canopy above.

  He looked at them a moment out his rolled-down window, then shook his head. “Sorry, but you won’t get a sunset or sunrise,” he said. “Too many leaves by now, guys. That’s a winter shot.”

  Greg and Steve slowly turned around together in the front seat and stared at him.

  “Scawy,” said Greg. “Vewy scawy! What if he turns out to be like his old man? Imagine two of them. And he’s already picked up a chick here! I think I’m going to make Ned my new hero.”

  Steve laughed. “Replacing SpongeBob? That’s a major commitment!”

  “Wait till you see him on Rollerblades,” said Melanie.

  Ned shook his head at that one. Ack. What did you do with someone like Melanie? “Right,” he said. “I blade just like my dad.”

  Greg laughed and started the car again while Melanie made a note of where they were. She leaned forward and added another note. She was logging distance off the odometer, Ned saw.

  Just ahead was a T-junction. There was a largish restaurant on the right and a small café ahead, with tables on both sides of the road. That seemed to be all there was to Le Tholonet. They went straight through. A little farther along the road rose a bit, the screening woods gave way, and they had their first glimpse of the full mountain, no trees between.

  Ned was impressed. Hard not to be. Seen this close, Mont Sainte-Victoire completely dominated the landscape. It wasn’t huge, you weren’t going to
snowboard down it in winter or anything, but there were no other mountains or hills around and the triangular peak was crisp and imposing. At the very top Ned saw a white cross.

  “Well,” Melanie said, checking her notes, “Barrett’s written ‘money shot’ just ahead, where there’s a place to get off the road.”

  Greg saw it and pulled over. He turned the engine off and hit the flashers again. They all got out.

  The triangle loomed above a long green field. There were trees to their left, but none were in the way here; it was a wide-open shot, easy to frame. The rocky slopes were lit by the afternoon light. The mountain looked primitive and astonishing. The four of them were silent awhile, staring.

  “Boss man won’t like it,” Steve said, finally. He put his sunglasses back on.

  “I know,” Melanie said glumly. She sighed. “There’s a pull-over-and-snap-a-picture thing going on here. They might as well put up a Kodak sign and picnic tables.”

  Ned wasn’t so sure, actually. The stony bleakness above the green meadow didn’t say “pretty” to him. It felt more powerful and unsettling than that. He was going to say something, but in the minute or so since they’d stopped and gotten out he had started to feel peculiar. He kept his mouth shut. Steve took a few more digitals.

  “I’ll make a note, but let’s go on,” Melanie said. “I’m gonna get worried about Barrett Reinhardt, if this is his idea of a money shot.”

  “The man wants to sell books,” said Greg. “This is, like, a photo of a painting everyone knows. Comfort food.”

  They got back in. Ned swallowed, tasted something metallic in his mouth. He had no idea what this was. Veracook’s lunch? Unlikely. It was more of a headache than anything else, and it had come on really fast. He never got headaches, if you didn’t count the two times he and Barry Staley had drunk cheap wine at class parties and he’d thrown up on the walk home.

  I really shouldn’t have remembered that, he thought.

  He did feel nauseous, actually. The road continued to twist and wind south of the mountain. The swinging movement didn’t help at all. There were parking lots on their left where people could leave their cars and climb. He saw a big wooden signboard with a map of the mountain trails on it.