He is Sir Adam Sinclair: nobleman, physician, scholar – and Adept. A man of learning and power, he practices ancient arts unknown to the twentieth century.
He has had many names, lived many lives, but his mission remains the same: to protect the Light from those who would tread the Dark Roads.
Now his beloved Scotland is defiled by an unholy cult of black magicians who will commit any atrocity to achieve their evil ends-even raise the dead!
Only one man can stand against them…
The Adept!
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE ADEPT
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Bill Fawcett and Associates
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ISBN: 0-441-00.343-5
ACE Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
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ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
For
betty ballantine,
who has a special knack
for finding and encouraging new authors.
She bought a first trilogy from each of us,
across a fifteen-year stretch,
and then had the uncommon good sense
to introduce us.
Thanks, Betty!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sincere thanks are due to the following people who contributed materially to the realization of this book:
Dr. Richard Oram, for his authoritative advice concerning matters of medieval Scottish history and archaeology, especially with respect to early Scottish cartography;
Mr. Kenneth Fraser of the St. Andrews University Research Library, for his valuable assistance in locating difficult-to-find research materials;
Dr. William Such, for his help in rendering the Greek terminology used in this book;
Robert Harris, for his help in reviewing the Latin;
Mr. G.H. Forsyth, caretaker at Melrose Abbey, for his useful information on the whereabouts of Michael Scot’s grave;
And finally, the staff of the St. Andrews Tourist Information Bureau, especially Mrs. Maggie Pitkethly and Mr. Andrew Purvis, for providing a wealth of miscellaneous information not to be found in history books.
prologue
THE autumn night was clear and sharp, with a bite to the still air that promised frost before morning. No moon eased the darkness, but the starlight cast its own faint luminescence over the Scottish countryside.
Partway up the slope of a wooded hill, a black-clad man waited in the shadow of ancient beech trees, hugging himself against the cold, now and again flexing black-gloved hands to keep his fingers supple for the work ahead. Several times in the last half hour, he had peeled back the cuff of his left glove to peer at the face of a military wristwatch. Now he did so again. The luminous dial read
.
The rear windows of Mossiecairn House were blind and dark. Upstairs, the last light had gone out some time ago. The old caretaker had long ago completed his last rounds, and could be expected not to budge again from his gate lodge until after daylight. The time would never be better.
Smiling slightly, the man in black zipped his leather jacket closer and pushed a black knitted watch cap up off his ears for better hearing, flexing his fingers again as he started working his way down the slope. He covered the distance swiftly, moving with the quiet assurance of a man well-schooled in night maneuvers, keeping to the shadows. A shallow burn was crossed by leaping lightly across a string of exposed stones. He paused for a final precautionary survey of the area before darting off across the open lawn, finally gaining shelter in the shadow of a porch over the kitchen entrance.
Disarming the house’s security alarms presented little challenge to the man in black. By American standards, Mossiecairn’s alarm system was woefully unsophisticated. Besides, the man in black had been in the house earlier in the day as a tourist, making note of everything that was likely to present problems when he returned.
Now he eased his way carefully across the darkened kitchen, lighting his way with a tiny pocket torch that cast a pencil-thin beam. He spared not a glance for the shelved candelabra and punch bowls and ice buckets, or the drawers full of silver flatware, as he passed through the butler’s pantry and into the dining room. Likewise disregarding a valuable tea service displayed on the dining room table, he made his way swiftly along the inside wall to the double doors at the other end. There a deft twist of a lock pick let him into the adjoining library, avoiding the outer corridor and the electric eyes guarding the doors into it.
Again he paid little attention to the many valuable items on display as he swept his light around, avoiding the windows. The portraits were particularly fine, ranging from the Jacobean builder of the house down to the present owner. The one above the ornate fireplace he had admired earlier in the day: a Cavalier gentleman in velvets and silks the color of fine port wine, with a froth of lace at his throat and the curls of a long, dark wig showing under his plumed hat.
Antique weapons and other military accoutrements stud ded the walls between the paintings, and smaller items were displayed under glass in a series of shallow table cases set along the walls. Rare books occupied a heavy library table in the center of the room.
The intruder passed them by without a second glance, heading for the cases flanking the fireplace. Most of the items in the cases were medals and decorations won by previous occupants of the house, or oddments of domesticity such as watch fobs and ladies’ fans and miniatures painted on ivory. A few, however, were bits of memorabilia associated with notables of Scotland ‘s heroic past: Bonnie Dundee or Mary Queen of Scots or Bonnie Prince Charlie. Noting one silk-tied lock of hair in passing, cased in a golden locket of breathtaking workmanship, the man in black wondered how the Stuart pretender had managed to have any hair left at all, by the time he escaped over the sea of Skye and then took up his sad exile in France . It reminded him of all the splinters of the true Cross he had seen over the years – which, if put together, would have made enough crosses to crucify a dozen Kings of the Jews.
So he supposed the Scots could have their relics too. It mattered not to him. And the Scottish relic of tonight’s interest would bring a pretty sum.
He smiled as he approached its case and shone his light through the glass, heedless of the Cavalier watching from above the mantel. The swept-hilt rapier and its scabbard lay on a bed of dark blue velvet, elegant tributes to the ornate style favored by Italian armorers of the late sixteenth century. The gold of the hilt and guard was deeply chased, and gold-washed etching glittered on the blued blade.
The scabbard was a more modest item, executed in Moroccan leather, but several semiprecious gems flashed discreetly along its length and at the throat. Between blade and scabbard, creamy white against the dark blue velvet, a small card carried a terse three-line inscription in an elegant copperplate hand:
The Hepburn Sword
once owned by Sir Francis Hepburn
the “Wizard Earl” of Bothwell, d. 1624
The man in black breathed a small grunt of satisfaction. Taking the tiny flashlight in his teeth, he extracted a delicate lock pick from an inner pocket and probed briefly at the case’s lock. When it yielded, he raised the lid and engaged its stops. The hilt of the sword fit his gloved hand as if made for it, and he felt a thrill of imagination as he drew the weapon from the case and tried its balance, sighting along its blade where the etching caught the torchlight. Why, oh, why had he not been born a Cavalier?
Only briefly savoring the rush of excitement he felt as he picked up the sword, the man in black flourished the sword in ironic salute to the portrait above the marble mantelpiece, then pulled the scabbard out of the case and sheathed the weapon with brisk efficiency.
The sword of the Wizard Earl, indeed! Games were well and good, but he had not been born a Cavalier; and if he lingered long, he might begin to regret he had ever been born at all. His employer was said to be a most exacting man, if eccentric in his tastes.
All business again now, the man in black reached inside his jacket and pulled out a much-folded black nylon duffel bag, long and narrow to suit his needs. Into its open end he slipped the sheathed sword, pausing to tie it firmly closed before slinging it over his back.
Then, before closing the case and locking it again, he produced from yet another pocket a small card similar to the one already there. This one read: Display Removed for Conservation.
After that, it was simply a matter of retracing his steps. On his way out, he showed no more interest in any of the other contents of the museum than he had shown on the way in. Once outside the kitchen door, he paused briefly to re-arm the security system, but then he faded back into the shadows up the hill, silent as a whisper, heading for the shelter of the woods and a service lane behind the house.
His transport was waiting – not the charger that would have been a Cavalier’s steed, but a powerful Japanese-built motorcycle that had seen him through many an escapade since being assigned to overseas duty. His imagination transformed the black crash helmet into a tilting helm as he donned it and wheeled the machine out of the underbrush, giving a strong push with his weight behind it. As the motorcycle rolled forward, gathering momentum on the downhill slope, he mounted on the run, letting the machine coast down the zigzag trail. Only at the foot of the hill, well out of earshot of the house, did he kick in the engine – and within minutes was roaring westward up a two-lane country road, into the frosty Scottish night.
An hour later, after an exhilarating run along the M8 Motorway, the rider was threading a more sedate course through the sleeping streets of Glasgow . Following precise instructions, he headed away from the city-center on a route that eventually brought him into a wilderness of abandoned buildings in the heart of the docklands of Clydebank . The low rumble of the engine echoed dully off the cobbles as he drew up outside the gates of a disused shipyard, going suddenly silent as he cut the ignition.
The man in black removed his helmet. Five minutes passed. The man glanced at his watch, got off his machine, and began slowly pacing back and forth, keeping to the shadows. His breath plumed on the frosty, salt-tinged air, and he stifled a sneeze.
Finally, as he turned in his tracks for the fourth time, his straining ears picked up the quiet murmur of a powerful car approaching. He returned to his machine. A moment later, a sleek, dark-colored Mercedes emerged from a side-alley and came to a smooth halt on the opposite side of the street.
As the headlamps were extinguished, the dark-tinted windows on the right side of the car glided down in automated unison. Pale face-blurs of a driver and a rear passenger showed in the darkness.
Relieved, the motorcyclist set his helmet on the saddle of his bike and sauntered over to the side of the car. Bending from the waist, he favored the passenger in the backseat with an ironic salute and drawled, “Morning, Mr. Raeburn.”
The backseat’s occupant acknowledged the greeting with a cool nod. “Good morning, Sergeant. I believe you have something for me?”
The sergeant pulled a cocky smile, exposing strong white teeth in a face weathered by years under Texas
suns.
“Christmas gets earlier every year,” he replied. “Just call me Santa Claus.”
With an exaggerated flourish he unslung the duffel bag he still carried over his shoulder. The Mercedes’ passenger elevated an eyebrow.
“Did you encounter any difficulties?”
The American gave a derisive snort. “Are you kiddin’ me? I’d have had more trouble taking candy from a baby. What folks your side of the Atlantic don’t know about security must cost your insurance people a mint.”
As he began methodically unlacing the neck of the duffel bag, the man in the backseat of the Mercedes watched his every move.
“I trust,” said the man, “that you were not tempted to exploit the situation beyond the terms of our contract?”
His tone was conversational, but there was more than a hint of steel beneath the silken inquiry. It elicited a sharp glance from the sergeant, and an almost petulant disclaimer.
“Hey, I got a reputation to maintain!”
The man in the car smiled in chilly satisfaction. “You reassure me. Reliable help is not always easy to find nowadays.”
The American did not bother to acknowledge the comment. As he jerked open the mouth of the duffel bag and drew forth the sword by its hilt, a map light came on inside the car. The light glinted off the gold and cut-steel as he passed it through the open window, point first.
“It’s a pretty enough toy, I’ll grant you,” he remarked, “but I guess you know you could’ve had half a dozen fancy swords made for half what you’re paying me to steal this one.”
His employer took the Hepburn Sword in both gloved hands, briefly drawing the blade partway from the scabbard, then sheathed it with a sigh and laid it carefully across his knees.
“An object’s worth is not always to be measured in terms of money,” the man murmured.
The sergeant shrugged. “Whatever you say, Mr. Raeburn. You’re a collector, and you know what you want. Me, I’m a – an acquisitions agent.” He savored the sound of the title on his tongue. “And us agents do what we do for the money.”
“Of course,” said his employer coolly. “You’ve fulfilled your part of the agreement. I am now prepared to fulfill mine.”
He nodded to his driver in the rearview mirror. The man in the front of the Mercedes wordlessly reached into the breast of his coat and drew out a fat leather wallet, handing it through the open window without comment. The recipient opened it casually and riffled through the thick sheaf of American currency inside, one eyebrow raising in pleased surprise.
“As you see, I have included a small bonus,” the man in the backseat said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Raeburn,” the American said with a broad grin. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
“I think I may safely say the same.”
The man in the backseat drew the glove from his right hand. A signet ring set with a blood-red carnelian seal glittered richly on the third finger as he extended his hand through the open window.
The American accepted the proffered handshake. His employer’s clasp was surprisingly hard. The man in the car gave a savage downward jerk, and the thief found himself staring into the muzzle of a silencer – one of the sleek West German ones.
This alone the American had time to grasp, even as the man in the car pulled the trigger at point-blank range. He never heard the quiet cough of the first shot, much less the second or third.
His body crumpled to the pavement with a loose-limbed thud as his hand was released. When he did not move, his killer slipped the silenced automatic carefully under the seat and signalled his driver to go on. The sound of the Mercedes’ engine turning over was far louder than the shots had been, but neither raised any ripple of curiosity as the car crept almost soundlessly out of the Glasgow docklands.
chapter one
IT was not until the following Monday, while waiting for his breakfast, that Sir Adam Sinclair became aware of the incident in Glasgow . He was still in riding clothes, having just come in from a brisk, early morning canter over the grounds of his country estate, not far from Edinburgh . Sunlight was pouring into the little parlor always called the “honey-bee room,” because of the pale gold pattern of bees and flowers on the wallpaper, so he shrugged out of his hacking jacket and tossed it over the back of a nearby settee before pulling out the chair set before the little table in the wide window bay.
On the table, centered on a snowy tablecloth of fine Irish linen, a crystal vase of cut chrysanthemums reigned over a single place setting of antique silver and fine delft breakfast china. On top of his leather-bound appointment book, the morning edition of The Scotsman lay neatly folded in its customary place to the right of the china and cutlery. Adam unfolded it with a sharp flick of the wrist and scanned the main headlines as he sat down, absently loosening the knot of his tie.
Nothing of major interest had happened over the weekend. The European Parliament was poised to ratify a new set of air pollution control standards; a Japanese electronics firm had announced its intention to open up a manufacturing plant in Dundee ; members of the Scottish Nationalist Party had staged another protest against the poll tax. He almost missed the item tucked away in the paper’s lower lefthand comer: Body of Alleged Drug Dealer to Be Returned to U.S.
Raising an eyebrow, Adam folded down the top half of the paper and continued reading. As a physician and sometime police consultant, he tried to keep up with progress – or lack thereof – in the ongoing war against illegal drugs, but-this seemed to be a follow-up to a story he somehow had missed, toward the end of last week. According to the article, the body of an American serviceman had been found in a derelict area of Glasgow ‘s docklands – probably the victim of a drug deal gone wrong, judging by the execution-style shooting and the amount of money found on the body.
Given only what was in the article, Adam allowed that the police theory probably was correct, for drug trafficking, unfortunately, was becoming more and more a fixture in Scotland ‘s largest city. Still, the thought crossed his mind, for no rational reason he could fathom, that the case might not be as open-and-shut as the Glasgow police seemed to think it was.
Further speculation was diverted by the arrival of Humphrey, his butler and valet of some twenty years’ service, bearing a laden silver breakfast tray.
“Good morning, Humphrey,” Adam said easily, lowering the paper as the butler set down a rack of buttered toast and a steaming porcelain teapot beside the immaculate breakfast service.
“Good morning, sir. I trust you had a pleasant ride.” “Yes, Humphrey, I did. I rode up by the castle ruins. I was appalled to discover that there are several small trees growing out of the debris on top of the first floor vaulting. And the ivy doesn’t bear thinking about.”
Humphrey gave a subdued chuckle as he poured his master a cup of tea.
“I understand that even the Queen Mother wages a constant war against ivy, sir,” he murmured. “Absolutely hates the stuff. It’s said that weekend guests are apt to be drafted to help pull it down. Perhaps we might consider the same tactic, here at Strathmourne.”
“Hmmm, yes,” Adam replied, with a twitch of his newspaper. “Well, I didn’t realize ours had gotten so bad over the summer. I left a message for MacDonald to get a crew up there today, if possible, and start clearing it away. If he should call, you can confirm that for me. We can’t have the thing collapsing any more, just when I’m intending to start restoring it next spring.”
“Indeed not, sir,” Humphrey agreed. “I’ll see to it.” As the butler retreated to the kitchen, Adam helped himself to toast and opened the paper to pages two and three. He skimmed over the first few headlines on the left-hand page, not paying particularly close attention, until his gaze was arrested by another item, tucked away in the lower right-hand column: Antique Sword Goes Missing.
