The Serpent's Shadow (12 page)

Peter Scott, if he knew enough to know what Charan was, surely knew that as well. But he didn't move, either to pull back, or to extend his hand further. And he didn't make any of the silly noises people often did to reassure the monkey. He didn't smile—wise, since the baring of teeth was a sign of incipient battle among those of Charan's ilk—but he did blink, slowly, and make a faint, clucking sound.

Charan sat down, just within reach. He contemplated the extended fingers, then raised his great, sad eyes to Scott's face and locked gazes with him.

Then with the greatest of casual ease, as if he had known Peter Scott all of his life, he put his tiny hand gravely into Peter's large one.

Peter gently closed his hand around Charan's. “I am pleased to meet you, sir,” he said, and only then did he look up at Maya while Charan waited trustingly at Peter's feet. “Since he and I don't share a language, I don't suppose you could tell me what his name is, could you?”

“Charan,” she replied, and before she could say more, Peter immediately returned his attention to the monkey.

“I am glad to meet you, Charan,” he said, releasing the little paw. “My name is Peter. Would you care to join me? I'm afraid your protector has only provided a single seat, but you can use my good knee, if you wish.”

Now Scott straightened up, and at that signal, as if he had understood every word—which, all things considered, he might very well have—Charan leaped up onto the correct knee, and balanced himself there quite as if he belonged.

“I haven't seen a Hanuman langur since my last trip out,” Scott said softly, and ventured to scratch Charan's head. Charan closed his eyes and leaned into the scratching fingers, his face relaxed into a mask of bliss. “By heaven, he brings back memories! I know that a lot of the sahibs thought they were filthy little nuisances, but—well, I like them. I like their cheek, and their cleverness. So—” he faltered a moment, then looked squarely up into her eyes. “So few people take the trouble to bring a pet from abroad home with them; one sees the poor things wandering forlorn so often, in every land there is, not excepting this one. It speaks a great deal for you that
you
did not take that ‘expedient' answer, Doctor, when you moved to our island.”

She had noted that the longer he spoke, the less he sounded like a working man, and the more like a man of some education.

If this isn't a sign
—“Antoine de Saint-Exupery,” she said, a last test, and he nodded.

“ ‘Many have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it,' ” he quoted, with a kind of reverence most reserved for the words of the Bible, “ ‘You remain responsible,
forever,
for what you have tamed.' ”

She let out her breath in a soft sigh. “I believe—perhaps—I can help you a little, Captain Scott. But it will take time and patience.”

“Patience—so long as it isn't storming—I have plenty of, Doctor,” he replied, looking down at Charan, who had decided that a man so adept at scratching must be equally adept at cuddling and had moved into the crook of his arm. “As for time—” He looked up, and a faint smile answered her shake of the head at Charan's boldness. “As for time, however much I have, it is
not
being spent well when I'm driven out of temper, is it?”

She had to laugh, for between Charan and this man's undeniable charm, she had been won over, entirely against her own judgment and will. “Very well, then, Captain Scott. If you will follow me into the examination room—and
yes,
Charan, he will carry you—” she added, as Charan opened one eye resentfully at the prospect of being forced from his comfortable “nest,” “—I will make some more specific tests, and see just how much I can improve that temper of yours.”

Peter Scott left Doctor Witherspoon's office knowing that however much he had managed to charm the doctor, she had entranced him that much again, and more. There being no further patients waiting, he had met the doctor's entire menagerie, been invited to what was clearly her true sanctum, a conservatory worthy of a horticulturist, and taken a cup of tea with her in her conservatory. Somehow, over the course of a mere two hours, he had become her friend. He sensed both that she did not boast too many friends, and that it was not a gift she was inclined to extend too readily.

He had in his pocket a packet of herbal powders, a small box of pills, and a prescription to be compounded at the apothecary at the end of the street. And he
thought—
although it was difficult to be certain—that during the course of the time when he had sat upon the examination table, pants leg rolled up absurdly to disclose a rather unattractive, hairy shank, when she had manipulated his knee, she had done something more to it than simply prodding and poking.

Earth Magic was healing magic, and even the untaught Earth Master could heal by sheer instinct. If she had sensed
his
power, she would not have been too eager to reveal her own....

Untaught. She knows that she's a mage, but she's untaught That's the only answer.
But how, how, how had
that
come about? She had grown up in India, a land swarming with mages both real and charlatan.
How
had she missed finding a Master to take her as an Apprentice?

Then, as he paused in front of the apothecary, he could have struck himself for his stupidity.
Of course
no mage of India would take her as apprentice, or priestess, or anything else! Her mixed blood would have made her of no-caste; no less than the English, those of the high blood of India shunned the Eurasians. She was ranked with the street sweepers, the Untouchables; no Brahmin would ever teach her, no guru take her for his disciple, not even an old street babu accept her as his chela except on terms no woman of spirit or sense would agree to.

My God, my God, what a waste!
He entered the dark and redolent apothecary shop and wordlessly handed his folded piece of paper over to the old, skull-capped man behind the counter. That, and the mezu-zah at the door told him that the doctor looked after yet another outcast here.

“Bad knee, or is it elbow or shoulder?” the old Jew asked, perching a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles on the end of his nose to peruse the prescription.

“Knee,” Scott replied. “Broke it in a storm at sea; went to the deck and hit it on a brass fitting.”

