The Long-Lost Jules

by Jane Elizabeth Hughes

  I flared up instantly. “Of course not! I loved it!”

  “You were never afraid?”

  I swallowed: If you’re scared, I’ll find a braver companion. “Fear is for cowards,” I said.

  “Vraiment? I was terrified more times than I can imagine when I was in the military.”

  I gazed at him, startled. Leo was certainly not a coward—I remembered him in the car chase. “Were you afraid in the car? When you were shot?” I asked.

  “But of course! Weren’t you?”

  I thought back to his calm even as blood poured down his arm, his quick thinking, and his ability to turn a Coke bottle into a deadly weapon. I too was calm under fire, but was I afraid? “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, I’ll say it for both of us: I was scared out of my skin.”

  “I was scared for Kali,” I said tentatively.

  “Yes, she’s helpless. Helpless victims terrify me more than anything.”

  A spark of oneness, of complete connection, flared between us, and I had to turn away from the understanding on his face. We waited in silence for the dessert.

  But I relaxed again when the Sacher torte, overflowing with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, was placed in front of me. The cup of hot chocolate, topped with even more whipped cream, completed my capitulation. “All right,” I said, spooning torte into my mouth and feeling the delicious warmth of pure chocolate fill my senses, “tell me why you’re so obsessed with Katherine Parr.”

  “I am not the first man,” Leo said, “to be obsessed with Katherine Parr.”

  I smiled at him. His defensive tone and the lock of black hair falling into his eyes made him seem around Kali’s age. He must have been irresistible as a teenage boy; he certainly knew himself to be charming as a man and was not above using that magnetism to get what he wanted. All of my doubts returned.

  “Henry VIII was determined to marry her, even though she had been widowed twice by then and was generally supposed to be barren.”

  “But clearly, she wasn’t,” I put in.

  “No. Husbands one and three were old men, and husband number two was rumored to be impotent.”

  I smiled again at the thought of gossip lingering for almost five centuries.

  “Maybe he was gay,” I suggested.

  “Quite possibly. And Tom Seymour probably married her for advancement and riches as much as for her winsome self. By all accounts he was quite fond of her.”

  I shrugged. Tom Seymour had dallied with the teenage Elizabeth under the eyes of his pregnant wife. I thought he was an ass. “I’m not too interested in Tom’s opinions,” I said. “When he died, Elizabeth commented that he had been a man of ‘much wit but very little wisdom.’”

  “Quite,” Leo said. “At any rate, after a year or so of marriage to the King, Katherine was denounced by some of her political enemies for being too involved with the religious reformists and for trying to sway Henry to her opinions. She was in grave danger. Remember the fate of her predecessors Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. Anne was beheaded for sins much less grave than those of which Katherine Parr was accused.”

  I felt a shiver run down my spine. For all the pomp and glitter, how terrifying it must have been to be the wife of Henry VIII.

  “And that was when he was younger and less evil-tempered than when he married our Katherine,” Leo added. “But Katherine was smart. Today she would probably be prime minister. She knelt at Henry’s feet and told him she talked politics only to distract him from the great pains he suffered from his infected leg. The old king raised her up and kissed her and sent the courtiers who had denounced her to the Tower.”

  “Wow,” I said inadequately.

  “And she was a marvelous stepmother to the King’s children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward. Even Mary, a crabby spinster almost the same age as her stepmother and of a completely different religious bent, had nothing but good to say about her.”

  “Hmm,” I said, as unimpressed with Mary—who, as queen, was dubbed Bloody Mary for the rampant murders of those who dared to disagree with her fanatical Catholicism—as I was with Tom Seymour.

  “And as for Elizabeth,” Leo went on, “she lived with Katherine and watched her stepmother govern the country when Henry took off to fight in France and designated the Queen as regent. What an experience for Elizabeth to see a ‘mere woman’ ruling men and country! Who knows what effect that had on Elizabeth when she became queen?”

  “So . . . Sudeley?”

  He sighed. “Ah, yes, Sudeley. Motek, it would be a tragedy to let that memorial to Katherine Parr be turned into second homes for Russian oligarchs and Saudi sheikhs.”

