Thirteen Days By Sunset Beach (17 page)

"You look fine to me," Ray said despite suspecting that under the hat her hair might be somewhat dishevelled, given the visible strands. "You will to everyone."

"That's a promise, Sandra," Pris called from her balcony.

"We'll all second that," Natalie contributed.

Ray was afraid it would be obvious that their determination had no bearing on how Sandra actually looked. In a bid to distract her he called "So where are we bound today?"

"Wherever you two would like to go," Natalie said.

"I just like being driven," Sandra said. "That's always part of the holiday for me."

"We'll leave it to the researchers," Ray said. "Show us things we haven't seen."

"I've got one," Pris said.

Ray had an uneasy sense of having been too careless. "Which is that, Pris?"

"My monastery at last. We'll have cars that can go off the road." Ray couldn't help thinking of the effigy tied to the chair on the bonfire, the blank whitish bag of a face lolling out of the monkish cowl. For an instant he was tempted to use William as an excuse to avoid the monastery—to suggest that it might somehow be unsuitable for his grandson—but what reason could he have to spoil the day? "I've been looking forward to it," Sandra called, and he put his qualms out of his head.

***

"I can't see where we are," Jonquil said.

Ray might have fancied that the sun was in her eyes if it hadn't been masked by the midday clouds. In any case she was still wearing her sunglasses, just like Tim and Sandra. Julian halted the leading vehicle and held out a hand without looking back at her. "Let me see."

Jonquil turned her phone towards him but held it out of reach. "I'm showing you."

Natalie twisted around to peer at the miniature screen. "There's no road on it, Julian."

Ray thought the rough track through the forest might not be called a road. Countless pines as silent as the clouds shut it in, and apart from the Thornton party it had been deserted since they'd left the main road. Tim leaned across William to examine the screen. "It's just a blur," he said.

"Some of my photos are blurred as well," Jonquil said.

"I trust I won't be blamed in any way for that," Julian said, having taken his hand back.

"I'm just saying something's wrong with my phone."

"It's your responsibility to take care of it."

"Julian," Natalie said as if she didn't want someone in the other car to hear her. "Jonquil."

Doug had halted it behind Julian's, and now he took out his own mobile. "It isn't just yours, Jonquil," he called. "Mine's lost the way as well."

Ray craned forward to see that the map on Doug's phone had turned an unrelieved green, a good deal paler than the trees. When Doug pinched the image between finger and thumb it stayed the same, and the opposite gesture left it just as vague. "There can't be much coverage," Doug said. "It isn't even showing the road we came from."

Over the chugging of engines Sandra said "We were going the right way, weren't we?"

"If you'd like to go on, Sandra," Julian said, "then of course we will. And I hope you can pardon the squabble."

Ray thought he was apologising more for Jonquil than, if at all, for himself. Julian eased his car forward, and Doug followed around the next bend. Ray was starting to find the sight of pines in every direction monotonous—his troubled sleep had begun to catch up with him—when he noticed that the faint piny scent that filled the air had changed. It was giving way to another smell, a dry odour that put him in mind of dust, though not the dust the roofless vehicles were raising from the track. He was trying to identify the dead smell when William pushed himself almost to his feet. "What's all that black?"

"Sit down, William," Julian said at once. "Will you two kindly make sure he stays seated and keeps his safety belt on."

As the teenagers reached for the boy Ray could have thought William shrank away from them, but surely that was just a moment of defiance. Once William resumed his seat Julian said "I'm afraid it looks as though there are vandals even here."

Both cars had rounded another bend, and Ray understood the smell. A few hundred yards ahead the trees were a mass of blackness. Beyond the charred timbers the road ended at the foot of a blackened ridge bare of vegetation. "Shall we see what's there?" Pris said.

When Doug drove past the point where the green trees turned black Ray felt as though darkness had gathered around him, oppressive and chill. Sandra shivered, and he put an arm around her while he tried to grasp what he'd just seen. What kind of fire could do that? The innermost ranks of green trees were blackened in patches on the side nearest the dead pines, but if this was as far as the blaze had spread, what had stopped it to abruptly? Surely forest fires usually spread until they were balked by trees they couldn't reach. He was about to remark on the anomaly when William cried "Auntie Pris, is that your monstery?"

