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“I beg your pardon?”
“I am sorry,” he looked half embarrassed, “but it is… you will only have one chance to be seeing this for the first time, and it is better to be surprised. Please.”
I shrugged and stepped up to the door, screwing my eyes tightly shut like a child waiting to receive a present. I heard the creaking of old iron hinges as Christian pushed the great door open, and I caught a gentle breeze upon my upturned face, a breeze that faintly smelled of flowers and warm stone.
“There,” said Christian. “You may look.”
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sp; At first I couldn’t seem to move at all, I could only stand there with my face uplifted to the naked sky and stare and stare until my eyes grew moist. Before me, framed by the open doorway, rose two colossal pillars, smooth and richly white. They seemed to soar toward the heavens, supporting on their curving capitals the arched remains of a ruined wall, capped softly by a golden fringe of grass. Tall iron gates set in between the pillars shielded the inner sanctum, within whose cool and sloping shadows slender columns stretched along a sacred aisle, and the eyes of sculpted saints gazed blindly back at me.
Between the saints and me a garden grew, a wild garden, mindless of man’s will or rules of order. Here and there the sunken forms of graves spoke of the time when this wild place had been a proper church, with nave and transept, altar and aisles. But the graves were empty now, the bodies moved and buried elsewhere. Above where they had lain the roof had long since fallen and been cleared away, and the once-high walls had crumbled to uneven contours, their jagged stones yet softened by a trailing growth of ivy.
“My God,” I whispered.
Christian seemed to understand. “It is most beautiful, this place.”
I scarcely heard him. I finally managed to free my frozen limbs and take a cautious step inside the door.
Here a bay tree arched above a broken baptismal font, and delicate wild flowers quivered at my feet. Everything was green and living, even the soil sprouted moss, and the silent air around me seemed to hum with vital energy.
I nearly didn’t see him, to begin with.
He might have been a statue himself, propped against the sunlit wall. The pale hair, the white shirt, both seemed to blend into the ivory stone behind him, and his outstretched legs were buried in a waving sea of green. Only his eyes, when he opened them, commanded attention. They stared, blinked slowly, tried to focus. And then one hand came up to pull the wired headphones from his ears, and I heard the jarring click of a portable tape player being switched off.
“Good morning, everyone,” Neil Grantham said.
Chapter 15
…silent light
Slept on the painted walls…
The three of us reacted rather differently, although in my own case it wasn’t so much a reaction as a lack of one. I don’t think my expression even changed. Martine, beside me, simply laughed, a short delighted laugh, and said, “Neil, you idiot! How ever did you get in?”
Christian’s response was by far the most dramatic. “You will not move!” he ordered, in a forceful tone that sounded not a bit like him.
Neil, who had been leaning forward as if to rise, sank back against the wall and watched benignly while Christian dropped to his knees in the damp earth and swung the bulging satchel from his shoulder, searching through its contents. I’d never seen an artist in action. It was fascinating to watch him clasp an ink pot to the edge of his sketchbook and boldly dash a straight-nibbed pen across the virgin page.
Fascinating to me, at least. No one else took any notice. Martine Muret had doubtless seen it all before, and Neil was looking, not at Christian, but at me. “You gave me quite a turn just now,” he said, mildly accusing. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t hear us opening the door. That lock goes off like a shotgun.”
“I was listening to my music.” The small movement of his head provoked a stern look of reproach from Christian.
“Neil…”
“Sorry.” Neil’s head stayed very still against the glowing stone, but his eyes swung back to me. “Thierry loaned me this little machine to replace the one I broke yesterday. It’s working rather nicely.”
“At this moment.” Martine came forward, smiling, to stand between the two of us. “And how did you get in?” she asked again. “The door, it is kept always locked.”
“I have my methods.” His dark eyes crinkled at the corners.
Christian sighed. “Martine, please, you block the light. Thank you,” he said shortly, when she’d backed away a step. The pen went scratching across the drawing paper and Christian huddled over it, frowning with the force of his concentration. Neil seemed quite unaffected by all the attention. He didn’t stir against the wall, and when his gaze came back to mine it held a quiet resignation.
“It isn’t me that interests him,” he said. “It’s something that I’m doing, without knowing it. Isn’t that right, Christian?”
The painter looked up, briefly. “You make this good shadow on the column, just there. This shadow I can use.”
