Resurrectionists (53 page)

“Maisie!” Cathy had opened the door and grabbed her in a hug before Maisie knew what was happening.

“Come in. It’s great to see you.”

“Hi,” Maisie said, extricating herself from the hug, not cracking a smile. She closed the door behind her. Didn’t sit down.

Cathy was searching on her book shelf. “I’ve got something for you.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of a book and handed it to Maisie.

Maisie shoved the piece of paper in her bag without looking at it. Probably some new age ten commandments where “Thou shalt not keep a secret”

was top of the list.

“What’s up?” Cathy asked. “You look upset.”

“What did you tell Sarah about me and Sacha?”

Cathy’s blue eyes widened. A flush crept up her face. “What do you mean?”

“Sarah. Your sister.” Maisie worked to keep her voice cold. “She ran into Adrian in the supermarket and told him I was in love with somebody else.”

Cathy still didn’t answer. Obviously, she hadn’t anticipated that she’d be caught out.

“Have you any idea how much trouble you’ve

caused me?” Maisie asked.

“Oh, Maisie, I’m so sorry,” Cathy blurted at last.

“I mentioned it in passing – just that you had a bit of a crush on this guy – and Sarah should never have . . . I’m going to kill her. Honestly, I am.”

“If you’d never told her anything, she couldn’t have passed it on to Adrian. And don’t give me this

‘mentioned it in passing’ bullshit. You and your sister –

with all your new-age-hippy-bullshit-love-everybody crap that you go on with – you and your sister got so involved in gossip you didn’t even realise you could hurt someone. Not very fucking Zen is it?”

“Maisie. Maisie, I’m so sorry,” Cathy said again, reaching a hand out to touch her arm. Maisie flinched away from her, took a step back. “Was Adrian really angry?”

“I’ve been ordered to return home.” Maisie’s voice broke. She did her best not to cry. “He wants me home and I’m not finished here yet.”

“But Maisie, what are you doing here anyway?

You’d be better off at home. You’ve –”

“Shut up!” Maisie shouted. “How dare you tell me how to run my life?”

“Now don’t get yourself all worked up,” Cathy said. Her reasonable tone was as intolerable as fingernails on a blackboard.

“You’re incredible. Do you understand what I came here to tell you? You betrayed my trust. You are not my friend.”

“Maisie, please try to calm down.”

“No,” Maisie spluttered, and the tears came and she could feel her whole body grow hot with anger. “I won’t calm down.”

“I’ve said sorry, what more do you want me

to say?”

“Goodbye,” Maisie said. “I’m going back to

Solgreve.”

“Come on, Maisie. Let me make you a cup of tea and we’ll talk reasonably, and you can stay over. You can’t have come all this way just to yell at me.”

“I did. And now I’m going to get on the next bus home. And I never want to see you again. And next time you talk to your sister tell her I never liked her. I never liked either of you, and if you weren’t the only person in this hemisphere that I know, I would never have called you.” Maisie wrenched the door open and stalked out.

“Jeez,” Cathy said in an exasperated gasp. “No wonder you’ve got no fucking friends.”

Behind her, Maisie heard the door slam.

A bus was leaving for Whitby just as Maisie arrived at the train station. She hopped aboard, leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. In a few minutes they were pulling out into traffic. Cathy was right. It was no wonder she had no friends and it was a long way to come just to yell at her. Now she had a long bus ride home to contemplate what she’d done. About half an hour into the trip she remembered the piece of paper Cathy had given her. She pulled it out of her bag and unfolded it. It was a photocopy of a page from a book:
Late Medieval Catholic History
in England.
The entry that Cathy had copied for her was headed, “Aaron Flood.” She gasped and scanned it quickly.

Aaron Elijah Flood, b. 1486, d. unknown. Born in England and studied divinity and medicine at University of Cologne. Appointed court secretary to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, where he met Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim. Travelled to Rome in 1501. Ordained in Catholic Church 1508. Rose quickly to cardinal under Leo X. Had many serious disagreements with the pope, who demoted him by stages between 15181520. All accounts hold that Flood was eccentric and uncontrollable. He refused to give up his red cardinal’s dress, even when sent to Solgreve Abbey, North Yorkshire. Finally excommunicated in 1521. No records of his life exist beyond his excommunication. Maisie folded the paper carefully and turned it over and over in her hands. The same Flood? He told Virgil he had been born in the same year as Agrippa, and here was confirmation that they had been

contemporaries. But how could he still be alive in 1794? And if he was still alive then, could he still be alive now?

