The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (10 page)

What strain those resonances might impose on her present female personality, Peregrine could only imagine. It made him wonder if perhaps, like himself, Lindsay had initially been driven to seek Adam out for professional reasons, to deal with that strain. If that were so, Peregrine felt quite certain she would have found comfort and counselling there, along with a unique degree of understanding. If anyone could help somebody deal with a problem of that kind, Adam Sinclair was the individual to do so.

“These are very interesting, Mr. Lovat,” she said suddenly, looking up at him with her sapphire gaze. “You anticipated my finds precisely. It’s quite obvious that we’re playing on the same team.”

Peregrine smiled and shrugged. “It’s what I do,” he said. “It’s a gift I can appreciate now, but it took Adam to teach me how to use it, instead of letting it rip me apart.”

“He’s good at that,” Lindsay allowed, a small smile sketching at her lips. “And you’re good at
this.
I assume that you knew about the cross before you went out to Blair, since Adam specifically asked me about that artifact, but did you know about the ring with the hair?”

As Peregrine shook his head, Adam returned from the telephone.

“Well, we’re in luck so far,” he announced. “Sir John was waiting for my call, and he’s very graciously invited us to call on him on Monday. Noel, can you get time off? We’d better plan on two days, just to be safe.”

McLeod nodded. “I’m due in London for a conference over the weekend, but I can meet you at Gatwick on Monday.”

“Good. Peregrine, how about you?”

Peregrine grinned. “I was hoping you’d ask.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Adam said with a droll smile.

An amused chuckle from Lindsay reduced Peregrine to blushing silence.

“What about trying our luck with Miss Morrison in the meantime?” McLeod said, heading them back to business.

“I phoned her as well, but there was no answer,” Adam said. “I’ll try again after dinner. Lindsay, can I press you to join us? Humphrey says it won’t be more than five minutes.”

She gave a decided shake of her titian head and tossed off the last of her drink.

“Thank you, but no. I must be heading back to Glasgow. Val and I have made plans for a romantic dinner at home, and I’ve promised to be on time.”

“Well, far be it from me to stand in the way of romance,” Adam said with a smile. “Do give Val my fondest regards.”

She smiled and gave another restless toss of her fiery hair. “I’ll do that,” she said. “And if there’s anything else I can do for you, call me. I
do
check the machine regularly. You needn’t bother to see me out. And nice to finally meet you, Mr. Lovat.
Ciao,
Noel.”

Peregrine watched her go with eyes that were still somewhat dazzled.

“What a woman,” he murmured, when he had heard the front door close. “And whoever this Val is, he’s a damned lucky man!”

“Yes, Lindsay has certainly found a lover worthy of her,” Adam said. “They’ve been together for many years.”

His tone was studiously devoid of expression. Belatedly it occurred to Peregrine that “Val” might just as easily be a woman’s name. His eyes widened at the thought, but of course it made sense, in light of his earlier observations.

“I see you’ve guessed the right of it,” Adam said. “Does the notion bother you?”

“Bother me? No, not really,” Peregrine said, a little surprised to discover he was speaking the simple truth. “I could see her background in her face. But . . .”

“Are you wondering why she should be haunted by her past in quite that way? I’m not sure I know myself,” Adam said. “But she understands and accepts herself as she is, and has gone on to find a measure of joy in this life. For any human being, that is no inconsiderable triumph. Shall we go in to dinner?” he finished brightly. “I believe Humphrey is about ready for us.”

Chapter Nine

WHILE ADAM
and his associates were dining at Strathmourne, a slightly built man with sleek dark hair and a pencil-thin moustache presented himself at the door of an Edinburgh bed-and-breakfast establishment and requested accommodation for the night. Once the particulars had been arranged and the owner had departed back downstairs, he locked his door and drew the drapes before making a move to open the light valise he had brought in with him from his rented car.

The subdued light of the sixty-watt bulb overhead picked out the initials “H.M.G.” in brass lettering on the lid of the valise. The name recorded in the residents’ registry book in the lobby was Hilaire Maurice Grenier, but the initials in fact stood for Henri Marcel Gerard. He laid the case flat on the bed and took stock of his surroundings. The room, with its plain furnishings and slightly outmoded decor, was nothing like what he would have chosen, had present circumstances not compelled it, but it would serve for a few nights. If all went well, it would not be long now before he had the means to command all the luxury that always should have been his due.

