The Bog (31 page)

He turned to Grenville abruptly, and in an instant he understood what the old magician was up to. Nothing Grenville had said or done up until now had tempted David. He was intrigued by Grenville’s powers, but nothing the old sorcerer had shown him had given him any real cause to take the bait.

He looked again around the torchlit chamber. But what a boon to an archaeologist such dark forces afforded. He felt dizzied at the prospects. What theories he could advance, what gross ignorances and gaping holes in history he could fill, if he had the opportunity even to translate a fraction of these tablets. And what other libraries might he have access to, what other battles might he witness, what other figures out of history might he talk to, actually meet face to face, and even interview?

Suddenly Grenville waved his hand, and the tablet David was holding flew out of his grasp and placed itself back in a niche in one of the shelves.

“You see,” Grenville said quietly, “I told you not to be so certain that the path I have chosen is not worth the price.”

He turned to leave.

“But can’t I look a little longer?” David pleaded.

“Another time perhaps. Right now we must be getting back.” Grenville motioned for David to walk in front of him, and together they made their way back out. Outside, they bid Lugalzaggesi and his priests good-bye, and David looked one last time at the mighty city of Lagash. He then glanced at the proud prince from Umma and realized with bitter irony that in a few years he would be defeated by an even more ferocious warrior king, the infamous Sargon of Agade. Then it would be Lugalzaggesi’s fate to be brought in neck stock to the gate of Ekur and be ridiculed and spat upon by all who passed by.

They reached their chairs and sat back down, and as the entourage of Sumerians bowed their heads in obeisance, they lifted slowly into the air.

It was just before they were about to enter the wall of clouds that something strange happened. As they were soaring along, far in the distance there appeared a small but intense pinprick of light. It took several moments before David realized that it was zooming toward them. He squinted at it, trying to make out other features, but as it drew closer he realized it was little more than a bead, brilliantly luminous, and slightly golden in hue. Grenville also noticed it and seemed to be looking at it fearfully, and before David knew what was happening, it streaked toward them with lightning speed and struck the old magician in the side of the head, crackling furiously as it did so, and then soared off again, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

Grenville cried out with pain from the impact, and the moment he did David felt the powerful and steady force that gripped his chair shudder and loosen, and the next thing he knew they were tumbling over and over, plummeting downward. He screamed and struggled to hold onto his chair, and then out of the corner of his eye he saw a large ruby suspended on a chain come tumbling out of Grenville’s robe and slip neatly off his head. Desperately the old magician reached out and grasped it with but two of his fingers, and they tumbled for a few seconds longer before he finally regained control of their chairs. They leveled off just seconds before crashing into a rocky escarpment that had appeared in the desert beneath them, and they once again glided upward into the clouds.

Grenville slipped the ruby back into his robe.

Back through the mists they traveled, back through the thunder and the darkness, until once again they were both resting peacefully on the floor in Grenville’s study.

David looked around him just to make sure that they were indeed ensconced in the comforting solidity of the room before he turned to Grenville.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Just a phenomenon,” Grenville returned.

“What kind of phenomenon?”

He looked at David crossly. “A phenomenon,” he repeated. “It is just one of the rare but occasional hazards of time travel.”

It was clear from the disagreeable tone of his voice that he was not going to tell David any more about the thing, but it was also obvious that whatever it was, not only had it very nearly caused them to tumble to their deaths, but it had scared the wits out of Grenville. He had all but lost his normally implacable composure, and his eyes darted about nervously as he apparently contemplated the meaning of the encounter.

David too was deeply shaken over the event, but he was also excited, for it suggested at least that there were limits to Grenville’s power, and forces that were perhaps greater than his magic.

Grenville continued in his agitation until finally, cursorily, he called the butler and instructed him to show David out. David looked at him one last time as he was leaving the study, and observed that he was still sitting in his chair, fidgeting and thinking, while behind him the fire dwindled, and the maharaja in its gold palanquin glistened as it continued its interminable crossings.

