The Mayan Codex

9

‘The White Horse Inn? You’re staying at the White Horse inn?’

‘Why is that so strange?’ Calque was concentrating on his driving – he was clearly unused to a manual gear change.

‘Don’t you realize you’ll be paying fall rates?’

‘Fall rates? What are those?’

‘Christ, Calque. Didn’t you hear anything I said to you back there in front of the garage? It’s when the inns and guest houses pump up their prices for the leaf peepers coming in to see the fall colours. You pay maybe 75 per cent over the usual odds.’

Calque shrugged. ‘It was not my idea. It was that of my companion.’

‘Your companion? You’ve come out here with a girlfriend?’

‘In a manner of speaking. Yes.’

Sabir shook his head. He screwed himself nervously around in his seat.

‘It’s all right, Sabir. We aren’t being followed.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘I’m a professional. I’ve been watching all the way. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll stick to the public rooms. We just need to talk, that’s all.’

The two men got out of Calque’s car. The ride to the inn hadn’t taken them more than eight minutes in toto.

Sabir nodded to the desk clerk as they walked through the lobby.

‘They know you here, then?’

‘Calque, I’ve lived here all my life. I was born maybe three miles down the road.’

‘It’s nice to belong someplace.’ Calque’s attention was somewhere else, however. He had seen Lamia seated on one of the lobby sofas, near to an open fire. ‘Come with me. I want you to meet someone.’

When he first caught sight of Lamia’s face Sabir flinched backwards, as though he’d inadvertently stumbled into an electric fence.

Calque turned towards him, shocked. ‘You two already know each other?’

Lamia was staring down at the floor. She was clearly mortified by Sabir’s reaction to her.

Sabir took a deep breath. ‘No. No. We’ve never met. I’m sorry. It was a bit of a shock.’

Lamia looked up. The undamaged part of her face was still flushed from the effect of Sabir’s reaction. ‘I know I’m not pretty to look at, Mr Sabir. But few people respond to me in quite the way you did.’

Sabir could feel Calque’s critical gaze eating through the small of his back. ‘It’s not your face. Please don’t think that.’

‘Then what is it?’

Sabir shook his head. ‘I’ve seen you in a dream. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s true.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Sabir turned entreatingly towards Calque. ‘Maybe the Captain hasn’t explained to you what happened to me earlier this summer? There’s no reason why, I suppose.’

With a downward thrust of his arm, Calque indicated that Sabir should sit. He was glaring at Sabir as though, given half the chance, he would gladly have smashed one of the hotel chairs over his head. ‘May I introduce Lamia de Bale? Adam Sabir.’

Sabir didn’t sit down. He simply stood and stared down at Calque. ‘De Bale? She’s one of the de Bales? Jesus Christ, Calque. Are you out of your mind?’

Calque made another sharp movement with his hand. ‘Do I look as though I am out of my mind? Do I look as though I am subject to sudden sharp rushes of blood to my brain? Mademoiselle de Bale has been of extraordinary service to me in recent days. She has, as it were, fallen foul of the rest of her family. Her life, like yours, is in imminent danger. So please sit down and make a pretence, at least, of being civilized.’

Sabir dropped onto the chair behind him. He couldn’t take his eyes off Lamia’s face. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve heard of you. Heard your name mentioned. I know who you are now.’

Lamia let an embarrassed hand flutter in front of her cheek. ‘Well that’s all right then. Would you like me to veil myself, perhaps? Like a Muslim woman? Then you wouldn’t have to stare at me quite so hard.’

Sabir shook his head violently. ‘I’m sorry. Desperately sorry. But it’s not what you’re thinking. Ever since early this summer – ever since I was involved with your brother…’

‘Ever since you killed my brother, you mean?’

Sabir glanced away. To a third party it might have looked as though he were searching for an elusive waiter. But Sabir was merely trying to regain his sang-froid. To stop the sudden rush of panic that threatened to overwhelm him. To regain some measure of control over the still visceral memories of what Bale had done to him.

He turned back and met Lamia’s gaze full on. ‘Ever since I killed your brother, yes. That’s technically true. I did kill him. If I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed me. Where I come from that’s called justifiable homicide, Mademoiselle de Bale.’

‘My name is Lamia, not Mademoiselle de Bale. And believe me, Mr Sabir, I don’t blame you in any way at all for killing my stepbrother. He was a rabid dog. And I hated him for it.’

Sabir felt as if he were floundering in an unfamiliar ocean, far out of his depth, in a rapidly encroaching riptide. ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry that it had to end that way.’

‘I am not.’

Sabir stared desperately at Calque. He no longer had the remotest idea what was expected of him. Or why Calque had brought him into this mess.

‘Your dream. You were telling us of your dream, Sabir.’

Sabir tried to gather himself together. ‘Yes. Yes I was.’ The words came out explosively, like a sneeze. ‘Ever since I was in the cellar. Or in the cesspit rather. Ever since I thought that I would suffocate to death, in other words, I have been having these dreams. Well, they’re nightmares, really. In which I’m quite literally torn apart.’ Sabir’s voice trailed off. He was making no sense and he knew it. ‘And then my head is eaten by a snake. Then I become the snake.’ He had begun to sweat. ‘It’s crazy. I really can’t describe it. But I have them pretty much every night. They’re so bad I can’t sleep. That’s how come your twin brothers didn’t get me when they broke into my house last night. I get claustrophobic – so most every night I check out of the main house and go over to sleep in the summer house. It’s open out there. I can see the sky. I can breathe.’

‘You mean they entered the house when you were already outside? In the garden hut?’

‘Yes. Crazy, isn’t it? I even left the back door unlocked. Later, when they switched on a light, thinking I wasn’t anywhere about, I managed to get the drop on them with my father’s empty shotgun.’

‘You managed to get the drop on them? With an empty shotgun?’ Calque seemed to be having difficulty conjuring up a sufficiently lurid image of the event. ‘You held up the de Bale twins with an empty shotgun?’

‘You see, no one can tell whether a shotgun is empty or not. It’s not like a revolver, where you can see the shells. Or lack of them.’

‘I understand the constitution of a shotgun, Sabir.’

‘Well, anyway, as part of this dream I see a woman. She has her back to me. You’ve got to imagine that I’m the snake by now, and I’m approaching her. My mouth is hanging open. I’m going to take this woman’s head in my mouth, just like the snake did with me. Then at the very last moment the woman turns around. And she has your face, Mademoiselle de Bale.’

‘You mean exactly? With my birthmark? With my blemish?’

‘Yes. She has a blemish, if that’s what you want to call it, just like yours. At first I thought it was blood. All along, really, I’ve thought it was blood.’

‘And now you realize it isn’t?’

‘Yes. Now I realize it isn’t.’ Sabir looked down. He understood only too well how badly he had hurt the woman. That he had damaged her in some invisible way. In his head, though, he was still torn between his horror that she was Achor Bale’s sister, and his fascination that she seemed to have rejected the de Bale camp and joined the side of the angels – e.g. him and Calque.

‘And what happens to this woman who looks so much like me? In your dream, I mean.’

Sabir closed his eyes. Then he opened them again and stared directly at Lamia. ‘She opens her mouth – wider even than the snake was able to open its mouth – and she swallows me whole.’