Except that Mycroft’s grey job was that of éminence grise of the British Empire. He inhabited the shadowy world of Intelligence, but he belonged neither to the domestic Secret Service nor to the international Secret Intelligence Service. Instead, he had shaped his own department within the walls of Treasury, one that ran parallel to both the domestic branch and the SIS. After forty years there, his power was formidable.
If I stopped to think about it, such unchecked authority in one individual’s hands would scare me witless, even though I had made use of it more than once. But if Mycroft Holmes was occasionally cold and always enigmatic, he was also sea-green incorruptible, the fixed point in my universe, the ultimate source of assistance, shelter, information, and knowledge.
He was also untouchable, or so I had thought.
***
But as I said, children are a burden, whether three years or thirty. My only hope of sorting this out peacefully, without inflicting further trauma on the child or locking her disastrously claustrophobic and seriously wounded father behind bars, was to avoid the police, both here and in the British mainland. And my only hope of avoiding the Orcadian police was a flimsy, sputtering, freezing cold aeroplane. The same machine in which I had arrived on Orkney the previous afternoon, and sworn never to enter again.
The aeroplane’s pilot was an American ex-RAF flyer named Javitz, who had brought me on a literally whirlwind trip from London and left me in a field south of Orkney’s main town. Or rather, I had left him. I thought he would stay there until I reappeared.
I hoped he would.
(For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)
Pirate King
Russellisms
The insane logic of W. S. Gilbert had infiltrated our brains and turned them to blancmange.
**
Oh, Holmes: What have you got me into now?
**
As a non-sailor, I could not be certain, but drunken masts did not strike me as a promising start.
All the world’s stage: places Russell goes in this Memoir
Britain: Sussex, London
Portugal: Lisbon, Cintra
Morocco: Salé and Rabat
(See the Maps chapter for details.)
Skull & Crossbones, Moorish Castle, Cintra
Laurie’s Remarks
After ten books filled with adventures around the world, Russell and Holmes are startled when their investigatory ship runs aground on the rocky shoals of silent movies. What begins as a straightforward investigation—an English film crew is leaving a suspicious trail of wrongdoing wherever it goes, which now includes a missing girl—rapidly spirals down into a whirlpool of dizzy blonde actresses, megalomaniac directors, piracy both imagined and real, and the madness of poets.
As often with the Russell books, one meets unexpected characters. In Pirate King it is one Fernando Pessoa, self-proclaimed laureate of Portugal, a brilliant (again, self-proclaimed) poet and writer whose only published works during his lifetime were those in journals of his own manufacture. Pessoa is in love with a fantasy Portugal, one in which his small country still rules the world’s waves, one where pirates swashbuckle and poets are feted. One in which this thin, stoop-shouldered, bespectacled professional type-writer is a deadly privateer in disguise.
Fernando Pessoa: piratical poet?
Who better than Fernando Pessoa to reflect a case in which the silver screen is no match for off-screen antics, and in which Gilbert and Sullivan are the ones who make some sense? The Gilbert and Sullivan team is one that seems to haunt Sherlock Holmes, if for no other reason than the D’Oyley Carte operas were contemporary forms of hugely popular entertainment. Holmes quotes the plays—usually disparagingly—and once (Monstrous Regiment) goes undercover as the buxom good-time girl Buttercup from HMS Pinafore.
In Pirate King, the metafictional elements of the Russell Memoirs are given their freest rein. Absurdity is embraced, actors and poets are more competent than world-class detectives, and a sleepy village on the coast of Morocco is the capital of a piratical empire.
Ahoy, and avast!
Excerpt:
“Why should I wish to go work with pirates?” I repeated.
“You would of course be undercover.”
“Naturally. With a cutlass between my teeth.”
“I should think you would be more likely to wear a night-dress. “
“A night-dress.” Oh, this was getting better and better.
“As I remember, there are few parts for females among the pirates. Although they may decide to place you among the support staff.”
“Pirates have support staff?” I set my tea-cup back into its saucer, that I might lean forward and examine his face. I could see no overt indications of lunacy. No more than usual.
He ignored me, turning over a page of the letter he had been reading, keeping it on his knee beneath the level of the table. I could not see the writing—which was, I thought, no accident.
“I should imagine they have a considerable number of personnel behind the scenes,” he replied.
“Are we talking about pirates-on-the-high-seas, or piracy-as-violation-of-copyright law?”
“Definitely the cutlass rather than the pen. Although Gilbert might argue for the literary element.”
“Gilbert?” Two seconds later, the awful light of revelation flashed through my brain; at the same instant, Holmes tossed the letter onto the table so I could see its heading.
Headings, plural, for the missive contained two separate letters folded together. The first was from Scotland Yard. The second was emblazoned with the words, D’Oyley Carte Opera.
I reared back, far more alarmed by the stationery than by the thought of climbing storm-tossed rigging in the company of cut-throats.
