A Monstrous Regiment of Women (30 page)

But, was I “in love” with him? Ridiculous thought, instantly dismissed. The doubts and frenzies of a grand passion had by their very nature to wither under the cold, illuminating light of daily knowledge.

Love, though. Comfortable, interested, concerned, reciprocal love; was that perhaps a different matter?

And what rôle the physical? What place the body’s passion?

I could never, I knew then, lose myself “in love.” Margery had accused me of coldness, and she was right, but she was also wrong: For me, for always, the paramount organ of passion was the mind. Unnatural, unbalanced, perhaps, but it was true: Without intellect, there could be no love.

Since that moment on top of the hansom when the last lingering bubble of romanticism had burst, I had been looking for an alternative: freedom, academia, a régime of women.

Oddly enough, the very considerations that had made marriage impossible for him were mirrored in my own being: a rabidly independent nature, an impatience with lesser minds, total unconventionality, and the horror of being saddled with someone who would need cosseting and protection—the characteristics, come to that, that would have made it difficult for me to join Margery Childe, even without the rest of it.

Perhaps, though, the resemblance was not odd. Holmes was a part of me. Because of my age when we met, neither of us had erected our normal defences, and by the time I came to womanhood, it was too late: He had already let me in under his guard, and I him. Holmes was a part of me, and to imagine myself “in love” with him was to imagine myself becoming passionately enamoured of my arm or the muscles in my back. Yet in the same vein, it is not a part of Judaism to practice bodily mortification, to deny God’s gift of a physical body. One accepts and appreciates this act of creation; one loves one’s body, clumsy, inconvenient, and untidy as it may be. It was in this sense that I could love Holmes: Irritating as he could be, he was a part of me, and yes, I loved him.

Neither of us were domestic creatures. Holmes, by his nature and by the demands of his profession, had remained unfettered by domesticity, had never knowingly given a hostage to fate. The only woman he had allowed himself to love had been as jealous of her independence as he: Irene Adler had loved him for a time and then sent him away. And what of Mary Russell, a young woman as violently opinionated and as fiercely protective of her freedom as Holmes himself, and as competent as he at looking after herself?

It was, intellectually speaking, a pretty problem, and it occupied me for several days. By this manner, continuously interrupted by drugs and sleep and increasing befuddlement, I came tentatively to a point of balance with Holmes in his absence.

When thirty chips had gathered in the corner, I became aware of a new element in the cycle: anticipation. In another day or two, it degenerated into overt restlessness before his entrance, and there was distressingly little acting in the eagerness with which I stood, blinking and cringing at the light, to greet Him.

In the end, there came a third state, between the sweet horror of the poison flooding my veins and the body’s craving for the next, a state of—I can only use the Christian concept— grace. For a brief time as the drug ebbed, I was granted a few minutes’ respite. I ate, and to my mild surprise, one day I found myself speaking aloud the traditional Hebrew blessing over bread. After that, I used the time deliberately to do those things that returned me to myself. It was my nerves’ calm eye, between the gale of quivering and the wind shift to restlessness, and after I had found it, Holmes was usually there, as a companion, beside me in the black and endless night. I strode up and down in my cellar, scorning the walls and avoiding the pillars as if I walked in the clear light of day, debating and arguing and reviewing the moves of chess games with Holmes, reciting psalms and the ritual prayers taught me by my mother, biding my time beneath a veneer of madness.

EIGHTEEN

Tuesday, I February

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance; commits his body

To painful labour both by sea and land …

Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe…

—William Shakespeare

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Forty-five chips were in place. Restlessness for the forty-sixth had set in, and I was keeping busy sweeping up the débris from the rubbery boiled egg I had been eating, when suddenly I froze, aware somehow of unusual movement in the building above me. I had gradually, when I was in a state to notice, come to read the subtle vibrations in stone that transmitted distant footsteps, the faint sense of movement against one wall that I took to be water in pipes, and occasionally, rarely, a thread of hum that was human speech in the crack under the door. I swallowed the stub end of the egg and all but ran over to the most revealing wall. Movement there was; the stones fairly shuddered with it. Some emergency had hit the organisation. I backed away and turned to the door, thinking to press my ear to the crack, when I heard the familiar sound of feet on the stone steps. An injection was due, but those were not the normal footsteps approaching; this was a solitary man, and he was hurrying. Was this my death, coming for me?