“Ah. Never set right, then.” The old man turned and began pulling ingredients from little drawers, muttering to himself as he worked—and sometimes adding a comment over his shoulder to Peter.

“This'll be what ye're to start on after ye finish what she give ye,” he said once. And then, a little later, “No opium, no laudanum; she don't believe in that, no. I'll be giving ye two bottles and ye mind, ye look at the one, ‘twill only have seven doses. And ye'll be gettin' no more from me without she gives ye a new 'scrip. That'll be for the bad nights, the stormy nights, when the pain takes ye.
One
of those, mind, for th' night. No more.”

“Why?” Peter asked, surprised.

“Hemp,” the old man said abruptly. “There's them as calls it hashish. ‘Twill let ye sleep, but if ye misuse it, there'll be no more getting of it from
her
or
me.”

Well! Well indeed!
There were doctors who handed out prescriptions containing opiates, laudanum, cocaine, and hemp as if they were no more dangerous than sugar pills. Peter had often considered a little hemp when the pain became too great, but he had feared it as well, for he did not know how much was enough, and how much would leave him with a craving he could not, as an Elemental Master and a member of the White Lodge, afford to have. Pain was preferable to a weakness that could all too easily be exploited. In fact, he doubted that he'd use those pills more often than once a month, and then only when he was not only within protections, but physically guarded.

“I understand your caution—and hers,” he said, with a little nod of respect that seemed to amuse the old man.

A bit more work produced a pair of stoppered brown bottles, both holding pills, the second, as promised, holding no more than seven. Peter paid his bill and pocketed the bottles. Then, with another genial nod and a tinkle of the bell over the door, he left the shop.

There was no doubt in his mind, after a walk of a few blocks, that Doctor Witherspoon had improved his knee. It was just a trifle, and perhaps no one else would have noticed it, but an Elemental Master knew himself completely, inside and out, and
this
Elemental Master noticed a subtle improvement in his weakest physical point.

It wasn't so much that there was less pain—that could have been chalked up to the weather. It was that it no longer made that aggravating
click
it was wont to do, every third or fourth stride.

Now, pills and attention and the warmth of the doctor's hands, and even the determination of his own mind to sense an improvement could account for the loss of a little pain. The mind played an abundance of tricks, even on an experienced mage. But
nothing
in the power of persuasion was going to make that clicking go away.

He had a great deal to think about, and since he always thought better on his feet, he let them take him back through the varied neighborhoods until he reached one where cabs were thick upon the ground, and his gradually-assumed, confident, man-about-town air got him one without the least bit of difficulty.

He also climbed into the passenger compartment without difficulty; more evidence of the doctor's work. “Exeter Club,” he ordered shortly as the cabman peered down through his hatch for orders, and sat back in a seat still smelling faintly of the cigar of its last occupant, to finish his thoughts.

She's hiding from something, or trying to. Something occult.
What in heaven's name it could
be,
he had no clues. But if she had been hiding from something that wasn't arcane, she certainly wouldn't have the all-too-visible profession, the prosperous establishment in a slightly shabby street, or be spending part of her time doing charitable work at the Fleet Clinic, which had to be in one of the worst areas of London. Physical danger to her there would pass unnoticed in the general nastiness of the neighborhood.

It was clear, clear as the crystal sphere he kept in his own sanctum, that he didn't have nearly enough information about her to even make an educated guess as to what it was she was hiding from. But much as he found her a pleasant, highly intelligent, potential companion, and much as he would like to further their acquaintance, duty came before pleasure, and his duty was to first report to the Council and then to get back to his own shop. The lovely doctor could wait; he had a higher loyalty to the White Lodge and the Lodge Master that came before any considerations of a stranger. He also had a business to take care of, if he wished to continue eating and enjoying his current all-too-material lodgings.

The cab stopped directly in front of the club, which in the light of day was hardly distinguishable from the ordinary upper-class townhouses on either side of it. Enjoying the fact that he
could,
he took the stairs two at a time, earning himself a raised eyebrow from the daylight version of the Dragon of the Door.

“Good morning, Cedric. Been to see a new sawbones,” he said by way of explanation. “She's done me a world of good. You ought to have a look in on her.”

“I think not, sir,” Cedric replied with his usual dignity. “I don't approve of these woman doctors. It's unnatural, sir.”

Peter laughed, when he considered just
what
Cedric guarded from the intrusions of the outside world, and gave him a mocking little salute as he passed within.

The Council would not be meeting at this moment, of course, but Lord Alderscroft seldom left the premises. Rather than keeping a house in town, he kept a luxurious little set of his own rooms here, and as a consequence, needed only his own personal man, for all his other needs were attended to by the servants attached to the club. Peter sent his card up to Alderscroft's rooms with the cryptic message, “I've found what you were looking for,” scribbled on the back, and it was a matter of moments before a boy came down with an invitation to dine with His Lordship in one of the private rooms.

The boy conducted him to what was less a “room” and more of a silk-papered alcove done in unobtrusive mellow blue, a pair of overstuffed leather chairs tucked in beneath a sturdy mahogany table. It earned the name of “private” because of a pair of blue-velvet curtains that
could
be drawn across the entrance to conceal the diners within, but so seldom were that there was a hint of dust along the top edges of the heavy velvet bands that tied them back to either side.