The Mary Russell Companion Page 11

  At Coryton, in Devon, many hours later, I found the station deserted and dusk fast closing in. I stood there with my rucksack over my shoulder, boots on feet, and hair in cap, listening to the train chuff away towards the next minuscule stop. An elderly married couple had also got off here, climbed laboriously into the sagging farm cart that awaited them, and been driven away. I was alone. It was raining. It was cold.

  There was a certain inevitability to the situation, I reflected, and dropped my rucksack to the ground to remove my gloves, my waterproof, and a warmer hat. Straightening up, I happened to turn slightly and noticed a small, light-coloured square tacked up to the post by which I had walked. Had I not turned, or had it been half an hour darker, I should have missed it entirely.

  Russell, it said on the front. Unfolded, it proved to be a torn-off scrap of paper on which I could just make out the words, in Holmes‘s writing:

  Lew House is two miles north.

  Do you know the words to “Onward Christian Soldiers” or “Widdecombe Fair”?

  —H.

  I dug back into the rucksack, this time for a torch. When I had confirmed that the words did indeed say what I had thought, I tucked the note away, excavated clear to the bottom of the rucksack for the compass to check which branch of the track fading into the murk was pointing north, and set out.

  I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant by that note. I had heard the two songs, one a thumping hymn and the other one of those overly precious folk songs, but I did not know their words other than one song’s decidedly ominous (to a Jew) introductory image of Christian soldiers marching behind their “cross of Jesus” and the other’s endless and drearily jolly chorus of “Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.” In the first place, when I took my infidel self into a Christian church it was not usually of the sort wherein such hymns were standard fare, and as for the second, well, thus far none of my friends had succumbed to the artsy allure of sandals, folk songs, and Morris dancing. I had not seen Holmes in nearly three weeks, and it did occur to me that perhaps in the interval my husband had lost his mind.

  (Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes is available as an ebook, through her website. For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)

  O Jerusalem

  Russellisms

  “But women do not fight.”

  “This one does,” I answered.

  **

  “In all my years, I don’t believe I have ever before required the services of a midwife, Russell.”

  **

  Never, never will I understand men.

  All the world’s stage: places Russell goes in this Memoir

  Palestine (modern Israel): Javneh, Acra, the Sinai, Beersheva, Jerusalem, Dead Sea

  (See the Maps chapter for details.)

  Laurie’s Remarks

  (O Jerusalem, which re-visits an episode described briefly in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, also re-visits Russell and Holmes at an earlier stage in their relationship. This makes for an interesting flavor in the novel, since a reader familiar with the Memoirs knows more than the two people in question do…)

  Memoirs, along with their fictional counterpart, historical novels, are appealing not because they tell us about the past. Yes, the information gained can be both entertaining and useful, but we read them not for information, but for knowledge. We read them because they tell us not only where we come from, but who we are today. They are mirrors—through a glass, darkly—that present us with another way of looking at ourselves and our world.

  Take O Jerusalem. Few visitors to that holiest of cities would suspect the complexity of the world beneath their feet, those long-buried historical remnants and built-over alleyways, crypts, and cellars dating to Roman times, and before. Most visitors are aware of Jerusalem as a historical being, of course: why else come here? But the sheer size of its levels, the unseen worlds beneath hard paving stones: those take some work of the imagination.

  The layers of Jerusalem

  The Twentieth century, although close to the surface in the city’s historical layers, is one of the more tempestuous—not the early years, but the world went up in flames in 1914, and Palestine with it. When the Turks set themselves against the British in the Great War, their Palestine became the southernmost Front of the War.

  In the autumn of 1917, the Great War that everyone had expected to be finished before its first Christmas was looking at a third holiday season. The Western Front was now 450 miles of mud and blood. Gallipoli had been a catastrophic failure, the Bolshevik revolution rendered Russia uncertain, and the Kaiser’s bombs were falling on central London.

  Then in December, General Edmund Allenby electrified the British people with his Christmas gift: Jerusalem, wrenched from the Ottomans in a deft series of battles (of troops and of wits) that shook the foundations of the German ally. Britain’s conquering hero dusted off his boots and walked through the ancient city’s gate (where the Kaiser had driven), lending heart and determination to his countrymen in the cold north.

  General Allenby entering Jerusalem, 1917

  Then the work began.

  Memoirs about early Twentieth century life in Jerusalem (such as that by Wasif Jawhariyyeh) present a city cheerfully united under the Turks. Muslim, Jewish, and Christian: all People of the Book, all equally poor, equally oppressed, equally squeezed by the Ottoman grip. The children of the three communities played together, the men worked together, the women marketed together. Differences in religious belief were among the lesser barriers to peaceful co-existence.

  And then came the Great War, and Allenby’s victory. With the sudden release from Ottoman rule, the scramble for rights began, and escalated, until such amiable co-existence has become unimaginable. O Jerusalem was written well before 9/11, but even then it was clear that the well-intended decisions made by Allenby, Samuel, and the rest had merely stirred the waters into a whirlpool, pulling the entire region into the depths.

