The Beekeeper's Apprentice (34 page)

“A most gratifying challenging opponent, this,” he said in a calmer voice, and lit his pipe, which had gone out. When it was going again he continued in a completely different vein.

“Russell, I have been considering your words of this morning. I do occasionally take the thoughts of others into account, you know. Par-ticularly yours. I have to admit that you were completely justified in your protest. You are an adult, and by your very nature I was quite wrong to treat you as if you were Watson. I apologise.”

I was, as one might imagine, completely flabbergasted, and highly suspicious, but he went on as if discussing the weather.

“Today while I was on my distressingly fruitless quest for informa-tion through the human sewers of fair London town, it occurred to me that the matter of your future has come to a head.This peculiar ... present situation has forced it, but it should have come sooner or later. The question I am faced with is, what does one do with a student who has passed every examination laid before her? Eventually she must be removed from
in statu pupularis
and allowed to assume the rights and responsibilities of maturity. In your case every paper I’ve set you, every test, up to the viva voce question of the mud on our opponent’s footwear, has come up an alpha.

“I have, then, a limited number of options. Considering the gravity of this particular case, I feel I should be justified in removing you from the firing line as I did Watson, until I can clear it up. No, do not inter-rupt. Much to my displeasure, I find I cannot bring myself to attempt that. For one thing, the logistics of keeping you under control are too daunting.

“It has been on my mind since Wales that an apprentice kept from her journeyman’s papers will spoil. Faced with this, what for lack of a better term I shall call a case, I have two choices: I can maintain your ‘apprenticeship’ (as you yourself called it), or I can grant you your Mastery. Having never been one for half-measures, I see no point in delaying the inevitable.Therefore ...” He stopped, took his pipe from his mouth, looked into the bowl, put it back into his mouth, reached for the pouch in his pocket, and I very nearly screamed at him with the tension of being torn between “Thank God, here it comes, at last!” and “Oh, God, here it comes, he’s sending me away.”

He opened the tobacco pouch and dug from it a small, much-folded scrap of onionskin, dropped it in front of me, went to the ash-tray clipped to the table, and began to scrape the dottle from his pipe while I unfolded the paper. On it, in five lines of minute, cramped, an-tique, and graphologically cryptic script, were written:

Egypt—Alexandria—Sayeed Abu Bahadr Greece—Thessaloníki—Thomas Catalepo Italy—Ravenna—Fr. Domenico Palestine—Jaffa—Ali & Mahmoud Hazr Morocco—Rabat—Peter Thomas

Each of the personal names was followed by a series of numbers that looked like a radio frequency. I looked up, but Holmes was at the window again, his unrevealing back to me.

“I have said before this time that I regard it as stupidity rather than courage to overlook a danger that presses as close as this one has. Even my critics will not accuse me of stupidity, else I should not have reached my present age after a lifetime of the rough-and-tumble. I re-member vividly, as if it were last week rather than two and a half de-cades ago, sitting in Watson’s chair and admitting to him that London was too hot for my safety.The current state of affairs is ...remarkably similar.

“The admission then caused me some shame. But, that was half a lifetime ago, and since then I have learnt, slowly, and painfully, that time and distance can prove a powerful weapon. It is not one that comes naturally to my hand, I admit. I much prefer direct attack, com-plete immersion, and a quick finish. However, there is much to be said for the occasional, judicious, prodigious expenditure of time.”

“What sort of time are you thinking of here, Holmes?” I asked war-ily. His most famous hiatus had lasted three years; that would certainly drive a cart and horses through my University degree.

“Not terribly long. Enough to instill doubts in our opponent—Was she wrong after all? Did I just choose to vanish? Where on earth am I?—and to allow Mycroft and the elephantine Scotland Yard to sweep up the data and begin to sift it over. By the time we return” (we! I snatched at) “the momentum will have been taken from her. She will be furious, and careless, with the knowledge that we have removed ourselves from her rules, that we have opted out of the traditional and expected program of threat, challenge, response, and counterattack.

“For better or for worse, you are in this case.” My brief surge of tri-umph was quickly submerged in a backwash of conflicting questions and feelings: Was he fleeing because he was saddled with me? And what on earth did he have in mind? Tibet? “What is more, you are in it as, God help us, my partner, or as near to such a creature as I am ever likely to see. Given the circumstances, I have no choice: I have to trust you.”

I could think of no sensible response to this, so I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“What should you have done if I had walked through my lodgings door the other night?”

“Hmmm. I wonder. Perhaps unfortunately, that question does not pertain. Here we stand; I can no other. And as a means of noting the fact of your accession to the lofty rights and privileges of partnership, I shall grant you a boon: I shall allow you to make the next decision. Where shall we go to keep from harm’s way for a bit? Do you know, Russell,” he said in a voice that verged on playful, “I don’t believe I’ve had a holiday in twenty-five years.”

In the past seventy-two hours I had seen a bomb on my door and the results of another on Holmes’ back, spent thirteen hard, tense hours slogging towards London, waved a gun at Holmes, seen my first major attempt at high fashion reduced to shreds, been ill-fed, under-slept, half-frozen, and shot at, witnessed Holmes in more perturbation than ever before, and now this wild swing from matter-of-fact confi-dences to near-teasing merriment. It was all a bit much.

