While I'm still reading Deryn Lake's book, next up for me is THE LANGUAGE OF BEES by Laurie R. King featuring Mary Russell, student and then wife of Sherlock Holmes. Here's an excerpt:
Chapter One
First Birth (1): The boy came into being on a night of celestial alignment, when a comet travelled the firmament and the sky threw forth a million shooting stars to herald his arrival. Testimony, I:1
AS HOMECOMINGS GO, IT WAS NOT AUSPICIOUS. The train was late.
Portsmouth sweltered under a fitful breeze.
Sherlock Holmes paced up and down, smoking one cigarette after another, his already bleak mood growing darker by the minute. I sat, sinuses swollen with the dregs of a summer cold I’d picked up in New York, trying to ignore my partner’s mood and my own headache.
Patrick, my farm manager, had come to meet the ship with the post, the day’s newspapers, and a beaming face; in no time at all the smile was gone, the letters and papers hastily thrust into my hands, and he had vanished to, he claimed, see what the delay was about. Welcome home.
Just as it seemed Holmes was about to fling his coat to the side and set off for home on foot, whistles blew, doors clattered, and the train roused itself from torpor. We boarded, flinging our compartment’s windows as far open as they would go. Patrick cast a wary glance at Holmes and claimed an acquaintance in the third- class carriage. We removed as many of our outer garments as propriety would allow, and I tore away the first pages of the newspaper to construct a fan, cooling myself with the announcements and the agony column. Holmes slumped into the seat and reached for his cigarette case yet again. I recognised the symptoms, although I was puzzled as to the cause. Granted, an uneventful week in New York followed by long days at sea–none of our fellow passengers having been thoughtful enough to bleed to death in the captain’s cabin, drop down dead of a mysterious poison, or vanish over the rails–might cause a man like Holmes to chafe at inactivity, nonetheless, one might imagine that a sea voyage wouldn’t be altogether a burden after seven hard- pressed months abroad.* And in any case, we were now headed for home, where his bees, his newspapers, and the home he had created twenty years before awaited him. One might expect a degree of satisfaction, even anticipation; instead, the man was all gloom and cigarettes.
I had been married to him for long enough that I did not even consider addressing the conundrum then and there, but said merely, “Holmes, if you don’t slow down on that tobacco, your lungs will turn to leather. And mine. Would you prefer the papers, or the post?” I held out the newspaper, which I had already skimmed while we were waiting, and took the first item on the other stack, a picture post- card from Dr Watson showing a village square in Portugal. To my surprise, Holmes reached past the proffered newspaper and snatched the pile of letters from my lap.
Another oddity. In the normal course of events, Holmes was much attached to the daily news–several dailies, in fact, when he could get them. Over the previous months, he had found it so frustrating to be days, even weeks in arrears of current events (current English events, that is) that one day in northern India, when confronted with a threeweek- old Times, he had sworn in disgust and flung the thing onto the fire, declaring, “I scarcely leave England before the criminal classes swarm like cockroaches. I cannot bear to hear of their antics.” Since then he had stuck to local papers and refused all offers of those from London–or, on the rare occasions he had succumbed to their siren call, he had perused the headlines with the tight- screwed features of a man palpating a wound: fearing the worst but unable to keep his fingers from the injury. Frankly, I had been astonished back in Portsmouth when he hadn’t ripped that day’s Times out of Patrick’s hand.
Now, he dug his way into the post like a tunnelling badger, tossing out behind him the occasional remark and snippet of information. Trying to prise conversation out of Sherlock Holmes when he had his teeth into a project would be akin to tapping said preoccupied badger on the shoulder, so I took out my handkerchief and used it, and addressed myself first to the uninspiring view, then to the unread sections of the papers.
Some minutes passed, then: “Mycroft has no news,” my partner and husband grumbled, allowing the single sheet of his brother’s ornate calligraphy to drift onto the upholstery beside him.
“Is he well?” I asked.
My only reply was the ripping open of the next envelope. On reflection, I decided that the letter would not say if its writer was well or not: True, Mycroft had been very ill the previous winter, but even if he were at death’s door, the only reason he would mention the fact in a letter would be if some urgent piece of business made his impending demise a piece of information he thought we needed.
Holmes read; I read. He dropped the next letter, a considerably thicker one, on top of Mycroft’s, and said in a high and irritated voice, “Mrs Hudson spends three pages lamenting that she will not be at home to greet us, two pages giving quite unnecessary details of her friend Mrs Turner’s illness that requires her to remain in Surrey, two more pages reassuring us that her young assistant Lulu is more than capable, and then in the final paragraph deigns to mention that one of my hives is going mad.”
