Her voice sounded different. Sassier, older.
“I’m cool. Just finished a run on this track east of the city. With some army types. Bit weird.”
“I know that track. By the municipal pool? The guys are from the école militaire. Seen them, too. Yummy.”
“What’s with you today?”
“Nothing. I’m in a good mood, that’s all.”
“Yeah, ’cause your evil roommate has pimples.”
“Maybe. And maybe because we’ve got an outing later. If you have nothing more important doing, mec, buy us some cheese and apples and a baguette, we’ll have a late picnic up there.”
“Um, Kate. I’ve been thinking about—”
“Gotta run, babe. Late for class. Ciao!”
She hung up.
Babe, again? Ned felt confused. If they’d gotten to this stage in two coffees, he’d sure missed it. Larry would call him an idiot and tell him to go for it: a girl who seemed to like him, a long way from home and prying eyes . . . vive la France! Wasn’t this the real life he’d just been thinking about? Download songs, email a picture, see how far Kate Wenger would let him go after school?
He shook his head again. Trouble was, he kept picturing a sculpture in a cloister with a rose leaning against it, and an owl rising through the open roof of a tower at night. Maybe you did have to hang on to normal life, but some images could make it hard.
He was sweating, needed a shower. He went back to the intersection, then to the right up the road. He stopped at the bakery and bought a pain au chocolat and ate it as he walked. Better than the power bars, by a lot. He took the wide curve left and then their own path. When he reached the open field again he looked, but the boar hadn’t returned.
Small, handmade signs at branching points along the road pointed towards the different houses on the way up. He saw theirs at the top. Someone—had to be Melanie—had stuck cute little Canadian flags to the small blue markers for Villa Sans Souci.
For the first time, kind of late, Ned thought about what that name meant. No Worries. Yeah, right. And hakuna matata to you, too.
HE WENT BACK OUT later in the afternoon, before the others returned. Left a note on the table telling his dad he was meeting Kate. They had his cell number, anyhow. The wind was still blowing but not as much as in the morning. It was steady and hard, though, unsettling.
Veraclean had said the mistral would always blow for three or six or nine days, but Veracook said that was just an old tale and they’d argued about it, insulting each other. It was kind of funny, actually.
Ned wondered how the shoot at the abbey had gone. If Bernard of Wherever was spinning in his grave yet.
It was a bit of a hike: half an hour to the ring road and then around it north towards Cézanne’s studio. He thought of taking a bus, but he felt hyper and figured the walk would help. He passed the grocery store and the bakery again but he didn’t buy a baguette or the apples and cheese. They were not going up to picnic, there was no point.
He found the studio easily enough. It was signposted on a busy street, not much charm or quiet around it. It would have been a lot different in Cézanne’s day, he figured. This place would probably have been outside Aix, in the countryside.
Leaning against the stone wall in the wind, he watched the traffic whip by and tried to imagine this house overlooking fields, olive trees, maybe a vineyard. He’d seen another sign on the way here: Entremont was along this same road farther north. Kate had said that.
He’d taken a few minutes to google the name. It was pretty much as Oliver Lee had told them. A tough tribe of Celts and Ligurians (whoever they were) called the Salyans had built their stronghold up there. The Romans had taken catapults up in 124 B.C., smashed it to bits, killed bunches of Salyans, took the rest as slaves.
Then they’d built Aquae Sextiae, which became Aixen-Provence, eventually. And now a cluttered cathedral covered their forum. So the Roman city was gone, too, he thought. There were Celtic ruins, Roman ruins, maybe even Greek ones somewhere around. And ruined medieval abbeys like the one his father was photographing today: they were all covered over, or tourist spots, or just old and forgotten. Most people couldn’t care less. Couldn’t even tell the difference between any of them, probably. What’s a thousand years, between friends?
Ned, standing by the roadside, car horns blaring at intervals, mopeds whining past, tried to decide if it should matter, anyhow.
