The Apothecary's Curse

by Barbara Barnett

  She agreed. Good. She was playing along with him a game that right now must seem to her utter madness. She was trusting him without knowing what with. Patience, my love. I know what I’m doing here.

  “Lovely,” added Paul. “And maybe on the flight, Mr. Erceldoune might convince you not to return to the States at all once you’ve arrived back home. So it is settled. I shall fly back tonight and oversee the contract personally. Meantime, I’ll see about getting Mr. Erceldoune a passport and have it overnighted. Expect the contract in your e-mail within the next forty-eight hours. I’ll need a place of birth and birthdate for the passport.”

  Gaelan couldn’t help but laugh before considering what to say. “Er . . .” He coughed. “Edinburgh. But I’m not sure you’ll want to use my actual birthdate.”

  “Obviously. I am curious, however.”

  “Twenty-four March 1586.”

  Gaelan watched as the door to the shop closed and Dr. Paul Gilles exited. He held up a hand, saying nothing, and nodded toward the door. “Has he gone?”

  Simon went to the blinds, opening them slightly to look out. “He’s gone.” He turned back into the room, fuming as he paced. “What the bloody hell was that?”

  Anne continued to stare at Gaelan, hands on her hips, eyes blazing. “Exactly what he said. What the devil were you thinking? Join the team? Collaborate? You can’t be serious.”

  “Oh, I’m quite fucking serious. Just not about giving free samples of me to the likes of your ex-fiancé.”

  “Then what—”

  “I’ve an idea.”

  CHAPTER 53

  They decamped to Simon’s larger, more comfortable home after stopping at a scientific supply store near the Northwestern campus.

  Simon had helped Gaelan set up an improvised laboratory in his luxurious second-floor bathroom. “This idea of yours; it’s quite the double cross,” Simon noted, setting out an array of beakers. “It calls to mind another double cross—one that ended in disaster.”

  “But only for Richard Braithwaite. Yes. Eleanor,” Gaelan replied, nodding slightly, surprised that Simon had made the connection so quickly. “I felt her near to me, as if she spoke to me through time, affording me the courage—the courage she displayed—back then.”

  He thought for a moment. Simon needed to know about Anne. There was no time for the entire bizarre tale, but at least the man might go to his grave knowing Eleanor’s descendant. What he did with that knowledge was up to him.

  The Magic Flute floated up through the grand foyer, interrupted by a knock at the door. Anne. “Gaelan.”

  “A moment, luv.”

  “Your passport has arrived, I think.”

  Perfect. The toxins were finished. He carefully placed a glass stopper into one amber bottle. Then into two smaller cobalt vials he placed stoppers, which he’d wrapped in soft wax. Holding the bottles up to the bathroom light, he was satisfied the wax was evenly distributed around the neck. Soon it would harden to a secure seal, perfect for travel.

  He pocketed all three and turned to the final page of the manuscript—a beautiful rendering of sky and sea on a starry night, the place a high rocky cliff planted with a single hawthorn tree, its branches barren. Beneath it slept a man, beside him a woman, more light than flesh—not quite human . . . other. Airmid? The outlines of the illumination, scripted in black, a fine copper hand in Latin and Gaelic.

  “Tempore quamquam abest ut crescant et labatur si venistis ad hunc locum istum egregium locum semper et invenies me. Justus dormientes et expecta.”

  “Though time may grow distant and we fade from this place if ye come to this goodly land, ever shall you find me there. Just fall to sleep and wait.

  “Airmid’s medicine . . . herbs of every variety, she had spread upon her cloak. But they were scattered to the four winds by her father, jealous of her healing power. But Thomas Learmont of Erceldoune in Scotland, before the time her people had sojourned to Eire, had shown her a kindness in her grief at the loss of her brother, the anger of her father. And the fairy Airmid gifted Thomas a book, one that held the secrets of the minerals and herbs and healing and medicine. And Thomas promised to preserve it and perhaps someday return it to her.”

  There were numbers beneath the script—coordinates, he speculated. Gaelan put them into a GPS app on his iPad and came up with a dot on the northern coast of Scotland in the Highlands. It made some sense, from what he recalled about the Tuatha de Danann, of Denmark, some said. But from the north. He emerged from the makeshift laboratory and into Anne’s arms.