Her hands stilled.
Please, not that.

But she had seen too much weird stuff to dismiss it as an impossibility. Now she was more desperate than ever to find Virgil’s letter. She gazed through the window of the bus. The moors were speeding past under the darkening sky. A feeling of weariness settled over her. What did it matter? What did it matter what had happened over two hundred years ago? What did it matter how Sybill had died? She was dead and knowing wouldn’t bring her back. What did it matter what mysterious secret was being kept in Solgreve, because in a mere few weeks she would be back in the sunny sub-tropics, under aching blue skies, and the village would seem like the furthest place in the world from her. She no longer had Cathy as a friend here. She knew she should stop seeing Sacha. The cat didn’t even really like her. Cathy’s words came back to her:
What are you doing here anyway? You’d be better off
at home.
Tired nausea stirred in her stomach. Damn, what if Cathy was right?

By the time the bus pulled in at Whitby it was dark. Maisie thought about dropping in on Sacha but decided against it. A few days without seeing him would do her good. So she was surprised when she stepped off the bus and headed for a taxi, to hear him calling her.

“Maisie!”

She looked around. His van was parked around the corner from the bus station. He had rolled down the window and called out. Bewildered, she walked towards the van.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Get in. I’ll explain on the way.”

“On the way where?”

“To Solgreve.”

“You don’t have to give me a lift. I can catch a taxi.”

“Just hop in. It’s cold with the window down.”

She walked around the front of the van and got in.

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“Cathy called me.”

“Cathy?” Maisie was stunned. “What did she

say?”

He started the van and pulled into the main street.

“She said that you were really upset when you left and that she was worried about you.”

“Did she tell you why I was upset?”

“She said you two had a fight.” He glanced at her quickly. “Is that right?”

“Yes. I can’t believe she phoned you. How did she even know your number?”

“I’m the only Lupus in the phone book.”

“I can’t believe she phoned you,” Maisie said again. “I’d have thought she’d realised she’d interfered enough. Bitch.”

“Temper.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Maisie leaned back in her seat, arms crossed in front of her.

They drove in silence for a while. Maisie stared out her window, boiling with anger, squirming with embarrassment. Cathy had probably sent Sacha to pick her up just to assuage her own conscience. Maisie hated that Sacha had been brought into such a petty, trivial quarrel. It demeaned him.

“Maisie?” Sacha ventured when they were about halfway home.

“Yeah?” Wary. Trying to be cool.

“Cathy told me what you fought about.”

Vertigo. “She what?”

“She told me.”

“What did she . . . what did she say?”

He kept his eyes straight ahead, and Maisie realised, horrified, that he was embarrassed. “That Adrian’s upset with you because of me.”

“That’s right,” Maisie said quietly.

“That she told her sister you and I were . . . you know.”

“That’s right,” Maisie said again. Couldn’t think of what else to say.

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing.”

Absolutely nothing. “I don’t know where Cathy got the idea from.”

He said, “Mmm,” in a non-committal way and kept driving, silent. All her weariness, all her yearning seemed to be rising like a huge bubble in her throat. She felt she would scream. Instead, she picked at her fingernails by the dashboard light, hating them for being all bitten and ragged. It had started sleeting lightly outside. When they pulled into St Mary’s Lane, it had turned to snow.

“Let me come in and make you a cup of tea,”

Sacha said.

“No, really, Sacha. I’m so embarrassed about this. I don’t want to put you out any further.”

“Please, Maisie. Let me come in.” He parked the van and turned the engine off, turning to her. “I know you’re acting cool because of your fight with Adrian, but Cathy and her sister and Adrian and all the gossip between them aren’t really anything to do with us. With you and me.” Gently, he pressed a finger into her chest and then his own. Her skin started to swarm with bright, warm colours.

“Okay,” she said, “come in.”