“Gilbert and Sullivan?” I exclaimed. “Pirates as in Penzance? Light opera and heavy humour? No. Absolutely not. Whatever Lestrade has in mind, I refuse.”
“One gathers,” he reflected, reaching for another slice of toast, “that the title originally did hold a double entendre, Gilbert’s dig at the habit of American companies to flout the niceties of British copyright law.”
He was not about to divert me by historical tit-bits or an insult against my American heritage: This was one threat against which my homeland would have to mount its own defence.
“You’ve dragged your sleeve in the butter.” I got to my feet, picking up my half-emptied plate to underscore my refusal.
“It would not be a singing part,” he said.
I walked out of the room.
He raised his voice. “I would do it myself, but I need to be here for Mycroft, to help him tidy up after the Goodman case.”
Answer gave I none.
“It shouldn’t take you more than two weeks, three at the most. You’d probably find the solution before arriving in Lisbon.”
“Why—” I cut the question short; it did not matter in the least why the D’Oyley Carte company wished me to go to Lisbon. I poked my head back into the room. “Holmes: No. I have an entire academic year to catch up on. I have no interest whatsoever in the entertainment of hoi polloi. The entire thing sounds like a headache. I am not going to Lisbon, or even London. I’m not going anywhere. No.”
Chapter Two
My steamer lurched into Lisbon on a horrible sleet-blown November morning…
(For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)
Garment of Shadows
Fez, Morocco
Russellisms
“But a woman.”
“Not just any woman.”
“And young.”
“Russell? She’s never been young.”
**
I hope to God this man actually was a friend. If he was my enemy I was in grave trouble.
**
When the tiny cup was empty but for the grit, Holmes’ nerves felt as if they had been connected to a low-voltage wall socket.
All the world’s stage: places Russell goes in this Memoir
Morocco: Rabat, Fez, Erfoud, the Rif mountains
(See the Maps chapter for details.)
Laurie’s Remarks
Following the oddities of Pirate King (pirates! movies! dizzy blonde starlets!) the Memoirs return to the familiar ground of O Jerusalem and The Game: exotic adventure, unseen hazards, heavy consequences.
This time it is Morocco, where the Twentieth century’s colonial push for self-control takes shape around the revolt of the mountain tribes against their European masters. The French government, in the person of the extraordinary Hubert Lyautey, is pitted against two determined and equally extraordinary brothers heading the revolt. Under other circumstances, the three men might have stood shoulder to shoulder; now, Morocco looks to be the world’s next spark that ignites a great war.
And Russell meets it all from a dangerously vulnerable position: she wakes with no idea where she is, or indeed who—least of all, why armed men are after her. And she has to figure it all out all without Holmes.
The ancient city of Fez is one of the most fascinating places in the world. Medieval in essence but modern in energy, it is a snarling tangle of narrow, unmarked, heavily populated lanes with walls that alternate open shop-fronts with homes that are close-faced to the world. It is a mystery and a labyrinth to the outsider—and to a woman who lacks guidance even to her own identity, it is like walked blind-folded across a pitted floor.
Knowledge comes slowly, and trust more hesitantly yet. But faith? Faith is the force that keeps a confused mind together.
Excerpt:
Preface
The big man had the brains of a tortoise, but even he was beginning to look alarmed.
Sherlock Holmes drew a calming breath. Then another.
It had seemed such a simple arrangement: If Mary Russell chose to submit to the whimsy of Fflytte Films as it finished its current moving picture, that was fine and good, but there was no cause for her husband to be tied down by her eccentricities—not with an entirely new country at his feet. He’d never been to Morocco before. After some complex marital negotiations, he promised to return, at an agreed-to time and place, which was here and today.
Except she was not there.
He started again. “So she left her tent that night. After dark.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“And was still gone the next morning.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“She spoke to no one, merely left a brief note to say that she was going to Fez.” The man nodded.
“The filming ended. The rest of Fflytte’s crew came back here. No one thought this odd. And all you have to say is that my wife was last seen walking into the desert in the company of a child. Seven days ago.”
Morocco might be a small country, but it was plenty big enough to swallow one young woman. And a week made for a very cold trail.
Russell, he thought; what the devil are you up to?
Chapter One
I was in bed. A bed, at any rate.
I had been flattened by a steam-roller, trampled under a stampede of bison. Beaten by a determined thug. I ached, head to toe, fingers and skin. Mostly head.
My skull throbbed, one hot pulse for every beat of my heart. I could see it in the rhythmic dimming of an already shadowy room. I wanted to weep with the pain, but if I had to blow my nose, my skull might split like an overripe melon.
So I lay in the dim room, and watched my heart beat, and ached.
An alleyway in Fez
Some time later, it came to me that the angle of the vague patch of brightness across the opposite wall had changed. Some time after that, a thought slipped out between the pain-pulses: The sun had moved while I slept. A while later, another thought: Time is passing.
And with that, a tendril of urgency unfurled. I could not lie in bed, I had to be somewhere. People were depending on me. The sun would go down: I would be late.
