The Tenth Gate
~ Part Three
Ella
hadn’t slept well. She’d thought about joining him
in his room,
of sliding between the crisp sheets and lying close, absorbing his
warmth, his breath. But she needed to think.
The first time
she’d seen him, last summer in the university library,
she’d
recognised the look of a man obsessed. She’s always had the
talent
of reading thoughts, that sensitivity that had sidled into the
language as feminine intuition. It was a gift she’d practiced
and
cultivated, a talent she’d used to her advantage to gain
small
victories of wealth, of the moments of power that control brings, and
she’d learned to live with the resulting backwash of maggoty
guilt.
But she was perfectly aware that it was a skill few women
shared. The talent for reading a man’s thoughts was a rare
one, and
one that her family had had for generations. Some had kept it hidden;
some had used it to move their families’ lives forward, but
not
all. A few- and she wondered if she would include herself in this-
had used it to hurt and to harm. Had she done that in the library
entrance when she’d deliberately dropped her bag and made him
turn
and speak to her? She’d used her gift then. She’d
planned. She’d
set the trap, created the sticky web and lured him in with the bait
she knew he wanted. But as he stumbled in, grateful and amazed at
what he’d been offered, she’d felt something inside
herself
change, a balance shift. Sometimes a trap can be so clever that it
springs on the one that set it. Although she’d reeled him in,
the
if and then of her plan had not included him wrapping himself around
her, starting to squeeze and absorb, and making his being part of
hers. That hadn’t been part of the plan at all.
She decided
not to recognise what he was unconsciously doing to her. She would
not nourish this with her attention. Something so fragile would fail
without nurture.
She needed her mind for other things.
But
any sort of power could be used with malicious intent. It was only
the darkness of intention that separated the healer and the witch. It
was the simple morality of choices that turned the light into the
dark. She knew that the expression she had earlier seen on his face,
the tiny glance of avarice that sparked in his eyes when she had
mentioned the pictures the night before had grown from the seeds set
in his mind by what he had seen at the castle. He seemed to know that
the nine etchings promised something that was real, that behind his
last failure lay the ghost of some terrible power, like the faint
images in twilight that are clear in peripheral vision but vanish
when looked at directly. She had seen the greed that those pictures
had wormed into him. Whatever he said, he was afraid he’d
lose
them. So she stayed where she was, and kept her mind on her own
search, thinking through the details of what she would have to do to
find the last picture and then persuade him to let her use and
perhaps keep his treasured remaining nine, and trying to dull the
aching want that seeing him again had so unexpectedly created.
*********
Dean woke early. The strange, time
slipped world of jet lag still enveloped him. At first, as usual for
a strange place, he was lost, disorientated. The light from the
window was all wrong, the feel of the sheets, the sounds, or the lack
of them, from outside. The countryside was without the reassuring
presences of home. No sirens, no rumble of the commuting nine to
fivers. No shriek of brakes at a junction, no macho revving as the
seconds ticked out to the lights changing.
As he came to, he
found himself listening to the silence more carefully. Not silence at
all. A low level undercurrent of the papery rattle of leaves, distant
water flowing, clicks and chirps of insect life, and discordant music
of birds he didn’t have the names for, underpinned by the
distant
metallic groan of some farm machine cutting things down.
This
illusory silence was more disturbing than real urban noise. He
wasn’t
sure he was comfortable in this alien landscape.
His thoughts
ran through the conversation that had taken place after dinner
yesterday. Ella had told him how, before they had met, she had come
across an old local history book. It told the story of the witch
trials back in the days of the commonwealth, more than three hundred
years ago. There had been one particular etching. “It was
like
looking in a mirror. There was a woman from the past, from so long
ago, and the woman had my face. It could have been some sort of
co-incidence, but something about the feel of it, I can’t say
what,
made me know it wasn’t. She looked out of the past with my
face,
and saw me. This woman was something to do with me.”
As the
cat wound around his feet, he had smiled wisely, reassuringly. He
didn’t want her to know how he doubted her. He
didn’t know how
she could have known. Nothing but guesswork, clearly. The implausible
principle of feminine intuition. How could she base any real research
on the mists of feelings, and expect anyone who valued fact to give
the idea a second glance? Looking her in the eye, he had asked as
kindly as he could, “So did you find out who she
was?”
“Up
to a point. The book gave her a name, and told the story of a witch
trial. Any woman living alone in those days risked being called a
witch and suffering the consequences. At the trial, some of the
villagers said that she had second sight, and knew things about
people, used that knowledge to harm, to create malice. She was
accused of killing animals, of causing illness, of talking to the
devil, of keeping familiar spirits.”
“So what,” he
asked carefully, “What linked her to my pictures?”
Things were
getting so close that he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“At
the trial, there was another piece of evidence. The soldiers that
arrested he said that in her house, a series of ten pictures were
laid out. The descriptions make them seem like yours. Remember that
this was in the 1640’s, twenty years before your Nine Gates
book
appeared. The woman was said to read from the pictures in an old
language, Latin I imagine. The readings made her know all the
villagers thoughts. That was her source of knowledge.” She
looked
down, as if not wanting to meet his gaze.
“So what happened
to them, where are the pictures now?” He tried to keep his
voice
calm and even, but the urgency of want that obsession brings gave it
a fast and bitter tone.
