The Apothecary's Curse (23 page)

“And his financiers, most
especially
Lord Braithwaite?”

James folded his newspaper, passing it to Simon. “There is little can be done about Braithwaite. Besides, he is—”

Simon spoke over his cousin. “Oh, and you should know, Mr. Erceldoune, Mr. Tremayne no longer bullies the good folk of Smithfield.”

“Aye?” Gaelan urged Simon to go on.

“Murdered. Two years ago. A man came to his establishment to procure a tart, whereupon he was shown to the room of his own daughter. Went after Tremayne with a kris knife. Died upon the spot, the newspapers said.”

“Poetic justice, I grant,” Gaelan remarked without emotion. “Dr. Bell—” He turned toward James. “You were about to say something regarding Lord Braithwaite.
Besides
 . . . what?” Gaelan observed the wordless conversation between the cousins. “Besides . . . 
what
?” he demanded, impatience flaring.

Simon held up a placating hand, his eyes darting everywhere but toward Gaelan. “What James means to say . . . I . . . The abhorrent Lord Richard Braithwaite is . . . I can barely get the words past my tongue, sir. . . . He is married to my own dear sister.”

“Braithwaite is your brother-in-law?”
Holy mother of God, how is it possible?
Gaelan's breath caught in his throat. The room spun as his heart crashed against his ribs. Air. He needed air.

What incredulous bit of fate had entrapped him in this labyrinth so near the Minotaur? Gaelan stood shakily, groping along the table to steady himself, until he reached the French doors to the garden.

Erceldoune was sitting on a low bench deep within the garden when Simon found him. “I thought you might fancy a stick,” he said, holding out a gold-tipped cane. Erceldoune waved it away, peering into the gravel path.

Simon sat. He well understood Erceldoune, far more than he cared to admit. “Braithwaite is an appalling, monstrous man. My sister despises him, for what it is worth.” An exaggeration, perhaps, but what else might he say to ease Erceldoune's mind?

“Poor wretches like John William Bean go to prison, whilst the Handleys and Braithwaites suffer not at all.” Erceldoune studied his injured left hand, the bandages no longer stained pink. “Peculiar. It is almost as if they are yet attached. I can feel them throb with every heartbeat, and when I look down, of course . . . One at a time, he severed them. For the last, he gave the knife to your brother-in-law, who was only too delighted to play at being Butcher of Bedlam. I cannot rid myself of that morning; it ever plays in my mind, an incessant cycle of images. I fear I will never be rid of it.”

Simon couldn't fathom it; he'd never amputated anything. He envisioned Erceldoune: held down, unable to fight back . . . Braithwaite's wild physiognomy, his undisguised delight in the barbaric act. Simon clamped down hard on the nausea as it rose up through his gullet. Nothing he could say would be enough. “I am sorry little more can be done about him. I—” If only he had spoken up at Erceldoune's trial . . . Would it have made any difference at all? Might he have spared Erceldoune nearly five years of inhuman treatment? “You asked me the other day how I came to be at Bedlam that day, and more to the point, how I happened to chance upon
you
.”

“I did.”

Simon thrust the point of the stick into the soft dirt, tapping nervously as he regarded Erceldoune. “Do you recall the railway catastrophe a few weeks past here in London? All those people killed?”

“And
how
,” Erceldoune snapped, brittle and bitter, “might
I
have any knowledge of
that
?”

Stupid question.
Simon looked up into the branches as a large woodpecker landed awkwardly on a sturdy limb. He watched it edge toward the trunk. “Of course. Forgive me.” He paused. “Twenty-seven men, me amongst them, were trapped beneath tons of iron. All died of their injuries. Excepting me.”

As Erceldoune impatiently brushed his foot along the gravel, Simon wondered if he was really listening at all.

“It was then I began to recollect other times when injuries healed not in days, but in a matter of hours, illnesses that should have, but did not, befall me. I realized I'd had not so much as a sniffle in more than four years.”

A furious rat-a-tat-tat came from above their heads; Erceldoune startled at the noise, anxiously scanning the tangle of branches, his face ashen.

“Are you all right, Mr. Erceldoune?”

Erceldoune nodded tightly, his hand trembling. “You were saying . . . ?”

“Around this time, it came to my attention that there lived a man within the gates of Bedlam who was reported to possess a remarkable ability to recover from even serious injury. Beyond remarkable.”

“You did not, then, have an inkling it was me?”

“The source of this information was—”

“Your brother-in-law. Of course.” Erceldoune glanced briefly at Simon, who nodded in affirmation. “Aye, they all loved to watch Handley's exhibit of human curiosities and experiments, as he called it, and none more so than Lord Braithwaite.” Erceldoune stood unsteadily. “I might have need, after all, of that stick you so kindly offered.”

Simon handed it over. “Better?”

Erceldoune nodded, leaning heavily on the polished staff. “Perhaps . . . in this . . . accident of which you speak, you were not so badly injured as you thought. It would not be the first time someone robbed death of its due!”

“
Hear
me!” When Simon stood, he caught Erceldoune's eye, holding it in his own gaze, speaking each word as sincerely as he might to be understood unequivocally. “I was unconscious for
days
, yet when I awoke, there was little evidence that I had been injured at all! Not even a bloody scratch!”

“And what, pray tell, has
that
to do with me?”

There would be no better time to broach the subject. “I must ask you something about your elixir—”

Erceldoune glowered, remaining silent.

“It cured her, Erceldoune, even as . . . even as she . . . died. The tumors vanished within an hour of administration. Astonishing!” The image, even four and a half years later, seemed not possible. Simon observed Erceldoune's expression change, as the import of it dawned. “I've never spoken of it to anyone until now.” There had been no point. So what if the tumors had receded? Sophie was still dead. But Erceldoune should know.