  Perhaps Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes can set them straight.

  Excerpt

  The skiff was black, its gunwales scant inches above the waves. Like my two companions, I was dressed in dark clothing, my face smeared with lamp-black. The rowlocks were wrapped and muffled; the loudest sounds in all the night were the light slap of water on wood and the rhythmic rustle of Steven’s clothing as he pulled at the oars.

  Holmes stiffened first, then Steven’s oars went still, and finally I too heard it: a distant deep thrum of engines off the starboard side. It was not the boat we had come on, but it was approaching fast, much too fast to outrun. Steven shipped the oars without a sound, and the three of us folded up into the bottom of the skiff.

  The engines grew, and grew, until they filled the night and seemed to be right upon us, and still they grew, until I began to doubt the wisdom of this enterprise before it had even begun. Holmes and I kept our faces pressed against the boards and stared up at the outline that was Steven, his head raised slightly above the boat. He turned to us, and I could see the faint gleam of his teeth as he spoke.

  “They’re coming this way, might not see us if they don’t put their searchlights on. If they’re going to hit us I’ll give you ten seconds’ warning. Fill your lungs, dive off to the stern as far as you can, and swim like the living hell. Best take your shoes off now.”

  Holmes and I wrestled with each other’s laces and tugged, then lay again waiting. The heavy churn seemed just feet away, but Steven said nothing. We remained frozen. My teeth ached with the noise, and the thud of the ship’s engines became my heart-beat, and then terrifyingly a huge wall loomed above us and dim lights flew past over our heads. Without warning the skiff dropped and then leapt into the air, spinning about in time to hit the next wave broadside, drenching us and coming within a hair’s-breadth of overturning before we were slapped back into place by the following one, sliding down into the trough and mounting the next. Down and up and down and around we were tossed until eventually, wet through and
dizzy as a child’s top, we bobbled on the sea like the piece of flotsam we were and listened to the engines fade.

  Steven sat up. “Anyone overboard?” he asked softly.

  “We’re both here,” Holmes assured him. His voice was not completely level, and from the bow came the brief flash of Steven’s teeth.

  “Welcome to Palestine,” he whispered, grinning ferociously.

  ***

  The remaining mile passed without incident. Even with the added water on board, Steven worked the oars with a strong, smooth ease that would have put him on an eights team in Oxford. He glanced over his shoulder occasionally at the approaching shore, where we were to meet two gentlemen in the employ of His Majesty’s government, Ali and Mahmoud Hazr. Other than their names, I hadn’t a clue what awaited us here.

  Looking up from the bailing, I eventually decided that he was making for a spot midway between a double light north of us and a slightly amber single light to the south. Swells began to rise beneath the bow and the sound of breaking waves drew closer, until suddenly we were skimming through the white foam of mild surf, and with a jar we crunched onto the beach.

  Steven immediately shipped his oars, stood, and stepped over the prow of the little boat into the shallow water. Holmes grabbed his haversack and went next, jumping lightly onto the coarse shingle. I followed, pausing for a moment on the bow to squint through my salt-smeared spectacles at the dark shore. Steven put his hand up to help me, and as I shifted my eyes downward they registered with a shock two figures standing perfectly still, thirty feet or so behind Holmes.

  “Holmes,” I hissed, “there are two women behind you!”

  Steven’s hand on mine hesitated briefly, then tugged again. “Miss Russell, there’ll be a patrol any minute. It’s all right.”

  I stepped cautiously into the water beside him and moved up to where Holmes stood.

  “Salaam aleikum, Steven,” came a voice from the night: accented, low, and by no means that of a woman.

  “Aleikum es-salaam, Ali. I hope you are well.”

  “Praise be to God,” was the reply.

  “I have a pair of pigeons for you.”

  “They could have landed at a more convenient time, Steven.”

  “Shall I take them away again?”

  “No, Steven. We accept delivery. Mahmoud regrets we cannot ask you to come and drink coffee, but at the moment, it would not be wise. Maalesh,” he added, using the all-purpose Arabic expression that was a verbal shrug of the shoulders at life’s inequities and accidents.

  “I thank Mahmoud, and will accept another time. Go with God, Ali.”

  “Allah watch your back, Steven.”

  Steven put his hip to the boat and shoved it out, then scrambled on board; his oars flashed briefly. Before he had cleared the breakwater, Holmes was hurrying me up the beach in the wake of the two flowing black shapes. I stumbled when my boots left the shingle and hit a patch of paving stones, and then we were on a street, in what seemed to be a village or the outskirts of a town.

  For twenty breathless minutes our path was hindered by nothing more than uneven ground and the occasional barking mongrel, but abruptly the two figures in front of us whirled around, swept us into a filthy corner, and there we cowered, shivering in our damp clothing, while two pairs of military boots trod slowly past and two torches illuminated various nooks and crannies, including ours. I froze when the light shone bright around the edges of the cloaks that covered us, but the patrol must have seen only a pile of rubbish and rags, because the light played down our alley for only a brief instant, and went away, leaving us a pile of softly breathing bodies. Some of us stank of garlic and goats.

