The Apothecary's Curse (34 page)

“Dian Cecht murdered his son Miach, jealous of his surgical skills. And three hundred sixty-five herbs sprouted upon his grave—the number of joints and sinews. Miach's sister Airmid spread the herbs upon her cloak, organized by properties—a cure for every illness and disease known and unknown as yet to humankind. But Dian scattered the herbs and destroyed her cloak, so that mortal humans would never share in the power and immortality of the otherworldly creatures—the fairy gods.

“But it was little known that the recipes had been preserved and placed in a book, given to a man who'd ventured through a portal in Scotland and into Airmid's world, the place to which she had fled in the wake of Dian's wrath. That man, my son, was your ancestor Lord Thomas Learmont of Erceldoune. It is your legacy to pass on to your own sons. Do not neglect it. . . .”

Gaelan's heart missed a beat, then another, and the room began to spin; the tabletop became his tenuous anchor. He should say . . . something, but his ability to speak had vanished, his tongue as immobile as the rest of him. Standing only made the room spin faster, and he lost his balance, regaining it only as he backed into a counter. He slid down, settling finally on the floor, dumbfounded.

Generations, she'd said, it had been in her family—
his
book! But how was that possible? Was this some sort of delusion? A new and terrifying dimension of the PTSD triggered by the week's events? A break from reality so perfect, it seemed . . . tangible . . . tactile . . . real?

And what of Dr. Anne Shawe? Was she also not real? If he went to the window, would the media circus, the fanatics and their shrine, still be at his doorstep?

He lifted his head to see her sitting quietly at the table and gawking at him as if he were completely insane. That was no delusion. “Please, Dr. Shawe. A moment if you will.”

“Are you all right, Mr. Erceldoune?” She was beside him now, taking up his left wrist, finding the throb of his pulse. One hundred five beats per minute—he'd already counted.

He shook her off, still deep within himself. She was talking, but he could barely discern his
own
thoughts, let alone hers.

He must touch it, feel it in his hands, know it was real. Know for certain that
this
was not—what was it called?—a psychotic break with reality. Gaelan leapt in one motion to his seat at the table.

Dr. Shawe sat opposite him. He knew that look too well after his stay in the hospital. He could only think to describe it as doctorly concern. She was likely five seconds from dialing 911, but he didn't really care. Closing his eyes for a moment, he spread his hands across the book's cover, feeling the deep engraving of the embossed hawthorn tree. Its gleaming jeweled hues had not faded with time. It was just as he remembered it.

Gaelan had yet to utter a word, and had no clue of what he might say to this young woman. None.

“Mr. Erceldoune. Please.” She held the mug to his lips. “Drink.”

He nodded, taking a small sip of the tea before waving her away. “Thank you. I . . . I don't know what came over me. . . . I must not yet be . . . quite myself. The week has been . . .” Not especially convincing, even to his own ears, but he hoped it was enough. “Your book is . . . This cover, it is beyond amazing. I have no words. . . . I haven't seen its like . . . Forgive my stammering, but to be honest, I am quite staggered.” That much was true, at least. “The volume is pristine—the cover, at any rate. It seems time has not worn its beauty at all. I mean, it appears to be hundreds of years old. I've not seen many . . . any, in fact in . . . in . . . such perfect condition.” He had to stop the prattling. “Where did you say you found it?”

“It's brilliant, isn't it? My cousin's attic, of all places! Six months ago.”

“Indeed!”
All these years in a bloody attic. Un-fucking-believable.

She was smiling like a child on Christmas morning. Good. At least she wouldn't be harassing him about his medical history. For now.

Decades of searching, buying and selling, trading and acquiring, trying to reassemble his library book by book with never even a valid clue to the whereabouts of the only book that really mattered. And now here it was, returned to him through luck or fate. He now knew Simon's lead was another false alarm!

The earthy aroma of old leather and yellowed vellum made the volume come alive as he opened it in his lap. Tracing the images on a random page, his fingers soaked up the textures, solid and real: the coarse paper, the embossing of quill and ink, and the fluid patina of the ornamentations.

