The God of the Hive: A Novel of Suspense Featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

by King, Laurie R.

  In the blink of an eye, the world disappeared, and we were bundled into a grey and featureless nothing. Following one last tight circuit of the corkscrew, our wings tilted the other way and we grew level. I could feel Estelle sobbing, although I could scarcely hear her against the wind that battered through the broken pane. I rocked the armful of fur as my eyes darted around the little compartment, trying to see where all that glass had gone.

  But what drew my gaze was not the jagged glass: It was the neat hole punched through the front wall of the passenger compartment.

  Javitz spent a moment settling the controls, then gingerly swivelled in his seat to see if we were still intact. As his eyes came around, they found the hole: From his position there would be two—one in the partition between us, and one through the bottom of his seat. Had he been seated, the round would have passed straight through him. We looked through the glass at each other, and I watched his eyes travel to the smashed window, then to the child in my arms. I saw his mouth move, and although I couldn’t have heard if he’d shouted, I could read their meaning.

  I lifted the coat until my lips were inches from the child’s head. “Estelle, are you all right? Estelle, child, I know you’re scared, but I need to know if you’re hurt at all.”

  The head stayed tucked against me, but it shook back and forth in answer. I smoothed the coat back around her and mouthed to Javitz, “We’re fine. What happened?”

  In answer, he raised his right hand and made a gun out of it. Yes, I thought—although it had to have been a rifle, not a revolver. Before I could say anything, he turned around again and set about getting us below the clouds.

  I studied his back, seeing the motion of his head and shoulders as he consulted the instruments and worked the control stick between his knees. The grey pressing around us thinned, retreated, and eventually became a ceiling.

  Javitz craned over the side at the ground, made a correction on the stick, then hunched forward for a minute before turning to press a note-pad to the glass between us. On it was written:

  NOT THURSO, THEN. WHERE?

  All I could do was shrug and tell him, “South.”

  He looked from the window to the lump in my arms, then wrote again.

  SHALL I LAND SO WE CAN FIX THAT WINDOW?

  I shook my head vigorously. If he could survive in the unprotected front of the ’plane, we two with our fur wrapping could hold out until we had reached safety.

  Wherever that might be.

  Chapter 10

  We flew on through the grey, light rain occasionally streaking back against the glass. I had hoped the warm furs and steady course might reassure the child, but she remained where she was, a taut quivering ball.

  Could I remember being three and a half years old? Not really, but my childhood had been a comfortable place until I was fourteen and my family died. This soft creature in my arms was too young to have a sense of history, too new to understand that terror passes, that love returns. In the past month—for her, an eternity—her mother had disappeared (died, although I was not going to be the one to tell her) and left her with a strange man (who had, in fact, been the one who killed Mother) until Papa came and joined the man for a furtive series of trains and boats to a cold, empty, smelly house, where she had wakened to find herself in the possession of a strange woman. A woman who had then hauled her through the night and pushed her into a noisy machine that was fun for ten minutes before it turned very scary.

  My hand stroked the child’s back, counting the faint vertebrae and the shape of her shoulder-blades. What must it be like, to be so without control that one would submit to a stranger’s comforting?

  But my hand kept moving, and after a minute, I bent to speak to the scrap of black hair and pink ear that emerged from the fur. “Shall I tell you a story, Estelle?”

  There was no response, but I kept stroking, and started talking.

  “Once upon a time there was a lady from America. She was a singer, a beautiful singer, who—sorry, did you say something?”

  She turned her head slightly, and the faint murmur became words: “My Grandmama was a singer.”

  “I know, and this is a story about her.”

  I constructed a tale about the woman, a sort of midrash based on the little I knew about her, depending more on the drawings Damian had done of his childhood home than actual fact. The story was about opera, and her grandmother’s cleverness, and the French countryside, and it was a distraction as much to me as it was to her. Slowly, the child in my arms grew more solid as a sleepless night and the ebb of terror did their work. Eventually, she shuddered and went limp.