As he drove home David’s thoughts were in a flurry of confusion. One moment he was overcome with excitement, hypnotized by the implications of his journey into the past, and the next he was in the throes of depression, and then perplexity, as he recalled the various points in their conversation where Grenville had become curiously evasive, or seemed to be hedging some point. It was when he was almost to the cottage that he thought of the most baffling thing of all. With the evening now behind him it struck him as extraordinary that Grenville should care so much about what he felt at all. In retrospect, Grenville had spent the entire evening trying to win him over, to seduce David into crossing over to his side. Why? Everything that he knew about the old magician suggested that his ruthlessness knew no bounds. If he really only wanted the genetic contribution of their children, why didn’t he just kill David and Melanie? He had certainly not displayed any qualm about eradicating his adversaries in the past. What was so special about them that he had chosen instead to keep them alive?

When he arrived home he found Katy waiting up for him in the living room. The look on her face told him something was wrong.

“What is it, Katy?”

“It’s Mom,” she said, motioning for him to follow her upstairs.

“What about Mom?”

“She’s really sick.”

David followed his daughter upstairs. In the bedroom he found Mrs. Comfrey standing attentively at Melanie’s side and there was the smell of vomit in the room. Mrs. Comfrey looked up with a concerned expression. “It’s the Missus. She’s terribly ill.”

David rushed over to the bed and looked down at his wife. She was beaded with perspiration and her eyes were closed. Tuck stood worriedly at her side, gently stroking his mother’s limp hand.

“Do you know what’s wrong with her?” David asked the housekeeper.

For the first time since he had known her Mrs. Comfrey seemed definitely in a dither. “We brought her a cheese sandwich and some soup after you left, but she couldn’t keep them down. It came on quite suddenly. She complained of feeling ill and the next thing I knew she was delirious. She finally fell asleep and I thought it best to let her rest.”

David sat down next to his wife and felt her forehead. “She does have a fever,” he said. All of the commotion caused Melanie to stir, and she opened her eyes and looked up at her husband weakly.

“Oh, David, I’m so glad that you’re home.”

“What is it, Melanie? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Suddenly I just felt awful.”

“Well you haven’t been taking care of yourself. I told you to pull yourself together.”

“It’s not that,” she said in a hush. “It’s something else.”

“What else, Melanie?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a voice so low that it was almost inaudible.

“Melanie, I can’t hear you. What else, what is it?” he prompted.

“I just feel so strange,” she whispered. “I feel as if... as if I’ve been drugged or something.” She tried desperately to lift her head, but then she fell back to her pillow.

“Mom!” Tuck cried, as David pulled him close and hugged him. In his other hand he took Melanie’s and was about to ask her something further when he saw that she had again lapsed into unconsciousness. He sat there for several minutes wondering what to do, and then finally, as he was about to place her hand back down beside her, he saw. In the middle of the white expanse of her arm was a large red welt.

His interest piqued, David leaned forward and examined it more closely. The red swelling was about as big around as the end of his thumb and in the very center of it was a small red dot, not unlike the sting of a wasp or other insect. He turned around quickly and noticed that the window was open and the curtains were fluttering in.

“What is this?” he asked, and Mrs. Comfrey examined the mark perplexedly.

“Looks like a spider bite or something,” she said. “Yes, that’s it. Perhaps she’s having an allergic reaction to a spider bite.”

“Or some other insect,” David countered as he walked quickly over to the window and shut it. And then he paused, gazing out into the darkness as he pieced together a possible picture of what had happened.

When Julia had leaped out of the window of Grenville’s study he had not heard her hit the ground. Grenville had said that she had the ability to turn herself into an insect, and as he gazed back at the welt on his wife’s arm he now thought it likely that she had done just that. For some reason she had transformed herself into a bee or something and had come in the window and stung Melanie. But why? Out of jealousy? Or out of the sheer malice of the act?

