And the contrary: that while in the eyes of the world he had recovered his dignity and become an object of admiration, he had truly quit this time. The unspecified adventure he dreamed of had been unlikely enough anyway; but now that he was married and settled, he felt he had forfeited even that slim chance. He finally understood that he had never really healed after those months of youthful heartbreak. Rather, the magic lens of passion had scarred over. It had grown dimmer still through the years, overlaid with a laminate of disappointments, missed chances, and his own failures, until it was almost forgotten. Now it was only left to him to wonder, during moments like this, at what precise point he had accepted its never coming clear again. He supposed there had been many such points, like stepping-stones across a brook of time, bringing him to a far shore of endless if not unpleasant grays. The last of those stones had been the exchanging of vows with a woman for whom he cared deeply, with an affection that was mature, companionable, fitting for his age and place in life—but whom he did not love.
He glanced at his watch and realized with a start that he had been gone almost the promised two hours. The sun was deceptive, motionless in the sky, and the passage of time difficult to gauge. He pictured Linden wandering around the empty villa, unable to lie still beside the pool for long; starting dinner; perhaps beginning, a little forlornly, the chore of unpacking. He quickly corked the wine, and paused for a last look at the vista below. What scenes had the Templars gazed out upon from this spot? Crusaders and bands of pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land? Enemy hordes sweeping across the countryside, with the smoke and cries of pillage rising on the wind? A little reluctantly, he shouldered his pack and made his way back down the wall.
As he crossed the courtyard, the iron grate set into the ground caught his eye—a grim reminder of the darker side of medieval life. A few yards from it, a stone slab the size of a tabletop protruded from the pavement. Its purpose puzzled him. Late though he was, he could not resist a closer look. The dungeon was doubtless long since filled with earth and debris.
But when he looked over the opening’s stone lip, he was startled to see that it was filled with water. Blinking, he leaned closer. Not black and stagnant water, but clear and steaming, as if it were a bath.
A young woman was rising out of it.
For perhaps one second, McTell’s astounded eyes locked onto the details of her profiled face and form: rich chestnut hair pinned atop her head, with loose strands trickling down her neck; tiny beads of sweat on the bumps of her spine; the flex of muscle in her thigh; the delicate puckered rose of her breasts—
Suddenly she turned to face him, stepping forward as if into his arms. With a strangled cry of shock, he threw himself backward, catching what might have been a fleeting look of alarm in her own eyes.
An instant later, he found himself gripping a rusty iron grate, staring into a passage cut at a steep angle some fifteen feet into the earth. Remnants of a flight of stone stairs led to what might once have been chambers where the sun never shone, but was now only a heap of parched soil and rocks.
CHAPTER 2
Melusine Devarre found her gaze moving again and again to the girl who worked silently beside her in the kitchen. Alysse was always quiet, her temperament naturally gentle and subdued; but this evening there was a quality to her withdrawnness—a sense of disturbance, of worry—that Melusine could clearly feel. It disturbed her in turn.
She glanced at the clock. It was six-forty, twenty minutes before Alysse usually went home to her spinster aunt and supper. Melusine considered; then she sighed aloud and stepped back from the counter, patting at her forehead with her apron. “What heat!” she exclaimed. When Alysse looked up, Melusine winked and said, “Time for a little drink for the galley slaves.”
Alysse gestured doubtfully at the cobbler she had been layering with fruit. “I’m not done—”
“Pah, we’ve worked enough. Un petit Campari?"
The girl nodded timidly, her eyes large and grave, then gave a quick smile. She was an orphan, the aunt she lived with poor as a mouse; and ever since the Devarres had moved to the village the year before, Melusine had wished she could have known Alysse much earlier, adopted her to raise as one of her own. A bond had sprung up between them instantly, mysteriously powerful—almost more so than that of blood. But Alysse was seventeen now, nearly of age. The best Melusine could do was to give her light work helping around the house, and contrive excuses to overpay. “Put the fruit away, then,” she said. “I’ll make the drinks.” She moved around the kitchen, a handsome, strongly built woman in her mid-forties, limping slightly on her polio-shortened leg. Her dark skin, almond eyes, and slightly harsh features spoke of Eastern blood; her hair, black as a raven and carefully hennaed, was just beginning to show strands of gray. These she made no attempt to hide; on the contrary, they pleased her. Accept it with grace, she thought, and with a shrug added another splash of the sweet, mild aperitif to the ice and soda in her glass.
