“Come through,” Señor Abeja said. He opened a rickety door at the back of the shop that led through to a tiny kitchen. Adam, Duncan and Morag were sitting at a table, sipping from small glasses. “I gave them lemon juice with brandy and honey. It’s good for shock.”
“Hi, sis,” Adam said.
Rachel moved quickly towards her brother. He was very pale and she could see blood on his chin. “You OK?” She looked across at Morag and Duncan. “You guys OK?” They nodded.
Gabriel turned to Adam. “What happened?”
“We were being followed,” Adam said. “I don’t know if it was someone from the Hope Project, or one of the … others.” He saw that the French boys were smiling. “What?”
“Bananas,” Jean-Luc said.
“Bananas,” Jean-Bernard echoed. They no longer seemed bothered about blocking the translation. “You forgot to ‘pay’ for the bananas.”
“Oh,” Adam said, reddening.
Gabriel walked across and laid a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “No harm in being careful,” he said.
“Yeah, well…” Adam rubbed at the small cut on his chin, then rubbed the bump on his head and looked down at the table to hide his embarrassment.
Rachel stepped towards him and knocked playfully on the top of his head with her knuckles. “That’s what happens when you let an eight-year-old loose in a car.”
“He just needs practice,” Morag said, and everyone laughed.
Señor Abeja’s house was a few streets away. Having watched from his window as the battered Seat was towed away, he shut up shop for the day and led them through the narrow back streets.
“I don’t think anyone knows we’re in Madrid,” Gabriel told him.
“I know you are in Madrid. And if I know, someone else may know. But you will be safe in my house for a while.”
As the French boys kicked an empty plastic bottle across the cobbles of the deserted road, Señor Abeja stopped in front of a green gate, took out a key and opened a little door within it. Rachel looked up at the tightly shuttered windows, joined together by a cobweb of telephone wires, that stretched high above her on either side of the street. The buildings looked as if they had their eyes shut: giving no sign of life to anyone on the outside.
Rachel gasped when the shopkeeper opened the little door and ushered them through into a fabulous, tiled courtyard. She guided Morag and Duncan through, then followed after him. Exposed staircases – their ornate metal banisters twisted like roots and branches – climbed up from the courtyard to whitewashed balconies on each floor. Palms, creepers and trailing plants gave the space a lushness, as though it was a secret jungle, hidden away, just a few metres off the busy street.
In the centre of the yard, quietly buzzing in the afternoon calm, stood nine beehives.
“My bees,” Señor Abeja said, proudly stating the obvious, as Gabriel and the three sets of twins stared around the fantastic courtyard. “Now, you must meet my mother. Afterwards you can get some rest, and later we will eat something together.”
“Sounds good,” Adam said. And as he and Rachel climbed the staircase up to the first floor, they noticed that, fired into the little tiles on either side, was the sign of the Triskellion.
Laura Sullivan walked towards Van der Zee’s office like a schoolgirl on her way to face the music. Worst of all, she was the one who would be expected to do the talking.
Word had come through that the children had been spotted in Madrid. News of an incident involving a car – apparently being driven by a small boy – had been picked up from police radio by Hope agents in Spain and quickly fled back. As soon as Laura had heard the report and the location, she had felt certain about where the children were headed. She’d rushed back to her computer to look at that line again, snaking down from Scotland and out across several countries, and she had been as sure as she could be. It wasn’t their final destination – that was still debatable – but it was definitely the next stop on their journey.
She’d have bet her life on it.
Van der Zee had called her almost immediately. He had been excited; insistent that now Laura had been handed another piece of the jigsaw, he was expecting a much clearer picture.
Expecting answers.
She slowed as she approached the door of his den and took a good long breath. She thought about Rachel and Adam and the boy with green eyes. Now she had to decide.