He did not know. He only knew that now, as he saw the health and well-being of his family slowly being whittled away before his eyes, whatever temptation he had felt for Grenville’s offer quickly faded from his mind.

The next day Melanie was somewhat better, but still complained of nausea, and confined her appetite to toast and clear broth. No longer able to just sit around and wait for whatever was going to happen next, David resolved to make the only move open to him. His only hope lay in finding Grenville’s Achilles’ heel, so it was imperative he find out everything there was to know about sorcery and demonology. If there was one human being on the face of the earth who had sifted through the mountain of literature on the subject and might offer him some insight on the matter, it was Burton-Russell.

He called Grenville and with as untremulous a voice as possible asked for permission to make a routine trip to Oxford. After being assured that Melanie and the children would be staying behind, Grenville assented. Next, after giving Mrs. Comfrey strict orders to keep the children inside and to keep the windows closed, he went outside to the Volvo. In spite of the fact that he had been told that Julia did not come out during the daytime, he was taking no chances. After he got into the car he searched it from top to bottom for uninvited passengers. When he found none, he rolled all of the windows up and drove off, and it wasn’t until he was miles beyond the valley that he rolled them down again.

He arrived at Oxford shortly after noon and made his way to All Souls College, where Burton-Russell had his office. David had not telephoned to say that he was coming. He had not wanted to take the chance of Grenville knowing his destination in advance. In spite of this, he had no serious worry that Burton-Russell would not be in. David knew enough about the old antiquities scholar to know that he would spend the better part of the morning and afternoon in his office in quiet study.

David gazed up fondly at the distinguished old facade of All Souls College before he went inside and made his way to Burton-Russell’s office. He knocked on the door, and a croaky voice bade him to enter. Burton-Russell sat at his desk, surrounded by his usual avalanche of books, periodicals, photographic plates, and old manuscripts. In feature Dr. Aubrey Burton-Russell was a small man, with a narrow fringe of short white hair and pink-veined eyes. He had a reputation among his colleagues for being a bit dotty, and although he had a tendency to ramble and sometimes make points that only he himself understood, David knew that somewhere behind his foggy eyes there worked a formidable intellect.

He looked up at David with pleasant surprise. “Mr. Macauley, how nice to see you. Come in, come in. How thoughtful of you to drop in.”

After they had exchanged amenities David surreptitiously scanned the room for insects. On seeing no suspicious intruders he sat down.

“To what do I owe the honor of this visit?” inquired the old don.

David swallowed nervously and was about to answer when he noticed that Burton-Russell’s window was open a crack. “Do you mind if I shut that?” he said without explanation.

Burton-Russell looked at him quizzically, but nodded.

David crossed the room and shut the window. He paused briefly to look outside, and across the quad he saw the Roman dome of the Radcliffe Camera and its eighteenth-century Tower of the Winds. He found himself growing quite homesick for the safe spires and quiet greens of the ancient university.

He turned and faced Burton-Russell uneasily. He knew he had to phrase his questions carefully, for given that he did not know the extent and range of Grenville’s powers, he could not take the chance of telling the old professor anything that might anger his captor.

“Well, I do hope you don’t think me quite strange, but I was wondering if you might tell me everything that you know about sorcery.”

Burton-Russell blinked once or twice, but quickly took the question in stride. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me why you are interested in this subject?”

David shifted his weight nervously. “It has something to do with a theory I’m working on, but for the moment, since my thoughts on the matter aren’t as structured as I would like them to be, I wonder if I could beg your indulgence and refrain from telling you until I’m more certain of my hypothesis?”

Old Burton-Russell regarded him quietly, and for a moment the fogginess of his gaze seemed to lift as he assessed what David had just said.

“Very well,” he said. “But you know you’ve aroused my curiosity enormously. No doubt this has something to do with the things you’ve been digging up out at that bog, and, of course, I’d like to know every detail. But for the moment I’ll respect your wishes. What would you like to know?”