The English Girl: A Novel

olive oil stood next to a pair of burning candles. “Won’t you sit down?”
    “I’d rather not.”
    “You still don’t believe?”
    “I believe,” he said.
    “Then why won’t you sit? Surely you’re not afraid. Your mother named you Gabriel for a reason. You have the strength of God.”
    Gabriel felt as though a stone had been laid over his heart. He wanted to leave at once but curiosity made him stay. After helping the old woman into her chair, he sat opposite her and dipped his finger into the oil. Upon striking the surface of the water, the three drops shattered into a thousand before disappearing. The old woman nodded gravely, as if the test had confirmed her darkest fears. Then, for the second time, she took Gabriel’s hand in hers.
    “You’re burning,” she said. “Are you sure you’re not unwell?”
    “I was in the sun.”
    “At Christopher’s house,” she said knowingly. “You drank his wine. You have his gun on your hip.”
    “Go on.”
    “You’re looking for a man, the man who killed the English girl.”
    “Do you know who he is?”
    “No,” she said. “But I know where he is. He’s hiding in the east, in the city of heretics. You must never set foot there. If you do,” she said firmly, “you will die.”
    She closed her eyes, and after a moment began to weep softly, a sign that the evil had flowed from Gabriel’s body into hers. Then, with a nod, she instructed Gabriel to repeat the test of the oil and the water. This time the oil coalesced into a single drop. The old woman smiled in a way that Gabriel had never seen before.
    “What do you see?” asked Gabriel.
    “Are you sure you want to know?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    “I see a child,” she replied without hesitation.
    “Whose child?”
    She patted Gabriel’s hand. “Go back to the villa,” she said. “Your friend Christopher has returned to Corsica.”
    W hen Gabriel arrived at the villa, he found Keller standing before the open refrigerator. He wore a dark gray suit, wrinkled from travel, and a white dress shirt open at the neck. He withdrew the half-drunk bottle of Sancerre, gave it a demonstrative shake, and then dumped several inches of the wine into a glass.
    “Rough day at the office, honey?” asked Gabriel.
    “Brutal.” He held up the bottle. “You?”
    “I’ve had quite enough.”
    “I can see that.”
    “How was your trip?”
    “The travel was hell,” said Keller, “but everything else went smoothly.”
    “Who was he?”
    Keller drank some of his wine without answering and asked Gabriel where he had been. When Gabriel told him that he had been to see the signadora , Keller smiled.
    “We’ll make a Corsican of you yet.”
    “It wasn’t my idea,” explained Gabriel.
    “What did she want to tell you?”
    “It was nothing,” said Gabriel. “Just the usual hocus-pocus about the wind in the willows.”
    “Then why are you so pale?”
    Gabriel made no response other than to place Keller’s gun carefully on the countertop.
    “From what I hear,” Keller said, “you’re going to need that.”
    “What do you hear?”
    “I hear you’re going on a hunting trip.”
    “Are you willing to help me?”
    “Frankly,” said Keller, raising his wineglass to the light, “I expected you a long time ago.”
    “I had a painting to finish.”
    “By whom?”
    “Bassano.”
    “Studio of Bassano or Bassano Bassano?”
    “A little of both.”
    “Nice,” said Keller.
    “How quickly can you be ready to move?”
    “I have to check my calendar, but I suspect I’ll be ready to go first thing in the morning. But you should know,” he added, “that Marseilles is crawling with flics at the moment. And half of them are looking for us.”
    “Which is why we’re not going anywhere near Marseilles, at least for now.”
    “So where are we going?”
    Gabriel smiled. “We’re going home.”

32
    CORSICA–LONDON
    T hey had dinner in the village, then Gabriel settled into a guest suite on the lower level of the villa. The walls were white, the bedding was white, the armchair and ottoman were covered in sailcloth. The room’s lack of color disturbed his sleep. That night, when he ran to Madeline in his dreams, he ran across an endless field of snow. And when she scratched at the back of her hand, the blood that flowed from the wound was the color of heavy cream.
    In the morning they caught the first flight to Paris and then flew on to Heathrow. Keller cleared customs on a French passport, which