The Apothecary's Curse

by Barbara Barnett

  “Then you have my thanks—and my word. If I find the book, you shall be the first to know of it.”

  Simon embraced his sister and left the two of them alone in the drawing room. A peaceable silence surrounded them as they now sat alone opposite each other. “We really must say good-bye so soon? You cannot stay, even for one more—”

  “We have spoken of this already, Eleanor. Would it be any easier if it was next week? Next month?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot tell you, Gaelan . . . Your bravery . . . There are no words can be found in any lexicon that—”

  “Hush, don’t let us waste what little time we have on trivialities. Come sit with me in the garden? It is a beautiful night, and the sky is lit only with a crescent; the stars will be out in spectacular display. And it shall be the last time I see the skies from these shores.” Gaelan rose from the settee and extended his good hand, bowing deeply.

  A breeze cooled the unusually balmy August night, sending a shiver through Eleanor. Gaelan stood behind her, hands on her shoulders, directing her gaze upward into the heavens.

  “Mars is out tonight, do you see it, Gaelan?”

  “Aye, the red planet, and do you see there . . . ?” He held her arm, caressing it as he oriented her. “Do you see, there, nearly straight above our heads? That is the Corona Borealis, Ariadne’s Crown. If you keep looking, you will see the points of it. You, my dear, dear Eleanor, are so like her, the courageous Ariadne. Do you know the story?” He turned her in his arms so he might behold the stars captured in her eyes.

  She nodded, reciting, a schoolgirl before her tutor. “Ariadne aided Theseus in slaying the Minotaur, and they fled to Naxos, where he left her only later to be found by Dionysus, who wed her. But Theseus was cruel to Ariadne; you have not been—just the opposite—although it is true you have slain the Minotaur.”

  “Well, to speak true, it was you that slayed the Minotaur. But like Theseus, I must abandon you, and for that I am sorry. But I swear you shall find your Dionysus, who shall treat you with tenderness and love and cause you to forget both Braithwaite and me for all the children and grandchildren that shall surround you all your days. With me, there would be only sadness and regret. You know what I am.”

  Eleanor pulled back slightly, regarding him, emotion overflowing. “I know.” She brushed aside a lock of his hair, reaching up to kiss his temple.

  Gaelan sighed, overwhelmed. He captured her mouth, devouring it before moving to her jawline and down to her breast as his hands followed, caressing, touching. He could not get enough of the taste of her. He grasped her hand in both of his, kissing each of her fingers, desire and emotion engulfing him like a tidal wave. There was nothing to do but give in to it, savor every moment he had remaining with her and engrave them all in his memory for eternity.

  Eleanor tugged at his hand, leading him into the house. “Come, my love, let us go upstairs.”

  Morning broke, and light poured in through the window, bathing Eleanor’s bed in warmth and sun. She awoke, wrapped in Gaelan’s arms, the ecstasy of the past night still enveloping her. She turned, facing him as he slept beside her peacefully. A single sunbeam illuminated his hair, painting it red-gold. She kissed the spot just in front of his ear, her breath a whisper. “Good morning, my darling.”

  He awoke, stretching, and his arm curled tighter around Eleanor as he drew her closer. The drowsy warmth of his smile did not conceal his melancholy. “Morning, love. What time is it?”

  “Just past six.”

  He frowned, nodding tightly, the reality of his leaving dawning upon his angular features. “I must arise soon, my love; I’ve a journey ahead, you know.” He looked away, not quite able to conceal his regret from her.

  “We have a little time, do we not?” She put to use her best coquette’s smile. The events of the past weeks had faded to an ache, except for Gaelan’s departure. She did not want to say her fare-thee-well, not yet. Not ever. But she had no choice. Yes, she could follow him to New York, but what then? He was right; there was nothing to be done but let him go. But not quite yet.

  She ran her toe along his flank, eliciting a low purr.

  “So you aim to give me a proper good-bye then, lass?” He quirked an eyebrow, dipping his head to kiss her, a frenzy of sensation pooling across every inch of her skin.

