The Adept (22 page)

Adam watched her for a full minute from the far side of the corridor, assessing her condition with growing concern, noting the hands and skirted lap of someone sitting close beside the bed on the right, though he could not see the rest of the person. When he finally decided to enter, a comely blond woman in her late thirties started up from a chair at the bedside. So marked was the resemblance to the girl in the bed, Adam had no doubt they were mother and daughter.

“Good afternoon, I’m Dr. Sinclair,” Adam said, smiling. He left his coat draped across the foot of the bed as he came to take her hand. “You must be Gillian’s mother.”

The woman’s eyes met Adam’s, wide and frightened, but when Adam retained her hand, she made no move to withdraw, already engaged by his direct gaze.

“Yes, I’m—Iris Talbot, doctor,” she admitted, with confusion and apprehension mixed. “Did—Dr. Ogilvy ask you to look in on Gillian?”

“Not exactly,” Adam said truthfully. “But I heard about Gillian’s case, and thought I might be able to help.” He neglected to mention just how he had heard. “I’m a specialist in psychiatric medicine. I’ve dealt with similar cases in the past.”

“Then, it’s isn’t hopeless!” Iris Talbot whispered, “There is some hope—”

“There is always hope, Mrs. Talbot,” Adam reassured her. “I must urge you not to expect miracles—these things sometimes take time—but rest assured that I shall do everything within my power to bring Gillian back to her previous, happy state.”

“Oh, if only you could help,” Mrs. Talbot murmured, both adulation and desperation edging her voice. “Gillian is our only child, and the doctors—”

She was on the verge of tears, exhibiting every sign of nervous anxiety—for which Adam could hardly blame her. But she also was primed to listen to anything he might say, eager for any shred of reassurance that things were not as bad as they seemed.

To find out whether that was true or not, Adam needed a few uninterrupted minutes with Gillian—which meant diverting her mother’s attention for a little while. He had already done the groundwork, by the confident projection of his medical authority. With a little care, he should be able to guide the situation in precisely the direction necessary.

“Why don’t you sit down and tell me a little more about it, Mrs. Talbot?” he urged. She made no resistance as he gently guided her back to her chair, sitting as he released her hand. “In fact,” he continued, as he moved to pull the drapes around the bed cubicle to afford at least a little visual privacy, “before you tell me that, perhaps I should first assure you that I find no fault whatever in Dr. Ogilvy’s handling of your daughter’s case so far. On the contrary, she has done everything I would have done, had you been referred to me in the first place. In psychiatric cases, however, there are sometimes limits to what conventional medicine can accomplish. I hope to overcome those limitations.”

As he returned from the curtains to stand beside her, he casually slipped his pocket watch from his vest pocket and let it dangle from about six inches of antique gold chain, spinning and gently swinging to and fro so that the gold caught the afternoon sunlight in small, rhythmic flashes. Mrs. Talbot’s troubled gaze was drawn to it immediately, as Adam had intended it should be.

“Tell me what happened, Mrs. Talbot,” he urged softly. “When did you first notice that something was wrong with Gillian?”

“Yesterday morning,” Mrs. Talbot said, watching the watch turn and spin. “Her father and I tried to wake her for school, and she—wouldn’t wake up,”

“So you called the doctor, didn’t you?” Adam murmured, “And she was brought here to emergency.”

Mrs. Talbot nodded, her blue eyes a little unfocused, her voice going a little flat and sing-song as she continued.

“They said she was in a coma. They couldn’t wake her either. They ran some tests. And then, sometime early in the afternoon, she woke up—but she wasn’t herself . . .””

“In what way was she not herself?” Adam questioned, lifting the dangling watch a little, so that she had to look up.

“She just lay there and—and stared at the ceiling. It was as if she couldn’t hear us. We couldn’t get through to her. Dr. Ogilvy said it was au—autistic behavior.”

“I think I understand,” Adam murmured, gently laying his free hand on her shoulder and continuing to let the pocket watch catch the light. “You’re very, very tired, aren’t you?”

As she nodded dreamily, swaying a little under his hand, he went on.