The dark brows raised slightly as Adam bent for a closer look. As a connoisseur and sometime collector of edged weaponry himself, such an article never failed to pique his interest. He scanned it once through, quickly, then turned the paper inside-out and folded it in half to read the article again, while he sipped his tea, trying to supply what the article did not say.
Lothian and Borders Police are investigating the disappearance of a historic sword from the museum in Mossiecairn House, outside Edinburgh . The sixteenth-century Italian rapier, known as the “Hepburn Sword,” has long been associated with Sir Francis Hepburn, the fifth Earl of Bothwell, who died in 1624. The sword is presumed stolen, but the actual date of the theft is uncertain. Its disappearance was not noticed for several days, owing to confusion on the part of museum staff, who were under the impression that the weapon had been removed from its case for cleaning. The sword is valued at approximately £2000. A reward is offered for information leading to its recovery….
Adam sat back in his chair, lips pursed, dark brows drawn together in a deep frown. Though he told himself that his interest came of the subject matter in general, some sixth sense insisted that this story almost certainly reflected more than met the eye. Taking a pen from beside his appointment book, he drew a circle around the entire article. Then he reached around behind him and leaned back in his chair to snare the telephone off a side-table next to the settee.
The number of the Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh was a familiar one. He dialled swiftly, identified himself, and asked to speak with Detective Chief Inspector Noel McLeod. There was a short delay while the police operator transferred the call to Press Liaison. Then a familiar, bass voice rumbled in his ear.
“Is that you, Sir Adam? Good morning. What can I do for you?”
“Good morning, Noel. I’ve just been casting my eye over the morning paper. If you’ve got a moment, I’d like a word with you concerning one of the items on page two of The Scotsman.”
“Oh, aye?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded anything but surprised. “I suppose that’ll be the piece about the Hepburn Sword.”
“You seem quite certain it wasn’t the report on the latest sighting of the Loch Ness Monster,” Adam said, smiling. “Monster sightings,” said McLeod, “are five pence a dozen. And you wouldn’t be phoning me, you’d be phoning the constabulary up at Inverness . On the other hand, the theft of a sword that once belonged to Sir Francis Hepburn might well be of interest to you – given the good earl’s reputation.”
“As a wizard?” Adam replied, careful to phrase his next words with suitable ambiguity, just in case anyone should chance to listen in. “I know of no reason,” he said ingenuously, “to dispute with tradition on that account.”
There was just the slightest of hesitations on the other end of the line, before McLeod replied, “I see.”
“As a collector of edged weaponry myself,” Adam went on, “I was disappointed that the newspaper account was so thin on detail. It’s a beautiful sword. Can you supply any additional information?”
McLeod made a noise between a growl and a snort, back now on more neutral ground.
“I wish I could,” he said. “We’ve got two good men assigned to the case, but they’ve not got much to show for their pains. One thing’s for certain: it wasn’t a conventional theft. Nothing else in the place was lifted – not so much as a silver spoon.”
“Which means,” Adam replied, “that the thief was after the sword, and that alone. Was it an amateur job?”
“Most definitely not,” McLeod said emphatically. “Quite the reverse. Our jolly thief disarmed the security alarms at the back of the house and then avoided the hall sensors by going through the dining room and picking the lock on the connecting doors. We figure he must have visited the house at least once to case it, so we’re following that lead, to see if any of the staff remembers anyone suspicious.”
His sigh conveyed a world of exasperation.
“Unfortunately, I doubt any of this will come to anything. We’re not even certain when the theft occurred, because our boy left a sign in the case: Display Removed for Conservation. Oh, he was clever, this one. Needless to say, we didn’t find any prints.”
“In other words,” said Adam, “you haven’t any leads.”
“Not one worth a wooden ha’penny,” came the tart reply. “We’ll just have to keep our eyes open, and hope for a break. It’s possible the sword will turn up eventually in one of the auction rooms or arms fairs – though I doubt it. The case has all the earmarks of a contract acquisition for some collector who fancies items with odd provenances.”
“Hmmm, as a collector with similar proclivities, I would tend to agree,” Adam said, ” – though you can rest easy, Noel,” he hastened to add, smiling. “I haven’t got your sword!”
McLeod’s easy chuckle left no doubt that the inspector had never even considered such a notion.
“It would help if we had some idea what kind of person might go after an item like the Hepburn Sword,” McLeod said. “As a psychiatrist as well as a collector, would you care to speculate?”
It was an unofficial way of inviting Adam to tender an opinion – and to articulate an idea that probably had already occurred to the canny McLeod, though he would never dare to admit it in any official capacity.
“Well,” Adam said, again choosing his words carefully, “I believe we can rule out a simple profit motive. A £2000 sword simply isn’t worth the effort and expertise it took to evade the security system and steal it. The fact that nothing else is missing would tend to support that theory. This means that the thief was after this specific sword.”
“Aye,” McLeod agreed.
“So we must ask ourselves, what sort of a person would want this particular sword?” Adam went on. “It isn’t especially unique for its kind; I have several similar blades in my collection, some of them previously owned by men far more historically important than the Earl of Bothwell.
“So it has to be something else about the sword’s past. What else do we know? It belonged to the Wizard Earl of Bothwell. I shouldn’t want this to be taken wrong, Noel, but it is not inconceivable that the thief – or someone for whom he is acting – is someone who believes that the sword is imbued with some measure of the powers ascribed to its former owner.”
“Now there’s an interesting thought,” McLeod said. The tone of this noncommittal reply made it quite clear to Adam that the other man was well aware of the Wizard Earl’s legendary fame as a necromancer.
“Assuming less esoteric motives, however,” McLeod continued blandly, “I think I’ll still have my chaps keep an eye on the auction rooms and arms fairs.”
“That’s what I would do,” Adam agreed.
McLeod snorted. “Somehow I figured you would! Meanwhile, if some poor sod turns up impaled on Francis Hepburn’s blade, in culmination of some satanic rite, I’ll be sure to let you know before the press get wind of it.”
“Thank you,” Adam said drily. “I’d appreciate that.” He pushed the newspaper aside thoughtfully. “Oh, there was one other item I wanted to ask you about, since I’ve got you on the line. I don’t suppose you’ve formulated any personal theories concerning that American serviceman who turned up dead in Glasgow ?”
“No. I was just relieved that he didn’t turn up dead in my jurisdiction,” McLeod said baldly. “The Glasgow police have been getting a hell of a row from the people at the Home Office, who have been getting a hell of a row from the American embassy – ” He broke off abruptly. “Do you think there might be some connection between the two cases?”
“I don’t know,” said Adam. “I was merely wondering.”
“That,” said McLeod, “is anything but reassuring.
Whenever you start wondering, I know it’s only a matter of time before something happens that I’m going to have trouble explaining to the satisfaction of the media.”
Adam allowed himself a companionable chuckle. “I am sorry, Noel. If this case produces any unusual complications, you know you can count on my help.”
“Oh, aye,” came the gruff reply. “But as they say somewhere or other: I knew the job was dangerous. Anyway, I’ve got another bloody phone ringing. Call me if anything else occurs to you, all right?” “You know I will.”
With this assurance, Adam rang off and resumed his breakfast, thinking about the Hepburn Sword. He was just finishing his second cup of tea, and thumbing through his day’s appointments, when Humphrey reappeared with the morning’s post on a silver tray.
Adam accepted the stack of mail with a murmur of thanks and gave it a cursory riffle, then set it aside and handed Humphrey the front section of The Scotsman.
“I’ve circled an article on page two. I’d be obliged if you’d file it for me. We may have occasion to refer to it again.”
“I understand, sir.” Humphrey folded the paper and tucked it neatly under his arm before casting an eye over the table. “Are you quite finished here, sir?”
Adam nodded, rising as he gave a glance to his watch. “Yes, I am. Good Lord, where does the time go? I want to call in at Kintoul House before I head into Edinburgh .”
Humphrey paused in the act of clearing the table, his expression all at once one of concern. “Nothing wrong with Lady Laura, I hope, sir?”
Adam grimaced. “I don’t know yet, Humphrey. I won’t know until I see her. Incidentally, did you remember that I’m dining with the Bishop of Saint Andrew’s tonight?”
“Of course, sir. I’ve laid out your dark grey suit, and there’s a fresh shirt in your briefcase.”
“Perfect!” Adam said with a grin, pulling off his tie as he headed for the stairs. “If anyone wants me, then, you know where I’ll be. Oh, and if Inspector McLeod should happen to ring after I’ve left the hospital, tell him where I’m dining, and that I’ll get back with him directly.”
“Very good, sir,” said Humphrey. “I’ll attend to everything.”
chapter Two
A SCANT twenty minutes later, freshly showered and shaved, Adam emerged from his private apartments, riding clothes replaced by the crisp white shirt and formal three-piece suit that are the uniform of the medical profession.
The images that kept pace with him in the mirrors that lined the entry hall of Strathmourne House were those of a tall, dark-haired man in his vigorous forties, who moved with the purposeful air of one to whom time is always precious and in all too short supply. He had been a fencer and a promising dressage rider in his younger days, before the allure of medicine and other pursuits turned his energies to different priorities. The grace and suppleness required to excel at either sport persisted in an elegance of carriage that could not be taught, only inborn. The silver at his temples softened a patrician profile that, in other men, might have been regarded as severe.
Yet any severity of temperament was that of a man who expects more of himself than of anyone else around him. And it was compassion that tempered the air of brilliant intensity that Adam Sinclair wore as naturally as he wore his clothes. Even in unguarded moments of relaxation, the dark eyes promised the smouldering potential of a banked peat fire – a glow that could kindle spontaneously into comforting warmth or, more rarely, flare into sudden, formidable anger. The latter instances were rare, indeed, and usually balanced by a dry wit that could defuse nearly any taut situation.
His sense of humor came through now, as he passed from the hall into the vestibule. Outside, Humphrey had brought up the sedate and conservative blue Range Rover that Adam usually took into the city when he drove himself, and was waiting to hand him trenchcoat, hat, and briefcase; but as the day was promising to be fine, Adam shook his head as he emerged, heading for the garage instead.
“I’ve changed my mind, Humphrey,” he said, bidding him toss case, coat, and hat under the tonneau cover of a dark blue XJ-S convertible, a recent and prized acquisition. “It’s a perfect day for the Jag. If I get out of Jordanburn on time, it should still be light when I drive up to Perth . I don’t believe the bishop’s seen this beauty yet. If he’s very respectful, I may even let him drive her before dinner.”
Humphrey chuckled as he helped Adam zip back the tonneau cover on the driver’s side and tuck it behind the leather seat.
“The bishop should enjoy that, sir.” “Yes, he should. She’s a very fine motorcar.” He grinned as he slid behind the wheel and began pulling on driving gloves.
“Then, after I have eaten his food and drunk his very fine port – and so that he shan’t feel totally deprived – I shall hand him a rather substantial cheque for the cathedral fabric fund. I believe Saint Ninian’s could do with some roof work.”
“Can you name me a cathedral that couldn’t, sir?” Humphrey replied with an answering smile, as Adam turned the key in the ignition and the powerful engine roared to life.
Soon he was easing the big car out the stableyard gate and down the tree-lined avenue, bare-headed under the sun, enjoying the breeze in his hair. The copper beeches were at their very best on this mid-October day, and as he turned the first curve, the gothic front of Strathmoume vanished from his rearview mirror in a sea of flame-colored leaves.
He kept his speed down as he threaded past a row of cottages belonging to the estate. Beyond the houses, the fields were patchworked brown and gold, dotted with circular bales of new-mown hay. Up on the high ground, one of Adam’s three tenant farmers was ploughing up the soil in preparation for sowing a winter crop of barley. A cloud of white birds circled in the wake of the plough, screeching and diving for grubs and worms in the newly turned earth.
Nearly a mile from the house, the drive passed through a second set of gates, usually left open, and gave onto a good but narrow secondary road. Adam turned left rather than going right toward Edinburgh , winding along a series of “B” roads until at last he approached the main entrance to the Kintoul estate, marked by the distinctive blue-and-white sign bearing the stylized symbol of a castle.
Gravel hissed under the tires as he nosed the Jag under the arch of the stone-built gate house and on down the long avenue. The autumn color at Kintoul – the fiery shades that were Lady Laura’s favorites – was as spectacular as that at Strathmoume, and as Adam continued toward the house, he found himself wondering again why he had been summoned.
Since he had known Lady Laura since boyhood, there were any number of possibilities, of course, both professional and personal. He had received her brief note just before the weekend, enjoining him to come up to Kintoul on Monday. The tone had been casual and witty, as was Laura’s usual wont, but Adam had been left with the lingering impression that the invitation was issued to some unstated purpose besides the mere pleasure of his company. He had phoned Kintoul House the same morning, but Lady Laura firmly declined his offer to come sooner. This strengthened Adam’s suspicion that she had chosen this particular day for a reason.
Beyond the gatehouse, the dense plantation shortly gave way to rolling pastures, finally affording Adam a glimpse of the great, sprawling pile that was Kintoul House. Seen from a distance, it presented a fairy-tale silhouette of towers, turrets, and battlements, the rugged roughness of its ancient stone work overlaid with silver-white harling. The corbels supporting the parapets, like the timbers framing the windows , were painted a smoky shade of grey that matched the slates covering the rooftops. The bright blue and white of Scotland’s national standard – the Saint Andrew’s flag or, more familiarly, the “blue blanket” – fluttered from a staff atop one of the highest turrets, but the Kintoul banner was not in evidence, indicating that the Earl of Kintoul, Lady Laura’s oldest son, was not at home.
This did not surprise Adam, for Kintoul, like many historic houses in Scotland , had become as much a museum and showplace as it was a residence. In the summertime, the earl opened the grounds and twelve of its twenty-eight rooms to public view. It was a matter of economics. Everything was still well maintained; but picnic tables, a visitor center, and a children’s playground now occupied a stretch of lawn that formerly had been reserved for croquet and badminton. It saddened Adam, in a way, but it was better than having historic properties like Kintoul turned into hotels, or broken up for conversion into flats. He hoped he could spare Strathmourne that fate.
Remembering shuttlecocks and croquet hoops and the summer days of a childhood now long past, Adam carried on past the visitors’ car park, all but deserted now that the tourist season was nearly over. A paved extension to the public drive took him through a gateway and around the eastern end of the house into a smaller parking area adjoining the family’s private entrance.
He parked the Jaguar next to a car he did not remember having seen at Kintoul House before: a Morris Minor Traveller, with dark green paintwork and recently refmished timber on the sides. The backseat had been folded down to accommodate several large canvases, all of them blank so far as Adam could see. As he took off his gloves and briefly ran a comb through his hair, he wondered briefly who the owner might be, but he put the curiosity aside as he mounted the steps to the Kintoul side door.
The bell was answered by a liveried manservant Adam had never seen before. As he conducted Adam into the vestibule, they were joined by Anna Irvine, Lady Laura’s personal maid and sometime secretary.
“Sir Adam, it’s good to see you,” she said, welcoming him with a strong handshake and a smile that was tinged with worry. “Her ladyship is in the long gallery. I’ll take you to her, if you’ll just follow me.”
The gallery ran the full length of the north wing – a narrow, chilly chamber, more like a hallway than a room. A handsome Persian carpet stretched along its length, boldly patterned in rose and peacock blue, but because it was little used as a living area, the furniture consisted mainly of a row of delicate, spindle-legged chairs arranged along the interior wall, interrupted by the occasional sideboard or hall table. In its heyday, the gallery had been intended to provide the occupants of the house with space for indoor exercise during times of inclement weather. Nowadays, it served mainly as a corridor connecting the other reception rooms on the ground floor, except when summer visitors came to view the Kintoul collection of family portraits.