“Yes . . . brilliant.” He tried to force a professional distance, but it disintegrated even before the first word. “I . . . Will you excuse me? I shall be only a moment. I need to . . . find something in my office that should be of some help,” he lied.

Gaelan set the book on his chair before backing into his small office, his eyes never leaving the volume until he closed the door. Every remaining bit of reserve uncoiled as he locked himself inside. After spotting the crystal decanter on the credenza behind his desk, he poured a large glass of whisky, hands shaking. Gaelan savored it as it slithered over his tongue and down his esophagus, washing over him. One more to steel his nerves and face Anne Shawe—and the book . . . 
his
book.

He returned to the table, calmer. “Sorry—”

“Are you all right, Mr. Erceldoune?”

“Aye. No, I am. Fine. Fine.” His hands roamed the cover again, the smooth edges of the hawthorn tree worn and soft, more like silk than leather.
Professional distance
 . . . his new mantra. Anne was observing him, assessing him, waiting for his analysis. He was an academic with a rare find.
Professional interest.

He opened to the first page, running his index finger over the text. “An elaborate hand, its texture is like fine engraving. Every page would have been inscribed by hand, of course. It is far too old to have been printed on a press.”

The script was so very familiar. Old Gaelic—a name, his ancestor's. Below that, a further inscription: “
tiodhlac
” (gift), “
iochdmhorachd
” (compassion), and another name, “Airmid.”

He had forgotten so much about the book over the decades. But now, with the manuscript restored to him, finally, memory flooded back with the suddenness of an earthquake.

The inscription was in Gaidhlig—Scots Gaelic, not Irish. But that made no sense. Airmid's people had been in Ireland a long time before Gaidhlig had become a language of its own. And his family had not been of the Highlands, where the language had been spoken, but of the Borderlands, as far as he'd known. Confusing, but not the least of it.

Latin and Greek, Old Norse, even Hebrew covered nearly every inch of this first page. He'd been tutored in all these languages, but too long ago. . . . Their history and nuances . . . would he even possess the ability to deconstruct a single page, much less hundreds? The Greek and Latin, even Gaidhlig and Gaelic he could parse—with enough time, but Norse? Hebrew?

An ouroboros bordered the title page in a multitude of metallic colors, deeply embedded into the paper—colors still vibrant and rich as the stained glass in Westminster Abbey.

“Mr. Erceldoune?”

Oh, fuck.
Dr. Shawe. He'd forgotten her entirely. She drew his attention to an outer border just above the snake. “As you might imagine, as a geneticist, I found this in particular completely astonishing. The helices, I mean. They are everywhere, even on the cover.”

He cleared his throat, trying to force the words past his tongue. “Sorry?” He'd barely been listening.

“Molecular genetics. Sounds weird, I know, but somewhere in my fantasies, this book holds some sort of genetic secret. Please do not laugh at me, but there's something deliciously mysterious and ancient about it. How can those not be depictions of DNA molecules? And then, all through the volume, the numbers twenty-three and forty-six in designs, in texts. Forty-six chromosomes, twenty-three pairs. You'll see it as you peruse . . . and the ouroboroses. At first, I thought they were only unusual design elements, and then I did some research on the Internet. The ouroboros has always been a symbol of eternal life. But I shall stop talking a mile a minute and let you get a word in. I'm sorry. It's just so . . .”

Gaelan stared at her as if they resided on two different planes of existence—she in a different, faster reality, while his had slowed to a quiet creep. He'd zoned out again, but he'd heard enough to understand what she was more than implying.

He could not disagree. There was in the design more than the mere suggestion of modern genetics. Brilliant, but impossible. Confounding. He'd never put it together before. How would he? He'd lost the book more than a hundred years before Watson and Crick discovered the double helix of DNA. He forced himself to concentrate on what Dr. Shawe was saying.

“It's completely ironic, me being a geneticist, finding that book, hmm? My research is built upon the molecular genetics work of Blackburn, Greider, and Szostak, winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize. But I'm babbling, being a total genetics nerd. Sorry. But who knows?” She laughed. “Perhaps this book is the secret to the Elixir of Life, and I shall visit Stockholm myself someday! Or better still, a commissioned television series:
Forgotten Secrets of the Alchemists: A BBC Documentary Series
! It is a book of alchemy, isn't it?”

