by Ann Benson
And so, he thought to himself, his heart incongruously full of pride while his gut trembled in fear for her, the daughter has become as the father, a robber of graves.
Had his own father felt the same pride and fear for him, when he was Kate’s age? He longed, with all his soul, to ask. And so he did, in a silent prayer, whispered briefly. But there was no time to listen in his heart for an answer. He returned to the letter with this thought: May all who watch over mortals grant that these deeds shall not lead her as far astray as they did me.
We must hasten to get you out of there, the letter continued, for we need to leave Paris and go north again, and I will not let Karle leave until you are freed. There is to be a battle between the forces of Charles of Navarre and the supporters of the Dauphin, and Marcel has negotiated with Navarre for Karle to lead a contingent of peasants in support of Navarre, in return for concessions toward freedom when the Dauphin is deposed. Though Karle and I agree that Navarre is a cruel beast, Marcel has made us believe that it is the only way to accomplish our ends.
Take care in your dealings with Elizabeth, Père, for she is the wife of my half-brother. Karle insists you will know this, but I must make certain that you do by saying it in these lines. We fear for you if Lionel learns who you are. Nevertheless, we await word from this page of hers.
May God keep you safe, and send you to us soon.
He glanced out the window; the shadowy figures were close together. Karle seemed to have an arm around Kate as if he were protecting her, not for Alejandro’s sake but for his own. With a long sigh, he went to his table and scratched out a hasty reply:
Daughter, I am taking all due care to ensure that Elizabeth does not learn my true identity—and it does not suit de Chauliac’s purposes right now to reveal it to her. My next missive to you will likely come from Chaucer—I have set this in motion just today, but I cannot say when it will happen. Soon, though, I am sure, for Elizabeth seems an impatient sort. He will ask for Karle by the name of “Jacques,” as they have been introduced.
I long to stand beside you once again. Perhaps then you will tell me why it is that your letter contains far more we’s than I’s. Godspeed to you both.
22
Janie stared out the window as the airplane banked in preparation for landing. Sunlight gleamed on the water below, and she squinted to ward off the piercing reflections that, were she to stare long enough, would dapple her vision with floating blue spots. She wondered, as an attempt at self-distraction, if those were whitecaps glinting down below, or perhaps the tips of icebergs.
It would be only a few more minutes until they landed. She’d had a surprising slow build of excitement as she went through the beginnings of the journey, the check-in, the suiting up after they boarded, and now the anticipation of seeing Bruce again after so long was close to overwhelming. Though the flight was relatively short, she’d already read everything the screen on the seat-back in front of her had to offer, and the novel she’d brought for just that purpose couldn’t seem to hold her attention. In near-desperation she pressed the talk button on her headgear and said to the man seated next to her, “Looks choppy out there. Hey, do you think we flew over the Titanic site?”
The big, Nordic-looking man leaned forward slightly, his suit crinkling, and cast an uninterested glance out the window, then sat back again and shrugged. Without a word of comment, he returned to viewing his own screen.
She’d hoped for at least “Yah shoor yoo betcha,” which might have led to a pleasant, anesthetizing conversation with her Viking seatmate, a crosscultural exchange of viewpoints on how the surface of the sea ought to look. But it was not to be.
She’d been so ambivalent about this trip until now, when the strain between her and Bruce suddenly seemed all but forgotten, having been rendered insignificant by the knowledge that in only an hour or so she would actually reach out her hand and touch him.
Four months it’s been. The airplane banked again and then straightened, and as they came in closer Janie could see the desolate black beaches of Iceland’s southern shoreline. Off in the distance, rising up out of a flat expanse of water, implausibly close to the beach, were the tall columns of a geothermal plant, which looked far more deadly and ominous than it was. Clouds of steam dotted the otherwise crystal-clear air like runaway cotton balls, and as the plane came closer to the ground, Janie was charmed by the sudden appearance of the pastel-painted homes and businesses of Reykjavik.
One stowed bag was all Icelandic Air would allow her, so she’d layered herself, and when she got off the plane and out of the plastic flight suit she thought she must look like a walking laundry basket. She’d sweated inside the suit, and strands of hair were plastered to the side of her face. A quick glance around failed to reveal the bathroom for which she had a sudden and dire need, but until she went through customs there would be no stepping out of the line.
For once her bag was one of the first on the carousel, so she dragged it off and literally ran to the inspector’s station, where her one electronic device, a telephone, scanned through without a hitch. Her visa was declared to be in perfect order, the hotel reservation confirmed, her passport stamped, so all that remained was to put her hand on the sensor and pass on through.
She reached out slowly, but pulled her hand back for a second or two as internal bells blared and paranoia ruled her.
Don’t worry about it, Tom had told her. He’d been very adamant that she would be in no legal danger by going to Iceland. England has no jurisdiction there. All they can do is record that you’ve been there and send you on through the gate. They can’t detain you or arrest you or otherwise harass you in any manner.
He’d seemed less forceful when he’d said, Now just go and have a good time.