In the parlor they sank into chairs. “Will it never rain?” Melusine said.
“It’s bad this year,” the girl agreed.
“But you,” Melusine said accusingly. “I think the lys in your name must stand for water lily. You always look so cool and lovely.”
Alysse blushed, lowering her eyes. Melusine watched the girl’s slender tanned fingers turn the glass and thought, Heavens, child, with proper clothes and a touch of gold, you could be on the covers of magazines. But not quite. There was the thing that kept her features from perfection: her nose, strangely flat across the bridge—a peasant nose pressed onto the face of a princess. And yet even this added an inexplicable charm, the mar that true beauty must have. Melusine found herself toying with the idea of an unobtrusively expensive necklace for Christmas.
But, she reminded herself, there was a reason for this drink, this little breach of routine. She knew that the girl had no real communication with her aunt, who still wore corsets and, while kind enough, disapproved of the very air she breathed. Firmly, Melusine said, “Come now, tell me what’s on your mind. A young man, perhaps?”
Alysse’s forehead creased, but she did not look up.
“I’ve raised two daughters myself, remember,” Melusine said, “and even an ancienne like me has had her day with men. You’ll feel better if you talk.”
“I don’t have any boyfriends,” Alysse finally said. “It’s just that it seems silly. This afternoon when I was bathing, I looked up and thought I saw a man in the window, watching me.”
Melusine’s face tightened, but she made herself relax. There was no point in adding to the upset—yet. “You’re sure?”
“I thought so. Only—it’s impossible. The window is much higher than anyone’s head; there are no trees or rooftops. But the face was right there, not two meters away, as if it were hovering in the air. I must have imagined it, but it was terribly real.”
“Terribly?” Melusine said sharply.
Alysse nodded. “It was very ugly, and grim, with a big nose and cruel mouth—and only one eye. The other—there was no patch. It was just empty.”
Melusine’s fingers tapped the chair arm. She sipped her drink, watching the girl’s face closely for a sign of guilt or, Christ forbid, madness. But Alysse was telling the truth, or at least believed she was. Melusine was sure, and about such things she was never wrong. Hallucination, then? Something to do with the tensions of approaching adulthood, or as simple as a chemical imbalance in the diet? Could the girl have been experimenting with drugs? It was impossible to imagine.
“You’ve never seen this man elsewhere?”
Alysse shook her head. “It happened so quickly. But a face like that . . .”
Melusine nodded. There was no one in the village who remotely answered to that description. A wandering clochard? But how would he have reached the window?
“Well, perhaps it’s a new form of satellite TV, coming directly to you in your bath. Let’s just hope they’re not broadcasting your charms to the world.
” Alysse giggled, hiding her face behind her drink. “Keep your door locked at night,” Melusine went on, “and if you see this man anywhere—if anything at all strange happens again—you must tell me at once.”
The front door opened and closed; a cheerful greeting came to them from the hall. Roger Devarre was the town’s only physician: semi-retired, he saw perhaps a dozen patients a week, and spent most of his time happily, if badly, painting. A moment later the high-pitched whine of the bathroom faucets came on. He was forever pushing up his glasses or scratching his head as he paused to survey his work, managing to spread nearly as much pigment on his skin as on the canvas. Luckily, he used mostly watercolors.
She rose and saw Alysse out, took from the refrigerator the pitcher of dry martinis she had made earlier, poured one into a chilled glass for Roger, and left it beside the parlor table where he would spend the next half-hour with his newspaper. Then she turned to the business of dinner. As she sliced and chopped the assortment of vegetables on the counter before her, she thought again of what Alysse had told her, and felt a sudden fierce surge of protective anger that anyone would dare to interfere with the girl in such a way. If it were true, if it were somehow a vagabond or voyeur, she would see to it that he regretted the day he had set foot in Saint-Bertrand-sur-Seyre—
Abruptly, she was staring in amazement at the thin line of blood welling up from the web between thumb and forefinger of her left hand. With a gasp, she hurled the paring knife clattering across the counter.
