The Mary Russell Companion

by Laurie R. King

  “The housekeeper did not say.” The last of the bees had crept with relief into the wooden chest. Holmes shut the lid and took out a ball of twine. “But you are right, I should look to something less elevated for the cause of this death. Such as the boundary dispute that has sprung up with the professor’s neighbour, Josiah Warner. The little Standish lad overheard an exchange of threats between the two men concerning the wall that separates the professor’s lane from Mr Warner’s orchard—young Master Standish was up an apple tree in said orchard at the time, intent on plunder. He informed his mother, who told the postmistress, who mentioned it to our own Mrs Hudson two days ago when she went in to purchase stamps.”

  “And Josiah Warner keeps bees,” I noted. I had wondered why the PC did not ask Warner to remove the bees: a long-time dispute explained that.

  “What is more, Mr Warner had the stonemasons in yesterday morning to talk about repairing the wall. As if already aware that the dispute was moot.”

  I interrupted before he could recount how this tale reached his ears. “Still, that will be hard to prove.”

  “Yes, but this should not.” He had manoeuvred his way out of the door with the box (causing PC Harris to back-pedal down the walk) and now set it down, holding out a narrow splinter of wood some three inches long with blue paint up one side. “I found this on the bedroom window-sill. Sycamore, I should say. Warner uses a blue box made of sycamore to transport his swarms. Take it, Harris—you will find a matching gap in one corner of Warner’s box, where he hit the window-frame as he poured the bees inside.”

  Harris studied the sliver of wood in bemusement, taking no notice when Holmes retrieved the furiously protesting crate and tucked it under one arm.

  “Country life,” Holmes mused happily as we turned for home. “The city has nothing on it for sheer viciousness. Now, Russell, where shall we install our newest community of apis mellifera?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, then subsided. Perhaps a hive of man-killing bees was just what our household needed.

  Birth of a Green Man

  This short piece reflects on the period in the life of Robert Goodman (The God of the Hive) after he had left the hospital in Edinburgh, where he was being treated for shell shock, and before Mary Russell dropped out of the sky on him in 1924.

  Craiglockhart Hospital Edinburgh

  A god is born where need and torment meet. A god is born when dark and light are one and the same. A god is born, and the earth is given voice in which to sing its joy and its terror. And where a god is born—have no doubt about this—there is blood.

  **

  He died when the god named War ripped open his skull and thundered confusion inside. He died, until one spring day he left the hospital, creeping away to a place of childhood quiet and innocence, among the Cumbrian lakes. A place where all deaths were meant to be and the only thunder lay in the rain.

  **

  There, green air washed him, wood and soil touched him, fur and feather healed him. He shunned a mansion; he built a cave in the green. He went days, weeks without speech.

  **

  The greens-man heard the child first, a gulping, choking noise pressing through the summer-thick trees and troubling the birds. He thought it a creature caught in a poacher’s cruel trap; he was not altogether wrong.

  A boy, thin and brown and years from a razor’s touch. He’d seen him before in his woodland rovings, noticed the way the woodland creatures did not mind the boy’s presence, did not feel that this was a lad who turned restlessness into cruelty.

  The boy was hunched beneath a tree, and although he cradled his left arm with exquisite tenderness, the tears were those of a still-child’s impotent rage.

  Pain was a thing the greens-man could deal with.

  He stepped from the trees, permitting a branch to whisper against his sleeve. The startled boy gaped at this figure born of the woods: a man with too-long hair and untidy beard, whose clothes might have been woven from the branches behind him, who waited, at a distance, palms outstretched, saying nothing. The boy dashed the moisture from his cheeks, and his sharp fear subsided into wariness

  The man came forward. He dropped to his heels, holding the boy’s eyes, and stretched out his hands in invitation. Hesitant, the boy’s supporting hand loosened, then fell away. The man’s fingers took a moment to confirm what his eyes had told him, and he sat back on his heels to talk the boy calm.

