‘It is surprisingly easy to refuse to disclose what one genuinely does not know, Nick. And the threat of death only confirmed the equanimity with which I regard the prospect. Monasticism taught me that as well as a tolerance for physical hardship. My lost vocation stood me in remarkably good stead, in fact. I was not really frightened at all until I realized that you too were in Demetrius’s clutches. Unless, of course, you’re about to tell me that you never were.’
‘No. I’m not about to tell you that.’
‘Doubtless he had you abducted for the same reason.’
‘Yes. The same.’
‘Why have we been released, then? Because he came to understand that neither of us could help him? Or because one of us could?’
But there Nick called a halt. He wanted to be out of Venice before he told Basil what had happened. He wanted to be sure they had made good their escape before he revealed what they were escaping from.
Basil’s grasp of basic Italian got them in and out of the Zampogna within minutes, leaving Carlotta bemused but content, given that Nick had already paid her for the night’s stay. Denying themselves a final visit to Luigi’s bar, they headed west towards Santa Lucia. Night had fallen, but time was on their side.
It was still on their side after they had bought their tickets, so Basil proposed telephoning Irene to reassure her that they were both well. Nick could hardly object. But he could insist on being the first to speak to her.
‘Old Ferry Inn.’
‘Irene, this is Nick.’
‘Nick? Where in God’s name have you been?’
‘I’ve found Basil. He’s fine. So am I. We’re at the railway station in Venice, waiting for a train out.’
‘Where did you find him?’
‘A monastery. He’d booked himself in for a retreat.’ As cover stories went, Nick reckoned the one he and Basil had just cobbled together was far from implausible.
‘Without telling anyone?’
‘You know Basil.’
‘Put him on.’
‘I will in a minute. The thing is, Irene, I literally only caught up with him an hour ago. There hasn’t been time to go into everything.’
‘Have you told him about Tom?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘No. I’ll do it later.’
‘All right. But there’s been a lot of anguish here in your absence, you know. I’ve had Terry on to me. He and Kate have had a pretty major row, apparently. And he seems to blame you.’
‘I’m sure he does.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘We’re all to blame, to greater or lesser degrees.’
‘Are you feeling OK, Nick? You sound odd.’
‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘Have you contacted this cousin of ours—Demetrius?’
‘Demetrius Andronicus Paleologus died a year ago, Irene. Dad’s will meant nothing.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll explain when we get back.’
‘When’s that going to be?’
‘Oh—’ Nick contemplated the wilderness of his short-term future for a moment.‘Soon enough.’
While Basil spoke to Irene, Nick cast his eye around the station concourse. Everything was calm and orderly. There was no sign of the police, nor of pursuit in any form. Their train was up on the departures board. They were going to make it. He thought suddenly of Emily and seemed to feel the coldness of the mortuary slab against his skin, a coldness Emily could no longer feel. He shuddered, certain in that moment that he would never stop regretting his failure to save her from herself—and certain also that he would never want to.
The Rialto Express to Paris pulled out dead on time. They had paid for a sleeping compartment, but made no early move to occupy it. The restaurant car was busy, but there was a virtually empty seating carriage just beyond it. The train gathered speed across the night-blanked flatness of the Veneto Plain. Somewhere between Padua and Vicenza the whiskies Nick was drinking started to take effect. He began to talk.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Nick woke to the sway of the train and the snores of his brother on the bottom bunk. They had gone to bed in sombre spirits, for the truth in their situation was no comfort. Basil had taken the news of Tom’s death as a judgement on the whole family’s folly in pursuing the Tantris offer.‘We failed him,’ he had said several times the previous night. And so they had, Nick supposed, although it was equally true to say that Tom had failed them. But Nick was done with apportioning blame. What should have broken him had somehow remade him. Lying there in the yawing dark, he sensed a change within himself. Where he should have felt cowed and overwhelmed by all that had happened, he felt instead released, in some strange way restored. He still flinched at the memory of how Emily had chosen to die, but he glimpsed now the essence of her act. She had controlled her destiny to the last, whereas Nick had never controlled his from the start. Or maybe, he thought, as he looked at the luminous dial of his watch and calculated that they would be in Paris in less than two hours, he had simply not started yet. To him beginning seemed more possible than continuing. And the time to begin had unquestionably arrived.
Three hours later, after a meagre breakfast and a walk beside the Seine, Nick and Basil were sitting on a bench in the square behind Notre-Dame as a Parisian morning of early spring coolness and clarity cast its spell over the city. From where they were sitting, the cathedral’s flying buttresses looked like the legs of some giant stone spider, squatting above the trees. But it was a spider without a web. No thread twitched at Nick’s sleeve, no reproach at his conscience. He had reached a decision. And he knew, with wholly unfamiliar certainty, that it was the right decision.
‘I’m not coming back with you, Basil.’
‘There’s a surprise,’ said Basil, flicking a croissant crumb from his knee towards the nearest sparrow.
‘You don’t sound surprised.’
‘That’s because I knew you weren’t.’
‘How?’