I dove for the corner where I stored my larger rocks and scooped them up, flew to my bed and gathered the stones and the nail I had sharpened on the stones, and made the safety of the western pillar just as the key sounded in the lock. The bolts slid, and I prepared myself for a final defence. Light poured in with the opening of the door, more light than I had seen for days—an electrical bulb outside the door. I squinted desperately around the stones at the vague figure outlined there.

“Russell?” he said, and the breath congealed in my throat. “Russell, are you in here? Dear God, they’ve taken her.” His voice went hoarse with despair, and he stepped back to shout, “Constable! Fetch one of those torches down here!”

“Holmes?” I said. The paltry stones of my defence rattled down around my toes.

“Russell! Are you all right? I cannot see you.”

“I’m not certain you want to, Holmes,” I croaked, and edged into the light, one hand out against the painful glare.

I could see nothing but a tall, dark shape, which made a strangled noise and took a step towards me, when the sound of constabulary boots on stones came from above. He whirled around and barked out an order.

“The torch won’t be necessary, Constable. Resume your position at the top of the stairs.” He paused, with his back to me for a moment, and when the footsteps had retreated up the stairs, he turned and walked past me into my prison. He stood first and contemplated my bed, the remnants of my food, and the gourd of water, spilt onto the stones in my final rush. Finally, reluctantly, he turned to me, and with no expression whatsoever, he looked at me, read the state of my pupils and my matted hair, my stinking rags. He reached for my arm. I flinched away from him as if he had lashed me, and he halted, then slowly put his hand out again and took my wrist, drew out my arm, glanced at the state of my veins, and let go. His only reaction was a brief spasm along the edge of his jaw. He looked back into my face.

“Will you be all right if I leave you here and go find you some clothes?”

“Leave the door open.” My voice trailed upwards and cracked.

“Of course.”

He ran light-footed up the stairs, and returned within three minutes, to find me cowering just inside the door like some timid beast afraid to seize its freedom. He held out a pair of trousers, a linen shirt, a pair of carpet slippers. I just looked at them.

“It will take me some time to locate your own clothing,” he said, mistaking my hesitation. I reached for the things, avoiding his hand, and stepped back into the dark to dress. The clothes were my captor’s. I could smell Him, feel the imprint of his body. A curious intimacy, but, oddly enough, not unsatisfying. I straightened my shoulders and stepped into the light, then walked out of my cellar prison and up the bright stairs, feeling like the mermaid granted feet.

Holmes escorted me up into the house, never touching me but guiding me with his physical presence, as substantial beside me as one of my pillars. In the main corridor, a uniformed constable came up to us, eyeing me with alarm before recalling himself and greeting Holmes.

“Mr Holmes, sir, Inspector Dakins sent me to ask you if the young lady would see fit to identify the men under arrest. He thinks there may be one or two missing, and it’d be helpful he says if the young lady could give us descriptions. If she’s up to it, he says,” the constable added dubiously. I straightened my shoulders again and felt the fingers of the restless shakes playing over my nerve endings.

“Yes, I’m quite fit,” I said in an unfamiliar and far-off voice.

“Very good, miss. If you’d follow me.”