“So tired—and who can blame you? I can see you’ve been too distressed to sleep. Why don’t you take a little nap right now? It will do no harm if you close your eyes for just a few minutes’ rest. I’ll call you if your daughter should need you. It’s all right to rest for a while ...”

As he continued speaking softly, her eyelids drooped heavier and heavier. Within only a few minutes, under his skilled guidance, she had settled into a passive state of hypnotic relaxation, her eyes safely closed.

Adam noted the time before pocketing his watch again and spared a swift glance at the curtains around them, cocking his head for the background, sounds. Nothing seemed to have changed, but he might have only a very short time to accomplish what was needed. If nothing else, visiting hours would not go on forever—and who knew when a curious nurse might notice the closed curtains and come to investigate?

Turning his back on the mother, and also interposing himself so that her view of her daughter would be blocked, should she come out of trance before he was finished, Adam took one of Gillian Talbot’s slack hands in his own. He laid his other hand on her forehead, easing her back until her head was resting on the pillow.

She made no resistance, even when he brushed his fingertips down over her eyelids, holding them there until the eyes stayed closed. Because time was short and he had no idea when someone might walk in on them, he used a shorthand method for casting a protective circle of warding around himself and his patient—a rapid sketching of the circle with a circular, clockwise motion of one up-raised forefinger, accompanied by the appropriate interior petitions of dedication and empowering. That accomplished, he set up a scenario for visual misdirection, should anyone come in, pressing his fingertips to Gillian’s wrist as if counting her pulse rate, head bowed over the pocket watch in his hand once more, eyes closing as he began his real work.

A single deep breath took him deep into an altered state of consciousness; carefully, like a man testing his way across a rickety bridge, he moved in spirit out of himself and into the borderlands of Gillian’s inner being. He had expected the changeover to be profound, with so little time to make the passage, but entering her world was like stepping from a lighted room into a wilderness.

The interior landscape was like a scene from an earthquake: all cracked earth and heaps of rubble. Off in the distance, Adam glimpsed broken outlines of structures that might have been buildings, now fallen into ruin. Even as he steeled himself to set out across this wasteland, a subterranean rumbling broke out in the deeper regions below. A moment later, fresh upheaval rocked the ground.

The surrounding landscape began to break up. Whole patches of earth crumbled and fell away, leaving only chaos behind. He quit the unstable ground to hover above it, scanning all about him in growing dismay. The degree of psychic disruption was appalling. In all his years of function on the Inner Planes, he had rarely encountered such a complete breakdown of personality.

All around him spun floating clusters of psychic debris—thoughts, memories, fragments of personality. It was as though a cyclone had swept through a room full of jigsaw puzzles, scrambling up the pieces and scattering them far and wide in indiscriminate confusion.

All the diverse elements that had gone into the making of Gillian Talbot were out there somewhere, along with those elements belonging to Michael Scot—and doubtless others besides. In time, one might sort out the pieces, put the puzzles back together, rebuild the masks. But only in time. For now, Adam was forced to concede that bringing Michael Scot back in any meaningful way, at least in the immediate future, was out of the question—which meant that any hope of timely assistance regarding the Melrose incident lay with Peregrine. And repairing the damage to Gillian Talbot was another question entirely.

He was just starting to withdraw into his own body again when the sound of the curtains being briskly swept back catapulted him precipitously back to normal waking consciousness. He schooled himself to make no outward sign of alarm, composing himself in that space of two or three seconds before he calmly turned to look at the nurse standing between the parted curtains. Her expression was one of incensed disapproval.

“Here, now, what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, looking from Adam to the startled Mrs. Talbot and back again.

Affecting no concern whatsoever, Adam pocketed his watch and produced several business cards from inside his coat.

“You needn’t alarm yourself,” he said, handing her one of the elegantly engraved cards. “Mrs. Talbot asked me to examine her daughter, I’ve agreed to transfer Gillian to a clinic nearer my usual practice, if her condition does not improve within a few weeks.” He jotted a number on the second card with a gold fountain pen and handed it to Mrs. Talbot.

