Disclaimer: I only own Joseph Thorn and his bees - nothing else.
The Beekeeper.
Sussex Downs, 1864.
The garden was so bright, full of splashes of colour, as though a mad artist had been let loose with his paints and slapped his brush on everything in sight. Soft-winged butterflies in pastel shades of blue and yellow fluttered about the plants like delicate ladies in ballroom finery, engaged in an whirling, airy dance of their own; a few midges wended their annoying way across the garden, and hoverflies darted from one bright spot of colour to another, undecided where to land. The majority of the insect population in the garden, however, was made up of bees. Honey bees with soft thoraxes and transparent, veined wings, busily working, carrying their burdens of pollen on their legs to and fro about the flowers.
Joesph Thorn watched a bee, laden down from its peregrinations amongst the foxgloves, fly over to the row of bee hives at the bottom of the garden. Beyond the hives, beyond the low stone wall the hives stood against, rose the Sussex Downs, miles of grasses waving gently in the wind, rippling in silver waves forwards and backwards in a continuous flowing movement, a movement only stopped when the wind dropped. Joseph smiled.The Downs were his life; he had been born and bred on a small farm in their very heart, and he could not imagine a life anywhere else. When his parents died, more than twenty years ago, he had moved to this cottage and set up his bee-hives here. He had remained here ever since.
Joseph got up from off his knees where he had been weeding, feeling his joints protest as they took the strain. His back gave a quick twinge of pain, and he grunted, pressing his hand against his spine. Once he was steady on his feet, he stumped off towards his cottage, a small, thatched building with walls of rough grey stone. He opened the back door, hearing the swallows twitter in the thatch above. Inside the cottage, it was very bare, but very clean. One room served as his bedroom, another as his kitchen and dining room combined. It wasn't as though he needed a room to entertain visitors - he never had any. That suited him fine.
In the kitchen, Joseph poked at the coals inside his old black range, shifting them about and causing a fresh burst of sparks. Satisfied, he replaced the lid, and moving the basin of rising bread, he began to clean the table, whistling under his breath. Suddenly, he cocked his head onto one side, listening intently. Then he got up and went to the window.
He saw a boy climbing over the wall, keeping a respectful distance away from the bee hives. The boy looked about, and stared in admiration at the explosion of flowers around him. Joseph drew his eyebrows together in a frown and went outside. The boy heard the creak of the door open, and quickly turned around as Joseph stumped up to him. The two stood silently, each evaluating what they saw.
One saw a man of about sixty; old, but sturdy and tall, with a tangle of white hair and bushy white eyebrows over squinting brown eyes; a tanned face wreathed in wrinkles - lines of both age and laughter.
The other saw a boy of ten years, slenderly, but strongly built; taller than most boys his age, with raven-dark hair brushed back from a thin face that had already started to brown in the fierce sun. A thinking face, Joseph concluded, seeing the boy's hawk-like nose and observing eyes that were as sharply grey as the sky during a thunder storm.
Finally, Joseph spoke. "Good morning," he said.
"Good morning, sir." the boy replied. "I'm sorry if I'm intruding, but I saw the house, and wondered if I might have a drink. I'm very thirsty."
"A drink, eh? Been out all morning?"
Joseph turned and lead the way back to the cottage, the boy following, and answering: "Yes, I have. I was just rambling about, and I suppose I wandered too far...I hope they won't be cross."
"Who's they?"
"Oh, my parents and my older brother. We're staying here for a while, at a farm not far away. Over there."
"I know't." Joseph gestured to the kitchen table. "Ye can sit on that. There be only one chair."
While the boy sat on the table and swung his legs, Joseph found the water jug and poured some of the contents into a chipped mug. "There ye go."
"Thank you."
While the boy drank it, Joseph eyed him silently. Then, as the boy put the mug down, he asked, "What be your name, boy?"
"Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes. My older brother's called Mycroft. He can speak French."
"Can he though?"
"Yes," Sherlock Holmes replied. He evidently held his elder brother in the highest regard, and was anxious for his new aquaintence to do the same. "I don't know much of it... yet. I'm learning, though. Mother's teaching me."
"Ah."
There was a silence, then Sherlock inquired politely, "Are those your bees, out there in the garden?"
"Aye, they'm mine. Kept 'em for nigh on twenty years."
"Don't they sting you?"
"Ye have to respect bees, ye do. Treat 'em bad, and they do the same. Like lots o' things in life. Come, I'll show ye." Joseph waited, interested to see the boy's reaction.
Sherlock smiled, and said, "Yes, thank you, Mr Thorn."
Only when they were in the garden and in front of the buzzing hives, did it occur to Joseph. "How did ye know my name, boy?"
Sherlock looked faintly suprised. "Joseph Thorn was scratched on your table. You wouldn't get many visitors, as it's very cut off here, and you wouldn't get many who would carve their name on their host's table, either. Also, you had a Bible on the chair with a woven bookmarker in it. The marker had JT embroidered on it."
"Tha's a sharp one, Sherlock. Very sharp. See, here be the main hive. In here is the Queen."
"The bees have a queen, just like us?"
"The bees have their own lives to live, just as we live our's. They have a Queen, and the Queen has servants to carry out her orders, workers to bring food to the hive, and more workers to keep the hive in order. The Queen is the life of the hive. Kill the Queen, and the others' life be destroyed. She be the main point of the bees' living."
"Oh!" Sherlock gazed in admiration at Joseph, then directed his awe-struck eyes to the hives. "Little working peoples," he said dreamily. "Little working gangs, all slaving for one big goal, all slaving to serve the Queen."
Joseph smiled at the boy's poetic speech. "They be little working gangs alright. They have their ways of living and their own laws for living. Like humans in villages."
"Or in London,"
"I would not be knowing about that. I never been to London."
"No, of course not..."
For some time, the two sat in silence, while the bees flew about their business, unaffected by the rest of the world, exploring the flowers, sometimes landing on Joseph's clothes or in the grass at his feet. When that happened, Joseph would gently pick the bee up and toss it lightly into the air. Once, a bee landed on Sherlock's sleeve, and Joseph was pleased to see him shake the bee off with no fuss or fright, and send it on its way.
Eventually, Sherlock said regretfully, "I must get back. I've stayed away long enough as it is." He went over to the wall, at the exact same spot that he had climbed over.
When he was safely on the other side, Joseph said, "Ye'll be going home soon, I take it?"
"Yes, tomorrow."
"I'll not be seeing ye again, then. Goodbye, Sherlock Holmes."
"Goodbye, Mr Thorn." Sherlock held out his hand, and man and boy shook hands over the wall. Then, Sherlock turned and began walking up the rise behind Joseph's cottage. Joseph stood and watched him go, shading his eyes against the sun. When the boy was out of sight, Joseph went back to stand before his hives, watching the little people that he loved going about their lives in their wonderful world of flowers, fragrances and nectar.
- - -
Neither Joseph Thorn or Sherlock Holmes saw the other again, but each held inside their memory those few hours that they had spent together; when a man passed onto a boy something that would make the boy famous the world over, while the man remained unknown, and forgotten. Both were content with their lot.