Julian rewarded him with an indulgent laugh. "It's a monastery, William."

"It looks kind of monstrous as well," Tim said.

"Please be careful what you say, Timothy."

Ray refrained from agreeing aloud with Tim. Above the shrivelled treetops he'd seen holes in the blackened rock, and now he realised they were too regularly spaced and shaped for caves. They were the unglazed windows of a building that had the crest of the ridge for its roof. As the car followed Julian's out of the forest he saw an entrance midway between the dozens of windows, a tall wide pointed arch. A steep flight of high steps led to it, and an uneven path started where they did, doubling back to the arch from the outer side of the monastery—the side that didn't merge with the rock. "That's it, Will," Pris said. "It'd take more than a fire to destroy it."

"You think someone tried," Ray said.

"Why should anyone? More like someone dropped a cigarette." Ray had a pointlessly random thought: the pyre in the village hadn't done away with the monkish figure either, it had just been a token destruction. As Julian and Doug parked near the steps, he saw how black the ridge and the building carved out of it were—even blacker than the nearby trees and the bare earth in which their roots were clenched like a symptom of a convulsion. "That's another reason smoking is bad for everyone, William," Natalie said.

The boy scampered up the steps as Ray helped Sandra out of the car. "Stay outside till we're there, William," Julian called and frowned at Jonquil, who was taking the easier path with Tim instead of following William. The teenagers halted at the bend, and Ray was dismayed to think they had to rest after so little exercise until he saw they were gazing around the end of the ridge. "Look where we've come back to," Tim said. Jonquil pushed up the brim of her hat as if greeting the sight. "I never saw that on my map."

William ran to them along the upper stretch of path as Ray followed Sandra up the lower half. When Ray saw why the cousins were surprised he wasn't sure how the sight made him feel. The bend in the path overlooked a distant section of the coast road—a location he recognised. There was the shrine beside the bus stop and the path leading to the beach with the cave. "So much for your navigation, Jonquil," Julian complained. "We could have driven here in a fraction of the time."

"We used my phone as well," Doug reminded him and clambered along the side of the ridge away from the path. "We'd never have got here that way," he called. "There's heaps of rubble and undergrowth all the way to the coast road."

"Don't ever do what your uncle's doing, William," Natalie said. "Climbing on rocks is dangerous."

"Yes, come back, Doug," Pris called as if Natalie had let her admit to nervousness. "I want to look inside."

When Ray turned his back on the view, having waited for his son to scramble back to the path, he felt as if the blackness of the ridge had recaptured him. On the way to the entrance he saw the remnant of a chapel through the first window, and then a succession of monastic cells as unadorned as caves. They looked even blacker than the exterior, and he was trying to find some appeal in them when Julian said "Leave that alone, William."

He was too late. Fragments of a door were propped inside the entrance, and the boy had picked up a chunk. Ray didn't know if it was Julian's rebuke that made William drop the piece of blackened wood with a startled laugh that could have used more mirth. The wood had crumbled in his grasp like a lump of dirt, and when it struck the floor it broke asunder, not so much splintering apart as scattering wide. Even the dull thump didn't sound too wooden. "Look at your hand, William," Natalie cried. "Excuse him, everyone. Just you come outside."

She spilled water from a bottle over his stained hand before rubbing it furiously with her handkerchief. "We'll be going ahead, Natalie," Pris said.

Ray found he'd welcomed the deferral. When he stepped through the arch the walls of bare black rock closed around him beneath a ceiling he could have touched with his fingertips. He suspected that a coal mine deep beneath the earth would feel very much like this. He had a sense of darkness awaiting the night, an impression that the muffled daylight only helped. Pris turned right at the end of the passage, away from the outermost side of the monastery, and led the way into the first cell.

There was barely room for everyone. Inside was nothing but a knee-high ledge carved out of one wall and the remains of a door strewn beside the doorway. Tim was last into the cell, and had to stoop. Perhaps he meant to leave self-consciousness behind by saying "There's your bed, Will."