I looked down at the paper in my hand, two inches of nearly trans-parent onionskin and its five lines of writing.

“Are these our only options?” I asked.

“By no means. Captain Jones is quite willing to steam around in circles if we ask him, or to head for South America or to the northern lights. There are few limits, although if you wish to try breaking the bank at Monte Carlo I shall have to arrange a discreet transfer of funds. Just avoid the United Kingdom or New York for six or eight weeks.”

“Two months! Holmes, I can’t be away for two months, I’ll be sent down if I miss that much time. And my aunt will have the army out.

And Mrs. Hudson, and Watson ...”

“Mrs. Hudson will embark tomorrow on a cruise.”

“A cruise! Mrs. Hudson?”

“To visit her family in Australia, I believe. And you need not con-cern yourself with Dr. Watson, either; his greatest danger will be gout from high living, where Mycroft has him secreted. Your college and tutors will grant you an exeat, while you attend to your urgent family business. Your aunt will be told that you are away.”

“Good Lord. If Mycroft can tame her, he’s a valuable ally indeed.” I could feel my objections beginning to waver.

“Well?”

“Who are these people?” I asked. Holmes plucked the paper from my hand.

“This is Mycroft’s writing,” he said by way of explanation.

“And Mycroft has ...tasks that need doing in these places?”

“Precisely. His words were, if we choose to remove ourselves from the field of combat whilst the scouts assess the enemy’s position, we may as well be of some use to His Majesty, and might care for a change of scenery under auspices.” Holmes’ eyes were filled with mischief and amusement, and I could see that he had already laid our case to one side. He waved the paper gently in front of my nose. “It has been my experience,” he added, “that Mycroft’s assignments tend to offer quite extraordinary amounts of entertainment.”

I acquiesced, took the paper from his fingers, spread it out on the table in front of me, and pointed to the fourth line.

“Yisroel.”

“What?”

“Palestine, Israel, Zion, the Holy Land. I desire to walk through Jerusalem.”

Holmes nodded slowly, bemused. “I think I can honestly say, that particular destination should not have been my first choice. Greece, yes. Morocco, perhaps. Even Egypt, but Palestine? Very well, the choice is yours, and I am certain our foe will never guess that as my destination. To Palestine it is.”

y midnight we were off the coast of France and, with no signs of anyone in our wake and strict radio silence maintained, the tight knot that had held me since Tuesday evening was beginning to loosen. Captain Jones came into our cabin, a barrel-shaped and lugubrious individual with thinning, once-red hair, distinguishable from the four crew members under his command by the state of his fingernails, which were slightly blacker than theirs, and the straight-spined, confident air of one who caters to royalty. The boy was a smaller version of his father, and all, including the child, had been chosen by Mycroft from wherever he was holed up with Watson.

“Good evening, Jones,” said Holmes. “Brandy? Or whisky?”

“No thank you, sir. I don’t drink when I’m out to sea. Asking for problems, it is, sir. I just came down to ask if you’d decided on our course.”

“Palestine, Jones.”

“Palestine, sir?”

“Palestine. You know—Israel, Zion, the Holy Land. It is on your charts, I assume?”

“Of course, sir. It’s just that, well, if you’ve not been there recently, you’ll not find it the easiest place to move around in, so to speak. There has been a war on, you know,” he offered in a mild understatement.

“I am aware of that, Jones. London will have to be notified, and they shall make all the necessary arrangements.”

“Very good, sir. Shall I set course tonight, then?”

“The morning is just as well, Jones, there is no hurry. Is there, Rus-sell?” I opened my eyes. “None at all,” I confirmed, and closed them again.

“In the morning it is, then, sir, Miss.” His footsteps faded up the stairs.

Holmes stood silently, and I felt his gaze on me.

“Russell?”

“Mmm.”

“There’s nothing more that needs doing tonight. Go to bed. Or shall I cover you with a blanket again?”

“No, no, I shall go. Good night, Holmes.”

“Good night, Russell.”

awoke when the engines changed their sounds in the early grey light of dawn. Passing through the cabin for a glass of water I saw the silhouette of Holmes, curled in a chair staring out at the sea, knees to chin, pipe in hand. I said nothing as I went back to bed, and I do not think he noticed me. I slept all that day, and when I awoke it was a summer’s evening.

It was not actually summer, of course, and we were to have rain during the weeks that followed, but we had sun enough that Holmes and I could spend hours darkening our skins up on the deck. To think of London huddled under its blanket of sleet and thick yellow fogs as we sweated and dozed was like imagining another world, and I often found myself hoping fervently that our attempted murderer was caught in the worst of it, with bronchitis. And chilblains.

The days passed quickly. To my surprise Holmes did not seem to chafe under the enforced rest but appeared relaxed and cheerful. We spent hours devising complex mind games, and he taught me the sub-tleties of codes and ciphers. We took apart and rebuilt the ship’s spare radio, and began an experiment on the point at which various heated substances will self-ignite, but as it made the captain exceedingly ner-vous, we moved on to picking pockets. Christmas came and went, with flaming pudding and crackers with paper crowns and carols about iron-hard ground and snowy footprints, and after dinner Holmes came onto the upper deck with a chess set.