‘The explanation can wait. Though not as long as the one you will eventually feel obliged to proffer to Irene and Anna. There’s no reason, as far as I can see, why they should hear about this.’ Basil held up a folded copy of Carriere d’lia Sera, which he had bought at the Gare de Lyon. The lower frontpage headline Lido di Venezia: Strage Sanguinosa in una Villa di Lusso—helpfully if loosely translated by Basil as Murder Most Foul at Lido Villa—was printed above an article that made absolutely no mention of an English cousin of the deceased Demetrius Paleologus being sought by the police, although it did imply a connection between Demetrius’s murder and the supposedly accidental death nine months before of an Englishman by the name of Jonathan Braybourne.‘I hardly think the Western Morning News is likely to devote even the briefest of paragraphs to such an event. The Birmingham Post is quite another matter. But fortunately our sisters don’t live in Birmingham. For the rest, what is there to say? You found me and all is well. Or, if not well, then not as bad as it might be.’
‘I need to go away. To think. To put my life back together.’
‘I quite understand. Although, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll not think too much. Thinking is what makes people unhappy. I never do more than the bare minimum myself.’
‘What’s the minimum in this case?’
‘The modest amount necessary to reveal that Irene and Anna cannot sell Trennor without our consent. We risk nothing by delaying our return.’
‘We?’
‘I’m not going back either. Which is how I could be so certain you weren’t going back with me.’ Basil smiled.‘I for one would welcome a travelling companion.’
‘So would I.’ Nick returned his brother’s smile, appreciating as he did so just how welcome company would be on the road to wherever he was going.
‘Do you remember our first visit to Paris, Nick?’
‘Of course.’
In September 1976, a few weeks before going up to Ca
mbridge, Nick had accompanied Basil on a long weekend trip to the French capital. He had gone home alone, however. At the top of the Eiffel Tower on their last afternoon, Basil had announced that he was proceeding to Greece in quest of what being a Paleologus ultimately meant. He had seen Nick off later at the Gare St-Lazare on the train to Cherbourg, without having managed in the interim to give his brother the meagrest of insights into the workings of his mind.
‘I’m not likely to have forgotten.’
‘Indeed not. My behaviour was inexcusable. I couldn’t face Dad. That’s the simple truth of it. I knew he would think I was running away from him. As, in a sense, I was. I knew he would regard my vocation as no more than a triumph of self-delusion. Which, in another sense, it also was. What I overlooked was that he would think me a wretch as well as a coward for sending my sixteen-year-old brother home alone.’
‘I quite enjoyed the journey, actually.’
‘Without your crackpot brother to embarrass you at every turn, you mean?’
Nick chuckled.‘Something like that.’
Basil pursed his lips.‘We must take care lest honesty become too fixed a habit.’
‘It’d be good to leave Paris with you this time, Basil. Honestly.’
‘Do you remember the Texan we shared that room with near the Sorbonne?’
‘The Vietnam veteran from Laredo with the Edith Piaf fixation? You bet I remember. Gary something. Son of a rancher.’
‘Gary Longfellow.’
‘That’s it.’
‘I expect he’s the rancher now.’
‘Probably.’
‘The Lazy K, the place was called.’
‘That’s right.’
‘He invited us over.’
‘So he did.’
‘ “It’d be great if you guys swung by the spread one day,”’ Basil drawled.
‘You’ve got him to a tee.’
‘It’s a direct quote.’
‘Is it?’
‘So, why don’t we take him up on it?’
‘What?’
‘Why don’t we swing by Laredo?’ Basil grinned.‘Via New Orleans, perhaps. Or Las Vegas.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No.’
‘You must be.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘For one thing, we’d have to fly.’
‘Not necessarily. I believe you can hitch passage on a container ship if you know how to go about it. Antwerp would be the place to try. Or Marseilles.’
‘Now you are joking.’
‘About the container ship, yes. But not about the trip. Demetrius succeeded in reminding me that I am perversely unafraid of death. So, flying really should be no problem. I may experience the odd panic attack while we’re airborne, but the worst that can happen is that I embarrass my kid brother all over again.’
‘I’m old enough to cope with a little embarrassment.’
‘It could be a lot.’
‘Even a lot.’
‘You’re game, then?’
‘Yeah.’ Nick nodded.‘I am.’
‘Excellent.’
‘When shall we go?’
‘When can you be ready?’
‘I am ready. But we’d have to organize tickets. And it’ll be a morning flight. So ’ Nick suddenly realized how much he was relishing the prospect. Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow it is.’
‘We’d better find a travel agent.’
Basil raised a thoughtful finger.‘Actually, there’s something I need to show you first. And to tell you. It’s not far. And it won’t take long.’
‘Can’t it wait?’
‘No.’ Basil gazed up at the flying buttresses.‘Now is the time.’
The chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, in the Palais de Justice, near the other end of the le de la Cit , was their far from distant destination. Its soaring spire and slender buttresses lacked the massive Gothic presence of Notre-Dame. The building was a contrasting study in delicacy and elegance, its high stained- glass windows filling the nave with what could easily be taken for heavenly light.
