The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [11]
I cradled my arm, looking away from my reflection in the glass. Had his response when I asked about his delay been a glibly prepared speech, designed to conceal his worry? Did he believe that I was so fragile that I might not withstand abandonment? Had my admittedly precarious mental state left him with no choice but to bring me along?
Certainly, Mycroft's reference to “your current responsibilities” suggested that both Holmes brothers saw my need for comfort as equal to a prisoner's need for aid.
Which led to the conclusion that Holmes felt there was nothing for it but to reveal to me one of the most private and distressing episodes of his life. To lay out his most personal history, while it was still raw and unformed, to my eyes. To allow my presence to rub salt into the wounds of what he had to consider one of his most abject failures.
I should go home, immediately. I should pack and call a taxi, leaving a brief note to preserve my own self-respect, and to provide a bulwark for the shreds of Holmes' dignity.
And yet…
I could not shake the notion that there had been a degree of relief underlying his chagrin. Almost as if the humiliation was a thing to be borne for a greater cause, to be got through quickly. But for what?
I found myself considering the previous summer, the beginnings of the case involving the child whose letter had recently reduced me to tears. My arrival at Holmes' house that day had been unexpected: I found him in disguise and about to depart, intending to slip off before I could become enmeshed. But why had he not simply taken an earlier train? That case—so nearly missed entirely—became a cornerstone of our subsequent partnership, firm foundation for a tumultuous year.
Had Holmes, deliberately or unconsciously, lingered that afternoon so that I might find him?
Was his present uncharacteristic solicitude for my tender state a means of ensuring my presence here?
I did not feel all that precariously fragile. Granted, I was not at my best, but surely he could see that I was finding my feet again? That I was not about to fall to pieces if left alone?
I raised my gaze to the looking-glass before me. I was nineteen years old. During recent months, I had proven myself strong, adult, and capable, not only to myself, but to Holmes—my teacher, my mentor, my entire family since I stumbled across him on the Downs, four and a half years before.
During the winter, the balance of our relationship had begun to shift, from apprentice and master to something very close to partnership. Several times I had even wondered if some deeper link was not in the process of being forged between us.
Holmes was a master of avoiding undesirable situations. If he had seen my recovery, and chose to discount it, then it followed that he wanted me here. That this steely, invulnerable man, once mentor, now partner, still friend, had his own reasons for laying his vulnerability at my feet, as a man kneels to expose the nape of his neck to his sword-wielding sovereign.
Another memory came back to me then, bringing a wash of foreign air through the sultry room. It came from Palestine, in February, shortly after the Hazr brothers and I had ripped Holmes from the hands of his Turkish tormentor. As we parted ways, the elder Hazr, Mahmoud—silent, deadly, and himself bearing scars of torture—had been moved to make a rare incursion into personal speech: Do not try to protect your Holmes, these next days. It will not help him to heal.
I nodded, and finished my preparations for bed. As I lay down on the lavender-scented sheets, I reflected that Holmes and I seemed to have a habit of forcing unpalatable decisions on one another.
The Tool (1): The scrap of other-worldly metal sent the
boy was of the four Elements: the earthy stuff that gave it
substance, the fire that twice shaped it, the water that
twice received it, and the air through which it arrived.
Testimony, I:2
THE DAY WAS ALREADY HOT WHEN WE SET OFF for the avocat's office the next morning, the city air