Simon sat again on the bench. “I regret that I'd not spoken on your behalf . . . back then. I . . . I was angry, furious, and torn by grief over my wife's death—”

“Four and a half years of torture I suffered at the hands of a madman whose cruelty and barbarity knows no bounds, and you were . . . 
angry
,” Erceldoune spat with quiet contempt.

“Believe me, I did not know. Had no idea—”

“What? That I was yet living?” Erceldoune hobbled back toward the house through the hedgerow maze.

Simon followed, stopping him with a hand on his shoulder. “As for my silence—”

Erceldoune turned, facing him. There was no glimmer of warmth or understanding in his eyes.

“A terrible injustice, unforgivable for what it did to you. I cannot even presume to beg your pardon for it.” What more could he say than this plea for comprehension?

Erceldoune dropped his gaze to follow a small tree frog as it hopped along the path and into the hedge. His voice when he spoke was barely above a whisper, resigned and weary. “It likely would have done me little good in any event. You'd no real evidence to present, only an overheard conversation, with no authoritative way of knowing whether I had poisoned Lil or not.”

Simon held his breath, considering whether to broach the subject of gravest concern. Erceldoune seemed less agitated; perhaps it was the best opportunity Simon might have. “There is more. Concerning Sophie's death, that is.” They had come back to the bench. “Might we sit? You look as if you are about to keel over—”

“Yes.” Erceldoune eased himself onto the bench, still in obvious pain. He looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. A hawk soared above their heads, scrutinizing its quarry.

“It opened. The bottle, I mean. I was in my laboratory and—”

Recognition dawned slowly on Erceldoune's face. “Did you not grasp the instructions? The writing was quite clear—”

“It was not intentional, I assure you. The glass bung came loose and shattered on the floor. Not a day goes by that I fail to consider it was something I'd done that killed her by exposing—”

“The oxidation of it would change it, yes. And if she was ill enough or . . . Yet I cannot know with absolute certainty. So much of medicine . . . is art, not science.” Erceldoune looked away.

“In my head, with the perspective of now nearly five years, I know she was better for dying quickly. I do not blame you for Sophie's death. I have too often seen the ravages of cancer, and I would not have . . . Not to say I would have hastened her death.” Simon exhaled. “I had, once she was gone, nothing else left to live for—”

Out with it, man!
Simon strode several yards, coming to an abrupt halt, his back to the bench. “I drank it, Mr. Erceldoune. I drank it. All of what remained, and—”

“What! But why would you—”

Simon turned, staring at Erceldoune, waiting for him to come to the obvious conclusion, but the apothecary sat in silence, impassive.

“I'd seen what it did to her and desired only to follow her. Yet here I am, confounded at each futile turn, seemingly unable to end my life . . . I only broach the subject with you because of—”

Erceldoune nodded, comprehension dawning. “‘Many have said of alchemy,'” he began softly, “‘that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.' But the power of it is not always virtuous, and wrongly used—whether by intention or error—it can cause many ill or strange effects: some wondrous, others horrific.”

“Paracelsus again. You are fond of him, Mr. Erceldoune, it would seem. This is not the first time you have quoted him to me.”

“Paracelsus. Yes, his wisdom is well-known to me; it defies the turn of three centuries for its inherent good sense. An alchemist, an apothecary—a healer, he was, but uninterested in the Elixir of Life—immortality—or the transmutation of cheap metals into riches untold, as were many of that trade. And so it was with my own family, akin to the thinking of Paracelsus. My own grandfather, his valued correspondent.”

“Your
grandfather
, did you say? But that would have been more than three hundred years ago!”

“Aye.” Erceldoune waited, saying no more. The hawk had disappeared somewhere beyond the hedgerow.

Simon froze, emotions overwhelming him.
Is it possible? Is it then true? But how?

“That book, the one with the ouroboros on it . . . The one in my shop . . . that night . . . Do you recall it?” Erceldoune asked.

The wretched manuscript's cover had long since burned itself into Simon's memory. “Yes.”

“Mind, it is but legend . . . but that book is quite singular, I have been told, and not of our known world, but from a different place, a different time.”

What was Erceldoune talking about? He made no sense. Simon could only shrug.

“Are you familiar, perchance, with the romances of a certain Lord Thomas Learmont? The Rhymer, he was called. It was said by some in his day he had the gifts of a Merlin—”

“I cannot say I do, but what has that to do—”

“He was my ancestor and had been bestowed a ‘gift'—that book—by one fairy born. A Celtic deity. Airmid was her name. The book is said to be from the land wherein she dwells, perhaps still now, but beyond a portal in another realm, an
other
world.”

This was absurd. Utter madness. Fairies? Portals? If Erceldoune was trying to bedevil him, he was doing a first-rate job of it.

“To speak true, I know little else of its origins, but I was knowledgeable in some measure of its contents. The recipes described within its pages have differing effects, depending on how they are prepared, the dosage, and when, during the progress of the illness, they are administered. It is precise, and all set forth in the book's pages. When you—”

“When I drank it, the elixir changed me, did it not, like a magic potion of some sort?”

“
Magic!
Understand, sir, that this book has no
magic
. It is
science
. It is
medicine
—chemicals and herbs and that is all—at play in the human body, amongst its organs and cells, vessels and bones,” Erceldoune barked.

Simon had clearly upset him. “I only meant, sir—”

But Erceldoune was not to be interrupted. “My own
father
was burnt as a sorcerer owing to that misbegotten understanding of the manuscript.” He winced, cradling his left arm, taking a moment before going on, less agitated. “It is science, not magic, that has made it impossible for me—and apparently you—to succumb to injury or illness.”