The Mary Russell Series Books 1-4: The Beekeeper's Apprentice; A Monstrous Regiment of Women; A Letter of Mary; The Moor (54 page)

The first piece, the only finished one, was not too bad, a suit of soft grey-blue wool with a wide band of Kashmiri-style embroidery, white and a darker blue, set into the jacket and the skirt. The fit was nearly as comfortable as my father’s old linen shirt, for which I was grateful.

Then I caught sight of their idea of an evening gown suited to me.

One of the problems I have in clothing myself is a concern that never would have come up in my mother’s day, but since the war, with dresses becoming ever more skimpy, evening wear was nearly impossible, and I had tended simply to avoid those few formal affairs I might have been tempted by. On Thursday, I had been forced to strip to the skin before Mrs Elf to demonstrate just why low necklines are not suitable: I do not care to have my fellows at table or on the dance floor offended by, or speculating on, my scar tissue. The automobile accident that killed my family when I was fourteen had left me just able to wear a cautious degree of décolleté, but five years later the bullet through my right shoulder put an end to any thoughts of bare flesh below the neck.

This dress, though—as a piece of pure engineering, it was fascinating; as a piece of evening wear, even in its present incomplete state, it transformed the padded torso on which it hung. High on the right shoulder, it dropped down to expose the left and continued down and yet farther down, the fabric barely meeting at the waist before it began a slit up the left side, where the hem angled down in a mirror image of
the bodice line. The ice blue silk made it aloof—in any warmer colour, it would have been an incitement to riot.

I gulped, smiled feebly at Mrs Elf, declined her eager invitation for me to try it on, and turned to the other two half-formed outfits. One was a rich brown with slashes of crimson that looked as if they would appear and disappear with movement; the other was an intense eaude-nil sheath with lots of little tucks and ruches that made the dressmaker’s dummy look like the representation of a woman considerably more voluptuous than I. I clutched the fronts of my new overjacket and told them that I should have to return for a fitting soon, but I was not allowed to escape so easily. First I had to choose a pair of shoes from a huge stack they had caused to be delivered (I think they did not trust me not to wear mud-spattered brogues beneath their creation) and then Mrs Elf insisted on arranging her small cloche hat (matching embroidery, of course) on my hair, and even then I had to reassure them that I would remove my overcoat whenever possible.

I achieved the street, feeling like some child’s costly doll. My toes were indignant about the unfamiliar shape they were being pushed into, and cloche hats always made me feel as if I were wearing a soft chamber pot. I was hungry and ruffled and not in the best mood to approach Margery and her Temple of women, and I stood on the street and said aloud the first thing that came to my tongue: “Holmes, where the hell are you?”

I was immediately abashed, particularly as neither the organgrinder nor the pie-seller metamorphised into him, and even the man on the delivery wagon merely glanced at me and flipped the reins.

I had to admit it: I wanted to see Holmes, who, although one of the most peculiar individuals I had ever met, was nonetheless the sanest and most reliable of men. Beyond that, I wanted to know what had been done with Miles Fitzwarren, four days ago. I had expected Holmes to be in touch before this. I stood undecided, until my eye caught a post office sign, and then I knew what I would do. I used
their telephone, but no, the Vicissitude was holding no message for me, so, before I could reconsider, I wrote out a telegram and had it sent to five separate places, including his cottage in Sussex, if by some remote chance he had landed there. Each one said:

AM UNEASY NEED CONSULT

RUSSELL

I regretted it immediately the message had irrevocably left my hand. Perhaps he will not answer, I comforted myself, then took myself to Selfridges for something to eat.

M
Y TUTORIAL WITH
Margery was for half-past four. Upon my arrival at the Temple, I sat down at a table and took out my chequebook, then handed the completed cheque to the startled secretary.

“This is for the library fund, which I believe Miss Beaconsfield is in charge of. Would you kindly give it to her when she comes in?”

Communication within the Temple was excellent. Margery greeted me with all the naughts of my cheque in her eyes, although of course she did not mention it, and when she saw my clothing, the transformation was complete. I regretted it, but to have continued with her thinking me a bluestocking forced to mend the ladders in said stockings would have been too painful. I returned her greetings evenly, sat down, and prepared to teach her about her Bible.

We were interrupted only once, by a telegram for me, which read:

EIGHT OCLOCK DOMINICS

SH

It cheered me greatly. I folded it and made to thrust it into my pocket, only to discover that I had none. I put it instead into my
handbag, turned back to Margery with a smile, and continued my brief overview of the history of Judaism and Christianity.

“So, we have the Hebrew Bible, roughly what you would call the Old Testament, composed of the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings; we have the intertestamental literature, or Apocrypha; and we have the Greek, or New Testament, composed of the four life stories of Jesus, called Gospels, the Acts of the early church, various letters and writings, and the Revelation of John.

“None of this was written in English. Now, that may sound ridiculous, but one gets so into the habit of thinking the Authorised Version as the direct word of God, that one needs to be reminded that it’s only three hundred years old and was the work of men.” I reached into my bag and took out two sheets of paper I had prepared earlier.

“I want you to commit these two alphabets to memory. This is Greek, for your purposes more necessary perhaps than the Hebrew. The letters are
alpha, beta, gamma
.” I continued on to
omega
. “And these are the sounds they make, in this column. You’ll see the similarities; that’s because the alphabet we use in English grew in part from this one. Now, using the chart, sound out these three words.”

She did it laboriously, but correctly. “
Anthropos; an
r; gun
.”

“Good. In English, we use the word
man
to translate both
anthropos
, “human being,” and
an
r
, a “male person.”
Gun
is woman, the counterpart of
an
r
. Most of the time it is obvious which is meant, and occasionally one finds in Greek
an
r
when one might expect
anthropos
, and vice versa, but it is good to keep in mind, for example, the fact that Jesus is called the Son of Humanity, not the Son of Man.”

We worked on this for a while and I gave her a Greek Testament to use. We talked briefly about the difference between gender and sex, but since she was fairly fluent in French, I could pass lightly over that issue.

It was a stimulating ninety minutes, and I found, as I had expected, that Margery had a quick mind and an acute ear for theological subtleties, as well as having the determination necessary to overcome her
lack of training. She might never compete with an Oxford scholar, but she might communicate with one.

That first session unavoidably served largely to point out to Margery her ignorance. She watched me slide my books into my case, a subdued and almost wistful look on her face.

“It’s quite hopeless, isn’t it, Mary?” she said with a rueful laugh. “I feel like a child who’s just discovered sweets, standing at the sweetshop window. I’ll never have it all.”

“It’s hardly an all-or-nothing proposition, Margery. And remember Akiva—
you
can at least read.”

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