  She cupped Gaelan’s cheek, moving a lock of his hair behind an ear, looking gravely into his eyes. “I know you can’t tell me where you’re going with my . . . your . . . book, but . . . I’ll never see it again, will I? Or you?”

  “I have traveled such a long distance; I am weary and ensnared in a labyrinth with the minotaur chomping at my heels.”

  “Sorry?”

  Ah, yes. She didn’t know Greek mythology. He’d forgotten. “Nothing. Just an obscure metaphor.” He shrugged.

  “You would really throw away the possibility that your book—that you—might achieve some greater good living, and not dead?”

  He placed a finger against her lips, stilling further protest. “Tomorrow you will get on the plane, and when you arrive in London, you will tell Paul I ditched you at O’Hare and you had no choice but to board, given the nature of immigration and international travel these days. You will give him a letter from me and say nothing else. I can tell you no more than that. Please trust me. Yes?”

  “There’s more you’re not telling me.”

  “Anne, let’s not waste our last night arguing. This is all settled, and there is nothing you can do to undo it.” Gaelan embraced her, still not believing that he had found love again, and again would abandon it. He backed away as his body responded to the gentle prodding of her thigh.

  “What is it? Why—”

  “To have fallen in love with my own descendent. It’s rather Oedipal, to say the least, despite the span of generations between you and my daughter Ariadne. I cannot put myself—”

  “Listen to me. Eleanor had many children. What I tried to tell you the other day. It is my cousin’s family that are long-lived, and not my direct ancestors. No one in my immediate line: grandparents, aunts . . . no one has lived extraordinarily long, I assure you. Both my grandmother and great-grandmother died of cancer. I am not Ariadne’s descendent. Yes, I’m very likely Eleanor’s descendant, but not yours.”

  These past few days had been, equally, the most peaceful and most turbulent in his life. But now Gaelan felt the peace that can only come from wholeness. That Hebrew word he’d encountered in places throughout the manuscript. Shalom: peace, but more—completeness. The void within him had been suddenly filled to overflowing; he’d been reunited with his book, found purpose—and found family in Anne. And love, albeit brief. Since that horrible afternoon when Anne woke him, the dreams, the flashbacks had retreated to a distant corner of his mind, if only temporarily. Gaelan had no illusions that they would return, but perhaps he would be . . . gone . . . long before then.

  “Come, my love, let’s go upstairs,” Anne whispered.

  He nodded, letting her lead him up the stairs to her bedroom.

  The first rays of sunlight spilled over them, and Gaelan awoke. He looked down at Anne, knowing they would soon be on their way, down divergent paths—she, back to her life, and he to finally meet death. A month ago, he’d never have believed it, to choose death, given the choice. But there was no choice. Not anymore. Life had run its course.

  He removed the e-ticket from his passport folder and glanced at the departure time: 2:00 p.m., Virgin Air to Heathrow and then straightaway to Inverness.

  “Morning.” Anne was awake. “What are you doing?”

  “Making certain of my flight time. What time is yours?”

  “It’s at four; you know that.”

  Gaelan rolled a cigarette and lit it. “Sorry. A bit nervo
us. I’ve never been in an airport, much less flown.”

  “That’s what you’re nervous about?” She smiled, trying to pull him down into the sheets.

  “Hey, I shall set the bed afire; Simon wouldn’t like that much.”

  “Much rather you set me afire. And we’ve plenty of time.”

  “Aye.” Gaelan put out the cigarette and lowered himself, drawing Anne beneath him. She was wet and already aroused. The awkwardness of their first time had transformed into an easy comfort as he found a rhythm that elicited from Anne the most abandoned moans he’d ever heard. If he’d been a sorcerer, he would cast a spell and freeze them in time, right here, right now.

  Anne gasped as the wild contractions of her orgasm shook her, sending him careering over the edge of ecstasy as he followed her. Afterward, they lay together in silence.

  “You’re worried,” Anne said finally.

  “Aye. Yes. Anything—everything—could go wrong. My flight could be delayed, and I might run smack into your Transdiff friends at Heathrow.”

