A Monstrous Regiment of Women

A Monstrous Regiment of Women

Laurie R. King

MARY RUSSELL-SHERLOCK HOLMES 02

Previous books by Laurie R. King

Also about Mary Russell

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

and about Kate Martinelli

To Play the Fool

A Grave Talent

for Zoe

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EDITOR’S PREFACE

The story between these covers is the second I have resuscitated from the bottom of a tin trunk that I received anonymously some years ago. In my editor’s introduction to the first, which was given the name The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, I admitted that I had no idea why I had been the recipient of the trunk and its contents. They ranged in value from an emerald necklace to a small worn photograph of a thin, tired-looking young man in a WWI army uniform.

There were other intriguing objects as well: The coin with a hole drilled through it, for example, heavily worn on one side and scratched with the name IAN on the other, must surely tell a story; so, too, the ragged shoelace, carefully wound and knotted, and the short stub of a beeswax candle. But the most amazing thing, even for someone like myself who is no particular Sherlock Holmes scholar, are the manuscripts. The Beekeeper’s Apprentice told of the early days of a partnership heretofore unknown to the world: that of young Mary Russell and the middle-aged and long-retired Sherlock Holmes.

These literally are manuscripts, handwritten on various kinds of paper. Some of them were easy enough to decipher, but others, two of them in particular, were damned hard work. This present story was the worst. It looked as if it had been rewritten a dozen or more times, with parts of pages torn away, scraps of others inserted, heavy cross-hatching defying all attempts at bringing out the deleted text. This was not, I think, an easy book for Ms. Russell to write.

As I said, I have no idea why this collection was sent to me. I believe, however, that the sender, if not the author herself, may still be alive. Among the letters generated by the publication of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was an odd and much-travelled postcard, mailed in Utrecht. It was an old card, with a sepia photograph of a stone bridge over a river, a long flat boat with a man standing at one end holding a pole and a woman in Edwardian dress sitting at the other, and three swans. The back was printed with the caption, FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD. Written on it, in handwriting similar to that of the manuscripts, was my name and address, and beside that the phrase, “More to follow.” I certainly hope so.

—Laurie R. King

For who can deny that it is repugnant to nature that the blind shall be appointed to lead and conduct such as do see, that the weak, the sick and the impotent shall nourish and keep the whole and the strong, and, finally, that the foolish, mad, and frenetic shall govern the discrete and give counsel to such as be sober of mind? And such be all women compared to man in bearing of authority.

—John Knox (1505-1572)

The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women

(Published in 1558 against Mary Tudor; later applied to Mary Stuart.

Regiment is used in the sense of regime.)

ONE

Sunday, 26 December-

Monday, 27 December

Womankind is imprudent and soft or flexible. Imprudent because she cannot consider with wisdom and reason the things she hears and sees; and soft she is because she is easily bowed.

—John Chrysostom (c.347-407)

I sat back in my chair, jabbed the cap onto my pen, threw it into the drawer, and abandoned myself to the flood of satisfaction, relief, and anticipation that was let loose by that simple action. The satisfaction was for the essay whose last endnote I had just corrected, the distillation of several months’ hard work and my first effort as a mature scholar: It was a solid piece of work, ringing true and clear on the page. The relief I felt was not for the writing, but for the concomitant fact that, thanks to my preoccupation, I had survived the compulsory Christmas revels, a fete which had reached a fever pitch in this, the last year of my aunt’s control of what she saw as the family purse. The anticipation was for the week of freedom before me, one entire week with neither commitments nor responsibilities, leading up to my twenty-first birthday and all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto. A small but persistent niggle of trepidation tried to make itself known, but I forestalled it by standing up and going to the chest of drawers for clothing.

My aunt was, strictly speaking, Jewish, but she had long ago abandoned her heritage and claimed with all the