Guy Kay - Ysabel

“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.