The God of the Hive

“I don’t look like that.”

“You will. Your Papa thinks you will.”

She leant forward, her nose near to touching the page.

“He loves you very much,” Goodman said.

“I love him, too. Mr Robert, is Papa all right?”

“Yes.” Goodman’s voice was absolutely certain, and my fingers twitched with the impulse to make a gesture against the evil eye.

Estelle did not respond, not immediately. Instead, a minute later I heard her feet cross the room, and opened my eyes to find her standing beside me, the sketch-book in her hand. “Can you take this out for me?” she asked.

I pushed myself upright, taking the book. She pointed to the drawing of her older self and ordered, “Take it out.”

I only hesitated for a moment before deciding, with the complete lack of logic that had permeated the last two days, that if Damian had wanted the drawing, he shouldn’t have let himself be duped by the charlatan who had murdered his wife. I reached down to my boot top for the knife I kept there, ran its razor-sharp point along the edge of the page, and handed it to her.

I thought Goodman was not going to accept it. He swallowed, shaken by the gift, before reaching out and taking it by the edges. After a moment, he stood and took it to the decorated wall. “Where should I put it?” he asked her.

She pointed at a handsbreadth of bare wood. Instead, he removed the bundle of feathers that marked the wall’s focal point, and mounted the drawing in its place.

She watched solemnly, then asked, “Is that the kind of feather that’s in your hat?”

“The very same,” he said, and began to work one of them free.

“Why do you wear a feather in your hat?”

“Ich habe einen Vogel,” he replied.

I choked, and he cast me a twinkle of his green eye.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means I have a bird. Or at least, one feather of a bird. And now so do you. This is for you,” he said to her. “It’s from the owl who lives in the big tree. She sometimes gives me one of her feathers, to thank me for sharing my mice with her.”

She fetched her hat and brought it to me, demanding that I work the feather into the hat’s crown.

I did so, trying not to laugh all the while: The colloquial English for the German Ich habe einen Vogel is I have bats in my belfry.

When the feather was installed, I suggested it was time for bed. Rather to my surprise, she accepted the command, although when she was tucked into the makeshift bed, the hat and its feather stood on the floor beside her head.

She wished us both good-night, and curled up with her face towards the wall, banishing my own thready memories of prolonged stories and prayers and glasses of water.

At long last, I was free to take to my own bed. I removed my shoes and sat on the window-seat I had been assigned, then realised that Goodman was still in the bedroom doorway, his eyes on the sleeping child. He felt my gaze, and turned to look at me. His eyes were liquid with tears. “‘A simple child,’” he said, “‘that lightly draws its breath/And feels its life in every limb…’”

Then turned and walked out of the house into the night.

Slowly, I arranged the wraps over my legs.

My paternal grandmother had been much taken by the poems of Wordsworth, the bard of the Lake District, and had read and recited them, over and over, when I was at her house in Boston. Thus, my mind could now supply the line about the child that Goodman had left off:

What should it know of death?

Chapter 19

On Tuesday at half past five, Reverend Thomas Brothers’ taxi stopped in front of a house in St Albans. His left arm was in a sling, his overcoat rested on his shoulders, but he was in better condition than he’d anticipated, after the long journey south. The town itself pleased him, built as it was on the blood-sacrifice of a Roman: The site was propitious. “This town was known as Verulamium,” he told Gunderson, who had closed the taxi door and was now paying the driver. “It was the most important Roman town in the south of England. Named after an executed soldier, martyred as a Christian in the year 304.”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied.

Gunderson had never been the most responsive of employees. Still, he’d been surprisingly efficient, during these past months. Perhaps it was time to give him a small rise in salary.

Gunderson picked up their valises and followed Brothers up the steps, waiting as the door-bell clanged inside. The door came open, and Brothers stepped up, his right hand already out.

“We meet at last,” he said, for the man could not possibly be a servant, not in that suit. “Thank you, sir, for your longtime assistance to the cause.”

The man with the white streak in his hair replied, “Reverend Brothers, how do you do?” He took Brothers’ hand, although he still had his gloves on against the chill of the house. “Gunderson, you can leave those bags here. Come to the back, Mr Brothers, I have the fire going.”

Gunderson took the coat from his employer’s shoulders, and accepted Brothers’ hat and scarf.

When Gunderson came into the garden room, where the curtains were drawn and the air was cool despite the glowing gas fire, Brothers was well launched in his explanation of what had taken place over the past two weeks. He had claimed the chair nearest the heat, and allowed the other man to hand him coffee, accepting it as he might have from a servant. It was clear that Brothers considered himself the important person in this room, the other two mere worshippers at the altar of Thomas Brothers.

He poured out his heart to his two acolytes, blissfully unaware that heresy was in the offing.

Then he paused, and gave an embarrassed little laugh. “I have a confession to make, sir. I have to admit that I do not recall your name. I’m sure you told me, but I meet so many people, and our communications have been of the sort that names were not used.”

The man with the white streak in his hair had not, in fact, ever given Brothers his name. Nor had he shown himself to Brothers, although he’d gone to the man’s church once, early on, just to be sure that Brothers did not rave too outrageously in public. “Peter James West,” he said, putting out his still-gloved hand for another, ceremonial clasp.

“I am so glad to get this chance to talk with you, Mr West. You and Gunderson have been my faithful friends, my helpmeets, as it were, ever since I arrived in November. So I hope that you can help me find my way to understanding the events of this past week. I know we expected considerable results from the events of Friday, and I was at first deeply puzzled, even dispirited, at what appeared to be the failure of my sacrifice. However, as Testimony says, ‘The greater the sacrifice, the greater the energies loosed.’ I have had some days to meditate on it, and I should like to put before you my thoughts, to see if you are in agreement with my understanding. And also to get your thoughts about where I might go, since England looks to be a bit hot for me at the moment. I was thinking perhaps America, where they-”

“Brothers, I’m sure Gunderson is as tired of this nonsense as I am.”

Brothers gaped at him. “What was that you said?”

“You heard me. I put up with your claptrap because it made you such a useful tool. I brought you from Shanghai because of it.”

“You brought-for heaven’s sake, West, don’t be absurd!”

“Your name came to my attention last August, when I was searching for potential weak spots in a colleague. Your former wife provided a link-she’d married an artist in Shanghai, who I discovered was my colleague’s nephew. That made you useful.”

“Do you mean Damian Adler? The man has no family, he told me so himself.”

“Then he lied. However, we all know that you are in the habit of hearing only what you wish to hear, which makes your companionship, at times, most trying. So instead of your filling the air with verbiage, let me tell you a story.