“I’ve noted a second number where I can be reached at any hour, Mrs. Talbot,” he went on, closing her hand around the card and holding it for just a moment, to underline the post-hypnotic suggestions he was placing. “Please do call me again, if I can be of any assistance at all.”

As Mrs. Talbot nodded agreement, still looking a little dazed, the nurse read the card Adam had given her, eyes widening at the professional credentials listed.

“ ‘Sir Adam Sinclair, Fellow of the Royal’—I am sorry, Sir Adam,” she said, looking up at him apologetically. “Dr. Ogilvy didn’t mention that you’d be seeing Gillian. When I saw the curtains drawn—”

“I’m sorry, I should have checked at the desk,” he said, bending over Mrs. Talbot to take her hand in farewell. “Don’t get up, Mrs. Talbot. I’m expected elsewhere, so I really must go now, but I’ll have a look at Gillian’s chart before I leave. I did mean what I said before, however. If her condition does not improve, don’t hesitate to call me.”

“Yes—I will,” Mrs. Talbot agreed.

“Brave lady,” Adam whispered, patting her hand a final time before releasing it.

He retrieved his coat from the end of the bed, gesturing for the nurse to accompany him as he said, “I’ll see that chart now.”

Then he was leading her out of the room toward the nurses’ station. He managed to take back his card as well, when she laid it down to fetch Gillian’s chart. But the chart told him little he did not already know or expect. All the blood work was normal, the neurological tests were normal, the CAT scan was normal. Everything was normal—except that it was not normal for healthy twelve-year-old girls to end up in the condition Gillian Talbot was in. Adam resolved then and there to apprehend those responsible—and to bring them to his own sort of justice, if the Fates did not supply a justice of their own.

Chapter Fourteen

MEANWHILE,
Peregrine had parted company with Adam in a state of suppressed excitement. As the taxi crawled up Park Lane and then right, into Oxford Street, he drummed impatient fingers on the armrest of his seat and scowled abstractedly out the window at the people crowding the pavements on either side. The air was acrid in his nostrils, heavy with exhaust fumes. He was relieved when at last they reached the quieter streets flanking the museum.

Not that the museum itself was quiet. Peregrine stepped out of the taxi into a bustling exchange of visitors coming and going. Just inside the museum entrance he was overtaken and engulfed by a uniformed troop of schoolchildren, and had to wait while their teacher consulted the curator at the information desk concerning how to get to the exhibition of Greek sculpture. As the group moved noisily away, Peregrine reflected that if the reading rooms in the Manuscript Section were half as busy as the rest of the museum, he was going to have a hard time carrying out his intended mission without attracting undue attention.

He half-expected his own credentials to be questioned when he presented Adam’s letter and asked to be directed. But the uniformed woman behind the desk merely nodded politely and reached for the telephone at her elbow. After only a brief exchange with someone on the other end of the line, she turned back to Peregrine with a brisk smile and informed him that Mr. Rowley would be along very shortly to meet him.

In person, Peter Rowley proved to be short and broad, with a spiky fringe of black hair wreathing a bald crown. Rowley’s black eyes were disconcertingly shrewd behind their old-fashioned bifocal lenses. But after reading over Adam’s letter of introduction, he extended a hand with every appearance of cordiality. “You’re not the first person who’s come to examine the
Brevis Descriptio,”
he stated genially. “But if Sir Adam has seen fit to take you on as his assistant, I expect you’ll make better use of it than some might. Let’s go down to my office.”

Rowley’s office was located deep in the bowels of the museum’s underground vaults.

“This place is a veritable warren,” he commented, as they threaded their way along several connecting corridors. “Still, if you want to get anything really useful done in the way of research, you’ve got to get as far away from the general public as possible. Here we are.”

He opened a door with his name on it and ushered Peregrine into a small, cramped anteroom lined with file cabinets and overflowing bookshelves. From an island at one side of this academic clutter, a grey-haired secretary looked up inquiringly from the console of a very up-to-date word processor.