Rolling onto my side was like pushing a motorcar up a hill. Raising myself up from the thin pad made me cry out—nearly black out—from the surge of pressure within my skull. My stomach roiled, my ears rang, the room whirled.
I crouched for a long time on the edge of the bed. Slowly, the pounding receded. My vision cleared: small, roughly plastered room. Hand-made floor tiles, a tawny herringbone of small bricks. A door of some dark wood, so narrow a large man might angle his shoulders. A hook driven into it, holding a long brown robe. A pair of soft yellow bedroom slippers on the floor—babouches, my mind provided; new leather, my nose told me. The room’s only furniture was a narrow bed and a rough three-legged stool at its head. The stool served as a table, its surface nearly covered with disparate objects: in the centre stood a small oil lamp. To its left, nearest the bed, were arranged a box of matches, a tiny ceramic bowl with half a dozen spent matches, a glass of water, and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that appeared to have been trod upon. The other side of the lamp held an even more peculiar collection: a worn pencil stub, a sausage-shaped object tightly wrapped in a white handkerchief, and one stone.
I studied the enigmatic display. The little bowl caused a brief memory to stir through the sludge that was my brain: as I slept, the sound of a match scratching into life would wake me; the sharp smell would bite my nostrils; faces would appear and make noises; I would say something apparently sensible; the faces would bend over the light and with a puff, I would be back in the shadows, and alone.
My hand reached out, hesitated over the water, rejected it, and picked up the spectacles instead. I winced as they settled between my ears and the snug head-wrap I wore, but the room came into focus.
The matches also came into focus: a cheap, bright label, in French. I picked up the box, slid it open, my nose stung by the smell of sulphur. Four matches. I took one, scraped it into life, held it to the oil lamp. A spot of warmth entered the room.
By its tiny light, I looked down at what I wore. Drab homespun trousers and tunic. Bare feet. The clothing was clean, but not my hands. They looked as if someone had tried to wipe away a layer of some dark greasy matter, leaving stains in the deeper creases and under the nails.
I stretched the left one out nearer the lamp. Motion made the flame dance shadows across the room. When it had steadied, I frowned at the finger-nails to which I was attached.
Not grease.
Blood.
(For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)
Interview II
LRK interviews Mary Russell
Six years passed before Ms King was permitted to return the favor of the interview, in the weeks leading up to the publication of The God of the Hive. This one clearly took place at the Sussex home of Russell and Holmes, near Beachy Head, although there are indications that the earlier one did, too.
LRK: Thank you for meeting with me today, here in your Sussex home. I had rather hoped to meet your husband this time, but—
MR: Holmes is away on an investigation.
LRK: At his age?
MR: (coolly) His body has slowed, his mind is quite nimble, thank you.
LRK: Yes, of course. And you, Miss Russell, I wonder—
MR: (coldly) I trust you are not going to ask me about my age.
LRK: Er, no. Of course not. Perhaps we should get straight to the focus of the interview. Next April, volume ten of your memoirs will be published.
MR: Yes, The God of the Hive. Although I persist in thinking of it with the name I had suggested, The Green Man. Extraordinary, what these publishers will do.
LRK: It sure is. And this volume—
MR: Which is to be published as fiction, I presume?
LRK: I’m afraid so. Now, your…memoirs are generally told in the first person, with the very occasional dip into objective narration to clarify an episode. However, The God of the Hive is told from multiple points of view. Did you find this difficult to accomplish?
MR: Well, having all th
e principals to hand made things easier. I believe it would have been more difficult to explain how I had come to learn of all the things that took place when I was elsewhere. It was a complex tale.
LRK: And it includes a great deal about your brother-in-law, Mycroft, who was central to the British Intelligence community.
MR: One might even say that Mycroft was British Intelligence. In both meanings of the noun, come to think of it.
LRK: The story includes a number of disturbing revelations about—
MR: I shall have to ask you to take care with your questions. Some of the material in the book remains to this day under the Secrets Act.
LRK: Which is why this book, in particular, was presented to the world as fiction.
MR: Precisely: a fable. And like many fables, the truths it contains may be unsettling.
LRK: Even if it’s somewhat… embroidered.
MR: I do not embroider.
LRK: Oh come now, surely Robert Goodman, the “Green Man” of the woods, was not exactly as you present him? He’s a creature of mythic fantasy.
MR: Ms King, you are the writer of fiction; I could never have made up such a man as Goodman. A fantastic creature he was indeed. I shall never forget the first time I saw him—or rather, his boots—waving from the shrubbery.
LRK: You’re claiming he’s true to life?
MR: (even more coldly) I write memoirs, not fantasy.
LRK: If you say so. Okay, so, in the book we also see a great deal about Mr Holmes and his artist son, introduced in The Language of Bees, who—
MR: I don’t care to speak about personal matters, if you please.
LRK: No politics, no family. What does that leave us—religion?
The Mary Russell Companion Page 14
