Ysabel

YSABEL

GUY GAVRIEL KAY

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Simon and Schuster UK 2007

Copyright © Guy Gavriel Kay 2007

Guy Gavriel Kay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007342037

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007352241

Version: 2016-10-03

For Linda McKnight and Anthea Morton-Saner

There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling, Whether as learned bard or gifted child; To it all lines or lesser gauds belong That startle with their shining Such common stories as they stray into.

—ROBERT GRAVES

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Part One

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Part Two

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

ALSO BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The woods came to the edge of the property: to the gravel of the drive, the electronic gate, and the green twisted-wire fence that kept out the boars. The dark trees wrapped around one other home hidden along the slope, and then stretched north of the villa, up the steep hill into what could properly be called a forest.

The wild boar—sanglier—foraged all around, especially in winter. Occasionally there might be heard the sound of rifle shots, though hunting was illegal in the oak trees and clearings surrounding such expensive homes. The well-off owners along the Chemin de l’Olivette did what they could to protect the serenity of their days and evenings here in the countryside above the city.

Because of those tall eastern trees, dawn declared itself—at any time of year—with a slow, pale brightening, not the disk of the sun itself above the horizon. If someone were watching from the villa windows or terrace they would see the black cypresses on the lawn slowly shift towards green and take form from the top downwards, emerging from the silhouetted sentinels they were in the night. Sometimes in winter there was mist, and the light would disperse it like a dream.

However it announced itself, the beginning of day in Provence was a gift, celebrated in words and art for two thousand years and more. Somewhere below Lyon and north of Avignon the change was said to begin: a difference in the air above the earth where men and women walked, and looked up.

No other sky was quite what this one was. Any time of year, any season: whether a late autumn’s cold dawn or midday in drowsy summer among the cicadas. Or when the knife of wind—the mistral—ripped down the Rhone valley (the way soldiers had so often come), making each olive or cypress tree, magpie, vineyard, lavender bush, aqueduct in the distance stand against the wind-scoured sky as if it were the first, the perfect, example in the world of what it was.

Aix-en-Provence, the city, lay in a valley bowl west of the villa. No trees in that direction to block the view from this high. The city, more than two thousand years old, founded by Romans conquering here—surveying and mapping, levelling and draining, laying down pipes for thermal springs, and their dead-straight roads—could be seen on spring mornings like this one crisply defined, almost supernaturally clear. Medieval houses and modern ones. A block of new apartment buildings on a northern slope, and—tucked into the old quarter—the bell tower of the cathedral rising.

They would all be going there this morning. A little later than this, but not too much so (two alarm clocks had gone off in the house by now, the one woman was already showering). You didn’t want to linger of a morning, not with what they were here to do.

Photographers knew about this light.

They would try to use it, to draw upon it as someone with a thirst might have drawn from an ancient well—then again at twilight to see how doorways and windows showed and shadowed differently when the light came from the west, or the sky was blood-red with sunset underlighting clouds, another kind of offering.

Gifts of different nuance, morning and evening here (noon was too bright, shadowless, for the camera’s eye). Gifts not always deserved by those dwelling—or arriving—in a too-beautiful part of the world, where so much blood had been shed and so many bodies burned or buried, or left unburied, through violent centuries.

But as to that, in fairness, were there so many places where the inhabitants, through the long millennia, could be said to have been always worthy of the blessings of the day? This serene and savage corner of France was no different from any other on earth—in that regard.

There were differences here, however, most of them long forgotten by the time this morning’s first light showed above the forest and found the flowering Judas trees and anemones—both purple in hue, both with legends telling why.

The tolling of the cathedral bells drifted up the valley. There was no moon yet. It would rise later, through the bright daylight: a waxing moon, one edge of it severed.

Dawn was exquisite, memorable, almost a taste, on the day a tale that had been playing out for longer than any records knew began to arc, like the curve of a hunter’s bow or the arrow’s flight and fall, towards what might be an ending.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

Ned wasn’t impressed. As far as he could tell, in the half-light that fell through the small, high windows, the Saint-Sauveur Cathedral of Aix-en-Provence was a mess: outside, where his father’s team was setting up for a pre-shoot, and inside, where he was entirely alone in the gloom.