  “It’s dislocated. I can fix it for you, but it’ll hurt like the devil for a moment. Afterwards it will be just sore. I knew a man during the war who had a shoulder just like yours. He drove a team of horses at the Front, hauling shells, wire, equipment. A German shell landed while he was unloading the wagon. The horses panicked and he reached out for them as they bolted. Yanked his shoulder right out its socket.”

  The man went on for a time, embroidering a thread of heroism into the story, while the boy tried to wrap his mind around the idea of further pain. But he was a brave lad, and trusting, and eventually he gave his permission by saying, “He didn’t mean to do it. My Da’.”

  The man kept his eyes from the raw swollen mouth, and rose to do what had to be done.

  When it was over, when fresh tears were stinging their way into the half-sealed scabs on his face, the boy’s face wore the same look that the driver’s had: wonder, relief, and gratitude, a mix indistinguishable from joy.

  He sent the boy on his way, and followed, silent this time as a woodland pool. The boy paused at the edge of a walled pasture, then trudged manfully towards the unkempt farmyard below. The woods-man watched as the farmer came out of the cowshed, crowded up to the boy, cuffed him to the ground, and went inside. He watched the boy pick himself from the ground, and follow.

  At dawn the next day, the farmer went to milk his cow. When the farmer’s wife went to see what was keeping her husband, she found him on the muck-strewn floor, his head stove in by a tidy bash the size of a cow’s hoof. The milking stool stood upright, a full pail of milk beside it, a silver coin on its top.

  From then on, every so often a silver coin was found, here and there around the farm.

  A god is born at the intersection of need and torment, and brings joy where he can.

  Parrot King

  Parrot King was a part of the 2011 Pirate King celebration, arranged on the page to permit for illustrations. These are by Shirley Bomgaars, Veronica Adrover, Debra C. Thomas, and Jenny Parks; more can be found on the Laurie R. King website.

  Parrot King

  He emerged in a world of moist green.

  When he shouted, seeds and fruit came.

  One day he stretched out his wide and

  brilliant new plumage, and away he flew.

  For three years he ruled the heights. His

  kingdom ranged from the jungle canopy

  to a low, treeless place where strange dull

  creatures lived in huge wooden nests. The

  creatures left seed offerings, until one day

  vines fell from the sky to trap his wings.

  He rode the vast, salt sea in an iron cage

  on a stinking wooden nest, calling down

  curses upon his captors. The iron snapped

  his scarlet tailfeathers and wore at his sharp

  beak before the taste of the air changed, and

  sounds arose, and the creaking nest ceased to

  push forward through the plunging waters.

  The cage bars carried him to a place of birds

  and creatures driven mad by iron. After some

  days he was taken to a dry and quiet room where

  a dry and quiet old woman fed him seeds and

  fruits, and taught him new and appealing sounds.

  Though her own plumage was grey and she cut his

  blue flightfeathers, he recited the sounds back to

  her, and she was happy. There he lived for many

  years, until the old woman grew drier and then

  altogether quiet. His cage w
ent to a young man’s

  nest where things were far less quiet, with shouting

  and passion and many others continuously in and

  out. Although they too were dull in plumage, they

  were pleased when the parrot repeated their sounds,

  and brought him tribute of sweet fruit and rich nuts.

  One night men came to the nest, breaking its door

  to drag the loud young man away. They took the bird

  back to the place of mad creatures for a day, two days.

  A man came then. They studied each other. A cloth

  went over the iron cage, and it moved. The air changed,

  and the old sounds of creaking wood returned. After a

  night, the cage moved, the cloth came off, the door was

  opened. But this time, the old woman was not there to

  clip the blue feathers. The bird beat his glorious wings in

  the air, and he flew, for the first time in years he flew—a

  swoop past the wooden deck, a circle around a great black

  ripple of skull and crossbones, then to the heights where taut

  vines hung from bare-leafed trees. Canvas grew all around.