It wasn’t so much what she should tell Van der Zee, as if…
Señora Abeja was a round, bustling woman dressed head to toe in black. She would probably have appeared stern and somewhat frightening had her hair not been dyed an improbable shade of orange. Rachel guessed she was around the same age as her own grandmother had been and smiled to herself as she watched the old lady issue instructions to her son in machine-gun Spanish, gesturing with arthritic fingers as she fired out her orders.
“Salvador, fetch a clean tablecloth. The good linen, Salvador, and bring up some wine while you’re about it. The good Rioja … the Reserva! Salvador, slice some ham. The Ibérico, Salvador … we must have the best, and not too thick; you always slice it too thick…”
Sitting round the table in Señora Abeja’s salon, the twins watched, amused as the middle-aged man did his mother’s bidding. He had changed into a smart grey suit with a bow tie, and he tugged at his goatee beard or twisted the ends of his moustache as he went about his errands.
He glanced nervously at Gabriel, winked at Rachel and pinched Morag and Duncan’s cheeks as he filled the table with ham, wine, olives and bread until, finally, they were ready to eat. The French boys had been watching a loud game show on Señora Abeja’s old TV, but the food, beautifully laid out on large wooden platters, lured them to the table.
Only Gabriel stood away from the table, deep in thought on the balcony outside the room. Señora Abeja sheepishly beckoned him in, making “eating” gestures, then, gaining confidence, waving a variety of incoherent blessings over him. Finally, she grabbed him, pressed his face to her bosom and kissed the top of his head repeatedly. Gabriel looked more than a little relieved once he had sat down and everyone had started eating.
Rachel asked Señor Abeja about his bees, explaining that their friend in England, Jacob Honeyman, was a beekeeper. Abeja did not seem surprised, as if everyone had beekeeping friends. He told them excitedly that Spain had the biggest bee herd in Europe: about seven hundred billion strong. “That is about eighteen thousand bees for every person in the country.”
Morag gasped. “Where does everyone keep them?”
Abeja laughed. “Did you know that the earliest recorded beekeeping and honey gathering was here in Spain?” Everyone shook their heads, hanging on his every word. “It’s true. It is recorded in eight-thousand-year-old cave paintings.”
“Paintings of bees?” Morag asked.
Abeja nodded and turned to Gabriel, his enthusiastic demeanour changing in a moment. He looked sad suddenly; beaten down. “In the last few years, though, the bees have been dying…”
“Why?” Rachel asked.
Abeja shrugged and explained that entire colonies had been struck by a mystery disease he called desabejacion: debeeing. Some claimed it was pesticides, he said; some that it was caused by mobile phone waves. Others claimed that the ecosystem had been irreparably damaged by modern man.
“No big surprise,” Gabriel said.
Abeja shook his head sadly and told them that forty per cent of all Spain’s bees had been wiped out. “It is destroying my livelihood, and if it gets worse it will destroy everything.”
Adam looked unconvinced. “Everything?”
Jean-Luc looked at his brother, equally sceptical. “Je ne comprends pas…”
“There’s not much to understand: without bees there is no pollination,” Abeja said simply. “The bee makes food for us. The only animal that works so that we can eat. If bees die out, within four years, life on this planet will come to an end.”
It was conversation that came to an end; silen
ce descended like a shadow across the table, until Señora Abeja finally spoke up: telling her son that he was a miserable doom-monger and eagerly encouraging the children to carry on with their dinner.
Adam leant across to Rachel and whispered, “We could still eat meat, though, right? If all the bees … you know?”
“I guess so,” Rachel said.
“Except, what would the animals eat?”
“Looks like we should stop using mobile phones.”
The second glass of good, red wine that Señor Abeja had poured made Rachel feel warm inside. She felt her cheeks flush as she ate more of the delicious food that had been placed in front of her: a huge clay dish of yellow rice, tiny roasted peppers, meatballs and crisp legs of chicken. The French twins gobbled their food noisily and with enjoyment, as did Adam. Thanks to the wine, he was becoming even more chatty than usual.
