Laurie King: The Language of Bees

I caught sight of a head of white clover being worked over by a late bee, and I watched until the busy creature flew off-in the direction of the orchard behind me, not towards the madness of the far field. I bent down to pick the flower, and as I walked, I plucked its tendrils, sucking out each infinitesimal trace of nectar.

It was a perfect summer's evening in the south of England, and I dawdled. I meandered. Had I not been wearing the formal skirts and stockings of travel, I might have flopped back onto the cropped grass and counted the wisps of cloud.

India was spectacular and Japan was exquisite and California was a part of my bones, but God, I loved this country.

I found Holmes squatting beside the hive, shirt-sleeves rolled to his elbows. At a distance I was concerned that he would come away with a thousand stings, but closer up, I could hear the absence of the deep, working hum of a summer hive. The white Langstroth box was silent, its landing-board empty, and when he lifted the top of the hive, no cloud of winged fury boiled up from within. The only sound was the light jingle of the bells his friend had hung there.

I hoisted myself onto the wall, taking care not to knock stones loose, and waited for him to finish. The nearby burial mound was small enough to have remained undisturbed for four millennia, escaping even the attentions of the ever-curious Victorians. It cast its late afternoon shadow along the ground to the base of the wall. Raising my gaze to the south, I could make out the line carved by six thousand years of feet treading the cliff-side chalk soil; beyond it, the Channel had gone grey with the lowering sun.

Suddenly, the odour of honey was heavy in the air as Holmes began to prise up the frames of the super. Each was laden with dark, neatly sealed hexagons of comb, representing hundreds of millions of trips flown to and from the hive from nectar-bearing flowers. Abandoned now, with not a bee in sight.

More than that, we could not see, although I knew that come morning, Holmes would be out here again, hunting for a clue to the hive's catastrophe. Now, he allowed the frames to fall back into place, and replaced the top.

As I have said, I care not overmuch for Apis mellifera, but even I held a moment of silent mourning over the desolate rectangular box.

“Dratted creatures,” Holmes grumbled.

I had to laugh as I jumped down from my perch. “Oh, Holmes, admit it: You relish the mystery.”

“I wonder if I can get a message to Miranker this evening?” he mused. “He might be able to come at first light.” He shot the white box an irked glance, then turned back across the Downs towards home. I fell in beside him, grateful that the moody silence between us had loosed its hold a degree.

“Was that who wrote you the letter?” The signature had been less than precise.

“Glen Miranker, yes. He retired and moved here last summer. He's a valuable resource.”

To tell the truth, I'd never been able to pin down why Holmes found bees so fascinating. Whenever I'd asked, he would say only that they had much to teach him. About what, other than a flagellant's acceptance of occasional pain and perpetual frustration, I did not know.

As we walked, he mused about bees-bees, with the sub-topic of death. Alexander the Great's honey-filled coffin, preserving the conqueror's body during the long journey back to Alexandria. The honey rituals of The Iliad and The Rig Veda . The Greek belief that bees communicated with the beings of the underworld. The use of honey in treating suppurating wounds and skin ulcers. An ancient folk custom called “telling the bees,” when a dead beekeeper's family whispered to the hives of their master's death. The infamous poison honey that decimated Xenophon's army-After a mile of this, I'd had enough of the macabre aspects of the golden substance, and decided to throw him a distraction. “I wonder if Brother Adam might not have some suggestion as to your hive?”

The reminder of the dotty German beekeeper of Dartmoor 's Buckfast Abbey cheered Holmes somewhat, and we left behind the shadow-filled hive to speak of easier things. When we reached the walled orchard adjoining the house, the sun was settling itself against the horizon, a relief to our dazzled eyes. The hives here were reassuringly loud as a thousand wings laboured to expel the day's heat and moisture, taking the hoarded nectar a step closer to the consistency of honey.

I watched Holmes make a circuit of the boxes, bending an ear to each one before moving on. How many times over the years had I seen him do that?

The first time was on the day we had met. Holmes and I first en-countered each other in the spring of 1915, when I was a raw, bitterly unhappy adolescent and he a frustrated, ageing detective with little aim in life. From this unlikely pairing had sprung an instant communication of kindred spirits. He brought me here that same day, making the rounds of his bees before settling me on the stone terrace and offering me a glass of honey wine. Offering, too, the precious gift of friendship.

Nine years later, I was a different person, and yet recent events in California had brought an uncomfortable resurgence of that prickly and uncertain younger self.

Time, I told myself: healing takes time.

When he returned to where I was standing, I took a breath and said, “Holmes, we don't have to remain in Sussex, if you would rather be elsewhere.”

He lifted his chin to study the colours beginning to paint the sky. “Where would I rather be?” he said, but to my relief, there was no sharpness in his question, no bitter edge.

“I don't know. But simply because you have chosen to live here for the past twenty years doesn't require that we stay.”

After a minute, I felt more than saw him nod.

Communication is such a complex mechanism, I reflected as we rounded the low terrace wall: A statement that, at another time or in a different intonation, would have set alight his smouldering ill temper had instead magically restored companionship. I was smiling as my feet sought out the steps-then I nearly toppled down them backwards after walking smack into Holmes.

He had stopped dead, staring at the figure that stood in the centre of our terrace, half-illuminated by the setting sun.

A tall, thin man in his thirties with a trimmed beard and long, unruly hair, dressed in worn corduroy trousers and a shapeless canvas jacket over a linen shirt and bright orange cravat: a Bohemian. I might have imagined a faint aroma of turpentine, but the colour beneath the fingernails playing along the gaudy silk defined him as a painter rather than one of Bohemia 's poets, playwrights, or musicians. The ring on his finger, heavy worked gold, looked positively incongruous. I felt a spasm of fury, that whatever this stranger wanted of us couldn't have waited until morning. He didn't even look like a client-why on earth had Lulu let him in?

I stepped up beside Holmes and prepared to blast this importunate artist off our terrace and, with luck, out of our lives. But as I cast a rueful glance at the man by my side, the expression on his face made my words die unsaid: a sudden bloom of wonder mingled with apprehension-unlikely on any face, extraordinary on his. My head whipped back to the source of this emotion, looking for what Holmes had seen that I had not.

Unlike many tall men-and this one was a fraction taller even than Holmes-the young man did not slump, and although his hands betrayed a degree of uncertainty, the set of his head and the resolute manner with which he met Holmes' gaze made one aware of the fierce intelligence in those grey eyes, and a degree of humour. One might even-

The shock of recognition knocked me breathless. I looked quickly down at the familiar shape of those fingers, then peered more closely at his features. If one peeled away all that hair and erased five years, two stone, and the bruise and scratch along the left temple…