He prayed she was merely lost in the euphoria of her find. The fact that she was a geneticist,
and
in possession of this book, chilled him to his core. It was a mix dangerous for him—and the entire world. He'd experienced firsthand the consequences of the mad quest for immortality. But it did not end with Handley and Braithwaite, nor with the Elixir of Life. Gaelan had read so many accounts of cruelty in the name of medicine: ruthless madmen—purported scientists and doctors all—who would rip the last shreds of dignity from their victims, even in the twenty-first century. For fame, for money, for power. And at times, just because they could.

Mengele fit that last category. He'd read a book on Hitler's Angel of Death years ago, curious about what would drive men to such utter cruelty, and it had plagued him for weeks. The hollow, pleading eyes of the victims haunted him, reflecting back his own face pleading, his life in the butcher Handley's hands. There were always Mengeles waiting to be born, hiding beneath their scholars' hoods, experimenting on the poor and unsuspecting.

Gaelan's attempt to muster a semblance of detachment was met with failure. “I'm sorry, Dr. Shawe. This book. I—” He had to say something, but what?
It's mine! You can't have it; hand it over and leave
? That would go over well.

He could not afford to frighten her off, and he knew he'd already gone more than half that distance. She was studying him as if he'd gone completely barmy.

Gaelan cleared his throat. “Dr. Shawe, what you must think of me.” He forced a laugh. “You must think I'm a bit daft. I'm sorry. This book . . . You've no idea how long I've sought . . . I've sought one like it—”

“That much is obvious! One like it? Then this manuscript is not unique?” She looked disappointed. “Are there others, perhaps even in your collection? I'd love to see—”

“No. No. It is . . . it
is
unique. Completely. Others might have existed at one time, but not for centuries, I think.” Adequate by way of explanation, but no, there had never been a book like this one. “Volumes of its kind would have been burned long ago . . . erroneously considered the work of witchcraft. But this is not a grimoire—a magician's conjuring book . . . at least I do not think so . . . from examining but one page,” he quickly added. “But I must say, that in its day, one might have justifiably thought it sorcery. Or from the gods.” He pointed to the name Airmid, skipping the inscription to his ancestor.

“Airmid was the Celtic goddess of healing. She was of a people . . . fairy folk, according to legend anyway, called the Tuatha de Danann, ‘people of the god of Danu.' Some historians speculate they were of the Hebrew tribe Dan . . . Danu.”

“Not a myth, then?”

“Who knows for certain? After Christianity took hold, myth and oral history fused and fractured several times over. . . . It is said that the Tuatha de Danann were an advanced culture: literature, science, technology. Generally in Irish legend, but they also appear elsewhere in Celtic lore.” The world solidified beneath Gaelan's feet as he found himself on firmer ground.

“You seem expert in your knowledge of Celtic mythology!” Her smile disarmed him, warmed her eyes to sapphire in the shop's lighting.

Gaelan shrugged. “Part of being an antiquities dealer—and a sometime professor. I teach occasionally at the university. . . . And, well, I am Scottish.” He managed a shy smile, hoping he'd managed to be at least a little convincing. “Historical memory, perhaps.”

Pulling his chair closer, he guided Anne through the first several pages of the book. “Fascinating,” he said, opening to another page. “See here? The several languages?”

“I recognize the Greek lettering, and the Latin text, of course.”

Gaelan beamed, impressed. “Can you make it out, then?” Yes, much firmer ground.

Anne shrugged. “A word here and there. An Oxford education finally put to use? Is that Hebrew?”

“It is. Or Aramaic, more likely, I think. Alchemy texts often used kabbalistic symbology and language, hence the Aramaic.” But if the manuscript originated with Airmid, then was it an alchemy manuscript at all—or something quite other, made to resemble one?

“Ah, here . . .” he continued, running his fingers across a different page, this one decorated with symbols and notes radiating from a central ouroboros design. “This, I believe, is Romani.”