The Beekeeper's Apprentice - Laurie R. King [17]
The day went quickly, and I enjoyed being an addition to the trio of old friends, Holmes, Watson, and Mrs. Hudson. When Watson went off after supper to gather his things for the evening train to Lon-don, I sat down beside Holmes, feeling a vague need to apologise to somebody.
“I suppose you know I was prepared to hate him,” I said finally.
“Oh yes.”
“I can see why you kept him near you. He’s so...good, somehow. Naïve, yes, and he doesn’t seem terribly bright, but when I think of all the ugliness and evil and pain he’s known...It’s polished him, hasn’t it? Purified him.”
“Polished is a good image. Seeing myself reflected in Watson’s eyes was useful when contemplating a case that was giving me problems. He taught me a great deal about how humans function, what drives them. He keeps me humble, does Watson.” He caught my dubious look. “At any rate, as humble as I can be.”
hus my life began again, in that summer of 1915. I was to spend the first years of the war under Holmes’ tutelage, al-though it was some time before I became aware that I was not just vis-iting a friend, that I was actually being taught by Holmes, that I was receiving, not casual lessons in a variety of odd and entertaining ar-eas, but careful instruction by a professional in his area of consider-able expertise. I did not think of myself as a detective; I was a student of theology, and I was to spend my life in exploration, not of the darker crannies of human misbehaviour, but of the heights of human specula-tion concerning the nature of the Divine. That the two were not unre-lated did not occur to me for years.
My apprenticeship began, on my part, without any conscious recognition of that state. I thought it was the same with Holmes, that he began by humouring this odd neighbour for lack of anything more demanding at hand, and ended up with a fully trained detective, until some years later I recalled that odd statement he had made in his gar-den on our very first day: “Twenty years ago,” he had muttered. “Even ten. But here? Now?” I did ask him, but of course he said that he had seen it within the first minutes. However, Holmes has always thought of himself as omniscient, so I cannot trust him on it.
On the face of things it would have been extremely unlikely for a proper gentleman such as Holmes to take on a young woman as pupil, much less apprentice her to his arcane trade. Twenty years before, with Victoria on the throne, an alliance such as Holmes and I forged— close, underchaperoned, and not even rendered safe by the bonds of blood—would have been unthinkable. Even ten years before, under Edward, ripples of shock would have run through the rural community and made our lives difficult.
This was, however, 1915, and if the better classes clasped to them-selves a semblance of the old order, it did little more than obscure the chaos beneath their feet. During the war the very fabric of English so-ciety was picked apart and rewoven. Necessity dictated that women work outside the home, be it their own or that of their employers, and so women put on men’s boots and took control of trams and breweries, factories and fields. Upper-class women signed on for long stretches nursing in the mud and gore of France or, for a lark, put on smocks and gaiters and became Land Girls during the harvest. The harsh demands of king and country and the constant anxieties over the fighting men reduced the rules of chaperonage to a minimum; people simply had no energy to spare for the proprieties.
Mrs. Hudson’s presence in the cottage made my long hours with Holmes possible. My parents being dead and my aunt caring little for my actions, as long as they did not intrude on hers: that too made it possible. Rural life conspired as well, for rural society, though rigid, recognises a true gentleman