With this consoling reflection, he opened the case and took out a pair of striped pajamas and a leather kit-bag containing his shaving paraphernalia and other personal items. Carefully packed among the rest of his clothes were two heavy leather-bound books and a weighty, palm-sized object wrapped in several thicknesses of silk handkerchief, which he removed and set on the coverlet beside the case. His agile fingers lingered briefly on the silken bundle before he straightened to take stock of the rest of the room.

Besides the single bed and a bedside locker with lamp, the room boasted a mirrored wardrobe, two mismatched armchairs, and a cheap, functional coffee table. These latter were arranged before the hearth of a small fireplace which now housed a modern electric fire. After moving the two volumes to the coffee table, Gerard switched on the heating, lingering with an extended hand until he was sure it was starting to warm up, then went back to reclaim the silken bundle. Carrying it over to the fireside, he chose the more comfortable-looking of the two chairs and sat down, allowing himself to indulge old dreams as he felt what it contained through the folds of rich silk.

Its acquisition marked the culmination of many months of scheming. Ever since Gerard had determined the Seal’s history and significance, he had desired it as he had desired nothing else so ardently in all his thirty-six years of life. It was, he told himself now, a criminal miscarriage of fate that Nathan Fiennes and his family should have possessed such a treasure for so long in swinish ignorance of its value. Thus it was only just that he, Henri Gerard, should have stepped in to relieve them of it.

Surely so powerful an artifact as the Seal of Solomon belonged rightfully in the hands of someone who would know how to employ its powers to some good purpose. Nathan Fiennes had been a fool to try and stop them from taking it—all the more so because, like the proverbial dog in the manger, he had been trying to retain possession of something that was no use to him personally. It was only equitable that he should have been forced to give it up. If the old man had gotten more than he deserved in the process, the fault for that was to be attributed to Logan. Gerard certainly had never intended Nathan to die; in that regard, his own hands were clean.

Even as he repeated these assurances to himself, his mind conjured up an unbidden image of Nathan Fiennes crumpling to the floor with blood streaming from a broken contusion on one temple. To purge that image from his thoughts, Gerard took refuge in contemplating the wealth and power that would soon again be his, in glorious fulfillment of a dream from the past.

That dream, which had first occurred to him in childhood, had repeated itself so often that he had come to regard it as an oracle. In The Dream, he had figured not as a humble scholar of limited means and reputation but as a powerful advisor to kings. He even fancied he knew the name he had borne in that other life: Guillaume de Nogaret, Keeper of the Seals and trusted advisor to King Philippe le Bel of France. A man of incalculable wealth and far-ranging influence, de Nogaret had been feared and courted by all lesser men, his political powers such that no one had ever succeeded in defying him with impunity.

Not even the Knights Templar.

His were the promptings that had emboldened Philippe le Bel to launch his assault on the Order, a campaign which had resulted in its official dissolution. Within the revelations of The Dream, Gerard/de Nogaret had presided over the trials and torments of many a Knight Templar, and had heard the testimony which convicted a number of them of sorcery and sodomy. Waking as well as sleeping, Gerard had come to believe unshakably in the Templar’s guilt, and had shaped his academic career accordingly in this life. Little had he suspected that there might be more to the story—until his association with Nathan Fiennes revealed the existence of the Seal, and his further research for Fiennes had prompted him to go looking for new documentary material that might pertain specifically to Templar treasures denied to Philippe and de Nogaret centuries ago, but perhaps still accessible to Henri Gerard.

The Dream had hinted at such wonders—and had led Gerard not only to the hitherto undiscovered testimony of Renault le Clerque, which he foolishly had shared with Fiennes, but to two additional unpublished depositions Gerard had since discovered, wherein both the witnesses in question had sworn to the existence of a mysterious coffer which the Templars had guarded with ceaseless vigilance since the days of their founding. This coffer, they asserted, was sealed shut by magic, and could only be opened by the guardian of the Seal. One of the witnesses had speculated that the coffer contained a small trove of choice treasures more valuable than all the rest of the Templars’ property put together: books of magic and implements of sorcery which had enabled the Order to become the single richest, most powerful organization in all the known world.

