The Language of Bees

by Laurie R. King

  Holmes launched himself through the edge of the flames at Brothers' legs, but the blanket he threw back tangled across my feet. It cost me two seconds to fight clear of the encumbering wool, by which time the flame had spread into a crackling sheet the length of the altar stone. I shoved away from the igniting paraffin, cracking my head painfully on stone as I scrambled to my feet on the opposite side of the altar.

  My eyes were met by a nightmare scene worthy of Hieronymus Bosch. A confusion of leaping flames and shadows was punctuated by yells and curses, then another shot, but when my eyes cleared from the blow, they were drawn to the fire that licked down the top of the stone towards the man who lay there.

  My gun flew into the night as both hands reached out to drag Damian's uncontrolled body away from the flames. I dumped him on the ground and slapped at the burning shoulder of his overcoat. Once it was out—a matter of seconds—I sprinted, still crouched, to the prow of the altar-stone, where two men wrestled for control of a gun.

  I jumped to hit the weapon hard with my fist, knocking it onto the altar stone, but Brothers' elbow slammed hard into my chest and sent me flying. I rolled and regained my feet, and saw Holmes stretched over the stone for the gun.

  But Brothers was not interested in the revolver. His arm was moving and he took two quick steps forward, holding in the air a knife with a curved blade, gleaming and vicious in the leaping fire-light. I opened my mouth to scream a warning as I gathered myself to jump, but I knew I would be too late, long seconds too late, because the arm was flashing down towards Holmes' exposed back.

  A third shot smashed the night. The descending arm lost its aim; metal sparked against stone. The knife made a skittering noise as it flew down the altar, followed by a coughing sound and the slump of a heavy body.

  The flames were already beginning to die, and I drew my torch to shine it on Holmes: He had a cut, bloody but shallow, on the side of his face. Then I turned it on Brothers, and saw the bullet hole directly over his heart, and blood staining his thick overcoat near the hole.

  With one motion, Holmes and I stepped clear of the altar, and saw Damian, lying where I had left him, gazing with surprise at the gun in his hand—my gun, I saw, flown from my grasp as I jerked him from the flames, fallen to the ground where he lay. His hand drooped, recovered, then sank to the ground, followed by his chin.

  Holmes rolled Damian onto his back, and pulled his son's overcoat away: blood on the right side of Damian's chest, a hand's width and growing. Holmes ripped away the shirt, and exhaled in relief: The bullet had missed the lungs, and might, if we were lucky, have avoided the major organs as well.

  “He needs a doctor,” I said.

  “Estelle,” Damian muttered through clenched teeth.

  Holmes didn't answer me.

  “Holmes, we have to get him to a doctor.”

  “If we do, he'll be arrested.”

  I met his eyes, aghast. “You don't intend …”

  “Let's at least take him to the hotel where we can see the extent of the injury. We can decide after that.”

  “Holmes, no. I'll go to that farm and see if they have a telephone-see, there's already a light on upstairs, they'll have heard all this—”

  He reached for the pile of blankets. “We can use one of these as a stretcher.”

  “You'll kill him, Holmes!”

  “Being locked up in gaol will kill him.” Holmes stared at me in the dying light of the flames; I had never seen such desperation in his face. “Are you going to help me, Russell, or do I have to carry him?”

  We worked the blanket under Damian's limp weight and dragged him free, then Holmes stuffed the other blanket around him. “We don't want to leave a trail,” he said.

  Damian groaned at the motion, then fell silent.

  Holmes gathered up the three guns, handing me one, slipping the second into his pocket, and laying the third near the dead man's hand. Then he wrapped two corners of the blanket around his fists, and waited for me to do the same.

  We dropped our burden once, and a second time, I fell. Damian cried out that time, but we were far enough from the lamp bobbing in our direction from the nearby farmhouse that the farmer wouldn't hear.

  And, thank God, the man had no dogs.

  The End and the Beginning: When the stars are in

  alignment, and the ages look down in approval.