“Mrs. Trayle, this is Mr. Lovat,” Rowley informed her. “He’s here to do some work on folio 239 of
Cotton MS Nero D.II
. Would you fetch it for us, please? That, and some tea.” He led Peregrine on through an inner door giving access to a slightly larger but no more tidy office beyond. “I expect you’d rather look, over the manuscript someplace where you can count on a bit of privacy,” Rowley observed matter-of-factly, “I’ve got a lecture to give over the road’ at the university in half an hour’s time, so you might as well make use of these humble premises while I’m gone.”

His gaze connected squarely with Peregrine’s. In that instant, Peregrine caught a flickering succession of companion images overlaying the cartographer’s rubicund face. Adam, quite clearly, had had more than one good reason for sending him to Rowley.

“That’s uncommonly kind of you, sir,” he found himself saying, without any lingering trace of doubt. “I’m not terribly familiar with the museum, and I was-wondering where I might find a quiet corner to work.”

The secretary intruded briefly to deliver the requested manuscript, returning a moment later with a laden tray. Rowley stayed long enough to drink a cup of tea, giving Peregrine a few brief instructions on how to handle historical documents, before suddenly glancing at his watch and starting to shovel a sheaf of lecture notes into an untidy folder.

“Good gracious, where
does
the time go? I’m due across the street in five minutes. I shouldn’t be much more than an hour,” he continued, pulling on coat and hat as he paused by the door. “If there’s anything more that you require in the meantime, Mrs. Trayle will attend to it.”

Left alone, Peregrine opened his briefcase and took out” the sketches he had made at Melrose. He laid them carefully to the left of the manuscript containing the
Brevis Descriptio,
then sat back in his chair, mentally rehearsing the instructions Adam had given him. His heart was racing with repressed excitement. He felt, he realized, almost like a criminal poised to execute some illicit operation.

For God’s sake, you idiot!
he told himself in exasperation.
You’re trying to retrieve information, not rob a bank!

He took a firmer grip on himself and concentrated on bringing his breathing under control. As his respiration slowed, his heartbeat returned to normal. Continuing to breathe in disciplined measure, as Adam had taught him, his present situation lost its strangeness. All at once he felt calm and clear-headed, as sure of his ground as one treading a familiar path.

The feeling of certainty brought with it an attendant sense of self-mastery. He became conscious of being in control of all his faculties, as he could not recall ever having been before. Without stopping to think, he laid his left hand on the stack of drawings, palm down. With the other, he smoothed flat the folio page in front of him and began to study it in detail.

Using his right forefinger as a pointer, he traced over the whole manuscript once from beginning to end. At first the medieval script looked strange and crabbed, a chaotic collection of minims, smudges, and run-on lines. But by the time he returned to the start of the entry, he discovered he could, in fact, disentangle word from word quite easily. His concentration narrowing, he began slowly to read.

An hour earlier, he might have been surprised that the thirteenth-century Latin should be so readily decipherable to his untrained eye. Now he hardly gave the matter a second thought, translating without conscious effort the lines spread out before him. The author of the
Brevis Descriptio
treated each Scottish province by name, beginning with the border areas of Teviot and Lothian. Peregrine passed over them without sensing any response, and continued reading:
Postea est terra de Fif in qua est burgus Sancti Andree et castrum de Locres . . .
Next there is the land of Fife in which there is the city of St. Andrews’ and the castle of Locres—Leuchars, by modern spelling. . .

Subsequent entries dealt with the province of Angus and the Grampian Mountains, known to the writer as “Le Mounth.”

Oblivious to the passage of time, Peregrine read on past mention of the east-coast cities of Aberdeen and Elgin until he came to another natural break in the text. The next sentence conformed grammatically to the ones preceding it:
Et postea est terra de Ros
. . . But as Peregrine came to the word “Ross,” he felt a sudden tingling in the palm of his left hand where it rested over the drawings Michael Scot had prompted him to make.

He returned his index Finger to the place-name and held if there, stationary. The tingling in his opposite, hand became stronger, ceasing altogether when he briefly lifted his hand from the stack of drawings and resuming when he made contact once more.

That’s it!
he thought triumphantly.
Scot’s castle must be somewhere in the ancient kingdom of Ross!
He knit his brows, casting his mind back over what he remembered of the medieval period of Scottish history. The kingdom of Ross, he recalled, had taken in a wide area between Loch Ness .to the south and the mountains of
Sunderland to the north—still a great deal of ground to cover.

