The Apothecary's Curse

by Barbara Barnett

  “You’re a bit skittish tonight, I daresay,” declared Simon. His voice was now devoid of all anger.

  Gaelan retreated to a far corner of the room, his back to Simon, mustering the scattered remnants of his composure. “Perhaps I was more unnerved by Sir Arthur than I considered. As for your sister, I could not stay in England at the time, and this you well know.” He turned, now facing Simon: his enemy, his lone friend in the world.

  His combativeness dissipated as excuses failed him. Simon was right; he had to get away—from Simon and from England, where too many memories haunted too near. “Yes, you have a point. And perhaps it is time for me to reinvent myself, as it were. I think I’ll repair to Scotland for a bit. Perhaps Aberdeen.” He could predict Simon’s reaction before a word more was spoken.

  “Do not dare!” Simon roared. “Do not dare set foot anywhere near Aberdeen. You shall bring my niece nothing but misery.”

  Gaelan considered his limited options. “I cannot go back to America. Not now, and perhaps not for a long time to come.”

  “Why in the devil not?”

  Gaelan dropped his voice to a bare whisper, sitting again. “I was nearly discovered, and I fear . . . There was an incident, and I—”

  “I have never quite understood, Erceldoune,” Simon replied, pouring himself a cup of the tea, “why you yet live in the shadows, even now, well-nigh a generation past the time anyone would care you’d eluded the noose. You were certainly enough in plain sight tonight!”

  “It is not that sort of discovery I fear. But I yet live in abject terror each time I spy an advertising poster for one of those wretched freak shows come to town.”

  “I hear they have all but vanished in America. Too distasteful.”

  “Indeed, that may be the case, yet not so much as you think.” Gaelan had hoped to keep his temper in check; Simon was grieving for the last of his close relations. Yet, how could the man be so obtuse? Gaelan sprang from his seat again, striding across the room, his hands clenched into tight fists before wheeling on his companion. “Tell me, Bell,” he said finally, his tone sharper than intended, “what do you think would transpire should my condition . . . our condition . . . come to light? How can you not comprehend? The fortunes of wars, the balance of power world-over shall forever alter if one side or the other possesses such a secret. One to which we both hold the key?”

  Gaelan seethed, but stopped before the discussion devolved into vicious argument. Simon well knew that men with naught but greed in their hearts yet coveted the elusive Elixir of Life. Why, then, this shallow disregard for . . . ? Gaelan fought against further provocation on the matter. He pinched the bridge of his nose, applying pressure to forestall the gnawing in his forehead.

  “Do not worry, Simon. I shall not play the interloper—in Aberdeen. This I promise you.” Restless energy propelled Gaelan from one window to the next, despite the headache, as he paused at each but a moment to look up into the starlit sky, hoping it might settle him. “But I can and shall also know that my daughter and her family are happy, and at least observe, if only from afar, their accomplishments. How can you reckon what my heart yearns for, and how it tears me to shreds knowing I must live ever in exile from my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, shall never feel their tiny hands ruffling my hair—” He turned away.

  “It is far too late for that, for all your words of regret. There would have been ways to manage it—as I have!”

  Simon’s harsh words hurt far worse than the cruelest physical torture. “I had no choice,” Gaelan insisted. “And is it not also true that I saved her life? Perhaps I was a coward to stay away for so many years, but the very thought of discovery . . . It is only now, sixty years hence, that I feel safe to return here.”

  The weight of solitary exile bore down on Gaelan’s shoulders and crushed his throat until he was unable to breathe. Yes, Aberdeen would be a risk, all the more now, since he had come face-to-face with his daughter, his dear Ariadne, a woman who knew him solely as an acquaintance to her “cousin” Simon.

  “Yes. You speak the truth, and I have always been grateful for what you did for us both.” Regret suffused Simon’s countenance. “Nevertheless . . . the sight of you is more than I can stand, the representation of all I have lost, and now with Eleanor’s death . . . She is the last, you know. I am as alone as you on this earth, despite what you might believe.”

  “Aye, I do know that. So let us drink to Eleanor a last time.”

  Simon poured two tumblers. They drank down the fine Scotch without another word.

