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needed to run for miles, up and down hills until the sweat poured out of him.
    From here he could see the rose again between the two pillars, behind the carving. People said she was the Queen of Sheba. It was posted that way on the wall. How did he know they were wrong? It was ridiculous.
    Directly in front of him the corner pillar was much larger than those beside it—all four of the corners were. This one, he realized, without much surprise, had another bull carved at the top. It was done in a style different from David and Goliath, and nothing at all like the woman.
    Two bulls now, one in the baptistry, fifteen hundred years ago, and this one carved—if he understood properly—hundreds of years after that. He stared at it, almost angrily.
    “What do goddamn bulls have to do with anything?” he demanded.
    Kate cleared her throat. “New Testament. Symbol of St. Luke.”
    Ned stared at the creature at the top of the pillar in front of him.
    “I doubt it,” he said finally. “Not this one. Not the old one inside, either.”
    “What are you saying now?”
    He looked over, saw the strain on her face, and guessed he probably looked a lot the same. Maybe they were kids. Someone had pointed a knife towards them. And that was almost the least of it.
    He looked at the sculpted woman where Kate stood and felt that same hard tug at his heart again. Palecoloured stone in morning light, almost entirely wornaway. Barely anything to be seen, as if she were a rendering of memory itself. Or of what time did to men and women, however much they’d been loved.
    And where had that idea come from? He thought of his mother. He shook his head.
    “I don’t know what I’m saying. Let’s get out of here.”
    “Need a drink, Detective?”
    He managed a smile. “Coke will do fine.”
    KATE KNEW WHERE she was going. She led him under the clock tower and past the city hall to a café a few minutes from the cathedral.
    Ned sat with his Coke, watched her sip an espresso without sugar (impressed him, he had to admit), and learned that she’d been here since early March, on an exchange between her school in New York City and one here in Aix. Her family had hosted a French girl last term, and Kate was with the girl’s family until school ended at the beginning of summer.
    Her last name was Wenger. She planned to do languages in university, or history, or both. She wanted to teach, or maybe study law. Or both. She took jazz dance classes (he’d guessed something like that). She ran three miles every second or third day in Manhattan, which was not what Ned did, but was pretty good. She liked Aix a whole lot, but not Marie-Chantal, the girl she was staying with. Seemed Marie-Chantal was a secret smoker in the bedroom they shared, and a party girl, and used Kate to cover for her when she was at her boyfriend’s late or skipping class to meet him.
    “It sucks, lying for her,” she said. “I mean, she’s not even really a friend.”
    “Sounds like a babe, though. Got her phone number?”
    Kate made a face. “You aren’t even close to serious.”
    “And why’s that?”
    “Because you’re in love with a carving in a cloister, that’s why.”
    That brought them back a little too abruptly to what they’d been trying to avoid.
    Ned didn’t say anything. He sipped his drink and looked around. The long, narrow café had two small tables on the street, but those had been taken, so they were inside, close to the door. The morning traffic was busy—cars, mopeds, a lot of people walking the medieval cobblestones.
    “Sorry,” Kate Wenger said after a moment. “That was a weird thing to say.”
    He shrugged. “I have no clue what to make of that sculpture. Or what happened.”
    She was biting at her lip again.
    “Why was he . . . our guy . . . why was he looking down there ? For whatever it was? Could it have been the font, something about the water?”
    Ned shook his head. “Don’t think so. The skull and the carved head were the other