A Monstrous Regiment of Women - Laurie R. King [118]
It was a long, long passage, tortuous and utterly unrelieved by light. The vestas I clutched as talismans against the night. I lit each one with care, scurried along until it began to burn my finger, then groped my way down the passage for a few more feet, considerably more disorientated than if I had remained in the dark. I knew that if I gave my senses a chance, they would guide me, but in craven cowardice I clung to my feeble lights, and I still had three in the box when I reached the end.
There was a door, a narrow one, and it opened easily onto an equally narrow passageway that was, glory of glories, open to the sky. I sidled between two buildings, stepped out onto a street, and stood breathing in the early-morning air.
The street seemed to me a foretaste of paradise—the morning mist was the breath of God; the early pedestrians, angels. I had come straight through the block of buildings onto the next street up from the hall, so with a wary eye for constables and Temple members, I made my way around the two corners until I found Holmes (Buttercup long discarded for the costume of an indeterminate labourer). I seized his hand, which surprised me as much as it did him. What is more, I did not release it until we reached my flat.
* * *
TWENTY-ONE
Sunday, 6 February
[Thy husband] craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience—
Too little payment for so great a debt…
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she’s froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
—William Shakespeare
« ^
That silly demonstration seemed to convince Holmes that I was at the ragged edge, either physically or mentally. On reaching my flat, he insisted that I undress, bath, and take Mrs Q’s breakfast in bed, where he sat scowling horribly at me until I had pushed the last of it down. I was taken aback, as Holmes normally treated my infirmities as his own—that is, he ignored them. Perhaps, as Q had hinted, the previous days had been as hard on him as they had been on me, if for different reasons. I looked at him over the rim of my cup and dutifully recited all I had done and found within the Temple buildings. He sat on a pink satin boudoir chair, his labourer’s boots propped on the foot of my Brobdingnagian bed, his fingers steepled, his eyes shut. I reached an end, then waited, but there was no response. I suspected he was asleep. I put the cup noisily on the tray, and his eyelids flashed open.
“I never asked you, Holmes. How did you find me… in that house in Essex?”
He leant forward and busied himself with the coffeepot, and I thought at first he was not going to answer. However, renewing his scowl and transferring its focus to his cup, he said. “My career has been sprinkled with glittering examples of incompetence, Russell, normally buried under the verbiage by Watson, but rarely has my stupidity had such potential for truly calamitous disaster. I did not even realise you were missing until Friday morning.”
“When I didn’t show up for the presentation. But didn’t Duncan miss me sooner than that? We had planned to spend Wednesday together—Holmes! You went there, to the presentation?”
“I was there, properly gowned—my own gown, too, mind you, not from a costume box. I walked into the hall, to find utter panic, of the Oxford variety: tight voices, careful polysyllables, a certain amount of wringing of hands. Margery Childe was there, too, incidentally. I found your colleague Duncan and he controlled himself long enough to tell me that no one had seen you that week. I sought out Miss Childe and she confirmed that you had not come to the Temple during the week, as you had halfway promised, but she had assumed that you were busy. After your landlady assured me that you had indeed not