Peregrine sighed and shook his head.

If only I had a map to go along with this piece of text!
he thought.

No such map existed, of course, but the notion suggested another tangent of speculation.

“How early are the earliest maps of Scotland that
do
survive?” he wondered out loud.

“If you’re prepared to consider Great Britain as a whole,” said Rowley’s voice from the doorway, “the
very
earliest ones, in our collection date from the thirteenth century. They’re cartographical drawings, actually—not really maps in the usual sense.”

Peregrine looked up with a start.

“I’m sorry—I thought you heard me come in just now,” the cartographer added. He gestured toward the
Brevis Descriptio.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes, I think so,” Peregrine said. “At least in part. But I’ve still got a lot of unanswered questions.” He paused to adjust his spectacles. “Would it be possible for me to take a look at those maps you just mentioned?”

Rowley shrugged. “I don’t see why not. But I must warn you, they’re wildly inaccurate when it comes to Scotland. The man who drew them, Matthew Paris, was an Englishman, a monk of St. Albans. His practical knowledge of Scottish geography seems to have been limited to the region south of the River Tay.”

“I’d still like to see them, if I may,” Peregrine said. “What else have you got, that’s more accurate?”

“Let me see . . .” Rowley pursed his lips and searched the air slightly above Peregrine’s head. “The earliest would be Lansdowne 204, an untitled map by one John Hardyng, dated roughly 1457. It’s not much more of a map than the Paris ones—in the nature” of an illustrated diagram, actually—but it’s got about fifty place names on it. After that, there’s a parcel of sixteenth-century maps by various people. Are you interested in printed maps, or only in original manuscript drawings?”

“I wouldn’t mind having a look at whatever there is dating from before sixteen hundred,” Peregrine said. “Provided that you can spare the time.”

“I’ll make time,” Rowley said cheerfully. “I could do with a diversion.” He lifted a bushy eyebrow. “How do you want to do this? In chronological order?”

“Unless you can think of a better way,” Peregrine replied.. ”So be it, then.” Rowley poked his head back out into the front room. “Mrs. Trayle, can you spare a moment? I need you to pull a few more items for me . . .”

For the better part of the next two hours, the two men pored over a whole series of early maps, concentrating on those that showed the area of the ancient kingdom of Ross. At first Peregrine was shy of demonstrating his eccentric method of investigation in front of Rowley. At the same time, however, he could see no way of avoiding it. After his first assay, he fully expected Rowley to question him quizzically about what he was doing. Instead, the museum’s cartography expert treated the situation with an offhand manner suggesting that this sort of thing was nothing new to him.

Rowley’s matter-of-fact attitude put Peregrine at his ease and made his self-appointed task that much easier. At the same time, the work itself proved singularly unproductive. Some of the maps Peregrine looked at were portularies—maritime charts showing only coastal regions. The rest proved to be insufficiently detailed in other respects. By the time the clock in the outer office struck six, Peregrine was forced to accept that, much as it galled him to admit defeat, there was nothing more to be gained from continuing.

He swallowed the lukewarm dregs of his third cup of tea and sat back with a heavy sigh. Rowley, watching him, gave a sympathetic nod.

“I know just how you feel,” he said philosophically. “In my experience, most research is ten percent discovery and the rest a waste of valuable time.” He cocked his head in inquiry. “Do you want to carry on?”

Peregrine flexed tired shoulders and shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, but no. If I haven’t turned up anything by now, I doubt I ever will—not from these
sources, at any rate.” He gave the other man a rueful grin, “I suppose I’d better be on my way, and let you be on yours. Thanks for your help, all the same,”

“Don’t mention it,” Rowley said robustly. “Just tender my regards to Sir Adam.” He waited until Peregrine had finished putting his drawings back into his briefcase, then offered his hand. “Don’t hesitate to call on me again if I can be of any further assistance.”

As they shook hands, a telephone jangled loudly in the outer office, interrupting any protracted response on Peregrine’s part, and a moment later, Rowley’s secretary ducked her head around the door-frame.