Title: Fin de Siècle
Author: Lyrastar
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairing: Holmes/Watson
Rating: NC-17, in a rather Victorian sort of way
Warnings: mush, some dark themes
Betas: Sara who offered her always insightful comments to help me fix the rough patches, Helen who helped anglicize it, and most especially Dina, without whom I am beginning to doubt if I could even write anymore.
Summary:
Part of the Cliché Fest at
www.kardasi.com/Cliched
Write a story in which a well-meaning meddler--hopefully not an OC--decides to
do something about the latent attraction between Holmes and Watson and plays
matchmaker.
Author's Notes: This is a highly derivative work of amateur fan fiction based on the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The characters and the situations referenced herein are now public domain, however I will still attest that I am making no money from this piece. The timeline used to reference canonical events is the one suggested by William Baring-Gould in his 1955 Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Fans and careful readers will realize that even this well considered timeline contains some rather glaring inconsistencies. I can only beg to be excused for my attempt to work within this as the Conan-Doyle canon bears those selfsame holes. A summary of this reference can be found at www.soundofthebaskervilles.com/B-Gorder.html
Because of the insertion into canon, several lines and phrases used in the referenced stories appear here. One large and significant section of dialogue has been lifted and paraphrased from the canon story "The Final Problem". This is in no way an attempt to represent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work as my own, but merely the representation of the visible lines of my poor attempt to blend this tale into the established history.
Some defunct terms are used here, as they would have been at the time. Of note, alienist is a term for a practitioner we might now call a psychiatrist. Dementia praecox was the first term for what we now call schizophrenia.
And lastly, a warning to anyone who has somehow stumbled on this from outside the usual slash fiction pages: this story does revolve around the explicit description of a homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson. If you do not wish to read such an adventure of the heart, then please turn back now.
Special disclaimer: Male homosexuality was illegal in Great Britain until 1967 and generally considered both immoral and sinful at the time of the body of the story. The thoughts and ideas expressed along these lines are in accord with the esprit de temps and not the opinions of the author.
Feedback always appreciated at: lyrastarwatcher@yahoo.com or my website www.geocities.com/lyrastarwatcher
Fin De Siècle
Chapter 1-- Saturday, November 27, 1999, 9:28am : fin de siècle
Finchley, North London
In some manner he had learned of my own sad bereavement...
"Lionel!" Francie called to her husband from the kitchen. "I want that basement cleared out today. Marguerite and I are going to start painting the walls tomorrow."
"What?" The absent response came from the lounge chair. Lionel flipped dully through the 246 television channels available on his brand-new state-of-the-art satellite dish. Nothing appealed.
"You heard me." Francie wiped her hands on her apron and appeared in the doorway of the living room. Somehow she always managed to seem more intimidating than one would expect for her eight stone size.
"You've had all month and now you're down to the wire. Marguerite and I are going to start the mural tomorrow. Something trendy and modern for the millennium party. We're thinking spacestations and starships--maybe something out of Star Wars.
"And Harrods is having a household
sale this week. We're going to pop down and pick up a couple more suitable
pieces for the next century. Chrome and glass or somesuch. So I want all of
that old junk out of there. All of it. Yours, Arthur's, everything."
"But darling," Lionel protested weakly, "those are antiques. And Arthur was
famous--knighted even. His effects are national treasures. We can't just throw
it all out."
"Arthur's Sherlock Holmes stories are national treasures. That tripe in our basement is rubbish," Francie pronounced firmly. "Anyhow, I don't mind what you do with it. Sell it, trash it or bury it in the yard as long as that basement is clear by morning and it's out of my house."
"Why don't we just do the basement over as a tribute to Sherlock Holmes?" Lionel enquired. "We could use the mementoes we have and--"
"Sherlock Holmes was last century's entertainment. No one is interested in him anymore. Jar Jar Binks will be the icon for the next century," Francie declared confidently. "Now get moving."
Lionel mumbled a "Yes, dear" and started down into the basement.
The task took up the better part of the morning and the rubbish bins of two of his neighbours as well as his own. Lionel had to admit that most of it did indeed seem to be junk, but when he reached the tin dispatch box, he realised that he had stumbled across something wonderful indeed.
It was heavy and it rattled when he picked it up. He opened it and emptied the contents upon the floor. Medical instruments, all from before World War I, spilled out. He recognised the forceps, the scalpel, the hypodermic and a few others, but several he couldn't place. He stashed the lot in a corner of the basement stair, anticipating a later trip to the Church street antique shops, then tossed the dispatch box onto the trash heap with a clatter.
In the end, the tin box was dumped unceremoniously into the backyard dustbin with the other relics of its time. It sat without complaint for three days stewing among the coffee grounds and the egg peelings and settled gradually to the bottom of the lot.
Down in the basement, thanks to the magic touch of Francie, Marguerite and Dulux Semi-Gloss Interior, the great empty void of space began to form. Cold white stars appeared from unfathomable distances as tiny white specks on a great black field. A cold metal habitat sprung from the brushstrokes and the mechanical perfection of great mindless machines took over where before only a jumble of yellowing memories had been stored.
Eventually the women decided not to paint in Jar Jar in after all, but settled for some rather nice spaceships instead.
Just before crawling into bed Tuesday night, Lionel had--like every other Tuesday night--a last minute thought. He leapt up and slid into his bedroom shoes to drag the wheelie-bin from the backyard to the kerb, where it must await its fate.