Today, however, the far end of the gallery had been transformed into something resembling a stage set. As they approached it, Adam recognized several pieces of furniture from other parts of the house – a settee, a wing-backed chair, an ornamental screen – brought together to create the illusion of a much smaller room. Set in profile in the midst of this artificial setting, regal as a porcelain costume doll, stood a pert, elderly woman in a floor-length white ballgown. A length of tartan sash was brooched to one shoulder and across her breast, its silken fringes bright against the gown’s brocade, and a diamond tiara glittered like a crown of ice crystals on her soft, upswept white hair.
As the maid led Adam nearer, he saw that a large canvas had been mounted on a tall standing easel positioned a few yards back from the composed little scene. He caught the piney smell of turpentine, and then just a glimpse of someone moving behind the easel. Before he could gain any clear impression of the artist, the woman in the tiara turned her head and saw him, her face lighting in a delighted smile. “Adam! My dear!” she called. “Stay where you are, and I’ll be right with you.”
With an apologetic wave in the direction of the artist, she abandoned her pose in front of the screen and came eagerly down the gallery to meet him. Watching her with the critical eye of a physician, Adam was reassured to see no signs of weakness or hesitation in her bearing. She held out two thin, blue-veined hands to him as the distance between them closed. Adam bent down as he took them, and received a swift, motherly kiss on one cheek.
“Adam, I can’t tell you how delighted I am to see you,” Lady Laura said, as he, in turn, kissed both her hands. “It was so good of you to come.”
“Did you really think I could ignore an invitation from my favorite lady?” he said with a smile. Then his expression sobered. “How are you, my dear?”
Lady Laura dismissed the question with a small shrug, also waving dismissal to the maid.
“I’m as well as can possibly be expected, given the conditions of my age,” she said easily. “Never mind me. How are you getting on, with your latest covey of student-doctors?”
“Not too badly – though life would be much simpler if I could persuade them not to go baring off after every new theory that comes along, with nary a second thought for common sense.” He gave her a rueful grin. “There are days when I feel strongly akin to a sheepdog.”
“Ah, and you know you love it!” she scoffed, with a knowing twinkle in her eyes.
“Yes, I suppose I do, or I wouldn’t keep at it.” Adam stood back and surveyed his hostess appraisingly. “But you – Laura, you look positively splendid in all your regalia! You really ought to have your portrait painted more often.”
“Perish the thought!” The Dowager Countess of Kintoul rolled her china blue eyes in mild dismay. “This is only my second sitting – or standing, as I suppose I should say – and I assure you that the novelty of the whole experience is already beginning to wear quite thin. I can only hope that Peregrine won’t insist on too many refinements.”
“Peregrine?” Adam cocked his head in new interest. “That wouldn’t be Peregrine Lovat, would it?”
“Why, yes,” Lady Laura replied, looking quite pleased with herself. “May I take it that you’ve seen his work?”
“Indeed, I have,” Adam said. “Some of his portraits were hanging at the RoyalScottishAcademy, the last time I went. I was quite impressed. There was a luminance to his style, an artistic insight – one almost had the impression that he was painting more about his subject than would be visible to the naked eye. I should very much like to meet the man himself.”
“I’m very pleased to hear you say that,” she said, “because I should very much like him to meet you, too.” This candid disclosure earned her a penetrating look from her visitor.
“I don’t suppose that would be the reason you asked me here today?”
Biting at her lower lip, Lady Laura breathed a long sigh and averted her eyes.
“I think he needs your help, Adam,” she said quietly, linking her arm in his and leading him farther out of possible earshot of their subject. “Perhaps I’ve no business meddling, but – Peregrine is more than a casual acquaintance. You probably don’t remember, but he was a friend of Alasdair’s. They met at Cambridge . Alasdair used to bring him up to the lodge at Ballater for the salmon fishing – before the accident.”
Encouraged by Adam’s attentive silence, Lady Laura continued. Alasdair had been her youngest and favorite son. “Peregrine was away painting in Vienna when it happened,” she went on a bit more strongly, “but he came home for the funeral. That was the last I saw of him for quite some time, though he wrote regularly to let me know where he was and how he was doing. At times, I almost felt I had a replacement son.
“So you can imagine my delight when I learned he’d rented a studio in Edinburgh ,” she went on brightly. “I immediately invited him to come up and paint the children. He drove up the following week to do the preliminary sketches. If I – hadn’t arranged the meeting in the first place, I hardly would have recognized him.”
She made a show of studying one of the tassels on the front edge of her plaid. “He was always rather a quiet boy,” she went on more slowly, “with more reserve, perhaps, than was strictly good for him. But he had quite a charming smile when he forgot to be serious. And now – now he hardly seems to have any life in him at all. It’s almost as if he – wants to cut himself off from the rest of the world. And if someone doesn’t come to his rescue soon,” she finished bleakly, “I’m afraid he might very well succeed.”
As she raised her eyes to meet Adam’s at last, her expression was one of mute appeal. Adam gave her frail hand a comforting squeeze.
“Whatever else may be said about this young man of yours,” he said with a gentle smile, “he is fortunate in his friends. Why don’t you come and help us make one another’s acquaintance?”
Peregrine Lovat was standing behind the easel as they approached, nervously dabbing at a palette with a brush whose end was well chewed. Every line of his body suggested tension. Seen at close range, he was a classically attractive.young man of middling height, apparently in his late twenties or early thirties, with fine bones and shapely, strong-fingered hands. Fair-skinned and fair-haired, he was meticulously attired in light-weight wool trousers and a vee-neck cashmere sweater, both in muted shades of grey. The sleeves of the sweater had been pushed up, the cuffs of the ivory shirt turned back neatly. The silk tie knotted precisely at his throat proclaimed his Oxford connection, and permitted no allowance for relaxation, even when he was working. His oval face and symmetrical features might have provided a study for da Vinci, except for the gold wire-framed spectacles riding on the bridge of his nose. The large lenses made it difficult to read the color of his eyes.
As Lady Laura embarked on the necessary introductions, Adam set himself to refining his initial impression, going beyond mere physical appearance. What he saw at a second, more searching glance lent substance to the fears the countess had expressed on Lovat’s behalf.
Everything about the younger man suggested a state of acute emotional repression. The thick, bronze-pale hair had been barbered to the point of ruthlessness at sides and back, and the chilly monochrome of his attire only served to leach any remaining color from a face already pale and drawn, thinner than it should have been. The line of the tight-lipped mouth was strained and unsmiling.
Lady Laura’s voice recalled Adam from his impromptu assessment. She was speaking, he realized, to the artist.
“Adam’s a psychiatrist, Peregrine, but don’t let that put you off,” she was saying. “He’s also an old and dear friend – and an admirer of your work.”
“I am, indeed, Mr. Lovat,” Adam said, smoothly picking up his cue. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
He smiled and offered a handshake, but he was not surprised when Peregrine found a way to avoid it.
“Forgive me, Sir Adam,” the younger man murmured, nervously displaying a set of paint-smudged fingers. “I’m afraid I’m in no fit state to return your courtesy.”
With this tight-lipped apology, he retreated to the work-table next to the easel and began wiping his hands on a linen paint-rag. His fingers were not entirely steady. When Adam moved a step closer, as though to view the work in progress on the easel, Peregrine reached out and hastily flicked a flap of cream-colored hessian over the partly-finished canvas.
“No matter, Mr. Lovat,” Adam said, affecting not to notice. “I apologize if I’ve interrupted your work. Judging by what I’ve been privileged to see in the past, you have a rare talent for portraiture. I was particularly taken by your study of Lady Douglas-McKay and her two children. In my opinion, it was one of the finest pieces in this year’s RSA exhibition.”
Peregrine shot Adam a fleeting, almost furtive glance from under lowered lids, then pointedly returned his attention to the brush he had started cleaning.
“I’m obliged to you for the compliment, sir,” he mumbled stiffly.
“Your handling of children as subjects is particularly masterful,” Adam continued calmly. “I was visiting the Gordon-Scotts only last week, and couldn’t help but notice your recent portrait of their son and daughter. I knew it for your work even without seeing the signature. Your gift for capturing the spirit behind each face you paint is really quite distinctive.”
The younger man murmured an incoherent phrase that might have been self-deprecation and put aside his paint rag. He glanced at Adam again, then abruptly took off his glasses and scowled at them as though dissatisfied. Out from behind the glasses, his eyes were a’dull shade of hazel, with dark hollows underscoring them.
“Now, Adam,” Lady Laura said abruptly, from behind them, “if you and Peregrine are going to debate the relative merits of artistic technique, I’m sure we can do it far more comfortably somewhere other than this draughty hall. If the pair of you will excuse me, I’ll go tell Anna to have coffee sent up to the morning room.”
She was gone before Peregrine could raise an objection – and Adam was not about to lose the opportunity she had created. The artist hastily put his glasses back on and followed the countess’ departure with eyes that held an expression akin to numb desperation. Adam wondered why.
“Well, as ever, Lady Laura is a very perceptive and practical woman,” Adam said amiably, affecting to rub his hands together against the chill. “Coffee would be most welcome, just about now. I’m surprised your fingers aren’t too stiff to paint. May I?”
Before Peregrine could prevent him, Adam crossed to the easel in two easy strides and was reaching for the hessian drop-curtain. The smoothness of the sudden movement caught Peregrine completely off guard, and he instinctively reached out a hand as if to grasp at Adam’s sleeve, only recollecting himself at the last moment.
“No – please!” he protested, his hand fluttering helplessly to his side as Adam started to lift an edge of the cloth. “I’d – really rather that you didn’t – I mean, I don’t like anyone to see my work before it’s properly finished – “
Adam gave the younger man a sudden, piercing look. It stopped Peregrine in his tracks, his voice subsiding abruptly into silence. Adam returned his gaze to the canvas. With studied deliberation, he lifted aside the hessian drop so that the painting beneath was exposed to full view.
The canvas was an almost surreal fusion of scenes that might have been taken from two totally different pictures. Adam knew the three Kintoul grandchildren. In the foreground, Walter, Marjory, and Peter Michael gazed happily out at the world with bright, laughing eyes. Their portion of the canvas was vividly aglow with warmth, life, and color.
The expression of mischievous innocence in young Peter’s round face elicited an involuntary smile from Adam. The smile died as his eyes travelled upward to take in the other half of the portrait. .
The graceful figure presiding in the background was that of Lady Laura. The likeness was faultless, but where the children’s forms were bright and solid, Lady Laura’s was pale and insubstantial, like an image printed on water. The expression in the eyes was sweet and sad, the mouth wistful as a word of farewell. The scene glimpsed through the window behind her was of a white winter garden sleeping under a blanket of fallen snow.
Adam stared at the painting for a long moment in unbroken silence. Then he released the curtain so that it settled gently back over the canvas.
“Now I understand,” he said softly, still facing the painting. “You see it. Don’t you?”
Behind him, Peregrine gave a small strangled gasp.
Surprised, Adam turned to look him squarely in the face.
Behind the wired lenses, the younger man’s eyes were full of pain and bewilderment. Quite clearly, Peregrine Lovat had no idea what had prompted him to paint what he had painted.
“I am sorry,” Adam said softly, his own dark eyes softening with compassion. “I see now that you didn’t actually know. But yes, she is dying, Mr. Lovat. I doubt if half a dozen people in this world know – and she doesn’t want them to – but you can see it. Or rather,” he finished quietly, “you can’t help but see it.”
Peregrine’s gaze widened. He took two steps backward, then halted, visibly shivering. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.
“My dear boy, it’s all right,” Adam murmured. “There are many ways of seeing; some of them are tantamount to knowing. This faculty of yours is a gift, not a curse, You can learn to use it, rather than letting it use you.”
Peregrine made a small, defensive gesture with trembling hands and swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said hoarsely.
“No, it’s clear that you don’t – at least not now,” Adam agreed. “But for your own sake, I hope you’ll at least consider what I’ve just said.”
A small stir at the eastern end of the gallery prevented either of them from saying more. Lady Laura’s maid soon joined them to announce that coffee was now ready, up in the morning room, where the countess was waiting to receive them. Peregrine excused himself from accompanying Adam, claiming that he would follow as soon as he had a chance to wash his hands. Adam made no demur, but went on to the morning room alone, leaving the younger man to regain at least some semblance of composure.
The morning room, in contrast with the more formal gallery, was cheerfully done up in sunny shades of gold and leafy green. Adam arrived to find Lady Laura comfortably ensconced on a chintz-covered sofa before the fireplace, where a log fire crackled cheerily. A matching chair faced the sofa across a small table holding the coffee service.
“A most interesting young man,” he said in response to her inquiring look, as he sat down beside her. “You were right to bring him to my attention.”
“Will he be all right?” she asked, clearly still worried. “Adam, what’s wrong with him? Do you know?”
Adam patted her hand and smiled reassuringly. “On such a short contact, I can only make an educated guess, but I believe I’ve given him something to think about. Let’s just wait and see, shall we?”
Peregrine seemed uneasy and rigidly self-contained when he joined them a few minutes later, though the monochromatic grey now was broken by a smart navy blazer with shiny gold buttons. He accepted a cup of coffee from Lady Laura and sat down across from her, but he declined anything to eat. Reassured by a look from Adam, Lady Laura smoothly took command of further conversation, embarking on a series of comic anecdotes revolving around some of the more eccentric characters represented in the family portrait gallery. Presently Adam set aside his cup and saucer and consulted a handsome silver pocket watch.
“Ah, do forgive me, Laura, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to run,” he said, slipping the watch back into a vest pocket. “I’m expected on rounds in half an hour, and goodness knows what new flights of speculation will lure our fine student-doctors off in all directions, if I’m not there to supervise. Sometimes I wish that psychiatry was a more exact science.”
“You’re forgiven, my dear,” Laura said, smiling. “Far be it from me to monopolize your time at the expense of your duty.”
Adam stood up smoothly. “The temptation to linger,” he said with a laugh, “is by no means inconsiderable. Thank you very much for the coffee. If I may, I’ll try to call round again on Wednesday.”
“You know you’re welcome any time,” she replied, turning her cheek for his kiss. “Thank you for coming, Adam.”
“The pleasure was all mine, dear lady.”
He turned to Peregrine, sitting withdrawn and silent on the other side of the little table.
“And Mr. Lovat,” he continued, “I’m very happy to have made your acquaintance.” Then he reached into the inside breast pocket of his coat for a monogrammed card case.
“Here’s my card,” he told Peregrine, handing one across. “Please feel free to call upon me in the near future. After what I’ve seen today, I should like very much to discuss the possibility of your painting my portrait.”
chapter three
THE next two days passed without hearing anything JL from Peregrine Lovat. On Wednesday afternoon, Adam returned to Kintoul House for his promised visit. To his surprise, Peregrine Lovat was not there. After satisfying himself that Lady Laura was in good spirits and reasonably comfortable, Adam inquired after the young man.
“I can’t really say, Adam,” she said, sipping tea with him in the morning room. “He didn’t show up yesterday; and then he rang me this morning to say that something had come up with an agent from some gallery in London. If I didn’t know better, I would accuse you of having frightened him away.”
“Well, he’s certainly frightened,” Adam agreed soberly. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a great deal I can do to help him until he becomes more afraid of himself than he is of me.”
He turned the conversation to other subjects after that, for he did not want to reveal the reasons for his interest in Peregrine Lovat – not to Lady Laura Kintoul, whose impending death Peregrine had seen. After chatting for nearly an hour, and exacting her promise to call if she should feel the need of him either as a physician or a friend, he took affectionate leave of her.
In the normal course of things, Adam would have called in to Lady Laura again on Friday, but on Thursday a bleak autumnal tempest swept in off the North Sea, bringing blustery gales, torrential rains, and a spectacular thunderstorm. Within the space of twenty-four hours, the trees on the northeast flanks of the hills had been stripped bare of their leaves, the furrows in the fields turned into long ribbons of standing water. The storm left the air charged, sending several of Adam’s patients at Jordanburn into suicidal depressions. He was kept busy far beyond his usual clinic hours, helping the staff cope, and consequently Peregrine Lovat was even farther from his thoughts than Laura Kintoul.
