Laurie King - The Beekeeper's Apprentice

"You're doing fine, Jessica, just stay quiet and we'll have you out of here. Those men out in front are our friends, though they may not know it yet. We've got to hide very quietly for a little while until the police can get here, and then you'll see your parents. All right?"

I could feel her nod against my neck. I could also feel the rag doll, squashed between us. I moved rapidly ahead of the noisy mob (which was indeed beginning to break up), holding the chain and bed leg securely so as not to rattle. I kept to the blackest shadows, but when I looked back, against the glow from the house I saw an arm wave in wild salute from the midst of the carollers. Holmes had seen us; the rest was up to him. I stopped at the caravan just long enough to gather blankets and food, and took the child back along the road and up a dimly seen hill. My eyes had been in the dark long enough to distinguish vague shapes, and I stopped under a tree and let her slide to the ground. Keeping one hand in light contact with her shoulder I eased my spine, then turned to sit up against the trunk, pulling her, unresisting and unresponsive, onto my lap, blankets around us both.

The relief was overwhelming, and I could only sit, shivering with reaction and with the drying sweat that had soaked my clothes. I was struck by the sudden vision of the expressions on those men's faces when they managed to open the door, and began to giggle. Jessica stiffened, and I forced the incipient hysteria down, took a deep breath, and another, and murmured into her ear.

"You're safe now, Jessica, completely safe. Those men cannot find you now. We're just going to wait here for a while until the police come for them, and then your parents will come to take you home. Let's wrap this rug around you so you don't get cold. Are you hungry?" I felt her head shake side to side. "Right. Now, we'll have to stop talking and be still, as still as baby deer in the woods, all right, Jessica? I'll stay with you, and your doll is here now. By the way, my name is Mary."

She greeted this with silence, and I pulled the rugs around us, put my back against the tree, and waited. The thin body in my arms slowly relaxed, gradually went loose, and eventually, to my amazement, dropped off to sleep, I listened to the last sounds of the beery men returning home, and after half an hour several cars came swiftly up the road. Distant yells, two shots (the child twitched in her sleep), and then silence. An hour later came the sound of solitary footsteps on the road, and the light of a lantern through the trees.

"Russell?"

"Here, Holmes." I took the hand torch from the basket of food and flashed it. He climbed the hill and stood looking down at us. I could not read his expression.

"Holmes, I'm sorry if I — " I began, but the simple and immediate plea for understanding was not to be, for Jessica woke at my voice and cried out at the sight of Holmes in the lamplight, and I moved quickly to reassure her.

"No, Jessie, this is a friend; he's my friend and your mother's friend, and he's the friend who made all that noise so I could take you from the house. His name is Mr. Holmes, and he doesn't always look so funny; he's dressed up, like I am." This soothing prattle took the worst of the tension from her body. I bundled the rugs together and handed them to Holmes and walked down the hill with the child in my arms.

We took her to the caravan, lit a fire, and dressed her in one of my woollen shirts, which flapped around her ankles. The publican's wife produced a hot, thick mutton stew, which we wolfed and the child picked at. Holmes then put the kettle of water on the little stove, and when it was warm he washed and examined my sore foot, wrapped it securely to stop the bone ends from their tedious creaking, and finally used the rest of the water to make a pot of coffee and shave the bristle from his cheeks. Jessica watched his every move. When his face was clean he sat down and showed the child how his gold tooth came out, which was the cause for serious consideration. He then brought his ring of picklocks from his pocket and spread it on the table for her to examine, and asked if she wished him to take the chain from her leg. She cringed away from him and tucked as much of herself as she could get into my lap.

"Jessica," I said, "nobody's going to touch you if you don't want. If you like, I can take it off you, but you'll have to sit on the table — I can't do it with you on my lap." There was no response. We waited a while, and then Holmes shrugged and reached for the picklocks. She stirred, and then slowly pushed her foot towards him. Without comment he got to work and, touching her as little as possible, within two minutes had the shackles on the floor. She gave him a long, grave look, which he returned, and then gathered herself up against me again and put her thumb into her mouth.

We sat, and dozed, and waited, until finally there came another car on the road, which braked to a halt just outside the caravan. Holmes opened the door to the Simpsons, and Jessie flew into her mother's arms and glued her arms and legs around her as if she would never come free, and Mr. Simpson put an arm around both of them and led them to the car, and I found it hard to see properly, and Holmes blew his nose loudly.

The end of a case is always long, tedious, and anticlimatic, and since this is my story I choose to save myself from having to describe the next hours of weariness and physical letdown and questions and the ugliness of confronting those men. Suffice it to say that the night ended and I crawled into my hard bunk for a few hours of collapse before a fist on the caravan door brought me into the day. Cup after cup of black coffee did not help the soggy thickness in my bones and brain, and it was with considerable sour satisfaction that later that afternoon I watched the last of the cars drive off down the narrow track. I rubbed my tired eyes and propped up my sore foot and thought vaguely of a bath but found I could not summon the energy to do anything except sit on the wagon's back step and watch the horse graze.

It must have been nearly an hour later that I became aware of Holmes, sitting on a stump and tossing his jack knife repeatedly into the tree next to him.

"Holmes?"

"Yes, Russell."

"Is it always so grey and awful at the end of a case?"

He didn't answer me for a minute, then rose abruptly and stood looking down the road towards the house with the plane trees. When he looked around at me there was a painful smile on his lips.

"Not always. Just usually."

"Hence the cocaine."

"Hence, as you say, the cocaine."

I hobbled into the caravan for more coffee and brought the lukewarm cup back into the last rays of the evening sun. The oily slick on top was slightly nauseous, and I abruptly tipped it out, watched it soak into the trampled grass, and spoke in a rush of words I had not intended to say.

"Holmes, I don't think I can sleep here tonight. I know it's late and we should barely get on the road before we had to stop, but would you mind awfully if we didn't stay here until morning? I really don't think I can bear it." My voice came out a bit shaky at the end, but I looked up to see Holmes with a genuine smile in his eyes.

"Mary, me girlie, you took the very words from me mouth. If you'll get the nag in place, I'll have these things stowed away in a minute."

It was considerably more than a minute, but the sun was still above the hills when we turned the painted wagon around and faced back up the road we had come down the day before. I began to breathe more easily, and after a couple of miles Holmes put his back against the caravan's painted door and let out a sigh.