  Involuntarily, I thought of my own Saudi sheikh. Would he be interested in buying a McMansion in the Cotswolds? Quite possibly. And suddenly I too was sickened by the idea, positively nauseated at the vision of his granddaughters flaunting Tiffany bracelets and tiny bikinis at a garish swimming pool; beer-soaked parties (Saudis tended to let loose when released from the strictures of their homeland); and hunting rifles and dead deer in the grassy green parklands where Katherine Parr had once strolled, awaiting the birth of a long-awaited baby and discussing politics with her ladies.

  I pushed away the remains of my Sacher torte. “What can I do to help?” I asked.

  Leo grinned. “Well, if you could lead me to Jules Seymour, then she could present herself to the authorities and—”

  I interrupted him. “Seriously.”

  “Seriously. Well, seriously . . . I don’t know.” He sighed and shook his head. “I just don’t know.”

  We parted amicably, with an alarmingly amicable hug in the lobby of the Ritz.

  Leo, I thought, was very good at this. But I was better.

  So I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. and an hour later was on a train speeding through the German countryside toward Prague. I had some old contacts there, from my IDC consulting days. They might be able to help me figure out if Leo had any ulterior motives and what had prompted the attacks on us in England. I stared out the streaked window, wondering if I had lost him for good. Maybe I would never see him again. Or maybe he would use those “contacts” of his to track me down wherever I went.

  I put on my iPod, and the strains of an old Beatles tune filtered through my ears. I thought of Leo singing, “Hey, Jules . . .”

  If I let myself be close to Leo, if I dared to let him in, then would it be better? My mother had deserted me, apparently uncaring that she was leaving me to the father who she thought would endanger me. In the end, my father was snatched from me too.

  It had been thirteen years since my father died. (I still dated everything in my life by Before He Died and After He Died.) After he died and my party-girl life died along with him, I lost interest in men—well, to be fair, in all relationships—for a while. Eventually I realized that I missed sex, so I had a few affairs (five, to be exact). My last lover was Scott, a lanky, laid-back aid worker with sandy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a taste for quality weed. I liked Scott; he was good in bed and not much of a conversationalist outside the bedroom.

  So he lasted longer than the others, until I watched him dissolve into a red mist when he was blown up by a stray land mine in Chechnya. I don’t remember anything about what happened next; Bob said I ran straight into the choking cloud of blood and gunfire and filth, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything except waking up in a sweat-soaked field-hospital cot with a pair of twisted, smoking, wire-rimmed glasses clutched in my hand and hot, helpless tears rolling down my cheeks.

  There had been no one in my bed since Scott.

  As the train rocketed eastward, the countryside deteriorated rapidly. I gazed with some surprise at the communist-era machinery and decaying factories that littered the East German landscape—rusting, depressing hulks that were apparently still in operation somehow, spewing filthy fumes into the air and spitting out the kind of gray, worn workers whom I associated with the Soviet Union and not modern, unified Germany. We crossed the C
zech border, and things only got worse. Now the hunks of ruined machinery appeared to be no longer functional, just collapsing into themselves to pollute the landscape for miles around.

  My mood darkened, and for a moment I experienced a fleeting sensation of . . . well, I suppose it was homesickness. Absurd, for a woman who had lived her life in all corners of the world and didn’t have anything that could be called a home, or even a hometown. My tiny flat in London hardly qualified. My father was gone, and my mother lived as far as she could get from my nomadic career in Europe and beyond.

  So what on earth was I homesick for?

  The train conductor made an announcement in Czech, a language of which I understood not a single word. Blessedly, he began to repeat it in English: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now approaching . . . Czlctxlkd prhsysfksk spslkhyys.” Or something like that. Outraged, I stared at the blameless loudspeaker. Why get my hopes up when he was just going to lapse into Czech again? And how was it possible for a language to contain no vowels?

  Determinedly, I stared unseeingly out the windows and watched for the lights of Prague.