She led him inside and he went to the kitchen while she lit a fire in the lounge. She joined him in the kitchen a few minutes later. The kettle had boiled and he was pouring water into the teapot. The bubble was rising in her throat again. The tiny movement of the tendons under the skin of his hand as he replaced the teapot lid made her ache. Weary. Yearning.

Don’t cry again.

He reached for two mugs. Turned to her. “Want sugar?” he asked. “I’ve forgotten how you have it.”

She found herself staring at his lips, at that tiny, flat space. She kept staring and he didn’t say anything. She reached out her right hand, index finger, slowly. Pressed the tip of her finger to his lip.

“Maisie,” he said. Like that. No tone.

She let her hand drop to his neck. His skin was warm. Some kind of mad courage had seized her. She leaned in, face up to kiss him. Mortifying her, he flinched away, took two steps to the left.

This couldn’t be happening.

“Maisie, there’s something I have to say,” Sacha started. And so this is how it was going to be. She had finally crossed the line, tried to claim the kiss that she ached for, and he was going to reject her. Her disappointment dropped like a black stone in her stomach. Her hands trembled and she could barely keep her eyes from becoming moist with frustrated tears.

“I’m sorry, Sacha,” she said, before he could say anything else. She turned, but he caught her wrist.

“No, listen to me,” he said, warm fingers pressing into her skin. She looked up into his black eyes, couldn’t believe how impossibly perfect each eyelash was. “I want to say this. Don’t start with me if you don’t intend to finish.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, don’t kiss me unless you’re prepared to keep going.” He averted his eyes, diffident. “It’s all or nothing.”

At moments like these, Maisie knew, people were supposed to flush, to turn warm with desire. Instead, she felt the blood drain from her face, as though terrified. Even though she had imagined it a million times, in reality the magnitude of his suggestion was overwhelming. Maisie felt her lips move but no words were coming out.

“What is it?” he asked.

“All,” she said, finally, feeling herself take a step into a canyon. “I’ll have it all.”

Going into his embrace was like collapsing, swooning. He caught her with warm, firm arms. Before she had a chance to relish the wait, his lips were upon hers. Everything about him was hot – his skin, his tongue, the inside of his mouth – and the heat was permeating her, saturating her. A stark contrast to the freezing wind outside which was shaking the treetops and driving snow against the windows.

Maisie’s flesh seemed to be alive and moving languidly, meltingly, across muscles and bones. Sacha’s hands ventured down her back, pressed into the curve at the bottom of her spine, lightly across her buttocks, around to her hips. He pulled her hips hard against his own and she could feel his erection beneath his jeans. A long-held breath shuddered out of her, rattling up past her ribs and making her shiver. He caught her breath in his mouth, little kisses on her top lip, her bottom lip, then another full pressing-down of his mouth, his tongue seeking hers.

Hands everywhere, he turned her around, pushed her hips up against the sink. His lips were on her neck, his right hand taking in the weight of first one breast, then the other. His fingers gliding, slight friction from the cotton, over her nipples. She had started to ache, deep and low inside. His other hand was drifting down to her thighs, rucking up her skirt, hot fingers on her skin and then on the outside of her underwear, tentatively touching her.

“You’re damp,” he said, a smile in his voice.

“What do you expect? I’ve been waiting six weeks for this.”

“It’s sexy,” he said, “you’re sexy.” His fingers edged under the elastic of her knickers; one, then two pushed deep inside her. She let her head drop back, her eyes closed.

“Oh, god,” she said.

He kissed her again, his fingers still inside her. Unbearable desire threatened to shake loose every nerve in her body. He was inching down her

underwear, but she didn’t want to do it like this, against the kitchen sink. None of her fantasies had involved the kitchen sink.

“Can we lie down?” she said, close to his ear.

“Sure.” He took a step back, reached for her hand, and guided her to the lounge room. His mattress still lay there in front of the fire. They stopped in front of it, reached out to unbutton her blouse. She stood, stupefied – literally made stupid – as he eased her out of her blouse and bra, arms encircling her waist to unzip her skirt and let it fall, pushing down her knickers. She stepped lightly out of her clothes and he pulled her against him; he still fully dressed, she completely naked.