Professional crises were under control by Saturday morning, however, in time to embark upon his weekend social obligations as planned. The weather was still unsettled, but by ten, as Humphrey drove him out of the car park at Jordanburn and headed west, the sky to the north hinted of a possible clearing later on. The elegant old Bentley that was Adam’s favorite vehicle, even above the Jaguar, lived up to its reputation as the “silent sportscar” as they bowled along the M8 toward Glasgow and Ferniegair, to the south.
His lunchtime engagement was at Chatelherault, a magnificent hunting lodge built in the early eighteenth century for the Duke of Hamilton, where Adam had promised to deliver a birthday tribute in honor of the present duke. As the old man had been a close personal friend of Adam’s father, Adam regarded his own contribution to the festivities as a pleasure rather than a duty. Bringing the Bentley today was another way of demonstrating his affection, for his father and the duke had been old car buffs together.
He would have preferred to take the wheel himself, but delegating that task to Humphrey allowed time to read over the text of the speech he had prepared. During the drive he also reviewed his notes for a second address he was to make later that evening in Edinburgh, at a charity performance of Die Zauberflote – which was another good reason to have Humphrey drive. Adam hated having to park in the city. In addition, since the day’s tight scheduling precluded any return to Strathmourne between engagements, he had had Humphrey bring along a complete set of dinner clothes, so he could change before setting out for the concert hall. It was a fairly typical Saturday for Sir Adam Sinclair, Baronet.
The Hamilton affair went off without a hitch, despite the persistence of poor weather. During a lull in the rain, Adam took the old duke out to the car park to kick the Bentley’s tires and reminisce about the old days, when he and Adam’s father used to drive far older cars far faster than Adam or Humphrey drove the stately Mark VI. Afterward, Adam was persuaded to stay for drinks after most of the other guests had left, so that he had just enough time to change before leaving Chatelherault to pick up his companion for the evening.
She was ready on schedule, and they arrived at the concert hall in good time. Janet, Lady Fraser, was the wife of one of Adam’s medical colleagues who had been called away on a consultation in Paris. The Frasers lived just north of Edinburgh, on the other side of the Firth, and like Adam, were generous patrons of the opera. Both Frasers had been friends since Adam’s childhood.
Janet Fraser also was an incurable romantic, who teased Adam unmercifully about his bachelor eligibility and was forever trying to arrange matches with young ladies of suitable lineage. Once Adam had made his speech and returned to their box, she confined her good-natured badgering to the intervals, letting him lose himself in the magic of the music, but she could not resist further sly digs once they were safely ensconced in the privacy of the Bentley and on their way home.
“You really are impossible, Adam,” Janet was saying, as Humphrey drove them north across the Forth Road Bridge. “I’m always delighted to have you as an escort when Matthew has to be away on one of his trips, but you need a lady of your own. You could have had any of a number of bright young things on your arm tonight.”
Adam sighed and sat back in the Bentley’s deeply cushioned leather, beginning to tire of the game. He had not yet abandoned the hope of eventually sharing his life with a wife and family, but the lady of his admittedly exacting dreams seemed to be maddeningly elusive.
That was not Janet’s fault, of course. Still, he was glad she could not see how her persistent harping on the subject was beginning to annoy him. Though the white of his scarf and wing-collared shirt would be starkly visible above the black of his dinner jacket, he knew that his face was only a vague blur. She was wearing ubiquitous black as well, and blended almost invisibly into the darkness of the backseat, except where a choker of diamonds glittered against a vee of white throat opening upward toward the whiter patch that was her face.
“Must I keep reminding you that I’m saving myself for the right woman?” he quipped, giving her the light-hearted rejoinder that he knew she expected. “You’re already married, after all.”
“Oh, Adam! You are so incorrigible. It isn’t that you don’t have normal appetites – I know that from long ago. Lately, though, you seem to enjoy living like a monk!”
Adam considered the accusation. In that part of his life that he shared with only a few close intimates, some aspects of their common work did recall the discipline and dedication required of monks; but that was hardly anything he was prepared to discuss with Janet, dear a friend as she might be.
“Will you think me less monkish if we stop at Strath-mourne for a drink, before I take you home?” he asked lightly. “I hasten to remind you that this is only an invitation for a drink. Lovely married ladies are always welcome at Strathmourne Abbey’s refectory table, but my monkish cell remains sacrosanct.”
“Oh, Adam,” she giggled. “I don’t know why I put up with you. I don’t know why I ever did.”
But she allowed him to change the subject, once he had told Humphrey to make the necessary diversion, settling into drowsy companionship with her head against his shoulder by the time Humphrey turned up the avenue to Strathmourne.
The Bentley prowled up the winding track toward the gate-arch in a hiss of wet gravel. As they rounded the last bend below the house, Humphrey reached for the remote control box to unlock the gate. Then he uttered a startled exclamation and applied the brakes.
The Bentley skidded to a halt in a back-sheet of rainwater. Adam sat up sharply and peered ahead through the forward windscreen, Janet stirring sleepily beside him. Drawn up at the closed wrought-iron gate and blocking it was a dark green Morris Minor with timber sides. To the left of the car, a slight, rain-drenched figure spun around in the full glare of the Bentley’s headlamps.
“Good God, is that Peregrine Lovat?” Adam exclaimed, already reaching for the door handle.
The artist was wearing neither hat nor scarf. The rain had soaked through his trenchcoat, and his fair hair was plastered flat to his skull. He evidently had been pacing beside his car for some time, for his feet had worn a path through the wet carpet of fallen leaves. For an instant he stood arrested, as though mesmerized by the headlights; then he lurched forward, staggering toward the Bentley like a sleepwalker. He was not wearing his glasses. “Is he drunk?” Janet asked. “I don’t think so.”
Throwing his topcoat around his shoulders, Adam stepped out of the car just in time to catch the younger man before he fell to his knees. Seen at close range, in the merciless revelation of the headlights, Peregrine looked even worse than Adam had imagined. His eyes were bloodshot and deeply hollowed from lack of sleep, and an ugly bruise stained his right temple.
“Peregrine, what on earth has happened to you?” Adam demanded. “You look dreadful!”
Peregrine made a sound between a sob and a moan and clutched at Adam’s sleeve with rain-chilled fingers.
“Help me,” he mumbled brokenly. “Please – you have to help me.”
“Of course I’ll help,” Adam assured him. “But let’s get you in out of the weather first.”
Humphrey had left the driver’s seat of the Bentley, and was coming around the front of the bonnet to join them. Janet’s face was a pale blur in the opening of the left rear door. With sudden decision, Adam headed Peregrine toward the Morris Minor, putting his own coat around the younger man’s shoulders before bundling him into the passenger seat with Humphrey’s help.
“I’ll deal with this,” he told the butler, as he closed the door on Peregrine and headed around to the driver’s door.
“You drive Lady Fraser home. Tell her I’ll ring her tomorrow and explain.”
As Humphrey retreated to the Bentley, bending to speak to Janet as he closed the door, Adam glanced at Peregrine. Huddled deep in Adam’s coat, the artist was shakily pulling his spectacles from an inner pocket, sliding them onto his face with trembling hands. Adam reached for the ignition, for he wanted to get Peregrine back to the house, but the keys were not there.
“I’ll need the car keys, Peregrine,” he said quietly, holding out his hand.
Peregrine dragged them clumsily from his coat pocket. When he unclenched his Fingers to drop the keys into Adam’s waiting hand, Adam caught sight of a row of raw, half-moon gouges across his palm where he evidently had driven his own fingernails deep into the skin. Adam said nothing for a moment, merely locating the correct key by the light of the Bentley’s headlamps and then starting the car.
Humphrey activated the gate from inside the Bentley, and Adam put the Morris into gear and eased it through, glancing sidelong at his silent passenger as he negotiated the few dozen yards to the garage. Floodlights came on as he pulled into the stableyard, triggered by an electric eye, and Adam parked the Morris under one of them.
“I’m – sorry to be such a bother,” Peregrine murmured huskily, when Adam had pulled on the hand brake and switched off the ignition. “I wouldn’t have come here, but I had nowhere else to turn. I – think I must be going mad.”
Adam’s dark gaze was steady. “Why do you say that?”
Peregrine made a small gesture of miserable helplessness, not daring to meet Adam’s eyes.
“I wanted to kill myself earlier,” he muttered. “If I’d had a gun in the studio, I probably would have done it. Then I thought of gouging out my eyes with a palette knife. I only just managed to stop myself, by clenching my fists as hard as I could and slamming my head against a wall.” He gave a bitter, half-hysterical laugh. “If that’s not mad, I don’t know what is.”
“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” Adam said quietly. “Can you tell me what made you suddenly decide on this course of self-destruction?”
A long shudder wracked the younger man from head to foot. “Lady Laura,” he said hoarsely. “She’s dead. She died this afternoon.”
This bald announcement kindled a gleam of enlightenment as well as grief in Adam’s steady gaze.
“You were right to come to me tonight,” he said, after a heartbeat’s silence. “I’m only sorry, for your sake, that you didn’t come sooner.”
“Then you think you can help me?” Peregrine asked disbelievingly.
“I think you can be helped,” Adam corrected carefully, still taking it all in. “For my part, I shall do whatever lies within my power. Meanwhile, we should get you out of those wet things.”
With Humphrey otherwise engaged, it fell to Adam to manage the domestic details. After showing Peregrine the location of the library, he shepherded the younger man upstairs to one of the auxiliary bedrooms and laid out dry clothing from his own wardrobe, returning downstairs then to make a phone call. The tear-choked voice that answered at Kintoul House belonged to Anna, Lady Laura’s maid, and confirmed, without having to ask, that Peregrine had told the bare truth about Lady Laura.
Adam identified himself and apologized for the lateness of the call, then gently related what he had been told. The maid supplied sparse details in a voice close to breaking – how Lady Laura had died shortly before four o’clock that afternoon, slipping away peacefully in the middle of an afternoon nap. Her eldest son and other members of the immediate family were now all gathered at the house. Funeral arrangements had not yet been decided.
It was the expected scenario for a death in a noble family. Nor did the death itself come as any surprise to Adam, whose long-time friendship had widened to include professional attendance when Laura Kintoul first learned of her terminal illness. He requested a brief word with the earl in order to convey his condolences, along with his willingness to render any personal service the family might require.
Then he rang off with the promise to call by Kintoul in the morning.
As he laid the receiver gently back in its cradle, he found it increasingly difficult to hold at bay his own feeling of sudden loss, coupled with a fleeting twinge of doubt, that perhaps he had not done all he could.
/ knew this was only a matter of time, he thought. Perhaps I should have been there. To which another part of himself responded, All had been done that needed to be done. Laura was ready to make this journey. You yourself opened her eyes to the way….
A sound in the hall outside the library recalled him to more practical considerations, and things needing doing for one still living. Seconds later, Peregrine appeared hesitantly at the library door, shuffling in outsized velvet slippers bearing Adam’s heraldic crest and wrapped up in a quilted blue dressing-gown at least two sizes too large for him. He said nothing as he allowed himself to be steered numbly to a chair beside the library hearth.
He was still deathly pale from cold and the trauma of the afternoon and evening. He was also terrified. Feigning unconcern, Adam went to the drinks cabinet in the comer and poured two stiff measures of whiskey into cut crystal tumblers. He gave Peregrine a reassuring smile as he pressed one into his chilled hands.
“Here – drink this,” Adam advised. “I’ve just rung Kintoul House. Let me get a fire going, and we’ll talk about it.”
He put his own drink on the mantel and bent wearily to the hearth, slipping a fire-starter briquette under the kindling already laid and lighting it with a long match. When he had nursed it to a healthy blaze, he took back his drink and sat opposite Peregrine.
“I spoke to Anna, Lady Laura’s maid,” he said quietly, in answer to the artist’s look of shrinking inquiry. “Of course she confirmed what you told me earlier. But you mustn’t mourn for her. She travels now in bright company.”
Peregrine’s eyes flew wide at this calm statement of assurance.
“What do you mean?” he demanded shakily. “You speak as if you know.” “I do.”
“But – how can you know that? Who – what are you, anyway?”
Adam schooled his expression to one of bland neutrality, wondering just how much Peregrine was seeing.
“You know my name. You see my face,” he ventured.
Confusion and fear flared again in Peregrine’s taut face.
“Yes,” he whispered. “That’s part of what frightens me. Oh, God, if only I could stop seeing!” he moaned, shaking his head. “If you have some kind of power – if – if you’re some sort of – of wizard or something – for God’s sake, lift this curse!”
His eyes were feverish bright, his hands clenched so tightly around the tumbler that Adam feared he might crush it.
“I told you, it isn’t a curse!” he said sharply. “And I haven’t the power to make you stop seeing, even if I had the authority. Before we carry this conversation much further, though, you’re going to have to try to relax.” He jerked his own glass pointedly at the one in Peregrine’s hand. “I wouldn’t want to have to pick glass out of your very talented hands, if that shatters. If the whiskey isn’t to your liking,” he added more gently, “I can give you a sedative.”
Peregrine blanched and shook his head, alarmed, but he did loosen his death-grip on the glass.
“N-no, please. No sedative. That only makes matters worse. If I take pills, I lose what little control I have left over this vision of mine.”
“Then you do have some control.”
Peregrine gave an unsteady, mirthless laugh.
“You’re humoring me, aren’t you? You think I really have gone mad.”
“No, I am genuinely interested to hear what you have to say,” Adam said truthfully. “But if I’m to help you, you must make up your mind, here and now, to be absolutely candid with me – however outrageous you may think you sound! I promise not to judge – but I have to know. It’s a leap of faith, I realize – you hardly know me – but I can’t help you unless you do your part.”
Adam waited. Peregrine stared at him for a long, taut moment, totally motionless, then breathed out a long sigh, running a hand over his face and through his drying hair, dislodging his glasses.
“I’m sorry. I – there’s really never been anyone I could talk to, about this. Where shall I start?”
“The beginning is usually best,” Adam replied. “When do you first remember – seeing1?”
Peregrine swallowed painfully, removing his glasses for a moment to rub the back of his hand across his eyes. Then he put the glasses back on, to stare down at the whiskey in his tumbler.
“I – can hardly remember a time when I couldn’t,” he murmured. “When I was a child, I used to see all kinds of things – things that weren’t really there. I used to see pictures on walls that afterward turned out to be blank. I used to see other faces in mirrors, besides my own. Sometimes I would see things happening around me that seemed to belong to other times….” His voice trailed off.
“Were you frightened by what you were seeing?” Adam asked.
The question seemed to take Peregrine off guard. He frowned, remembering.
“No, now that you mention it, I wasn’t,” he said. “But it scared the hell out of my father, when he found out about it. He thought there was something seriously wrong with me.” He took a breath before continuing. “When I was really small, I had a whole host of friends who used to come and talk to me all the time – tell me stories, play games with me. I know that lots of kids have imaginary friends, but eventually they outgrow them. Mine seemed very real. When I first went away to school, some of them used to help me with my studies. Sometimes they even gave me clues during exams – though they would never actually tell me the answer.”
He shot an oblique glance at Adam, encouraged when Adam remained attentively silent.
“It – seemed so natural that I never thought much about it,” he went on, ” – until I started talking to some of the other boys. That was when I realized that – no one else was aware of my friends’ existence. Eventually I made the mistake of asking my father about it.”
“Why was that a mistake?”
Peregrine hunched his shoulders and grimaced. “If you had known my father, you wouldn’t have to ask. He was very much the hard-nosed realist. He was appalled to think that any son of his should be so fanciful.”
“Then, you discussed the matter in some detail?”