  Gaelan peered into his empty glass. The emptiness and loneliness, the unrelenting pain that ever emanated from his disfigured left hand: a precipitous burden that threatened to crash down upon him. He strode to the mantelpiece and stopped, scrutinizing the facets in his crystal tumbler before slamming it into the wood. It shattered, slicing into his hand; he watched the blood flow down his arm, darkening the ruffled shirtsleeve. “I shall bid you a good night then.”

  By morning, Gaelan was gone.

  CHICAGO’S NORTH SHORE, PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 1

  Three hours and 125 autographs later, Simon Bell emerged into the unexpected heat of the late-March afternoon, flexing his cramped right hand. His pseudonym, Anthony C. Danforth, swam across his vision, a ghostlike image in red Sharpie; blinking did not vanquish it. His latest novel, another Holmes pastiche, had risen to number fifteen on the New York Times best-seller list. “Holmes resurrected in the style of his times! Danforth channels Conan Doyle with a rare authenticity—again,” read the review. Simon might add, Victorian mysteries written by a Victorian mystery.

  The Gingko trees along the Evanston shoreline were already green; their cloven, odd leaves provided a momentary distraction as he wove his way through the baby carriages, skateboards, and bicycles. But there it was again: indelible.

  The warm breeze washed over him as he dusted off a sandy white boulder above the beach. Simon draped his trench coat over the rock, and he sat, attention riveted on a pair of noisy gulls rowing over a discarded ant-infested hamburger.

  Simon reveled in his well-deserved “reclusive writer” moniker, and it was a rare occasion for him to venture into so public a space. The brave new virtual world made for a handy castle keep, with moats constructed of Twitter feeds and Facebook postings manned by battalions of publicists and their minions. None of his affair.

  A familiar figure meandered the beach below, silhouetted in the glare, and Simon did a double take. As if reading his thoughts, the man turned, shielding his eyes against the sun as he peered up from the sand. What the devil was Gaelan Erceldoune doing down there at the water’s edge?

  Simon loosened his tie just a bit, but thought better of laying his bespoke suit jacket beside him on the guano-stained rock. He thought of calling out, but Gaelan was already climbing the boulders, a rare smile creasing the corners of his eyes as he waved.

  Breathless and smirking, face flushed with exertion, he dropped to sit cross-legged on a nearby rock. “Typical of you to dress like a bloody CEO on a fine spring day! Decided to descend from your mountaintop to rub elbows with the masses?”

  Simon brushed off the remark with a scowl. “What, no warm greeting, then? And you embody, I suppose, the perfect model of a man?” Gaelan appeared much worse off than Simon had seen him in a long, long time: blown pupils, dark smudges below each eye, a slight tremor in his hand, unshaven . . . worn and washed out. Lank, greasy hair hung loose to his shoulders; his jeans were threadbare and faded almost white; the last vestiges of a cigarette burned between his lips. His expression, though, was as penetrating as ever.

  “I suppose I don’t have to point out that you look like hell.” A pang of guilt—should he have checked in? Made sure Gaelan was all right? Was he living rough here on the beach, one of those gray, stooped vagrants pushing shopping carts along the park paths?

  Gaelan plucked the cigarette from his mouth, holding its nearly burned-out remains precariously between hi
s thumb and index finger. Ash drifted from the stub, glowing red, before fading to gray as it fell to the rocks. He shrugged, staring straight out into the horizon. “You just have. Bad night.”

  Shorthand Simon knew well.

  Gaelan sucked in the last of the hand-rolled cigarette before crushing it on the boulder. “Might I nick a fag off you? I’m out.”

  “You are aware they’re bad for the health?” That drew a raucous laugh. Simon handed him his pack of Silk Cut Purple.

  “Filters?”

  “Want them or not?”

  “I asked for one fag, not the whole bloody pack. I’m fine, Bell. And I don’t need your bloody charity.” Gaelan noticed a battered paperback on Simon’s knee, quickly snatching it up. “Scandal in Bohemia. Rereading Holmes? Or pinching his ideas for your next best seller?”

  “Just reading.”

  “Have you not yet committed the entire canon to memory after all these years?”

  “It gives me pleasure—nostalgia of a sort, I suppose, like having him nearby again. And you are clearly not ‘fine.’”

