Eric Lustbader - The Testament

Settling herself, Jenny felt small sticking pains as if beetles roamed over her body, biting her with their pincers. She made incoherent sounds deep in her throat, as people often will when their dreams get the better of them.

After an indeterminate time, she opened her eyes to see Bravo standing over her. The water sounded like a cataract, burbling and rushing as if anxious to get from one place to the next. She had the strange impression that the tide had risen high enough to seep through the foundation, swirling upward to wash into the room and now lapping at her thighs. Her fingers worked the bedspread, searching for evidence that she had floated free of terra firma.

Without a word, Bravo scooped her off the bed and carried her into the bathroom. Once inside, he did not stop but stepped over the lip of the tub. Steam was rising, and it was wonderfully warm. He laid her in the water and, taking up the handheld faucet, ran the hot water over her. Then he began to untangle her clothes. At first, she felt as if the beetles had returned, and she resumed her sounds of distress, but when she was more herself, she understood that her own blood, drying, had made her clothes stick to her and it was this that caused the pain when she'd moved in bed.

Slowly, layer by layer, he unpeeled her. Her blood was dissolving, and it was not an unpleasant sensation. She thought of an orange, whose bitter rind must be stripped away to reveal the sweet fruit beneath. She gazed up into Bravo's face and saw herself reflected in his eyes. She was half naked, and somehow she was neither angry nor embarrassed.

On the other hand, she felt compelled to say, "Why are you doing this?"

As his hands continued with their work, he looked at her for what seemed a long time. "Because," he said at last, "I almost lost you." His fingers, nearly finished, stroked her bare flesh. "Because you mean something to me."

"What?" The hot water cascaded over her, over both of them as he knelt facing her. "What do I mean to you?"

She saw what he wanted to say in his eyes, felt it in the way he cradled her, in the heat rising between them. Her arms came around him and because she couldn't help herself she pulled him toward her. She felt him against her and she was lifted up, not only her body but her spirit. She recalled what Camille said about the healing power of Mont St. Michel.

She felt the steady, strong beating of his heart. A wildness had taken hold of her that was strangely familiar, the deep, soul-shattering yearning that had gripped her before her mother had sent her away to school.

The floodgates, so long held in check, opened. Her head moved forward, her lips opened, and she surrendered herself to everything she wanted, everything that was coming.

When they emerged from the bath, the fog had lifted entirely. It was that time of day, beautiful, mysterious, when the sky is infinite and full of light from an unseen source, when far below, the darkness of evening has already begun to gather, spreading its midnight-blue shadows across roads and cobbles, low walls and foundations, weighing them down, fastening them to the black earth.

They sat side by side, gazing out the window at the Marvel with its two-level walled village curled like the defeated dragon around its feet. The enormous monastery, which was constructed entirely of granite, had foundations that were laid 160 feet above sea level.

"As you probably know, the abbey is Benedictine," Bravo said, "but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was fortified in the manner of a military installation. In fact, Mont St. Michel's position in the channel made it an important outpost when France went to war with England. Immediately, it became both strategic and impregnable. Its defenses have never been breached."

On the wall just above the window were sculpted a cockleshell, a horn and a staff.

Jenny ran her fingertips over the bas-relief. "Do these symbols have a meaning?"

"They're the insignia of Mont St. Michel," Bravo said, "known to every pilgrim who made his way to the islet from the thirteenth century on. This was before the causeway was built, you understand, when the high tide completely cut off the islet from the mainland. Many people drowned in the uncertain tides. It's difficult to know which was more treacherous, the tides or the sea floor. The staff was used to probe for quicksand on the journey out to the abbey, the horn would be used to sound the alarm if the pilgrim was lost in lowering fog or rising water, and the cockleshell was stuck in the pilgrim's hat when he left Mont St. Michel, a symbol that proclaimed his safe and successful journey."

"I wish I had a cockleshell." Jenny put her head back against the sofa.

"Do you want to sleep?" Bravo asked her.

"No," she said, a small smile on her lips. "I'm hungry."

"What should I bring you?"

But her eyes were already closed. In a very short while her breathing became even, and Bravo, rising, brought the blanket over, covering her from feet to neck.

St. Malo occupied the westernmost part of a small cape that jutted out into the English Channel. The cape was more or less in the shape of a dog's head, St. Malo being the muzzle. They arrived just after 12:30 in the afternoon. The inner core of the city was ancient and beautiful, fortified by a thick stone wall. Around this had been thrown up concentric circles of twentieth-century housing, cheap and ugly, where many of the residents lived and worked. The tour buses, however, drew up in the vast cobbled car park outside the gates to the Old City, where they disgorged their contents of excited, video camera-toting tourists, wanting to tape the highlights, eat crepes and continue to the next stop on their whirlwind tour. There were Germans and Swiss and Austrians, Spaniards, Italians, Britons and, of course, Japanese. As hostile as warring parties, they clannishly' formed into tight knots as if afraid to come into contact with each other. They moved in swarms, under military banners resentfully brandished by their guides.

Camille pulled up adjacent to several of the buses. She looked at Bravo sternly and said, "Are you certain this is what you want to do?"

He nodded. "Absolutely."

"Bon."

"You'll do as I asked and return to Paris," Bravo said a little anxiously.

"I told you at breakfast I would." She kissed Bravo and Jenny both on either cheek and advised them to enter the city amid the forming crush of tour groups.

This they did. As they passed through the ancient gates to the Old City, Bravo glanced over his shoulder, but the Citroe"n was nowhere to be seen.

Amid all the video equipment and digital cameras, the GPS Bravo had taken from Kavanaugh's car was inconspicuous. He punched in the coordinates his father had provided.

They stayed within the knot of the tour group for five or six minutes, but when it began to move out to its first destination, he went to their left. "This way," he said, heading through the narrow shop-lined streets. He led them through the maze of the Old City, heading generally northwest toward the seawall.

St. Malo, more or less midway along the Cote d'Emeraude, the Emerald Coast, was built on the rocky and often wild coast of Brittany, France's north shore. In the old days, it had harbored both merchant sailors and marauding corsairs. At that time, many of the European countries were at war, and the high seas was open territory. The kings of France, Spain, Holland and England did what they could to encourage private owners to arm their ships to attack enemy vessels. The French privateers were known as corsairs after the king's permit, a lettre de course, a formal authorization to carry out their business under strict regulations. Their booty was divided into equal shares split between the king, the ship owner and the crew.