But, as Basil seemed anxious to point out, the chapel was only eighty years younger than Notre-Dame.‘It was built for Louis the Ninth in the twelve forties to house the holy relics he’d brought from the Latin Emperor of Constantinople,’ he whispered as they moved slowly, necks craning, from window to window.‘The Crown of Thorns, plus fragments of the True Cross and the skull of John the Baptist. He’d paid several times more for them than it cost to build this. A pious dupe, I fear. What would he not have paid, I wonder, for the artefact entrusted to Richard of Cornwall? He bought the relics in the same year as the conference at Limassol, twelve forty-one. It occurs to me that Richard may have met Andronicus Paleologus specifically in order to reassure the Byzantine Emperor that the artefact wasn’t destined for a rich monarch’s collection, like the relics the Latin Emperor was so enthusiastically selling off to the highest bidder. A nice and generous touch on Richard’s part, especially if, unlike Louis’s acquisitions, it was the genuine article. Which prompts the question: what was the article?’
‘I’m not holding out on you, Basil. I don’t know.’
‘Ah, but you did know. That day at Buckland Abbey you told me about last night. You knew then.’
‘Yes. I think I did.’
‘We didn’t come here in September seventy-six, did we?’
‘No.’
‘Had we done so, the comparison with Louis the Ninth and his expensive relics—transferred to Notre-Dame long since, by the way—might have lodged in your mind rather than the echo of that Spanish placename, Nombre de Dios.’
‘What are you getting at, Basil?’
‘The truth, Nick. I think I know the other phrase you can’t call to mind.’
Nick stopped and stared at his brother.‘You do?’
‘Yes. In fact, I’m sure of it.’
‘What is it?’
‘Numero de Dias.’ Basil’s voice dropped still further. The Number of Days.’
Nick went on staring. He could not speak. For the moment, he could not even move. Basil was right. Numero de Dias was the phrase.
‘Dad took me to Buckland Abbey one day not long after I came back from Greece. I’d forgotten the visit until you mentioned your own trip there with him. He spent a long time studying that picture of Drake’s burial at sea up in the gallery they have there. Then he used the same phrase it had put you in mind of. Numero de Dias. He must have heard you say it all those years before. “Numero de Dias.” He was remembering what you no longer could. He turned to me and said, “Do you know the legend of the Number of Days, Basil?” As it happened, I did, prompting him to make some crack about my years as a monk not being entirely wasted. Then he said, “When I’m dead and gone, tell Nick the legend. Bring him here—right here—and tell him. Will you do that?” I said I would readily enough, but I’m afraid it was rather a vague undertaking on my part. At the time, I was more than a little distrait. I dare say it struck me as a whimsical request which I needn’t treat seriously. The point of it escaped me, as it was bound to. Only now do I understand. There was one more thing he said, you see, as he took a last glance at the picture before we left the gallery. I barely caught the words. “He’ll remember.” That’s what he said. “He’ll remember.” He meant you, of course. And he may well have been right. I’d have called our visit—and my promise—to mind eventually. I’m certain of that. So, sooner or later, you and I would have gone to Buckland Abbey together and looked at the picture. And then, at long last—’
‘I’d have remembered.’ Nick let his unfocused gaze drift across the river. They had left Sainte-Chapelle and walked to the Square du Vert-Galant, the tree-bowered western prow of the le de la Cit . They were standing at the very point of the prow, apparently studying the mansarded roofscape of the Louvre on the northern bank. But though they were looking in that direction, Nick for one was conscious of very little beyond his brother’s words. A bateau-mouche moved seda
tely past them, a child waving to them from within. They did not wave back.‘We’re a long way from Buckland Abbey. You’ll have to remember for me. What is the legend of the Number of Days?’
‘I first heard about it from an old monk on his deathbed. It revolves around the Lord’s brother, James, an ambivalent figure in the history of the Church, since to the Catholics the existence of siblings of Christ is literally inconceivable, by reason of Mary’s perpetual virginity. No dispassionate reading of the Gospels can leave one in any real doubt, however, about James’s blood relationship with Christ. They were brothers. Or half-brothers, strictly speaking. James was plainly a prominent disciple, if not an apostle. He succeeded Peter as head of the Church in Jerusalem. Paul deferred to him in matters of doctrine. Some scholars take Paul’s account in his first letter to the Corinthians of Christ’s appearances after the Crucifixion to imply that he appeared to James before any of the apostles. James believed Christianity and Judaism could be reconciled. He maintained close links with the Judaist community in general and the Pharisees in particular. He enjoyed what for a Christian was a unique level of access to the Temple. He went on working for a rapprochement between the two faiths until his death in the year sixty-two, when he was done down by intrigue in the Temple hierarchy, slain, so the story goes, by a blow to the head with a club. Ritualistic and strangely familiar, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yes, I would.’ Nick looked round at Basil.‘Tell me the legend.’
‘Very well. You shall have it as it was given to me by old Brother Philemon. During the forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, the risen Christ was several times asked by the apostles when he would return in glory; when the Kingdom of God would be inaugurated on Earth. He replied only that it was not for men to know. But some believe he relented in the case of his blood brother. Some believe he told James how many years would elapse before he came again.’
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