  “You won’t. Trust me.”

  “I do, my darling. I am entrusting you with far more than my life. But, Anne . . . what if . . . what if the people . . . Airmid, her kin . . . whomever this book belongs to . . . ? What if they’re gone? I mean really gone and—”

  “No guarantees. I suppose, then, you will do what you must. Destroy the book . . . before you . . . before you drink the contents of that vial.”

  It was the first time she’d acknowledged it aloud, the inevitability of this, his final journey. “I have something for you.” Gaelan produced a test tube packed in dry ice. “I didn’t know if it had to be refrigerated, but—”

  “I don’t understand—”

  It was a single tube of blood—the ultimate token of his trust in her. “It’s mine. My gift to you. You’ve my notes from the ouroboros book and now a vial of my blood. Perhaps it might do you some good—or the world. Who knows?”

  “But, Gaelan, the risk. You’re giving your life . . . our life together to make certain it’s all . . . all destroyed forever. I don’t know if I can assume such a burden. I—”

  “I trust, my love, that you will keep this safe and not let it into Transdiff’s hands. Use it to . . . study, to understand. Perhaps someday you shall win a Nobel Prize with it, cure cancer with it. I only ask that you use it well and wisely.”

  He had one more gift for her. The autographed copy of Conan Doyle.

  “Always, my love, remember me when you read the inscription. Now you must go before I lose my resolve—”

  “But—”

  He halted her protest with a final kiss, drinking her in to sustain him for the long days ahead. “Know that I do this, Anne, only because there is no other way. If there was a way to alter my genetic makeup, to reverse the process—and do it in time—I would. With all my heart, I would. But we both know as long as I am living, Transdiff will not stop, and to find an antidote to reverse my condition could take lifetimes more than I can afford.”

  She nodded, tears running freely down her cheeks.

  Gaelan watched from the gallery as Anne said her good-bye to Simon, taking from him a large accordion envelope. Forget about me, my love, and be happy.

  CHAPTER 54

  Anne was off, and with any luck, she would be at Heathrow breaking the news to Paul Gilles in approximately ten hours. The front door closed, and Simon breathed a sigh of relief as Gaelan came down the stairs.

  “So, Gaelan. This is finally the end for us. We must drink a toast to old friends.”

  Simon poured two large tumblers, each filled to brimming with Lagavulin.

  “To our beloved Eleanor,” Gaelan offered.

  “To Arthur and Joseph. And to Sophie; banshee or not, she did not deserve this unrestful rest.”

  Gaelan nodded. “Perhaps you will see her soon enough.” They touched glasses. “Slàinte!”

  “Do dheagh shlàinte. However, you do realize, my old friend, that we’ve just drunk to each other’s health and we intend quite the opposite.”

  Gaelan smiled easily. “Force of habit, I suppose.” Resolve had lifted a four-hundred-year-old burden from his shoulders. “Well, my friend, I shall be off shortly. I suppose ‘See you on the other side’ might have been a more practical toast.

  “Mind, Simon, I made this to exact proportions. As I did with my own, but a slightly different formulation—specific to the elixir I’d made to cure plague. Take all of it if you wish to die. This will not reverse the elixir; it will kill. It is a potent poison, but it will do it fast. There should be no pain in it. The Tuatha de Danann were healers, and even their deadliest poisons were not meant to prolong suffering, but to be quick and effective.”

  “All medicine is poison?”

  “Not in this case. This recipe is explicitly a toxin, no medicine to it at all. There is no good in it, I can see, save the murder of an enemy. Or a suicide. Have you told Sophie?”

  “I’ve not seen her for days, come to think of it. She’s left me in peace. She’s not been round since we’ve been occupied with your accursed book.”

  “Perhaps, as I have long said, my friend, she only wants you to go on living and let her be dead. Do not pine for her on her grave, and she will vanish. You’ve had little time for pining these last days. Perhaps she has truly left you after all this time! Are you certain you do not desire to stay a bit longer on this earth? Haven’t you a new novel coming out shortly?” Gaelan could not suppress a laugh.