  (For more background and a longer excerpt, see this book’s page on the Laurie R. King website.)

  Justice Hall

  Russellisms

  Justice Hall was the most self-centred house I had ever seen.

  **

  Three footman and Ogilby were on hand to ensure we did not starve, die of thirst, or pull a muscle reaching for the salt.

  **

  When Holmes stoops to wheedle, God help us all.

  All the world’s stage: places Russell goes in this Memoir

  England: Sussex, Arley Holt (Berkshire), London, Dorking

  France: Paris, Lyons

  US: New York

  Canada (Ontario): Toronto, Webster

  (See the Maps chapter for details.)

  Laurie’s Remarks

  The English country house was a world to itself. A showcase, yes: a place to invite one’s friends for a Friday-to-Monday of drinks, huge meals, riding, shooting in season, and a bit of discreet scuttling-through-the-corridors after the lights went out. But the country house was also the center of a self-contained working estate, a piece of economic machinery that meshed together gears as tiny as the retired nanny who kept a few chickens and as large the lord of the manor himself.

  The machinery turned smoothly over the centuries, apart from minor rubs when crops failed, when politics intervened, until a problem cropped up—and the larger the problem, the worse the grinding noise.

  Justice Hall is one such working estate, and Justice Hall the story of what happens when the biggest gear of them is prised away and smashed.

  During the Great War, British men and boys as young as sixteen years old arrived in France and walked toward the guns. Hours, days—weeks on end with mud to the knees, crawling with lice, bullets clipping anything that stuck above the parapets. But most devastating of all were the guns: artillery, pounding the earth, shattering the nerves, round after round after endless round.

  By all the days that I have lived

  Make me a soldier, Lord.

  —W.N.Hodgson

  Despite prayer, despite the fellowship of the trenches, nerves broke. When it happened to an officer, he was whisked away to a quiet place, fed and rested and bathed and sent on to a desk job. When it happened to an enlisted man, he was shot. In the Great War, 306 British men—some of them little more than boys—were convicted of desertion and cowardice, and shot by their fellows at dawn. The men were not pardoned until 2006. This is the background of Justice Hall.

  What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

  —Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  —Wilfred Owen

  Verdun 1916

  The bone-deep commitment to “God, King and Country,” and the feeling of the Great War’s noble purpose (particularly among literate Britons such as Vera Brittain and Wilfred Owen) keep the War alive in British hearts.

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

  Pro patria mori

  —Wilfred Owen

  Wilfred Owen

  Good and sweet it is, to die for one’s country. But to some, it is even harder to live for its sake.

  Excerpt

  I fluffed my fingers through my drying hair and picked up my book. Silence reigned, but for the crackle of logs and the turn of pages. After a few minutes, I chuckled involuntarily. Holmes looked up, startled.

  “What on earth are you reading?” he demanded.

  “It’s not the book, Holmes, it’s the situation. All you need is an aged retriever lying across your slippers, we’d be a portrait of family life. The artist could call it ‘After a Long Day’; he’d sell hundreds of copies.”

  “We’ve had a fair number of long days,” he noted, although without complaint. “And I was just reflecting how very pleasant it was, to be without demands. For a short time,” he added, as aware as I that the respite would be brief between easy fatigue and the onset of grey boredom.

  I smiled at him. “It is nice, Holmes, I agree.”

  “I find myself particularly enjoying the delusory and fleeting impression that my wife spends any time at all seated at the feet of her husband. One might almost be led to think of the word ‘subservient,’” he added, “seeing your position
at the moment.”

  “Don’t push it, Holmes,” I growled. “In a few more minutes my hair will be –”

  My words and the moment were chopped short by a fist crashing against the front door. The entire house seemed to shudder convulsively in reaction, and then Holmes sighed, called to Mrs Hudson that he would answer it, and leant over to deposit his newspaper on the table. However, I was already on my feet; it is one thing to relax in the presence of one’s husband and his long-time housekeeper, but quite another to have one’s neighbour or farm manager walk in and find one in dishabille upon the floor.

  “I’ll see who it is, Holmes,” I said. He rose, maintaining the pipe in his hand as a clear message to our intruder that he had no intention of interrupting his evening’s rest, and tightening the belt of his smoking jacket with a gesture of securing defences, but he stayed where he was while I went to repel boarders at our door.

  The intruder was neither a neighbour nor a lost and benighted Downs rambler, nor even Patrick come for assistance with an escaped cow or a chimney fire. It was a stranger dressed for Town, a thick-set, clean- shaven, unevenly swarthy figure in an ill-fitting and out-of-date city suit that exuded the odour of mothballs, wearing a stiff collar such as even Holmes no longer used and a rather garish green silk necktie that had been sampled by moth. The hat on his head was an equally ancient bowler, and his right hand was in the process of extending itself to me- not to shake, but openhanded, as a plea. A thin scar travelled up the side of the man’s brown wrist to disappear under the frayed cuff of the shirt, a thin scar that caught at my gaze in a curious fashion.