like desert scrub brush—the famous salt pastures, Claire explained, originally planted centuries ago in a futile effort to stabilize the sands—and beyond them the distant low roofs of Avranches.
In front of them was the bay itself, featureless except for a few narrow streams that wandered through it in great, lazy curves. Everything was veiled in a thin mist shot through with watery, pink-tinged sunlight, so that sand and sky blended into a bland, disorienting world of pale, diffused mauve. No, not quite blended. There, on the horizon, ten miles off or more, Gideon could just make out the gray, gleaming ribbon that was the receding tide. He watched it for a while, trying to tell if he could see it change—it was, after all, the fastest-moving tide in Europe— but it remained the same: a flat pewter strip separating a smooth and formless earth from a smooth and formless sky.
'What do you call that dog,” John asked dreamily, “with the gray fur? Big dog, short hair—'
'A Weimaraner?'
'Right. That's what this sand reminds me of; what a Weimaraner must look like to a flea coming in for a landing.'
Gideon laughed. “Amazing. I've never known you to be moved to poetic fancy before.'
'No kidding, Doc, is that what that was?'
'You're in good company, John,” Ray said. “You'll be happy to know that du Guesclin himself used the same metaphor in—1390, I believe it was. Well, not quite the same, but close enough.'
'That would have been difficult,” Claire said. “Du Guesclin died in 1380.'
Her eyes darted hesitantly at each of the men. She wasn't used to making jokes, Gideon could see, and she was trying to gauge whether she'd gone too far.
Ray's burst of laughter set her at ease. “Is this,” he said with mock austerity, “what I have to look forward to? A lifetime of caviling fault-finding over trivial arcana?'
'Yes!” she said, bubbling over with too much intensity, like a child learning to play. “Oh, yes!” Then she giggled; a girlish, appealing tinkle of pleasure that made her look almost pretty. “Whatever it means—what you said.” She was certainly coming out of her shell.
Ray squeezed her hand, looking flustered and pleased. “Perhaps we ought to go down now,” he said primly. “We want to be sure to be back within three hours.'
At the base of the Mont they had to clamber over algae-slimed granite boulders, then slog through fifty feet of black mud. Claire, wearing tennis shoes she'd carried with her for walking, led the way, moving with confidence. When they reached the sand she said: “Before we go any further, I think it would be good for you to know what quicksand looks like. Would you like me to show you?'
She went to the top of a hummock—the tidal plain, seemingly so featureless and smooth from above, was actually full of furrows, humps, and depressions—and looked around her, leaning into the misty glare and shielding her eyes with her hand like a Gilbert and Sullivan sailor. “There!” she said. “Come!'
They went to a roughly circular patch of sand perhaps ten feet in diameter. Unlike the flat-toned, uneven surface everywhere else it was glossy and smooth, brown rather than mauve. And not in the least dangerous- looking.
She pointed to smaller patches nearby. “As you see, there's a fair amount of it. In the summer, when the tourists come, the sands are more stable, thank God. But in winter you must watch where you go. Gideon, is something wrong?'
'Claire, if it's this obvious, how could Guillaume not have seen it?'
'Yes, that's a good question,” Ray said.
'But how could he see it?” Claire asked. “Under even an inch of water it's invisible. The tide was rising, and he must have stepped into it through the water—” She frowned curiously at him. “Isn't that what happened?'
'I suppose it is,” Gideon said, and he supposed it was. Wherever he looked there was a logical explanation for the accidental drowning of the man he'd known as Guillaume. Reasonable explanations all; doubted by no one, even John. And still...
They walked out into the bay for about twenty minutes, never looking back. (This was Ray's suggestion for heightening the dramatic impact when they finally did turn.) When they came to a sand dune six or seven feet high they climbed it and found a craterlike top in which they could all sprawl comfortably, leaning against the sides of the hollow, looking back at the Mont.
From there the abbey was indeed like the prow of a tremendous ship bearing down on them over a sea of sand. For a while they lay back in the pallid sunshine, peacefully taking it in, wrapped in their own thoughts. Then, prompted by questions from Ray, Claire began to tell them the history of the rock from the time when it was not Mont St. Michel but Mont Tombe, and it reared up not from the floor of the sea but from the green forest known as Scissy. Then the terrible tide of A.D. 709 had annihilated the population and transformed the landscape, so that when the archangel Michael made his appearance there a little later, it was on today's lonely monolith, almost a mile from the shore.
Before long Gideon heard a long, contented sigh from John, followed by the immediate commencement of slowed-down, rhythmic breathing. If John were ever to suffer from insomnia (a laughable premise) he wouldn't have to resort to pills; all he'd need to do was sit himself down at anything resembling a lecture. But this time Gideon sympathized. Claire's voice was melodic and soft, and the sand beneath them radiated the warmth it had somehow managed to soak up from the wispy sunshine.
He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles, luxuriating in Claire's lulling story and in the spired abbey floating above them. He would bring Julie here someday, to this very spot, to see this with him. First they would lunch at the Mouton Blanc; that was essential. It wouldn't be the same without that lovely lamb sending out its own warmth from within.
He didn't realize he was dozing until his eyelids jumped suddenly open, leaving him tense and alert. He couldn't have been drifting for long. Claire was still in the tenth century. John was still asleep.
'Listen!” he said urgently. What for, he wasn't sure. Only that there was something...
Claire stopped in the middle of a word. John awakened instantly. All of them sat straining to hear for a moment, then leaped to their feet and looked around them.