“ ‘Going mad’? What does that mean?”
He gave an eloquent lift of the fingers to indicate that her information was as substantial as the air above, and returned to the post. Now, though, his interest sharpened. He studied the next envelope closely, then held it to his nose, drawing in a deep and appreciative breath.
Some wives might have cast a suspicious eye at the fond expression that came over his features. I went back to my newspapers.
The train rattled, hot wind blew in the window, voices rose and fell from the next compartment, but around us, the silence grew thick with the press of words unsaid and problems unfaced. The two surviving aeroplanes from the American world flight were still in Reykjavík, I noted. And a conference on German war reparations would begin in London during the week- end. There had been another raid on Bright Young Things (including some lesser royals) at a country house gathering where cocaine flowed. Ah–but here was an appropriate interruption to the heavy silence: I read aloud the latest turn in the Leopold and Loeb sentence hearing, two young men who had murdered a boy to alleviate tedium, and to prove they could.
Holmes turned a page.
A few minutes later, I tried again. “Here’s a letter to The Times concerning a Druid suicide at Stonehenge–or, no, there was a suicide somewhere else, and a small riot at Stonehenge. Interesting: I hadn’t realised the Druids had staged a return. I wonder what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say on the matter?”
He might have been deaf.
I shot a glance at the letter that so engrossed him, but did not recognise either the cream stock or the pinched, antique writing. I set down the newspaper long enough to read first Mrs Hudson’s letter, which I had to admit was more tantalising than informative, then Mycroft’s brief missive, but when I reached their end, Holmes was still frowning at the lengthy epistle from his unknown correspondent.
Kicking myself for failing to bring a sufficient number of books from New York, I resumed The Times where, for lack of unread Druidical Letters to the Editor, or Dispatches from Reykjavík, or even News from Northumberland, I was driven to a survey of the adverts: Debenhams’ sketches delivered the gloomy verdict that I would need my skirt lengths adjusted again; Thomas Cook offered me educational cruises to Egypt, Berlin, and an upcoming solar eclipse; the Morris Motors adverts reminded me that it was high time to think about a new motor- car; and the London Pavilion offered me a Technicolor cowboy adventure called Wanderer in the Wasteland.
“They are swarming,” Holmes said.
I looked up from the newsprint to stare first at him, then at the thick document in his hand.
“Who– Ah,” I said, struck by enlightenment, or at least, memory. “The bees.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “You asked what it meant, that the hive had gone mad. It is swarming. The one beside the burial mound in the far field,” he added.
“That letter is from your beekeeper friend,” I suggested.
By way of response, he handed me the letter.
The cramped writing and the motion of the train combined with the arcane terminology to render the pages somewhat less illuminating than the personal adverts in the paper. Over the years I had become tolerably familiar with the language of keeping bees, and had even from time to time lent an extra pair of arms to some procedure or other, but this writer’s interests, and expertise, were far beyond mine. And my nose was too stuffy to detect any odour of honey rising from the pages.
When I had reached its end, I asked, “How does swarming qualify as madn...
This book is 9th in series of 9. I'm not a big fan of Sherlock Holmes (blasphemy!) but I do like this series quite a lot.
After that book, I'll probably begin the new quartet by Nora Roberts, VISION IN WHITE. Here's an excerpt:
PROLOGUE
By the time she was eight, Mackensie Elliot had been married fourteen times. She’d married each of her three best friends—as both bride and groom—her best friend’s brother (under his protest), two dogs, three cats, and a rabbit. She’d served at countless other weddings as maid of honor, bridesmaid, groomsman, best man, and officiant. Though the dissolutions were invariably amicable, none of the marriages lasted beyond an afternoon. The transitory aspect of marriage came as no surprise to Mac, as her own parents boasted two each—so far.
Wedding Day wasn’t her favorite game, but she kind of liked being the priest or the reverend or the justice of the peace. Or, after attending her father’s second wife’s nephew’s bar mitzvah, the rabbi.