  The sun was hot; wind tickled his royal breastfeathers; he

  shouted a recitation in hard joy, surveying his new courtiers

  gathered below. Their crestfeathers ran from black to golden;

  their bodies were clothed in rainbow; their chief was as brilliant

  as the bird himself, with a plume even a king might envy.

  But it was a pair of the creatures that most interested him: a

  man as grey as the old woman, but intense with energy, a woman

  as thin as the young man, but without the noisy passion. So

  the king of parrots took up his position at the top of the leafless

  trees, tipping his head at the grey man and the thin woman,

  sidling down the smooth, flat branch towards them.

  They were quite the most interesting creatures

  he had seen since leaving his distant jungle.

  —Laurie R. King

  Illustrations by Shirley Bomgaars, Veronica Adrover, Debra C. Thomas

  Interview IV

  A Twentieth Anniversary Conversation

  In celebration of the twenty years since the publication of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Laurie King sat down on the terrace to interview Mary Russell. Or, she tried.

  Interview on the terrace

  LRK: Thank you for that tour, the garden is looking beautiful.

  MRH: It is, isn’t it? Tea? Oh, Mrs Hudson? Might we have some of your shortbread biscuits as well? Thank you.

  LRK: Oh, yes please! I do remember these, they’re fabulous.

  MRH: A recipe from the first Mrs Hudson.

  LRK: Her granddaughter does—

  MRH: Great-granddaughter, in law.

  LRK: Right. Well, this Mrs Hudson does the earlier proud. No, thanks, I won’t take honey. Although I’m glad the bees seem to be doing well.

  MRH: Yes, so far Holmes has avoided the worldwide hive plague. He has a number of theories why—

  LRK: (sotto voce) Of course he does.

  MRH: —but essentially he finds it best to treat Nature as Nature has developed over the centuries. The potentially dire consequences of modern agriculture encourage one to be conservative.

  LRK: An interesting statement from a renowned iconoclast and experimenter. Is this thing working? Yes, looks like. Shall we get started? Good morning, Miss Russell. Happy anniversary!

  MRH: Of what is this the anniversary?

  LRK: Your publication—or, I suppose, ours. Believe it or not, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice came out twenty years ago.

  MRH: I do believe it. I hear of myself everywhere, since you became my ‘chronicler.’

  LRK: The Greek Interpreter!

  MRH: I beg your pardon?

  LRK: Oh, nothing. I hope you don’t mind, that you have become rather famous?

  MRH: It was inevitable, once I decided to send the manuscripts to you. My name has even appeared in our local newspaper. Although the world does still seem determined to believe that these are novels, rather than memoirs.

  LRK: Yes, I am sorry about that, but the publishers—

  MRH: However, I will admit that my feelings about that oddity have changed somewhat, of late.

  LRK: How so?

  MRH: I have decided that there is a distinct advantage in being thought fictional. We have had considerably fewer American hiking boots tramping through our garden since that belief has taken hold.

  LRK: So that’s good, then.

  MRH: Yes, it was a pleasant discovery, although it still rather takes me aback when I discover that I am fictional.

  LRK: [Laughs] I’m glad I could help.

  MRH: So, you were saying it is the anniversary of our little joint venture. Are you intending to mark it in some way? Apart from coming here to visit, that is?

  LRK: Yes, there are a number of events going on this year. Not the least of which is a Companion volume, with background information on the various, er, novels.

  MRH: A whimsical compendium? What a good idea.

  LRK: Of course, in it we will treat the stories as…

  MRH: As what?

  LRK: As, well, your… memoirs.

  MRH: [Silence]

  LRK: Since most of the people who will be interested in it are your enthusiastic readers, you see—and they’re much more interested in playing “the Game” than in analyzing fiction.

  MRH: [Silence]

  LRK: [Hurriedly] Really I don’t believe you’ll find it makes the least bit of difference, to you personally. It’s like any public figure—the fantasy life of the fans takes over, and becomes more important than any firm and verifiable fact. I mean, take this house of yours: you’re not on any map. The only people who find you have more or less stumbled across the garden wall, isn’t that right?

