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“Then the facts, Mrs. Clive. Who is such an enemy that they would go to these lengths merely to settle a score?” He could not help thinking of McNab as he spoke. How far would McNab go to destroy Monk? As far as betraying a customs operation, and creating a situation where it was likely Monk or his man, or both, would be killed? That was what he believed.
The difference was that Aaron Clive would have his full memory, and he would know not only the enemy, but his reasons.
“Mrs. Clive?” he prompted.
She nodded, as if accepting some inevitable challenge long expected.
“I married Aaron nearly twenty years ago, in San Francisco.” She spoke very quietly, as though there were someone else just beyond the door who must not hear her. “Before that I was married to Piers Astley. He was…” She took a deep breath. She could not hide that this was going to be deeply painful to her, and in her imagination she could feel it already. She began again. “He was brave as well, but quieter than Aaron, less…dashing.” There was apology in her voice. “He was someone men were loyal to, because he was loyal to them. His word was unbreakable, but you knew that only after some time, after testing.” She gritted her teeth, struggling to keep what composure she had.
Monk waited. He wished he could comfort her, but there was nothing he could do. To speak, still more to touch her, would be intrusive beyond excuse.
Hester brought in tea for them both and left it with no more than a smile, merely nodding to Miriam as she murmured her thanks.
Monk waited again.
“There were darker sides to him,” Miriam said at last, as if she had made a difficult decision, an irreversible one. “Things I did not know until long after we were married. I believe the Greeks had a word for it. Hubris. It is a kind of arrogance, a sense that you are entitled to the best you can take for yourself.” Now that she had broken the surface of resistance she spoke freely, without having to search for the words. She was drawing on elements she was long familiar with and her words came quickly. Still she did not look at Monk but into something beyond him, in the past.
“He could be charming, very funny at times. I remember laughing so easily, till I had tears on my face. He loved life, adventure, the beauty of the world. All of it, to be relished almost as a duty. He stared up at the great redwood trees and adored them. They were centuries old, you know? Giants with their heads among the stars, he used to say.” Her voice was thick with emotion, on the edge of tears.
“Yes,” he agreed. He did know that. “They make us seem like tiny earthbound creatures.”
“He revered them,” she said. “Oddly enough, I’m not sure he ever revered any people. He was a truly good man…generous of soul, sweet of nature, like the wind off the sea.” She gave a little shiver, and blinked away tears. “But that was a long time ago. It took me until very recently to acknowledge that the dark side of…my husband…was real. I won’t speak of it. I am ashamed, and I have no wish or need to tell you the details…the realities. It is enough for you to know that he got into a very serious fight over a gold claim and I was told that he was dead….”
Now he could see the total grief in her face, just for an instant. It was devastating, and so complete that he was afraid for her. Then she mastered it, and assumed an air of calm.
“My dream of what could have been, what at last I believed, was also dead. It was Aaron who came to my assistance in those dark days, and protected me from those who wished me ill. After my first husband was officially declared deceased, and a decent time had passed by, Aaron asked me to marry him, and I accepted.”
Monk was waiting for her to get to the point, and he did not want to assume anything yet. What she had said was far from clear.
“Go on,” he invited her.
She looked as if her last hope of rescue had vanished. This time she lowered her eyes. Clearly she could not bear to look at him while she said it. “I never saw Piers Astley’s body,” she whispered. “If he is alive, his enmity of Aaron would be awful. He was not a man who forgave.”
Now he understood both her grief and her fear, perhaps even a sense of guilt, as if her beauty were her own fault.
“You think he would look for vengeance against your present husband?” he concluded. “How is he at fault? As far as he was concerned, and everyone else, you were a widow. Why should you not marry again?”
“Some people are very possessive, Commander Monk. Piers would consider that I belonged to him, all my life, whether he were dead or not.”
“Are you afraid for yourself?” he asked. Without thinking, he moved a step closer to her.
Suddenly she seemed exhausted. She answered as if it hardly mattered to her. “Not at all. What use am I to him if I am damaged? You do not spoil your own property, Mr. Monk. If someone steals it from you, you steal it back. Perhaps you have to destroy the thief to do so, but not intentionally. Maybe you do it simply to demonstrate to others that you punish those who trespass in such a way. Then you can be sure
it won’t happen again.”
Monk poured the tea and gave her the first cup. She accepted it and seemed grateful, sipping it straightaway, but still she did not sit down. He took the other cup himself.
“Describe Piers Astley for me, Mrs. Clive. You said he was handsome, in a quiet way, but you did not say if he is fair or dark, or anything of his voice or mannerisms, his way of moving, speaking, things that might not have changed over twenty years. And if he is responsible for these crimes and plans more, something of his mind, his way of thinking.” She stared at him, considering. “Has he any deep loves, or fears?” he went on. “If I am to find him, I need to know all I can, especially of the things that don’t change. One can lose hair, or grow a beard. Gain a limp, acquire a new habit. But a love of nature, perhaps of dogs, a taste for chocolate, a fit of sneezing when near a cat, a phobia about spiders—those stay the same.”
“I see.” She was clearly weighing what he had said and searching her mind for answers.
He waited, not wanting to hurry her, and with some sense of guilt he saw her eyes fill with tears. She did not seem to be aware of them herself, as if they came from some well within her. Guilt disturbed him for wakening a grief so profound, but if this Piers Astley who had hurt her so much was now planning to destroy her present happiness by robbing Aaron Clive, or otherwise ruining him, Monk had to know everything about him that he could.
“He was English,” she said at last. “Don’t look for an American. He never lost his accent. He came from a good family, though not aristocratic. They lived in the country, in the north, near the Great Dales; he loved the big, sweeping open lands where the hills seem to touch the sky. You can walk for miles and never see a soul. And of course the city of York, close by, was completely different, teeming with people, narrow, winding streets, and the old walls are still standing. Did you know that York was a city under the Romans, called Eboracum, and is still the sacred place in England for the Church?”
“If he is alive, do you think he will have gone back there?” Monk asked, hearing the remembered tenderness in her voice.
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “He might be afraid someone would recognize him. At the time of his supposed death there was much in his face that had not changed since youth. His cheekbones, his mouth, the way his hair grew. Most of all his voice.”
