Guy Kay - Ysabel

“Not by yourself,” Meghan Marriner repeated, with a firmness that really was kind of impressive. It wasn’t a voice you could argue with; it didn’t actually occur to you to argue.

Ned ended up in the city with his mom and dad.

Dave was driving Kate and Steve to Fort de Buoux, Greg took Aunt Kim to the fountain. The idea, again, was to be in touch by phone, meet up if anyone found anything, or come back here for mid-afternoon to figure a next step if nothing happened.

It could actually have been funny in a different time and space, walking into town between his parents. Ned half felt like asking for an ice cream or a popsicle or a ride on the merry-go-round near the biggest of the fountains.

The cathedral was open but the door out to the cloister was locked. The guide who had the key and ran the half-hourly tours was coming in only after lunch. Ned didn’t even think of having his dad try to pick the lock. Not here. He wondered if his mom knew her husband could do that.

They went through the medieval streets back towards the main drag, the Cours Mirabeau. On the way they passed the café where he’d gone with Kate. He saw the chair he’d used to block the dog attacking him. He didn’t say anything to his parents about that. His father was looking stressed enough.

On the Mirabeau, lined with cafés on one side and banks on the other, shaded by enormous plane trees, he stopped. The feeling was becoming almost familiar.

“She’s been here,” he said.

“How do you know that?” his mother demanded. His logical mother, exasperation in her voice.

“Jeez, Mom, I have no idea. I just do. Same way, sort of, that I knew Cadell was at the tower last night, I guess.”

“Why ‘sort of’?”

She didn’t miss a lot.

Ned fumbled for words, looking at the tourists sitting at small outdoor tables. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. Why not? People dreamed of coming here, didn’t they? Of sitting at a café in the south of France in May.

“It isn’t exactly the same,” he said finally. “I don’t get her as an aura like the other two, or Aunt Kim. Or my own.”

“You can see your aunt, inside?”

He nodded. “If she’s close enough, and isn’t screening herself. Same with them.”

His mother sighed. “And…Ysabel?”

“Different. I just have a feeling she was here, like she was at the cemetery.”

“Why?”

“Jeez, Mom.”

She frowned. “I take it that eloquent phrase means we lack an answer?”

He nodded. “Yeah. We lack an answer.”

“Maybe because of Melanie,” his father said suddenly. “Maybe you’re picking up Melanie, not Ysabel.”

“Ed! You’re as bad as they are.”

His father still looked strained.

“Let’s have lunch,” his mother said, after a moment. Ned saw her looking closely at his dad. “We have to wait, anyhow.”

They picked a café near the end of the street. The inside looked flashy in an old-fashioned way, lots of green and gold, but on a day like this it was way nicer outdoors.

His father bought a newspaper next door. He found a report on the return of the skull and the sculpted bust. No details that seemed to matter. The police hadn’t any idea who had returned them, other than that it had been a man in a black leather jacket, on a motorcycle.

Grey, Ned thought.

“At some point,” his father said, mostly to himself, “I’m going to have to call her family.”

His mother looked at him again. Then she surprised Ned a bit by reaching out and squeezing her husband’s hand.

Aunt Kim called as they were finishing lunch. The Fontaine de Vaucluse was jammed with tourists on a Saturday morning in spring. It was theoretically possible (Ned’s father relayed) that Ysabel might be hiding in a tourist shop among lavender sachets and olive oil samples, but unlikely. Kim and Greg were heading back to the villa.

They phoned Dave. He reported that the three of them were still climbing about and around Fort de Buoux. No one else was there at all, it was windy, and there was a pretty compelling altar right at the top. As advertised. But the “no one else there” included any sign of a red-haired woman Kate was supposed to recognize if she saw her.

They were about to work down the steeper, wilder side of the hill, to see if there were any caves or recesses where she might have ducked out of sight, out of the wind. They’d head back after that.

“Be careful,” Ned’s father said to his brother-in-law. “Watch your knee.” He hung up.

“He can’t go clambering around rocks with that leg,” Meghan said.

Edward Marriner shrugged. “What am I going to do? If he can’t, he can’t.” Worry was written on his face. He looked older. Ned didn’t like seeing him like that. It made Ned feel fragile, somehow.

They went back to the cathedral. Ned walked into the dimness and past the baptistry on their right. He saw the grate covering the floor there. He didn’t stop. Nothing there now, nothing to see. It had been a trick, anyhow. Items borrowed from the museum, now returned.

The cloister door was open. There were three people outside, with a severe-looking guide. She had stopped in front of the squared corner pillar by the far door to the street. She was lecturing, and pointing. The visitors, holding cameras, looked bored.

Ned went left, away from them, towards Ysabel.

He was beset with complicated feelings. Too many associations. It was less than a week since he’d first come here.

The rose was gone. Not a surprise, but for some reason it disturbed him. He wondered who would have taken it. Maybe just the gardener? He wished, suddenly, he’d thought to bring flowers.

His father had a small digital camera and was taking snaps of the cathedral walls and the roof where it came down towards the cloister. A different sort of shot, about lines and light. Ned was glad to see him working. It was hard to see him so distressed, so obviously helpless. It made Ned feel as if he was the one who was supposed to make everyone else feel better.

His mom had gone over to the tourist information on the wall. She’d put her glasses on and was reading. Ned remembered: a diagram showing how the cathedral complex was laid on top of the Roman forum, another one identifying the figures on the columns here. Saint Peter at one corner, a bull, an eagle, David and Goliath. The Queen of Sheba.

He let himself slide slowly down, back against the wall, until he was sitting on the tile flooring in front of her. He looked at the sculpture. So little there, so much implied. A hint, an echo.

He knew what his mother was going to say. What else could she say, reading what was posted on the opposite wall? The Queen of Sheba, it said.

He watched her coming over, putting her reading glasses back in her purse, taking out sunglasses. Her hair was really red in the sunlight, darker when she crossed into shade. She came up and stood beside Ned and looked at the worn, pale sculpture in front of them. She shook her head, and sat neatly down beside him, legs extended, crossed at the ankles. She took off her sunglasses and looked some more.

“She was beautiful,” she murmured.

He swallowed. “Who?”

“Ysabel,” she said.

Ned began to cry.

She looked at him quickly. “Honey, what…?”

“You don’t…you don’t think it’s the Queen of Sheba?”

His mother handed him a Kleenex. “Ned, dear, with Melanie gone, and what I’ve seen in less than a day, I’m not going to doubt you here.”

“Honest?”

She made a face. “Don’t fish, child.”

Ned had to smile, even as he struggled for control. He wiped his eyes. “I…it matters a lot to me that you believe me.”

His mother didn’t smile this time. “Because I didn’t believe your aunt?”