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8.

"Pointe du Raz," John said, with a sweep of his arm, "the farthest point west in continental Europe. Somewhere beyond this sea is your own, your native land."

"Very nice. I'm still hungry," I pointed out. Grand gestures are all well and good, but (as I'd been bringing up for the past half-hour), breakfast had been a long time and several cities ago. My tour-guide, who'd emerged from the hotel in Vannes as his normal, blond self at last, had bought food in Quimper after I'd racked up my final cathedral, Saint Corentin. I wanted to eat. From what I could see, this must-see of the dedicated sightseer consisted of a parking lot and a gravel road.

"I'd expected better than bellowing for Brotzeit from someone with such an overactive imagination," he said, tugging on the parking brake. "Schmidt has been a bad influence. You have no romance left in your soul."

I snorted. "Schmidt's so brimming with the 'romantical feelings' we need mops. But I'll think about acquiring some after there's food in my stomach."

"As you're the most concerned with the food's welfare, I'll graciously allow you to carry it." I didn't mind being porter for the day again; the sun had finally decided to put in another guest appearance, and the wind wasn't that cold. I wasn't unhappy to be there.

We crunched down the graveled road toward the cliff, and John contented himself with strolling along beside me with a tarp. We stood aside to let a few helmeted cyclists labor their way past us, and John pointed out where he'd like to set up our base camp. Wind aside, there were worse places for an impromptu picnic.

While he fussed with the bags, I hiked closer to the edge of the cliff to look out at the lighthouse. Below me I could hear shouts, and saw a few teenagers picking their way downward toward the Atlantic, which was bashing itself furiously on the rocks. I have certain problems with underground places, which was why I'd firmly struck that tumulus at Carnac off our sightseeing list, but high places don't bother me a great deal -- I'm fond of climbing on things. Need the wall of your compound scaled in a daring escape attempt? I'm available at reasonable rates.

"So I want to go down there, too," I announced after I'd returned back to the spot where John had dropped a tarp on the springy turf plants. I collapsed down beside him. "They've got life preservers fastened to the cliff face, so that means they expect people to go down."

"I am unsurprised that you draw the wrong conclusion from that message," he said. "Please bear in mind that I've no intention of diving in to haul out your corpse."

I stuck out my tongue. I picked up one of the baguettes and idly bounced it off my toe while I watched him root through the collection of bags. "What're you looking for?" I asked finally.

"I was certain there was a knife here somewhere . . ."

"Oh, should have said something. I've got a Swiss army knife in my purse," I said, reaching for it.

"I thought you wanted to eat this week," he said. He tends to exaggerate like that. It only took me eight minutes to find it.

"What is this?" he said wonderingly, picking up one of the items I'd dumped to get it out of the way.

"Cat toy," I said, snatching it out of his hand and stuffing it back into my purse.

"And these?" He poked at the pile warily.

"Electrician's tape, seam ripper, tire-pressure gage for my Audi, and none-of-your-business. Hands off." I began to return my myriad useful items to my bag while he occupied himself with the bread. "Come the revolution," I crooned to myself, "you decadent types will regret not being a practical peasant like me."

"Au contraire. Come the revolution, I shall be far way and gathering speed while you're still wedging in the kitchen sink."

He munched away on bread and paté while I continued to scoop loose items back where they belonged. Then my fingers wrapped around something unfamiliar. I picked it up, and turned it over in my hands. It was something longish, narrow, and heavy wrapped in a piece of padded cloth. It felt like a flashlight, but mine was smaller. "This isn't mine," I decided.

"I wonder that you can tell," he remarked dryly. "But you're correct. My addition to your fascinating collection."

"Oh?" I unwrapped the cloth -- and caught my breath. I'd never seen anything like this before, not outside a museum or private collection. It was a cylinder, and grimy as it was, I could tell that it was gold. The surface was covered with an intricate, swirling design that brought to mind the roadside calvaries. Gold wires had been carefully worked into imitations of chain-stitching and fused over the surface to make it resemble the decorations on those women's costumes in the museums. On what must have been the cap, four small cabochon stones had been fixed. I rubbed one, and saw red, both literally and figuratively.

I knew where this must have come from.

