Ysabel (15 page)

Ned had left them to their work.

He’d gone inside the arena and wandered among the seats, looking out over the bright sand below. They used this place for bullfights these days. Everything changed, nothing changed: huge crowds of people coming here to watch a battle.

In the Middle Ages, the guidebook said, there had been a kind of ghetto inside these curved walls, shabby,
falling-down hovels within a structure that had celebrated the power of Rome. If you liked irony, this was for you, Ned thought. Larry would
definitely
have liked it.

He looked at an artist’s sketch of that medieval slum in the book Melanie had given him. He wondered what that would have been like: to live in a world sunken so low, struggling just to stay alive, with the towering evidence of glory all around you, looming above your collapsing little walls and muddy alleys.

You sure wouldn’t have a feeling that the world was progressing or getting better over the years, he decided. The book reported that one time, during a plague outbreak in here, the authorities of Arles had surrounded the arena and had killed anyone trying to get out of the slum.

The world might be a
little
better than that today, Ned thought. Parts of it, anyhow.

Making his way along the seats, he circled all the way around to the chute where they released the bulls. He was able to get down from there, jumping a barrier onto the sands.

There were people inside the arena—including a big Japanese tour group—but no one seemed inclined to tell him to leave. He saw people taking his picture. He actually thought about that sometimes: how we end up as background faces in some stranger’s photo album or slide show.

Had he been a little younger he might have pretended to be a gladiator or a bullfighter, but not at fifteen with people watching him. He just walked
around and enjoyed the sunshine and the size of the place. The Romans were engineers and builders, his father had said on the drive here: roads, temples, aqueducts, arenas. Whatever else you thought about them, you had to give them that.

Ned wondered if Kate Wenger had been here, had seen this place. He thought of calling her, then remembered it was a school day. Besides which, it was too soon, majorly uncool, for that kind of call.

Thinking of her sitting in some classroom made him grin, though. He’d have been in school himself back home at this hour. Without wanting to actually give his father the satisfaction of knowing it, Ned had to admit this was way better.

He took out his own Canon and snapped a couple of pictures. He’d email jpegs to Larry and Vic and ask how biology class had been today and how much homework they had. Maybe he’d get Steve to take a picture of him in the pool at the villa to send. They didn’t need to know it was freezing cold in there. With his friends, you had to grab the moments when you had the upper hand.

Ned considered that for a moment. Grabbing moments with the upper hand: Mr. Drucker would have labelled that a mixed metaphor and probably marked him down for it. Ned smiled to himself. Mr. Drucker was on the other side of the ocean.

They had lunch at a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the Roman theatre ruins, near the edge of the city centre. Oliver Lee, the writer for the book, joined them there. He lived in the countryside to the north.

Lee was in his sixties, tall, rumpled, and stooped, with pale, pouchy eyes, reading glasses on a chain about his neck, and long, not very disciplined silver hair that scattered in various directions and gave him a startled look. Every so often he’d run a hand through it, to mostly negative effect. He wore a jacket and a diagonally striped tie and smoked a pipe. There were ashes on his tie and jacket. It was almost as if he’d been
cast
as a British author.

He was funny, though, a good storyteller. It seemed like he knew a lot about wine and Provençal food. He also knew the chef, who came hurrying out to greet him with enthusiastic kisses on both cheeks. Lee’s French accent and grammar weren’t good—surprisingly, after thirty years here. He put almost every verb in the present tense. He was rueful about that. Called it Frenglish.

“Stubborn Brits, my generation,” he said. “Still regretting we lost Calais back to the French five hundred years ago, too superior to take the time to learn any language properly. Point of honour, almost, to be ungrammatical.”

“Why move down here, then?” Edward Marriner asked.

He was in a good mood again. The morning had gone well, obviously. He had switched to water after one glass of wine, startling the Englishman, but there was a working afternoon ahead for him.

Oliver Lee gestured towards the gleaming marble of the Roman theatre across the way, pine trees scattered
among stones and dark green grass. “Sun and wine, ruins and olive trees. The ancient, all-knowing sea an hour away. And truffles! Have you
tasted
the truffles here?”

Ned’s father shook his head, laughing.

Lee drained half of his third glass of wine and smiled affably, fiddling with his pipe. “Mostly it was the sun, mind you. Ever lived through a winter in Oxfordshire?”

“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?