“I wouldn’t say that we discussed it,” Peregrine said, with a bitter curl of his lip. “Let’s say that we had words. It was made quite clear to me that my overactive imagination was not to be indulged. Unfortunately, that wasn’t much help. In fact, it only made the problem worse. It seemed like the more confused and upset I got, the more prone I became to seeing things….”He glared down into the liquor in his glass.
“How old were you?” Adam asked.
“About eleven,” Peregrine replied tonelessly.
“And do you know if your father ever considered submitting you for psychiatric evaluation?”
Peregrine shook his head, not daring to look Adam in the eyes.
“He thought it would reflect badly on the family, if word ever got out. Eventually he abandoned trying to reason with me, and simply made it clear that if I – wanted to continue being his son, I had better learn to control my delusions.”
Adam only nodded. He had seen the pattern too many times before.
“Goon.”
Peregrine closed his eyes briefly and then continued.
“As you can imagine, the threat was a good one. I made every mortal effort to shut my eyes to the other world. I suppose his methods were vindicated, because by the time I turned thirteen, I’d finally succeeded in blotting it all out.”
The tone in his voice was dreary, rather than triumphant. After a pause, Adam said casually, “Let’s leave that for a moment. When did you first start drawing and painting?”
Peregrine looked relieved.
“That’s easy enough,” he said. “It was at the beginning of my third year of prep – about the time everything else had shut down. I took an art class as an honors elective.” He smiled wanly. “It was incredible. I’d never known I had it in me to draw. After that, it was as if a whole new world had opened up for me, to replace the one I’d lost.”
“What did you draw?” Adam asked, trying to steer him away from the emotional mine field of his sight.
“Oh, nice, safe landscapes and buildings, for the first year, with a strong emphasis on perspective.” Peregrine’s voice had a more confident ring to it, as he talked about his art. “Most of my classmates hated the technical assignments, but for me, the exercises in perspective were like a kind of – oh, I don’t know – a form of magic, I suppose. There were rules you had to follow, but the possibilities were almost infinite. The art mistress was very supportive, and I started picking up the pieces of my self-confidence.”
He took a tentative sip of the whiskey before continuing thoughtfully.
“It got even better, once we started in on life studies. Portraiture was my forte from the start. In my final year, I did a portrait of the headmaster as Robert the Bruce that was good enough to win me an important prize. My father was dubious about all this artistic effort – he would have preferred excellence in sports, I think – but you can’t argue with a picture on the cover of Scottish Field. Fortunately, my exams were good enough that even he couldn’t complain about that.
“I wanted to go to art school next – he wanted me to read law – so we compromised on art history at Oxford, and then art school.” He grimaced. “I wish now that I’d done as he wanted and read law – or even become a banker or an economist.”
“Do you?” Adam carefully kept his tone uninflected.
“Yes!” Peregrine declared vehemently. “Oh, I started out well enough, during those first few years after I finished art school. I got a lot of lucky breaks, thanks to Lady Laura and others. I was even on the way to gaining a reputation, when things took a turn for the worse.”
“In what way?”
“My vision – changed,” Peregrine said. He took another swallow of whiskey. “I started seeing things again. I tried to control it, but I couldn’t always. More and more often, when I started on a new portrait, I began to see things I had no business seeing. Sometimes when I looked at a subject’s face, I would catch myself looking into his future – “
“Seeing his death, you mean.” Adam made it a statement.
Peregrine’s mouth tightened grimly. “It didn’t happen every time. But it happened often enough to convince me that painting anyone over the age of legal majority was courting insanity.”
“Which is why you’ve mainly painted children, in the last few years,” Adam finished, nodding. “What persuaded you to paint Lady Laura?”
“Did you ever try saying no to Lady Laura?” Peregrine replied, giving Adam an almost incredulous glance. “Besides, the original commission was to paint her grandchildren. It was only after I’d started that she asked to be included in the picture. I couldn’t very well refuse her; she was the kindest and most generous of patrons – almost like a mother, if you really want to know. That’s why, when I realized what I was painting – “
He drew a deep, unsteady breath and tried to go on.
“I tried to tell myself that it couldn’t be true,” he whispered. “It was all I could do to continue working. I tried to blot out the knowledge, but I couldn’t. Then you showed up – and continuing to deny it became out of the question. Now she’s dead, as I foresaw. And I – haven’t got any tears left for her.”
He buried his face in his hands, a single dry sob wracking his frame. Sharing his grief, Adam reached across to lay a comforting hand on one taut shoulder.
“Peregrine,” he said quietly, “Lady Laura Kintoul was diagnosed with terminal cancer nearly six months ago. That was long before you made a start on her portrait. Foreseeing someone’s death is not the same thing as causing it.”
When Peregrine offered no response, Adam tried another tack.
“Is death the only thing that you see?”
Peregrine gave a quick shake of his head.
“What else do you see?” Adam prompted.
Peregrine lifted his head, making a gallant attempt to get his emotions under control again.
“Well, it’s – hard to describe,” he said hesitantly. “I see – the sorts of things I seem to remember seeing when I was very young. Sometimes it’s only the background that changes – and then it’s as if I’m looking into some other time or some other place. Sometimes the face itself changes when I look at it from another angle, or in another light. It’s still the same person – but different somehow.”
Adam nodded. “Can you give me an example?”
Peregrine bit his lip. “Well, take you, for instance. Even as I sit here, I can’t be entirely sure what you look like. Something about your aspect keeps changing. I see you differently now than I did only a minute ago.”
Adam was listening intently. “Is it my death that you see?”
Peregrine flinched at the question, then recovered himself. “No. Not your death…” He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head at several different angles, as though trying to stabilize his vision.
“It’s no use,” he said after a labored pause. “I can’t tell you what it is I see.”
Adam sat silent for a moment, weighing his next words very carefully.
“I think we ought to see if there isn’t some way to remedy that,” he said at last, setting aside his untouched glass. “There are ways to separate and clarify one’s perceptions. If you’re willing, I propose carrying out a simple experiment. “
“An experiment?” A wild, almost cornered look flitted briefly behind Peregrine’s eyes, but then he took an impulsive gulp of whiskey.
“Why not?” he said, suddenly reckless. “I certainly can’t go on the way I have been. If this experiment of yours offers any hope at all, I’m willing to give it a try.”
chapter four
GOOD lad,” said Adam approvingly. “Now all we need are a few simple props.”
He left his seat and shifted a small rosewood side table away from the end of the adjoining settee and into the space . directly in front of Peregrine’s chair. Then he returned to the drinks cabinet to rummage in a bottom drawer. When he rejoined Peregrine a moment later, he was carrying a fisherman’s float made of transparent, pale green glass. He handed it to Peregrine, who set aside his tumbler to take it.
“A crystal ball?” the artist said, with more than a trace of skepticism in his tone.
“If you wish,” Adam replied, smiling. “I’ll explain everything in a moment. You can decide then if you want to carry this any further.”
From the mantelpiece he took one of the pair of silver candlesticks flanking an oil of a hunting scene, bending to light the stub of a long fireplace match from the fire and then using that to light the candle in the silver candlestick. This he brought to Peregrine’s table, setting it carefully in the center. Peregrine watched all these preparations with mingled fascination and uncertainty. By the flickering candlelight, the intricate inlay pattern in the top of the rosewood table seemed almost to glow.
“Now,” Adam said, as he resumed his seat opposite Peregrine. “As you probably already know, the keys to most upheavals of the psyche generally lie buried in the individual’s unconscious mind. Before we can get at those keys, we need to set the conscious mind at rest. There are chemical ways of doing this, of course, but they all have their side effects. Besides, you’ve already told me that drugs just make your problem worse.
“What I propose, then – and what I prefer anyway – is that we use one of several meditational techniques I’ve found useful in the past. One of the ways the unconscious guards its secrets is by projecting fear into the conscious. So I’d like to direct you in a simple relaxation exercise, to see if we can’t bypass that fear and get down to what’s really troubling you.”
“I know what’s troubling me,” Peregrine muttered. “I keep seeing things I shouldn’t*.”
“Why don’t you humor me by pretending that I do know what I’m doing?” Adam said mildly. “I know you’re a bundle of nerves – and I understand why – but it isn’t going to get any better if you won’t let me help you.”
Brought up short by this gentle rebuke, Peregrine blinked owlishly at Adam from behind his spectacles, then drew a determined breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said, subdued. “What do you want me to do?”
“First of all,” Adam said easily, “I want you to take the float between your two hands and hold it so that you can see the flame of the candle through the glass.”
“All right.” Peregrine turned the glass globe around experimentally, peering through it from several different angles. “Should I take off my glasses first?” he asked.
“You may, if it will make you feel more comfortable. How well do you see without them?”
“Oh, well enough, this close,” Peregrine replied. “They’re really for distance. Will it make any difference with the experiment?”
“Not really.”
“In that case, I’ll leave them on.” He glanced doubtfully at Adam. “Are you going to hypnotize me?”
“So, you know my tricks already,” Adam said, leaning back in his chair with a look of faint amusement. “You needn’t worry. It won’t be like Svengali or Count Dracula, robbing his victim of all power of will. I promise you, you’ll remain in control of the situation at all times.”
The assurance produced the desired smile, if still a bit strained. Subsiding, Peregrine bent his gaze to the float and the light of the candle. Seen through the slight distortion of the hand-blown glass, the flame seemed to take on a life of its own, expanding and contracting in a succession of bright dancing forms.
By degrees, as Adam’s low voice began urging relaxation and a centering on the image of the flame, Peregrine felt himself drawn closer to the warm, lively glow, bathing in its brightness as it filled his field of vision. A growing lightness seemed to permeate his limbs, as though his body were shedding its weight. Far from being strange, the sensation was oddly familiar, even comforting.
Peregrine closed his eyes, trying to recall when and where he might have felt this way before. At the same time, he heard Adam Sinclair’s deep, resonant voice speaking to him in words that were clear but remote, as though carried over a great distance.
“That’s right…. Go ahead and close your eyes. Relax and float. There’s nothing to fear now. You’re perfectly safe. Just relax. Relax….”
Gradually the remaining tension drained away from the young artist’s face. As he began to relax, his breathing came more easily, with the shallow regularity of someone just on the verge of sleep. Adam fell silent for a few seconds, to see if he would rouse himself, but Peregrine only gave a little sigh and seemed to settle even more.
“That’s very good,” Adam said softly. “Can you hear me clearly?”
“Yes.” The answer was almost inaudible.
“Excellent.” Adam kept his tone quiet and reassuring. “At the moment, you’re perfectly aware of what’s going on around you; it’s simply too much bother to pay attention to other things. You’re relaxed and safe and perfectly at peace. Now, I’m going to fetch something from across the room. When I return, I shall ask you to perform a simple task for me – one that is perfectly within your ability. Will that be all right?”
“Yes.”
Satisfied, Adam went to the desk at the far end of the room, returning with a pencil and a blank pad of paper. Peregrine was sitting as he had left him – relaxed and motionless, eyes closed.
“You’re doing just fine,” Adam reassured him, in the same quiet tone he had used throughout. “We’re finished with the float for now, so I’m going to take it out of your hands,” he said, suiting action to words. “I’m giving you a pencil and some paper instead. I want you to take a few more deep breaths, to let go of any remaining tension or anxiety that might still be with you. Then, when you’re ready, I want you to open your eyes and look at me, with all your inner intuition as well as your physical eyes, and draw what you see. Do you understand?”
Peregrine nodded his assent, his closed eyelids fluttering as he drew a slow, deep breath. Quietly Adam retreated to his chair, sitting back casually to watch, legs crossed. When the artist looked up, a few seconds later, the dull, hazel eyes had taken on an inner luminance, like lamps newly kindled.
Adam neither moved nor spoke, only watching his subject’s minute nuances of expression, feeling Peregrine’s eyes on his face. After a moment’s searching scrutiny, the artist brought pencil and paper together and began to sketch rapidly, his gaze rarely leaving his subject. After a moment he frowned and scribbled vigorously over what he had drawn, and began on another. When he scribbled out the second sketch and started again, looking more and more confused, Adam quietly rose and came to set one hand on his shoulder in gentle restraint, the other pressing lightly to his forehead.
“Close your eyes and relax, Peregrine,” he murmured. “Relax and let yourself drift. It seems I’ve set you a more difficult task than I realized. Just relax and rest easy for a few minutes, while I see what you’ve drawn.”
Peregrine surrendered the pad and pencil without resistance, eyes closing and hands fluttering to his lap with a relieved sigh. Adam watched him for a few seconds, absently sticking the pencil through the spiral binding at the top of the pad, then turned his attention to what Peregrine had drawn.
Fortunately, the scribbling had not entirely obliterated the work. The sketch at the top showed a lean, bearded face with deep eyes and a patrician nose set above a stern, passionate mouth. A chain mail coif surrounded the face, surmounted by a conical helmet in the style of the late thirteenth century. The device delicately shaded on the left shoulder of the mantle was the distinctive, eight-pointed Maltese cross of, among others, the Knights Templar.
Adam pursed his lips, nodding as he realized what Peregrine had glimpsed – echoes of a past life whose details were only accessible to Adam himself when in a deeply altered trance state, and mostly elusive during ordinary consciousness. As a psychiatrist, he preferred to believe that his “far memories” were psychological constructs – tricks that the mind played, in order to deal with material more acceptably couched in the fantasy of a past existence than in the cold, stark terms of reality. The mystical part of him preferred to believe that it all was literally true, in some way he could not begin to explain.
As a compromise, he permitted himself to function as if it were true, simply accepting and using the insights he sometimes received from his “previous selves,” because they usually worked – even if the methods he employed often did not square with his medical training or blunt logic, much less his affiliation with the religious establishment to which he gave generous support.
Meanwhile, more tangible proofs confirmed that Sir Adam Sinclair, Baronet, did have ancestral ties, at least, to the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem. The tower house awaiting restoration in the north field had been in the Sinclair family for at least five hundred years – a former Templar site, as, indeed, were most places in Scotland with “temple” in the name. It was Templemor, not Strath-mourne, from which the Sinclair family took their baronial title. And it was said that Templar blood ran in the Sinclair line as well, from the dark times after the Order had been suppressed nearly everywhere except Scotland.
At this remove, some of the historical “proofs” were hazy, of course – not that it really mattered. Some truths simply were. And the ultimate truth about the Templars, which even history books tended to substantiate – and which Adam’s heart had never doubted – was that the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem had pursued a course of single-minded devotion to the defense of hallowed ground and the guardianship of secret truths, many suffering burning martyrdom rather than betray what the Order held sacred. And though a fourteenth-century King of France had set out to destroy the Order, hoping to gain possession of their legendary wealth, he was never to know that the greatest treasure of the Templars lay not in gold, but in knowledge….
Knowledge. Peregrine Lovat seemed to have it – though it was clear that he did not know what he had. Thoughtful, Adam returned his attention to the young man’s work. Behind the scribbling, the second sketch showed the same strength of determination as the first, but the face was clean-shaved and hawk-visaged, framed in lappets of boldly striped linen. The tall headpiece Peregrine had sketched above the linen was the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, incorporating a solar disk set between tall ostrich plumes – the adornment of an Egyptian high priest.
No longer really seeing the sketch, Adam turned slightly to gaze into the fire. The second drawing was far more startling than the Templar Knight had been, for it depicted the most vivid of Adam’s far memories. He wondered, briefly, what other faces Peregrine might have sketched, had Adam not stopped him.
The boy had the gift, though. There was no doubting that. The question was, who was Peregrine Lovat, that he should possess the ability to penetrate beyond the mask of matter and see another’s soul, especially that of one trained as Adam had been trained? The answer to that question might well have far-reaching consequences, not only for Peregrine, but for Adam and his associates as well.
He turned to regard the young artist for a long moment, reaching deep inside himself for guidance on how to proceed. Peregrine was sitting quietly, hands lying gently cupped in his lap, the eyes closed behind the wire-rimmed spectacles, but Adam had some doubt that the level of trance was deep enough for what he had in mind to do next.