De Nogaret would have been aware of the depositions; perhaps, Gerard allowed, their promise of wealth was part of what had led de Nogaret to urge the King to attack the Order. But no coffer or any other great Templar treasure had ever been found. When the seneschals of the French King broke into the former Templar strongholds, they had found the treasuries empty. Apparently no one, not even de Nogaret himself in those days, had suspected what Gerard had since discovered—that the Seal of Solomon and the secret and treasure it guarded were the key to the mystery. After a lapse of nearly seven hundred years, Gerard was about to succeed where he had failed as de Nogaret—and his fortunes were to be raised to a height even beyond that of his predecessor.

For he had the Seal. Now all he needed to do was locate the casket. Between the research Nathan Fiennes had carried out and the information Gerard had since been able to assemble, all the evidence indicated that the coffer and its contents, like the Seal itself, had been spirited away to Scotland for safekeeping when the Templar fleet fled France. Gerard was convinced that he was getting close now. So far he lacked any specific clues to its whereabouts, but fortunately there were ways of getting at the truth without resorting to Nathan’s painfully pedestrian methods of investigation. Gerard had not spent all his time merely poring over obscure, mouldering manuscripts for historical snippets; he had studied as well, with some of the finest if most amoral minds on the Continent.

He rewrapped the Seal in its silken swaddlings and laid it in front of him on the coffee table. Then he reached for the topmost of the two ancient books he had brought with him. It was a treatise, in Hebrew, on the art and practice of Qabalistic divination. Nathan Fiennes, he knew, would never, ever have profaned the Qabalah as he proposed to do.

But Nathan was dead, and Gerard had staked his remaining fortunes on the success of this present, all-important gambit . . .

Chapter Ten

THE NEXT DAY
was Friday. Up at Strathmourne, Adam finished his usual light breakfast while he cast his eyes over the headlines in
The Scotsman,
waiting for a decent hour to phone someone he did not know, then dialled the Inverness number of Fiona Morrison at nine o’clock precisely. There had been no answer the night before, but a woman’s voice answered cheerily on the third ring.

“Oh, yes, Sir Adam,” she said, when Adam had identified himself. “Miss Oriani said you’d be ringing. If you tried last night, I’m sorry I missed your call. I’m a light sleeper, so I unplug the phone before I go to bed. I understand you’d like to see the Dundee ring.”

“Indeed, I would, Miss Morrison,” Adam replied. “I believe Miss Oriani may have mentioned that I’m writing an article for the Royal Society of Antiquaries. I wonder, would it be convenient if I drove up this afternoon to have a look at the ring?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly let you do that,” she replied. “My niece is bringing her children over after school, and I haven’t seen them for months. Besides, I was already planning to be in Edinburgh at the weekend for a Templar investiture,” she added, just as Adam was drawing breath to try another tack. “Perhaps we could meet somewhere and I’ll show it to you. You do know, of course, that Dundee was a Knight Templar? It’s said he was wearing the Grand Cross of the Order when he died at Killiecrankie.”

“Yes, I’d heard that story,” Adam said, “and if you’re already coming down to Edinburgh, that would be absolutely splendid. As a matter of fact, I’d been planning to attend that investiture myself. It’s the one at St. Mary’s Cathedral tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Yes, of course I’ll bring the ring to show—oh, dear, there’s someone at the door. I’ll have to ring off now, Sir Adam, but I’ll see you tomorrow at St. Mary’s. I look forward to meeting you.”

She hung up before Adam could say yea or nay, but as he hung up at his end, he reflected that a day’s delay probably wasn’t going to make that much difference, especially since he couldn’t see the Templar cross until Monday anyway. Besides that, the fortuitous coincidence of Miss Morrison’s already planned trip to Edinburgh seemed to confirm that he probably was being led in the direction he was supposed to be going.

Meanwhile, there were more mundane responsibilities that required his attention after a two-day absence from his professional duties. Resisting the temptation to fret over the enforced lag in the investigation, Adam drove in to the hospital and spent the morning attending to the needs of his patients and students. A late morning call to McLeod revealed that the inspector had put out an advisory police bulletin on Henri Gerard and was awaiting responses that might not come, similarly obliged to press on with some of his more conventional police work while he marked time. Peregrine had planned to start a new commission this morning, so at least had something to occupy his attention for the day.

