Lee Child - MatchUp

The cover of the new book I hold is limp with no boards, made of a fine-grained leather. I gently stroke it. Unborn lamb, perhaps. Its pages are handwritten in French, but an archaic version, one I don’t recognize, the book lavishly illustrated with drawn images, beautifully detailed, traces of the original gilding and color still clinging to many of them.

I catch their meaning.

Alchemy.

I scan more of the thin parchment pages, each in wonderful condition despite their obvious age. My brows go up seeing a remarkably explicit—though beautifully rendered—drawing of a woman having her way with a four-horned goat. I’ve risked enough exposure to the elements for this treasure, so I close the old book. As I do, I catch a glimpse of the title page.

Le grimoire du Le Compte Saint-Germain.

I free the other book from my kilt’s waist band and compare the size and thickness. About the same. Nearly identical, in fact. What did Chubb say about the 15th-century grimoire? We think it’s a copy of a much older volume. One perhaps by Saint-Germain himself. Is this the original manuscript from which the book I hold had been printed?

Suddenly I’m yanked from my thoughts.

By a scream.

I STAND IN THE BOAT and listen, but catch nothing other than the shriek of gulls. Perhaps I mistook one of their cries for something more human.

I carefully rewrap Melisande’s book and replace it into the bag. I notice something else inside, bulky at the bottom. I dig down through the bottles and boxes and discover a flintlock pistol, loaded and primed, protected by a holster. Etched into the leather is a name.

Geillis.

I wonder.

Is that relevant to this woman?

Hard to say, but the flintlock is a fine specimen. Quite deadly from short range. Its presence raises a ton of questions about my benefactor, several of which I’ve already asked myself. So I decide to not take any chances. I withdraw the weapon and shake the cartridge and wad out into my hand. I stuff both into the sporran at my waist, then replace the weapon, now useless, in the bag.

An explosion of seal hysterics warns that someone is coming and I see Melisande pick her way down the rocks, now minus the coin box. Her movements are quick with a nervous vitality, and her shoulders rise and fall in concert with her rapid breathing.

“Let’s be away,” she says, stepping into the boat. “The tide’s just on the turn.”

I nod, not bothering with conversation. I’m as anxious to get back to the mainland as she is—possibly more so. The afternoon looms pale and without warmth and she’s right. This is no place to be stranded. She’s also right about the tide. It is turning, and the currents remain bizarre, pulsating and lifting us with each swell.

I keep my rowing in time with the shallow, jerking pitch.

Eventually we come to land and, with a final surge, the tide shoves us onto a pebbled shore. Close to the black cliff small thatched cottages stand, built of the same dark stone, smoke curling from holes in the thatch and the flicker of firelight just visible from a narrow window here and there. She bends to retrieve her bag as I scramble ashore to secure the boat to a barnacle-crusted iron ring sunk into the rocks. I just finish tying the rope when I hear a click behind me and the immediate pop of a flash in the pan, signaling the firing of a primed gun with no load. I turn around to see Melisande, holding the weapon, aiming at me. Her expression bears a mix of anger, contempt, and surprise.

Luckily, my suspicions proved correct.

“I’m not that stupid,” I say to her.

Then I spot a package, wrapped in clear plastic, in the shadows under the slats of one of the seats.

Damn.

I dropped Chubb’s grimoire.

She leaps over the gunwale and I catch the glint of a knife in her hand. She brings it toward me in a wide, flailing arc. I grab her wrist, but she’s strong, twisting like a snake. Her knee slams into my thigh and twists me sideways. She jabs with the blade and I dodge her attacks. I grapple with her for a few moments then decide enough of being a gentleman and smash the back of my hand across her jawline. Her head flies up in a cascade of hair that snaps her teeth together with a loud smack and makes her totter backward. Her eyes go wide, then she moans and collapses onto the beach, skirts blooming around her.

“Hoy!”

Shouts reach me from the water, and I stare out to see three boats with men standing up, waving their arms. The doors to the nearby cottages open and more burly men flood out. Melisande suddenly rises to her knees. Blood seeps from a gash in her lip.

“Help me. He’s a murderer,” she screams.

Rage fills her eyes.

This apparently is not going according to her plan.

No time to snatch up the lost book. So I retreat and make for the trail, bounding upward in a wild scramble, scree sliding under my feet. I reach the top winded and sweat drenched. A quick look below shows me that Melisande is no longer lying on the beach and that a couple of the fishermen and several of the other men are making their way up the trail. I run off across the moor, with no idea where I’m going. I jog and walk alternately, as fast as I can, my lungs pumping like bellows. After a while I slow, fairly certain that nobody is following. God knows what that woman is telling her saviors, or what she would have told them if she’d succeeded in killing me.

I’ll have you on your way home by sunset.

Home, all right. Dead, more likely.

And now I know exactly why she didn’t hire the local fisherman. She preferred a corpse nobody either knew or would miss.

I regret losing the grimoire, but there is no way to double back and retrieve it. Too many people around. I have to keep moving. I’m way past tired, my senses growing dull, my thoughts fragmented, the only constant the whine of the wind in my ears. Daylight gradually fades and I finally stop, overcome as much by confusion as by weariness. No amount of training could prepare anyone for this experience. Whatever this experience actually is. All sense of past and future seems gone.

Only the present matters.

I decide not to keep going any farther as darkness grows around me.

So I find a bit of high ground with no standing water, huddle up in the shelter of a clump of broom, and fall headlong into a dreamless sleep.

I COME AWAKE TO A morning rain across the trackless, rough, uneven moor, the night’s chill deep in my bones. The past few hours of impossibility flow with a calm finality through my mind. No visible sun aids my sense of direction, so all I can do is walk away from the faint sound of the distant sea and hope to find someone who might prove helpful. In the uneasy realms of sleep my mind seems to have accepted the insane notion that I have been displaced in time. Also it’s clear that the ragged little group of stones has something to do with my dilemma. So that’s what I need to find. The stones. And see what, if anything, might happen if I touch them again.

I walk for several hours, growing wetter by the minute. The few structures I pass seem as weathered and worn as the pitted road. I read once that the thick wool of a kilt and sweater traps body heat like a diver’s wetsuit. I’m pleased to discover that the observation proves at least partially correct. I’m not comfortable, but I’m not freezing, either.

Just wet.

And hungry.

I should have eaten more of what I found in Melisande’s saddlebag. Thinking of her, I spare a brief thought for Duncan Kerr. What on earth had led the old man to keep company with such a murderous bitch? Did she go back after him? Or had she just left him in the heather? I push aside those thoughts and trudge on.