It lay beside the sink, inert, innocent, only a knife, with nothing to suggest what it had been—seemed, she corrected herself—an instant before:
A snake, flat evil head reared back, eyes locked malevolently with hers—then twisting and striking with a blur of speed at her free hand.
Snakes, the creatures she loathed most in the universe.
She leaned against the counter and waited for her breathing to even, the hammering of her heart to slow. But another glance at the knife brought the sudden feel of the cold deadly writhing in her hand. She gagged and hurried, limping, into the parlor. Roger Devarre glanced up from his paper. His good-natured face sharpened instantly with concern, and in two steps he was examining her hand.
“Vapors,” she said, managing a smile. It was an old joke between them, from the early days of marriage.
“Well, it’s not serious,” he said. “I’ll just put something on it that stings enough so you’ll be more careful.”
“Slicing vegetables. You’d think I’d never done it before.”
“Vapors,” he agreed; then, as if to a patient, “Wait here, please.” She watched him stride off to get the necessary supplies, a lean craggy man with clear eyes and springy step; and while his concern was sometimes stifling, just now she was very glad of it.
He was right, the stuff he painted onto the cut stung harshly. In the process, she noted with amusement, he unobtrusively took her pulse. Then she was bandaged and safe, the pain subsiding to a dull throb.
“Now I prescribe a good stiff drink,” he said, “to be taken in the company of, say, an admirer.” He returned from the kitchen with another chilled martini. She sipped, coughed a little. The pressure in her hand and heart lessened again.
“So you’re getting clumsy in your old age?” he said.
“Actually, I had something like a waking nightmare.”
His eyebrows rose. Too casually, he said, “Ah?”
Psychiatrist too, she thought. “A clear-cut anxiety dream,” she said, teasing. “I was attacked.”
“By what?”
“A snake. Of course you know what that means.”
He snorted and she laughed, but a pang of worry remained. Many years before, visions and premonitions of a gentler kind had not been uncommon in her life. The parents of her great-aunt Mathilde had themselves been caravan gypsies. It was this aunt who had insisted on the infant girl’s being named after the Melusine of legend, a mythical creature half woman and half fairy; this aunt who had whispered to the child of the gift she possessed and must learn to use, but who had died before that education was more than barely begun. The birth of Melusine’s own children had put an end to any such doings—or so, for the past two decades, she had assumed.
Now this. There was no knowing what it might portend. She only hoped that if visions were to begin again, they would not be in the same vein. Snakes. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. She shivered, finished her drink, and got out the pitcher again.
“Another?” Roger said, surprised. She drank little, and rarely.
She shrugged, resisting the urge to tell him the truth; it would worry him to madness. Though she had borne him three healthy children, two now with babies of their own, and had hardly been sick a day in her life except for the polio, her withered leg made her an invalid in his eyes, to be cherished and protected obsessively.
Well, she would have to face the kitchen sooner or later. She walked in firmly. The knife was just that, a knife, and she gripped it without hesitation; but a faint sickness touched her. She was not sure she would ever trust the thing again. She rinsed it, put it in a drawer, and began to saute the vegetables.
But it was not just the knife, or what Alysse had told her, or the fear that there might be more to come. Something else was nagging.
Then she had it. It was the sense that something had been let out which should not have been. As if you knew that a viper was loose in the house, and that any time you opened a closet or reached into a drawer or slid your feet into bed . . .
** ** **
“So what is it?” Linden murmured. “Sea air? Exercise? Or am I finally irresistible?”
They lay uncovered on the bed, sweat beginning to dry on their bodies. McTell felt her fingers twisting lazily through the hair on his groin, occasionally moving with a fascination of their own to touch his still-wet penis and measure the progress of its shrinking.