  MRH: Well, true enough.

  LRK: In fact, you and I once had a laugh about how anyone wanting to find Sherlock Holmes would be better served by reversing any map built from the information in your memoirs.

  MRH: I remember.

  LRK: Basically, other than you living on the Sussex Downs, the clues you provide are so deceptive, a person might as well set out blindfolded from the Eastbourne pier.

  MRH: I believe a few of them may have tried that.

  LRK: So, can you tell your, er, fans—

  MRH: ‘Readers’?

  LRK: Yes, that’s better: your readers. Can you tell those who read this interview something about—

  MRH: I trust you are not about to ask me about my personal life?

  LRK: Good God, no. I won’t make that mistake a second time. No, I was going to say that they would be interested to hear something about your life at present. What you and Mr. Holmes are doing these days?

  MRH: Holmes and I? Yes, let me see. Many of our activities cannot be spoken of.

  LRK: Because you and he are private people, we all understand that.

  MRH: I suppose, yes. But I was thinking more of the Official Secrets Act. We are legally bound to silence on much of what occupies us, these days.

  LRK: You mean…espionage sorts of things?

  MRH: Some of it could be categorized as such.

  LRK: Really?

  MRH: You think us too antique to be of use to Her Majesty’s Government?

  LRK: Oh no, no. I don’t, not for a minute. But I’m surprised the government doesn’t assume you and he are…

  MRH: The phrase is, I believe, ‘past it.’

  LRK: Exactly.

  MRH. It took some persuading. I had even to learn to knit in order to convince them that there is no person more invisible and less suspicious than a white-haired lady.

  LRK: Well, I guess I can see that. But what about Holmes? Surely he doesn’t knit?

  MRH: He mumbles. A frayed collar, a smear of egg-yolk on the lapel, and a habit of m
uttering aloud enable a person to listen in on any conversation in the world. Men who are rabidly paranoid about satellite cameras and listening devices in the trees will sit down on a park bench in full hearing of an old coot with uncombed hair. Of course, it does mean that Holmes must remain unkempt for rather longer than he cares to. But if it is in service to Her Majesty, he will do so.

  LRK: That picture may entirely change my attitude toward the homeless.

  MRH: I am glad. And now, I fear I must end this. I have a commitment on the docks in Portsmouth. It would appear that drugs smugglers are often absurdly vulnerable to the soft appearance of grandmotherly types. I will need to excavate my knitting project from the laboratory before I leave. Tell me, Ms King: do infants actually wear fuzzy woolen sweaters any more?

  LRK: Probably not. But I don’t imagine that a drug smuggler knows that.

  MRH: Very true. Thank you for coming to visit. And do please wish my... readership many happy returns of the day.

  LRK: And a happy twentieth anniversary to you, as well. Good luck with your drug smuggler.

  MRH: Luck, my dear Ms King, has little to do with it.

  Five:

  Addenda, I-III

  My mind was both empty and occupied, all of the thoughts buzzing far below the surface. (Language of Bees)

  *

  When Holmes stoops to wheedle, God help us all. (Justice Hall)

  *

  The night air moved up the Downs, washing over the sea and orchard. I breathed it in, and knew that henceforth, loneliness would smell to me like fermenting apples. (Language of Bees)

  I

  Recipes

  (from Mrs Hudson)

  Perhaps to acknowledge that she was not always the most forthcoming co-respondent in the above interview, a few days after the above conversation took place, Laurie received an envelope containing the following recipe. One does not need to ask if Miss Russell herself attempted the cookies: this is a woman who can reduce a tin of Heinz beans to carbon in minutes.

  The recipe, which the good landlady converted to American terms for the purpose, makes tongue-in-cheek reference to “The Naval Treaty”, in which Holmes compares that earlier Mrs Hudson’s idea of breakfast to those of a Scotchwoman.