The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [167]
“Thank you,” I said. “Mrs Magnuson, is it? I'm not actually hungry, so I won't join you. Can I just ask you for a bit of writing paper and an envelope?”
“Are yeh sure yeh won't have a wee bite?”
“It smells delicious, but no.” Actually, the rich aroma was making me queasy, and I wanted to be alone. She showed me into the cold, disused parlour, lit the fire, and left me with stationery and pen. I warmed my hands in front of the flames, and eventually removed my coat and hat, taking up the pen.
Dear Holmes,
I write from Thurso, about to set off for Orkney. Something must have delayed Brothers on the way—they were seen in Edinburgh on Monday, yet Damian was here just this morning, hiring a local fisherman to cross them over. The wind is powerful, unusually so, and the reproving locals were not sanguine about their chances of success. If I do not make it home, would you be so good as to locate the family of the man whose boat Damian hired, and see that they are recompensed?
R
I looked at the inadequacy of that ending, and added:
P.S.: I do not know if Damian is acting alone and against Brothers, or if he was under duress as the man's agent. If the latter, I can only believe he had good reason.
Again I hesitated, tempted to black the postscript out, or change it for something more affectionate, less bleak, but in the end I sealed the flap and wrote the Sussex address, leaving it with a coin for the stamp and a note instructing Mrs Magnuson not to post it until the end of September. It felt like one of those letters soldiers were encouraged to write before a battle. I regretted the melodrama, but I did not wish to take chances with the young fisherman's family.
I sat in the slowly warming room until I heard voices in the hallway, then went to join Captain Javitz for the final assault north.
The Stars (2): It is no secret that the stars note greatness:
A star drew the sages to the infant Jesus, as the sun went
dark at His death. A comet brought William the
Conqueror to the throne. The sun lingered to give Joshua
time to complete his conquest.
Testimony, IV:7
JAVITZ AND MAGNUSON HAD CLEARED THE FUEL LINE, the culprit in our faltering engine, and used the farmers horse to drag the aeroplane back to the start of the rough field. The laundry was still veering wildly back and forth, but I thought it was not quite so rigid in its pull.
Perhaps that was self-delusion: I decided not to ask.
Once airborne, we turned east, so as to be over land as long as possible, and battled the wind until we ran out of mainland. When there was nothing before us but sea until Scandinavia, Javitz turned due north across the Pentland Firth, and the wind seized us, shaking us in its teeth like a dog with a rat.
I do not think there were ten feet on the five miles between John o'Groat's and the first island when we were flying still and steady. When Javitz turned to study the rudder, his face had a greenish tint. I found after a while that I was reciting, over and over again, a passage from Job that I hadn't thought about since my mother died. Clouds scudded across our windows, pushing us lower and tempting us off-course until Javitz returned to the compass and corrected our line of flight. Glimpses of land teased at us, seeming no closer, although the white wave-caps grew ever nearer. Then suddenly with a moment of clarity, land lay below us again.
Javitz dropped further, seeking protection from the wind, and followed the little island's eastern coast. At the end of it, we passed over a brief stretch of sea to another, even smaller, island, then a landscape that indeed resembled mainland came up underneath us. He directed the nose west again, skimming above countryside that looked surprisingly like England—I don't know what I expected of an island nation ruled by Vikings for seven hundred years,