  I finished the story, and wrapped my arms around the warm little body. For the first time in hours, I had nothing to do but sit quietly and fret. Instantly, a wave of thoughts rose up and crashed over me.

  A sniper, in Thurso? Brothers might have got away from the Stones alive, but he’d been in no condition to place a rifle to his shoulder—although he’d had assistance on Orkney before, and after the War, firing a rifle was hardly an unusual skill. How difficult was it, to hit a low-flying aeroplane? As difficult as hitting a deer, or a soldier on the other side of no-man’s-land?

  I did not even consider the possibility of an accidental discharge—if we’d been peppered with stray birdshot, perhaps, but this had been a single round. Someone had wanted to bring us down.

  Not the police. Even if they had been unaware of the child on board, my crimes hardly justified a deadly assault.

  It had to be Brothers or one of his men—and yet he’d wanted the child: Back in the hotel, I’d found a forged British passport for him and Estelle. Had he decided that if he couldn’t have her, no one should? Had he given the order, not knowing I had her? If not Brothers and his local assistance, then who?

  My thoughts went around and around, considering the possibilities of what had happened, what it meant, what came next. I blame that preoccupation, along with the distraction of fear and the weight of responsibility, for missing the obvious. Of course, there was little I could have done even if I had known—ours was not an aeroplane with dual controls in the passenger compartment. Still, it took a shamefully long time for me to make note of the placement of the holes, to calculate the trajectory between the back of Javitz’s seat and the overhead windowpane, then compare it to the actual position of my pilot when the round passed through.

  When I had done so, I felt a cold that had nothing to do with the blast of air. I loosed an arm from the coat and stretched out to rap against the glass. Javitz slowly turned: The hesitation of his movements told me all I needed to know.

  “How bad?” I mouthed.

  He pretended not to understand. I grimaced, and began to trace the letters of my question, backwards against the glass.

  HOW BAD IS YOUR LEG?

  I could see him waver on the edge of denial, but my glare changed his mind. He wrote on his pad, and held it up:

  BLEEDING, BUT USABLE. I PUT A TOURNIQUET ON IT.

  In reply, I traced:

  PUT DOWN AS SOON AS YOU CAN FIND A PLACE.

  He shook his head, so decisively I could tell there was little arguing with him, so I changed it to:

  GIVE IT AN HOUR? TO PUT US WELL CLEAR OF BEING FOLLOWED.

  He started to turn back when he saw my gesture and waited for me to add:

  LOOSEN THE TOURNIQUET EVERY TEN MINUTES OR YOU’LL LOSE THE LEG.

  He nodded, and showed me the back of his head. We flew on through the morning, a trapped woman, a sleeping child, and a pilot slowly bleeding to death at the controls.

  Chapter 11

  He’s bleeding to death,” Sherlock Holmes said with forced patience. It was good he’d had so much practice with stubborn females. Why couldn’t this one be more like Watson, who at least placed medical needs before debate? Although Watson had never been shanghaied by having an anchor raised while he was below decks. Come to think of it, perhaps he should be grateful Dr Henning hadn’t turned her scalpel on him.

>   “He’ll lose it all the faster if my scalpel jerks. I’ll not cut until this boat is still.”

  Holmes ran his hand over his hair, staring down at his half-conscious son. Without a word, he climbed up to have a word with Gordon.

  “We need to keep the boat on a steady keel again for a while.”

  “How long?”

  “Half an hour, perhaps longer.”

  “I did say we should stay in t’harbour.”

  “I couldn’t risk it.”

  “Well, if you’re thinking to anchor in a nice quiet bay, you picked the wrong coast of Scotland.”

  “Short of a bay, can you give us calm?”

  “If I keep heading before the wind.”

  “Do that, then.”

  “You do know the farther out I go, the harder it will be to beat our way back?”

  “Can’t be helped.”

  “You’ll buy me half a boat by the time you’re finished,” Gordon grumbled.