After lunch saw a resumption of the lecture Adam had been forced to curtail on Monday. Even so, the afternoon seemed to drag by, only briefly leavened by a lively tutorial session with some of his brighter students. Four o’clock came and went without bringing any further word from McLeod, by which Adam inferred that there must be nothing new to report. Overruling an impulse to phone up his Second on general principles, he wound up his day at the hospital with a 4:30 staff meeting, then went home to shower and shave.

At least the evening promised some diversion, though not as originally conceived. Weeks before, he had made plans to attend an advance review performance of
Die Walküre,
scheduled for tonight at the Playhouse Theatre. Those arrangements had included a pre-theatre dinner engagement with Sir Matthew Fraser and Janet, his wife, who were friends of long standing—a comfortable threesome, even though Janet’s ongoing attempts to find a match for one of Edinburgh’s most eligible bachelors occasionally wore on Adam’s nerves.

He had counted on Matthew’s presence to keep Janet from pressing the matter too stringently, but with Matthew unexpectedly called away to fill in at a medical conference in Boston, Adam had promptly invited Peregrine and Julia along to swell the party, so that Janet could exhaust some of her matchmaking energies on the two of them. The pair had been keeping company for nearly a year now, and Adam suspected that marriage was an eventual probability. It had been agreed that the two couples would meet up in Edinburgh for dinner, and proceed from there to the theatre.

Adam had Humphrey drive him in the Bentley. They collected Janet at the Frasers’ elegant home near Dunfermline, then continued on to the Caledonian Hotel, where Adam had booked a table overlooking the lamplit sweep of Princes Street and the Princes Street Gardens. Peregrine and Julia had not yet arrived.

“This must be one of the most romantic views in all of Edinburgh!” Janet exclaimed, as she slipped gracefully into her chair and laid aside her beaded evening bag. “However, it really does seem a waste that you should be sharing it with me. Fond as I am of your company, Adam, I can’t help thinking it’s a great pity that your lovely Ximena isn’t here in my place. But then, I suspect that you’re probably thinking much the same thing,” she added archly, picking up a menu.

A stillness came over Adam’s chiselled face at the reminder of recent disappointment. “You make me out to be very uncivil,” he said quietly.

“Not at all,” she replied. “I make you out to be what you are: a man with a lady on his mind. Now, let’s see what’s on offer tonight. Do you suppose it’s too early in the season for venison?”

As she turned her attention to the menu, Adam pretended to study his own. The lady of whom Janet spoke was Dr. Ximena Lockhart, an American surgical specialist who, up until three months ago, had been working in Edinburgh on contract as a consultant advisor in emergency room practice and procedure. Adam had met her the previous December in the emergency room at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, when an auto accident had brought him in as a casualty. Their attraction for one another had flourished from the outset, giving rise to the first intimately romantic relationship Adam had allowed himself to enjoy in many a long year. They had even spoken of marriage, though there was no disguising the difficulties that must be resolved to accommodate their respective careers.

Since then, she had been obliged to cut her contract short and return to California, because of the terminal illness of her father. The relationship now hung in limbo, though at least the almost ghoulish process of waiting for her father to die forced a time of mutual reevaluation. Unfortunately, too, most of the onus was on Ximena; for though Adam’s qualifications as a psychiatrist would have enabled him to practice virtually anywhere in the Western world, the ties that bound him to Scotland were such that he could not break them without violating a commitment as solemn and inviolable as the ordination vows of any priest. He had not yet broached this aspect of his requirements to Ximena.

“Well, there’s no venison on the menu,” Janet said brightly. “And sitting there mooning isn’t going to bring her back, Adam.”

A wistful smile tugged at one corner of his long mouth as Janet’s words brought back to him all the bitter-sweetness of loss and longing. Rather than let her see the depth of his feelings, he took refuge in a wry shrug of his shoulders.

“I won’t deny missing Ximena’s company,” he said lightly, “but life must go on.”

Janet started to pout at this apparent piece of flippancy, but then she took a closer look at Adam’s eyes.

“You really oughtn’t to let her get away, you know,” she told him quietly. “All your friends would like to see you happily married—even to a colonial, if that’s what you truly want.”

It was spoken in all sincerity. As Adam groped for a suitable response, somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear an echo of his mother’s voice.

