“Try Montreal!” said Melanie.
Oliver Lee turned to her. “Had you been there to greet me, and had I been even ten years younger, my dear, I’d have willingly tried Montreal.”
Ned blinked, and then did so again. Melanie actually blushed.
“Wow!” said Greg, looking at her. “That was impressive! I’ve never seen her do that.”
“Be quiet, you,” Melanie said, looking down at her plate.
“Interesting,” Ned’s father said, grinning behind a hand, smoothing his moustache. “Green hair streaks do it for you, Oliver? Do people know this about you?”
“Adornment has varied widely over the centuries,” Oliver Lee said airily, waving a hand. “My own ancestors painted themselves blue long ago, with woad. Silly to be wedded—or woaded, shall we say?—to only one look as attractive.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Green hair is entirely a matter of a woman’s style and choice, and when she has eyes like your Melanie, she may make any choice she wants.”
“Wow!” said Greg again. “Um, she’s single, you know. And she’s read some of your books.”
“Shut up, Gregory!” Melanie said fiercely, under her breath, still looking down.
Ned had never thought about Melanie’s eyes. They were green, he realized. He wondered if the stripe in her hair, maybe even her ink colour, had been chosen to match. Women did that, didn’t they?
“Mr. Lee, you are much too nice. You’ll make me lose focus this afternoon,” Melanie said, looking up finally, smiling at the author. “And that’s bad in photography!” She still looked flushed.
Lee laughed, and shook his shaggy silver mane. “I must doubt that, though it is kind of you to say. I’m just an old man in sunshine among ruins, paying homage to youth and beauty.”
Do people actually say that sort of thing? Ned thought.
Evidently they did, in Oliver Lee’s circles, anyhow. The waiter came for their plates. The others ordered coffee.
“I’ll be heading home, get out of your way,” Lee said to Ned’s father. “Wouldn’t want me tripping over your apparatus or meandering into a photograph.”
Ned decided this was a role the man played, a public pose. Looking at his father, he saw the same assessment there, and amusement.
“You’re welcome to stay,” Edward Marriner said. “Melanie can help keep you from meandering. We’re going over to Saint-Trophime, the cloister.”
“Ah. Good. You’ll want to photograph the eastern and the northern sides,” Oliver Lee said, brisk all of a sudden. “If the other elements . . . light and such . . . are right for you, of course. The pillar carvings on those sides are the glory and wonder. There are legends about them.”
“What kind?” Melanie asked, clearly pleased to have the subject changed. Homage to youth and beauty. Ned was going to have to remember that. Ammunition for later, in the war of the ringtones.
“The sculptures there are so lifelike,” Lee was saying, “it was believed at various times that magic was used to make them. That the sculptor had sold his soul and been given a sorcerer’s power to turn real people into stone.”
“The Devil’s work in the cloister of a church? Very nice.” Ned’s father smiled.
“That was the tale, for centuries.” Lee finished his wine. “People have often feared very great art.”
“What about the other two sides?” Steve asked.
“Ordinary work, done later. Pleasant enough.”
The judgment was crisp, dismissive. It made you realize how much of an act the eccentric ancient was. In its own way, Ned thought, it wasn’t so different from Larry Cato pretending to be bored by everything.
“I’ll remember that,” Ned’s father said. “But I’ll need Melanie to tell me which side is east or north.”
Oliver Lee smiled. “A woman is often our guide. Guardian of portals, and all that.” He lit his pipe, taking his time about it, then brushed some ash off one sleeve. “East is to your left, as you go in.”
“You’ll put me out of a job,” Melanie protested. They laughed.
“What else will you do here?” Lee asked.
“That’s all today,” Marriner said. “Two set-ups is as much as we usually manage. We can come back later. What else should we look at?” He pointed. “The theatre here?”
“You might. But the cemetery, surely. Outside the walls. They always buried people outside the city walls, of course. Les Alyscamps was the most famous burial ground in Europe for a very long time. Ruinously pillaged by now, of course. Most of the marbles are gone, but if it is quiet, and it usually is, it is one of the most evocative places I know. Van Gogh painted it. There were Celtic, Roman, medieval . . . wouldn’t even surprise me if there were Greek tombs there.”
“Why Greeks?” Ned asked.
First thing he’d said over lunch. He wasn’t sure why he’d asked.
Oliver Lee smiled at him through pipe smoke. “It was the Greeks who founded Marseille, about 600 B.C. Called it Massilia. They traded with the tribes up this way. The coastline was nearer here back then, it’s changed.”
“Traded? Did they . . . fight?” Ned asked.
“Oh, of course. There was always fighting here. Provence isn’t the lavender-coloured paradise travel agents and romance books make out, you know.”
“I know,” Ned said.
His father glanced at him.
“But they did trade mostly,” Lee said, as the coffee arrived. He fussed with his pipe, put the lighter to it again. “In fact the founding myth of Marseille has the captain of that first Greek expedition being chosen as husband by a chieftain’s daughter, shocking everyone in the tribe.”
“She got to pick?” Melanie asked wryly.