  Gooseflesh arose along her arms and legs as he tasted her, his tongue darting along her collarbone to her breast and lower still until she thought she might swoon from it. He grew hard along her thigh, and she only wanted to feel him inside her again. She needed him in that spot, which last night had sent her into spasms of delight and left her boneless and spent. She had never known that feeling, and she would die should he not bring her to it before he was gone for good.

  “Ah, my love, there, yes . . . ” she hissed as he entered her, showering her again with kisses light as butterfly wings, driving her mad with desire until she shattered into fragments of light and color, holding onto him as he followed her, breathless and bathed in sweat.

  Gaelan rolled away slightly, tucking Eleanor in the crook of his shoulder. He touched the jeweled pendant resting on her collarbone. “Ariadne,” he said quietly.

  Eleanor shook her head, confused.

  “Your necklace. I admired it that first night in the garden, but I could not see it clearly in the dark. It is a labyrinth.”

  “Yes. A gift from my father’s father. I’d always thought it an odd piece, and I’m now embarrassed to say I’d never connected it to the labyrinth in Ariadne’s tale. But of course. Where she first met Theseus.”

  He ran his thumb across the diamonds set deeply into the tiny maze. “It is a sign, if we are to believe in such things. So, then, it is settled. You shall stay here in Naxos and await your Dionysus, and as for me, I must be off to Liverpool; I’ve a ship to board, and you, my beloved seductress, shall make me tardy.”

  Gaelan nearly relented as she tried a final time, appealing directly to his heart. “I implore you, do not leave me here alone, widowed again. Please take me with you!”

  “Would that it was possible, my love. But I cannot. . . . It would not be fair to you. It is a rough life I am bound for, despite what you might hear of the place, and despite the fortune you and Simon have insisted to burden me with. And as I said last night, I could not bear to see the resentment in your expression as you grow old, and my own heart shattering when I lose you, as I have lost everything and everyone time and again. It is better—for us both.”

  She imagined herself: old and tired of living, wrinkled and stooped, her husband a vigorous man of only forty years tied to a woman old enough to be his grandmother. He would resent her, and she him. Gaelan was right, of course. Reluctantly, she nodded. He sat up, kissing her a last time as she tried to memorize every plane of his face, the tickle of his shaggy mane, the dark, soulful eyes, now so overflowing with emotion she had to look away.

  By the time Gaelan had washed and dressed, Eleanor awaited him in the drawing room with Simon.

  “I am off to be born anew as soon as I alight in New York. I shall send word of my whereabouts when I can. Good luck to you, Bell.”

  “And you. I don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done for Eleanor. You did not have to do it.”

  “I did, and I am glad for it.” He regarded Eleanor, who sat quietly with no word of farewell to him. “I should have told you sooner, Bell, about Braithwaite; then perhaps something might have been done to put a halt to the entire thing. As for you, Lady Braithwaite . . .” He took a tentative step toward her. “I only hope that time will put asunder that terrible act you were forced to commit. I—”

  She leapt from the chair embracing him, not caring what Simon did or did not suspect. Gaelan blushed as she kissed him. “You shall forget me, Eleanor. You must, and find happiness, my love.”

  With a tight, silent nod toward Simon, Gaelan disentangled himself from Eleanor, leaving the house as he heard the carriage come around to the kitchen door. Eleanor fell
to the settee and wept, a terrible pain in her chest as if a cord pulled tight had been ripped from her heart, leaving in its wake a chasm.

  CHICAGO’S NORTH SHORE, PRESENT DAY

  CHAPTER 44

  Gaelan locked the door and removed the ouroboros book to his tiny office, sweeping aside the glues and cleaners, rags and solvent cans littering his desk. He opened again to the first recipe, wondering if he should test his theory immediately. Was he right? Was it possible that every ingredient was embedded into the illumination inks? Fucking bloody brilliant, that. It was a wild idea, wholly implausible. But what if?