It rained that night. Not the soft gentle mist of the infamous London fog, but a hard, bitter driving rain. It beat down on the lid of the dustbin as if intent to bevel it off, as if nature would make one last, valiant effort to free that which was secured within. But the lid held on tight and the box remained sealed inside, along with all the other leavings of the old century.
In the morning the dustmen came in their fluorescent yellow vests and emptied the bin into the shiny new waste-processing vehicle. The giant steel maw closed down, crushing the little tin box and popping loose the secret compartment hidden in its base.
In the darkness of the belly of the great truck, several delicate pages of an ivoried folio poked though the wrinkles of tin. A single brittle sheet of cream-coloured stationery fluttered free and drifted loose from the mouth of the truck.
April 6, 1894
My very dear Sherlock,
As I sit here cradled in the warmth of your dressing robe, the elixirs of our passions still cooling gently upon my body, I revel in the swell flush of the love that we have shared together and all that the Fates have granted for our future. The very sound of your breathing fills my once fallow heart with the most simple and basic joy, one which, in the long years of your absence, it had altogether forgotten that it ever knew. Your familiar scent rises up from the robe, from the pores of my very own body now, and envelops me, holding me in a place I have so longed to be. Your visage intoxicates my soul and I can still feel within me the sweet sting of the pleasures we so recently gave each other this night.
But it is not the mere carnal tingle I feel, but the manifest evidence of our joining that lingers and pulses a reminder of who we are to each other and how we are complete only together. The burn I feel stems not from our coupling, but from the agony that it is to have been so empty, to have been parted from you these three years now.
I am forced to complain that she was wrong, that esteemed poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning; how little she understood the drives of men. But perhaps I see from my experience that it can never be given to a woman to understand that which is the heart of a man. To love, to cherish, to nurture and to protect--of all that the gentler sex is most capable. But to truly understand another human soul, like unto like it must be, I do believe.
In her verse she wrote:
Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed
To comprehend a nectar, requires sorest need.
Beautiful words, most assuredly but having yearned for love, having had love and lost it, having again had love restored to my possession, I can attest to the fact that it is only in that final condition that a man can accurately render a valuation.
For those who have never known the prize aspire to only a phantasm. They chase endlessly after illusions and shadows and the echoes of the horn of the hunter. They wander lost knowing that they would die willingly for some supreme ideal, but having not the foggiest notion of what it might be.
Those who have loved and lost value a false idol only. They sculpt a Galatea in their mind out of their most fervent wishes that never came to fruition. The idol grows grander and more marbled and its pedestal grows higher with each passing day. But the time of the gods is long past and there is no Venus to breathe life into it and so it remains but a mocking, lifeless effigy.
And so I loved the man who took me from London but I worshipped the perfection of the legend that I created of the man who left me in Meiringen. Until you came back to me, I had only the surreal melodrama of a martyrdom of the mind, not a true grief at all.
But watching you lie here beside me with the most imperfectly real creases of your face accented in the shadows, I see nothing but the man I love. I am more grateful than I have words in my head or ink in my well to ever express that you have returned to free me from the vast empty void that was my life without you.
Did I once call this unnatural? Why, it is more natural than breathing. I no longer wish to breathe if you are not here. And if this be sin then I willingly take my chances for I simply cannot comprehend any god of love who could banish me to hell solely for giving my love to the most miraculous creature he has ever set forth upon this earth.
But I thank God, with every beat of my newly restored heart that that creature has found it within him to love me back. For that is my victory.
I love you, Sherlock, with all the strength and joy and passion that a man can be, I love you.
Yours, for as long as you will have me, and after,
John
The letter landed in the gutter by the side of the road, the rivulet of rainwater rapidly running the hundred-year old ink into oblivion. Within minutes the letter was illegible. Within an hour it was gone.
With a hiss and a chug, the truck rolled ignorantly on its way.
__________
Study of Charles Augustus Milverton
From the unused notes of John H. Watson
I have made up my mind. My sympathies are with the criminals rather than the victim and I will not handle this case.
--Sherlock Holmes,
"The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton"
With perfect coolness, Holmes slipped to the safe and rifled through the cache of letters. Even in the dim light of the study, he found it in a matter of seconds, as if he knew it by touch alone. By rights he should have burned it. It had imperilled us enough already. But the great reasoning machine, the man who had declared emotion an anathema and the softer passions to be the Achilles heel of the mind simply plucked if from the stack and handed it over to me without so much as a backwards glance.
But Holmes couldn't resist a little gibe. "Do you think you can manage to maintain this in your possession for a few hours at least, Watson? And the next time you choose to allow a friend's valet such liberal access to your own private effects, I would beg you to not be so casual with mine.
"Had you but asked, I could have told you that Penwarren's young valet had the same earlobe configuration as the Holcombe brothers arrested in the affair of the Amateur Mendicant Society. There could be no question that he was of the same bloodline and, one must credit Mr. Darwin with advancing the astute observation that it is not only ears and foreheads but also baser criminal tendencies that, alas, run in families."
I stared mutely between the envelope folded by my own hand five years ago, upon the very night of our most happy reunion, and the blood pooling around the corpse. Milverton had been a blaggart and a scoundrel of the lowest order who grew fat upon the suffering of unfortunates. It was impossible for me to rue his demise. And yet my uneasy conscience pricked at me, posing the disquieting notion as to whether there may be some connection yet unclear to my reeling mind.
To all appearances, we had been innocent observers to a wronged woman's revenge. The blackmailer had not yet even plied his unsavoury trade upon us. And yet it all seemed much too convenient of a coincidence.