  “You’ll be gone, and she will return, I am certain. But with you gone as well, I shall be truly alone in the world. No. I must end it; it is long past time.”

  Gaelan sighed. “Then I give you this vial and hope it brings you the peace you have so long craved, my friend. It is likely for the best, in any event. I thought I was safe from discovery, and had been for what? How many years? And then a simple accident in this age of electronic wizardry, sorcery beyond anything my ancestors might have foreseen in their age—”

  “I’m well aware. So, my old friend, it is a death pact we sign here, yes?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “And Anne?”

  “Anne will write about what she learned from me and the book—it will give her a lifetime’s work. She has my notes, and my library, and now—”

  “And now that you’ve told me of her tie to Eleanor, she shall have my fortune as well. It seems I owe you a debt of gratitude once again, to have connected me with . . . my niece, is it? Somehow it is comforting to know that I go to my grave having known her. It is a gift beyond measure.”

  “You told her, then . . . about yourself?”

  Simon shook his head. “That I couldn’t bring myself to do, at least not . . . But it is all there in a thick packet of papers I insisted she take with her. She will know soon enough. She is, after all, my closest known relation, my own sister’s descendent, unbelievable as it is. It will be a story to tell her children someday—”

  Gaelan flinched. That was not something he wished to think about. They heard the taxi as it pulled up to Simon’s door.

  The two men embraced, wishing each other success as Gaelan hoisted his messenger bag over his shoulder, patting it to make certain the book was inside.

  The house was silent; Simon’s footsteps echoed on the foyer tiles, making the place seem yet more desolate. He reflected on Sophie’s disappearance a moment before realizing he’d simply forgotten about her these past few days, perhaps for the first time in decades. He’d not missed her shrieks and mercurial temperament. Her bitter harangues or her biting tongue. She was gone. Really gone.

  Had Simon finally done what she’d wanted all along? All that was required to let her go and send her back to her eternal rest? What was that ballad she’d always wailed, her cries and shrieks punctuating each and every verse? That was it: “The Unquiet Grave.”

  Cold blows the wind to my true love,

  And gently drops the rain,

  I never had but one sweetheart,


  And in greenwood she lies slain.

  I’ll do as much for my sweetheart

  As any young man may;

  I’ll sit and mourn all on her grave

  For a twelvemonth and a day.

  When the twelvemonth and one day was past,

  The ghost began to speak:

  “Why sittest thou here all day on my grave,

  And will not let me sleep?”

  Simon wanted to believe that Sophie had finally broken free of him; he’d never wanted to hold her against her will. But his heart had mourned her, had felt guilty about her death—perhaps he had held her, but unwillingly so. And now she was gone, let go. At peace. There was only one thing for Simon to do. He uttered a fervent prayer as he took in hand the cobalt blue vial Gaelan had prepared for him: that Sophie would be waiting for him, not the banshee she had become, but the soul mate she had been back then.

  “Simon, my love.”

  Sophie.

  “I thought you’d gone—”

  “I have, my love. I am free, and I return to you of my own will. I know what it is you aim to do and shall be awaiting you when the time comes.”

  “Soon, love, soon.” It would be all right.

  He held up the amber bottle to the light, studying the liquid as it swirled in the glass. He put it to his lips and drank as if it were his only sustenance and not a poison. He tasted the tang of metal, like fine silver, and the alcohol solvent; the scent of almonds and orange peel surrounded him as he felt himself falling into a vast white sea of light.

  Sophie awaited him, her hand extended, dressed in sapphire velvet, a diamond tiara in her black hair, radiant.

  He was home.

  NORTHERN HIGHLANDS, SCOTLAND, PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 55

  Thurso was on the northernmost tip of the Scottish mainland, overlooking the Orkneys. It was a wild area of stark beauty, the very feel of it otherworldly. Gaelan landed in Inverness and hired a car, taking his time to drive north and west through the Highlands. The road wasn’t easy, and the car awkward to drive, with everything reversed. There was little traffic, but more than once, he had to remind himself to drive on the left, not the right as a car traveling the opposite direction would surprise him coming over a hill or round a curve. It wouldn’t do to crash—again. It would be all he needed.