  He resisted the urge to tinker impulsively, not when there was too much he did not yet understand or had forgotten over the centuries. That had been his mistake in the first place, and it cost him, Simon, and Sophie Bell. There was a missing piece, something his father never had time to explain, omitted from his notes. He needed to find it before he dared experiment. He regarded the book with new eyes, feeling the weight of history, of family. This was his legacy, and he meant to fathom it as his ancestors intended him to do.

  He’d a sudden urge to write his notes longhand; Microsoft Word didn’t seem quite the proper vehicle for this endeavor. After tearing the plastic from a fresh legal pad, he sat with pen in hand and set to work.

  The text was infinitesimally tiny in places, and his oversized magnifying light helped immensely, as he wondered how he had ever managed it by mere candlelight. The navigation was difficult, and he struggled through the varying languages, which often switched direction midsentence or halfway down the page and back again by the end. The text twisted and wound within and between, around and under the illustrations, never crossing the boundary into the illuminations themselves.

  Memory seeped through the decades, along with his translation skills—aided, he admitted, by the god of Google—at first a trickle, and then a tsunami, as he began to make sense of the languages and symbols. Impulsively, he would stroke his hands over the images and words, hoping the rough surface of the writing, the radiant color and texture of the designs would somehow percolate through to his soul and bring about an epiphany.

  Hours later, he pinched the bridge of his nose, bringing the light closer as the letters blurred and pricked at the edges of his vision. He must keep going, he knew, get as much done as quickly—and accurately—as possible, he reminded himself, before Anne Shawe returned in the morning. By the time he pushed his chair away from the desk, it was after three a.m. And he’d only managed six pages. He desperately needed a break.

  Picking up his mobile, Gaelan hit number one on the speed dial.

  “I have it.” He didn’t wait for the “hello” on the other end.

  “What?” A groggy voice. “Who the bloody hell is this? Have you any fucking idea of the time?”

  “Aye.” He looked at his pocket watch, energized. “Half three. Practically morning. I have it . . . the book. Did you not hear me?” Gaelan fought the urge to howl his excitement. He needed to stay measured. Calm. In control of his faculties and grounded in reality. This wouldn’t have been the first time he’d called Simon, frantic, in the middle of the night. And it would not do for Simon to believe Gaelan had become completely delusional. It wasn’t as if Gaelan hadn’t considered the option himself at least twice already.

  “How?” Simon was more alert. “And why could this not wait until morning?”

  “Says the man who has been obsessing over it for nearly two hundred years. Don’t be annoyed, Simon. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you thought I shouldn’t either?”

  “Look. I don’t want to speak about this over the phone. . . .” Gaelan listened through the silence.

  “You’re sure you’re not just confused? Because, coincidentally, I’ve also got a line on the book, or have you forgotten? Have you taken something? Or is it just one too many Lagavulins? Because it’s bloody unlikely that—”

  “Of course I’m bloody sure. And it isn’t a line on the book or some elusive little clue or ‘perhaps.’ I have it, looking at it right now, touching it, in actual fact. Unless I’ve finally flipped, in which case . . . Look, I may be immortal, but my mobile battery, sadly, is not. If you want to continue this conversation, we need to meet in person.”

  “There’s an all-night IHOP near the Wilmette train station. Do you know it?”

  Gaelan considered. He knew the place, mostly haunted by cops on break at this hour. He didn’t much fancy running into his friends from the hospital, unlikely as it was in Wilmette. “I do, but I’m not sure. . . . Should we be discussing . . . our condition . . . in so public a place? Maybe you might drive down here?”

  “At three in the morning, do you really think anyone would be listening, and if they are, would they really care? And I hate coming to your flat in the middle of the night . . . the train tracks, you know.”

  Simon and train trestles; his phobias ran nearly as deep as Gaelan’s. “You have a point. And thank you for reminding me you’re every bit as much a nutter as I am. I shall meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  Was it possible? The ever-skeptical Gaelan Erceldoune insisting he had the elusive book, not only a lead, but in his actual hands! Unless he didn’t, and it was all in Gaelan’s head—equally likely. Just how stoned was his old friend tonight, given all that had befallen him these past weeks?