For since the return of Sherlock Holmes and my hasty relocation back to our Baker Street rooms, rumours had been whispered as to the intimate nature of our companionship. Although my position as a respectable widower gave pause to some of the waggling tongues, the publication of my indiscreet epistle would have been damning indeed.
With the realisation of how my marriage had insulated us both from the spectre of disgrace, I had sometimes thought to write a second wife for myself into the published accounts of our adventures. Holmes, however, had vetoed the idea proposing that should any portion of my chronicles ever be disproved, the entire testament they carried to his great deductive powers would be likewise tainted as suspect to having been fictionalised as well.
There has never been another I hold in higher regard than Sherlock Holmes, but I must aver that for all his enviable acumen and pragmatism, it was clear that his equally generous vanity was preordained to be the victor in this matter.
So, having been given this one reprieve, I resolved to be more circumspect in the future. Regardless of Holmes' protestations, my stories would from here out be peppered with nebulous references to a phantasmal second Mrs. Watson. Considering the gravity of the situation we faced, I can only beg charity from my patient readers over this small deception and any confusion it may generate concerning my own affairs and trust that they will accept the cause as being sufficient.
Sufficient cause? With a sudden shock, I again peered at the lifeless body of our would-be Nemesis. I thought back on the revulsion with which Holmes had spoken of Milverton that first day. The fever in his voice had smacked of a personal vendetta, which seemed odd to me at the time for then I had not even realised that the letter was no longer in our possession. I shivered as it occurred to me that I had no knowledge of how Sherlock Holmes came first to know of Milverton or our client. I wondered about the veiled murderess whose arrival, Deus ex machina, had solved not only her dilemma but our own and I wondered, not for the first time to just what lengths this man would go for what he perceived as justice. I turned the envelope over to see my own precise script on the reverse and it struck me like a thunderbolt from the blue. This was all my writing, my words, my confession. Mine alone.
Oh, scandalous for him most certainly, but nothing any competent barrister could not argue away. Anyone could pen such words about any man. It would be incriminating and embarrassing, but by no means conclusive as to the guilt of the therein-named party. But at the very least, my own hand has made me guilty of both crimes against the person and gross indecency. Those offences alone would be enough to buy me Wilde's old place in Pentonville prison and there was not a single doubt in my mind that Holmes would have done anything at all to spare me such a fate.
Holmes fed the rest of the letters into the fire and turned back to me. He read me in an instant. When he spoke his voice was low and earnest. "He was an evil man, Watson. A demon. A putrid rot upon the flesh of mankind that spreads among the sweet fruit of love and turns the whole lot of it rancid in an instant." He gestured to the grate where literally hundreds of letters burned simultaneously to ashes. "Not for us, my dear fellow, but for all of them, he had to be obliterated."
"Murder, Holmes?" I asked, almost too stunned for words.
"Not by you or I, my dear fellow. I assure you, I have no idea who that was."
I stared at him, befuddled. His words were carefully chosen, nothing like flat denial I had hoped for. For the first time in my recollection, I doubted him.
The sounds of the household stirring could now be heard. "I think your breast pocket would be the safest place," Holmes said with a nod towards the envelope. "This way, Watson, we can scale the garden wall in this direction." He extended his hand to me, his face earnest and hopeful, as close to pleading as I have ever seen.
I have trusted Holmes with my life, why not my eternal soul? In all the years of our interdependent association, I have never known Holmes to be wrong. Perhaps it was that thought which stirred my feet, perhaps it was something else entirely, but after the briefest hesitation, I took his hand and we ran together along the garden path.
Did I call Holmes cold-blooded? That night his hand burned hotter in mine than any fevered grip of any patient ever in extremis. He bolstered me over the wall as the alarm broke through the house and caught up with me on the heath. When we had shaken off our pursuers, panting and gasping he grabbed me by the wrist. We stood there in the moonlight, catching our breath. He put one hand over my breast, over the pocket where the letter lay. I heard it crinkle beneath the tweed. He slid his other hand up my arm and held me by the shoulder. With a queer expression he looked me in the eye, as if asking a question and answering it both at once.
"John Watson, you really are the most extraordinary man." And then he kissed me full and deep, right there under the open sky, in the middle of Hampstead Heath. I will remember it always as one of life's most perfect moments.
When we returned to our rooms, we collapsed into a hard sleep. The next morning, refreshed and breakfasted, I offered his letter back to him. Holmes settled into the wing-back chair with his clay pipe and waved it back to me dismissively. "You keep it if you wish, Watson. Such foolishness means nothing to me. But I do trust you will be more prudent this time 'round." Holmes closed his eyes and was seemingly lost in a haze of blue smoke.
An acerbic reply poised on the edge of my tongue but I thought on the ease with which Holmes had plucked the note out from among hundreds and the ridiculous risk he ran in even keeping such an incriminating bit of "foolishness" at all.
I ran my fingers over the time-softened linen fibres and called his bluff. "Really?" I asked. I tried for sarcasm, but I could not quite keep the affection out of my voice.
Holmes raised one languid lid and, as he only did in our most private moments, winked at me. He then exhaled and was lost, eyes closed, within a great plume of smoke.
Chuckling silently to myself at the irony of living with, at once, the greatest mind, the greatest heart and the greatest fraud that all of England shall never know, I opened the secret compartment in the base of my tin dispatch box. In it was the little notebook penned that black night in Switzerland eight years ago at the end of that long day when I had discovered that there had been no professor Moriarty at all. I wedged the letter in between the pages of the notebook and next to the little missive that I always kept with the journal. The note that Holmes had left for me by the falls on that same day eight years ago. The day that had both, paradoxically, wrenched us apart and begun the process that would allow us to mend together.