  The Prague train station was no more or less revolting than train stations everywhere else in the world (except for Switzerland, where you could eat off the pristine floors). I had traveled enough to be ruthless, though, and shoved my way to the front of the platform, only to discover a flight of at least fifty steep steps up to the main concourse. Shit fuck shit fuckity. I glared at the stairs and at my sixty-pound suitcase. There was no way. So, grimly, I fought my way back to the other end of the platform to find an out-of-service escalator and a long ramp tucked into a tiny, dark corner where trains apparently hibernated for the winter. I glanced around uneasily. This was a perfect spot for a mugging, and I was absolutely alone and vulnerable, burdened by my heavy bag.

  Suddenly, I wouldn’t have minded Leo’s annoying but reassuring presence, just to escort me through this nasty tunnel. But I made it safely and emerged into the harsh lights of the station, only to discover that my driver was not waiting by the Burger King, as we had planned. My phone had no bars, so no Uber. With another spate of mumbled curses, I made my way to the three-block-long cab line and was stabbing furiously at my unresponsive phone when a dark Mercedes glided up to the curb beside me. Somehow I wasn’t surprised when the driver reached across to open the passenger door and smiled up at me.

  “Need a ride?” Leo inquired.

  I wanted to throw myself on the filthy sidewalk and pound my fists and legs with fury, as I had when I was a toddler. “I never saw anyone have such tantrums as you,” my father had told me admiringly. My mother had just rolled her eyes.

  But I was thirty-four, not four—and Leo’s contacts within Israeli military intelligence were apparently quite efficient. So I heaved a great sigh and climbed into the car, leaving my bags on the sidewalk for Leo to deal with. He tossed them into the boot with admirable ease and climbed in beside me. “The Intercontinental, I presume?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  But I couldn’t maintain my huffy silence for too long. I asked, “How the hell do you keep finding me? Military intelligence again?”

  “I’m a researcher—that’s what I do. I research. And I have great contacts.” He glanced unsmilingly at me. “You’d be surprised what I can learn about people.”

  My stomach clenched with anxiety.

  Leo glanced at me again. “Stop twisting your hair,” he said.

  Chapter 18

  As I got off the elevator the next morning, Leo stood up from a chintzy, fussily flowered armchair and folded the newspaper he had been reading. It was in French, I noticed. Once again, I observed other women watching him covertly and felt a frisson of pleasure that I was the one he was waiting for.

  It’s only business, I reminded myself.

  Also, Leo puzzled me; sometimes he acted like Hugh Grant’s nerdier little brother, and sometimes he seemed almost alpha male. I didn’t want a man whom I couldn’t understand; it didn’t feel safe to me.

  I decided not to sleep with him after all.

  Leo put his arm around my shoulders. “Breakfast?” he asked.

  We chatted about innocuous things over our meal: which cities we liked best (Tel Aviv and Avignon for him, London and Moscow for me), which cities we liked least (we agreed on New Orleans and, surprisingly, Istanbul), and what countries felt most like home.

  “I have a love-hate relationship with France,” Leo admitted.

  “That’s how I feel about Russia,” I confided. “But I don’t really have a home.”

  Disliking the flash of connectedness between us, I pushed my chair back from the table with a nasty scrape and stood up. “Shall we walk?” I suggested.

  I hadn’t been to Prague in a while, so Leo led me down Parizska (Paris) Street, past Gucci and Louis Vuitton and Tiffany, to Old Town Square, which struck me as slightly less Disney-esque than the one in Warsaw (which was actually built in the 1950s). I loved the filigree and decorations on the old buildings and the way they seemed to lean against each other for support.

  “Fortunately,” Leo said when I expressed my thoughts, “Prague isn’t in an earthquake zone.”

  We strolled past some shops, and I thought that if I actually had a home, I would have liked to buy some of the pretty hand-painted pottery and etched crystal that the store windows displayed. Perhaps one day I would, and I would fill my home with pottery and objets d’art from all of the many, many countries I had visited. I could tell visitors, Look, this vase came from Poland and this shawl from Turkey and this painted pitcher from Prague . . .