She held her hand in front of the sensor. It flashed out a beam onto her palm, and in the blink of an eye the electronic gate clicked open. She hauled herself and her bag through, turned the corner, and saw Bruce. After one hard swallow, she ran to him.
The hotel was built almost entirely of concrete, easily had in Iceland unlike wood or metal, but in keeping with most of Reykjavik’s buildings it was painted in a soft, cheerful color, in this case a lovely butter-yellow with rose-colored trim. The room they were shown to was similarly pleasant, with spare but deceptively comfortable furniture and few other adornments. It was on the iron-framed bed, painted Swedish blue, and under the soft blanket, woven in rainbow stripes of Icelandic wool, that Bruce and Janie knew each other in more than two dimensions for the first time in a third of a year.
When they awoke again at ten P.M. the sun was low in the sky but still visible. It hovered just over the horizon, threatening descent, and cast its thin, muted glow in nearly horizontal rays, creating subtle hazy shadows that seemed to stretch out to infinity. As she slipped into renewed consciousness, Janie let her eyes rest on Bruce’s angular face and rediscovered things about it that she’d forgotten in the time since they’d last been with each other. The halo of curly hair—did it have a touch more gray than it had last time she’d seen him? The dark, lush lashes that rested so innocently, almost on his cheekbones, when his eyes were closed, and stole her breath away when those eyes were open. The one or two gray hairs in his eyebrows, a little scar just at the bottom of his lower lip. She touched it with the tip of one finger and he flinched slightly.
“I know you told me,” she said, “but how did you get this?”
Though his eyes were still closed he smiled and said, “ Learning to ski. Put my tooth right through it when I was a little kid.”
“Ouch,” she said softly. “Where?”
“I forget. Somewhere in New England.”
“How old were you?”
He breathed deeply. His eyes fluttered open for a second, then closed again. His brows knitted together as if he were thinking very hard about an important question. “Eight, nine, maybe.”
“Oh. Young to be skiing.”
“Not in my family. My mother said we were all b
orn with skis.”
And trust funds, and a pedigree, Janie thought. It accounted for the uncanny grace with which he moved through the world.
He kissed her on the forehead with unstudied grace and rose up naked from the bed. Janie followed his easy movements with half-open eyes, admiring the silhouette he made against the balcony doors. A salty breeze came in when he opened the multipaned glass panel, bringing with it a slight ashy smell, a reminder that they would be sleeping that night in the foothills of a volcano.
He found his shirt from the pile on the floor and slipped it over his arms, then pulled on his pants and went out onto the balcony. And though she was exhausted from the journey and the time-zone change, Janie managed somehow to get up out of the soft, warm bed. She draped herself in the first rumpled garment her hand found and went out to join him in the night air. When she reached his side he wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, then kissed her on the cheek while the breeze blew her hair around in wispy threads.
“Oh, God, I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “This has been one of the longest days of my life.”
“It has been long,” Janie agreed. She hugged him closer and smiled. “But it’s ending pretty well, don’t you think?”
Kristina’s day was ending badly. “I’m just not getting anywhere with finding the patent holder. I’m getting the distinct feeling that whoever did this left a deliberately confusing trail.”
“You know what? That’s been known to happen before when bad guys don’t want to be discovered.”
“What are we going to do, then? I’m stuck here. I need to know who the patent holder is, and then I need to find Patient Zero.”
“There may not be a Patient Zero at all. And if there is, it’s a statistical likelihood that he’s dead.”
Kristina pushed herself away from the computer. “I’m so confused,” she said. She rubbed her eyes with one hand. “I thought everything would just fall into line. We could do all these backward traces and end up with someone to blame.”
She looked away, and seemed to slip off somewhere until her companion brought her back with a little ahem.
“Oh,” she said as she came around, “sorry. One of my ozone moments.” She took in a long breath and said, “I was just thinking about Janie. I wish she’d brought V.M. with her. She might be talking to her friend about all this.”
The man said nothing for a moment. “She hasn’t seen him in how long?”
“I think she said four months.”
“Then believe me, she is not talking to him about this quest of ours.”
“The work is completely exhilarating. I barely even remember that I’m working at the foundation anymore. I haven’t felt so alive in almost a year.” Then quickly, she added, “I mean, except when we’ve been together.”
They sat on opposite sides of a small table, their hands intertwined over a partially consumed assortment of fruits and cheese. Bruce removed one of his hands from the tangle and picked up a cherry, which he teasingly held out by the stem to Janie. She stopped talking long enough to lean forward and suck the little red ball of sweetness into her mouth.
“I’m glad you clarified that,” Bruce said.
“Sorry,” she said. She swallowed, then leaned even closer. “Come here,” she whispered.
He obliged. She slipped her cherry-flavored tongue between his lips and passed him the pit.
Kristina’s companion gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Do you have any idea of what time it is? You must be exhausted.”
“I’ll be okay.” She rubbed her forehead.
He was not convinced. “Go to bed. Right now. Use the extra bedroom upstairs.”
“Will you get me up early in the morning?”
“Why? Are you going someplace?”