  When his masculinity prepares to act, and his feminine

  nature is ready to receive. At that moment,

  the Work is ready for consummation.

  Thus Testifies a man.

  Testimony: Part the Greatest

  WE MADE IT TO THE HOTEL. WHILE HOLMES STOOD winded just inside the back door, I tucked my agonised hands under my arms and conducted a quick survey of the ground floor, finding an inner storage room in which a light would not show outside. I hauled the brooms and buckets out and replaced them with cushions, and we staggered through the dark hotel with our half-conscious burden. While Holmes was undressing his son, I went in search of the hotel medical kit.

  I came back to find Holmes standing above the sprawled figure, frowning at the wound. It looked terrible, but Damian was breathing cleanly, which meant no broken rib had entered a lung, and the seeping blood indicated that no major blood vessel had been severed.

  “Is the bullet still in there?” I asked.

  “It's travelled along the ribs, probably broken a couple of them, and lodged around the back, under his arm.”

  “You're not going to perform surgery, Holmes,” I warned.

  “It's buried fairly deep in the muscle,” he more or less agreed. “I shouldn't want to be responsible for having damaged the use of his right arm.”

  As if hearing the threat to his painter's hand, Damian stirred, then gasped.

  “He doesn't seem very heavily drugged,” I said.

  “He's a big man, and Brothers may not have wanted to risk knocking him out too early. He might have carried an unconscious Yolanda, but not Damian.”

  “Bugger, that hurts,” Damian said in surprise then went slack again.

  “I'm going to find the child,” I told Holmes. “Should we try and get some coffee into him?”

  “It might be simpler to transport him unconscious.”

  I ignored the proposal. Instead, I passed through the kitchen to set a kettle on the gas cooker.

  I found Estelle in an upstairs room that was dimly lit by a burning candle. Her small body lay in a tangle of bed-clothes. She was not moving.

  In an agony of trepidation, I crossed the floor to bend over her still figure. Seconds passed, and my heart failed at the thought of telling Damian—but then she made a tiny sound in the back of her throat and followed it by a childish snore.

  My legs gave out and I had to sit down on the unmade bed beside hers. Slightly dizzy, I dropped my head in my hands and sat listening to her breathe, hearing the precious air go in and out of her throat. I didn't know if this was Holmes' granddaughter or not, but in truth, it no longer mattered: Damian loved her, therefore she was ours.

  It took some time to recall the heating kettle and the waiting men. I sat up, studying the tiny, limp form. I shouldn't be surprised if Brothers hadn't given her a dose of the Veronal as well.

  The thought of the dead man finally roused me to my feet. I left the sleeping child and went to the next room, where I found signs of Brothers. Unlike Damian, whose clothes were scattered about the room he shared with his daughter, Brothers had packed his bag, ready to leave.

  When I opened the bag, I saw two passports. I picked them up, checked again to make sure Estelle was still sleeping, and went downstairs.

  I made coffee and took it to the inner room, where Holmes had managed to sit Damian up and rouse him into a state of groggy semi-consciousness. The coffee was thick enough to stimulate the dead, much less the merely sedated. I pressed a cup into Damian's good hand, waited to see that he was not about to drop it, then pulled the passports out of my pocket and handed them to Holmes.r />
  One was for a British citizen named Jonas Algier; the other was for the same person, but included his young daughter Estelle.

  The distaste on Holmes' face matched my own; when he laid the passports to one side, his fingers surreptitiously wiped themselves on his trouser-leg before he reached out to shake his son's shoulder.

  “Damian,” he said forcefully. “I need you sensible. Can you talk?”

  “Where's Estelle?” came the reply, slurred but coherent.

  “She's fine,” I assured him. “Sleeping.”

  “God, what the hell happened?”

  “Brothers tried to kill you.”

  “Don't be 'diculous.”

  “He shot you.”

  “That's what…? Ah. Hurts like the devil.”

  “You shot him back, if it makes you feel any better. He's dead.”

  “Dead? I killed Hayden? Oh Christ—”

  “Damian!” Holmes said sharply, and waited for his son's eyes to focus on his. “We need to get you away from here, now. Can you move?”

