The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (18 page)

“No, quite the contrary. If anything, he’s pushing for faster progress—or at least I think he is. Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of his somewhat oracular pronouncements, though.”

Briefly he outlined the gist of his audience with the Master, and the growing certainty that Peregrine’s further advancement somehow hinged on a successful resolution of the Gillian Talbot case.

“He said, ‘
The artist must be also the craftsman. Broken images must be restored. The temple of lights must be rebuilt.’
I take that to mean that Peregrine is somehow to be involved in restoring the Talbot girl to wholeness. I plan to try contacting her parents next week, when I go down to London to collect Philippa. I’m not sure how I’ll engineer it all, to get the two of them together in a setting where we can work uninterrupted, but I don’t suppose I would have been told to do it if it weren’t possible. Of course, ‘possible’ does not always equate with ‘easy.’’’

“Almost
never
does, where the Master’s instructions are concerned,” McLeod rumbled. “But as we keep saying, we knew the job was dangerous . . .” He sighed, glanced at his watch, then sat forward explosively. “Jesus, I’ve got a press conference in half an hour! I’ll be in touch, Adam. Ring me if you come up with anything else.”

* * *

The next day brought no new counsel, and only one piece of news that could be construed as good. After lengthy consultation with the police, the Procurator Fiscal finally agreed that Randall Stewart’s body could be released to his family for burial. McLeod passed the word to Adam, and Adam and Christopher assisted Randall’s family in making the necessary arrangements. Because of the wide variety and number of Randall’s friends and acquaintances, Christopher contrived to secure St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral for the following Tuesday, rather than the much smaller parish church he had attended nearer home. Six of Randall’s Masonic Brethren were deputized to act as pall bearers, and members of his Lodge also made arrangements for their own commemoration of their slain brother, at a Lodge of Sorrow on the Friday evening.

“Later in the month, the Brethren will also be organizing a party to go down to Melrose Abbey for the annual Mason’s Walk,” McLeod told Adam, when they had exchanged final decisions about the funeral. “That’s St. John’s Eve, the day after Boxing Day. Jane and I will definitely be going down, and you’re welcome to tag along.”

“I’ll do that,” Adam said. “It’s the sort of commemoration Randall would have liked.”

Once Adam’s part in the planning was accomplished, however, he determined not to waste any more time or energy brooding over their lack of progress in finding Randall’s killers. Rigorous self-examination left him convinced that he had not overlooked anything of material value to the case, so he turned his thoughts instead to the more accessible if no less perplexing mystery of Peregrine Lovat and his ongoing part in all of this. That Peregrine was a key figure in the overall strategy against the Lynx, Adam had no doubt; but first Peregrine must prove his worthiness on a cosmic scale by doing whatever he was intended to do regarding Gillian Talbot-or Michael Scot. Perhaps it was
Scot
who was the key. Perhaps that was why the Master had linked Peregrine’s admission to the Hunting Lodge with success in restoring the scattered psyche that was both Michael Scot and Gillian Talbot—and a host of others, Adam had no doubt.

Very well. He had made plans to contact Gillian’s parents next week, if they did not contact him first. Meanwhile, there were things Adam could do to further pave the way for Peregrine’s eventual entry into the Hunting Lodge. As yet, Peregrine had met only three of Adam’s esoteric colleagues. It was time he made the acquaintance of a fourth.

Chapter Fourteen

“I THINK
you’ll like
Lady Julian,” Adam told Peregrine, as they motored south on Saturday morning under a chilly and changeable November sky. “I’ve known her since I was a lad of about twelve. She’s like a favorite aunt. Her late husband was a businessman, mainly engaged in trade in India and the Far East, and they amassed an incredible collection of Orientalia over the years. A lot of it’s gone to museums now, but Julian’s kept some of the best pieces for herself. She and Michael were actually friends of my parents first, and she and my mother were and still are close. She’s also one of the most talented jewelry designers I know-which is why I’ve had her do the repair on my ring. You’ll love her place—and her work.”

“She sounds delightful,” Peregrine said.

What he did not say, because Adam had not brought it up, was his suspicion that Lady Julian might be rather more than an old family friend who happened to dabble in jewelry—just as he
knew
the ring in question was no ordinary piece of jewelry. It perhaps had saved more than just his hand from serious injury, that awful night at Urquhart Castle, and he, doubted that Adam would ever have let it out of his possession except under a bond of unshakable trust—which made it more than likely that there was more to Lady Julian than Adam was letting on.

They continued to chat of inconsequentials as Adam threaded the Range Rover through the elegant environs of New Town, finally entering a quiet crescent tucked well away from the bustle of Queen’s Street. Midway along a row of Edwardian townhouses, he pulled in at the curb and they got out, Adam pointing out one of the flats on the other side of the street. Behind a wrought iron gate painted the pale green of verdigris, cut stone steps led up to a door of vivid vermilion, guarded by a pair of fierce granite Fu dogs.

