The Moor - Laurie R. King [81]
***
At five o'clock in the morning I lay open-eyed, staring at the ceiling. The portions of my body that didn't ache gently hurt actively, with the occasional shooting pain from my ribs for variety.
This is ridiculous, I decided, and began the laborious process of oozing out from under the bedclothes. Surely I can make it down the stairs without waking Baring-Gould, and make myself a pot of tea without disturbing Mrs Elliott. I wrapped myself in Holmes' dressing gown, pushed my feet into his bedroom slippers, and tottered downstairs, considerably less spry than Elizabeth Chase.
I need not have bothered with silence: Baring-Gould was sitting before the drawing-room fire, a half-full cup of tea with the cold skin of age on it by his side. He held a book on his lap, a small green volume with gilt letters, mostly obscured by his hands but having something to do with Devon. He was not reading it, only holding it while he gazed into the fire. By the looks of the coals, he had been there for some hours.
"Good morning, Miss Russell," he said without turning his head. "Do come in."
"Good morning. I thought I might have some tea. Would you like another cup yourself?"
"That would be most kind of you. Although truthfully I can scarcely be said to have had the first one."
I removed the cup and returned with a tray holding pot, cups, and paraphernalia. I poured his cup, milked and sugared it to his instructions, and hesitated.
"Please do sit down, Miss Russell. Unless, of course, you have work to do."
"No," I said quickly, stung by the faint, so very faint, note of request in the proud voice. "No, I am between projects at the moment." Oh dear, that didn't sound very good. "You know how it is, one thing finished and the next still coming together in the back of the mind."
"I envy you. I never had the leisure to think in advance about the next, as you call it, project." He raised his tea to his lips to give me time to absorb the gentle scorn. This was not going well.
"What are you reading?" I asked him.
"Nothing, actually. My eyes are too bad. I do like to hold a book from time to time, though. Rather like conducting a telephone conversation with an old friend: unsatisfactory, but better than nothing at all."
"Would you…shall I read to you?"
"That is a kind offer, Miss Russell, but not perhaps at the moment."
Each time he said my name, it sounded as though he had it in italics. This unorthodox form of address was obviously more than he could swallow. I relented.
"Please, Rector, call me Mary."
"Very well, Mary. One of my daughters is named Mary, and she too has a lovely voice. No, I think that, rather than read to me from books in my library that I already know, I should prefer to hear about your own efforts. My friend Holmes tells me you are in the final stages of writing a book of your own. Tell me about it."
"I have finished it, in fact. The first draft, that is—I sent it to the publisher just before I came down here. There will be a fair amount of work before it's actually ready to publish, of course, but it is very nice to make it to the end of the first time through."
"Hmm," he said. "I never was much of one for second drafts. It always seemed to me that if my publisher did not like it to begin with, no amount of tinkering would set it right. Best to start on something new."
"So you would just scrap it?" I asked, astonished.
"Not invariably, but generally, yes. Who is your publisher?"
I told him, and he asked about the editor, and we talked about the mechanics of publishing for a few minutes. Then he asked, "And the subject? You never did answer me."
"Sophia," I said. "Wisdom."
"Hochmah," he said in rejoinder. "You are Jewish, I think?"
"I am. My father was a member of the Anglican Communion, but my mother was Jewish, which under rabbinic law makes me Jewish as well."
"Have you seen our church here in Lew?"
"On Sunday. It's very lovely."
"Paravi lucenum Christo meo," he said. I have prepared a lamp for my Christ.
I ventured