The God of the Hive (6 page)

But
how
had Brothers followed us? The man was a religious charlatan, not some master criminal with a platoon of armed men at his beck and call. Yes, he had Marcus Gunderson, but I’d questioned Gunderson myself, at the point of a knife, and there had been no indication that he was one of a platoon of Thugees.

Brothers’ mumbo-jumbo was the spiritual equivalent of eating an enemy’s heart. He believed that by spilling blood at carefully chosen places and times—lunar eclipse, summer solstice, meteor shower, today’s eclipse of the sun—he would absorb the loosed psychic energies of his victims. However, he appeared to have kept this aspect of his teaching to himself: I had seen no evidence that he used any of his Inner Circle in his quest to become a god; only Gunderson.

With Brothers in my thoughts and the Hebrew on my lips, my mind
turned to the nature of gods. The Hebrew Bible does not say that the gods do not exist, merely that we are not to worship them. For a Christian, doubt is a shameful secret, a failure of faith, but the rabbis have long embraced doubt as an opportunity for vigorous argument. For the rabbis, the existence of God is no more of a question than the existence of air: Doubt is how we converse with Him.

Small-g gods might be considered a sort of concentrated essence: Loki the impulsive, Shiva the destroyer, Wayland the craftsman. The local gods were why Brothers had come to Britain, a country littered with Norse and Roman deities. The Holmes brothers were a bit god-like: generous and well meaning towards lesser mankind, but capricious and sometimes frightening in their omniscience. What, I wondered sleepily, would Brothers have embodied, had he succeeded in becoming a god? For that matter, what god would carry the attributes of flying machines? Which deity would be represented by the rifle?

As I sat in the deafening, cramped and frigid compartment, behind a dying pilot, holding a child for whom I could do nothing, incredibly, imperceptibly, I drifted into sleep.

The grey scraps of cloud outside, tossed like leaves in a fitful breeze, shifted, becoming wind-tossed foliage. I was sitting not in a fragile device of metal and wood, but on a hillside, warm and secure in an ancient land. The foliage remained, a hedgerow bordering a field of summer wheat. The grain rippled with the breeze, the green wall danced, until in the midst of the leaves—or the scraps of cloud—I became aware of a Presence among the moving scraps of green or grey: a pair of eyes that were there and then gone, that met mine and were hidden again. Green, grey; there, gone; comfort, threat.

I must have made a noise, because the child in my arms stirred, pushing away the heavy coat to rub her eyes and look around her.

“What did you say?” she asked me.

“I didn’t say anything, honey.”

“Yes, you did,” she insisted.

“I fell asleep, and was dreaming. It must have been something about that.”

“I’m cold,” she complained.

“It won’t be much longer,” I said. She gave me a look that declared her lack of reassurance at the statement. “Here, snuggle back under the coat,” I suggested.

This must be what it felt like to be an Elizabethan noblewoman before a roaring fire, I thought: toasty warm in front, frigid in back.

“What was your dream about?” Estelle asked.

“Only a silly dream. A face peeping out from leaves.”

“My Papa made a painting like that.”

“Did he? Oh yes, I remember.” I’d seen it in a London gallery—heavens, only two weeks before?
The Green Man
, Damian had called it, a Surrealist rendering of the ancient pagan spirit of the British Isles, the surge of life in this green land. The figure was carved into church ceilings and pews, painted on the signs of public houses, leading processions. He was often shown as a face with branches bursting from his mouth and nostrils and twining about his head in the exuberance of life: a divine creature, speaking in leaves.

Jack-in-the-Green, Will of the Wisp, Wild Woodsman: The figure represents not just life, but the cycle of birth and death and birth anew. His authority and mystery stand behind such diverse characters as Robin Hood and Puck. Damian’s painting began as a study in green, a canvas entirely covered with leaves so precise, they might have been the colour photograph of a hedge. Only after examining the wall of greenery for some time, searching for meaning in the shades and shadows, did the viewer become aware that two off-centre points of light were not drops of water on leaves, but reflections from a pair of green eyes. Unlike the foliate heads carved into the stones of churches, nothing could be seen of the features—or rather, the skin seemed made of leaves instead of flesh—but the sense of watching was powerful. Not threatening, necessarily, just … eerie. Disturbing.