Peregrine bent briefly for a closer look at one of them as Adam rang the doorbell, also admiring an unusual boot-scrape set into the stone beside the door, cast in the shape of a Chinese dragon. The door was opened a moment later by Lady Julian’s live-in companion, a stout, practical-looking woman in her mid-fifties, with apple-cheeks and a twinkle in her eye.

“Good morning, Mrs. Fyvie,” Adam said with a smile. “I believe Lady Julian’s expecting me—and this is Mr. Lovat.”

Mrs. Fyvie beamed at them both and stepped back from the door, bidding them enter.

“Indeed she is, Sir Adam! Do come in, both of you, and let me take your things.”

Still beaming, she ushered them through a tiny, tiled vestibule and into a broad hallway papered in pale green damask with a raised pattern of lotus flowers. Two lofty cabinets of fine Chinese lacquer-work faced one another across the width of the carpeted floor, and an almost life-sized Kwan-Yin gazed serenely down the corridor at them from beneath a gilded medieval baldachin. As the two men divested themselves of coats and scarves, a fluffy Himalayan cat sauntered out from behind the large potted fern in the corner and made a move to twine itself around Peregrine’s legs. Mrs. Fyvie clucked her tongue and shooed it away as she hung up their coats.

“Here now, off you go, before you get the young gentleman’s cuffs all covered in fur,” she told the cat reprovingly, though she was smiling as she turned back to face the visitors. “Lady Julian’s in the sun parlor, if you’d care to follow me, please.”

The sun parlor was a spacious, south-facing chamber at the back of the house. A bowed set of French windows afforded an unobstructed view of a sheltered rock garden with an ornamental fishpond set down in the midst of it, though the garden itself was looking somewhat subdued in the thin November daylight.

The room, by contrast, was a riot of colors, textures, and shapes, flung together to create an effect of fairy-tale opulence. Oriental rugs in rich shades of emerald, ruby, and gold covered all but the edges of a fine parquet floor. The walls were hung with subtly figured yellow silk as background for a delectation of fans, embroideries, and pale watercolors that, to Peregrine’s trained eye, bore the unmistakable stylistic features of the Edo Period. By contrast, he thought the festoons of transparent silk swagged across the top of the window and down the sides in lieu of drapes might be saris, with their rich edgings of metallic gold embroidery.

Every shelf and tabletop displayed its selection of curios and objets d’art—pieces of antique cloisonné, intricate carvings in ivory, soapstone, and jade, fragile vessels of thin, translucent porcelain, lacquer-work inlaid with gems and mother-of-pearl, all sweetened with the faint, spicy fragrance of sandalwood and cinnamon. Gazing round him in growing delight, Peregrine felt almost as if he had stepped out of the workaday world into an enchanted palace in an Oriental fable.

The presiding genius of the fable, Lady Julian herself, was sitting ensconced in an old-fashioned wicker wheelchair at the center of this room, a slight, twisted little figure with an Indian shawl draped over her head and another across her lap. At the sight of her visitors, her thin, ivorine face brightened in a welcoming smile.

“Hello, Adam, my dear!” she exclaimed, and lifted both hands to him in a musical chime of bangles and bracelets. “I’m so pleased that you could come, to brighten such a grey, dreary day.
And,”
she added with a twinkle, “I see you’ve finally consented to bring along your Mr. Lovat.”

“Didn’t I say that I would?” Adam said with a laugh. He lifted one of her beringed hands to his lips with an air of affectionate gallantry, then beckoned his companion closer. “Peregrine, allow me to present you to Lady Julian Brodie.”

Smiling shyly, Peregrine stepped forward and found himself under friendly scrutiny by a pair of bright black eyes, sage and candid as a child’s. Liberated from his usual reservations, for there was that in her expression which invited him to return that regard, he gazed back at her and found himself looking deeper than he had consciously intended.

Lady Julian, he estimated, was somewhere between sixty and seventy years of age, but he could see, as if in overlay, the girl she once had been-a dainty, doll-like creature with raven hair and laughing black eyes. She had retained, he saw, the fair transparency of skin and the fine, winged arch of her eyebrows, but some of the laughter had been lost along the way, diminished by pain and a tragedy he could only guess at. As he bowed over the hand she offered, Peregrine found himself comparing her to a Chinese willow, at once delicate and gnarled.

“Lady Julian,” he murmured.

Lady Julian smiled wistfully, as if somehow aware of his mental analogy, and the overlaying image dissolved with a shimmer. Then her face brightened again, as abruptly as a beam of sunlight breaking through a cloud.

“Mr. Lovat,” she said, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you ever since Adam first mentioned he’d made your acquaintance. I fear I’ve not yet had the opportunity to see any of your work, but I gather from the reviews I’ve seen that we can expect great things from you in the artistic sector.”

Peregrine had the good grace to blush. “If you’re, referring to that article in
The Scotsman
last month, I’m afraid Mr. McCallum was being overly generous—though I certainly appreciate the compliments, both his and yours.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Mr. McCallum,” Lady Julian said serenely. “I was thinking of something Adam said to me when he was last here. And there’s no need to blush. I have every confidence in Adam’s critical instincts.”