Holmes stayed at my shoulder, close enough that I felt the heat of him, but never actually making contact. A part of me was disintegrating, not only because of the drug, and without him beside me, I could never have looked into the knowing, leering eyes of the thugs (easily recognised despite the absence of the false beards) and the curious, disapproving eyes of the police, could never have described my captor (two inches under six feet, thirteen and a half stone, black hair, small scars on his right lip and in his left eyebrow, Yorkshire-born, London-raised, with a fairly well-seated French addition to his accent, various moles, and the habits and abilities I had deduced), could never have made it out the door and up the stairs to the anonymous guest quarters and walked calmly in and waited while the constable brought in a tray with tea and biscuits and cheese and fresh plump apples and set it clumsily on a table. Holmes chased him out, poured a cup, and brought it to me where I stood with my face pressed up against the window, drinking in the glorious sight of a rain-swept hillside. The vibrancy of the green grass against the grey sky was almost frightening in its intensity; it certainly hurt my eyes. Holmes stood at my shoulder for a moment before putting the cup down on a polished table and reaching past me to work the latch and push the window open. Sweet, freezing air engulfed me, an almost tangible substance pressing against my face and in my hair.

“What time is it?” I asked him.

I heard the sound of his watch rubbing against the coin he wore on it, a faint metallic sound I had heard a thousand times before and had not thought I would hear again. “Twelve minutes past eleven.”

For the first time in days I was anchored again to the progress of the sun through the heavens. Holmes took up the tea cup, put it into my hands, and then snatched it back to keep it from tumbling out the window. He carried it back to the tray, stirring in three spoons of sugar before bringing it back to where I stood. He held the cup to my lips, and I drank. When the cup was drained to the sugary dregs he gently closed the window and led me to a chair in front of the fire. I sat where I could see out of the window, and I managed to hold the second cup of tea on my own. The horrid iced biscuits he pressed on me were too much, and I told him so, my words ending in a jaw-cracking yawn.

“How long since you ate?”

“I don’t know. Not long. I’m not hungry.”

“Inspector Dakins will want to interview you when you’ve rested.”

“God. Not today.”

“He will insist, I’m afraid, unless you’re unconscious in hospital.”

“Perhaps we might arrange that,” I groaned, and his face lightened a trifle. For the first time, I noticed his appearance: gaunt, grey, and ill-shaven. Even his shirt collar looked tired, a highly unusual circumstance. Before I could rouse the energy to comment, he turned to go into the next room, where I heard the roar of the geyser starting up and the rush of water into the bath. He came out in a cloud of flower-scented steam.

“Can you manage?”

“Yes. I’m fine, Holmes, just feel a bit feverish, that is all.”

“Shall I stay here, or hunt down your clothing?”

“I am fine, I tell you. By all means, find my clothes.” I told him what I had been wearing. “And my specs. Just—don’t lock the door.”

It was an admission, but he did not comment, just said, “No.”

In the bathroom, I agonised over the key, eventually forcing myself to close the door and leave it unlocked. I placed the key on the tiles below the bath, stripped and stuffed the filthy underclothes along with my captor’s things into the waste bin, and eased myself into the hot, foam-covered water. I did not care to examine my body overclosely, but I did notice that the knife wounds, at least, received defending Margery in another lifetime, had healed to clean pink lines.

The heat helped, but I kept my eye on the door, and jerked when there was movement in the adjoining room.

“Russell? May I enter?” Of course: that was why he’d used such a liberal hand with the foaming bath salts. I was quite thoroughly hidden from view. I gave him permission. He placed some familiar garments on the dressing table, brought my glasses over and put them on a chair within reach, looked through some drawers and came up with a silver comb, which he put with my clothes, and turned to the door.

“Holmes? How long has it been?”

“You were taken from the train late on the twenty-second. It is now February first.” He paused, to see if I had further questions, and then left.

He remained in the next room, although I knew he would rather be asking questions of the thugs and the servants and uprooting clues the officials were missing, if not destroying.

Twice, I heard a knock and a brief conversation at the corridor, several times the ting of a cup and saucer. I scrubbed my pores, washed my hair several times, until the tangled mass was at least clean, and ran hotter and hotter water in, but to no avail. I pulled the stopper, and as soon as I climbed out, I began to shiver. Familiar clothes helped. Putting my glasses on and having a world of bright, focused, everyday objects around me helped. But still I shivered. I took my borrowed comb into the next room. Holmes raised his eyes from a book.