“Get ‘im . . . away from . . . me! He be . . . be a demon! A . . . demon, I say!” The man quaked violently, teeth chattering between each word.
Gaelan gestured Bell toward the door with a hasty sweep of his arm. “Perhaps it may be better if you make yourself scarce.”
“Of course.” Bell eyed the door for a brief moment, before nodding his head toward a curtained area. “Would it be alright if I remain to . . . observe?”
Gaelan shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Hmm. Perhaps the display on hand was more fascinating to Bell than dining with his brother gentleman physicians.
Gaelan crouched to the floor, the same level as the wild man, but at a distance, reluctant to approach too close. The man had settled some since Bell disappeared into the examining room, but just a wee bit. “If you please, sir. I cannot be of help if you—”
“What is this place? Why am I here? Who are you?” Confusion, now, and the shaking had worsened considerably, despite the blanket he’d managed to throw over the man.
Gaelan ventured closer, now sitting cross-legged on the floor close by the man, nonthreatening as he could manage. He spoke softly, gentle as to a wee child. “I am Mr. Erceldoune, the apothecary. You came to me only just moments ago, sir, for my help. Do you not remember? You asked I follow you . . . somewhere. To your home, perhaps? Has illness taken your family? Your wife, perhaps? A child?” He eased a calming hand on the stranger’s bare arm. Ablaze, just as Gaelan suspected. Fever, ravaging chills, delirium.
Bell stood in the entrance to the examining room, watching, a grim expression darkening his features.
“Dr. Bell, is this—?”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes. It is. Do you see? This was my patient . . . although not exactly. I daresay he did not make me out to be a demon. I thought to seek you out immediately, but then, you see, the business with the girl. Do you desire my assist—”
“Better you should stay where you are for the moment.” Gaelan turned his attention to the man. “I should like to ask you a few questions. How is your head?”
The man closed his eyes, as if to concentrate, before slowly nodding. “It throbs, sir. Like the devil himself’s inside it tryin’ to get out. Please, sir, a blanket? Do you not have a blanket? I am terrible cold,” he complained.
Gaelan tucked the blanket about the man more securely, but no amount of warm coverings would suffice to stem the fever chills wracking his body. “Do you think you can walk?”
He nodded. “I can try, sir. I cannot promise my legs will hold me—they tremble so. I am terrible cold, you see.”
“Alright, then. Let’s give it a go, shall we? Perhaps you shall find more comfort in the nice cot I’ve got ready for you in my examining room.” Gaelan helped the man to stand, looping an arm around his back and steadying him against his side as he avoided Bell, urging him out of the way. “Right?”
He waited a moment, until the man nodded again.
“Good. It is but a few paces to the left. Can you tell me your name?”
“Barlow. I be Zacharias Barlow.”
“Very well, Mr. Barlow, I am Mr. Erceldoune, and I will do my absolute best to make you comfortable and see you back to your family, and in good health. But I must know a few things, and my friend, Dr. Bell, might be helpful in that regard. Might I bring him to the room as well? He is no demon, I assure you.”
Barlow was faring better than when he’d first come in, much calmer, the delirium subsided. But Gaelan remained on his guard lest it return and be directed toward him.
“Yes. Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to . . . Don’t know what I meant, to be honest. I know there ain’t no demons ‘round here! That’s for fairy stories.” He started to laugh, and it triggered a fit of coughing, nearly sending the two men sprawling to the floor.
Gaelan secured him more closely to his side. “Only another step or two now. Do you need to stop and rest?”
“Nah, I’m all right.”
“Nearly there now.” Gaelan settled Barlow into a low cot and placed several more blankets about him. “Right. I shall return in a trice.”
Gaelan hoped Bell hadn’t taken the opportunity to flee; he needed to know how precisely Barlow’s symptoms matched those of his recovered patient. But Bell was standing in the shop, his hat, gloves, and stick in his hand.
“Dr. Bell, I wonder if you might look in with me on our Mr. Barlow.”
“Now why would I do that?”
Gaelan grimaced. The exertion of practically carrying Barlow into the examining room had been more tiring than he’d have imagined. He brushed his long hair back from his sweat-slick forehead. “You would not agree his delirium was caused by fever?”