Plus, she enjoyed the cupcakes or fancy cookies and fizzy lemonade always served at the reception. It was Parker’s favorite game, and Wedding Day always took place on the Brown Estate, with its expansive gardens, pretty groves, and silvery pond. In the cold Connecticut winters, the ceremony might take place in front of one of the roaring fires inside the big house. They had simple weddings and elaborate affairs. Royal weddings, star- crossed elopements, circus themes, and pirate ships. All ideas were seriously considered and voted upon, and no theme or costume too outrageous. Still, with fourteen marriages under her belt, Mac grew a bit weary of Wedding Day. Until she experienced her seminal moment. For her eighth birthday Mackensie’s charming and mostly absent father sent her a Nikon camera. She’d never expressed any interest in photography, and initially pushed it away with the other odd gifts he’d given or sent since the divorce. But Mac’s mother told her mother, and Grandma muttered and complained about "feckless, useless Geoffrey Elliot" and the inappropriate gift of an adult camera for a young girl who’d be better off with a Barbie doll. As she habitually disagreed with her grandmother on principle, Mac’s interest in the camera piqued. To annoy Grandma— who was visiting for the summer instead of being in her retirement community in Scottsdale, where Mac strongly believed she belonged—Mac hauled the Nikon around with her. She toyed with it, experimented. She took pictures of her room, of her feet, of her friends. Shots that were blurry and dark, or fuzzy and washed out. With her lack of success, and her mother’s impending divorce from her stepfather, Mac’s interest in the Nikon began to wane. Even years later she couldn’t say what prompted her to bring it along to Parker’s that pretty summer afternoon for Wedding Day.
Every detail of the traditional garden wedding had been planned. Emmaline as the bride and Laurel as groom would exchange their vows beneath the rose arbor. Emma would wear the lace veil and train Parker’s mother had made out of an old tablecloth, while Harold, Parker’s aging and affable golden retriever walked her down the garden path to give her away. A
selection of Barbies, Kens, and Cabbage Patch Kids, along with a variety of stuffed animals lined the path as guests.
"It’s a very private ceremony," Parker relayed as she fussed with Emma’s veil. "With a small patio reception to follow. Now, where’s the best man?" Laurel, her knee recently skinned, shoved through a trio of hydrangeas. "He ran away, and went up a tree after a squirrel. I can’t get him to come down." Parker rolled her eyes. "I’ll get him. You’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding. It’s bad luck. Mac, you need to fix Emma’s veil and get her bouquet. Laurel and I’ll get Mr. Fish out of the tree." "I’d rather go swimming," Mac said as she gave Emma’s veil an absent tug. "We can go after I get married." "I guess. Aren’t you tired of getting married?" "Oh, I don’t mind. And it smells so good out here. Everything’s so pretty." Mac gave Emma the clutch of dandelions and wild violets they were allowed to pick. "You look pretty." It was invariably true. Emma’s dark, shiny hair tumbled under the white lace. Her eyes sparkled a deep, deep brown as she sniff ed the weed bouquet. She was tanned, sort of all golden, Mac thought, and scowled at her own milk white skin. The curse of a redhead, her mother said, as she got her carroty hair from her father. At eight, Mac was tall for her age and skinny as a stick, with teeth already trapped in hated braces. She thought that, beside her, Emmaline looked like a gypsy princess. Parker and Laurel came back, giggling with the feline best man clutched in Parker’s arms. "Everybody has to take their places." Parker poured the cat into Laurel’s arms. Mac, you need to get dressed! Emma—" "I don’t want to be maid of honor." Mac looked at the poofy Cinderella dress draped over a garden bench. "That thing’s scratchy, and it’s hot. Why can’t Mr. Fish be maid of honor, and I’ll be best man?"
"Because it’s already planned. Everybody’s nervous before a wedding." Parker flipped back her long brown pigtails, then picked up the dress to
inspect it for tears or stains. Satisfied, she pushed it at Mac. "It’s okay. It’s going to be a beautiful ceremony, with true love and happy ever after."
"My mother says happy ever after’s a bunch of bull." There was a moment of silence after Mac’s statement. The unspoken word divorce seemed to hang in the air. "I don’t think it has to be." Her eyes full of sympathy, Parker reached out, ran her hand along Mac’s bare arm. "I don’t want to wear the dress. I don’t want to be a bridesmaid. I—" "Okay. That’s okay. We can have a pretend maid of honor. Maybe you could take pictures." Mac looked down at the camera she’d forgotten hung around her neck. "They never come out right." "Maybe they will this time. It’ll be fun. You can be the official wedding photographer." "Take one of me and Mr. Fish," Laurel insisted, and pushed her face and the cat’s together. "Take one, Mac!" With little enthusiasm, Mac lifted the camera, pressed the shutter. "We should’ve thought of this before! You can take formal portraits of the bride and groom, and more pictures during the ceremony." Busy with the new idea, Parker hung the Cinderella costume on the hydrangea bush. "It’ll be good, it’ll be fun. You need to go down the path with the bride and Harold. Try to take some good ones. I’ll wait, then start the music. Let’s go!" There would be cupcakes and lemonade, Mac reminded herself. And swimming later, and fun. It didn’t matter if the pictures were stupid, didn’t matter that her grandmother was right and she was too young for the camera. It didn’t matter that her mother was getting divorced again, or that her stepfather, who’d been okay, had already moved out. It didn’t matter that happy ever after was bull, because it was all pretend anyway. She tried to take pictures of Emma and the obliging Harold, imagined getting the film back and seeing the blurry figures and smudges of her thumb, like always.
