CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
… lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,
‘What, no lectures?’ Harry asked me, as we paused before the altar. Christian swung the iron gate shut and the sound disturbed my thoughts. I turned unfocused eyes towards my cousin.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘About how I shouldn’t steal things from historic sites,’ he clarified. ‘You’re rather puritan about the subject, as I recall. You read me the Riot Act that day I nicked a pebble from Tintagel.’
‘That wasn’t a pebble, it was a building stone, and if everybody did that there wouldn’t be a castle left to …’ I saw his smile forming and broke off with a heavy sigh. ‘Anyhow, I suppose I can’t talk, can I? I stole a coin from an offering plate, for heaven’s sake.’
‘You brought it back.’
‘And you said yourself you’re going to give the letters to the University of Paris.’
‘Right. Just as soon as I have a chance to look at them.’
My gaze narrowed. ‘Harry …’
‘Well, have a heart! You can’t expect me to just turn the damn things over without looking at them first. Christ, I’m not a saint, you know.’ His eyes flicked sideways to where Radegonde’s calm statue stood behind the altar, as if he half expected to be flattened by a lightning bolt. ‘Besides,’ he went on, in a lower voice, ‘since no one else even knows that the letters exist, it stands to reason that no one will miss them for a few days, will they?’
‘A few days?’
‘Well, a month maybe.’
‘And then you’ll send them on to Paris?’
‘On my honour.’ He swore the oath with hand upraised.
Past redemption, I thought – that’s what Harry was. On his honour indeed. I smiled and looked away, out past the iron grille to where the gentle fingers of the breaking dawn touched softly on the bay tree standing sentinel beside the chapelle’s door.
‘Cold?’ Harry asked me.
‘No.’
‘Then why the shiver?’ And then he followed the direction of my gaze, and said quite simply: ‘Ah.’
I turned around. ‘What do you mean, “Ah”?’
‘Just “Ah”.’
He saw things rather more clearly than I liked, I thought. More clearly, sometimes, than I myself could see. I felt the colour stain my cheeks and turned my head away again, looking back towards the bay tree and the man who sat beneath it.
He was sitting comfortably stretched out against the outer wall, one leg drawn up on which to rest his injured hand. The hand hung stiffly, as though it hurt him, and I remembered Harry telling me how Neil had climbed the château walls to get inside. Actually climbed the walls. They must have been a good twenty feet high, even at their lowest point around the gates. Less than that on the inside, naturally, where the ground level was higher, but even so. He simply hadn’t wanted to wait, so Harry said, for the main gates to be unlocked. It must have been a different Neil Grantham, I decided, who’d shown such a lack of patience.
It could not have been this quiet man, lost in a serenity so deep he scarcely seemed to breathe, with the faint light trickling through the bay leaves turning his hair a pale and softly radiant gold. He might have been Christ contemplating the sunrise over Gethsemene. All else was darkness compared to him, and though he neither moved nor spoke his very stillness drew the eye more effectively than motion – drew it and held it until I felt myself being pulled into the glowing centre of its reverent, breathless peace.
Harry watched me, eyebrows raised. ‘I like him, if it matters.’
I faced him with a flat expression. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Right.’ My cousin turned to Christian, with a smile. ‘Sorry to have kept you from your bed, but I really am grateful for this. And for these.’ He patted the lumpy parcel wrapped with care inside his jacket.
Christian shrugged. ‘It is no trouble. And now,’ he announced, brushing his forehead with one hand, ‘I will make for everyone some coffee, yes? So much excitement in one night, it makes the head ache.’
‘Coffee,’ Neil agreed, ‘sounds wonderful.’ He rolled his head against the stone wall to smile at us, and moved to stand up, wincing a little. ‘It isn’t so much the excitement,’ he explained, ‘as the drink. Bloody Calvados. I feel like there’s a herd of horses dancing on my skull.’
My cousin laughed. ‘That’s age for you. You ready, Em?’
No, I thought, I wasn’t ready. That was the whole problem, wasn’t it? I trailed along the cliff path after them, too busy with my own confusing thoughts to join the conversation. I had some vague memory of passing by the house where Harry had kept hidden, and of brushing through the fragrant clutch of pine, and then of starting our descent into the town, but I was still surprised to find myself upon the pavement outside Christian’s house, with all the houses round still shuttered tight against the pale and spreading light of day.
I looked at Harry, and at Neil, and suddenly I felt a little stifled. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘I don’t feel much like coffee. I’d rather get some sleep.’
Harry’s eyes were gently sceptical. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘Yes. I think I’ll just go back to the hotel.’
Neil smiled at me, faintly, seeing too much, as he always did. I tried my best to make a graceful exit, but in truth it took all my effort not to break into a run as I wound my way through the narrow sleeping streets. Each window seemed to stare at me, accusing me of cowardice, and even when I reached the fountain square the elegantly entwined Graces looked less than approving. I wrapped my arms around myself defensively, moving across to stand at the fountain’s edge.