  “These fags are shite.” Gaelan stared down at the beach, ignoring Simon’s assessment. “Will you look at them, those lads down there? And that kite! I’ve never seen anything its like. And they say dragons are extinct! Brilliant!” He fished a gold-edged iPhone from his jeans pocket and snapped a photograph. “Have you got one of these things, Bell? They’re fucking marvelous.”

  Simon snorted. “How can anything still be marvelous for you? After all you’ve been through . . . we’ve been through.”

  “Do you know what your problem is?”

  Besides the inability to die? Besides the fact that I am daily tormented by my dead wife? Simon knew what was coming next. “I’m certain you’re going to tell me.”

  “Your imagination is mired in the nineteenth century. You, my dear friend, are two centuries behind the times.”

  “Says the man with the antique shop.”

  “Antiquarian books. And I’m quite good at the trade, a noted scholar in some circles.” Gaelan thumbed the fragile yellowed pages of the paperback, half-separated from the spine, before fixing his gaze once again out toward the horizon. “The shop is a brisk enough business. With the Internet, eBay . . . Even Sotheby’s has an online auction with which I’ve made a fair penny. I still teach the odd class at Northwestern, do a lecture here and there. I more than make ends meet.”

  “Then what? You look like you’ve been living on the beach, not just taking a stroll.” Even as he asked the question, Simon cursed himself—after seventeen decades, one thing he should have learned was that it was never a good idea to get sucked into Gaelan’s chaos.

  Gaelan scrubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, his voice so soft Simon could scarcely discern it above the beat of the waves below. “It’s getting worse again. I’m trapped in a fucking labyrinth, and I cannot figure a way out—”

  Compassion nibbled at the edges of Simon’s irritation. “Nightmares?” He was aware that much of Gaelan’s often-acerbic attitude was smoke and mirrors. How many late-night calls had there been over the years when Simon would find Gaelan hiding in the dark of his flat above his shop, cowering beneath a table or in the corner of a closet, panicky and shaken? He would seem better, almost normal for a time, and then something would trigger another bout. What was it this time?

  “My hold is slipping these days, more and more. Can’t sleep; can’t eat.” An unbidden admission, and certainly not without cost.

  “Why have you said nothing to me? You’ve not rung me up in more than six months—”

  Gaelan shrugged, brushing it off. A harsh breeze rattled the branches, dropping the temperature by ten degrees as tendrils of dark gray cumulonimbus overtook the sapphire sky. Swirls of black-green clouds edged the steel gray above the horizon to the east.

  “Bloody hell!” Simon jumped, almost slipping down the steep incline as lightning shredded the sky and hail pelted them, icy marbles lobbed by the clouds. The air froze as the wind blasted, and incongruously, it began to snow. Hard. They made a run for Simon’s BMW.

  “Drop you anywhere?” Simon asked between gasps.

  “My shop will do.”

  The doorbells jangled as they entered through the door below the sign: “G. Erceldoune—Rare Books and Antiquities”—a threshold back in time. Simon only wished that Gaelan had not located the shop beneath the Brown Line elevated tracks.

  Simon surveyed the shop, its wood and bronze not much different than the apothecary where he’d first met Mr. Gaelan Erceldoune. But instead of jars and bottles were bookshelves; instead of the aroma of cinnabar and citrus, mint and jasmine petal tea, there was the musty fragrance of old vellum and leather.

  Booksellers or not, Erceldoune’s shop evoked the bitterest of memories—images better left to the cobwebs of time.

  Simon drummed his fingers on the counter. “I might have a line on the book. The book.”

  Gaelan flinched just enough for Simon to notice.

  “What? Did you not hear me? I might have located your book.”

  “Yes, I heard you. How many times is this, then, and each time futile?” Gaelan stepped behind the counter and rolled a cigarette, his eyelids fluttering closed as he lit up and took a deep drag. “Ah. So much better than that shite you smoke.”

  Simon expected dismissive, but this was complete disinterest. “Really, Erceldoune! What’s wrong? I can’t help but notice—”

  “You will tell me I’m overreacting, Simon. I know you. But it’s . . . There was an article. In the Guardian. They’re renovating the London Imperial War Museum. In Lambeth Road.”