But I observed that despite all of Holmes so-called protestations, a fortnight later, when I opened the box to review some notes on the case, the compartment had been left unlatched and the letter stuffed casually back elsewhere amongst the pages, as if having had been recently re-read.
Holmes had not been wrong then either. The very nature of the domestic comforts we had shared since then was an affidavit to his great foresight. Here on the brink of the new century, we now stood free of the old sediment of our prior lives and looked to the new for a more tolerant society.
We had made it thus far. If only the world around us would break free as well.
________
Chapter 3--Wednesday, December 1, 1999, 11:16am: fin de siècle
Edmonton incinerator plant, North London
It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.
--John H. Watson, "The Final Problem"
The truck rolled up and dumped its load on top of the refuse heap. The crumpled tin sheeting gave way and the little diary tumbled out into the light for the first and last time in almost eighty years. The pages rippled in the air, as if turned by unseen fingers for one final, sweet memorial to the men who lived on only in its pages.
_________
Chapter 4--Tuesday, May 5, 1891, 8:37pm
Englischer Hof, Meiringen, Switzerland
The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and Mycroft, one of the queerest men.
--Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter
And so passes from my life Sherlock Holmes, the finest soul who has ever trod the bitter confines of this poor earth. My anaesthetised eyes roll over the pre-release the pressman from the Journal de Geneve left with me after our interview. "Un détective anglais tué à Reichenbach". Fourteen lines in all. Although I know the article to be erroneous, it still pains me to see the words in print. It seems that such an event should be shouted from the rooftops and heralded at the top of the lungs by each and every newsboy on the continent. But I doubt that it will even make the first pages for all the interest the journalist showed. Fourteen lines and I have memorised each one. And yet I can not grieve his passing.
I am numb, utterly numb at what has occurred. To grieve would be a relief, but one that I have not earned and one that I dare not be so hypocritical as to claim. For I have dammed myself to some grey limbo of non-emotion, bound to wander the path by the falls in the dreams of my own private damnation on earth. Such is my lot for having been too timorous to commit and to entranced to leave. Too insipid in my love to spare my poor wife from a sham of a marriage and too irresolute in my sin to rate the release of the fires of hell. I shall do nothing but live out my empty life and think of what I have impotently allowed to come to pass.
For Holmes, while his sacrifice was great, I do believe his wisdom was greater still. What I could offer him was never enough. He wore the constraints of our daily existence most uncomfortably when at all. He chaffed at the edges of his cage in London and perhaps, in unravelling the great mystery that lies before him in his new whereabouts, he will finally find the contentment that has eluded him here. No, I cannot grieve for his passing from my life, but my God, I do so ache to see him just one more time again.
But it is very late. I am very tired and I ramble.
Once, when I was so privileged as to work alongside in his shadow, I fancied myself a writer. It is said that a true writer, if pierced through the heart, would rend his own heart from his chest and affix it with the selfsame blade to the page for his eager reader to study.
And so, before my bleeding heart exsanguinates itself, I shall sit and pen the tale that will never be revealed of the love that dare not speak its name. And I shall write it although my heart is too full to do so and too full not to do so both at once and then I shall lock it securely away with the other chronicles for which the world is not yet ready. I will lock this curious adventure of ours away until such time as this world may have be converted to a kinder, more benevolent habitat and a devotion such as ours may be freely and unabashedly declared.
And so it only remains to decide where to begin. I cannot begin when I fell in love with him as I can no more pinpoint that than I could the moment I woke up no longer a child or the second of time that differentiates long enough from too long. And so I shall fall back upon my usual format in these matters and begin on the day of the summons.
It was the eleventh of February, 1889. My impending marriage drew ever closer, but at the time I regarded it only with a naive anticipation. Events carried me along rapidly as a rowboat driven down a stream and I saw only the gay ripples and not the spray of the great Victoria Falls that loomed ahead.
Due to a succession of events, it had been over three months since Holmes and I had shared the comforts of the fireplace at Baker Street. Most recently I had been living as the houseguest of Dr. Reginald Harris, a distinguished general practitioner, in preparation for the acquisition of his practice. And so this night a few short words of greeting passed between us at the door as I returned to our rooms and a flicker of welcome travelled Holmes' gaunt face. We spent sometime in amiable conversation until, in the middle of a sentence, Holmes switched abruptly to the company of his Stradivarius. He folded himself into the wing-back chair and, in his old peculiar manner, began to saw a melancholy melody, lost in a world of his own.
I was about to doze off in the cane-backed chair, lulled by these familiar comforts of home, when Mrs. Hudson knocked with the afternoon post. It was a single letter on heavyweight linen stock addressed to Holmes.
He glanced at it briefly and gestured to the mantelpiece. "You may put it with the rest of them."
I reached for the jack-knife to affix it with the few pieces of unanswered correspondence skewered beneath it, but then I saw the pile to which he referred. Under the amethyst snuffbox, was a pile of at least a score of identical note cards. Only two had been opened.
Although not one to meddle in another man's private affairs, my curiosity overcame my sensibilities and I glanced at the envelope in my hand. The emblem on the paper was that of the Diogenes Club and the firm hand was not dissimilar to that of Sherlock himself. The initials on the seal stood MH.
"Your brother, Holmes?" I asked.
"Quite," he responded scraping the bow indolently over the strings. "I am overjoyed to remark that your powers of deduction remain as scintillating as ever despite your extended absence from my methods," Holmes remarked dryly.