Setting the pad on the mantel, he decided to find out how good a hypnotic subject Peregrine was.
“Peregrine,” he said quietly, “I’d like to take this a step further, if I may. Will you trust that what I ask is only for your well being?”
At the younger man’s drowsy affirmative, Adam reached down and gently removed the glasses, so he could monitor better by watching the eyelids.
“Just keep your eyes closed now,” Adam directed. “I’ve taken off your glasses so you can be more comfortable. You don’t need to see for a while anyway. I want you to take a deep breath and concentrate on your heartbeat. I’m going to count your pulse, and I want you to count with me.” He pressed his fingertips against Peregrine’s wrist and felt the pulse, strong and steady.
“Take a deep breath and concentrate on your heartbeat,” he continued. “Feel the pulse and rhythm of your life gently taking you even deeper and more relaxed as we count down from ten – nine – eight – seven – “
He could see Peregrine’s lips moving, continuing the counting, and he could feel him slipping deeper, hardly even whispering the final, “One.”
“Good,” Adam replied, half-breathing the word himself. “Very relaxed… very deeply relaxed. And now, as my hand touches your forehead, I want you to sink into an even deeper – sleep.”
At the word “sleep,” he shifted upward to touch his subject lightly between the eyes. A quiver of eye movement registered briefly beneath the lowered lids, but then Peregrine drew a long, even breath and exhaled on a shallow sigh, his head lolling forward slightly, nodding.
The response was precisely what Adam was looking for. Leaning down to take one of the slack hands, he lifted his subject’s arm to shoulder level and stretched it out straight, running his free hand down it several times from shoulder to wrist.
“Now imagine that your arm is becoming as stiff and rigid as an iron bar,” Adam said, testing at the lock of the elbow for emphasis. “It’s becoming so rigid that neither you nor I can bend it, and you cannot lower it. Try if you wish, but you cannot bend your arm.”
Peregrine did seem to try. Adam could see the consternation on the younger man’s face, but the arm did not budge. Quickly, before Peregrine alarmed himself or did move the arm, Adam stroked along its length again.
“That’s fine, Peregrine. Your arm is going back to normal now. It’s no longer stiff. You can stop trying to move it, and relax. Let your arm return to your side. It’s perfectly normal now, and you will have no aftereffects. Sleep now. Deep sleep.”
Silently Adam considered what to do next. He could simply try to regress Peregrine to a past life, hoping to find some clue to his problems in the present; but there was a quicker way, and one far more certain. It was hardly a usual psychiatric procedure – most of his medical colleagues would be scandalized – but then, there did not seem to be much that was usual about Peregrine Lovat.
“Now, Peregrine,” he finally said, “you’re doing very well indeed. You’ve achieved a very useful level of deep trance, and in a moment I’m going to ask you to go deeper still.
“For now, however, I have further instructions for you. For reasons I’ll eventually explain, you’re to remember nothing of what is about to happen, when you wake up later on. But if and when I ask you to recall it at some later date, it will come back to you in full detail. I have my reasons for asking this, but it isn’t appropriate for you to know them just now. So you will retain no conscious memory of anything you might hear or experience in the next little while, for your own well being. Nod if you understand and accept this.”
When Peregrine nodded, Adam drew his own chair closer to the rosewood table, reducing the distance between himself and his subject.
“Thank you. I will not betray the trust you’ve given me. Now, I want you to go very, very deep – twice as deep as you are now. Go so deep that nothing you may hear with your ears will register on any conscious level until I touch your wrist like this and tell you to come back.” He briefly pressed Peregrine’s wrist between the first two fingers of both hands.
“Only if real physical danger should threaten, such as a fire, will you counter this instruction and come out of trance. Now lean your head back and sleep. Sleep deeply, hear nothing, and remember nothing. Deep asleep.”
When he was satisfied that Peregrine was, indeed, oblivious to his surroundings, Adam moved behind the chair, reaching into his coat pocket to take out a heavy gold signet ring set with a handsome sapphire. Slipping it onto the third finger of his right hand, he touched the stone briefly to his lips, then laid the backs of his hands along the tops of the chair wings to either side of Peregrine’s head, open palms turned upward. Taking as a centering point the candle still burning on the table before Peregrine, he drew a deep, centering breath and slowly exhaled, at the same time breathing the opening words of an almost silent invocation, couched in the Hellenic Greek and Latin of third-century Alexandria:
“Ego prosphero epainon to photi…”
He offered the rest in the silence of his mind, lifting his heart and his hands in selfless oblation.
/ offer praise to the Light in the person ofRa: Pantocrator, Deus de deo…. ofHorus: Logos, Veritas veritatis…. of Isis: Hagia Sophia, Regina Caeli…. and of Osiris: Nous, Lumen de lumine…. Thou, O Lord, an Light Eternal, Alpha and Omega, Source and Ending. Preserve us unto everlasting day. Amen.
Briefly he brought his hands together, palm to palm, touching the fingertips to his lips reverently, in salute to That which he served. Then, drawing a deep breath, he set his hands on the chair wings again, to either side of Peregrine Lovat’s bowed head, closing his eyes to the physical flame before him.
“As Above, so Below,” he murmured. “As Without, so Within….”
The brightness of the flame’s after-image shimmered behind his eyelids, establishing a glowing point of reference. He focused on that point to the exclusion of all other internal images. As it receded, twin threads of brilliant silver unreeled in parallel against the expanding ground of his internal vision, fine as spider-silk. One was the silver cord of his own life; the other, he knew, was Peregrine Lovat’s. The threads began to spiral as he plunged after them, not falling but flying.
In the still, pristine silence of his own mind, Adam made himself a part of that cosmic spiral. It gathered momentum, whirling faster and faster through gauzy fields of lights like scattered stars. The star-points elongated into other silver threads, all wheeling and spinning. The myriad filaments all converged toward a single distant point, like the heart of a coalescing nebula.
Never relenting, Adam fixed on the unbroken spiral of Peregrine’s silver cord and followed it into the shimmering midst of the dance. Anticipated, but never quite expected – as usual – came an icy thrill of disorientation that left him momentarily breathless and slightly dizzy. When the universe righted itself again, he found himself standing in spirit before two immense doors of immeasurable height, robed in white, his feet bared to tread on holy ground. It was familiar ground – the eye of the cyclone, the calm at the center of the storm, the hub of the wheel – but the awe was always new.
Adam had the Word of an Adeptus Major. As he spoke it, the doors opened with ponderous majesty. Beyond lay timeless vaults of silence: the unmapped and unmappable halls of the Akashic Records, the imperishable archives of all lives for all time. Into the vaults of the future, he might not go; but guided by the silver cord that was Peregrine’s connection into the Sephiroth, Adam passed into the vaults of the past, threading a circular, inward-tending course along corridors iridescent as mother-of-pearl. At the heart of the labyrinth lay a convoluted chamber, whorled and curved like the walls of a nautilus shell. And at its center, on a canopied altar, lay a great book. As Adam approached the altar, the book opened of its own accord.
Hands pressed palm to palm in respect, Adam bent his head over the book, framing his intent in wordless query. As if conjured by some mystic wind, the pages began to turn and images to be presented for his gaze – the strands of the thread that linked the many lives of the one now known as Peregrine Lovat.
He skimmed over the early material, searching for the key – that initial moment of awakening, the point at which the soul first encountered its own spiritual likeness mirrored in the greater soul of the Divine Light. For Peregrine Lovat, that epiphany had taken place at Delphi in the age of Pericles. The oracular gift bestowed at that instant of enlightenment was what made itself known now, as the gift of seeing. Not to many was such vision given; and to endure the gift, its use – and disuse – must be mastered. Such would be the task of Peregrine Lovat – and of Adam, to teach him.
So. The soul that now was Adam Sinclair bore witness to the mandate: to make of a potential curse a gift, a tool for his own further spiritual advancement and in the service of the Light – for Peregrine had made that unreserved dedication to service before. It remained but to reawaken him in this life – a task which Adam, as a healer of souls as well as of minds, had performed before.
But as he closed the book, preparing to go, light darted from roof to floor to roof again in quicksilver flashes too swift for the eye to follow, lively as summer lightning. The signature was unique, portending the imminent arrival of one of those to whom Adam answered on the Inner Planes.
Stilling his curiosity, for he had not asked for audience, Adam acknowledged the authority of One who had long ago progressed beyond the need to manifest in physical form, bowing his head and opening his hands at his sides in a posture of receptivity. The other manifested in a beam of pure white light that pooled momentarily on the floor of the dais beneath Adam’s feet and then surged up and around to envelope him in a shimmering pillar of opalescent fire.
Restive forces brood at the edge of the Abyss, Master of the Hunt, came the unexpected warning. Do you seek our help?
The question startled Adam, for he had perceived no threat requiring his attention. He had been functioning in his capacity as a physician of souls tonight, not as a cosmic keeper of the peace.
No, Master. I have come on an errand of mercy, as a healer of souls. Explain.
It is written that all pilgrim souls must enter the world as children, and that so long as the personality is immature, the intellect untrained, even an Adept may be kept from achieving his full potential. There is such a one come to me – an Adept, I find, of rare gifts – who has been crippled, half-broken in childhood, before mind and intellect had sufficiently matured to protect the indwelling spirit. I believe his destiny may lie within the mandate of my mission, but the fledgling hawk must be re-pinioned, before he is ready to rejoin the Hunt. I would help him learn to fly again, that the potential of his gifts may be regained.
The desire is worthy, came the response, but you should know that opposition threatens, and a risk is involved. What opposition, and what risk?
The Veil obscures details, even from us, but a threat exists. You will be a focus, though even the opposition will not know it for some time.
I am not afraid to face this threat, Adam replied. But, is the fledgling to become an ally, then? How, if I can neutralize the self-doubt that cripples him, so that his potential is released? May he take his rightful place before the Light?
He may. If the fledgling proves steadfast, you have authority to receive him; but this is by no means foreordained. Do you accept the commission to rehabilitate this soul?
The question bore of no answer but one. My office as physician in the Outer was not lightly undertaken, Master. Nor do I take lightly my vows on the Inner, as a sentinel of the Light. I see the spark in Peregrine Lovat – a spark too bright to be wasted in aimless wandering, when it could be directed to Service. I accept the commission.
So be it, then, Master of the Hunt. But tread softly, lest he and you should plummet into the Abyss. It shall be so, Adam replied, with a deep bow. Between one heartbeat and the next, the enfolding presence simply was not there any longer. The Chamber of Records wavered around Adam and then disappeared, and he arrowed back toward the material world. The slight disorientation of soul-flight ended with the faint psychic jolt that signalled the spirit’s reunion with matter. When Adam opened his eyes, swaying a little on his feet, he was standing once again in the familiar library at Strathmourne, hands resting on the back of the chair where Peregrine Lovat slept. Details of what had just transpired grew more hazy by the second, but a clear plan of action lay before him now.
Almost perfunctorily, he brought his palms together in salute to the Light, the touch of his fingertips to his lips closing and sealing the rite he had just performed. Then he came around in front of Peregrine’s chair, settling fully back into his role as physician and teacher.
The younger man was as Adam had left him, head tilted back in the angle of the wing-backed chair, eyes closed. After blowing out the candle, Adam bent to touch Peregrine’s wrist lightly in pre-arranged signal.
“Peregrine, listen to my voice,” he said firmly, no longer uncertain of his way. “Can you hear what I am saying?”
The younger man’s lips parted slightly, in a scarcely breathed, “Yes.”
“Excellent,” Adam said. “In a moment, I am going to ask you to return to waking consciousness. Before I do that, however, there is something you should know, even though it may be some time before you arrive at a full understanding of what I am about to tell you.”
He settled carefully back into his chair, watching the other man closely.
“It is a fact, though I cannot prove it to you in any rational, scientific manner, that an individual’s personal history often goes back beyond the boundaries of his present lifetime. I have reason to believe that the vision which you have been at pains to suppress since childhood is actually a valuable legacy from earlier stages of your development. And there is no doubt that you can control it – provided that you acknowledge the gift for what it is.”
Vague hope stirred the trembling eyelids as Peregrine’s lips moved soundlessly to frame a single word.
“How?”
“First,” Adam said, “you must learn to sort out the different kinds of information that, up until now, have been coming in uncontrolled. In a word, you must learn to focus your talent, and to turn it on and off when you decide – not just when it happens. The techniques for doing this already exist in your own subconscious mind, but they are buried. They can be retrieved through dreams. I should like to leave you with a posthypnotic suggestion to strengthen your ability to remember those dreams. Do you agree?”
Peregrine nodded his acceptance.
“Very good. Then, you will accept that suggestion, and know that you will dream the knowledge that will set you free. You will dream it as you are ready to receive it, and you will remember what you dream.”
“Yes,” Peregrine whispered, his head nodding slightly.
After a slight pause, Adam also nodded.
“Now, in a very few minutes, you are going to wake up of your own accord. At that time you will have no conscious memory of the conversation that has just passed between us. However, the ideas themselves will filter through to you in the course of the next few nights, couched in dreams that you will remember very clearly. I want you to record any dream that should happen to come to you – write it down, or make a sketch, if that suits you better – and then we’ll talk about it at the first opportunity. Will you do that for me?”
“Yes,” came the whispered response.
“Very good. Now in addition, because looking at people with your artist’s eye seems to be what triggers your vision, I’m going to suggest that you not set out to draw anything for several days, other than in connection with your dreams. Give yourself a bit of a rest, while your unconscious begins sorting things out. Lady Laura’s death has been a shock, I know, but it’s also the catalyst that seems to have brought everything to a head. Then, after a few days, I will ask you to draw quite a lot. If you can link your ability to see with an intention to draw or paint the results, that can be the first step toward gaining conscious control.
“Now, in your own good time, awaken feeling refreshed and relaxed and remembering my instructions.”
He sat back in his chair and waited, making a steeple of his forefingers and tapping them lightly against his chin. A few moments later, as instructed, Peregrine stirred and sighed, then opened his eyes. Seeing Adam in watchful attendance, he drew himself upright and stretched a little sheepishly.
“I was half-expecting to find myself sprawled out on the sofa in my studio,” he said. “How long have I been under?” “Hmmm, the best part of an hour,” Adam said, glancing at an ornate carriage clock on a side table, “but never mind. For what it’s worth, I think we’ve made a very good beginning. How do you feel?”
Peregrine summoned a crooked attempt at a smile. “Not too bad. More tired than anything else – which is a distinct improvement.” He flexed stiff shoulders, then glanced down at his wristwatch. “Good Lord, if that really is the time, I ought to retrieve my own clothes and go home while there’s still time for you to get a few hours’ sleep.”
“Sleep is a luxury I can do well enough without, now and then,” Adam said. “Besides, you’re not really in any fit state to drive. The room where you changed can be yours. I expect Humphrey can supply anything you need.” “Well, I don’t want to impose,” Peregrine began. “It’s no imposition – simply common sense. As a matter of fact,” he continued casually, at the artist’s look of continued uncertainty, “it would probably be no bad thing if you were to move in here at Strathmourne for a few days. It’s clear from what you’ve told me tonight that you have a lot of soul-searching to do. And in my experience, it’s generally a good idea not to embark on that kind of inner journey without the benefit of someone standing by, ready to step in, if you feel the need of a mediator.”
Peregrine flushed slightly. “That’s uncommonly generous of you, Sir Adam, and I’m very grateful – but as you know, I didn’t exactly come prepared for an extended visit.” “That needn’t worry you in the least,” said Adam with a deep chuckle. “It’s one of the many good reasons for having a faithful manservant. I’ll give your keys to Humphrey, and he can drive down to Edinburgh first thing in the morning and collect whatever you need from your flat.”
A relieved smile eased the younger man’s weariness. “You think of everything, don’t you? In that case, I’ll take you up on your invitation – at least for a few days. I can’t seem to summon up the energy to argue with you.”
