‘The ends of the earth?’ she whispered. ‘Finistère.’
‘Yes. That’s why. The ends of the earth. But that’s not all it is. Only one way of looking at it. A narrow, finite way. The Bretons call it Penn-ar-Bed. The Head of the World, where everything begins. Not the end at all.’ He shook his head, as if trying to clear it. ‘Forgive me, old stories, old legends, nothing more. But this is a place of legends. Of mysteries. That is all I mean.’
She drew in a ragged breath and forced the words out.
‘I saw Simon. And you did too.’
‘I saw something. It might have looked like Simon, but I don’t think it was. Not entirely. You have to be careful, Ari. He’s seen you now.’
‘You called it Ankou. Out on the cliff.’
‘Ready?’ called Nico from the hall outside, snapping their attention back to the kitchen and the gîte, to the here and now, to reality.
Rafael gave that same sad smile, and lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a gentle kiss onto her knuckles. His hand was shaking, his lips were cold. ‘I’ve got to go.’
He couldn’t. Not without giving her an answer. ‘But what is Ankou?’
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer and then she saw something else in his eyes. Sorrow. Such sorrow. Real fear. He believed now.
‘A herald of death. My death, I suppose. The death of all the men of my line.’
CHAPTERELEVEN
The morning light came through the gap in the curtains, playing across Ari’s face. She hadn’t slept, not well, not really, but her body didn’t want to admit that or think about it. Never awake enough to get up and do something productive. Nor asleep enough to really rest. There had been nightmares, but she couldn’t say what they were. It was just the lingering sense of horror, crawling back with the shadows, morning mist lifting with the sun.
Simon’s face haunted her.
A box sat outside the bedroom door and she knew at once what it was. She’d dreaded seeing it. Because she already recognised some of the things in it. His notebooks, some photos taken in better times, papers, a couple of awards and certificates, and all the ephemera of a life cut short far too soon. Ari sat on the floor, staring in to it, unable to bring herself to touch anything. Not at first.
Finally, she pulled out a folder and opened it to reveal photocopies of articles, with his handwriting all down the side and threaded through the text. She scanned the first one – a travelogue about Sainte Sirène written in the sixties – and put it aside. The next one was a study of Ankou in folklore, and she stared at grainy images of the carvings from countless churches, thedanses macabrespainted on their walls. So he’d been researching Ankou as well. Of course he had.
Tears welled in her eyes as she reached for the notebook. His handwriting, sketches and maps spread out before her, filling the pages and trailing off the bottom and up the sides as it always did, because he always ran out of space when his thoughts ran away with him and he never had time to just turn the page like a normal—
She closed the book and some loose pages slipped out of the back.
Not his writing. Not this time. She didn’t even know the language it was written in. It looked like some kind of code. Where had he found this? The paper was yellowish, old but not ancient. It had that high acidity of cheap early twentieth-century pages, and the edge of each one was ragged, as if it had been torn out of a notebook.
‘What were you up to, Simon?’ She sighed and carefully slid the loose pages into the back of the notebook again. She didn’t want to think of last night, of the figure on the clifftops with his face.
Ari didn’t look at the various photos of the two of them, smiling, arm in arm. She couldn’t. It hurt too much, even now. She put the lid back on the box and left it on the desk.
Later. She would deal with it later. She’d have to. But not now.
Instead she went to the drawer beside the bed where she kept her most personal belongings. The letter was at the bottom, tear-stained and crumpled. She’d crushed it the first time she read it, then tried to flatten it out to read it again. His letter. His last letter.
Just one page. She didn’t need to read it, not anymore, because the words were burned into her memory.
I’ve met someone else, here in Sainte Sirène. I was looking for the pathway to Ys, thechemin de l’eau. I never meant for this to happen, and I have never wanted to hurt you. I cannot see you anymore. I’ve let the tide take me and surrendered to her. I am so very sorry.
He had sent the pendant with it, the little carved bone disc, delicate as filigree, with a horse running on water, Morvarc’h, King Gradlon’s horse, a gift from his enchantress wife from a land across the sea. Simon had always teased her that she was Irish too. So why had he sent it back? It was his.
At the bottom of the letter, there were numbers – 48065 4688 – just scrawled there, like an afterthought. She didn’t know what they were or what they meant. He’d probably noted them down on the page as they occurred to him, or left them there from an earlier note. They were the least of her concerns.
When she had tried to ring Simon, he didn’t answer, which seemed even more cruel, like he was avoiding her, letting her go to voicemail. Her calls went there directly and eventually she assumed he’d blocked her. It was brutal. Not like Simon at all. She couldn’t believe it.
Then, a few days later, Jason had phoned with the news. She’d never said anything to him about the letter. There didn’t seem any point once Simon was dead. No one else knew. She didn’t want to taint anyone else’s memory of him.
That was when she finally put the necklace on, her last memory of him, of the way he had been before, when they’d been happy, when he had been hers.