“Best food I’ve ever eaten,” he said.
“Gracias,” Señora Abeja said.
“Delicious,” Morag chirped. Next to her, Duncan nodded, his mouth full.
“Better than anything in France,” Adam said. Jean-Luc looked up briefly from his chicken leg and made a gesture with his finger that Adam chose to ignore. “A toast!” Adam raised his glass in the air theatrically. “To Spain!”
Morag raised a glass too, though hers was only filled with water. “My favourite country in the world,” she said. “So far.”
Everyone raised their glasses, even Jean-Luc and Jean-Bernard, who grudgingly expressed their liking for the country. “Better than England anyway,” Jean-Bernard muttered to his brother in French.
“Or America,” Jean-Luc replied.
Señor Abeja and his mother beamed, delighted that their honoured guests were so clearly enjoying their hospitality. Señora Abeja blushed to the roots of her orange hair and her son told them all that they were very welcome.
He looked at Gabriel. “Especially you,” he said.
Gabriel appeared to pay no real attention. To have no interest in celebrating anything. Rachel thought that perhaps the wine had affected him too. He appeared distracted suddenly, his green eyes wandering as he stood up and spoke, more to himself than to anyone else.
“Listen to us all … chattering happily,” he said. “Getting on like a house on fire, aren’t we?”
Rachel could hear the anger creeping into his voice. She leant across and put a hand on his arm, but he did not seem to notice.
“This is what we exist for, what we should exist for anyway. The kindness of strangers. People who do not think just of themselves, but who think of individuals as part of a whole.”
On the other side of the table, the French boys exchanged a look. Rachel caught their thoughts; sensed their confusion as Gabriel ploughed on.
“People like Señor and Señora Abeja here, who behave like the bees they keep and care about so much. Working so that others can survive. Acting for the good of the hive, always.”
Rachel thought she saw tears brimming in Gabriel’s eyes – just in that second before his voice dropped to a whisper and he looked down at the table.
“Hurt one of them and you hurt them all,” he said. “Hurt one of us … and you hurt us all.”
Señor Abeja’s face was serious once again. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak, but a look from Gabriel made it clear that he should wait.
“You hurt us all…”
The old lady went to bed, after kissing them all on both cheeks twice and calling out a croaky “Buenas noches!” as she climbed the stairs.
Señor Abeja showed the children to their rooms. Rachel settled the younger twins down in a pair of small beds off the landing and, while Adam and the French boys ran noisily up to the top floor, Señor Abeja ushered her graciously into the room next door. “I hope you will be comfortable here, Raquel,” he said. “This was my grandmother’s room.”
Rachel stared at the carved wooden bed, thick with blankets and covered in lace. “I’m sure I will,” she said, trying to look like she meant it.
Abeja pointed to a pile of blankets and clothes on a wooden chest in the corner. “Those are for you all to take with you when you go. You must take care of the little ones; you are like their mother. And you must take care of Gabriel too. You have a great … responsibility.”
Rachel nodded, thinking, that isn’t fair. I don’t want it.
Señor Abeja wished Rachel goodnight, kissing her lightly on both cheeks, his moustache tickling her face. Then he opened a cupboard, took out two books and handed them to her. One looked almost new: All About Bees, by Salvador Francisco Ortiz Abeja. The other was far older, leather-bound and falling apart, a Triskellion stamped in gold on its spine: The Ancient Churches of Seville.
“Thank you,” Rachel said, a little confused.
A few minutes later, propped up against the feathery pillows, Rachel opened the newer book and began to leaf through the diagrams of bees. The drawings were delicate, done with great care, and she thought about how much Jacob Honeyman would have loved it. She found herself able to read in Spanish about the bees’ flight patterns, their rituals and inexplicable “dances”. She looked at a passage about how the hive worked for the good of all, just as Gabriel had described, and soon she found herself drifting into a deep sleep.