  “Hayden's dead. Can't just walk away from a dead man. The police'll be after us.”

  “The police are already after us.”

  “Why?”

  Holmes looked at me, then returned his gaze to his son. “Yolanda was killed. Scotland Yard—”

  “No,” Damian said. “Not possible. She's on one of her religious adventures.”

  “Your wife died,” Holmes said gently. “Two weeks ago, at the Wilmington Giant. I saw her, Damian. The Sunday after you left me, three days before you and Hayden left London, I saw her. In a morgue. She'd been drugged, as you were, and then sacrificed, as you would have been. She felt nothing.”

  “No,” Damian repeated. “There was a letter. Hayden—Brothers, he changed his name—left me a message on how to meet him.”

  By way of answer, Holmes took something from his pocket and pressed it into Damian's palm.

  Damian opened his hand and stared at the gold band we had found in Brothers' safe. Still, he kept talking, low and fast, as if words might push back the testimony of his eyes. “We met at Piccadilly Circus, and he gave me a letter she'd written. On the Friday. That's why I came away. I wrote to you, to tell you what I was doing. I did write to you.”

  “We received it,” Holmes said. “What did Yolanda's letter say?”

  “It was just one of Yolanda's …” But with the voicing of her name, the truth hit him. He clenched his hand around the ring. “She was always going on about spiritual experiments, always wanting to drag me in on them. And I did. I never minded, it kept her happy. She was always so happy, those times. Oh, God. So when she wrote that she had a really vital adventure—that's what she called them, adventures— and that she knew it was asking a lot of me, but that she wanted me to go with Hayden and Estelle for a few days while she was getting ready, and then Hayden would bring us together and this would be the very last one.” He was weeping now, choking on his words. “She said that it would be a lot of bother for me, and that she was sorry, but that it would be worth it and if I wanted her never to do it again, she wouldn't, after this one.”

  He couldn't talk any more, just dropped his head back against the wall and wept. Holmes eased him gently onto the cushions, then pulled me out into the hotel bar.

  By the trickle of lamp-light from the half-open door, Holmes searched around behind the smoke-covered bar. He found a bottle, threw the first glass down his throat and poured a second; I took a generous swallow of mine.

  “The boat will be there until the tide changes in the morning,” he said.

  “The trip might kill him.”

  “And it might not.”

  “Holmes, it's four miles to Stromness. It would take the both of us to carry him, and what would we do with the child?”

  “We could drape her on top of him.”

  “And when she wakes up from this drug, in a dark place, cold air, strange movement? You think she'll be silent?”

  “What about a motor-car—there must be one here?”

  “An old lorry, yes. And there's a cart, if we want to borrow a horse from the paddock across the way. But don't you suppose that farmer with the lamp has already rung the police?”

  I saw his dim shape walk over to the window, and manoeuvre his way down until he located a viewing hole between the boards. By the way he came back, I knew what he had seen.

  “They're already here, aren't they?” I asked. “They'd catch you up long before you got Damian on board.”

  “We could give the child another dose of—”

  “Absolutely not. I won't be party to drugging a child.”

  “Then you propose we leave her here?”

  We looked at each other for a moment, and I gave in. “She was very limp. I'd expect she'll sleep until dawn. Plenty of time for me to help you get Damian to the boat, and get back before she wakes.”

  “Are you sure?” He was not asking about the timing.

  “No,” I said. “But I saw a stretcher in the shed.”

  So we carried him.

  He nearly refused to go without his child. Only when I promised to guard her with my life did he agree, and even then he demanded to see her himself first. It took both of us to convince him that waking the child by moving her downstairs to say good-bye would put her in danger.

  “Almost as much danger as the delay you're causing puts her in,” Holmes finally pointed out. We carried him. Two and a half miles to the end of the bay near Stromness; only once did we have to flatten ourselves to the verge to avoid head-lamps. The dinghy was there, hidden among reeds, and was big enough for two. Holmes and I got Damian upright, and Holmes started to lead him to the small boat.