“Celtic women were a bit different, yes. They had goddesses of war, not gods, among other things. But I think it was certainly unexpected when Gyptis chose Protis. If it really happened, of course, if it isn’t just a tale. Can’t imagine the warriors of her tribe could have been pleased. Someone just pops in to the feast and is picked by the princess.”
“Tough life!” Greg said, laughing.
For no reason he could put a finger on, Ned felt a chill, as if he was hearing more than was being said. But he had just about given up trying to have things make sense the past few days.
He was remembering last night’s lonely tower, wolves and a stag-horned man. His bright mood seemed to be gone. How did you send dumb emails to classmates after that kind of encounter? He felt like going off again to be by himself but he had to wait for the others to finish.
Steve said, “When did the Romans get here, then?”
Oliver Lee enjoyed having an audience. “They were asked to come, by those Greeks in Massilia, when the fighting got worse a few hundred years later. Some of the Celtic tribes were trading with them, but others were unhappy about foreigners all along the coast and started raiding. Collecting skulls for doorposts.”
“Skulls,” said Ned, as noncommittally as he could.
“Ah! I knew a boy would like that part,” said Lee, chuckling. “Yes, indeed, they did do that, I’m afraid. Skulls of enemies, skulls of ancestors, a complex religion, really. The Celts put them in shrines, hung them from their doors—a form of worship. They found scads of them at a site not far from here, and at another one, just by where you’re staying in Aix.”
Ned kept his expression neutral. “Entremont?” he asked.
“That’s the one!” Oliver Lee beamed at him.
“I’ve heard about it,” Ned said, as his father raised an eyebrow. “A friend of mine here said it was worth seeing.”
“Well, you can walk around it, the views are pleasant enough, but it’s been picked clean by now. The finds are in the Musée Granet in Aix, but that’s closed up for renovations all year. Everything’s in crates. Actually, there was a bit in the paper a few days back . . . a robbery in the storerooms. Someone nicked a couple of the finds, a skull, a sculpture . . . that sort of thing. Bit of hue and cry, valuable things, you know?”
“We didn’t hear about it,” Ned’s father said.
Ned was controlling his breathing.
“Well, we’re not listening to local news or anything,” Greg pointed out.
“Ah, well, archaeological finds are always looted and pillaged,” Lee said, waving his pipe. “First for gold and gems, then artifacts. Think of the Elgin Marbles in London, stolen from Greece. Wouldn’t surprise me if these things from Aix turned up in New York or Berlin on the black market soon.”
It would surprise me, Ned Marriner thought.
LEE EXCUSED HIMSELF after they paid the bill, to do some banking in town and then make his way home. He kissed Melanie’s hand when they parted. Nobody laughed.
Ned arranged to meet the others at the cloister, then walked across the street to the theatre ruins. They were just reopening after the midday closing.
“Ned?”
He turned.
“Mind company for a bit?” Melanie asked. “They don’t need me for the first half hour, setting up screens and lights.”
It was windier now, she kept a hand on her straw hat.
“How could I refuse youth and beauty?” he said. He’d wanted to be alone, actually, but what was he going to say?
“You be quiet,” she snapped, and punched him on the shoulder. He covered a wince; it was still sore from the day before. “Have you ever heard anything like what he said in your life?”
“Personally? I sure haven’t. Which is a good thing, I guess. I know you get it all the—”
He stopped, because she punched him again. He wasn’t actually in a kidding mood, anyhow. He was thinking about Greeks arriving among the tribes, back when, and objects stolen from a museum in Aix this week.
He was going to have to figure out what to do about that theft. He knew where those artifacts were, after all.
On the other hand, the person who had almost certainly taken them might not appreciate interference. There was even some question as to whether you could call him a “person,” given that he’d had horns growing from his head and then changed into an owl in moonlight. In fact you could go further and say he had made it extremely clear he didn’t want interference in whatever was about to happen.
If the joke in that underground corridor—and that is what both men seemed to consider it—was over now, would it be interfering to report that the objects stolen from the museum could be found under the baptistry in the cathedral? He didn’t know. How could he know? He needed to talk to Kate. Or his aunt.
His aunt, all by herself, was another subject—object, person—that needed thinking about, big time.
The good news for the moment was that Melanie seemed preoccupied too, not in her chatty tour-guide mode, which he’d feared. She sat down on a grassy mound and took out a long green guidebook, but didn’t open it. Nor did she seem unhappy to be left alone when Ned wandered away among the random pillars and what was left of the original theatre, which wasn’t much. This site wasn’t as well preserved as the arena was; grass growing among the ruins, and the quiet, made for a different sense of the past.
He glanced back at Melanie. He wondered if Oliver Lee’s comments had upset her. Maybe she’d felt she was being teased, the only woman among five men—or four men and a kid.
Ned didn’t think Oliver Lee had been teasing. He thought he’d meant the compliments, but these things were still a mystery to him.
So was trying to figure out last night.
AFTER THE WOLVES and the owl had gone away, he and Aunt Kim walked back from the tower to her car. Ned had kept his branch, but nothing troubled them on the path. He heard an owl as they approached the fork in the trail and it made him jump, but his aunt touched his arm.
“Not ours,” she said. “That’s a real one.”
“How do you know?”