"But why does he write you so urgently and, moreover, why do you ignore his overtures?" I gestured impatiently at the stack upon the mantelpiece. "Honestly, man, your own brother? You can be the most infuriatingly hard-hearted creature at times."
Holmes gave me an unfathomable look. "Do you think so, Watson? Really, your deductive intuition seems to wax daily."
Laying the violin down, he began to clean his briarwood pipe. "In any event, I have no need to open them as I am well aware of the message contained in each. One has arrived weekly since the affair of the Greek interpreter. The last was only two days ago so it requires no great leap of logic to conclude that Mycroft has heard of your return to Baker Street and that the letter which you hold implores us to be his guest at the Diogenes at our earliest convenience. You may open it if your curiosity is still undiminished, but I suggest you toss the lot in the fire. I have no need to accumulate such a useless collection."
I had already torn into the note and the words neatly penned onto the stock card read precisely as Holmes had predicted.
Mycroft Holmes had remained something of an enigma to me. In mid-September of the previous year I had met him briefly during the affair of the Greek interpreter. Then inside of a fortnight, I met and proposed marriage to Miss Mary Morstan and had had the happy privilege of announcing that she was to become my bride. No sooner had the ink dried upon the lines of the engagement notice than the affair of the Hound took us off to Dartmoor for a solid month. Immediately thereafter I was off to the home of Dr. Harris and had had no contact with either Holmes brother since. From Holmes' report, we had no interests in common and could not fathom why Mycroft would take such a pronounced interest in my company.
"You will not go?" I wondered aloud.
"We, Watson. You will note that the invitation is for us both, but I see little
point. As heartless as you have noted me to be, what care would I have for the
company of my fellow man?" His voice was as carefully modulated as ever, but
hearing the harshness of my own words in another man's voice gave me pause.
I tried for a bit more contrition. "I just mean, Holmes, that I don't understand you at all. To just shut everyone out of your life, you seem to have so little use for others--for family, acquaintances, for me--it is damned queer is all. And from a man whom I consider to be my closest friend, I often find it a bit unnerving."
"You wish to understand me, do you Watson? Then I beg you, fetch your coat and hat. But you'd best be prepared, for still waters run deep." Spinning suddenly, Holmes abandoned his pipe and collected his Inverness in its place.
"Deep waters?" I puzzled staring at the hoary frost upon the windowpane. "Surely not, for it has been frozen solid for over a week and there is not a rain-cloud in the sky."
Holmes waited at the door, walking stick in hand. "Ah, Watson, they did break the mould with you I must believe."
"Thanks old chap," I beamed, straightening my top hat upon my head. Together we passed into the dusk for the brisk stroll toward Pall Mall. I glanced behind as I shut the door to our rooms, still unaware that I would never again look upon our haven in the same innocent manner.
We arrived at the club just a few minutes past Mycroft's habitual arrival time. With a quick admonishment to me not to speak in the parlour due to the peculiar regulations of the institution, Holmes rang the bell. We were shown in by a young attendant with delicate features and swept through the common area into the strangers' room. Perhaps I imagined it only in retrospect, but I believe that behind those papers seated in those wide leather chairs, several pairs of eyes tracked our movements discreetly. The attendant left us and, within a minute, Mycroft's bulk had joined us in the room.
Mycroft glanced around shortly. "Sherlock. Doctor. Come with me," he said, and led us down the hallway into a sumptuously furnished private room.
"Doctor," Mycroft pushed past Holmes and pumped my hand with his corpulent palm. "I had begun to fear that I would have no opportunity to see you before your upcoming marriage."
I relaxed visibly as the mystery resolved. Apparently he wished only to offer another friendless man a congratulatory evening among gentlemen. Why Holmes should be so closed on the matter still eluded me. Perhaps Holmes' resentment of the fairer sex and my own happy state went further than I had realised.
"The ceremony is not until May, but I humbly accept your congratulations," I replied, as Mycroft dropped my hand at last.
"Quite," Mycroft said shortly. He settled his girth onto an overstuffed chaise lounge and tugged twice on the bellpull. Then he turned his attention to his brother.
"And you, Sherlock. Doctor Watson will soon be ineligible on the basis of his upcoming marriage, but I remain surprised that you have not seen fit to submit your application to the membership committee. If I am not mistaken, you have termed the atmosphere 'soothing' and not unpleasant."
Holmes swung his stick lightly behind his back. "You know my thoughts on the matter, Mycroft."
The door opened behind us and a slender Indian youth entered bearing a tray of whiskey. He squatted down before me. His supple form bent lithely as he bowed to extend the tray to me. He smelt of Asia, exotic spices and foreign lands and he brushed his hand over mine as he passed me the drink. It did not quite have the feel of an accident and I looked up into his face. He held his eyes low, but as he blinked the long lashes, I caught a glimpse of the most unusually smoky grey irises I have ever seen on any one of any race and it startled me so much I forgot myself for a moment.
He reminded me of a dancer with the grace and seeming economy of movement and the way he manipulated every digit, every finger in the way that was most pleasing to the eyes. Then he smiled gently at me and rose easily, breaking the spell and turning away to offer the tray to Sherlock. His shrift was cut low in the back of and I saw ominous bruised discolorations over his neck each about the size of a man's finger--or perhaps a mouth--and an eerie feeling began to stir deep within me.
"Conditions change," Mycroft observed enigmatically. "Perhaps a tour of the facilities would be more persuasive?"
"I am aware of what is available and what is not," responded my friend as he accepted a drink with nary a glance at the server.
I found that I could not tear my gaze from the lad. I tracked his lissom movements as if bewitched. Each bone, each joint, seemed to undulate together with the others in some perfection of the mechanics of human body that has eluded the rest of us. My eyes followed his backside until he slipped finally from the room.