“Nine disappeared, perhaps stolen
and sold on by the soldiers who performed the arrest. The last one
found its way into the record of the trial, which took place near
here. Legal documents are guarded carefully by governments, you know
that. It allows them to appear honest and credible in the most
unlikely of circumstances”
He didn’t even dare ask if she
was sure that the tenth was nearby. Sometimes, just sometimes, he had
intuition of his own.
He realised that coffee was necessary
to get him thinking straight. He dressed carelessly, city clothes
that didn’t really work in this new place. Looking at himself
in
the mirror, dragging a comb through his hair, he was unimpressed. He
removed the tie in an attempt at the casual, and considered buying t
shirts. But realising that this was the best that he could manage, he
lit a cigarette and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen, the
door to the garden was open to let the sun stream in. The smell of
the grass, still wet from the last night’s storm made the air
heavy, mixing with the coffee and toast smells of a breakfast just
finished. Dean wasn’t used to foods that had to be cooked
being
found in a kitchen. He mainly dealt in opening cans and packets and
the occasional attempt at heating up. The scattered mess of crumbs,
smears of butter, and used cups were pleasing, but he didn’t
really
understand why. He wondered if it was something to do with childhood
memories, a comfort and warmth that were in his case long lost.
He
found a clean cup, and poured himself some black coffee, adding a
couple of sugars to help him face the day, and went to the door. He
could see Ella in the garden, back towards him, making her way
carefully between the tall flowers laid flat by the storm, picking up
the stems, tying them up, looping them around the canes that kept
them tidy. She carried some garden tools, and seemed absorbed by what
she was doing. There was a beauty in her movement, an elegance in the
way her hands moved deftly, tying strings, moving canes, pulling
weeds. There was a beauty in watching a simple task well done.
Somehow it reminded him of dancing, careful steps, all in sequence,
minutely planned to make the difficult look easy. He watched each
step that she took, and as he did so, he knew that the question of
the pictures, and who got what from any magic they might have, was
not the important one. The real question was what Ella felt for him.
What he felt for her hovered uncertainly between lust and love.
“I’m lost without you” he whispered to
himself. But
even forming the words was a little admission of defeat. He felt glad
he’d said it, but somehow he felt lessened. The solid ground
of
lust was a safer place than the marshy unknown that was love.
She
had turned back to the house, and as she walked up to him, he could
see the smears of mud the garden had made on her face. Her hands were
dirty, and she kicked off some old shoes she was wearing as she got
near the door. Blades of broken grass stuck to her small white feet
as she walked back into the house.
“Sleep well?” She
looked just how he liked her, grubby and confident.
“Not
particularly” he replied. “I was awake a long time.
Time-zones,
and thinking about what you’d said about the pictures. I
thought of
coming to ask you about what you wanted us to do, but you would have
been asleep.”
She looked at him carefully, dragging the
back of a muddied hand over her lips. “I wasn’t
asleep. I was
thinking the same as you. Including the things you haven’t
said.”
He was taken aback. Again, she’d looked right inside him.
He dropped his gaze, embarrassed, ashamed. He knew what he wanted to
do, to touch and stroke and feel her, pull off the garden clothes.
But knowing that she knew made making the slightest move difficult.
The fear of acting foolishly, the dread of the brush-off, rose like
sickness in his throat.
She put her hand under his chin, and
made him look up. “I said I was thinking the same. The same
about
everything. Everything. This included.”
She reached down
and began to pull her dirty T shirt up, slowly letting him see the
lines of muscle on her thin stomach, and the perfect arcs underneath
her round breasts, pulled as the shirt pulled higher. He put his lips
to hers, lightly at first, and then with biting urgency. He loved the
taste of her mouth, warm with coffee and the hints of tobacco. His
mouth moved on, feeling the sinews of her neck, massaging and
exploring the tiniest details, the semicircular hollows where her
collar bones started, the curves and the flat centre of her chest.
His hands followed, confident, aware of what they could do.
“Let
me take you back upstairs” He couldn’t believe it
was him saying
that.
She drew him up and kissed him on the lips, tasting his
own taste with an almost lascivious pleasure. “Yes. Dean, you
have
a delicious mouth. The devil himself couldn’t do
better.”
He
wasn’t used to this type of compliment. Knowledge and
cleverness
were certainly things he had, but not to do with women. He
couldn’t
read the signs and signals they dealt in. He always felt he was lost
in the dark, any progress he made the result of chance not ability.
But perhaps things were about to change for him.
************
Later, relaxed and smiling, he poured out the rest of the
coffee into the last two clean cups. Lighting two cigarettes, she
passed one to him as she looked through the piles of
yesterday’s
newspapers that littered the table, to find some photocopied sheets
beneath. “These are the things I’ve found, the old
letters” she
said. The original of the etching, the one I think is the tenth
picture, is in the academic section of the museum. I’ll show
you
tomorrow. But you’re going to have to bluff your way in. You
once
told me that you had letters, or faked letters, from professors that
say you’re doing research. The museum will expect you to be a
genuine researcher, a real academic. We could use them now.”
So
this was the challenge. Slowly, he smiled at her.
“They’re in my
bag. They’re perfect, they won’t fail.
We’ll be welcomed in.
You’re going to have to dress smartly, because
you’ll be there
too. You can be my research assistant.”