He was supposed to feel cool about being by himself in here. Melanie, his father’s tiny assistant, almost ridiculously organized, had handed him a brochure on the cathedral and told him, with one of her winks, to head on in before they started taking the test digitals that would precede the real photographs for the book.

She was being nice to him. She was always nice to him, but it drove Ned a bit crazy that with everything else she had to deal with, Melanie still—obviously—made mental notes to find things for the fifteen-year-old tag-along son to do.

Keep him out of the way, out of trouble. She probably knew already where the music stores and jogging tracks and skateboard parks were in Aix. She’d probably known before they flew overseas, googling them and making notes. She’d probably already bought a deck and gear on Amazon or something, had them waiting at the villa for just the right time to give them to him, when he looked completely bored or whatever. She was perfectly nice, and even cute, but he wished she didn’t treat him as part of her job.

He’d thought about wandering the old town, but he’d taken the booklet from her instead and gone into the cathedral. This was the first working day, first set-up for a shoot, he’d have lots of chances later to explore the city. They were in the south of France for six weeks and his father would be working flat out almost the whole time. Ned figured it was just as easy to stick around the others this morning; he was still feeling a bit disoriented and far from home. Didn’t have to tell anyone that, though.

The mayor’s office, in the city hall up the road, had been predictably excited that they were here. They’d promised Edward Marriner two uninterrupted hours this morning and another two tomorrow, if he needed them, to capture the facade of their cathedral. That meant, of course, that any people wanting to go in and out to pray for their immortal souls (or anyone else’s) were going to have to wait while a famous photographer immortalized the building instead.

As Greg and Steve unloaded the van, there had even been a discussion, initiated by the city official assigned to them, about men going up on ladders to take down a cable that ran diagonally across the street in front of the cathedral to the university building across the way. Ned’s father had decided they could eliminate the wire digitally if they needed to, so the students weren’t going to be deprived of lights in their classrooms after all.

Nice of us, Ned had thought.

Pacing back and forth, his father had started making crisp decisions, the way he always did when finally on location after the long buildup to a project. Ned had seen him like this before.

Barrett Reinhardt—the publisher’s art director for the book—had been here in Provence two months ago, preparing a list of possible photographs, emailing jpegs back to Edward Marriner in Montreal, but Ned’s father always preferred to react to what he saw when he got to a place he was shooting.

He’d pointed out a balcony off the second floor of the university, right above the square, opposite the facade, and decided they’d shoot with the digital camera from the ground, stitching a wide shot on the computer, but he wanted to go up to that balcony and use large-format film from there.

Melanie, following him around with her binder, had scribbled notes in different-coloured inks.

His father would make his photo selection later when he saw what they had, Ned knew. The challenge would probably be getting the tall bell tower on the left and the full width of the building into one shot. Steve had gone with the guy from the mayor’s office into the university to see about access to the balcony.

A crowd had gathered to watch them setting up. Greg, using adequate French and a smile, was making sure the spectators stayed around the edges of the square, out of the shots. A gendarme had come to assist. Ned had watched, sourly. His French was better than the others’, but he hadn’t actually felt like helping. He’d left at that point, and gone inside the cathedral.

He really wasn’t sure why he was in such a bad mood. On the face of it, he ought to have been really cool with this: out of school almost two months early, skipping exams (he did have three essays to write here and deliver in July back home), staying in a villa with a swimming pool while his dad and the others did their work…

Within the dark, high-vaulted cathedral, he abruptly removed his iPod buds and hit the off button. Listening to Houses of the Holy in here wasn’t quite as clever as he’d thought it would be. He’d felt silly and even a little bit nervous alone in a place this shadowy and vast, unable to hear anything around him. He could imagine the headlines: Canadian Student Stabbed by Led Zeppelin-Hating Priest.

The thought amused him, a little. He’d put it in an email to the guys back home later. He sat down on a bench halfway up the central aisle, stretched out his legs, and glanced at Melanie’s booklet. The cover photo was taken from a cloister. An arch in the foreground, a sunlit tree, the bell tower behind against a really blue sky. It was postcard pretty. It probably was on a postcard.

His father would never take a picture like it, not in a million years. Not of this cathedral. Edward Marriner had talked about that yesterday, while they’d watched their first sunset from the terrace.

Ned opened the brochure. There was a map at the front. The light was dim, but his eyesight was good, he could make it out. As best he could tell, from the map key on the facing page, this place had been built in a dozen stages over too many centuries by too many people who didn’t care what had been done before they arrived. A mess.

