“You want me to take responsibility for telling you whether two millennia of history is a lie?” Hessler asked him.
“I do.”
“I have lived long enough not to be lured into replying to such questions.”
As Serrin and Kristen strode hand in hand back down the path, Serrin’s mind was far away in Scotland, down along the rugged coast under the gray skies, the cool of even a summer day, of the quietude and solitariness of the land. He needed time to think.
“Do you want to go?” Kristen asked.
“Michael’s going to be there, I’m sure of it. He mentioned a few other names to me. There will be some remarkable minds there if he manages to persuade only half of them to come.”
He was obviously still wrestling with it, but she pressed him.
“Tell me. Do you really want to go?”
“Half of me does, but the other half is very unsure,” he confessed. “There’s also the matter of what you think. Damn it, I’m so happy just to be at home with you. Walking along those stony beaches, wrapped up against the weather. I’ve gotten used to the place. It suits a part of me so well. But maybe you’d like a place in the sun again. Tell the truth, Kristen.”
“I think,” she said playfully as he opened the passenger car of the door for her, “that anyone who calls the Black Madonna his passion is all right by me. Even if he’s crazy. Maybe especially if he’s crazy.”
It was in her face then, it passed through his mind. The dark face was the biggest clue, the face on the icon. Kristen was with us every hour of every day and we just didn’t see it. I just hope that isn’t a rebuke to me. Looking at her face now, I think I know the answer.
“Why don’t we try some sun for a month or two and see what happens?” she said for him.
They got into the car and buckled their seatbelts. She turned and looked earnestly at him.
“Anyway, Merlin says we really ought to go.”
“You crafty little skullie.” He poked her in the ribs. “I thought you were just saying goodbye to him in the Kitchen.”
“He’ll be there from time to time, he says. He told me that Leonardo can get rid of the mark those Irish mages have on you. When they took blood from you, when you crossed them. You’d be safe. No more bloody long hours crafting those rituals to protect yourself.”
“It isn’t just for me, you know that,” he protested rather weakly. He felt himself accused of spending too much time on his own, and what made the accusation hurt was that it was true.
“I know,” she said, slipping an arm around his waist. “But wouldn’t it be great not to have to worry anymore?”
“Yeah, it would.” A sudden spasm of hurt and regret passed through him, and he couldn’t hide it. She leaned across and hugged him hard.
“Darling,” she said.
“Yes, frag it, it would be such a bloody relief,” he said in a thick voice, gritting his teeth to steady himself. It hurt to admit it.
He turned the key in the ignition and they headed for the highway.
Michael and Geraint sat drinking brandy together in the early evening, Streak having taken himself back south of the river with a hefty payoff ruining the smooth lines of his black jacket. That they would see him again they had little doubt.
“Well,” Michael said after the final phone call, “some kind of deal is being worked out. It’s just down to the details really. Apparently, our friend wants me to act as liaison for future arrangements with Renraku.”
“Why didn’t he just go to them with the deck and ask?” Goraint said. “Why all this fuss and games?”
“Part of it, for sure, was his beliefs,” Michael said, having pondered this long and hard. “He wanted witnesses. You have to admit that a lot of powerful people went to a frag of a lot of trouble to find him and try to erase him from the history books once and for all. People who weren’t involved with the Matrix thing. The Jesuits. The Priory.”
“Yeah, the Priory? What of them?”
“From what I can make of it they believe they’re the protectors of the Magdalene’s bloodline. And their initiation secret is his, the sacredness of the Magdalene rather than the Virgin. Their line, I think, is that they just didn’t want that being blown open. I’ve made some enquiries,” he told a surprised Welshman. “They’re only a small group now and when they got fragged at Rennes, what survived wasn’t organized enough to follow or hassle us.
“And I’ve been wondering, you know. What if I’d been alive for six hundred years or more? What if this guy isn’t lying? And what if I had a mind like his? I’d be bored as hell. Would I play games? You bet I would. But it was only partly a game. Partly it was bloody real. That bullet came within a few centimeters of Kristen’s head, remember.”
“We all got close enough at one time or another,” Geraint agreed. “I don’t think it was a game in play. it was a game in earnest.”
“And let’s just entertain the possibility that he really has been around that long. Lets say he is or was Leonardo. Can you imagine talking with him? About Michaelangelo, Verrochio, the great artists and designers? About the Borgias and the Medicis? Not to mention all the times he’s lived through since! Let’s say he really was there. Talking with him would be incredible!”
“You’re taking his offer seriously.”
“With the Renraku money I am. Part of a second Renaissance? You bet I will. I could use the regular employment.”
Michael put down his glass, and changed tack. “Those cards,” he continued, wondering now. “Back in Florence. All those women. I thought you were reading something else.”
Geraint shook his head, realizing Michael had thought it had something to do with the Countess. “I knew a woman was on the mind of our target. So many of the major arcana, it was as clear as crystal. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing just how that could be. And I damn well should have with that deck. Hang it, it was allegedly based on Egyptian designs. A fraudulent claim, but we were after the designer of a fraudulent shroud, and Isis is an Egyptian figure.
“It was bloody perfect,” he said. “And I didn’t see it.”
“You couldn’t have seen it.”
“Maybe not. Aw, sod it, Michael, I can see this bloody bottle of five-star and by God we’re going to finish it tonight.”
Hessler and Merlin took an evening stroll around the Tor, just as they were in the habit of doing at this time of day and at this time of year, weather permitting.
“Don’t you dare tell him the truth,” the elf said to the spirit. “He can find it out for himself.”
Merlin looked crestfallen.
“And you shouldn’t have told him to go. He needs to work that out for himself too.”
“I didn’t say anything to him,” Merlin protested.
“You said it to her,” Hessler retorted.
“Well, they should,” Merlin said with force. “They would be free then, after a fashion. Look how tight he’s locked up sometimes. It’s not fair to Kristen. Three months there and he’d be completely changed. I think he’d turn out to be a more fervent follower of Isis than our friend is, if that’s possible. With her as his inspiration. I couldn’t blame him.”
“A veritable Questor,” Hessler said quietly. “You might be right.”
“I can see into hearts more easily than you can sometimes,” the spirit said a little grumpily, as if justifying his right to an opinion.
“No, but you see the simpler things more quickly.” the elf said evenly.
“Sometimes that’s enough,” Merlin said firmly.
“You are rather rebellious this evening.” the elf said, and for a moment the spirit looked downcast, like a child faced with a parent’s disapproval. And then he saw the smile playing about the edges of the elf’s lips, and he mirrored it with one his own.
They walked into the beginnings of dusk, the long-striding spirit and the elf with the walking stick he leaned upon more heavily than he once had. And as they did so a cat, having abandoned the remains of a chewed cloth mouse, cast aside in the brambles with its stuffing torn asunder, followed close behind them, its amber eyes glittering in the golden light.