“Of course I do. But I daresay he doesn’t want me about. And you’ve that wonderful salt elixir to bring him round, eh?”
Bell was looking for a way out. To get to supper—at the club. Of course. “I do. I would very much . . . appreciate . . . You need to confirm for me that the symptoms match your patient’s. Or do not. Already, Barlow’s arms and hands are afire. The shaking too. The order as well as the severity. If you would be so kind, sir. And as I explained earlier about the salt elixir—”
Bell returned his belongings to the counter with a weary sigh. “Very well.”
Gaelan pulled the curtain. “Mr. Barlow, this is Dr. Bell—” Barlow had fallen asleep. At least, it would make the examination less difficult.
“There, do you notice, Mr. Erceldoune? The sweating. Pouring from him. The profuseness of it. My patient, exactly.”
“He also complained of headache. His breathing . . .” Gaelan pointed to Barlow’s chest. “Do you see that even in repose it is labored?” Gaelan removed two pillows from a shelf, covering them with muslin before setting them below Barlow’s neck and head. The man barely stirred.
“Yes. It is exactly what I observed, though Mr. Barlow is not, by many a mile, quite so extreme. I was certain my patient was mere hours from death. Quite certain, and yet . . . And yet, he recovered. It is a strange ailment, this one. I’ve never seen its like, and if this man too—”
Barlow sat straight up, his eyes glazed, darting everywhere. “Please, sir, my wife, my lad Johnny, they’re in an awful state. You must help them! There. Do you not see them? Sitting right there, atop the table. There she is. She is awful terrible pale; death’s upon her, I fear. Please!” Barlow’s arms flailed wildly in the direction of a large secretaire.
The delirium had returned; Barlow was growing more agitated with every second.
“Where do you live, Mr. Barlow?”
“In Page Street, sir. But she is right here, not at home. Not anymore. Do you not see her sitting—”
Bell turned to Gaelan. “Go, Mr. Erceldoune, with haste. I shall keep watch over our patient until your return.”
“I thank you, Dr. Bell. There is a bottle on the shelf. It is the same elixir I prepared for you earlier. Have him drink it. Small sips, until the bottle is half empty.”
Cate! In the urgency of the moment, he’d forgotten her. What if she should need him? What if she were to come down the stairs? Surely then she would come face to face with Bell, which would not do. “I’ve only to run up to my flat, and I shall be off.”
He fled up the stairs to warn Cate that Bell was about, and she’d best stay quiet. When Gaelan returned to the examining room, Bell was sitting beside the patient; he’d removed his frock coat and folded up his shirt sleeves to the elbow. He was speaking in soothing tones to Mr. Barlow.
“Ah, Mr. Erceldoune. There you are. You’re off then, to the Barlows?”
A nod.
“Good. Our patient is dreaming of the little people, it seems. In his mind, they are everywhere about your shop.” Bell chuckled. “I daresay, sir, you have quite the esteemed guests in residence.”
Gaelan echoed Bell’s laughter, more anxiousness than amusement. “One never knows where the fairy folk might take up, eh?”
“Mr. Erceldoune!” Barlow tried to sit, resting his weight on his elbows, hi
s voice coming in short gasps. “Mr. Erceldoune. Come closer. I need . . . they say . . . the fairy folk . . . they insist . . . you must . . . a picture . . . a pretty painting all aglitter, they showed to me. Blue and green. Snakes. Many, many snakes, and dragons . . . and . . . dragonflies. For you, she said . . . You must . . .” Barlow sank back into the cot, exhausted, his breath yet more labored, his lips blue and parched.
Gaelan froze.
“You see, Mr. Erceldoune. The fever. Delirium has overwhelmed him; his breath is barely . . . He will not last the night, I should think. I daresay, his family, if they yet live . . .”
Gaelan nodded, his lips in a tight line. He gathered several bottles and small pouches into a leather satchel and slung the strap across his chest. “I am off, then.”
The image conveyed by Barlow’s fevered vision had by now planted itself Gaelan’s mind as he headed down through the market toward Barlow’s home. It was the dragonflies, not the snakes, that gave him pause. Blue-black and emerald green caught up in tall grasses. An image in the ouroboros book Gaelan knew well. Barlow had not described it in detail, yet it resonated deeply. Did not Grandpapa’s notes reference dragons, dragonflies? Like as not, simple happenstance. Yet . . .