“No—but I want to get back to the work as soon as possible. I want to have a lot to show her when she comes home again.”
“I see so much of Betsy in her, Bruce, I can’t help it. They’d be about the same age now.”
He pulled her closer under the bedclothes. “Does she look like what Betsy would look like?”
“I haven’t done a projection of Betsy since we—used her in London. But she just reminds me of the type of young woman I think Betsy would be.”
Bruce got up on one elbow and looked at Janie in the thin glow of the incomprehensibly still-visible sun. “And that would be?”
Janie sighed. “Full of life, enthusiastic, interested in everything, and so sweet.”
“From what you’ve said, I don’t get the feeling that this Kristina is particularly sweet.”
“Oh, she is, in her own way,” Janie said as she played with his chest hairs. “She has some very endearing qualities. Mixed in with the odd ones. But I like her more all the time.”
They were quiet for a moment, listening to each other’s breath. Janie began to drift into sleep. “I can’t fight it anymore,” she murmured. “I think I’m out of here.”
“Go ahead.”
Tom stared out his bedroom window and watched absentmindedly as bug after bug flung itself against the streetlight outside, to no apparent purpose. In the silence he heard the clock on his bedstand ticking, ticking, and ticking some more, and he glared over at its illuminated face, as if by doing so he could make it jump into the nearest toilet.
Three A.M. Most people in Massachusetts would be asleep in bed. Perhaps not those who live on some edge, and those who keep an eye on them while they skirt that edge. But in Iceland, people might already be awake.
And doing things.
With an aching heart he wondered why his life and hers had been so completely out of synch. He’d vowed to himself as he drove her to the airport for the three-week trip to Iceland that the second she set foot on the home soil again he would get down on one knee in front of her and beg, if necessary, for the privilege of sharing her life. He hadn’t dreamed that another three weeks would make any difference.
“This is breathtaking,” Bruce said. “What an incredible view.”
“Amazing,” Janie said, “truly amazing.”
They held hands as they made their way carefully along the metal viewing platform at the peak of the climbing trail. They’d come up the side of the volcano slowly over the course of the morning, stopping now and then to rest, or to kiss when the mood came over them. The reward for their considerable effort was the starkly beautiful moonscape before them, a massive, glistening sheet of glacial ice.
The sun, as high as it ever got in Iceland, was still at an angle low enough to cause a nearly blinding glare. It bounced off the ice and cut right through their dark glasses. Janie shaded her eyes with one hand against its merciless attack. “I think this afternoon I’d like to do something inside,” she said. “My eyes have really had it.”
“I can think of at least one thing we could do inside.”
She laughed aloud, and the sound echoed out over the ice sheet. So she lowered her voice and said, “Well, of course, that, but after that, I mean.”
“Is there anything beyond that?”
“It might surprise you to know that there is. Actually, I had something in mind. The travel agent gave me a guidebook, and it had a listing for this place called the Arni Magnussun Institute—it’s sort of a museum. They have a lot of old manuscripts there.”
For a split second Janie thought she saw the tiniest flash of anger in his expression. But it disappeared almost instantly. He smiled and put an arm around her shoulders. “Can’t get enough of those old manuscripts, can you?”
“No. I can’t. Bring ’em on.”
As they headed toward the downward trail, Bruce said, “We had our first date in a museum, as I recall. ”
“We did, indeed.”
“Well, I guess we should go to this other one, then.”
“We used to call these nooners when I was younger,” he said softly as his hands moved from button to button down the front of her sweater. And as it dropped to the floor behind her, leaving just a
lacy camisole and panties to be removed, he breathed softly into her ear, “But you know us boys—we had these silly ideas, like you had to hoot and brag when you got something in the middle of the day.”
She moaned softly as his fingers found a nipple under her camisole. She moaned louder when his tongue found it. “By ‘something,’ ” she whispered through her pleasure, “I assume you don’t mean anything contagious.”
“Well …”
His pants crumpled to a heap where he dropped them.
Now her breathing came deeper and slower. “Perhaps … you want to explain … this ‘something.’ ”
“No,” he moaned, “later would be better.”
“Oh, Bruce,” she said with a different kind of excitement, “take a look at this.”
He came up behind her at a massive display case in the Arni Magnussun Institute and peered over her shoulder. He read the placard and then regarded the item being exhibited in the massive climate-controlled case.
“Hmm.” He looked closer. “From the thirteenth century, it says.”
“This is even older than Alejandro’s journal.”
He examined the case with only his eyes; he decided from the looks of it that the slightest touch would set off a flurry of assorted security responses, all unpleasant. “This thing is like a vault,” he said. Then with an almost challenging tone in his voice, he said, “Will they put your journal in a case like this at the book depository?”
She shook her head no as she read the placard mounted on one side of the case. “Probably not. The other book with his handwriting is a lot older. I mean, the fact that there are two books with the same writing makes Alejandro’s journal more valuable and a lot more interesting, at least to me, and probably to some scholars. But even still, I don’t think the journal I brought from London will be considered to be in the same league.”
