Chapter Five
On Late Night Conversations
I stood outside the farmstead I knew so well. The windows were dark and the hearth was cold. A faint echo of memory, in my mother's voice, told me that my mother's family had spent this year in Boston. A half-formed idea of somehow warning her of a disaster twenty years in the future faded into the foggy night.
I turned away from the darkened house and set my face across the downs. My feet knew the path well enough to walk it automatically, but that was in 1920. Time had changed the boundaries of the fields, placing fences and walls where there were none before. But I knew my destination, like a migrating swallow returning to her roost.
I knew what to expect now, but it did not make the blow any easier to take. Our home, Holmes' and mine, was silent. The windows were boarded up and the front door was locked and barred. The hives were silent.
I forced open the kitchen door, which was merely latched shut, and tread carefully through the kitchen. It was filled with the strange nameless dread which pervades those places that are at once familiar and strange. The furniture was sparse, probably left behind by the last family to inhabit the place as being too old, cumbersome or ugly to move. Only the upstairs guest room showed signs of recent inhabitation. The bed had been slept in and there was a small suitcase stowed under the bed.
I returned to the kitchen and sat down gingerly, half-afraid the chair would disappear the moment I touched it. What on earth was I going to do now?
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I don't know how long I sat there. Time didn't seem to be moving at all. Something flitted across the corner of my vision and I stood quickly, knocking over the chair. The crash echoed through the house.
"Holmes?" I called, unable to keep a slight tremor out of my voice.
"How the devil did you know it was me?" He replied sourly. He moved into the doorway where I could see him properly in the dim light afforded by the half-moon. It was not the Holmes I knew, but the younger Holmes I had been confronted with this morning.
I hadn't known. I had merely hoped, with every fibre of my being, that it was my husband creeping around outside; that this was the kitchen where Mrs. Hudson had attempted to teach me to cook; that it had all been some sort of bizarre nightmare from which I had finally awoken.
"I very much doubt anyone else would follow me down from London and across the Downs at this time of night."
"You are incorrect in your assumption, Miss Russell."
"I am?" I said, slipping easily into sarcasm, an almost automatic response to Holmes' acerbic nature.
"I did not follow you across the Downs. I was, however, intensely surprised to find you breaking and entering into a property which I have recently purchased. And I am no great believer in coincidence."
"Neither am I. What about London?" I asked, noting what Holmes failed to mention.
"Ah, London. When I heard you had effected your escape from the Yard I realized the natural action for you to take would be to continue on your quest to reach Sussex. Once a woman decides a course of action, it is next to impossible to sway her from it."
The easy chauvinism in his voice grated on my already raw nerves. My husband had said nearly the same thing on more than one occasion, but with amusement which turned it into a compliment rather than an insult.
"And men are so impulsive." I said sharply. Despite the poor light, I could see Holmes was startled by my retort. He did not reply, but went over to one of the kitchen drawers, and after a moment of rummaging, pulled out a candle and a book of matches. The small flame did little to dispel the darkness, but now we could see enough to aim our barbed comments properly.
"You are lying, madam. It is madam, isn't it? You wear your wedding band on your right hand, contrary to established custom. You wish, for some reason, to be mistaken for an unmarried woman. Why is that?"
"I have always gone by Miss Russell." I said, sidestepping the question.
"You are neither as helpless nor witless as you appear to be."
"Oh, thank you."
"I do not believe this farce of amnesia."
"You wouldn't believe the truth either."
"Perhaps you should let me judge." I did not know what to say to that. I didn't dare tell the truth; it would only get me committed. And despite the truly bizarre twist my week was taking, I was sure of my sanity, having once before gone over the edge and returned.
"Let me think about this." I turned and walked out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. I heard a brief murmur of disbelief behind me, but Holmes made no move to stop me.
The large windows which graced the southern side of the house remained intact, although they had been mostly boarded over. There was a gap between two of the sheets of plywood and I laid my head against it, looking out over the familiar meadows rolling down toward the cliffs. It didn't take long to come to a conclusion, but deciding how to phrase it was another matter.
I returned to the kitchen to find a simple meal of bread and cheese had been laid out on the scrubbed wood. I stared in disbelief before I remembered that Holmes was still Holmes, no matter what year it was, and perfectly capable of producing a five course meal out of the wilderness.
I was suddenly very hungry and was startled to realize it had been at least eight hours since my last meal. I helped myself and we ate in silence. I was trying to organize my thoughts; God only knows what Holmes was thinking.
"I shall tell you the truth, on one condition." I said after we'd finished.
"Name it."
"You promise not to hand me over to a lunatic asylum once I've told you." This provision startled him and he didn't answer right away. But I knew him well enough to predict the answer.
"Very well. The truth, then."
"About two days ago, one of my old chemistry tutors disappeared without a trace while working on an experiment. I attempted to repeat the experiment and I suspect that I got the same results as my professor. There was…an explosion of some sort and I came to here. I believe my professor is here also, but I don't know where."
"When you say 'here,'" Holmes said carefully, "you do not mean this specific location."
"No." I said and braced myself. "You see, this happened about two days ago from my perspective, but about thirty years in the future from your perspective."
There was a long silence as Holmes worked through the implications of this statement. I held my breath and waited for a sign that he was about to break his word and send me to an asylum after all. I believe I heard crickets chirping outside.
"You are saying," Holmes said slowly, "that you have travelled backwards in time as the result of a botched chemistry experiment?"
"Yes." There was another long silence.
"I assume the notebook you had with you belonged to this professor?" I nodded. Holmes produced the notebook from an inner jacket pocket. "I glanced through his equations on the train. There seems to be a great deal of energy unaccounted for in the reaction. And these theological musings seem to be a later addition."
"I thought the formation energy of silicon was missing a decimal place." I sighed tiredly. "I didn't have a reference table with me, and I couldn't leave the solution over the flame. The loose paper is my work." I said it without thinking, but it left Holmes stunned. He could not have been more shocked had I revealed myself as Queen Victoria in disguise.
"I told you I studied chemistry." I reminded him reproachfully.
"Why did you come to Sussex, of all places?"
"I live … lived…will live in the area. Damn, I don't know."
"I see." He knew there was still something I wasn't telling him, but he wisely left it alone. How could I say it? I am your wife, or rather, I will be once I'm born and grow up? Perhaps later, when things made more sense.
"So, now that you have arrived from the future, what will you do?" For a brief moment I thought I had actually convinced him. But now his tone was careful, as if I might fly into hysterics at any moment.
"There's no need to patronize me. If you don't believe me, you need only say so."
"You are asking me to believe a tale better suited to Jules Verne, or one of his ilk."
"I believe that it was H.G. Wells who wrote about a time machine."
"There is enough to contemplate in the world without venturing into the impossible fantasies of fiction."
"Impossible? Or merely improbable?" This stopped him dead in his tracks and he peered at me in the uncertain light, as if seeing me for the first time. Then he chuckled, so softly I was hardly sure I'd heard it.
"Very well then. Improbabilities aside, will you be my guest tonight? Or perhaps you would prefer something at the town inn."
"You have only one bed here." I said noncommittally. It was a long walk back to the village, and I had heard no carriage before Holmes arrived.
"On the contrary. There is another bed in the attic space. I assume that you have found the one on the upper story. Permit me to offer it to you for this night. Unless you want to contend against my misogynistic self for the honour of the attic?"
"Under other circumstances I would, but in this case I think will bow to the dictates of chivalry."
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Grr. Finals. More coming as soon as I'm done with RL.
Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Complaints? Review!
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