If Coldplay, or Eminem, or the Boston Red Sox, or Guild Wars online were the big things in your life, and you didn’t give a thought to ancient Celts or Bernard the Spinner in his grave, was that so bad? Everyone lived in their own time, didn’t they? Didn’t they have to?
Well, really. If you left out the types like the nameless guy in a grey leather jacket who had apparently made a carving eight hundred years ago and was here now to put a rose beside it.
Did you have to believe him, anyhow?
Yeah, Ned thought glumly: with enough added to the story, you did, even if you preferred not to. Same with what he’d seen with his aunt.
He wondered where Aunt Kim was right now. He thought of phoning her, but that made him think of his mother, and their whole story—a different kind of past—and he left the phone in his pocket. His mom would be calling tonight. He knew one topic he wouldn’t raise with her.
“Yo, miss me lots?”
He turned, in time for Kate, stopping in front of him, to rise up on tiptoe and kiss him on each cheek.
Well, they did do that here in France. But still.
“Ah, hi,” he said, looking at her. “Yo. You’ve, um, got lipstick on.”
“So do you now.” She wiped at his cheeks.
“You didn’t before,” he said.
“Wow. An observant male-type person. Must make an entry in my blog.”
“You have a blog?”
“No.”
He laughed. But he was still unsettled. She looked good. Her hair was brushed out today, not tied back. She wore chunky silver earrings, and—he belatedly realized—she had some kind of perfume on. He decided not to comment on that.
“Montreal men,” he said instead. “We’re the observant ones. Finest kind.”
“So you say. Where’s the food, dude? I asked you . . .”
Ned took a breath.
“I, ah, thought we’d do things a bit differently. I haven’t been in town much. Not at all, really. Thought we’d see this studio since we’re here, then cruise Aix? I’ll get you a caffeine fix, then we can eat Chinese or a pizza or something?”
Kate Wenger stepped back a bit. A car horn honked, not at them.
“Ned, I really wanted to show you this place. It is seriously cool. And it may tie in to the stuff we’ve been finding.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, that’s the thing. You’re right, it may tie in. And tonight’s not a real good night, if it does.”
“Beltaine?” She smiled a little. She had some kind of eye makeup on, too, he realized. “Uh-huh. Montreal men, careful, cautious guys . . . little bit afraid?”
“Kate, there’s a couple things I’ve got to fill you in on. And, yes, maybe I’m being a bit careful. I did tell you what happened by the mountain, remember?”
“Well, obviously if you start getting sick or whatever, we turn back. You think I’m an idiot or something?”
“No, but I think you’re a little overfocused on doing this today.” There. He’d said it.
She crossed her arms, looking up at him. “You really are scared.”
Stung, he said, “Kate, I’m the one who went into that tunnel. I’m not exactly afraid of doing stuff.”
Her expression changed. “I know you aren’t.” She shook her head. “But look, Ned, it’s twenty after five. It only gets dark after eight. It’s a fifteen, twentyminute walk and we’ll go right now, forget the studio. I’d like to show you Entremont, even see if anything feels funny to you or anything? Then we’ll leave. I prefer Chinese to pizza, and I know where to get good hot-and-sour
soup. So, come on?”
She took his hand and tugged.
He found himself falling into step. Her fingers were cool. It took a second or two—he hadn’t done a whole lot of hand-in-hand walking with girls—for them to get their fingers sorted out. He felt briefly as if he had a few too many digits, then they did interlace and it was . . . pretty good, actually.
He seemed to be going north with her, after all. He caught another hint of that perfume. He wondered if they’d be alone at this place.
“As it happens,” she said cheerfully, “I am more woman than you deserve. I still have two apples and half a baguette in my pack.”
“Ew,” Ned said. “For how many days?”
With dignity, she said, “Montreal men may do that sort of thing but New York women don’t. Packed this morning.”