  Simon wandered through the house and out into the garden, the motion-sensor lighting creating a path through the rough-hewn stone. He skirted beyond the path, down to the tip of the promontory wall, and stared out into the dark stillness of the lake. He listened for a few minutes more to the gentle thrust and parry of the waves lapping at the rocks below. His imagination took flight contemplating the finality of death—his own.

  Dying had been only a theory for so long that it had lost all practical meaning. He could leap over the wall without a second thought, lie on the rocks for days, his tissues regenerating while he lived on morphine and biscuits. Each time he’d tried it, hoping for death, he’d been denied. He realized he’d been simply luckier than Gaelan never to have been found down at the water’s edge like that, after a plummet that would have killed any mortal being. What if he had? Then he’d be the bloody Miracle Man. There but for the grace of God . . .

  “So, my dear. Is it over, finally?”

  Sophie! Simon caught himself as he nearly tripped on the root of an old oak tree, startled by her voice, too loud in the quiet of night. “Gaelan says he has the book. And I shall die, and you shall be set free, and we can be together.” All the years she had haunted him: shrew or lover, banshee or sweet seductress, she never looked as she did now—dressed in simple, white muslin. A harbinger, perhaps?

  “How many times have you promised this to me? And even should it be true, how do you know that what you seek lies in a book you’ve seen but once?” She floated specter-like beyond the garden wall, opalescent white above the black of the lake.

  “I hope—”

  “But you do not know!” Her voice was a screech, hawklike, close to his ear—chilling. “All these years, you have held me here, tied me to a world in which I do not belong. Do you think I want to be with you now? For an eternity? The very thought depresses me. If you have not had it in yourself to sacrifice your desire to be with me after so many decades . . .” She harrumphed. “Now, your Mr. Erceldoune. He knows what it is to sacrifice for love!”

  Simon sighed. Not again. He hated it when she did that. “I cannot control what is in my heart; I have tried, believe me, I have, and . . .” But she had vanished just as his mobile ringtone echoed off the rocks and into the night. What now?

  “I’m on my way. I shall be there in—”

  “Mr. Danforth? This is Paul Gilles.”

  Simon took a step backward, nearly losing his footing on an outcropping of rocks. “Don’t you know it is the middle of the night here?”

  “Sorry. Look, I wanted to let you know, I’m coming to the States tomorrow. Oddly enough, the woman I spoke of, the one wi
th that book you’re—”

  “Yes?”

  “She’s reluctant to sell, and to be honest I can’t really say I blame her. But she happens to be in Chicago on business. Perhaps we can all meet, so you might at least see this manuscript you’re so keen on?”

  “You’ll be in Chicago? When?”

  “Likely day after tomorrow, given the time difference—”

  “Of course.” What the devil was going on? Was there, impossibly, a second book? Or was Gilles simply leading him on? But to what purpose? Or was this Gaelan’s fragile grip on reality warping into a whisky- and weed-fueled delusion? He sighed, not knowing what he would find beyond the boysenberry syrup at the IHOP.

  CHAPTER 45

  Gaelan waited in a booth, mindful of the door as Simon arrived and sat down. He’d produced a miniature mountain of shredded napkin, blowing it to the side of the table as a bleary-eyed server approached. “What can I get for you gentlemen this fine spring morning?”

  “Just coffee if you wouldn’t mind,” said Gaelan. “Milk and sugar, please.”

  “Pecan pancakes please. And coffee. Black.”

  They watched her sashay off to the kitchen, not speaking until the pot had been placed on the table along with Simon’s pancakes. “Don’t worry, we’ll pour for ourselves. Thank you so much,” said Simon. He slathered on half a carafe of maple syrup and did not speak again until he saw her sit in a booth at the front of the empty restaurant. “So we already have it? How?”

  “Quite bizarre, in actual fact. Very, very odd.” Gaelan explained Anne as best he could, still not quite believing it himself. “And I don’t believe there is a ‘we’ in this. If I recall, it is my book.” He grimaced. “Unfortunately, this Dr. Shawe insists on being my shadow, gazing, as it were, over my shoulder as I work.”