  “I’ll buy you the whole boat if you get us out of this in one piece.”

  “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Holmes helped Gordon adjust the sails, then lingered on deck as the boat settled into its new course. He rested his eyes on the Scottish coast-line, directly astern now and fast retreating. If Russell—

  No. He turned his back on the land and on problems beyond his control. Brothers was dead, Russell was in no danger, and the rest was travail and vexation of spirit.

  With the change in direction, the boat’s troubled passage was replaced by an easy roll. Down below, he raised an eyebrow at his captive. “Will that be sufficient?”

  “What if I say no?”

  “Then you’ll have to stand by and watch me do my best with your scalpel.”

  She bent her head for a moment, judging the motions of the hull, then asked abruptly, “How did you know my name?”

  “Your diploma is behind the desk in your surgery.”

  “You have good eyes, if you saw the print from across the room.”

  “I don’t miss much,” he agreed.

  “And this is your son, and you don’t wish to come into contact with the police, yet you swear you have done nothing wrong.”

  “Correct. On all three counts.”

  The whole time, her concentration had been on the boat’s rhythm, and now her head dipped once in grudging approval. “I can manage, if it doesn’t get worse. Boil a kettle. And I’ll need clean towels, a better light, and a bowl. A well-scrubbed bowl.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and moved the kettle onto the stove, tossing more coal into its already glowing interior.

  Her hands were small, but when Holmes watched them ease away the dried and clotted dressings, he found their strength and precision reassuring. Her fingertips marched a slow exploration of the patient’s side, lifting as Damian’s breath caught, then going on. When she sat back, Holmes spoke.

  “Those two ribs are the reason I didn’t want to move him before the bullet was out.”

  “A punctured lung is not a pretty thing,” she agreed. “However, I think they’re only cracked, not fully broken. Help me turn him so I can get at his back—I want to take care not to twist the ribs further.”

  The bullet had ricocheted off stone before hitting flesh. Had it hit a few inches higher, it would have reached the heart or lungs, and Damian would be the one lying dead on the standing stones’ altar, not Brothers. Had it retained more of its initial energy, it would have smashed through the ribs into the heart or lungs, and they would have a three-and-a-half-year-old orphan on their hands. Instead, the bullet had burrowed a track between bone and skin until it was stopped by the powerful muscles attached to the shoulder-blade.

  Dr Henning’s fingers delicately probed the clammy skin. “My hands are like ice,” she complained. “Could you slide the hatch shut, please?”

  “Your patient is pathologically claustrophobic,” Holmes told her.

  She looked down at the face that lay inches from her knees, then up to the hatch atop the companionway ladder, held open on the deck as it had been since leaving Orkney. “I don’t carry chloroform in my bag.”

  “Not needed,” Damian replied, his voice gritty but firm.

  “Very well, we’ll make do with morphia.”

  “No!” both men said in the same instant. Her eyes went wide as she looked from Damian to Holmes.

  “Drugs are not a good idea,” Holmes explained, in bland understatement.

  “I see. So, no sedation, and I work with cold hands. Any other problems you’d like to tell me about? Haemophilia? Hydrophobia? St Vitus’ Dance?”

  “Just the bullet,” he assured her. She shook her head, and went back to her examination.

  At long last, the doctor was satisfied that she had all the evidence her fingers could give her. She arranged pillows and bed-clothes around her patient, shifting his limbs as impersonally as she would the settings on a tea-tray. Holmes went to check on the kettle.

  “Have you studied the sorts of wounds received in war?” he asked over his shoulder. He knew that she had spent time nursing wounds, but not where.

  “This is from a revolver, not a rifle or bayonet.”

  Which response probably answered his question. “I was referring to the dangers of infection following a wound with a fragment of clothing in it.”

  “This will be my first private case of a bullet wound,” she said, “but I worked as a VAD during the War. I have seen gas gangrene, yes.”

  “You must have been fifteen years old.”