"Of course it's not," Natalie said. "Don't listen, William."

"Someone had to sleep there, though," Pris told him. "It was supposed to make them holy."

"Am I holy, mummy?"

"I'm sure you are. Just see you keep that way."

"I expect I will if I keep going to grandma's and grandad's." Before the silence could persist too long Sandra said "That's very sweet of you, William. What makes you say it?"

"I expect that bed's as hard as my one at your house."

As Doug risked a laugh Sandra protested "William, you should have told us. I'll see it never is again."

This time Ray could have thought the silence had borrowed darkness from the cell. While he tried not to imagine what several of the party might be leaving unexpressed, Pris said rather too hastily "Let's see what else there is."

The corridor led to cell after cell, each furnished with a stone bunk and scattered with the wreckage of a door. Had someone indeed tried to set the place on fire? The vandalism would have been mindless, since it took no thought to grasp that rock wouldn't burn, and yet Ray had to wonder how the forest fire had reached inside the monastery—how it had managed when the nearest trees were at least a hundred yards away from the ridge. As he glanced into the last cell Pris advanced along the corridor, beyond the dim glow that spilled out of the room. "Has everyone got a flashlight on their phones?" she said. "I'd like to see what's down here."

Ray had to give his eyes quite a time to adjust before he saw that the corridor hadn't come to a dead end. It continued steeply downwards, providing rough steps but no handrail, just jagged projections of rock. As he went closer he heard echoes of his movements, unnecessarily suggestive of someone retreating into the subterranean darkness. While the rest of the party approached the steps the echoes multiplied in the dark, so that Ray could have thought it hid a swarm of denizens. "Don't you want to see the chapel?" Natalie said.

"We can look there first if you like," Pris said.

Ray saw that Natalie had meant it as an alternative, not just a preference. She led the procession past the entrance and another series of
empty cells, beyond which was a larger room—a kitchen, to judge by
the rounded aperture in the roof. The adjacent room, with which it
shared a doorway, was several times the size and absolutely bare except
for bits of doors. "Do we think they could make it into more of an attraction?" Sandra said.

"Sorry, Sandra," Pris said more gently than Ray thought the question warranted. "Who could what?"

"The islanders. If they want to attract tourists, mightn't they restore this place and maybe hire a guide?"

"Maybe they don't want people coming here," Jonquil said.

Natalie frowned at her but stopped short of arguing, and made for the furthermost room—the chapel. Apart from the altar, which was carved out of the rock, it was as devoid of even the remains of furniture as the dining hall. The altar was an empty unadorned slab, a mute reproof to any kind of luxury. Once the walls must have been populated with painted icons, but not much was left of them. The faces and robed bodies had mostly flaked away, and their actions were beyond guessing, unless the figure that had managed to retain a tarnished quarter of its halo had been meant to bless the congregation with an upraised hand that had lost its fingers long ago. When the sun had shone into the chapel the undamaged icons must have shone like light rendered solid, but the traces were reduced to a glimmer that might have been struggling not to yield to the blackness of the walls. As Ray realised that he couldn't tell which or how many of the figures would have represented St Titus, Sandra said "Translation, anyone?"

She was gazing at a motto that surmounted the entrance to the chapel. The Greek letters were intact, having been incised in the rock. "Embrace eternity," Doug said after pondering, "and eternity will embrace you."

"More like immortality," Pris said, "don't you think?"

"Could be, or infinity." Doug tapped his forehead like a keyboard. "Or," he said, "I don't know, deathlessness."

"We never think to use our phones for translations."

"We don't usually need them, do we? They mightn't work here either." Nevertheless Doug took out his mobile and fingered a command. "Maybe she's here," he said.

He held the phone in front of his face and read the motto above the entrance so loud and slowly that Ray heard an echo somewhere along the corridor, almost catching up with Doug's voice. As the distant repetition fell silent the mobile acknowledged Doug's words with an electronic note, and then a woman's bright artificial voice said "Feed on everlasting, everlasting feeds on you."