The street lamps had not yet been lit but the sun was too far behind the buildings to provide much illumination, shrouding the market in a dreary gloom as Gaelan reached the address Barlow gave him. The house was in a far corner, down a bleak alleyway. The stench cut right through to his gut. Smithfield was ever a hothouse of vile odors, he learned during his first days in residence, but this was different. The decay of death. Not even rose water would do to disguise the stink.
The day had been sweltering hot. No breeze—not that a breeze would ever make its way into this claustrophobic corner of London. He opened the door just a crack, and the smell of putrefied flesh stung his eyes and nose, overpowering his senses. He lit a candle and counted the bodies, already half-overspread with bottle flies and vermin, silhouetted in candlelight—every orifice prime property for propagation.
Three—the wife and two children, gender indeterminate from the doorway. Gaelan pulled the door closed on the tomb gently as he might. How long had they been dead? Surely days, not hours.
As he made his way back to the apothecary, Gaelan could not help but notice quiet. The sun was dying to the west, but on such a warm summer’s day, would there not yet be stall keepers hawking sausages by lamp? The lowing of cows, the cacophony of poultry, the backdrop of porcine squealing as stall keepers closed for the day seemed to have faded into a peculiar silence.
Sally Mills paced in the mud outside the White Owl, hands on her hips. Gaelan did not need to see her face to read her concern.
“Mrs. Mills, whatever is the matter?”
“Do you not feel it, Mr. Erceldoune? A foul wind do blow hereabouts. Upon my life there is, thick with the reek of death.”
“Are you ailing, Mrs. Mills? Have you fever? Chills? Anything of the sort? Perhaps you ought follow me to the apothecary. I have—”
“Nah. Me, I’m fit and fine. No choice but to be anything but the picture of health! I’ve much too much to do. Ha! And a full house tonight at the Owl. But sense it, I do.”
Never had Gaelan seen Mrs. Mills quite so uneasy, and for no reason. He did not know her well, yet . . . He managed a smile. “Indeed, something may well be about. Not an evil, but an illness. Only just that.” Gaelan bowed and took his leave of her, rounding the corner to his shop. He paused a moment, peering in through the double bow windows before entering. Bell was waiting for him, appearing far more bedraggled than he had.
“Dr. Bell! Is all—?”
“Barlow’s gone, I am afraid. Died only just moments ago. I hope you don’t mind; I sent a boy for the undertaker. His family?”
Gaelan shook his head.
“Have you a clue?”
Indeed, he had, but he could not say it. Not yet. “Possibly, but it is a too far-fetched a notion, and I am not certain. For now, there’s naught but treat the symptoms, one by one as they appear. If there are others.” Barlow’s symptoms had come one upon the other, and in such rapid succession. In a discernible order. “It is the best course; do you not agree?” The only course.
“Yes, but—”
In no circumstance could Gaelan suggest even the remotest possibility they might be confronting a disease some two hundred years extinct. And Barlow’s dragonflies? The ravings of delirium, yet the image insisted itself into his thoughts. They nipped and fluttered, an echo of a memory. Too long ago, Gaelan learned never to dismiss out of hand anything, no matter how ludicrous on its face.
“I do have an idea,” Gaelan said finally, “some notes I jotted down after your last visit, thinking they might be of use for your patient. I must consult something upstairs in my laboratory first, and it will take some time. Perhaps on the morrow I shall have something more . . . substantial . . . than a simple salt elixir to offer. You will return?”
“I’ve other patients to attend, none of whom are exhibiting . . . Although, I must plead to an acute curiosity with regard to this ailment, and what treatment your musings tonight might produce.”
“I bid you a good evening then. Perhaps you will not be too late for your supper.”
Bell glanced at his watch and sighed. He gathered his hat and coat and left Gaelan alone in the shop with the expired Mr. Barlow.
Dragonflies.
CHICAGO NORTH SHORE, PRESENT DAY
CHAPTER 19
The drive from Simon’s home in Highland Park to meet Dr. Spangler at the Northwestern Campus was tricky enough without having to mind the correct side of the road. Narrow, two lanes. The lakeside lane plummeting far down jagged, forested cliffs. The road twisted and wound along the shore, descending to the water’s edge until the bluffs now towered above her to the west. Finally, the land flattened out completely.