"Then perhaps Doctor Watson would enjoy the tour, for I take it from your demeanour that it was his idea and not yours to attend at all." Mycroft addressed his brother.
I startled back to myself. "Yes," I replied reflexively to the latter part of his statement. I was so relieved at having been able to be able to follow at least a fragment of the discussion in my dazed state that only too late did I understand that I had responded positively to the former part as well.
"Good then. Perhaps I am not too late after all." Mycroft arose with
difficulty. "We have several more private rooms such as this, but do permit me
to show you our signature amenities."
Mycroft led the way down the hall, past the library, past the game room, past the conservatory, and down the back steps into the bath.
When he opened the door, the steam assaulted my senses. Dressed as I was for the chill of a London winter evening, I choked almost at once. But whether it was from the climate or the view, I would have been hard pressed to say. On the table before me, a marginally clothed young man fervently massaged another who lay unclad beneath a tiny, crumpled towel. One hand moved under the towel and I averted my eyes in dismay.
Around me a dozen men or more moved about in greater and lesser stages of undress. Two sat in a corner in terrycloth robes, kissing, oblivious to everything else. Those in the pool were naked, which was not unusual in itself, but the positioning of their bodies and the rapt expression on their faces spoke of unwholesome liberties beneath the water that I blush to think of even now. I turned my head, but the ongoings in the steam chamber were more outlandish still and I could not meet their eyes.
But the bathers seemed to have no such compunction. Most regarded Holmes with mild interest and me with a great deal more. My heart raced, my head swam and I broke out in a sweat which I am sure had nothing to do with the humid air.
I looked to Sherlock Holmes but found him strangely unaffected. He studied a
wall where a trompe l'oeil mural simulated ancient Greek frescoes and statues of
male nudes. Sherlock commented, "Shelby, I believe. His technique has improved
considerably.
"Have you replaced the chef yet, Mycroft? As I recall he could not make a shepherd's pie that even a sheep dog would deign to eat," Sherlock asked in an astoundingly casual tone.
"Gone," replied Mycroft. "If that is your only concern, then perhaps you will reconsider."
Mycroft turned his massive form to me next. "Or you, Doctor? Due to the specialised nature of our facility, invitation is only extended to gentlemen who are unmarried or similarly attached.
But as May is still some weeks away, perhaps there is something to discuss."
"Discuss!" I erupted. "Have you lost your mind?" Several curious heads turned
our way. "It is--"
Holmes cut me off crisply. "It is, as my dear friend would point out, most unfortunately already past the intended hour or our departure. I thank you, Mycroft, but clearly conditions have not changed significantly and I must, again, decline your kind invitation."
He twirled his stick. "Come along, Watson, other obligations await." Head held high, Sherlock Holmes strode up the stairs and out into the crisp night air. I could hardly jog rapidly enough behind him.
Finally, mercifully, we escaped. The chill made a stark contrast to the cloying vapours we had just exited. The blast hit my face and ran through my body. I welcomed it willingly, somehow feeling that it might blow me clean of the ill humours that had violated me inside.
But within a few steps the winter had become more than enough and I shivered violently. Holmes was, as usual, far ahead of me and had already hailed a handsom cab. We alit and drew the curtains and were off to cover the little distance to Baker Street.
I began to speak, burgeoning with questions and with outrage. Holmes silenced me with a look and, gesturing with his stick to the roof and the cabby seated atop, closed his eyes, pulled his mantle tight about his neck. He settled back in his seat as if the matter were already settled.
We climbed the seventeen steps to our rooms in silence. No sooner had the door closed behind me than it all ejaculated out of me in one tremendous rush.
"Holmes! What in heaven's name does he mean bringing us to a place like that? It is nothing but an sordid incubator for sodomites and pederasty," I blustered.
Holmes had divested himself of his outer garments and was already stretched out on the divan, lighting his cherrywood pipe.
"Sordid, Watson? You might wish to reappraise your conception. I had some small hand in formulating the bylaws of the Diogenes. As you can imagine, they have the utmost interest in barring admittance to anyone whose intentions and discretion are in anyway uncertain. Why, you yourself would not meet the stringent criteria."
"I should trust not," I blurted indignantly.
Holmes eyes twinkled. "By way of your engagement, my dear fellow. No gentleman with any outside attachment is permitted. A much higher standard than most gentlemen's clubs uphold.
"In today's agony columns alone no less than three allegedly upstanding gentleman have been unveiled in flagranto, much to the dismay and discomfort of their respective wives. And should all the bordellos and brothels of London ever all be raided in one night, the Times would have no space to print else the following day but the list of the married men found within.
"The Diogenes covenant is most insistent that it not become a vehicle of such distress, but that what occurs between members and affects no one else is the concern of no one else as well."
I opened my mouth to reply, but Holmes cut me short.
"And I assure you that there is no pederasty involved. The Sikh you found so appealing tonight might, by the nature of his bloodline, appear youthful and slight, but if he was in attendance at the Diogenes, he was of legal age."
"How can one be of legal age to perform an illegal act?" I blistered, choosing to ignore the other implications of his comment.
"Watson, I would remind you that you are speaking of my brother and those closest to him. He has elected to reveal himself to you, entrusting his repute, his livelihood and his very freedom to his belief in your sense of honour and I would thank you to keep a civil tongue when you refer to his affairs." He puffed evenly on his pipe with a calm that seemed incongruous to the circumstance.