That was the point, his dad had explained. The facade they were setting up to shoot was hemmed in by Aix’s streets and squares. It was part of them, entangled in the city’s life, not set back to be admired the way cathedrals usually were. The front had three styles and colours of stone that didn’t come close to matching up with one another.

His father had said that was what he liked about it.

Remember why we’re doing this shot, he’d reminded everyone as they’d piled out of the van and started unloading. Perfect cathedral facades like Notre Dame in Paris or Chartres were snapped by every tourist who saw them. This one was different, and a challenge—for one thing, they couldn’t back up too much or they’d crash through a window into a university classroom and ruin a lecture on the eternal greatness of France.

Greg had laughed. Suck, Ned had thought, and reached for his earbuds.

That was when Melanie had fished the brochure from her black shoulder tote. The tote was almost as big as she was. The running joke was that half the missing objects in the world could be found in Melanie’s bag, and she had a good idea where the other half were.

Alone inside, Ned studied the map and looked up. Where he was sitting was called a nave, not an aisle. I knew that, he thought, inwardly imitating Ken Lowery’s exaggerated voice in science class.

As best he could tell, the nave had been finished in 1513 but the part just behind him was four hundred years older, and the altar ahead was “Gothic,” whenever that was. The small chapel behind that had been built around the same time as the nave where he was sitting. If you looked left or right, the dates got even more muddled.

He stood up and walked again. It was a little creepy being alone in here, actually. His footsteps, in Nikes, were soundless. He approached a side door with two heavy old iron locks and a new brass one. A sign said it led out to the cloister and listed the times for tours. The black iron locks did nothing any more, the new one was bolted. Figured. Couldn’t get out. That might have been a cool idea, sit in a cloister and listen to music. He didn’t have any religious music on the iPod, thank God, but U2 would have done.

The cloister, Melanie’s map informed him, was really old, from the 1100s. So was the side aisle where he was standing now. But the chapel up at the end of it was eighteenth century, the newest thing here. You could almost laugh. They could put a Starbucks somewhere in this place and it would fit as much as anything else did. Chapel of Saint-Java.

He walked towards that late chapel by the steps to the altar. Not much to see. Some fat white candles had burned down, none were burning now. People weren’t allowed inside this morning: Edward Marriner was at work out front.

Ned crossed in front of the altar and worked his way back down the other side. This aisle was from 1695, the map told him. He stopped to get his bearings: this would be the north side, the cloister was south, his father was shooting the west facade. For no good reason it made him feel better to work that out.

This was a shorter nave, hit a wall partway down. Ned found himself back in the main section, looking up at a stained-glass window. He found another bench near the last side chapel by the bell tower. Saint-Catherine’s, the brochure advised; it had been the university’s chapel.

Ned imagined students hurrying here to confession five hundred years ago, then back across the road to lectures. What did they wear to school in those days? He popped in his buds again, dialing Pearl Jam on the wheel.

He was in the south of France. Well, forgive him for not doing cartwheels. His father would be shooting like a madman (his own word) from now to the middle of June. The photographs were for a big-deal book next Christmas. Edward Marriner: Images of Provence, accompanying a text by Oliver Lee. Oliver Lee was from London but had lived down here for the last thirty years, writing (Melanie had told him all this) six novels, including some prize-winners. Star English writer, star Canadian photographer, star French scenery. Big-deal book.

Ned’s mother was in the Sudan.

The reports were of serious fighting again, north of Darfur. She was almost certainly there, he thought, leaning back on the bench, closing his eyes, trying to let the music envelop him. Angry music. Grunge.

Pearl Jam finished, Alanis Morissette came up next on his shuffle. The deal was, his mother would phone them here every second evening. That, Ned thought bitterly, was going to for sure keep her safe.

Doctors Without Borders was supposed to be respected and acknowledged everywhere, but they weren’t always, not any more. The world had changed. Places like Iraq had proven that, and the Sudan was real far from being the smartest place on earth to be right now.

He pulled off the buds again. Alanis complained a lot, he decided, for a girl from the Ottawa Valley who absolutely had it made.

“Gregorian chants?” someone asked.

Ned jerked sideways along the bench, turning his head quickly. “What the—”

“Sorry! Did I scare you?”

