‘It’s all there,’ his companion said. ‘Keep moving.’ He glanced back. A hundred metres behind, the figure in the white poncho had stopped to study his map under a streetlight.
‘You didn’t have to risk your career going into that place,’ Lemmy grumbled.
A black minivan with a taxi-company number on the side drew up and stopped on the kerb.
‘You look wet,’ the driver shouted through the open passenger window. ‘You need a ride somewhere?’
‘We’re fine,’ said the man in the hat.
But he wasn’t. In the second he was distracted, the van’s rear door slid open. Three men in black sweatshirts and black jeans leaped out, straight for him, while a fourth stayed inside and held a gun.
The tall man saw them and acted instantly. He didn’t think of trying to fight: he ran straight to the rail and tried to heave himself over the edge. But this had been predicted. Before the man could get over the rail, the tramp had sprung up and wrapped himself around his legs. He clung on; the man kicked and flailed, but it was too late. The men from the van piled in and pulled him down. One took a needle and jabbed it into the side of his neck. He slumped and lay still.
Two of the men carried their victim into the van. Through the open door, Lemmy saw a pair of slim, feminine legs and bright red shoes sitting on the back seat.
The third man picked up the homburg hat off the pavement and tossed it into the car. Then, for the first time, he looked at Lemmy.
‘Well done,’ he said.
Lemmy stared at him in utter terror. He had a terrifying face, broken in so many places, with a tattoo curling up the back of his neck. A gold stud gleamed in his ear.
‘Of course, you didn’t see anything.’
Lemmy nodded. He realised he was still holding the open envelope.
‘Can I keep this?’
The man shrugged. ‘Sure.’
Without warning, strong arms grabbed Lemmy from behind and hugged him tight, pinning his hands to his sides. Before he could draw breath to scream, they dragged him to the edge of the parapet, lifted him up and dropped him over the rail. He fell fifty metres and landed in the concrete canal that was all that remained of the Pétrusse river. The men, including the tramp, drove away in their minivan. The tourist in the white raincape had vanished.
Lemmy’s body was discovered half an hour later, by a French businessman jogging through the park. It didn’t take long for the police to gather the basic facts: his name, his address, his occupation and the envelope stuffed with five-hundred-euro bills still clutched in his hand. Further investigation added the information that he drove a high-specification German sedan and held documentation for a number of bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The fact that he had visited the Monsalvat bank the day before was noted but not thought relevant. There were no next of kin.
A passing driver came forward to say he might have seen a taxi pulled up, and a gang of men in a brawl on the pavement. But the taxi company in question could prove that none of its drivers had been nearby at the time, and the descriptions of the men were so vague as to be meaningless.
Two days later a small notice in the newspapers reported that Lemmy Maartens, a respected civil servant in the Ministry of Finance, had leaped to his death off the Pont Adolphe. He left no note. The police speculated that he had been under a lot of stress, brought on by the financial crisis and the recent wave of bank failures. Perhaps he felt responsible. He was, his colleagues all agreed, devoted to his work.
VI
You can conquer the Welsh, but you can’t defeat them. My father says it’s because of the land: mounted knights can’t pursue the rebels up mountains and through forests, or into the deep marshes. My mother also says it’s because of the land — but she doesn’t mean it the same way.
My mother is a Breton — which, she says, makes her a cousin to the Britons who plough fields and cut wood for my father. She says Brittany is like Wales, a wild realm on the rim of the world. In these places, the borders between worlds grow thin and permeable; we scuttle across the surface like a spider on a pond. In England and Normandy, rocks are rocks and trees are trees, or they are iron and firewood. In Wales, every rock and tree might hide the door to an enchanted land. Once, when I was playing on the mudflats by the river estuary, I saw a shimmering wall of air, as you get over a fire. Another time, I put my ear to a crack in the rocks and heard laughter far below.
Last August, three of my father’s hayricks burned in the field. In October, someone broke into the stable and cut the hamstrings on his warhorse. My father had to slit its throat himself: when he came out of the stable, up to his elbows in blood, it was the only time I ever saw him cry. He blames brigands, but behind his back the servants whisper about the faerie people.
My mother knows many stories of the faeries. Sometimes, when the fire has burned low in the hall and my father has drunk his fill, she takes out her little harp and sings the tale, while I sit by the fire and the dogs lick fat off the hearth. Sometimes we sit together on the grassy bank under the willow by the river. All the ones I like best begin the same way: ‘A long time ago, when Arthur was king …’
I ask my mother when Arthur was king, but she just frowns and repeats that it was a long time ago. I ask Brother Oswald, who has been teaching me history. Was it before Duke William? Before Alexander? Before King Solomon? I think he will cuff me and tell me another story about Jesus or Saint David, but he chews his reed pen and tells me how Arthur was descended from Aeneas and Brutus; how he lived some six hundred years ago in the time of Saint David, when the Romans had gone and the Normans hadn’t yet come. He says he killed a giant on Saint Michael’s mount, and grew so powerful he even overthrew Rome. Some men, he whispers, say he is not dead but merely sleeping in a cave, and will come again in Britain’s deepest hour of need.
A light comes into Brother Oswald’s eyes as he tells this. Then he remembers himself, and sends me back to my declensions.
I sit in the sun and listen to my mother.
‘A long time ago, when Arthur was king, a knight went hunting. He spied a white stag and gave chase, following it until he found himself deep in the forest.
‘Suddenly, on the evening air, he heard a scream that made his horse rear up in fright. He spurred through the trees, and presently came out in a leafy glade. A hawthorn grew there, and tied to it stood a maiden, the loveliest he had ever seen. She wore a plain white shift and a plain white dress, nothing else. Her golden hair was so fair even Isolde the Blonde would have looked like a Moor beside her.’
I stir. ‘Who was Isolde the Blonde?’
My mother shushes me. ‘I will tell you that story another day. When you’re older.
‘The knight drew his sword to cut her free. But the moment he dismounted, the ground trembled with the approach of rushing hooves. The lady groaned. “Now you must flee,” she warned him. “That noise is Sir Maliant, the wicked knight who holds me prisoner. If he finds you here he will surely kill you.”
‘“Upon my honour, I have never fled from any man,” said the knight. He remounted his horse and spurred towards his enemy. Their lances bent like bows and shattered; they drew their swords, laying about each other with such fury that wood splintered, iron split and both horses were killed. The knight pummelled his opponent until every lace of his armour was broken. At last, he struck off his helmet and knocked him to the ground.