“You’ll find it rarely does any good, when I set my mind on something,” Adam said lightly, getting to his feet. “And we’ll discuss the length of your stay when you’re more rested. In the meantime, I highly recommend a late-night snack before we turn in. I heard Humphrey come in a little while ago. He makes exceptionally good hot ham sandwiches, and his recipe for cocoa, I’m convinced, has more than a touch of brandy in it.”
chapter five
HALF an hour later, feeling relaxed and comfortably full-fed for what seemed like the first time in days, Peregrine bade his host a drowsy good-night and made his way upstairs to the room he had used earlier. Though he had been in no condition to appreciate it before, the room was spacious and elegant, like most of what he had seen, thus far, at Strathmourne. The walls were a cool shade of Wedgewood blue, with the woodwork and cornices picked out in white. The center section of the coffered ceiling had been painted to resemble the sky by night. When he had shed his slippers and robe and climbed wearily under the chintz-covered comforter, he lay back on the feather pillows and gazed up dreamily at the tempera fresco of clouds and constellations for several minutes before switching off the bedside lamp. It was the serene image of a starry firmament that he carried with him as he settled unresisting into deep, untroubled sleep.
Overwhelmed by sheer fatigue, he had no dreams that he could clearly remember. When at long last he roused again to full awareness, the room was suffused with a subdued submarine glow, and from far, far away, he could hear the sound of church bells. Shrugging himself out from under the bedclothes, he padded barefoot over to the curtained window-bay and parted the blue damask drapes. Sunlight poured into the room, and outside, the sky was clear and bright.
But the continued ringing of the church bells told him that it must be far later than he first had thought. Blinking, he retired to the bedside table and snatched up his wrist watch. To his amazement, it was nearly half past eleven. Could he really have slept so late?
He found his clothes of the night before, clean and neatly pressed, laid out over the back of a chair to the right of the bathroom door-^Humphrey’s work, no doubt. On the counter beside the bathroom sink were his shaving kit and other small, assorted personal effects, obviously retrieved, according to plan, from his flat in Edinburgh. A quick foray back into the bedroom to inspect chests of drawers and wardrobes revealed that a thorough selection of the rest of his clothing had been brought as well. Marveling at the efficiency of Adam Sinclair’s soft-spoken manservant, Peregrine made shrift to bathe and dress as quickly as possible, wondering what he had gotten himself into.
There was no sign of Humphrey, when Peregrine made his way downstairs. Nor, at first, could he find evidence of anyone’s presence. As he paused on the bottom-most step to get his bearings, however, he noticed that the door to the library was standing slightly ajar. Taking his courage firmly in hand, he went up to the threshold and rapped lightly on the paneled oak.
“Come in,” said Adam Sinclair’s deep voice from inside.
Peregrine pushed the door open and stepped timorously into the room. Adam was sitting at his desk with his back to the window, the sleeves of an immaculate white shirt aglow in the morning sun against a dark waistcoat and cravat. The jacket of the morning suit was hanging over the back of another chair. Peregrine was surprised to see his host so formally attired until he remembered, with a pang, that Adam had promised to pay a sympathy call on the Kintoul family that morning, and apparently had done so.
“You’ve already been up to Kintoul House, haven’t you?” Peregrine said, flinching from the direct gaze as Adam looked up. “I – I meant to go with you. You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”
Smiling, Adam set aside a newspaper cutting he had been reading, laying it on a stack of similar items in an open manila file folder.
“I felt that you needed the sleep more than the family needed yet another caller this morning,” he said easily. “There will be ample time for a more meaningful visit in the week to come. Besides,” he added, not unkindly, “I think you may be sure that Lady Laura would not have begrudged you the benefit of a good night’s sleep.”
Peregrine opened his mouth as if to protest, then shut it again when he realized that Adam had spoken ho more than the truth. While he was still searching for a suitably chastened rejoinder, Adam said, “Humphrey’s set up a table for brunch in the room across the hall from this one. If you’re sufficiently wide awake to feel peckish, I’ll ring down to let him know we’re ready for something to eat.”
When Peregrine made no demur, Adam reached across the bay to tug at an embroidered bellpull, then returned his attention to tidying up the stack of cuttings in his file. The motion drew Peregrine’s gaze like a magnet, and the words, “Antique Sword,” jumped out at him from the headline on the top cutting, just as Adam closed the folder.
“You’ll find I have a variety of interests,” Adam said casually, taking no apparent note of the slightly guilty look of surprise on Peregrine’s face as the artist quickly looked up. “Every once in a while, I get asked to assist the police with cases that have aspects of the – shall we say, unusual about them. For quite some time now, I’ve made a habit of saving anything in the papers that happens to catch my eye. More than once, this eccentricity has given me advance warning that my services may be called for.”
Peregrine blinked and nodded, but he had the sudden, inexplicable feeling that something had just gone totally over his head. Adam’s manner seemed as relaxed as ever, but Peregrine abruptly was certain of one thing: his host’s apparently simple and open explanation was camouflage for something far from simple. Whatever the nature of the case involving this mysterious sword, Sir Adam Sinclair had some personal stake in the affair.
“I’m sorry, Sir Adam,” Peregrine said stiffly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
Adam cocked his head at Peregrine in some amusement. “Sir Adam?” he said archly. “If we’re going to work together, Peregrine, I think you might be entitled to drop the Sir, at least in private. And you’re not prying. If you’d not been meant to see this, do you think I would have been reading it when I knew you might come in at any time? Besides, it’s all been in the newspapers at one time or other. Have a look, if you’re interested.”
He held out the file folder, still smiling, but Peregrine shook his head, aware of feeling a little silly to have made such a fuss, yet quite certain that Adam was not laughing at him.
“That isn’t necessary,” he murmured. “I – just didn’t want you to think I’d take advantage of your kindness. And frankly, even if I did read that,” he jutted his chin toward the folder with a sheepish grin, “I doubt I’d be any the wiser.”
“Perhaps not,” Adam agreed with a chuckle. He opened a drawer on the right-hand side of the desk and deposited the folder inside before reaching for his jacket. “Shall we go? I seem to recall that Humphrey mentioned something about fresh salmon….”
Later, after they had disposed of the salmon, not to mention eggs Benedict and fresh asparagus, Adam took Peregrine on a long guided tour of the house. The present Strathmourne House was not of any great antiquity, having been rebuilt on the site of an earlier house ravaged by fire in the mid-nineteenth century – which, in turn, had been built on an old monastic site. In its present form, it was a Victorian rendering of Scottish vernacular architecture, designed and built, at the instigation of Adam’s grandfather, by a talented local architect named Forbes. Pundits south of the Solway and River Tweed tended to label Forbes’ distinctive style as neo-Gothic; Adam, when feeling particularly irreverent, was reminded of a favorite childhood picture book of Wind in the Willows, with its illustrations of Toad Hall.
“Toad Hall” notwithstanding, Forbes had gained a sufficient reputation to eventually be awarded a knighthood, in recognition of the excellence of his architectural achievements; and it was widely accepted that Strathmourne exemplified some of his best technical work. Peregrine’s artistic sensibilities were impressed, not only by the layout of the rooms and galleries, but by the close attention Forbes had paid to small details of embellishment. The vine-leaf friezes adorning the walls throughout the rooms on the ground floor were reminiscent of the best designs of the High Gothic period. Similarly, the stained glass window in the private chapel depicted the dream of Jacob with a medieval richness of jewel-like color.
Peregrine was particularly struck by a heraldic crest carved and painted on the central boss of the ceiling in the great hall – a phoenix taking flight out of a nest of fire, within a traditional Scottish buckle and strap.
“That’s a striking crest,” he said, shading his eyes with both hands to peer up at it. “Is it a Sinclair device?”
“Aye, one of several.” Adam smiled. “According to the Alexandrian Physiologus, the phoenix betokens life eternal. When it reaches extreme old age, it builds itself a pyre of Arabian spices and is consumed, to rise up again out of the flames as a new creature, reborn to ongoing life.”
“Reincarnation,” Peregrine murmured. “Do you think such a thing is possible?”
Adam flashed him a penetrating look from under raised brows. “Is it possible that we are born again and again in the course of fulfilling our individual spiritual destinies? Don’t ask me. Ask yourself.”
Glancing startledly at the chiseled face of his companion, Peregrine found himself without a word to say.
They left the great hall and moved upstairs. Peregrine’s discomfiture gradually subsided as they wandered in and out of the apartments in the north wing. The pair of adjoining rooms at the end of the corridor boasted an intriguing collection of Edwardian toys.
“This was the nursery, when my father and his brother were boys,” Adam said, watching indulgently as Peregrine bent to inspect a child-sized mechanical pony and cart. “My sister tells me that when she was a child, she used to regard it as a special treat to be allowed to come and play up here. That was one of her favorites.”
The mechanical pony had a removable leather harness, and a mane and tail of real horsehair. Peregrine fingered the brass rail behind the seat on the cart, cocking his head to admire the designs stenciled on the side.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” he said. Somehow, in spite of all his social grace and obvious charm, Adam Sinclair seemed strangely solitary – as though somehow set apart even from his friends.
“Theodora’s quite a bit older than I am,” Adam replied. “Actually, she’s my half-sister – not that it matters. Her mother was my father’s first wife. There’s quite a good portrait of her in the room next to yours. Come along and I’ll show it to you.”
The portrait was full-length, and showed a slender, dark-haired girl with laughing eyes, hugging a shawl of tartan silk over an elegant white ballgown.
“That was painted shortly before Theo’s twenty-first birthday,” Adam said. “The following year she married Sir Thomas Mac Allan. He was in the diplomatic service. They’ve spent most of their married life in the Far East, though they’re home now. All three of the children were born abroad. I’d love to see what you’d do for a family portrait of all of them.”
“Where is home now?” Peregrine asked.
“Over in Argyllshire, not far from Inveraray,” Adam replied. “It’s a pretty place, if a trifle tame after the Orient. But Theo, I think, was more than ready to settle down in one spot, after so many years spent in foreign climes. Thomas retired a few years ago. Theo tells me he rather enjoys being his own man for a change.”
The rest of the tour was taken up with travel anecdotes, ending up in the library once more. While they were waiting for Humphrey to bring up the tea tray, and Adam was making a phone call, Peregrine prowled idly up and down the array of bookcases that lined the walls adjoining the desk. A handsome volume bound in Moroccan leather caught his eye.
On an impulse, he drew it off the shelf and turned it over in his hands, appreciating the workmanship of the fine binding. Riffling through the pages, he discovered that it was a first edition of Psychologic und Alchemic by Carl Jung, dated 1944. On the flyleaf, a handwritten note read:
“To Philippa Sinclair,” followed by an inscription in German. The signature was that of Jung himself.
A shadow fell across Peregrine’s right shoulder. “My mother was a student of Jung’s,” Adam said from behind him. “She’s also a psychiatrist. He sent her that book shortly after she and my father were married.”
Peregrine turned to glance at his host, the book still open in his hands. “Is she Swiss, then?”
“No, she’s an American,” Adam said, “but she was in Switzerland, studying with Jung, when the Second World War broke out. When the United States entered the war in 1942, she joined the U.S. Army Medical Corps. She and my father met up in a field hospital behind the lines – and the rest, as they say, is history.”
Peregrine closed the book and carefully returned it to its place on the shelf. “I gather she’s still alive?”
“Oh, quite,” Adam returned with a laugh. “At the moment she’s in America, supervising the running of her clinic in New Hampshire. That was a bone of contention while my father was alive, since he thought she should be here all the time, attending to her duties as lady of the manor. Since his death, however, that’s where she spends most of her time. She maintains that the work keeps her young.”
He might have said more, but at that moment Humphrey’s discreet knock heralded the arrival of tea and scones. As Peregrine followed Adam back to the fireside, he reflected that a capacity for remarkable achievements seemed to run in the Sinclair family.
They passed the evening quietly at Strathmourne. A simple but excellent dinner was followed by brandy in the now-familiar environs of the library.
“I suggest we make an early evening of it,” Adam said. “I think you’ll agree that last night was – ah – something less than restful, and tomorrow, after I make my rounds down at Jordanburn, I’ve got to drive up to Gleneagles for the afternoon. It’s the quarterly meeting of the Royal Scottish Preservation Trust, and I’m speaking. Perhaps you’d like to come along.”
“Well, I – “
“It’s no intrusion, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Adam said with a smile. “I think you’d enjoy it – and it would give me the chance to present you to some good friends of mine who are members of the Trust – friends who might be the source of future commissions,” he added, raising his glass in smiling salute, “if the prospect of my company for the day and a bunch of probably boring lectures aren’t sufficient enticements.”
Warmed through by the brandy and the glow of their growing camaraderie, Peregrine found himself agreeing. Only much later, after he had retired to his room for the night and was drifting off to sleep, did it occur to him that this was the first social engagement in months that he had allowed himself to accept. Nor had he thought even once about the despair that had driven him here to Strathmourne not twenty-four hours before.
The next day, Monday, dawned fair and fine. After an early breakfast, Adam left Peregrine on his own for a few hours while he zipped into Edinburgh to see patients, returning just after eleven to pick him up.
“Traffic was lighter than I expected,” Adam said, as he leaned across to open the passenger door of the Jaguar for Peregrine. “We may even have time for a proper lunch. I told some friends we’d try to join them, if we got there before one.”
They arrived at the Gleneagles Hotel with plenty of time to spare. Adam’s friends turned out to be the Duke of Glendearn, who was president and principal patron of the Trust, and several other titled notables, several of whom were acquainted with Peregrine’s work. The warmth of their reception did much to dispel Peregrine’s initial shyness, and by the time lunch was finished, he was well on the way to finding himself at home.
Peregrine glanced at the program leaflet Adam handed him as they went into the lecture room. The morning’s program, he found, had included the society’s business meeting and several addresses on various aspects of Scottish history. The events scheduled for the afternoon included several more speeches and a series of panel discussions – none of which turned out to be at all boring, so far as Peregrine was concerned.
Adam’s own contribution, last on the agenda, was a lecture on the subject he termed “Intuitive Archaeology.” Interestingly enough, to Peregrine’s way of thinking, no one seemed inclined to leave early. In fact, people who had been wandering in and out during the afternoon made a point to come back in as the duke was introducing Adam. Evidently Sir Adam Sinclair was one of their more popular speakers.
“This is intended to be an exercise in creative speculation,” Adam warned his listeners, with a smile that compelled their instant attention. “What I am proposing is that, for the next fifty minutes, we waive all consideration of empirical methodology, in order to examine the intuition as a prime tool for archaeological investigation.”
“Intuition,” he repeated, looking around the room. “It’s something that many people think women have more of than men do.” That comment brought a chuckle. “People working in the so-called ‘hard sciences’ tend to mistrust it, because it can’t be ‘proven’ by scientific logic. People working in the ‘soft’ sciences – and psychiatry is one of them – know that intuition can be a very valuable tool, especially when confirmed by results. Perhaps, then, the line between logic and intuition is not as hard and fast as the hard scientists would have us believe.”
As Adam turned to the next page in his notes, Peregrine settled down contentedly to take it all in. This was turning out to be every bit as interesting as he had hoped it might be.
“Actually, many hard scientists do use intuition,” Adam went on, “though most of them would squirm, if forced to admit it. After all, it isn’t ‘logical.’ However, it is no secret that some researchers are infinitely more adept than others at arriving at correct hypotheses on the basis of slender or confusing physical evidence. Putting this into an historical perspective, I would like to suggest that intuition may, in fact, play a very large role in reconstructing history on the basis of artifacts….”
There followed a series of factual anecdotes involving a number of eminent archaeologists and their discoveries. As Peregrine listened, it began to dawn on him that the faculty Adam was describing was, by any other name, a kind of extrasensory perception. He glanced around him, wondering if any of the other members of the audience had caught the masked drift of the discourse. Before he could form any distinct impressions, the presentation took an even more radical turn.