“I’ve been that bad?” he said.
“Let’s say you seem to have had other things on your mind.”
“Travel,” he said vaguely. “Takes a lot out of an old man like me.”
“Hah. You were forty-nine going on eighteen tonight.”
“You bring out the animal in me, darling.”
“I wish I could do it more often.”
“We will,” he said. “I promise.” He began to stroke her back, pressing the heel of his hand into the muscles along her spine, feeling her relax with a sound like a purr. And he thought of what he could not or would not tell her: that with her so physically near those previous weeks, joining their bodies had been almost too intimate, as if he feared that in becoming so close they might merge, and that she, the stronger in some mysterious primal way, would absorb him until he ceased to exist. The time when he would have welcomed such a union of souls was long gone. There was even relief in having a mate who lived with him and cared for him in the world they shared, but who never crossed the threshold of the world where he walked alone.
But there was more he could not say. She had been a little cool when he returned from the ruin an hour late; and a dozen times, as he stood with cocktail in hand and watched her set out the dinner things, he had been on the edge of sharing with her his strange vision of the afternoon. Their stay in the house had begun inauspiciously enough; it would have been a simple way to overcome tension, reestablish intimacy.
But each time, something had intervened—something almost in the nature of a warning voice. It was not that he wanted to hide anything from her, he had finally decided, but that in some way he could not quite pin down, the vision of the girl had been too private, too much a part of his own inner world. And, the voice of common sense added wryly, few wives would be pleased to hear that their husbands had been imagining beautiful young nymphs bathing.
Linden’s breathing had evened. He kissed the top of her head and disengaged himself, turning onto his side. She made a small sound of complaint but did not wake.
&n
bsp; McTell, too, sought the deep sleep he needed after weeks on the road. But the face of the girl rose and floated before him—not a face of common abstract beauty such as he might have imagined, but sharp and clear, right down to the strange detail of an incongruously broad flat nose. He remembered that last flash of alarm in her eyes, as if she had seen him too, as if she had actually been there, as if, through some impossible warp of time or distance, it had not been his imagination at all.
For a long time he lay with his wife’s breath warm against his shoulder, until he seemed to be drifting, as though in a boat on a gentle river, through the interface between sleep and dreams. A hand was beckoning. He floated obediently after it, and saw that it was gloved in a heavy metal gauntlet. It led him through a land of gorgeous fluid dreamscapes, vivid, seductive, tantalizingly familiar. At last the hand descended into an opening in the earth and began to scrape at the red crusted soil. It dug steadily deeper, until McTell was looking into a compartment blacker than anything he had ever imagined. Something was in there, he understood—something terrible and powerful and wonderful; but as he hovered, in the manner of dreams, wanting and fearing to reach in and find out what it was, a sudden hard pressure pulled him away.
He opened his eyes to see his wife’s tense face. Her hand was gripping his arm. Seconds passed in the room’s dark stillness, and then Linden smiled timorously.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Bad dream.”
With murmurs and caresses they settled back down, and at last he dropped into a sleep that was sweet and profound.
CHAPTER 3
The exterior of the cathedral of Saint-Bertrand was pleasing but unremarkable, McTell decided after a few minutes. The design was standard Gothic: transepts extending out to both sides like wings, a semihexagonal apse in the rear, a row of high-arched clerestory windows whose stained glass depicted an assortment of saints and biblical figures. He was sure even at a distance that these were not original, but replacements from the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The good glass had probably been made away with for the private chapel of some noble, destroyed in the frenzy of the Revolution, or looted by Napoleon’s agents and sent to Paris. Carved in stone on the west-facing facade above the great main doors was a tympanum of the wise and foolish virgins; the cornices of the spire sported gargoyles weathered featureless by the centuries. But while the little church offered nothing of magnificence like the great cathedrals of Chartres, Amiens, and Notre-Dame-de-Paris, McTell was, if anything, more moved to awe by the incalculable labor of peasants and tradesmen, perhaps lasting generations and hundreds of years, in erecting such an edifice to a God who so often seemed dedicated to making their lives a misery.
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