  “Nineteen,” she said.

  When the water had boiled and the bowls and implements were clean, Holmes carried them over to the impromptu operating theatre. Dr Henning scrubbed her hands, leaving them in the bowl to warm while Holmes climbed onto the bunk, arranging his legs on either side of his son’s torso. When he nodded his readiness, the deft hands dried themselves on a clean cloth and took up the scalpel, suspending it over the lump beneath Damian’s skin. The boat tipped and swayed, riding out a swell, and at the instant of equilibrium, the fingers flicked down to make a precise cut in the flesh. Damian bit back a whine, but the cut was made, and in moments she was easing the bullet out as Holmes locked the young man’s arching body into immobility. The fingers staunched the blood, then reached delicately down to retrieve a clot of threads that had ridden the bullet through the body. They looked at each other over the bloody scrap, and smiled.

  Ten stitches, and four more to close the entrance wound in the front, then she was wrapping a length of gauze tight around Damian’s ribs. When they eased him flat again, he cautiously drew breath, and his mouth twitched with relief. He met her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” she said.

  Chapter 12

  I may have wrapped my arms more tightly around the child, following the realisation of our pilot’s condition. I know I prayed.

  We had been flying for a quarter hour or so when I became conscious that my lips were moving, and that the words they shaped were Hebrew: Yehi ratzon mil’fanecha, the prayer of the traveller begins. If it be Thy will, to lead us towards peace, to guide our footsteps in the way of peace, to have us reach our destination of peace. The repetition of shalom, meaning both peace and health, is said to calm the nerves. Mine could certainly use some calming.

  But how had Brothers followed us? The man was a religious charlatan, not some master criminal with a platoon of armed men at his beck and call. Yes, he had Marcus Gunderson, but I’d questioned Gunderson myself, at the point of a knife, and there had been no indication that he was one of a platoon of Thugees.

  Brothers’ mumbo-jumbo was the spiritual equivalent of eating an enemy’s heart. He believed that by spilling blood at carefully chosen places and times—lunar eclipse, summer solstice, meteor shower, today’s eclipse of the sun—he would absorb the loosed psychic energies of his victims. However, he appeared to have kept this aspect of his teaching to himself: I had seen no evidence that he used any of his Inner Circle in his
quest to become a god; only Gunderson.

  With Brothers in my thoughts and the Hebrew on my lips, my mind turned to the nature of gods. The Hebrew Bible does not say that the gods do not exist, merely that we are not to worship them. For a Christian, doubt is a shameful secret, a failure of faith, but the rabbis have long embraced doubt as an opportunity for vigorous argument. For the rabbis, the existence of God is no more of a question than the existence of air: Doubt is how we converse with Him.

  Small-g gods might be considered a sort of concentrated essence: Loki the impulsive, Shiva the destroyer, Wayland the craftsman. The local gods were why Brothers had come to Britain, a country littered with Norse and Roman deities. The Holmes brothers were a bit god-like: generous and well meaning towards lesser mankind, but capricious and sometimes frightening in their omniscience. What, I wondered sleepily, would Brothers have embodied, had he succeeded in becoming a god? For that matter, what god would carry the attributes of flying machines? Which deity would be represented by the rifle?

  As I sat in the deafening, cramped and frigid compartment, behind a dying pilot, holding a child for whom I could do nothing, incredibly, imperceptibly, I drifted into sleep.

  The grey scraps of cloud outside, tossed like leaves in a fitful breeze, shifted, becoming wind-tossed foliage. I was sitting not in a fragile device of metal and wood, but on a hillside, warm and secure in an ancient land. The foliage remained, a hedgerow bordering a field of summer wheat. The grain rippled with the breeze, the green wall danced, until in the midst of the leaves—or the scraps of cloud—I became aware of a Presence among the moving scraps of green or grey: a pair of eyes that were there and then gone, that met mine and were hidden again. Green, grey; there, gone; comfort, threat.