When the music started she felt bad that she hadn’t put on the scratchy dress and given Emma a maid of honor, just because her mother and grandmother had put her in a bad mood. So she circled around to stand to the side and tried harder to take a nice picture of Harold walking Emma down the garden path. It looked different through the lens, she thought, the way she could focus on Emma’s face—the way the veil lay over her hair. And the way the sun shined through the lace was pretty. She took more pictures as Parker began the "Dearly Beloved" as the Reverend Whistledown, as Emma and Laurel took hands and Harold curled up to sleep and snore at their feet. She noticed how bright Laurel’s hair was, how the sun caught the edges of it beneath the tall black hat she wore as groom. How Mr. Fish’s whiskers twitched as he yawned. When it happened, it happened as much inside Mac as out. Her three friends were grouped under the lush white curve of the arbor, a triangle of pretty young girls. Some instinct had Mac shifting her position, just slightly, tilting the camera just a bit. She didn’t know it as composition, only that it looked nicer through the lens. And the blue butterfly fluttered across her range of vision to land on the head of a butter yellow dandelion in Emma’s bouquet. The surprise and plea sure struck the three faces in that triangle under the white roses almost as one. Mac pressed the shutter. She knew, knew, the photograph wouldn’t be blurry and dark or fuzzy and washed out. Her thumb wouldn’t be blocking the lens. She knew exactly what the picture would look like, knew her grandmother had been wrong after all. Maybe happy ever after was bull, but she knew she wanted to take more pictures of moments that were happy. Because then they were ever after.
Wedding Day wasn’t her favorite game, but she kind of liked being the priest or the reverend or the justice of the peace. Or, after attending her father’s second wife’s nephew’s bar mitzvah, the rabbi.
Plus, she enjoyed the cupcakes or fancy cookies and fizzy lemonade always served at the reception. It was Parker’s favorite game, and Wedding Day always took place on the Brown Estate, with its expansive gardens, pretty groves, and silvery pond. In the cold Connecticut winters, the ceremony might take place in front of one of the roaring fires inside the big house. They had simple weddings and elaborate affairs. Royal weddings, star- crossed elopements, circus themes, and pirate ships. All ideas were seriously considered and voted upon, and no theme or costume too outrageous. Still, with fourteen marriages under her belt, Mac grew a bit weary of Wedding Day. Until she experienced her seminal moment. For her eighth birthday Mackensie’s charming and mostly absent father sent her a Nikon camera. She’d never expressed any interest in photography, and initially pushed it away with the other odd gifts he’d given or sent since the divorce. But Mac’s mother told her mother, and Grandma muttered and complained about "feckless, useless Geoffrey Elliot" and the inappropriate gift of an adult camera for a young girl who’d be better off with a Barbie doll. As she habitually disagreed with her grandmother on principle, Mac’s interest in the camera piqued. To annoy Grandma— who was visiting for the summer instead of being in her retirement community in Scottsdale, where Mac strongly believed she belonged—Mac hauled the Nikon around with her. She toyed with it, experimented. She took pictures of her room, of her feet, of her friends. Shots that were blurry and dark, or fuzzy and washed out. With her lack of success, and her mother’s impending divorce from her stepfather, Mac’s interest in the Nikon began to wane. Even years later she couldn’t say what prompted her to bring it along to Parker’s that pretty summer afternoon for Wedding Day.
Every detail of the traditional garden wedding had been planned. Emmaline as the bride and Laurel as groom would exchange their vows beneath the rose arbor. Emma would wear the lace veil and train Parker’s mother had made out of an old tablecloth, while Harold, Parker’s aging and affable golden retriever walked her down the garden path to give her away. A
selection of Barbies, Kens, and Cabbage Patch Kids, along with a variety of stuffed animals lined the path as guests.
