The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [117]
Dear God. I had wanted more responsibility, and here it was, with a vengeance. I worked to control my voice.
“Holmes, it is no false modesty to say that I haven’t the experience in this—this ‘game,’ as you insist on calling it. A mistake on my part could be fatal. We must have a back-up.”
“I shall think about it,” he said finally, and then he leant forward over the chessboard and looked into my eyes with that same curious intensity that he had shown earlier. “However, I want you to realise, Russell, that I know your abilities, better than you do. After all, I have trained you. For nearly four years I have shaped you and tempered you and honed you, and I know the mettle you are made from. I know your strengths and weaknesses, particularly after these last weeks. The things we have done in this country have honed you, but the steel was there to begin with. I do not regret my decision to come here with you, Russell.
“If you truly feel that you cannot do this, then I shall accept that decision. I will not consider it a failure on your part. It will merely mean that you join Watson while I enlist Mycroft’s help. It would be inferior, I admit—inelegant, and I think long, but not hopeless. It is, however, your choice entirely.”
His words were placid, but what lay beneath them shook me breathless, for what he was proposing would in another man be sheer recklessness. Holmes the painstaking, Holmes the thoughtful, calcu-lating thinker, Holmes the solitary operator who never so much as consulted another for advice, this Holmes I thought I knew was now proposing to launch himself into the abyss, trusting absolutely in my ability to catch him.
And more even than that: This self-contained individual, this man who had rarely allowed even his sturdy, ex-Army companion Watson to confront real risk, who had habitually over the past four years held back, been cautious, kept an eye out, and otherwise pro-tected me; this man who was a Victorian gentleman down to his boots; this man was now proposing to place not only his life and limb into my untested, inexperienced, and above all female hands, but my own life as well. This was the change I had noticed in him and puzzled about, the intensity and relish with which he was facing the coming combat: There was no hesitation left. He had let go all doubt, and was telling me in crystal-clear terms that he was prepared to treat me as his com-plete, full, and unequivocal equal, if that was what I wished. He was giving me not only his life, but my own.
I had long known the intellect of this man, been aware for nearly as long of his humanity and the greatness of his heart, but I had never had demonstrated to me so clearly that the size of his spirit was equal to his mind. The knowledge rumbled through me like an earthquake, and in its wake a small voice echoed, wondering if I had just pronounced his epitaph.
I don’t know how long it was before I looked up from the small carved queen into the carved-looking features of the man across from me, but when I did, it seemed that his eyebrows were waiting for some-thing. I had to think for a moment before I realised that he had actu-ally asked a question. But there was no decision to be made.
“When faced with the unthinkable,” I said shakily, “one chooses the merely impossible.” He smiled approvingly, warmly.
And then a miracle happened.
Holmes reached out his long arms to me and, like a frightened child, I went inside them, and he held me, awkwardly at first, then more easily, until my trembling faded. I sat, safe, listening to the steady beat of his heart until the oil lamp guttered out and left us in darkness.
wo days later the Crusader walls of Acre closed in on us, as unlike the sun-swept stones of Jerusalem, eighty miles away, as could be imagined. Jerusalem’s golden walls had sparkled and shone, and the city vibrated with an inaudible song of joy and pain, but Acre’s walls were heavy and thick, and its song was a multilingual dirge of ignorance