She gave Peregrine’s hand a confiding pat, then turned to Adam. “He’s charming, Adam. But I was about to ask Grace to bring us some refreshments. Will you have tea or coffee?”

“Tea, if you don’t mind,” Adam said. “And if I might put in a request, I don’t imagine Peregrine has ever tasted anything quite like that excellent green tea you get sent to you from Kwangchow.”

“I imagine Grace can manage that,” she replied.

The tea Adam had recommended turned out to be the color of palest jade, and savored subtly of jasmine. It was accompanied by fragile biscuits glazed with honey and sesame seeds and an exotic assortment of sweetmeats flavored with anise, ginger, and orange flowers. Talk ranged amiably over a variety of subjects, from the growing acceptance of acupuncture in Western medicine to the provenance of a bronze Buddha overseeing the room from a corner shelf to the technical refinements of Japanese brushwork. Peregrine became so caught up in the latter topic of conversation that he forgot all about the reason he and Adam were here, until Grace Fyvie arrived to collect the tea tray, and Lady Julian herself returned briskly to business.

“You’ve been admirably patient, Adam, my dear,” she said, “but I know you must be eager to have your ring back again. Give me half a moment and I’ll fetch it for you.”

Before either of the two men could offer to assist her, she had spun her chair around and was propelling herself over to the sumptuously-inlaid writing desk on one side of the room. When she returned, her lap contained a small, brass-inlaid wooden box with a Chinese dragon coiled rampant about a large moonstone set into the lid.

She brought her chair to a standstill and opened the box. Gold and blue gleamed through her fingers as she plucked out a handsome gold ring set with an oval sapphire, which she handed across to Adam with a small, graceful flourish. He took it from her with a smile that broadened as he lifted the ring to the light for token inspection.

“Ah, Julian, you’ve made a masterful job of it,” he told her warmly. “If I didn’t know better, I never would have guessed it had ever been damaged.”

“The stone, fortunately, was unscathed,” said Lady Julian, as Adam put on the ring. “And it took some doing, but I managed not to have to recast the entire setting. However, do try to be more careful in the future.”

At the mild note of censure in her tone, Peregrine squirmed uncomfortably, for it was he who had been the cause of the ring’s damage, not Adam.

“Please don’t be cross with Adam, Lady Julian,” he said ruefully. “I don’t suppose Adam will have told you this, but it’s my fault the ring was damaged in the first place.”

Lady Julian regarded him with a degree of amusement he found difficult to fathom. “Oh, he told me,” she said. “That’s why he and I thought that in the future it might be advisable for you to have this.”

She reached into the box again. Peregrine blinked-and found himself gazing down at a second ring. The stone was a large, emerald-cut sapphire about the size of Adam’s, held deep in a plain gold bezel, but the wide band sported a bold tracery of Chinese dragons. Though the physical design was quite different from Adam’s ring, its psychic “presence” was very similar. Peregrine shrank from taking it, his hazel eyes wide with stunned surprise.

“Surely this isn’t for me,” he managed to say.

“On the contrary,” Adam said, “it
is
for you. And yes, it’s a gift—but a gift that carries with it certain responsibilities.”

He emphasized this statement with a look, the significance of which was not lost on Peregrine. As Lady Julian continued wordlessly to hold out the ring, Peregrine summoned the boldness to reach and take it.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathed, turning it clumsily in his fingers. “I—thank you.”

“Aren’t you going to try it on?” Adam asked, quietly amused.

“Oh,” said Peregrine. “Oh yes, of course.”

He slipped the ring onto the third finger of his right hand. The fit, he discovered, was perfect.

“That’s amazing!” he exclaimed, and turned to stare at Lady Julian. “You made this, didn’t you? And how on earth did you manage to get the size right?”

“Oh, I didn’t make this one, my dear,” she said dryly. “The stone is new, but the setting is—very old. As for the size, I had Adam’s expert guidance.”

“But, how did
you
know?” Peregrine asked Adam.

Adam snorted in genuine amusement. “Really, Peregrine. You’d think there was some magic to it. I took the liberty of making a guess while I was cleaning up that hand wound you took at Urquhart Castle. I—ah—believe you were doing your best to look everywhere
except
at your hand just about then—for which I don’t suppose one can blame you.”

Peregrine shuddered, but he also grinned a little shamefacedly. “I suppose I
was
a trifle preoccupied,” he admitted. “But so would you have been, if you’d been worrying whether you’d ever paint again.” He glanced at the ring. “You were certainly thinking ahead, though. There appears to be no end to your craft!”

“I sincerely hope not,” said Lady Julian.

Her tone was grave enough to give Peregrine pause for thought.

Wondering what she could have meant, he gazed down again at the ring on his hand. The fit
was
perfect, but the ring seemed all at once strangely heavy for its size, and he slipped it off for a closer look. The dragons on either side had their tails intertwined at the bottom of the band, and tendrils from their scales and fins extended up and around the bezel in fine tracery.

“This ring,” he said hesitantly. “Does it have any . . . any . . .

“Any powers?” said Adam. “None inherent to its physical makeup. Whatever powers may come to be vested in it in the future will be up to you.”