  Simon was confused, anxiety ratcheting up a notch. “But what has it to do with the book?”

  “Nothing at all to do with the bloody book. The Imperial fucking War Museum. Do you not remember . . . ?” Gaelan drummed his fingers on the counter. “They’ve torn the place apart—”

  Recognition dawned.

  “They’ve unearthed diaries, Simon. Handley’s diaries—in the bowels of Bedlam. Extensive journals, dated early 1840s.”

  The name alone sent a chill through Simon. And Gaelan, even nearly two centuries later, was still tormented by years of torture endured there, under the mad doctor Handley’s “care.” “So what? There’s not the remotest chance they’ll—”

  “You’re not fucking listening. They describe—in detail—experiments and ‘private freak shows,’ as they are called. You want to know why I’m fucking falling apart? Now you do. And how long will it be, do you think, till they come calling?”

  LONDON, 1837

  CHAPTER 2

  The damp night air stank of death, horses’ leavings, decayed fish, and disease . . . so, so much disease. Dr. Simon Bell ignored the rising bile in his gut as he strode through the streets of London toward his destination.

  Sad-eyed waifs tugged at his greatcoat, their hands trembling in the cold November air. He fled past them, vaguely aware of their presence as he pulled away from their grasp. “Not tonight; I’m sorry.” Waving them off, Simon sloshed through miniature rivers on the cobblestones, remnants of the afternoon’s rainstorm.

  Breathless, shoes soaked through, and trouser cuffs dripping, he stopped, uncertain, lost among the buildings and market stands, each resembling the next in the maze of Smithfield Market. His head whipped one direction then the next through the yellow haze of the streetlamps until he recognized his destination.

  Ornate lettering edged in gold sat atop the double-bowed windows: “Gaelan R. Erceldoune, Apothecary.”

  He’d not seen Erceldoune in many months. The apothecary had long been a popular choice among physicians: clever and well-read—and a bit of a legend. Extraordinary medicines, it was said round the club in hushed and admiring tones, were concocted in Erceldoune’s back room and found not in any modern pharmacopeia. Cures long since considered magical nonsense, conjured with herbs and rare metals out of books with odd-sounding titles. More effective than any in current usag
e.

  Simon knew the apothecary was as skilled at modern chemistry as he was at grinding standard salves and dispensing medicines, inventing the most exquisite of preparations months before they would be discussed at the Royal Society. They’d been cordial, never friends exactly, but for ten years they’d shared a mutual fascination with the latest discoveries, no matter the discipline: science, philosophy, literature, languages. Simon had always looked forward to their late-night conversations over a good whisky and a game of chess in Erceldoune’s laboratory.

  But in truth, Simon knew little about Gaelan Erceldoune, who would never, for all his apparent brilliance, be a part of his society—not someone to introduce round the club, nor ask to dinner. At the end of the day, Simon would return to his London mansion and Erceldoune would retire to his tiny Smithfield flat above the shop.

  Then Erceldoune’s wife passed away, and the apothecary slammed his door to physicians. He’d refused all requests for the filling of even the simplest of prescriptions, yet his shop remained open to all others—the wretched souls of Smithfield. There was speculation aplenty as to why Erceldoune would so abruptly forsake so lucrative an income source, but Simon never inquired, however much he’d missed their discourse. There were plenty of apothecaries in London eager for the trade.

  At times, Simon had wondered why a man as clever as Erceldoune dwelled amid the vile zoology of Smithfield Market. No doubt, he could afford a better abode, away from the reek of animals permeating the air and filth that ran like a river through the streets.

  But at this singular moment, Simon’s sole thought was the hope that Erceldoune would not refuse him now. He must make the apothecary comprehend the dire nature of Sophie’s situation. For if she died, Simon knew he would not be long for this earth. Sophie was his anchor, his entire life.

  Week by week, Simon’s grip on the frayed end of his oil-slick tether slipped further and further as Sophie’s tumor grew, a malignant evil upon her breast. Then he noticed the second one, grotesque and purple-red, protruding from the hollow beneath her arm. And his heart stopped, for he knew there was little else to be done for her—by anyone.