In fairness, I conceded the validity of his request. I settled myself into the cane-backed chair and tried again for a modicum of composure.
"I just don't understand, Holmes. You have attended before? Mycroft believes membership should interest you were it not for the chef?" Even as I spoke the words, the inevitable conclusion settled itself in my throat. My mouth went suddenly dry and I could push no further thoughts past the lump.
Holmes puffed silently on his pipe.
I swallowed and wet my throat. "Holmes," I prodded gently. "You have confided something in your brother that you now wish to disclose to me?" I reached for my most professional level of detachment, but suspected that even it would not serve me well enough in what I was about to hear.
But in the place of the great gush of effeminate histrionics that I had feared would ensue, Holmes only glared at me irritably. He snapped, "Really, Watson, such a deduction hardly requires a consulting detective. I have confided nothing in Mycroft. I have spoken to him barely a handful of times over the past five years and then only concerning professional matters."
Holmes tossed his pipe onto the octagonal stand and sighed heavily. "Need I remind you that my brother has undoubtedly the keenest mind in the country and, arguably, on the continent. We lived under the same roof for sixteen years. I assure you it took him immeasurably less time than that and no dramatic exposition to arrive at the conclusion which has eluded you until now."
"You are a homosexual," I stated.
"Interesting." Holmes shifted on the divan and drilled me through the eyes. "'They' are pederasts, sodomites and buggerers. Your companion merits another term entirely."
I uncrossed my legs and crossed them again, the second over the other, trying to coalesce some coherent response within my brain.
"Be fair, Holmes; it is a bit of a shock."
He gave me then a glimpse of the most peculiar little smile. I have tried, in years since to place the expression, but I find I have no other reference for it at all.
"Yes. I imagine. It is evident that you don't know me at all."
"On the contrary," I answered reflexively. The response came across my lips before my mind had processed any higher thoughts, and I believe that it was hearing the conviction my own words out loud that gave me the impetus to continue.
"I think it is fairly evident that I do. In the past five years, I have come to respect you in the highest order and nothing has occurred to alter the facts on which that opinion was based. So any new information must fall within that framework. As you say, actions which affect no one else are the concern of no one else.
"I do know you, and I have come to love you above all men. I say that without reservation, but my meaning is nothing like what I bore witness to tonight. The carnal lust of man for man is unnatural and not to be compared to the love of man for woman."
"Do you think so Watson?" Holmes asked intently. "And yet to me, the former is as natural as breathing and the latter as incomprehensible as flying to the moon."
"There are specialists--" I began hopefully.
"Harley Street!" Holmes replied with a disparaging curl of his lip. "I might trust the better of them to hold the hand of a neurotic school girl or to convince a temperamental child to eat his supper, but you discredit the homogeneity with which this is ingrained into every aspect of my being. I am my brain, Watson, and I will not have some tottering quack with nary a quarter of my intellect poking around inside my head.
"And I have applied every ounce of my own powers to place myself back on the path of convention. It is quite out of the question, Watson. I am what I am."
I fell back upon my professional demeanour to disguise my consternation. "I see."
I did not. And yes the touch of the young Sikh and the smoky glow of his eyes beneath those hooded lids disturbed me still and I wondered how little effort it would take for me to understand. Mycroft was indeed a genius among men. And he had invited me as well. My mind rebelled and went elsewhere.
"But, I still don't understand what occurred tonight. You say you had declined membership. I naturally assumed--"
The corners of Holmes' austere mouth twitched momentarily. "Would you credit to believe that even an immoral sodomite such as myself--" I squirmed to hear this term self-applied to my friend, "might eschew random couplings in deference to a quest for true love?"
I confess to being more than a little taken aback, for in truth, I had not. I felt my cheeks colour and scrambled for something to cover the moment.
"But why, tonight, should Mycroft force the matter? And why insist that I accompany you? I see no purpose to bringing this all out on display. And what in blazes does the timing of my marriage have to do with any of it?"
"You know my methods, Watson. These are the salient facts. Mycroft has not contacted me on a personal matter in these many years. He has been made aware of my disinclination towards single membership. My brother a most astute student of human nature, deducing the most monumental discoveries from the smallest of cues. Upon observing us together during that little matter of the Greek Interpreter, he suddenly becomes intent upon a mission to secure us together within the club environs. Upon the announcement of your engagement, the requests become all the more urgent. What is your conclusion?
"And much more importantly, what is your reaction? I had prepared myself for
the sad inevitability of being minus a flatmate by the end of May. Shall I
also be minus a valued friend?" His eyes sparkled bright and intense and
refused to release mine without an answer.
At once I had the answer. He was in love with me.
"Is there anything you wish to tell me, Holmes?"
He shook his head. "All that I have to say has already crossed your mind."
"Then possibly my answer has already crossed yours," I replied.
"You stand fast?"
"Absolutely," I avowed, realising it was true only as I said the word.
He clapped his hand into the pocket of his dressing robe. I froze, my mind abuzz with all manner of uncharitable ideas of what a man of his persuasion might possess. Holmes pulled forth a pipe cleaner. "Stout fellow," he responded evenly and began to work on the cherrywood.
I chastised myself for my foolishness and hastened to explain. "I love you both, Holmes, but ours is the love of brethren. Nothing like my love for Mary, whom I shall marry in three months. The combination of sympathies has made me a very happy man and it is my fondest hope that tonight will change nothing between us."
"And I am very glad for it," Holmes said, improbably, "for I am quite sure that a man of your intelligence can see that there can be only one outcome to this affair. You must withdraw to your marital home and see me only in the course of our professional appointments. You see, I myself have only this one resource, but it would be a grief to me for any man, especially you, Watson, to have to grapple with these demons if another course avails itself to you. You smile, Watson, but I assure you, it really would.