  I shook my head to dismiss these silly musings and walked on. Leo wove a path through the old Jewish Quarter. Thanks to the very efficient Nazis, there was not much left to see except an old cemetery, so old that people had been buried two, three, four, five on top of each other to make room for the newest generation. In some places, five or more thin gray gravestones leaned precariously against each other, almost touching the next set of gravestones to the right or left and testifying to the presence of multiple layers of dead just below.

  Leo vaulted over the crumbling cemetery wall with infuriating effortlessness, so I had to do the same, although my thin Keds were hardly the ideal shoes for such a move. I skidded a little on landing but ignored Leo’s outstretched hand. We dodged the silent gravestones in the growing gloom as the first raindrops began to fall. Sometimes all I could hear was the sound of my own quick breathing and Leo’s slower, calmer breaths.

  “This is depressing,” I pronounced.

  “Let’s go up to Prague Castle,” Leo suggested. “If you’re up to it.”

  I snorted in a very unladylike manner.

  “I’ll have you know,” I said as my sneakers skittered sideways once more on the loose gravel, “I’m an expert mountain climber. I’ve climbed Denali and Pike’s Peak and—”

  I broke off as my ankle twisted on the slippery path, and Leo caught me with the ease of long practice.

  “If only I had some pitons!” I snapped. “Or at least cleats.”

  Surprisingly, he ignored the opportunity to tease me. “I know, the footing is terrible” was all he said.

  So I took his hand and let him help me out of the graveyard.

  And then we started the ascent to Prague Castle. When Leo had said “up to the castle,” he really meant up. We had climbed about a thousand steps and were still climbing when I paused to take a breath and admire the view. Leo said nothing, waiting patiently, as I watched a class of grade-school children scamper past me, skipping easily up the stairs.

  Well! I pushed myself off the rock and resumed climbing in grim silence. At the top, I paused again, enjoying the welcome feel of burning thigh muscles. How I missed those climbs with my father! “If only I had better shoes,” I said again, and I saw Leo smile to himself.

  We watched as one young couple carried their sleeping baby’s stroller between them all the way up the steep steps and staggered onto the pavement at the t
op, collapsing with groans of exhaustion. But they high-fived each other with the grins of true comrades, and I felt a twist of envy.

  Leo hadn’t even noticed. “A high defensive point and good fresh water source,” he muttered to himself.

  “What?”

  “It’s a solid defensive position,” he explained. “Good site for a medieval castle.”

  “If an army managed to climb up here and still had the strength to attack,” I said, “then they deserve to win.”

  He grinned. “Tell that to the Czechs.”

  He heaved me to my feet, and I groaned as fifteen blisters burned at the same time. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m okay,” I snapped.

  “I know, Denali and Pike’s Peak and all that,” he said. “Only to be defeated by a pair of worn sneakers and blistered toes.”

  With a martyred sigh, he reached into his wallet and pulled out—blessing of all blessings—a handful of crumpled Band-Aids. “Here,” he said, tossing them to me. “Bandage up those blisters.”

  I stared at him. “Why on earth do you carry Band-Aids in your wallet?”

  He grinned again. “Instead of condoms, like a real man, you mean?”

  Infuriatingly, I blushed.

  “Because I have a dozen nieces and nephews, that’s why,” he said as I finished applying the bandages and stood up, blissfully pain-free.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “B’vakasha,” he replied. “Shall we explore the castle?”

  Leo headed straight to the museum, and I sighed to myself. Spy and Cold War museums were fun, but history museums, not so much. In all of our travels, my father had never bothered taking me to museums. They were full of dead people’s stuff, when we were so gloriously alive—alive and free and outside in the bright, blinding sun or frozen mountains. History was meaningless when we were alive and outdoors and together.

  For a moment, I remembered Kali’s accusation—he always took you into danger—and felt chilled. But I loved the danger and the reckless abandon with which he courted it; the more I dared, the prouder he was. Playing it safe was for boring people, my father had said. Not us. I felt a sudden stab as I thought of where my life had taken me—to mousy Amy the banker—and wondered what he would have thought of it. But I didn’t have to wonder; I knew.