“Different sound. I live in the country, remember?”
He looked at her. It was hard to see clearly in the night, but her hair was really pale in the moonlight. He gestured to it.
“My mom colours her hair.”
“I know. I’ve seen lots of pictures. She’s lovely, Ned. She always was.”
“Would it be like yours if she didn’t? Colour it?”
She hesitated. “I doubt that.”
They walked a bit farther. Ned saw the barrier and her car.
Aunt Kim stopped. “I’ll drive you back, but first . . . Ned, listen to me, it would be unfair to you and to your mother for us to meet like this again. I don’t want to put you in a position of having to keep secrets.”
“Um . . . you think I don’t keep secrets from my parents?”
She smiled faintly. “I’d worry if you didn’t, but not this large, dear.”
Ned was silent. He’d been thinking the same thing himself, actually, about everything here. “You going to leave? Go home?”
They were at the barrier. Her car was on the other side, but this seemed a conversation better suited to the night.
“Not immediately,” Aunt Kim said. “I’m going to try to find out more about what’s happening, if I can. For a day or two. Is my phone number on yours now? On callback? If you need me?”
He nodded. “Am I going to need you?”
Her turn to be silent. He had a sense she was dealing with real emotion. He felt it himself: this was his mother’s sister, and he’d never seen her in his life and might never see her again. It seemed they shared something, too. Something complicated and difficult.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “I hope you don’t need me in the way you meant. I’m pretty sure he’ll keep his promise, leave you alone.”
“Pretty sure?”
She looked up at him. “What do you want me to say?”
“Um, ‘absolutely positive’ would do.”
She laughed. “Your parents have done a good job, Ned.”
He felt embarrassed suddenly. “Yeah, well, don’t tell them.”
He saw her smile, but she didn’t reply.
Ned thought of something. “I should have asked before. Do you and Uncle Dave have kids? Have I got cousins in England I don’t know about?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I never could have children.”
Ned looked at her a moment. He might be young, but he knew enough to change the subject. “Ah, you really think my mom would be unhappy if . . . you called her, or wrote?”
Not the best subject change. “She always has been, Ned. It wouldn’t be the first time I tried. Which is why she’d be so angry if she knew I’d called you.”
That made sense. An end run, going around her.
“She’d spit?” he guessed. He was a bit fixated on that image, actually.
“Maybe not,” Aunt Kim said, managing another smile. “Let’s go. You need to be home before your dad gets worried.”
“He’s not the worrying type, except about my mom.”
“I think I know that.”
They walked around the barrier to her car. She started it up, switched on the headlights. He looked at her in the glow of the dashboard panel. She really did look an awful lot like his mother, but her hair, he now saw, wasn’t silver or grey, it was entirely white.
“Do you colour it that way?” he asked.
“It’s been like this since I was very young.”
“Really? Must have been pretty cool, back then.”
“I suppose. Your uncle liked it.”
“I guess he must have.”
She turned the car around and they wound their way along the narrow, twisting road back to the fork where Chemin de l’Olivette branched away. Ned had pointed and she’d stopped.
“I should walk up,” he had said. “They’ll see headlights from the house.”
“I know. Tricky questions. You’ll be fine tonight, but from now on, Nephew—and pay attention—you stay with the others after darkfall. Don’t go wandering. I can’t give you that ‘absolutely positive,’ so don’t do silly things, okay?”
He’d thought of a joke, but didn’t make
it. Not after what had happened.
“I promise. But will you . . . if you figure anything out, will you at least let me know?”
His aunt had smiled at him. “You know I will. I’ll call before I go home, regardless. Keep my number, Ned.”
Ned had cleared his throat. “You know I will,” he said.
He’d leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She brought a hand up and touched his face. Then he got out of the car. He’d stood in the darkness and watched her drive away. Started walking up their road and found himself working hard not to cry.
It had been a hell of a day, really.
He’d heard a grunting sound from the trees off the upward path. That would be the wild boars, sangliers, that came out to feed after sundown. Veraclean had told them about those. They didn’t scare him. Other things might.
No one had asked any questions when he walked into the house. It wasn’t all that late and he was fifteen, after all, not a kid any more.
THERE WASN’T THAT MUCH to see around the theatre of Arles. It was peaceful, though, in the sunlight and shade. You could imagine the past.
Ned wondered if that was the trade-off here in Europe: the major sights were impressive, and overrun with people. The smaller ones you could have to yourself.
He and Melanie were alone here except for three cyclists who had chained their bikes to the railing outside and were huddled over a map on the far side of the three columns left standing.
He walked back to Melanie. She’d put her guidebook down, had her knees up and her arms around them. She looked relaxed, but he wasn’t sure she was.
“Did you match the streak in your hair to your eyes?” he asked, sitting beside her on the grass. He plucked some sprigs and tossed them up to blow away. It was windy now.
She looked at him from behind sunglasses. “Don’t tease me, Ned.”
“I wasn’t. Real question.”
She shook her head. “A dumb one, then. Of course I didn’t. You think I’m too old to just like punk as a look?”
“Way too old,” he said.
“I said don’t tease. I’m twenty-five, for God’s sake.”