them. Her arms came around him and because she couldn't help herself she pulled him toward her. She felt him against her and she was lifted up, not only her body but her spirit. She recalled what Camille said about the healing power of Mont St. Michel.
She felt the steady, strong beating of his heart. A wildness had taken hold of her that was strangely familiar, the deep, soul-shattering yearning that had gripped her before her mother had sent her away to school.
The floodgates, so long held in check, opened. Her head moved forward, her lips opened, and she surrendered herself to everything she wanted, everything that was coming.
When they emerged from the bath, the fog had lifted entirely. It was that time of day, beautiful, mysterious, when the sky is infinite and full of light from an unseen source, when far below, the darkness of evening has already begun to gather, spreading its midnight-blue shadows across roads and cobbles, low walls and foundations, weighing them down, fastening them to the black earth.
They sat side by side, gazing out the window at the Marvel with its two-level walled village curled like the defeated dragon around its feet. The enormous monastery, which was constructed entirely of granite, had foundations that were laid 160 feet above sea level.
'As you probably know, the abbey is Benedictine,' Bravo said, 'but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was fortified in the manner of a military installation. In fact, Mont St. Michel's position in the channel made it an important outpost when France went to war with England. Immediately, it became both strategic and impregnable. Its defenses have never been breached.'
On the wall just above the window were sculpted a cockleshell, a horn and a staff.
Jenny ran her fingertips over the bas-relief. 'Do these symbols have a meaning?'
'They're the insignia of Mont St. Michel,' Bravo said, 'known to every pilgrim who made his way to the islet from the thirteenth century on. This was before the causeway was built, you understand, when the high tide completely cut off the islet from the mainland. Many people drowned in the uncertain tides. It's difficult to know which was more treacherous, the tides or the sea floor. The staff was used to probe for quicksand on the journey out to the abbey, the horn would be used to sound the alarm if the pilgrim was lost in lowering fog or rising water, and the cockleshell was stuck in the pilgrim's hat when he left Mont St. Michel, a symbol that proclaimed his safe and successful journey.'
'I wish I had a cockleshell.' Jenny put her head back against the sofa.
'Do you want to sleep?' Bravo asked her.
'No,' she said, a small smile on her lips. 'I'm hungry.'
'What should I bring you?'
But her eyes were already closed. In a very short while her breathing became even, and Bravo, rising, brought the blanket over, covering her from feet to neck.
Chapter 12
St. Malo occupied the westernmost part of a small cape that jutted out into the English Channel. The cape was more or less in the shape of a dog's head, St. Malo being the muzzle. They arrived just after 12:30 in the afternoon. The inner core of the city was ancient and beautiful, fortified by a thick stone wall. Around this had been thrown up concentric circles of twentieth-century housing, cheap and ugly, where many of the residents lived and worked. The tour buses, however, drew up in the vast cobbled car park outside the gates to the Old City, where they disgorged their contents of excited, video camera-toting tourists, wanting to tape the highlights, eat crepes and continue to the next stop on their whirlwind tour. There were Germans and Swiss and Austrians, Spaniards, Italians, Britons and, of course, Japanese. As hostile as warring parties, they clannishly' formed into tight knots as if afraid to come into contact with each other. They moved in swarms, under military banners resentfully brandished by their guides.
Camille pulled up adjacent to several of the buses. She looked at Bravo sternly and said, 'Are you certain this is what you want to do?'
He nodded. 'Absolutely.'
'Bon.'
'You'll do as I asked and return to Paris,' Bravo said a little anxiously.
'I told you at breakfast I would.' She kissed Bravo and Jenny both on either cheek and advised them to enter the city amid the forming crush of tour groups.
This they did. As they passed through the ancient gates to the Old City, Bravo glanced over his shoulder, but the Citroe'n was nowhere to be seen.
Amid all the video equipment and digital cameras, the GPS Bravo had taken from Kavanaugh's car was inconspicuous. He punched in the coordinates his father had provided.
They stayed within the knot of the tour group for five or six minutes, but when it began to move out to its first destination, he went to their left. 'This way,' he said, heading through the narrow shop-lined streets. He led them through the maze of the Old City, heading generally northwest toward the seawall.
St. Malo, more or less midway along the Cote d'Emeraude, the Emerald Coast, was built on the rocky and often wild coast of Brittany, France's north shore. In the old days, it had harbored both merchant sailors and marauding corsairs. At that time, many of the European countries were at war, and the high seas was open territory. The kings of France, Spain, Holland and England did what they could to encourage private owners to arm their ships to attack enemy vessels. The French privateers were known as corsairs after the king's permit, a lettre de course, a formal authorization to carry out their business under strict regulations. Their booty was divided into equal shares split between the king, the ship owner and the crew.
The city was founded by Father MacLaw, a Welsh bishop who fled Wales to Brittany in 538, Malo being the French pronunciation of his name. Despite its advantageous location, the city did not attain real prominence until it was adopted by corsairs, who, growing rich and powerful, fortified it against their enemies both on the sea and on land. By 1590, the St. Malo corsairs had become so influential that they dared to declare the city a republic independent of both the federal and the municipal Breton governments.
Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, St. Malo acquired considerable wealth, not only from its maritime trade between the Americas and Europe but from its so-called Newfoundlanders, whose fleets fished for cod in the chill waters off the east coast of Canada. However successful these intrepid fishermen were, the bulk of the city's riches and fame was the result of the constant raids of its feared corsairs.
If one knew what to look for, St. Malo's rich and storied history was visible all around in the stone houses, the fortified walls, the brightly colored corsair pennants. Striding along cobbled streets, Jenny and Bravo reached the formidable seawall and now mounted the stone stairs set into its inside face. Gaining the top, they looked out onto the Gulf of St. Malo, beyond which were the gray-blue backs of Jersey and the Channel Islands, rising from the channel like breaching whales. The day was fair and what little breeze came to them was as soft and downy as a feather pillow. The summer sun blazed down from a clear sky. Because of yesterday's rain the normal heat haze had not yet reasserted itself. Every object stood out, sharp as a knife blade, and the vista seemed endless, the thick swath of sun-dazzle as solid-seeming as a pale stone road through a cobalt wood.
'There,' Bravo said, pointing. 'That's the spot!'
'But for miles and miles there's only water here,' Jenny said. 'Could your father have etched the wrong coordinates?'
Bravo shook his head. 'He knew just what he was doing.'
'Then how do you explain this?' Her arms swept out to encompass the infinite waterscape. 'And what about the last four numbers-one, five, three, zero-what do they signify?'
Bravo glanced at his watch. 'I don't know about you, but I'm hungry. Let's go down and have lunch at that pretty little cafe we passed.'
Jenny looked at him sharply. 'You know what the last number sequence means, don't you?' She shaded her eyes from the sun with the flat of her hand. The color had returned to her face, the spray of freckles across her nose clearly visible again. 'Tell me.'
'I don't want to spoil the surprise,' he said with a laugh.
