Elementals - A. S. Byatt [15]
She told Nils Isaksen then, more or less, the story of the day in the Narrow House, and of Tony’s fall, and of how she had left her life behind and come to Nîmes.
‘So you see,’ she finished. ‘You buried your wife, under that stone, and I – I walked away. I did not see why I should not walk away.’
There was a long silence. Patricia was filled with dread, that was the word, by the uncanny aptness of the man in the ice. She told Nils Isaksen how she had fled; she expected, perhaps hoped for, judgement. But he appeared to be struck dumb by her story.
‘I did not think I did wrong,’ she said. ‘I loved him, and he died, and that was an end. Enough of an end. But it feels wrong, terribly wrong. Not to the children, which is what you might think, leaving them to – look after – things. But to him. I left him.’
Nils sat looking out of the window.
‘What happened, in the rest of the story?’
‘The princess was found. In one of those castles with a fence where the skulls of past suitors are on every post. She set the young man three tasks – things to keep safe overnight, a pair of gold scissors, a ball of gold thread – which she stole back. She was bewitched, she was the lover of a troll to whom she flew every night on the back of a ram. But the Companion made himself invisible, and followed, and seized the scissors and thread, and returned them, so in the morning the boy triumphed after all. So then she said, bring me tomorrow what I am thinking of at this moment. And he said, how can I know that? And he despaired. But the Companion followed again, he followed again, and heard her tell the ugly troll, it was his beloved head she was thinking of. So of course, the Companion decapitated the troll with the magic sword, and brought back his head. And the next day, the boy threw it down before her. And then she had to marry him. And then the spell had to be broken, with alternate baths in milk and in ashes, I remember, certainly with bathing her skin. And then she became his good wife. And the Companion went away, and after five years returned to claim his reward. So the young king gave him half of everything he had. And the Companion said, there is one thing more, born since I left. And the young king and queen brought out their son, and the young king raised his sword to divide the boy, as justice required. And the Companion held back his hand, and said, no, you owe me nothing, for I am the spirit of that man who was frozen in the block of ice. And now I may go to my rest in peace. It is a dark story, Mrs Nimmo.’
‘Not altogether.’
‘You are right, Mrs Nimmo. You have done wrong. To the living, and to the dead. It can be set right, I think. You can return and set it right.’
‘Thank you,’ said Patricia gravely. And kissed his cool, bony cheek.
She did not sleep, that night, but lay awake, still and calm, visited by hypnagogic moons and stars and waves lapping on seashores, or skies lit with flaring curtains of blue and crimson light, as though she had stepped, or fallen, into some world of mythical absolutes. When she came down in the morning, Nils Isaksen was nowhere to be seen. The hotel lobby and dining-room were full of people and life. It was the time of the corrida, and the matadors and their retinues were moving into the Impérator Concorde. Two or three photographers lounged against pillars. Dark Spanish faces nodded ceremoniously to each other, as bundles of bright cloth and weapons went into the gilded lift-cage. Patricia paid them little attention. She went out and walked through the morning, fluid and automatic, from fountain to fountain, crocodile to clocktower, Memnon’s head to the naïf bronze lovers. She avoided the Arènes, as usual. In the evening the town was packed with crowds of festive Nîmois; there were bursts of music and fireworks. Patricia avoided it all. She was not in that world. She looked in the restaurant and the garden for Nils Isaksen, and he was nowhere to be seen. On the first day she thought easily that she could wait – time had become a coloured cave of light in