At the time, my thought had been,
Next time I walk in the woods, the back of my neck will crawl
.

Now I pulled my arms more snugly around the artist’s child, and raised my eyes to what I could see of Javitz. He had stayed reassuringly upright; there was no indication that he was about to faint away and send us spinning to earth. Still, I wanted to get down as soon as we could.
The hour I had given him was less than half over, but the man urgently required medical attention.

I stretched out an arm to knock on the dividing glass. I could tell he heard me from the tilt of his head, but it took a minute for him to turn.

When he had done so, I held out my hand and slowly lowered it, palm down, to indicate that I wanted us to descend. He put up a finger, telling me to wait, then bent over his pad for a minute. He held up the message:

I’M FINE. BLEEDING STOPPED. NO REASON NOT TO MAKE INVERNESS OR FORT WILLIAM.

Inverness was some eighty-five miles from Thurso, or less than an hour with the wind at our back as it was. Fort William was nearly twice that. I shook my head firmly, mouthing, “Inverness, not Fort William.”

He shrugged, which I would have taken for capitulation except that I had a feeling that those scars were hiding an expression of stubbornness. He started to turn back, but I rapped hard on the glass, and spelt out in front of his eyes:

KEEP LOOSENING THE TOURNIQUET.

Not bleeding:
Right
, I thought.
So why are you surreptitiously reaching down now to work the tie loose on your upper leg?

The first thing I’d learned about this aeroplane was that its 230 horsepower engine would take it 500 miles on a tank of petrol. On the trip up here, we had failed to come anywhere near that, but—so far—it appeared that our curse of mechanical problems was in abeyance. Theoretically, 500 miles would take us near enough to London to smell the smoke—although if Javitz’s hands were no longer on the controls, it could as easily land us in Ireland, France, or the middle of the North Sea.

How to force a man to your will when you could not reach him—could not even communicate if he chose not to turn his head? It was maddening, and his masculine pride was putting this child in danger.

I might have to break the pane of glass that separated us, even if it meant Estelle and I were in the full blast of air. The butt of the revolver
would do as a hammer—but as I was reaching for it, I saw that Javitz had turned again, and was holding to the glass a longer message:

I KNOW YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT THE LITTLE GIRL, BUT HONEST, IF I FEEL MYSELF GOING THE LEAST BIT WOOZY, I’LL TAKE THE CRATE DOWN, NO HESITATION. I’VE BEEN WOUNDED BEFORE, I KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO BE SLIPPING AWAY, AND I WON’T TAKE ANY RISK WITH THE TWO OF YOU.

BUT I CAN’T HELP THINKING ABOUT A MAN WITH A RIFLE IN THURSO, AND WONDERING HOW MANY MORE OF THEM MIGHT BE SCATTERED AROUND SCOTLAND. THE FARTHER SOUTH WE GET, THE GREATER THE CHANCE WE LOSE THEM. WHOEVER THEY ARE.

IF YOU REALLY INSIST, AND YOU DON’T THINK THEY’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU THERE, I’LL TAKE US DOWN IN INVERNESS.

UNLESS THERE’S A WHOLE ARMY OF THEM, THEY WON’T HAVE A MAN WAITING IN FORT WILLIAM. OR GLASGOW.
YOUR CALL.

The farther you go, the harder it will be to catch Brothers
, said a voice in my mind. I looked down at the burden in my arms, and pushed the thought away.

Javitz and I studied each other through the cloudy glass, me searching for a sign that his injury was worse than he was admitting, he waiting for my decision. Estelle stirred, and his eyes went to her, then came back to mine. His expression had not changed, and I could see neither doubt nor truculence there.

I mouthed, “Fort William.”

He turned back to his controls; the noise from the engine picked up a notch.

Chapter 13

C
hief Inspector Lestrade picked up the latest report from Scotland, then threw it down in disgust. It said the same thing all the other reports had said: no sign of them.

Lestrade was not a man much prone to self-doubt, not when it came to his job, but in the eight days since he’d posted the arrest warrants for Sherlock Holmes and his wife, he’d begun to wonder if he might not have been rash. Granted, their outright refusal to appear and be interviewed had left him with little choice in the matter, but even then, a part of him had refused to believe that the man had anything to do with the death of that artist’s wife down in Sussex.

