courtly intrigue of the Inner Circle, the plotting and animosity of Marie. I did not feel any urge to take up my copy of
The truth of it struck me as soon as I saw the spires of Oxford beginning to glimmer into solidity through the mist. This was, indeed, my home, as no other place was, or had been, or would be. I would buy a house here, I thought. What did I need with London? Or with Sussex, for that matter? Sussex could be for me what it had been for my mother, a summer cottage where I might play at farmer, but here, in this fold of earth between the rivers, this collection of buildings at once ethereal and human, was where my heart lay. Boar’s Hill, perhaps, or Marston. Holmes did not need me; far better to take the initiative and remove myself from his irritated, and irritating, presence. I would speak to an estate agent—after the twenty-eighth.
I crawled into my books and pulled the pages up over my head, emerging only when I was thrown out of Bodley in the evenings. It was too dark to read by the light of the street-lamps, so I had a quarter hour or so of simple, mindless movement in the cold, wet, dark air to my rooms. In the mornings, I carried an umbrella, that I might read while walking back to the Bodleian, and each day I slipped into the library’s miasma of old leather and damp wool with the incredulous relief of a caught fish being put back into its pool.
Even a fish must eat, however. On Wednesday, I rose briskly from my table to check a reference and was swept by a wave of nausea and dizziness. I grasped the edge of the table until it passed, and it dawned on me that I had not had a proper meal since—when, Saturday, Friday? And then, as if my body had been waiting for one sensation to push its way through to the surface, I was made immediately aware of dire thirst, the need to visit a WC, a stiff back, an incipient headache, and a corpselike sluggishness of all the muscles in my legs and arms. I dropped my pen and took up my coat and made straight for the nearest pub that served decent bar food: I couldn’t even bear to wait while a proper meal was cooked.
The crowded pub was sprinkled with black gowns. I pushed my way in with determination, until halfway across the room a hand came up from the level of my waist and imperiously bade me stop. I focused on the people at the table and saw three familiar faces looking up at me with amusement at the grim set of my features, as well as with a flattering amount of welcome and bonhomie. I do not make friends easily, but these three were more than acquaintances.
“Mary, just the person! Reggie, go get her a pint,” said Phoebe. The two of them were an unlikely pair, she big, brusque, and horsey, he small, neat, and quiet, but they were both brilliant in their shared field, which was cellular biology. I had met them two years ago in an anatomy lecture.
“Half a pint, thanks, Reggie,” I said, reaching into a pocket for some coins. “And take these and get sandwiches, as well. Many sandwiches—I’m starving.”
That half-pint was replaced by several more, and the sandwiches, though plentiful, did not go far in absorbing the alcohol. It was a merry lunch and a noisy one. Phoebe goaded me to the dartboard (which some tasteless undergraduate, if that is not a tautology, had stuck with a cardboard label printed Absalom) and after I had beaten every arm in the house, I played to the audience that had gathered, and I collected nearly two pounds in wages. An accurate throwing arm is perhaps the only truly remarkable skill I possess. It has, I admit, saved my life, but its chief benefit is parlour (and pub) tricks. I took in my winnings, used them to buy a round for the house, and sat down, glowing.
When we were thrown out for the afternoon closing, we stood blinking on the street, somewhat at a loss. The fourth member of the party, the one whose hand had so imperiously halted my progress, was a gangling young baronet, still an undergraduate, with a passion for both Einstein and a sweet-smelling blend of pipe tobacco, and an unexpected talent for brilliant puns and obscene limericks. I had known and liked him, as a friend, for eighteen months. This young man took a pipe from a tweed pocket, eyed it with mistrust, and put it back unlit.
“So, chaps. Back to the House to continue this mad debauchery, or some fresh air?”
We decided on both, a wide circle up through the Parks and down Mesopotamia, across the High and along the Cherwell, bleak and denuded of its summer wildlife of punters and ducklings, and down to the Isis, where darkness and a shower of sleet caught up with us almost simultaneously and sent us racing up the meadow to the shelter of the stairway. We burst into the warm rooms with an explosion of good spirits, coats and scarfs grew into a mountain on the floor, the baronet sent his scout off for hot drinks and poured us each a glass of cold fire, and we were all four of us brimming with an immense and inexpressible well-being.
It was Phoebe, inevitably, who gave voice to it.
“God, I’m so sick of work! I want to walk and walk until my fingers freeze and my feet blister and I fall into a room with a fire as if it were Paradise.” Then, after hearing what she had said, she asked, “Why not? Why don’t we?”
“Because it’s raining out there, my dearest Phoebe,” drawled the baronet. “And I want my tea.”
“Not tonight; I don’t mean tonight. But soon. Tomorrow? Why not tomorrow? Before term sets in again. Mary, shake away dull sloth, set an icy broom to the mental cobwebs. Just what you need.”
Phoebe’s irresponsible, imprudent, preposterous suggestion dropped into a ripe medium and bloomed brilliantly in my mind. With a flavour of throwing over traces and the logic of alcohol behind it, I agreed immediately, and the two genial men fell in. It was decided: A lengthy cross-country ramble was just the thing, for the four of us, as soon as possible. Tomorrow, in fact. We would meet at St. Sepulchre’s cemetery, to set a cheery tone on our departure, at eight o’clock, walk up the river as far as our feet should take us, and stop the night at an inn or house, then walk back on Friday. If it rained, well, we should just get wet.
The next morning, I woke knowing I’d been a fool and knowing it was far too late to withdraw. I made haste to throw everything warm I owned into my worn rucksack and set off at a run to the cemetery.
We did get wet, but not disgustingly so. We followed the loops of the Isis upriver as it wound through the fields. In the afternoon, we came to a promising inn, ate a surprisingly good dinner, and drank too much. Phoebe and I tossed for the narrow bed, and I lost, but there were comforters enough to soften the floor. I fell asleep, beautifully tired and slightly drunk, and was awakened at three in the morning by a pounding on our door. I staggered across, wrapped still in a feather comforter, and peered out. My glasses were behind me in my boot, but I could make out the face of our host, irate and disheveled in the light of his lamp.
“Is one of you lot named Mary something?” he demanded. My heart tried to sink at the same time as it began to accelerate.
“I’m Mary Russell.”
“That’s it. There’s a person outside, knocked me up at this gawdforsaken hour sayin’ as how he absolutely had to talk to you, though why ’e can’t wait for a decent hour I’m sure I—” I shut the door on his complaints and scrambled for clothing. Heavy jersey over my head, I stubbed my toe on my boots and rescued my spectacles, began to put on my woollen trousers and got them started back to front, but by that time, Phoebe, calm and efficient, had the candles lit and I could see.
“What is it, Mary?”
“Some kind of emergency for me. I’m going to see.”
“Shall I come?”
“Good heavens no. No reason for all of us to climb into wet clothes in the middle of the night. I’ll be back in a tick.”
“Take your walking stick,” she ordered. “A strange man, at this hour.”
It was easier to obey than explain.
Mine host led me down the narrow stairs to the door—he had actually left my messenger standing on the step. It was raining again, but despite the garments, I did not think I knew the figure huddled there.
“Holmes?” I said doubtfully.
The man turned, and I did know him, but only just.
“It’s Billy, isn’t it?” Once an Irregular, then Holmes’ long-ago messenger boy from the Baker Street days, and even now in middle age an enthusiastic assistant in London adventures. He looked completely out of place here.
“Yes, mum.”
I reached out and hauled him into the inn, ignoring the splutters of the innkeeper. Billy peeled off his hat and woollen scarf, looked around for a place to put them and then dropped them on the floor, and began to unbutton his