They walked beside the road into the wind. It was rush hour, cars going by, a lot of students getting on and off buses, classes over for the day. Ned saw another sign pointing towards Entremont. Just past it the road became a minor highway as they left the city limits.
“So, what else happened?” Kate asked. “What’d you need to tell me?”
Her fingers were still in his. The guys, were they aware of this, would be saying things about how he had it made, make-out wise, heading off with a chick who had started the hand-holding and had even met him with a tiptoe kiss. He wouldn’t have gotten far pointing out that sometimes even guys greeted each other with kisses on the cheek in France.
There was something about Kate today. Or maybe—new thought—maybe this was what she was usually like and the tour-guide geek stuff had been her manner with a stranger?
He didn’t think so. Ned shrugged, inwardly. Go with it, he told himself. She was right about one thing: Beltaine wouldn’t actually begin until dark, hours away. They’d be back in Aix.
“You aren’t talking to me,” she said.
He sighed. Decided to go halfway, but keep his aunt to himself—too many family things entangled in that. He said, “After you left the café, day before yesterday, the guy from the cloister showed up.”
He felt her react. The thing about holding hands: you could tell right away.
“You saw him outside?”
“No. He’d been in there, two tables over. Behind a newspaper.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said.
Ned, in his current mood, found that funny. “Nah. I’m beginning to think this goes back way before him.”
“Don’t be cute, Ned. What happened? How did you find him?”
The hard part. Explaining this. “He let his . . . screen down, whatever, his guard, when you and I walked out. And the sense of him I had in the cloister when he was on the roof kicked in. I knew he was inside.”
“And you went back?”
“Yeah.”
She walked a few steps in silence. “I didn’t mean it, you know, before . . . when I said you were scared.”
That felt good, but it would be uncool to show it. He said, “Well, I’m obviously not careful. I’m being led into the countryside by some hot New York woman I hardly know.”
“Hot? Ned Marriner! You coming on to me, babe?”
Again! There was no way she’d have said that before. He looked over at her. She was grinning, and then she winked at him.
“Ack!” Ned cried in horror. “No winking! Melanie winks all the time, I can’t stand it.”
“I refuse,” said Kate Wenger, “to let my behaviour be dictated by the habits of someone named Melanie. I will wink if I wish to wink. Deal with it.” She was smiling.
Then she pointed ahead. Ned saw a brown sign with the symbol for a tourist site and “Oppidum d’Entremont” on it. They had arrived.
It was at a branching of highways. A lot of traffic, still. They waited for a break and ran across. No sidewalk here, just grass by the highway. They walked a little farther north.
“Right here. Up the hill,” said Kate. “It’s pretty steep. Can you handle it?”
Ned didn’t actually feel like joking.
They went up a dusty gravel slope. He couldn’t see anything at first, then they were high enough above the highway—they always built high in those days, he knew—and he saw a small parking lot and a metal gate. The gate was open, the lot was empty.
“I’ve never seen anyone here,” Kate said. “I’ve been twice. I don’t even think the guard sticks around, probably just comes to lock up at closing.” Closing, Ned saw on the gate, was at six-thirty. They would be out of here hours before dark.
Kate led him through, still holding hands, along a wide path between olive and almond trees. “That’s what’s left of the outer wall,” she said. She pointed. “This was a city here, not just a fort.”
The wall was on their right, three metres high in places, rough stones still in place. A little ahead of them it had crumbled a lot more; stones lay where they’d fallen or been dislodged. The Romans had brought catapults all the way up here, Ned remembered. It couldn’t have been easy to do that.
It was very quiet now, two thousand years after. He heard birdsong. The wind was still blowing. The light was really clear, what his father had been talking about.
A little self-consciously, he stopped walking, unlaced his fingers from Kate’s, and closed his eyes. Found nothing, though, no sense of any presence, and he didn’t feel queasy or unwell or anything like that.
She was staring at him when he opened his eyes. He shook his head.
“Told you,” Kate said. “It’s an archaeological dig, a tourist site, that’s all.”