Yet, he was involved somehow. The name Adler could be no coincidence—the artist had to be related to Irene Adler, even if French records had been too thin to show precisely how.

Still, even if Damian Adler was a blood relation to the woman, what right did Holmes have to take matters into his own hands? An amateur investigator was a danger to society, and the man’s attitude towards the police was outmoded, self-important, and frankly offensive. It happened every time Holmes appeared on the borders of a police investigation. It hadn’t taken much urging for Lestrade to agree that it was high time to let Holmes know that a Twentieth-Century Scotland Yard would no longer tolerate his meddling and deceptions.

No matter how often the man had solved a crime the police could not.

No matter the respect Lestrade’s father had held for the man.

No matter the reverence with which politicians and royals alike spoke of him.

Time to bring the old man down a peg, him and that upstart wife of his.

(If he could only lay hands on them.)

Except that now the man’s brother had vanished as well.

He’d had Mycroft Holmes in two days before, and—surprise—the man had answered not one of his questions to his satisfaction. He’d been even more irritated when, half an hour after the man left, an envelope with his name on it was brought up—left by Mycroft Holmes at the front as he went out. Having spent two hours in Lestrade’s office, he was now suggesting a meeting later that afternoon.

Lestrade had thrown the note into the waste-bin and got down to the day’s work, but at five o’clock, he’d found himself going not home, but in the direction of the suggested meeting place.

But the man didn’t show. Lestrade stood in the crowded halls amongst the children and the tourists, feeling more like an idiot every minute. He went home angry.

His anger had become slightly uneasy when the man’s housekeeper telephoned bright and early the next morning to say that when she’d let herself into the Holmes flat that morning, her employer had been missing, and what was Scotland Yard going to do about it?

In fact, he’d been uneasy enough that he’d telephoned to the offices Mycroft Holmes kept in Whitehall. And when the secretary said that his employer hadn’t come in that morning, and yes it was highly unusual, Lestrade had rung the caretaker at Mycroft Holmes’ flat on Pall Mall: Mr Holmes had left Thursday morning, and not returned.

Not that there was much Lestrade could do about it yet. Mycroft Holmes was a grown man, and although he had not been seen since walking out the doors of Scotland Yard Thursday afternoon, there could be any number of reasons why he might have done so, and it was too
early to assume foul play. The man had vanished on the same puff of smoke as his brother Sherlock, along with Mary Russell, Damian Adler, and Adler’s small daughter. To say nothing of Reverend Brothers and his henchman Gunderson.

Nary a sign of any of them.

Chapter 14

A
n hour south of Thurso, I was relieved when the clouds at least grew light enough to suggest where the sun lay. However, its location also was a sign that we were not headed towards Fort William. Instead, Javitz was either aiming us at the other goal he had mentioned, Glasgow, or at Edinburgh to its east. Both cities were approximately two hundred miles from the island where we had started the day: two and a half hours at cruising speed, a little less with the push he had on now.

Estelle fell asleep again. The weak morning sunlight took some of the bitterness from the cabin’s chill. Or perhaps I was fading into hypothermia. If so, I couldn’t rouse myself to object.

Two hours south of Thurso, the big engine showed no sign of slowing, and I could perceive no change in our altitude. Javitz remained upright, and his head continued to swivel as he studied the instruments before him, so I hunkered down in the furs and tried to emulate my granddaughter.

Our decision was made for us by the machine itself. I jerked awake at a change in the noise around me, registered briefly that we’d come a lot farther than Glasgow, then realised that what woke me was something
drastic happening below. Javitz responded instantly by cutting our speed and nudging the flaps to take us lower.

A moment’s thought, and I knew what the problem was: The hole in our hull had given way, and was threatening to peel the metal skin down to the bones.

Land now, or crash.

For the first time in hours, we dropped below the clouds, although it took a moment before my eyes could make sense of the evidence before them: Somehow as I slept we had passed over all of Scotland, and were now in the Lake District—that could be the only explanation of those distinctive fells, that stretch of water in the distance. But on one of the aeroplane’s sideways lunges, I saw that below us lay not nice bare hillside, or even water, but trees.