“Hell, yes!” he snapped. “What do you think?”

He stood up. It was a girl, he saw.

She looked apologetic for a second, then grinned. She clasped her hands in front of her. “What have you to fear in this holy place, my child? What sins lie heavy on your heart?”

“I’ll think of something,” he said.

She laughed.

She looked to be about his own age, dressed in a black T-shirt and blue jeans, Doc Martens, a small green backpack. Tall, thin, freckles, American accent. Light brown hair to her shoulders.

“Murder? T. S. Eliot wrote a play about that,” she said.

Ned made a face. Urk. One of those. “I know, Murder in the Cathedral. We’re supposed to study it next year.”

She grinned again. “I’m geeky that way. What can I say? Isn’t this place amazing?”

“You think? I think it’s a mess.”

“But that’s what’s cool! Walk twenty steps and you go five hundred years. Have you seen the baptistry? This place drips with history.”

Ned held out an open palm and looked up, as if to check for dripping water. “You are a geek, aren’t you?”

“Can’t tease if I admitted it. Cheap shot.”

She was kind of pretty, in a skinny-dancer way.

Ned shrugged. “What’s the baptistry?”

“The round part, by the front doors.”

“Wait a sec.” Something occurred to him. “How’d you get in? The place is closed for two hours.”

“I saw. Someone’s taking photos outside. Probably a brochure.”

“No.” He hesitated. “That’s my dad. For a book.”

“Really? Who is he?”

“You wouldn’t know. Edward Marriner.”

Her jaw actually dropped. Ned felt the familiar mix of pleasure and embarrassment. “You messing with me?” she gasped. “Mountains and Gods? I know that book. We own that book!”

“Well, cool. What will it get me?”

She gave him a suddenly shy look. Ned wasn’t sure why he’d spoken that way. It wasn’t really him. Ken and Barry talked that way to girls, but he didn’t, usually. He cleared his throat.

“Get you a lecture on the baptistry,” she said. “If you can stand it. I’m Kate. Not Katie, not Kathy.”

He nodded his head. “Ned. Not Seymour, not Abdul.”

She hesitated, then laughed again. “All right, fine, I deserved that. But I hate nicknames.”

“Kate is a nickname.”

“Yeah, but I picked it. Makes a difference.”

“I guess. You never answered…how’d you get in?”

“Side door.” She gestured across the way. “No one’s watching the square on that side. Through the cloister. Seen that yet?”

Ned blinked. But he couldn’t say, after, that any premonition had come to him. He was just confused, that’s all.

“The door to the cloister is locked. I was there fifteen minutes ago.”

“Nope. Open. The far one out to the street and the one leading in here. I just came through them. Come look. The cloister is really pretty.”

It began then, because they didn’t get to the cloister. Not yet.

Going across, they heard a sound: metal on metal. A banging, a harsh scrape, another bang.

“What the hell?” Ned murmured, stopping where he was. He wasn’t sure why, but he kept his voice down.

Kate did the same. “That’s the baptistry,” she whispered. “Over there.” She pointed. “Probably one of the priests, maybe a caretaker.”

Another scraping sound.

Ned Marriner said, “I don’t think so.”

It would have been, in every possible way, wiser to ignore that noise, to go see the pretty cloister, walk out that way afterwards, into the morning streets of Aix. Get a croissant and a Coke somewhere with this girl named Kate.

His mother, however, was in the Sudan, having flown far away from them, again, to the heart of an insanely dangerous place. Ned came from courage—and from something else, though he didn’t know that part yet.

He walked quietly towards the baptistry and peered down the three steps leading into that round, pale space. He’d gone right past it when he came in, he realized. He saw eight tall pillars, making a smaller circle inside it, with a dome high above, letting in more light than anywhere else.

“It’s the oldest thing here,” whispered the girl beside him. “By a lot, like 500 a.d.”

He was about to ask her how she knew so many idiotic facts when he saw that a grate had been lifted from over a hole in the stone floor.

Then he saw the head and shoulders of a man appear from whatever opening that grate had covered. And Ned realized that this wasn’t, that this couldn’t be, a priest or a caretaker or anyone who belonged in here.

The man had his back to them. Ned lifted a hand, wordlessly, and pointed. Kate let out a gasp. The man in the pit didn’t move, and then he did.