Ysabel. Guy Gavriel Kay

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СКАЧАТЬ a bad movie.”

      “Maybe. But come on.”

      “This where the creepy music starts?”

      “Come on, Kate.”

      He got up and she followed. She could have left by herself, he thought later, sitting on the terrace of the villa that evening. They didn’t know each other at all that first morning. She could have gone out the way she’d come in, saying goodbye, or not, as she pleased.

      They walked together down the three steps into the baptistry and stood above the grate, beside that inner ring of pillars. The light was beautiful after the dimness of the cathedral, streaming down through windows in the dome above the shallow well in the centre.

      Ned knelt and peered through the bars of the grate. If it was supposed to be a viewing point, it wasn’t much of one. It was too dark down there to see where the sunken space might go.

      “Here’s the bit about the tomb,” Kate said. She was at the west wall, in front of some tourist information, a typed, laminated sheet, framed in wood. Ned walked over. Basically, it was just another map-key to this part of the interior. Kate pointed at a letter on the map, and then the text keyed to it. As she’d said, it seemed someone was buried there, “a citizen of Aix,” in the sixth century.

      “And look at this,” she said.

      She was pointing to an alcove on their left. Ned saw a really old wall painting of a bull or a cow and below it an almost obliterated mosaic fragment. He could make out a small bird, part of some much larger work. The rest of it was worn away.

      “These are even older,” Kate said.

      “What was this place, before? Where we are?”

      “The forum was here. Centre of town. The Roman city was founded about a hundred and something years b.c. by a guy named Sextius when the Romans first started to take over Provence from the Celts. He named it after himself, Aquae Sextiae. Aquae, because of the waters. There were hot springs until recently. That’s why there are so many fountains. Have you seen them?”

      “We just got here. The cathedral was built on top of the forum?”

      “Uh-huh. There’s a sketch of it on the wall. Where your dad is now was like the major intersection of the Roman town. That’s why…that’s why I still don’t understand someone being buried here, back then.”

      “Well, it was hundreds of years after, wasn’t it? It says sixth century.”

      She looked dubious. “It was still taboo, I’m almost sure.”

      “Google it later, or I will.”

      “Boy detective?” Kate sounded as if she was trying to tease but didn’t actually feel like it. Ned could relate.

      He shook his head again. He still wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, or why. He looked at that faded bull on the wall. It sure didn’t look like any church art he knew. This place was really old. He shivered. And perhaps because of that, because he felt scared, he walked quickly back, knelt again by the grate, put both hands on it, and pulled.

      It was heavier than he’d expected. He managed to shift it a bit, making the scraping sound they’d heard before. The man had broken some clasp or catch, Ned saw. He just had to lift and slide, but…

      “Help me, this sucker’s heavy!”

      “Are you insane?”

      “No…but my fingers’ll be crushed if you don’t…”

      She moved, to the part he’d levered up and, on her knees beside him, helped slide it over. There was an opening now, large enough for a small man, or a teenaged boy, to get through.

      “You are not going down there,” Kate said. “I am not staying to watch—”

      “I bequeath you my iPod,” Ned replied, handing it to her. And then, before he had time to think about it and get really frightened, he put his feet over the edge of the pit, turned so he was facing the side, and lowered himself. Just as he did he started thinking about snakes or scorpions or rats skittering through the dark, ancient space below. Insane wasn’t a bad word to use, he decided.

      His feet touched bottom and he let go. He looked down, couldn’t even see his running shoes.

      “You wouldn’t by any chance have—”

      “Take this,” said the girl named Kate, in the same moment. She handed him a small red metal flashlight. “I keep one in my pack. For walks at night.”

      “Efficient of you. Remind me,” Ned said, “to introduce you to someone named Melanie.” He turned on the beam.

      “You going to bother telling me why you are doing this?” she asked, from above.

      “Would if I knew,” he said, truthfully.

      He shone the beam along the dark grey stones beside and below him. He knelt. The slabs were damp, cold, really big, like for a road—which is what she’d said they’d been.

      On his right the foundation wall was close, below the grate. Straight ahead the flashlight lit the short distance to the sunken well, which was dry now, of course. He saw worn steps. The beam picked out a rusted pipe sticking out, attached to nothing. There were spiderwebs entangling it.

      No snakes, no rats. Yet.

      To his left the space opened into a corridor.

      He’d been expecting that, actually. That was the way back towards the main part of the cathedral, where the placard on the wall had said a tomb would be. Ned took a deep breath.

      “Remember,” he said, “the iPod’s yours. Don’t delete the Led Zep, or Coldplay.”

      He bent low, because he had to. He didn’t get very far, maybe twenty steps. It didn’t go farther. It just hit another wall. He’d be right under the first nave here, he thought. The roof was really low.

      His flashlight beam played along the rough, damp surface in front of him. It was sealed, closed off. Nothing that even vaguely resembled a tomb. It looked like there were just the two corridors: from the grate to the well, and this one.

      “Where are you?” Kate called.

      “I’m okay. It’s closed up. There’s nothing here. Like he said. Maybe this whole opening was just for getting down to fix the pipes. Plumbing. Bet there are other pipes, and more grates around the other side of the well.”

      “I’ll go look,” she called. “Does this mean I don’t get the iPod?”

      Ned laughed, startling himself as the sound echoed.

      And it was then, as he turned to go back, that the bright, narrow beam of Kate’s flashlight, playing along the corridor, illuminated a recessed space, a niche cut in the stone wall, and Ned saw what was resting in it.

       CHAPTER СКАЧАТЬ