  Damian shook him off and grabbed my hand. “You promise you'll protect my Estelle? Tell her that her mother and I have to be away, but we'll be together very soon? You promise?”

  “I promise to do everything I can to make her safe and comfortable.”

  “And loved?”

  “Yes. And loved.”

  Holmes helped him into the boat, wrapping the blankets around him. Then he came to stand beside me. The water surged and ebbed gently at our boots; the few lights of Stromness sparkled across the ever-shifting surface.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You're going to find my services as nanny come expensive,” I told him, the threat both playful and real. But baby-sitting was not what he had in mind.

  “I knew you would persist,” he said abruptly. “I knew that, were there evidence against Damian, you would find it.”

  “Holmes,” I said, startled.

  “Thank you for not forcing me to investigate my son.”

  “I… yes. Get him to a doctor.”

  “Soon.”

  “And stay in touch—through Mycroft.”

  “If he isn't also under arrest,” he said wryly, climbing into the dinghy.

  “I'd almost forgot. You don't suppose he is?”

  “If he is, you can always reach me through The Times agony column.” He sounded unworried about his brother's fate, and I agreed: Mycroft Holmes could look after himself.

  “Holmes, don't—” I caught myself, and changed it to, “Just, take care.” Too melodramatic, to say, Don't make me tell the bees that their keeper has gone.

  And so it ended as it had begun: Holmes vanished into the night with his son, leaving me with his other responsibilities.

  I waited on the shore until he had reached the off-lying fishing boat and raised its captain. I heard the sounds as they pulled Damian on board, and the noise of the engine reached me half a mile down the road; after that I moved at a fast jog, all the way to the burnt-out hotel. I could see lights at the Stones, as the police puzzled out what had taken place there, but they did not seem to have discovered the violated hotel.

  I let myself in and went upstairs. The candle was burning low in its saucer. Estelle was still asleep, although I thought the sound of her breathing was less profoundly drugged. I crept forward
and eased my arms into the warm bed-clothes, moving so cautiously one might have thought I was handling nitroglycerine. She smelt of milk and almonds, and as I pulled the tangle of cotton and wool towards me, her breath caught. I froze. After a moment, she sighed, then nestled into my chest like a kitten in the sun.

  An extraordinary sensation.

  I stood slowly, and with exquisite care picked my way down the stairs to the inner room. There I reversed the process, letting her weight settle onto the pads where her father had rested earlier. Cautiously, I slipped my hands out from under her: Her breathing continued, uninterrupted, and I felt as if I had won some sort of a trophy.

  I left the lamp burning, in case she woke, and returned upstairs to see what had been left behind.

  I took anything that would identify Damian or Brothers, including Damian's sketch-book and passport. I put a few of Estelle's warm garments and an old doll into a pillow-case, then shut everything else that might shout Child! into her small hard-sided suitcase. I carried it out of the back door, weighted it with rocks, and hurled it far into the loch.

  The night was clearing, the wind gentle: Holmes and his Thurso fisherman would have no problems crossing the strait. I walked to where I could see the Stones, and found them dark, which seemed odd. Perhaps rural police were less equipped with search-lights? Or less concerned about the dead, and satisfied with taking the body away and delaying an examination of the site until daylight?

  I went inside, took some food from the hotel's pantries, and returned to where my young charge gently snored.

  I chewed on dry biscuits and drank a bottled beer, studying her. She was, I saw, the three-and-a-half-year-old Damian had led us to believe, not the eight-or nine-year-old I had hypothesised: Reading or not, friends with an older child or not, that sleeping face had the soft and unformed features of a near-infant.

  So it was no surprise, when she stirred and woke half an hour later, to feel myself looked upon by a pair of eerily familiar grey eyes, imperious as a newly hatched hawk.

  They were Holmes' eyes. Estelle was Damian's child.

  The grey gaze travelled around the room, registering the absence of her father and the man she knew as Hayden. Unafraid, she sat upright.