"It’s a very private ceremony," Parker relayed as she fussed with Emma’s veil. "With a small patio reception to follow. Now, where’s the best man?" Laurel, her knee recently skinned, shoved through a trio of hydrangeas. "He ran away, and went up a tree after a squirrel. I can’t get him to come down." Parker rolled her eyes. "I’ll get him. You’re not supposed to see the bride before the wedding. It’s bad luck. Mac, you need to fix Emma’s veil and get her bouquet. Laurel and I’ll get Mr. Fish out of the tree." "I’d rather go swimming," Mac said as she gave Emma’s veil an absent tug. "We can go after I get married." "I guess. Aren’t you tired of getting married?" "Oh, I don’t mind. And it smells so good out here. Everything’s so pretty." Mac gave Emma the clutch of dandelions and wild violets they were allowed to pick. "You look pretty." It was invariably true. Emma’s dark, shiny hair tumbled under the white lace. Her eyes sparkled a deep, deep brown as she sniff ed the weed bouquet. She was tanned, sort of all golden, Mac thought, and scowled at her own milk white skin. The curse of a redhead, her mother said, as she got her carroty hair from her father. At eight, Mac was tall for her age and skinny as a stick, with teeth already trapped in hated braces. She thought that, beside her, Emmaline looked like a gypsy princess. Parker and Laurel came back, giggling with the feline best man clutched in Parker’s arms. "Everybody has to take their places." Parker poured the cat into Laurel’s arms. Mac, you need to get dressed! Emma—" "I don’t want to be maid of honor." Mac looked at the poofy Cinderella dress draped over a garden bench. "That thing’s scratchy, and it’s hot. Why can’t Mr. Fish be maid of honor, and I’ll be best man?"
"Because it’s already planned. Everybody’s nervous before a wedding." Parker flipped back her long brown pigtails, then picked up the dress to
inspect it for tears or stains. Satisfied, she pushed it at Mac. "It’s okay. It’s going to be a beautiful ceremony, with true love and happy ever after."
"My mother says happy ever after’s a bunch of bull." There was a moment of silence after Mac’s statement. The unspoken word divorce seemed to hang in the air. "I don’t think it has to be." Her eyes full of sympathy, Parker reached out, ran her hand along Mac’s bare arm. "I don’t want to wear the dress. I don’t want to be a bridesmaid. I—" "Okay. That’s okay. We can have a pretend maid of honor. Maybe you could take pictures." Mac looked down at the camera she’d forgotten hung around her neck. "They never come out right." "Maybe they will this time. It’ll be fun. You can be the official wedding photographer." "Take one of me and Mr. Fish," Laurel insisted, and pushed her face and the cat’s together. "Take one, Mac!" With little enthusiasm, Mac lifted the camera, pressed the shutter. "We should’ve thought of this before! You can take formal portraits of the bride and groom, and more pictures during the ceremony." Busy with the new idea, Parker hung the Cinderella costume on the hydrangea bush. "It’ll be good, it’ll be fun. You need to go down the path with the bride and Harold. Try to take some good ones. I’ll wait, then start the music. Let’s go!" There would be cupcakes and lemonade, Mac reminded herself. And swimming later, and fun. It didn’t matter if the pictures were stupid, didn’t matter that her grandmother was right and she was too young for the camera. It didn’t matter that her mother was getting divorced again, or that her stepfather, who’d been okay, had already moved out. It didn’t matter that happy ever after was bull, because it was all pretend anyway. She tried to take pictures of Emma and the obliging Harold, imagined getting the film back and seeing the blurry figures and smudges of her thumb, like always.
When the music started she felt bad that she hadn’t put on the scratchy dress and given Emma a maid of honor, just because her mother and grandmother had put her in a bad mood. So she circled around to stand to the side and tried harder to take a nice picture of Harold walking Emma down the garden path. It looked different through the lens, she thought, the way she could focus on Emma’s face—the way the veil lay over her hair. And the way the sun shined through the lace was pretty. She took more pictures as Parker began the "Dearly Beloved" as the Reverend Whistledown, as Emma and Laurel took hands and Harold curled up to sleep and snore at their feet. She noticed how bright Laurel’s hair was, how the sun caught the edges of it beneath the tall black hat she wore as groom. How Mr. Fish’s whiskers twitched as he yawned. When it happened, it happened as much inside Mac as out. Her three friends were grouped under the lush white curve of the arbor, a triangle of pretty young girls. Some instinct had Mac shifting her position, just slightly, tilting the camera just a bit. She didn’t know it as composition, only that it looked nicer through the lens. And the blue butterfly fluttered across her range of vision to land on the head of a butter yellow dandelion in Emma’s bouquet. The surprise and plea sure struck the three faces in that triangle under the white roses almost as one. Mac pressed the shutter. She knew, knew, the photograph wouldn’t be blurry and dark or fuzzy and washed out. Her thumb wouldn’t be blocking the lens. She knew exactly what the picture would look like, knew her grandmother had been wrong after all. Maybe happy ever after was bull, but she knew she wanted to take more pictures of moments that were happy. Because then they were ever after.
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster
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