The beat of the drum gets louder as the procession makes its way slowly across the square. It is Sunday, so that everyone can be here. They have been told to attend by the king himself. It is compulsory. It is an act of faith. Absence will be a sign of guilt, to be punished as these poor people are to be punished.
It is not cold, but the little girl shivers as the parade comes closer. A twisting, terrible serpent: its body black with the sweating pelts of horses and the cloaks of men, its nostrils streaming plumes of smoke and its glittering eyes the flames of burning torches.
The approaching footsteps shake the girl’s body in time with her pulse. She thinks her heart will burst as the bugles sound and the first of the black horses approaches. She hears its urgent whinny, sees the flash of its wild eyes and teeth. She feels the flecks of frothy spittle on her face as it tosses its head.
The man on the horse has had his shirt torn away and his upper body is naked. His hands are tied behind him and he writhes in pain as soldiers on either side tear into his back with whips. He is followed by another man, then a woman, then three others – their faces all masks of pain as the soldiers lay on vicious strokes without mercy.
This is what comes of helping the Traveller, for believing his words. For being his friend.
She presses her face into the coarse material of her mother’s skirts. Her twin brother does the same. They feel the warmth of her legs and try to breathe in the scent of her body, in the hope that it will take them away from this dreadful place.
The little girl hears a roar from the crowd, and she cannot help but look.
Here is the man himself, held high and strapped into a wooden chair. A gnarled green candle has been forced into one hand and a string of beads has been woven between the fingers of the other. A pointed hat has been pushed on to his head. It is decorated with suns and moons and stars, giving him the appearance of a terrible, tragic clown.
A steel collar attached to the back of the seat holds the man’s head upright and his mouth is gagged with a red cloth. The others can speak; can cry out in pain. They can stop the whipping by yelling out their admissions of guilt and save themselves from the flames.
But no one wants to hear what the Traveller has to say.
The king and the priests have heard enough of his ridiculous and wicked ideas. They do not want to hear that the universe is endless; that this earth is neither flat nor unique. They have seen enough of his sorcery and his so-called “healing” powers.
The little girl looks up. She sees the tears rolling down her mother’s face as the Traveller passes and she sees that his eyes are unafraid, calm and green. She hears her mother sobbing and muttering blessings. She knows that her mother is rememberi
ng the stranger’s kindness; remembering how a few years before, he had healed her and had eventually become anything but a stranger.
The little girl remembers how, after she and her brother had been born, her own grandfather had been among the first to denounce the very man who had given him grandchildren. Had accused him of sorcery and heresy: of witchcraft. The same grandfather who now walked with the grim procession and helped to carry the chair up the few wooden steps to the stake, before adding his own flaming torch to the bonfire.
The little girl and her brother cry as the heat from the flames scorches their faces and the terrible smell catches in their throats.
As the Traveller burns, he reaches out a hand to those who have condemned him and to his own children, who have been condemned to watch him die. The little girl sees her father, sees the love in his eyes; she looks around and sees the blood-lust in the eyes of everyone else.
She takes her brother’s hand and runs…
* * *
It was clear that Salvador Abeja would have been happy to see his guests stay a lot longer. He certainly seemed in no hurry to get back to his shop. The next day, when Gabriel announced, after a late breakfast of milky coffee, pastries and freshly squeezed orange juice, that it was time to be moving on, the Spaniard’s face fell.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Gabriel said. “We have a lot to do.”
While the children gathered up their things, Abeja led Gabriel to a quiet corner of the courtyard. “Seville is over five hundred kilometres from here,” he said. “How will you travel?”
“We can get the train, or it’s only an hour’s flight…”
Abeja shook his head and whispered conspiratorially, “There are people who are looking for you, yes?” Gabriel nodded. “Well, they can always get on the same train as you. The same flight. You would be trapped, like sitting ducks.”
“We are not helpless,” Gabriel said.
“All the same…”
The Burning Page 16