The Language of Bees

placing an advertisement in various newspapers; there were several estate agent listings for halls for hire, larger than the room they're using now. And there was a page in Miss Dunworthy's handwriting with times and prices. The sort of thing you'd jot down without needing to write the details, because you knew what they referred to.

“I did not write those down, but to the best of my recollection, those times and prices match your concierge's Bradshaw's for trains from London to Scotland.”

I reached for the small map I'd been studying, then rejected it in favour of a proper one from Mycroft's map drawer. Elbowing aside the accumulated notes and books, I laid the map on the blotter, then found a yard-stick in the corner and a rusty protractor probably not used since Mycroft was a school-boy.

“Now, this part I'm not sure about, since I was working on a smaller scale, but let's see how it transfers to this one.” I made a small X halfway up the left side of Britain. “Four sites in England, beginning with May Day, or Beltane, when a ram was slaughtered in a stone circle in Cumbria. The second, on the seventeenth of June-a full moon-was Fiona Cartwright, at the carving of a male figure in the hillside in Dorset.” I put a second x on the map, over Cerne Abbas, then a third in the upper right, the emptiness of the Yorkshire Downs. “On the twelfth of August, the night of the Perseids meteor shower, Albert Seaforth was killed at a stone circle in Yorkshire. And three days later, on the second night of the full moon, Yolanda Adler died at another male hill carving, in Sussex.” I put an x for Yolanda at the map's lower right.

“The male victims-the ram and Albert Seaforth-were found at the circles: Long Meg and her Daughters, and the High Bridestones, both female places. The two women were found at the male figures.”

Four marks on a map; two pairs of balanced masculine-feminine energies. I laid the straight-edge across the marks and connected them, making a shape that was not quite trapezoidal, since the upper corners were slightly higher on the left.

“A quadrilateral polygon,” Holmes noted, his voice unimpressed.

But I was not finished. “I asked Mycroft about events occurring around full moons. Among those he recalled were a sheep with its throat savaged in a Neolithic tomb in Orkney, on the eighteenth of May, and an odd splash of blood on the altar of the cathedral in Kirkwall, also in Orkney, on July the sixteenth: Both of those dates were full moons.”

They watched as I laid the yard-stick along the two side lines of the shape and extended them up to form a long, narrow triangle stretching the entire length of Britain, and more.

The meeting point was in the sea north of the Orkney Islands. I tapped my front teeth with the pencil, dissatisfied. “On the other map, they came together in the middle of the Orkney group. Here-”

I duplicated the lines on the smaller map, then set the point of the protractor at the triangle's tip, describing a circle that encompassed the islands. When I took my hands away, this was the shape that remained:

***

“However, the four points could as easily signify this,” Holmes objected, taking the pencil and yard-stick to connect the corners of the polygon, determining its centre point. We bent to look at an area north of Nottingham and Derby.

“Ripley?” I said. “Sutton? There's nothing Neolithic there, that I can see.”

“There's nothing Neolithic at the meeting place of the triangle, either, unless it's under the North Sea.”

“You're right.” I took off my spectacles and rubbed my tired eyes. “I told you it made little sense. Although it did look better on the smaller map.”

“It is but a matter of three or four degrees,” Mycroft said in a soothing voice, and stood up. “In any case, perhaps I had better widen the recipients of the watch order to include domestic steamers.”

“And trains,” I said.

Holmes said nothing, just studied the map as if hoping for the appearance of glowing runes in the vicinity of Nottingham. Then his gaze shifted north, to the spatter of islands off the end of Scotland.

I knew what he was thinking, as surely as if he were muttering his thoughts aloud. He was weighing how certain I was, how carefully I had gathered those snippets of evidence, if his eyes might not have caught something mine missed. After all, in both cases-the timetable and the dog-eared guide-book-the information was caught on the run, as it were, noted in passing while I was closely focused on something that appeared more important. Had I been actively looking for train tables at the time, then he could have counted on my memory of some scribbled notes as being rock-hard and dependable. But numbers seen and half-noted while my mind was elsewhere?

He had, before this, trusted his life to my hands. Now he was contemplating putting the lives of his son and the child in those same hands. I did not know if he would. Frankly, I hoped he would not.

“We have noted that the man is willing to sacrifice chronological and geographic precision for the sake of symbolic truth,” he mused.

“Fifty miles is a lot of imprecision,” I argued.

“Yes, but two degrees is not, Russell. If his map told him that the High Bridestones were one or two miles to the west, or the Giant the same distance to the east, then your lines would meet in Orkney.”

“But we don't know his map, and we do know where the eclipse will be.” I really did not want to wrestle him for the responsibility of saving those two lives.

“If he were going to Orkney for this… event, where would you imagine?”

“Stenness,” I answered. “Two stone circles, several free-standing stones, and a causeway. The tomb where the sheep was found back in May is a part of the same complex.”

The piece of paper on which I had noted likely sites near Bergen lay on the corner of the desk. He looked from the inaccurate map to the list, and then scrubbed his face with both hands, pausing for several breaths with his fingertips resting against his eyelids. “As I remember, Sir Walter Scott fancied the centre stone at Stenness as an altar for human sacrifices,” he commented idly. Then he dropped his hands and met my eyes.

“I shall go to Bergen. You'll need warm clothing for Scotland. And, Russell? Take a revolver.”

40

Time: As the workings of a clock must align before the

hour strikes, so must the stars and planets align before a

Great Work is done.

Time is round and repeating as a clock face; time is

straight and never-duplicated as a calendar Only at

midnight-the witching hour-does time suspend between

one day and the next.

Opposite concepts, only brought together in a Work.

Testimony, IV:4

HOLMES TUNNELLED INTO MYCROFT'S STORAGE room, creating a storm of wool and waterproofs, while I addressed myself to the Bradshaw's and the problem of getting from London to Orkney. St Pancras to Edinburgh: nine to twelve hours; Edinburgh to Inverness: another six or eight; Inverness to Thurso, at the northern tip of Scotland -trains twice daily: six or seven hours. Unless I caught the Friday express… but no, leaving it to Friday was not a good idea, since there appeared to be only one steamer a day from Thurso to Orkney.

What if I took to the water before I ran out of Scotland? There were sure to be regular sailings from Inverness or Aberdeen, although those wouldn't be in Bradshaw's.

Mycroft came into the study and found me searching his shelves.

“I don't suppose you have a time-table for the steamers into Orkney?” I asked him, although I was more thinking aloud than putting a question to him. “I'll ask your concierge-I need to see if it would be better to work my way north by train, or to take a steamer along the way. Of course, if the weather is bad there, I'm a bit caught.