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giving her a slightly gamine look, except for the taut pallor around the mouth,
and an impression of tension in the slender body vaguely outlined beneath the
sheets. To either side, a few pen strokes suggested the presence of several people
keeping watch beside her bed - whether anxious parents or medical staff was
hard to determine, for the ball-point had not allowed of the fine detail Peregrine
usually captured with pencil.
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"This is very interesting, Peregrine," Adam said, glancing up at him. "This is what
you saw, back in the morgue?"
Peregrine nodded. "I'd forgotten, until this very minute. I guess the images of the
castle overwhelmed me. Is it useful?"
"Hmmm, it could be. Noel, does this mean anything to you?"
The inspector regretfully shook his head. "Afraid not. It could be any hospital,
and any young girl."
"Yes, but it's a modern hospital, and it isn't just any young girl," Adam pointed
out. "She appears to be Caucasian, perhaps twelve or so, these may be parents to
either side, and - what's this at the end of the bed, Peregrine? Is it a chart?"
Startled, Peregrine bent his head to turn the sketch pad and stare. He had begun
sketching a chart - there, just jutting above the foot of the bed. He almost, if he
held his head just - so - could bring the chart into focus.
"Adam, put me under again," he whispered, fumbling for a pencil in his pocket.
McLeod raised an eyebrow, and Adam gave the doorway behind Peregrine a
surreptitious glance, but then he cupped a restraining hand over Peregrine's
wrist.
"Peregrine, what do you see?"
"I can't see it yet," Peregrine whispered. "Just put me under again, now\ Deep!"
McLeod had to work at controlling a smile, for no one ordered Adam Sinclair to
do anything, but Adam, after another glance behind his subject, lifted his hand to
brush Peregrine's forehead again. The hazel eyes closed immediately, tension
draining out of him as if the string had been cut on a puppet.
"That's fine," Adam murmured. "Settle back into trance. You can do this yourself,
you know, but for now, I'll talk you through it. Relax and take a deep breath, and
feel yourself go twice as deep as you were before. You see something that you
didn't notice before. Something that's very important.
"Take another deep breath and go deeper. It's starting to come into focus. Keep
taking yourself deeper, refining the image, and when you can see jt clearly - draw
it."
For several long seconds, nothing outward happened. Eyes closed, Peregrine
lowered his forehead to rest on his left hand, that elbow propped on the table. For
a full minute and more, by McLeod's watch, as the two older men exchanged
speculative glances, all Peregrine did was breathe. Movement behind the closed
eyelids suggested intense internal activity, but it was not reflected in any
movement of the pencil in his hand.
Then, suddenly, the pencil twitched, the eyelids fluttered and then opened to
merest slits, and the pencil hand began sketching feverishly. In far finer detail
this time, the foot of the hospital bed emerged from the shaded grey pencil
strokes. And at the foot of the bed, not on the chart itself but writ bold on a strip
of tape across the top of the clipboard holding the chart, could be read a name:
Talbot, Gillian.
As Peregrine wound down and the pencil stopped, Adam touched his hand again.
"Are you finished?" he asked softly.
At Peregrine's dazed nod, Adam glanced at McLeod. "All right. When you're
ready, come back to full, waking consciousness. Take your time, because you've
been pretty deep."
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He turned the sketch pad so he and McLeod could look at it as they waited for
Peregrine to come back. After a few seconds, the artist let out a very heavy sigh
and opened his eyes.
"Are you sure about this?" Adam asked, looking up at him and indicating the pad.
Peregrine rubbed a hand over his face, looked at the pad, and nodded.
"As sure as I can be, about this stuff. If the other is real, then this is, too. It felt the
same."
McLeod nodded and gave a sigh, rocking back in his chair.
"Right. Well, at least we can say that Gillian Talbot is a good English name. Do
you suppose it would be too much to hope that she lives somewhere in the U.K?"
"We can certainly give it a try," Adam replied. "I won't be up to it until I've had
some sleep, but we should be able to narrow it down."
Peregrine blinked, only now realizing what was being suggested.
"You don't really mean that you're going to try to find her?" he asked, appalled.
"Besides," he shook his head, "this doesn't make sense. How can Michael Scot be
a young girl?"
Adam's faint smile suggested that the latter was but one more notion about which
Peregrine was going to have to readjust his thinking.
"We'll discuss the psycho-sexual aspects of reincarnation on the way home," he
said dryly. "Meanwhile, here comes lunch - which you, my friend, have certainly
earned with this piece of work."
So saying, he closed the sketchbook and gave his attention to the meal being set
before them - and to more specific discussion with McLeod of how to defuse the
aspects of the case that really had no rational explanation, so far as the police and
media were concerned. Peregrine, though he clearly longed to pursue his earlier
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