However, this was John, after all, so it pays to be certain. I resisted the urge to press in a thumbnail into the metal to test it; I had a more accurate method for authenticating this particular piece. I hauled myself to my feet, faced the drop-off to the cliff, and jerked my arm back into my best first-baseman's wind-up. I'd done my time with the summer softball league when I was in high school, so my best wasn't bad.

One glance told me all I needed to know. John's face had gone gray.

Score for the home team. Satisfied, I dropped back down to the tarp. "So it's real," I said. "Huh."

"What's this?" he said acidly. "This past week, I'd gained the impression that you art historians could feel the aura of authenticity through your fingertips. Was I wrong?"

I tutted at him, and went back to examining it. "It doesn't really resemble the predominate trends of the period."

"No, it doesn't. Hence additional value," he said. "However, if you really don't want it --" He reached for it.

I cradled it to my ample bosom, ready to shriek in my most maidenly fashion for the other tourists wandering around in our vicinity. But his movement lapsed into a resigned shrug; then he stretched out on his back and tucked his hands behind his head, turning his attention to a deep scrutiny of the cloud patterns.

One of the week's minor mysteries was now solved. "It's too corroded to take off the cap. I wonder if there's anything inside?"

"No idea," he said, with a trace of sulkiness. "But I'd recommend a proper cleaning before attempting it."

I nodded absently, then I leaned over to ruffle his hair. "Do I get to hear the rest? How did you know it was there?"

That was when he told me the story of a friend of his ("We were at school together"), who'd had an extended sojourn in that same village when he was quite young, courtesy misunderstood directions, a mother's stubborn refusal to turn back, a father's placid disinclination to insist otherwise, and, ultimately, an engine that decided the matter by going on strike. "It was not," he informed me gravely, "uncommon for those parents to find themselves such situations. You might even say it was typical. Or so I am given to understand."

"I see."

"Yes, well, our intrepid hero found himself bored and at loose end for a rather extended period of time, and, er, amused himself in the usual fashion."

"In other words, this would be a little fiend whose mum wasn't controlling him?"

"Er, one might put it in those words."

"One did put it in those words, I seem to recall."

"Oh. Yes. Fair enough."

The young fiend, or rather friend, in question had, while prying where he shouldn't have been in the first place, noticed that a panel well within his reach was slightly off-center and slightly loose, and had in the natural course of events found something tucked within it of interest.

"And what did he do then?" I prompted.

"He put it back. He adjusted the panel so that it served the purpose for which it had been intended. He felt disinclined to share this particular discovery with anyone else." John sighed. "Or so I am informed. Hence my own more recent visit to the environs, to discern whether this tale of youthful derring-do was still relevant to modern concerns."

"I . . . see." I thought maybe I did, too. I could understand the appeal of having a secret like this, something that no one else knew. "Your friend was very kind, putting it back where he'd found it."

"Was he?" he asked. "He was being dragged about by parents who'd no doubt have questioned his latest acquisition."

"Still, I think so." That this 'friend' had never gone back later to waft it away for a quick sale also said something, but I wasn't sure what just yet. That I was sitting here now holding it in my hands said something else in addition.

"So now you're a patron of small villages in the middle of nowhere."

"Not as such." He laughed. "I think of myself as a patron of professors who look smashing in negligees."

"And how many professors would that be?"

"At latest count? One. Should I be working harder?"

"Your continuing existence depends on your laxity in this matter."

"I'll take that under advisement."

I set the cylinder aside, and went back to chewing reflectively on my piece of baguette. "Now I wonder if anything else was hidden in that furniture," I mused aloud.

"Who can say? This was once a fairly wealthy region -- enough to indulge in the sort of competitive church building that you've seen." John shrugged. "In any event, I believe you understand the full parameters of the problem. These days, the mere hint of a find sets people to digging up fields and draining bogs. Objects such as these are worth a great deal more than any furniture that might be hiding them." He gave me a long, hard look. "That Schrank that darling Friedl and her inamorato Freddy chopped to splinters in Bad Steinbach might serve as an excellent exempla. You seemed to be shocked by that outcome; I can't pretend that I was."