"You cannot conceive of the depths of pain to which these shameful urges can plunge a soul. The only thing that would give me greater peace than to have you share it with me would be to spare you entirely. Tonight you term it brotherly love, but I say unaffectedly that the danger to you is most real."
I said, "Danger is part of our trade; we have shared others together. I have no intention of abandoning our friendship, certainly not when you need me most. Surely a man of your intelligence can work this through for us."
"This is not danger," said he. "It is inevitable destruction."
"Why Holmes?" I asked in mild alarm. "Whatever do you propose to do?" Again, all manners of tales I had heard concerning men of sordid perversions hurtled through my mind. I am ashamed to think on the ideas I attributed to my dearest friend.
"Me?" Holmes snorted. "Why nothing. I shall do nothing at all."
So saying he rose from the divan. He plucked up the morocco case in one hand and a tourniquet in the other and retreated into his bedroom. Then he closed the bedroom door and, for the only time I can recall in our cohabitation, I heard the bolt turn in the lock.
I sat alone in the sitting room for several hours, but he did not re-emerge.
When I did retire to my bed I dreamt the most extraordinary dreams of smoke grey eyes dancing to the strains of an unseen violin.
The next morning at breakfast Holmes seemed his usual self. He greeted me absently as he ate a soft-boiled egg with one hand and perused the morning paper with the other. It was such a typical scene that I could have discounted it all as a dream. Only as the sleeve of his dressing gown slipped back and revealed the fresh bruise with the tiny central puncture did the events of the night before reoccupy my mind.
He paid me little mind, so I studied him covertly. I could not fathom why I hadn't seen the signs before. His face was smooth shaven and artistic, every line a pronouncement, every proud angle a jab at convention. His fingers were fine and delicate, the nails buffed and manicured as they primly spooned the egg from the cup. He held the silver with his fifth finger extended and smoothly raised the little bite to his mouth.
His lips were flush and swollen, I had never noticed that before. They parted almost indecently baring only a flash of tiny white teeth behind. His tongue extruded to capture the titbit of breakfast and I shivered unconsciously as those lips closed over the shaft and the tip of his tongue flicked out to lap a stray dribble from his lip.
Then he nailed me with those steely eyes. His mouth quirked up, not unkindly I would say. "Really, Watson, sometimes an egg is only an egg."
Flustered, I left my tea and toast and pushed away from the table.
"I must be off," I announced. "I am going to meet Miss Morstan for the day."
"Please give the young lady my best regards," said Holmes congenially, and resumed his paper.
I gathered my coat and hat and paused at the door. If I expected him to bid me stay, I was to be sorely disappointed. Good Lord, if I was waiting for him to bid me stay I should carry my own self off to Bedlam this minute! With that thought, I marched out the door to Mary's.
I took an open gig, though the weather was quite brisk, for I had hoped to persuade Mary to accompany me on a ride in the country. It would not do for a young lady to be in a closed carriage with a man while yet unwed.
My fiancee and I must shiver for the sake of convention, but two men from the Diogenes could hire a brougham and partake of any manner of lewd activities behind closed curtains then emerge to shake hands with the Prime Minister himself with no one any the wiser. I had to wonder what manner of society could allow such conditions to come to pass.
Sadly, I proved a poor companion for my bride-to-be. My head spun with all manner of onerous thoughts. I was not so unworldly as to automatically equate morality and legality. Had I ever been so inclined, my sojourn in India had cut me free from any such childlike beliefs. I had borne witness to all manner of malevolent horrors, committed by soldiers who received public honours and distinction for their shame. And if it could be that even the most revered edicts of Her Divine Majesty could yield such untold absolute evil, was it such a leap that the converse might also be true?
For I am no theologian, but how could the God of the Corinthians disdain love in any form? Furthermore, Sherlock Holmes was the closest thing I had ever witnessed to perfection here on earth and if his essence be judged to be an iniquity then, to be sure, I cannot tell right from wrong at all.
And I loved him. I held neither doubt nor shame for that. The familiarity that he allowed me and only me had been a source of great pride and joy for me for some time now and I could not help but turn my tender proclivities toward his acceptance. Who was I to assert that the love he held for me was any less correct than that I held for him?
I returned Mary to her rooms and made to take my leave but she demurred. "It is a bitter night. Why don't you stay, John? My landlady is away for the time." She laid her hand upon my thigh and kissed me with a sweet ardour all her own.
I pulled back. Her hand slipped up my leg to the centre of my body, thickening me in an instant. I summoned all my self-control and kissed her hand chastely. "Mary, my darling, I would not jeopardise your honour for the world. While I thank you for your hospitable offer, I regret that my breeding as a gentleman must impel me to decline. I will make my way back to my own rooms and solace myself with thoughts of our wedding night."
She accepted the lie, as did I at the time, and I left her there smiling ingenuously after me. The image of that trusting face has haunted me for many years since.
It is a wonderful and a terrible thing to have a woman entirely dependent upon you. I found that I was not ready, and bid her a hasty goodnight.
It speaks to how deeply traditional patterns are ingrained in our upbringing to the exclusion of rational thought, for at no time through the length of our affair did it occur to me to reconsider my engagement. Curious, that. Most curious.
______________
Chapter 5, recorded Tuesday May 5, 1891
Continuation of the Narrative from the Englisher Hof, Meiringen
concerning the events of February 12, 1889
221b Baker Street
...I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single-minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.
&n