“So,” said Ned, “was the cathedral.”
She bit her lip. First time today she’d reminded him of the girl he’d met three days ago. They walked on. There were almond petals scattered on the ground, making it seem like snow had fallen. The gravel path reached the end of the high wall and turned south to an opening and Ned looked through and saw the long, wide, levelled ruins of Entremont.
And though he’d felt nothing and found nothing when he checked within, he still shivered, gazing out over low grey stones in the late-day light. His gran used to say shivering like that meant a ghost was passing. He didn’t say that to Kate.
It was bigger than he’d expected, though he couldn’t say exactly what he had expected. The path they were standing on ran alongside the ruins on their eastern edge. Ahead of them, a long way, Ned saw that the plateau ended in a cliff. To their left, the ground sloped down past trees into a meadow.
On their right and in front was Entremont, what was left of it.
He really didn’t want to stay here. There were a lot of reasons not to stay. But he found himself walking forward with Kate, looking out over the stones. They weren’t holding hands now; her own mood had grown quieter, less feverish.
That was the word, Ned decided. She’d been feverish before.
He stole a sidelong glance at her. She looked pale, like the stones, as if taken aback by what she’d done, where they were. She stopped, so he did.
They were entirely alone here. In the wind, among the ruins.
He looked left. The site ended, not far away, in that short slope down to olive trees and the meadow. Tall grass there, wildflowers. On their other side were the crumbled, excavated ruins. Beside where they’d stopped were low stones, barely knee high. The wall of a house, he realized; there were others like it all around, defining small rectangular spaces.
“This was the lower town,” Kate said softly. There was no need to be quiet, but it felt right. “There’s an olive press over that way, under the tree.” She pointed past the low walls. Her manner was more like what he remembered.
Ned nodded. He walked past her, taking the lead now. They went farther south alongside what remained of those one-room houses. This had been a street once, he realized. It rose a little as they went. He could see, ahead of them, where the upper town began. There was a wider east-west roadway, big blocks of stone beyond it.
Just before they got there, he stepped up on one of the kn
ee-high house walls to look out over the site, and then he stepped down into the space that would have been a home for someone, with a roof and walls, over two thousand years ago. And as he did, as he entered, something happened inside him again.
Ned stood still. The wind was blowing, but they were somewhat guarded from it by the trees to the north and what remained of the settlement wall.
Kate looked at him from the path. “What is it?” she said.
He didn’t answer. This wasn’t like any of the sensations he’d had before.
“Ned, what is it?” he heard Kate Wenger ask again.
He took a breath. “There’s just . . . a lot of power here,” he said.
“What does that mean?” He heard her fear.
“I’d tell you if I knew.”
It was true: he didn’t understand this, only that from these stones a feeling like a heartbeat in rocks was coming into him. No sense of someone actually here, more a—
“It’s waiting,” he said abruptly.
Then, as he looked ahead, towards the higher ruins across the wide east-west street, he added, pointing, “What was that?”
Kate turned to look. She cleared her throat. “That was the guard tower at the upper town entrance. I saw a layout on their website. Beside it is where the religious sanctuary was. Just there. See the bigger stones? That was the tower.”
Ned saw the stones. Thick, grey, heavy. Only the base was left, everything else was down, had been down a long time. But at some point back then, between the part where they were and the section ahead of them, architecture had changed.
You changed, as a people, bit by bit, learned things. Then someone brought war engines to your walls, and it didn’t matter any more what you’d learned.
He went forward to look, almost involuntarily now.
Up on a low wall, back down, up and over another, and then he was on the dusty street that divided the upper and lower parts of Entremont. It ended to the east, he saw, on his left, where the slope ran down to the meadow.
This road was wider than anything behind them or ahead. Main Street, he thought. Just across it lay the base of the guard tower. He looked at the big stones, imagined a tower. Catapults and time, he thought. He still had a pulsing in his mind, as if the stones were trying to vibrate.