I groaned -- point taken. That Schrank stood in my own home only after the painstaking restoration efforts of Herr Müller. I'd doomed that particular antique to a future as firewood by incautiously expressing too much interest in front of two greedy people who were trying to locate a cache of gold jewelry. Gold in any form tends to trigger a descent of the buzzards. "If I return this to them . . . they'd want to display it. They don't have anything like the security to keep it safe."

"Naturally. They wouldn't have to worry about it for much longer after that, no," he said, finishing my thought. "The next time it disappears will be the last time." He pulled out his wallet and sorted out a slip of paper. "No one is aware that it was there, so I foresee no difficulty with you simply taking it home to enjoy. To that end, here you are: the receipt for your find. Provenance established, all above board and proper."

I stared at the paper. I'd seen it before; it was the receipt from that junk shop in Rennes for the leather case. The proportions weren't exactly the same, but if I dissembled the leather and discarded what had been underneath, no one would question it. People were always finding valuable articles and rare documents tucked into the backs of old frames or lining old trunks. This wouldn't be any different would it? The light dawned, a harsh, unforgiving glare.

"No, I -- wait." I rubbed my forehead, trying to sort this out. I wasn't trying to rationalize keeping this myself, though I knew he was right about everything else. But if I kept it, how did that make me any better than one of the thieves who might steal from a display? And if there wasn't some extra special penalty involved somewhere for stealing from a church, there ought to be. "This isn't yours to give."

"Isn't it? If anyone else had known it was there, they'd have taken it out long ago. And I do assure you no one will think to verify the small details. Whether the fit with that case is exact will matter not in the least. In these instances, what they wish to believe matters far more."

"That's . . . not the point." What mattered more to me was finding pieces. The glow of discovery. The authentication. Releasing the first journal articles. Even if I'd found the Riemenschneider reliquary by myself, without any witnesses, I wouldn't have spirited it off for myself. The same would have been true with the Trojan gold or any of that lost horde in Karlsholm. However . . . maybe if I were truly being honest with myself, I'd admit to that covetous thrill of holding something like this in my hands. Yes, I did work in a museum, but even I couldn't indiscriminately fling open the cases and finger the displays whenever I liked. Not if I wanted to keep my job, which I very much did. But this particular feeling wasn't one I was proud of; boiled down to essentials, it was the same motivation of the private collectors who paid people like John to steal the contents of our museums.

So I suppose that it came as no surprise that he'd recognized it in me; he'd seen it before in so many others. Which led me to an even less pleasant notion. I shifted around so that I had a good view of John. "Is this supposed to be some sort of test? Is that what you're doing?"

"A test?" He looked surprised, and, for once, I thought it might not have been feigned. "No. Not at all. But you might say that I am curious."

"Curious about what?"

"About you," he said simply.

"Me?" I squeaked. "Unlike some people, I'm a totally open book!"

"Are you?" he said, looking away. "On the face of it, you're honest, hardworking, loyal to a fault, and kind to dumb animals who've done sod all to deserve it." John wasn't particularly fond of either Caesar or Clara, and the latter had made it clear her feelings were bloodily mutual. "But I've also observed that you won't hesitate to pass yourself off under false pretenses or fabricate tales or put the screws to others when it's to your benefit."

For a moment I was furious -- but only for a moment. He really had seen me at my worst. I'd told John exactly how I'd gotten Schmidt to offer me a job. I'd forced an admission out of John that he hadn't been willing to make -- without offering up the consolation prize of those same words from myself. He was right, wasn't he?

I found myself surreptitiously twisting that ring on my finger. How well did I really know him? I knew that I wanted him -- we'd had several trysts in which we barely left the hotel rooms. Otherwise, the most time we'd spent in each other's company we'd both been in varying degrees of mortal peril; even now, my memories seemed to have a suspect sheen of adrenaline-fueled glamour. This past week had been the longest peril-free period I'd ever spent in his company. Hadn't I felt relieved to find out that we got on well together, bar the usual squabbling?

If that was the case for me, why had I assumed it would be different for him?

"So at times one wonders how you look at the world," he was saying. "There's no passing or failing grade involved with that, either way." Then he picked up my hand and lifted it to his lips. "Well, I leave it to you. As for the rest, "'You by me, And I by you; this is your hand in mine, And side by side we sit: all's true.'" he recited. "There now. I think that much we can agree on."