“Northwestern University Welcomes You,” read an enormous purple and white digital display. A beautiful campus, its ivy-covered Gothic buildings reminded her of Cambridge, but far more modern—and transplanted to a beach. She squeezed into a parking space on a side street and wandered toward the middle of campus, looking for Dr. Spangler’s building.
Anne had never been to the Califax Center for Molecular Biology, but she’d met several faculty members at conferences and conventions. Perhaps she’d look them up, before she returned to the UK. Although she was not keen to answer questions about Transdiff—or Salk. For that matter, why she was in the States at all.
Dr. Dana Spangler looked young enough with her short-cropped hair and small round specs that she might easily have been mistaken for a first-year. She greeted Anne in the building lobby, extending a warm hand.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
“No. Famished.”
“Have you eaten a slice of real Chicago pizza?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Well, you’re not allowed to leave Chicago without at least trying it, so . . . no time like the present.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“So, most of my work is downtown at the Medical Center. I figure we can catch the inter-campus shuttle and be downtown in less than an hour. There shouldn’t be that much traffic now. We can talk on the way down. And one of the city’s best pizza places is right on the water. Ah, there it is now. Perfect timing.”
They climbed into the small purple and white bus. There were no other passengers. Anne cleared her throat.
“I know a few of your Northwestern colleagues. I did . . . do . . . research on telomeres in tissue regeneration. T. nutricula. Other invertebrates as well—”
“I’ve read your work. Required reading.” She blushed. “I don’t mean that I wouldn’t have read it if—”
“No problem at all. So . . . you’re . . . were . . . a friend of Gaelan’s?”
“Not friends really. Acquaintances. No one really knew him, right? One of a kind, though. I think that’s what people dug about him.”
>
She remembered all those memorials left on his doorstep. “So, he taught here?”
“Not really. Guest lectures. Adjunct prof a couple quarters, I think. Not in the sciences, though it could’ve been. Easily. He knew a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.”
“History?”
She nodded. “Literature, mythology . . . Then he’d disappear from campus for a while, then come back. He never explained where he’d been but to say ‘traveling.’ I think he had bouts of depression, real serious, like. Drugs? Maybe—”
“So how did you know him?”
“The bookstore. Have you ever been in there? It’s amazing. Real old-school. No bestsellers, but really rare stuff. Do you know him from back in the UK?”
“Not really. I . . .” How could she explain it? “Family connections, I suppose.” At least it possessed a scrap of truthfulness. “So you must be wondering how I came to contact you.”
“He told me a while back he’d developed, as he put it, ‘an amateur’s curiosity’ about genetics. I suppose it was triggered by you, huh? Trying to impress you with his knowledge—”
Anne blushed. “No, of course not. I had no idea—”
Dana shrugged. “Didn’t think so. He wasn’t the type to try to impress anyone about anything, but he did it all the time. So. What can I do for you, Dr. Shawe?”
“Anne, please. I found a folder full of karyograms in Gaelan’s flat, and your business card. He’d created a series of—”
“Yeah. He was fascinated by the idea you could actually take photographs of chromosomes, see the banding.”
“So, the images. You helped him produce them?”
“Yeah. How else would he get them?”
“He’s pretty resourceful. You know he had a lab in his flat?”
Dana’s left eyebrow disappeared beneath her bangs. “No idea. Never been up there. He wanted to learn, I suppose so he could do it himself. Undergrad experiment. Expensive equipment, though, to do a simple karyotype.”
“So that’s all he asked? To show him how, and develop the images?”
“For a while. Then I think he got bored. It’s not very exciting as far as cytogenetics goes. I have to say, though, he was particularly interested in the telomeres. Wanted to examine them up close. Knew a lot about it too. More than some of my grad students. Come to think of it, I lent him a couple of special dyes. Said he wanted to try some things himself. Couldn’t figure out how, but now the DIY lab makes sense. I would have loved to know what he was trying. Why the obsession? I never heard from him after that. Two months later, he had that awful accident up Sheridan Road in the Ravines.”
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