“Stop!” Isabelle insisted. “I do not want to hear any more. I do not believe you. You’re insane or trying to manipulate me.”
“Think what you will, innocent,” Esmé said with a shrug. “But you cannot stay pure of heart around someone like the man he has become, and that is what you must be to save him. A conundrum, is it not?”
Standing up, Esmé ignored the spilled tea and took Isabelle’s arm. “Think about it, dear girl; sleep and pray to your God. Joubay found his answer in you. Who knows? It could be that I am mistaken. If that is so, and I am wrong, we will become enemies. My mission in life, as the healer’s descendant, is to see that Sebastian Dushayne is punished into eternity.”
Isabelle must have looked as stunned as she felt. “You would murder me?”
“Murder you?” Esmé’s shock was sincere. “Never. But there are other ways to make you unwelcome here. Please, don’t let it come to that. Avoid him. He deserves his misery.” The healer patted her arm as she showed her to the door. “For two hundred years. This has been going on for two hundred years. You are not the first innocent and you will not be the last.” Esmé pushed her out the door with a gentle shove and clicked it shut.
Home was five doors down, and even though Isabelle walked very slowly it was not nearly a long enough walk to sift out the truth of the healer’s story.
Hanging her dress on one of the hooks, she brushed her teeth halfheartedly and climbed into bed. Sleep was impossible, but Isabelle felt safest in her snug bed tucked into the alcove.
The sheets were soft with many washings and as white as island sun and lemon could make them.
Relaxing a little, Isabelle began to pray. If she did not actually fall asleep, she did begin to dream. Father Joubay came to her and sat on the edge of her bed, which was, suddenly, aboard a ship being tossed about in an insane sea.
“We are safe,” he assured her. “He is the one in danger.”
In the way of dreams she could see a man swimming, struggling against the waves, but swimming away from them and not to them.
“It really should not be hard to believe that a devil’s curse could hold this man and this curve of land in thrall.” He picked up a wooden cross from the shelf at the head of her bed and held it to his heart. “Isabelle, you believe in the miracles that are in the Bible.”
She nodded and Father Joubay went on, pressing his advantage. “You have seen miracles in your work. Why is it more difficult to believe in the curse of evil?”
“You called it the devil’s miracle.”
“Yes. Like the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center. Like the nightmare of slavery in America or the children who destroyed innocence at Columbine High School. Those were calamitous events and millions of people felt their impact.
“But there are many other curses like the one that Sebastian must endure, curses that do not impact the whole world.” He took her hand. “We could have been spared every one of those events, great and small, if one person had done the right thing.”
“What right thing?”
“Only God knows who or what would have led to a different ending to those tragedies, but there is always someone who could have changed what happened.”
“But no one stopped the Oklahoma City bombing or the Holocaust.”
“That’s true. But someone changed the heart of the man who would have destroyed the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the men set on destroying the Tokyo water supply. A beautiful sunrise convinced your mother not to abort you.”
“Yes, I know that story but not the others.”
“No one knows of those others because they never happened and never will. Goodness in some form changed a heart and drove all thought of hatred from them. And, you, Isabelle, are the one who can change Sebastian Dushayne’s life.”
“You ask too much of me.”
Father Joubay stayed silent, and Isabelle knew what he was waiting for.
“I’ve lived such a sheltered life, at least it was sheltered until I became a nurse. And even since then I have never had a serious boyfriend. How can I help a man as mired in dissipation as Sebastian Dushayne?” Isabelle asked as she pulled her hand from his and folded her arms.
“Because, despite his lifestyle, you can see the good in him. Because you freed me from the curse. Because your heart has love to spare. When our eyes met in church that day I had never felt so hopeful. It was as though you understood.”
“It’s absurd and this is just a dream.” She took the cross away from him and put it back on the shelf. “It’s my mind’s way of making sense of this.”
“Isabelle, do not let the scientist in you reject what the woman of faith believes. Look around you and see that the healer tells the truth.” Father Joubay spoke with a doggedness that belied the gentle way he patted her hand.
A cock crowed and Isabelle woke up, the image of the man disappearing along with the storm and the furious seas.
The sky was leaden today as if rain was inevitable. Taking a page from the healer’s book, Isabelle left a note under her door saying that she was taking the day off. Then she walked on to the castillo, allowing the scientist in her to rule the day.
She visited the kitchen, a massive vault of a room kept cool because it was mostly belowground. A line of windows ringed the ceiling to let in light.
All the household work was done by hand and even in the morning there were already five people busy preparing the main meal of the day. The staff was welcoming, the chef annoyed by the distraction. The mix of twenty-fi rst-century life with nineteenth-century ways was disconcerting.
There were contemporary clocks but no timers. Spoons of all kinds, except plastic, but no wire whisks or eggbeat ers. The fireplace had a baking oven to the side but there was no sign of a microwave or a conventional cooking range. Huge porcelain sinks looked contemporary but the hand pump was not.
Isabelle wandered around the castillo, finally getting a sense of the place as it was before it became one man’s prison. It must have housed hundreds of soldiers once and the construction of the time was impressive.
The Castillo de Guerreros was hundreds of years old but showed little sign of deterioration.
Isabelle found the room she had woken up in after the shipwreck. The curtained bed and candles made more sense now.
The window overlooking the harbor was open and she could hear shouting from the beach.
A group of men and older boys were playing some kind of game. But it was Sebastian who caught her attention. Stripped down to an odd undergarment, a cross between boxers and briefs, he was a magnificent contrast to the darker, shorter islanders with whom he was playing.
The game involved running and kicking, some combined version of soccer and kickball, apparently of island origin. Periodically play would stop, they would all drink something from various mugs, laugh and joke and then begin again.
Sebastian was in such good humor that Isabelle hardly recognized the man who had been so awful to her the night before. She loved watching the way he controlled his body, the ripple of muscles, the flex of his buttocks as he kicked the ball, his agility in avoiding opponents who wanted to stop his progress, the way he bent over, putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath.
The game grew more heated and one of the younger players broke ranks and took a punch at a boy on the opposing side.
The game stopped and Sebastian switched roles, from player to coach. With an arm around the young man’s shoulder he took him to a spot in the shade and they talked. Well, it appeared Sebastian mostly listened while the boy talked.
The others ignored the discussion, drank or found a shady spot to cool down. A few minutes later Sebastian and the boy returned to the team, the boy said something to the guy he’d punched and the game resumed, all ill will gone.
The competition ended a few minutes later with much cheering and back slapping. Then the men stripped off their clothes and ran into the water. When he was waist deep, Sebastian looked up and waved to her.