“The way of an Adept is sometimes fated to be solitary,” Philippa had told him, early in the days of his initiation. “It is not a road you can easily tread in company-as much for the sake of those you love as for the sake of the Work that must be done. It can be done, but only if both parties are willing to make considerable sacrifice.”

Experience since then had taught him that his mother had been speaking nothing less than the truth.

“What I want,” he said aloud, “is not the only thing at issue here.”

“That’s certainly true,” Janet observed with a sisterly tinge of asperity, “But your wants
are
important. I suppose you’ll tell me next that there are a hundred and one other things that have to take precedence. Granted that you may be right, I’d still like to see you just once try putting yourself first.”

It was rare for Janet to speak with such intensity. But before Adam was obliged to answer, he was saved by the approach of the maître d’, with Peregrine and Julia following close behind.

“Julia, you look radiant tonight,” Adam said lightly, rising to take her gloved hand and kiss her cheek as a beaming Peregrine greeted Janet and the maître d’ seated them.

Like Adam and Janet, the two were attired in evening wear: Peregrine in black tie and dinner jacket, Julia in a full-length frock of pale blue silk-crepe with white kid gloves. As the couple settled in their chairs and the maître d’ departed, Adam sensed that the pair of them had been up to something. There was a shared gleam of mischief in the looks they exchanged across the table, which Janet apparently noticed too.

“You two look like a pair of Siamese cats who’ve just jointly eaten a canary,” she exclaimed. “Are you going to confess of your own volition, or have Adam and I got to tease it out of you?”

Grinning, Peregrine glanced over at Julia. “Will you tell them, or shall I?”

The twinkle in Julia’s blue eyes was a match for the sparkle of the sapphire hair clips holding back her red-gold curls.

“I’d rather just
show
them,” she told Peregrine, and drew off her left-hand glove.

The flash from the dainty heart-shaped ruby set round with diamonds proclaimed their news better than any mere words.

“You’ re engaged!” Janet exclaimed delightedly, as Adam nodded, his smile a little wistful. “When did this come about?”

Peregrine grinned through a rising blush. “We’ve been toying with the idea for quite some time, but it just became official this afternoon. The ring was my grandmother’s engagement ring.”

“Oh, how lovely for you both!” Janet said, leaning over to give Julia’s hand an impulsive squeeze. “Have you given any thought to a wedding date?”

“Sometime in the spring, we think,” Julia said, “though we haven’t yet fixed a day.” Diverting another laughing glance over at Peregrine, she added, “We’ll be sure to let you know, the moment it’s decided.”

Adam had kept silent during the past exchange, but now he rose and smilingly offered Peregrine his hand.

“Congratulations, my friend,” he said warmly, “and I mean that with all my heart. And Julia, my dear,” he continued, turning to kiss her again on the cheek, “I’m very happy for you both. Whatever the future may bring,” he said, resuming his seat and signalling for a waiter, “I do believe that tonight calls for champagne. . .”

The ensuing dinner assumed a hitherto unanticipated air of festivity that lasted through the meal and saw them into the theatre. Until the lights went down, Adam was able to let himself be carried along on the tide of his young friends’ high spirits and good fortune, refusing to let himself dampen the mood by dwelling either on his own romantic frustrations or on the uncertainties of the task currently set before them. But the tumultuous music of
Die Walküre
drew him back to his own concerns, and he found himself brooding inescapably on the dark responsibility still hanging over him.

The Seal still missing, and Gerard still at large. Two of the many reasons why he could not afford the wondrous distractions of the heart, especially when there was nothing he could do right now to resolve his own situation. And yet the thought of Ximena stayed with him, like the echo of a musical phrase.

He carried that thought home with him later that night. Once he and Humphrey had seen Janet back to her house and were on the final stretch back to Strathmourne, he could not stop himself from comparing this evening to the many others when it had been Ximena sitting next to him in the darkness, drinking in the magic of the music, or merely enjoying one another’s presence in the same room. Her image in his mind made him suddenly, exquisitely aware of the silken resonance she had left behind her in the car, in his house, everywhere that the two of them had been together, haunting as a lingering breath of rare perfume. As Humphrey pulled in at the gates to the manor, he found himself calculating the eight-hour time difference between Scotland and California.