“If we accept that intuition does, in fact, play a vital expository role in archaeological investigation,” Adam said coolly, “we may well find ourselves obliged to modify our definition of physical reality. To that end, I am going to suspend, for a moment, all consideration of Newtonian physics in order to broaden the concept of nature to include that elusive field in which the intuition operates.”
This announcement generated an interested stir amongst those present. Without pausing to refer to his notes, Adam continued, leaning forward conspiratorially on the podium.
“All physical reality is traditionally quantifiable in terms of three dimensions: height, width, and depth. But such an assessment fails to take account of the fact that objects – and people, for that matter – also exist in the dimension of time. This temporal factor is something that, for lack of a better term, I should like to call Resonance.”
Peregrine sat forward in his chair. He felt suddenly as if he were on the brink of hearing something of vital personal importance.
“To draw an analogy,” Adam went on calmly, “resonance can be interpreted as a kind of existential echo: a subtle shadow of how things used to be. As a theoretical psychologist, I would submit that the ability to perceive resonance is a rare function of the human psyche. In antique times, that faculty was the trademark of priests, seers, and mystics. In these latter days, it is still a factor among those whose livelihood depends on their developing that faculty of vision: archaeologists, psychiatrists, artists….”
Artists? Startled, Peregrine was suddenly swamped by a host of half-realized implications. Was this why Adam had wanted him to come along? He was still struggling to untangle his own thoughts when he was roused from his reverie by an outburst of hand-clapping. He looked up to see Adam descending from the podium into a crowd of would-be questioners.
It was some time before Adam was free again to join him. By then Peregrine was sufficiently master of his own whirling speculations to follow along gracefully while friends and acquaintances offered their congratulations and goodbyes. The shadows were lengthening by the time they pulled out of the car park. Peregrine held his tongue until they were back on the main road toward Strathmourne, then abruptly voiced the question that he had been at pains to suppress for more than an hour.
“This business of resonance that you spoke of – is that another way of saying that objects can somehow generate images from their temporal past?”
Wry amusement plucked at the corner of Adam’s long mouth. “You were listening closely, weren’t you? Yes, that’s the basic idea. The same principle applies to people as well. Those resonances are sometimes described, in psychic circles, as ‘auras.’ And they can resonate forward in time, as well as backwards.”
“Oh,” said Peregrine. For a moment he stared hard at the road ahead. Then in a rush he said, “This problem of mine – this problem with seeing things that other people can’t see – could it be somehow related to this notion of resonance?”
“It’s at least a theory,” said Adam. “But I can’t give you any hard answers. I suggest you sleep on it.”
That proved to be his last word on the subject. Balked in several further attempts to draw out his host in greater detail, Peregrine at last gave up and allowed the conversation to drift into other channels, equally fascinating, but of far less personal import, so far as Peregrine could tell. Later that night, none the wiser, he went to bed with no expectation of falling asleep readily, let alone dreaming.
But as he lay in bed, staring up at the starry patterns on the ceiling, his thoughts drifted so subtly from conscious into subconscious awareness that he was not aware of having fallen asleep until the onset of the Dream.
chapter Six
THE dream began as though he were waking up from a light doze. He was still in bed in the Blue Room at Strathmourne, but the door was standing half-open, emitting a wedge of unearthly light. Peregrine rose from the bed and crossed to the doorway. When he looked beyond the confines of the room, he realized that he was standing on the threshold of some other reality.
He should have been facing another door, in a corridor papered in a willow-herb pattern designed by William Morris. Instead, he was confronting a square chamber, empty and bare, whose blank walls had the silvery sheen of mirrors. The wall to his right was broken by a high archway, affording him a view of a succession of other rooms beyond. The light that suffused all the rooms seemed to be emanating from somewhere off in the distance, in that direction.
Peregrine was seized by a sudden desire to locate the source of the light. His dream-self stepped out into the middle of the square chamber, and his own reflection sprang out at him from three sides. He fetched up short, for the reflection did not match up with his appearance.
His dream-persona was wearing the modern clothes he had worn when he had fled to Adam Sinclair in search of counsel. But the self that gazed back at him out of the mirror was wearing only sandals and a striped woollen chlamys thrown over the left shoulder, in a style that recalled amphorae paintings from ancient Greece. Apart from the differences in clothing and hairstyle, however, the reflection conformed with Peregrine’s every look and gesture. It occurred to him, within the framework of the dream, that what he was seeing might be a true, if deeply hidden, part of himself.
He moved hastily through the arch into the adjoining room. This chamber was mirrored too, and in this one, his reflection wore the short tunic and leather body armor of a Roman centurion. In the room after, he was greeted by a long-haired image of himself in a rich Byzantine dalmatic of embroidered silk. More images followed, detailed like a fantastic display in a museum of historical costume. But the face was always his own.
The strange gallery of mirrors brought him at last to the foot of a tall door. Ornately carved as the entry port of a church, it yielded smoothly when Peregrine gave a tentative tug at the latch. He felt no sense of danger, so he stepped across the threshold and paused to look around.
The chamber in which he found himself was vaulted like a Greek Orthodox chapel, its curving dome overlaid with mosaic work in marble and gold. LigHt spilled down from a glowing filigree lamp suspended on golden chains from the ceiling. Directly below the lamp, on an upraised dais of white marble, a curiously fashioned pedestal supported a shimmering globe the size of a royal orb.
Aware that he was still dreaming, Peregrine gazed at the orb in wonder. It had a nacreous sheen, like a great pearl. The silken beauty of it drew him like a magnet. Without pausing to consider his actions, he strode across the floor and mounted the dais, hands reverently outstretched to touch it.
The instant of contact brought a radiant flash, like a surge of heat lightning. Reeling, Peregrine flung up his arms to shield his dazzled eyes.
He took his hands away to find the chapel gone, himself suspended in an iridescent sea. Fear of falling gripped him, and he kicked out frantically in an attempt to find the floor. His violent and instinctive movement sent a wave of color surging through the opalescent matrix surrounding him. The wave folded back on itself, fragmenting in a kaleidoscopic explosion of fractured light.
Straightaway Peregrine was swallowed up in a polychrome tempest. He thrashed about in the eddying tides like a swimmer in danger of drowning, becoming more disoriented by the second. Panicking, he choked out a gasping cry for help.
A chorus of voices answered him, calling out reassurance and encouragement. They spoke in different languages, but he understood all of them. In that Pentecostal moment, he realized that they were all echoes of his own voice, all telling him the same thing: Be still. Be still, and know that thou art lord of all.
He stopped struggling. At once the wild fluctuations of light became less erratic. Holding himself motionless, he willed the storm to subside. By degrees, the warring colors resolved into a unified field of light, like a pearly lake – and he could walk upon it! Awed and astonished, he set off in perfect silence….
A soft blue light grew up all around him, gradually overwhelming every other color. In trying to blink back focus, he discovered that his eyes were closed. When he opened them a moment later, he found himself gazing up at a painted sky full of painted stars. He was back in his room at Strathmourne.
He sat up in bed, puzzled and abstracted, as he mentally reviewed the very vivid dream he had just experienced. At the same time, a mild compulsion laid hold of him to commit the details to paper. He found pen and notebook on the table beside his bed, and he switched on the bedside lamp and began to scribble down an account of the dream’s scenes and events.
By the time he had finished, it was past eight o’clock. Mindful that his host was an early riser, Peregrine rushed through his ablutions and, with his notebook tucked under his arm, hurried downstairs to the morning room where Adam habitually ate breakfast. He arrived rather breathlessly to find Adam in the act of pouring himself a steaming cup of tea, a newspaper at his elbow. The wide bow window beyond the table showed the day starting out to be a misty one.
“Good morning,” Peregrine said, tendering the older man a sheepish grin. “I hope I haven’t disgraced myself by being late again for breakfast.”
“Not at all,” Adam laughed, putting aside his paper. “I’ve only just sat down myself. Join me, by all means.” A discerning look produced a raised eyebrow. “Is anything amiss?”
“Not amiss, no.” Peregrine slid eagerly into the chair across from Adam. “I had the most extraordinary dream, just before I woke up. Could we talk about it?”
“Certainly,” Adam replied. “Did you make notes?”
Nodding, Peregrine produced his notebook and proffered it across the table. “It’s all here – everything I could remember. You don’t actually have to read it right now,” he added, somewhat self-consciously. “You can have your breakfast first.”
Adam took the notebook and hefted it in his hand, smiling.
“I think I’ll do both at once,” he said lightly. “I’ve found that such material makes far more interesting breakfast reading than the newspaper. In the meantime, by all means have something to eat….”
Peregrine went through the motions of taking toast and tea while Adam read and then re-read the closely penned lines. The account ran to several pages. When at last he raised his eyes from the notebook, Peregrine abruptly pushed aside his plate, all further appetite at least temporarily fled.
“Well?” he said, a little apprehensively. “What do you make of it?”
“The textbook response from me,” said Adam, “is, what do you make of it yourself?”
Peregrine grimaced. “I was afraid you’d say that.” After a moment’s thought, he said with some hesitation, “Based on what you said yesterday in your lecture, I suppose it’s all about history – history, and the resonance that history generates. What I don’t understand is, why the self-portrait gallery?”
He glanced obliquely at Adam as though inviting an explanation. Adam gave him a penetrating look from under his eyebrows and carefully set the notebook on the table between them.
“I don’t think you really need my help in extracting meaning from this experience. Do you?”
Peregrine bit his lip, clearly groping for words. “No. No, I suppose I don’t. But – ” He shook his head impatiently, then said in a rush, “Adam, I was brought up to be a good Presbyterian. It isn’t easy for me to reconcile notions of reincarnation with Christianity.”
“And yet, Christianity itself embraces a multitude of different interpretations of the same basic story,” Adam responded. “Otherwise, we shouldn’t have all the different denominations of Christians, who all think their way of approaching God is best.”
“Then, you think the two are compatible?” Peregrine asked doubtfully.
Adam shrugged. “That’s a matter of conscience, for you to decide. My own feeling – and I say this as a committed Christian, and having dined with my bishop only last week – is that Christianity quite possibly embraces far greater and more universal truths than are generally accepted and taught in its various churches.”
This rather pointed observation reduced Peregrine to wide-eyed silence. After a long moment, he said slowly, “This is crazy. You’re a psychiatrist, yet you’re telling me that you believe my delusion is no delusion at all, but the truth.”
“I didn’t say that,” Adam replied. “But if it makes you any more comfortable, accept that the illusion of past resonances – past lives, if you will – is a useful metaphor for utilizing some seventh sense for which we have no adequate explanation at present. In a word, if it works, use it.”
Goggle-eyed, Peregrine simply stared at him for a moment, taking it all in. Then he nodded slowly.
“I think I understand what you’re saying,” he murmured. “Somehow, it even makes sense – of a sort.”
“Intuitive sense?” Adam asked, smiling.
“Maybe. But you’re right about one thing: whether it’s real real or only seems real, it’s better than anything I’ve been able to come up with to explain what’s happening to me.” He fingered the notebook on the table between them, then looked up again.
“So let’s assume that I have had several other lives before this one, just for the sake of argument. If the same is true of you,” he continued in the same reflective tone, “then what I was seeing the other night, when I tried to draw you, was – resonances of your past?” He looked to Adam for confirmation.
“Somewhat over-simplified,” Adam agreed, with a wry half-smile, “but essentially correct, as far as it goes.”
Peregrine assimilated this. After a pause he asked, “Do you ever find yourself seeing shadows of my past lives?” “Not spontaneously, if that’s what you mean.” “Why not?”
“For one thing,” Adam said, “I suspect that it’s because I’ve developed the ability to limit my temporal perspective as well as expand it. For another, that isn’t where my major talents lie.”
Before Peregrine could demand a fuller explanation, Adam squared his shoulders briskly and set his cup and saucer aside.
“Are you a horseman, by any chance?” The sudden shift of subject took Peregrine totally by surprise.
“I beg your pardon?” “Do you ride?”
Blinking, Peregrine said, “I used to be quite keen when I was at school. Why?”
“As I think I may have mentioned,” Adam said, “I’ve had a crew doing some badly needed clearance work up at Templemor Tower, during the past week. There’s a chap coming by this afternoon – an archaeologist from Ancient Monuments. Before I give him the go-ahead to carry out a survey of the ruins, I’d like to take a good look at what’s been done so far. I was planning to trek out there on horseback later this morning, and it occurred to me that you might like to come along, do some sketching. I think we can kit you out in some of my nephew’s breeches and boots – he’s about your size – if you think you’d be interested.”
Peregrine was studying Adam with amazement tinged with suspicion. “Is this going to be another experiment?” he asked.
Adam threw back his head with a laugh. “So much for the subtle approach. Yes, it’s going to be another experiment. I assume you’ve got a pocket sketchbook? Good, then bring it along. I’ll tell you what I have in mind, once we’re on our way.”
John, the ex-Household Cavalry trooper who looked after Adam’s horses, had Adam’s favorite grey gelding already saddled by the time they found riding gear for Peregrine and got down to the stable, and was just leading out the blood bay mare that was to be Peregrine’s mount. The mare nickered as she caught sight of Adam, and the grey pricked his ears and pivoted on the forehand to look too. Behind them in the stable aisle, two more heads poked out above stable doors with equine interest.
Their keeper grinned and lifted a hand in affable greeting, almost a salute, as he cross-tied the mare and began saddling.
“Morning, sir. He’s all ready to go, and I’ll have Poppy ready in a minute.”
“Good morning, John. Thank you,” Adam said. As he ran a gloved hand over the grey’s satiny neck and down the near front leg, the animal whuffled softly and presented its face to be scratched.
“And good morning to you, too, Khalid,” he murmured, with indulgent compliance. “Ah, you like that, don’t you? Are you and Poppy ready for a little outing?”
“Oh, he’ll give you a good ride today, sir,” John said with a chuckle, finishing with the mare’s girth and moving on to bridle her. “Not that there’s a mean bone in either of them,” he added, for Peregrine’s benefit. “You shouldn’t have any trouble, Mr. Lovat, if you’ve ridden much at all.”
“I used to hunt, when I was still at school,” Peregrine offered.
“Well, then, you’ll do fine with this lady. And she’ll keep pace with that great grey lump there,” he said, giving Khalid an affectionate smack on the rump as he led the mare past. “She should give you a very good ride.”
After John had given him a leg up and helped him adjust his stirrups, Peregrine waited for Adam to mount and then fell in behind him as they walked the horses out of the stable yard. The mare moved out obediently in response to his legs, clearly ready to be off, if called upon to do so, but making no demands – a perfect lady, as John had maintained.
They continued walking for the first ten minutes, to let the horses warm up – and let Peregrine reaccustom himself to being in the saddle. Then, after a short trot along a drainage ditch that separated two fields, they set off across a rolling pasture at a canter. In deference to Peregrine’s long hiatus from riding, Adam took them through gates rather than jumping fences and hedges, reining back to a walk as they approached the wooded slope of Templemor Hill.
It was Adam’s intention to have Peregrine look at the castle ruins with an eye to locking in on some of its resonances from the past. He had set the stage in his previous day’s lecture, and it had occurred to him that the artist might find it less threatening to look at a structure rather than at a person, as he began allowing his talent of seeing to reassert itself. Ahead, through the ragged lattice of wind-stripped branches, the jagged ramparts of Templemor gleamed gold-grey in the morning mist – a classic Z-plan fortalice with two headless stair turrets jutting from opposite corners of a roofless keep.
Adam stood and stretched a little in his stirrups as they approached, wondering what the man riding at his side would see when asked to look beyond the mere physical of the ruin. He was not seeking or expecting anything for himself, content merely to be present as facilitator and guide for Peregrine, as the younger man learned to harness his gifts.
