News of Great Joy
Rating : PG
Prompt : Sherlock, Lestrade and Christmas Carols. The poem recited by Father Mulligan is Carol Ann Duffy's Bee Carol.
"Ah, Gregory." Young Father Mulligan, who in former days would have been dubbed a first-class specimen of muscular Christianity, squeezed Lestrade's shoulder with iron gusto as the latter stepped into the nave. "Good to see you here, the men's voices could do with some back-up... Ah, Simon, Letty, how are you tonight... though Miss Gunnings here has bravely volunteered to – ah, Michael – join the basses."
"Ah, Padre," Lestrade said for lack of a better rejoinder, accepting Miss Gunnings' proferred hand and the program that came with it.
"It's the mulled wine." Miss Gunnings, who sported seven feet two of churchly devotion and usually cast herself as Herod in the Nativity Play, beamed down on the two men. "Tips me down an octave, that it does. Nothing like cloves and brandy to bring out the oomph."
"Indeed, indeed. Ah, Mrs Henessy, you've brought your husband, how nice. You know Detective Inspector Lestrade? We're lucky he's off duty – until we take it into our heads to massacre Purcell, eh, Inspector?"
Lestrade did his best to rally an oomphy smile. Well, he'd hoped to bring someone too for their Carol Evening – had, in fact, felt a tender pang at the thought of showing Sherlock his little church, now filled with enough candles to light them to Babylon and back again. It didn't matter that Sherlock's creed was limited to his own synapses; in Lestrade's somewhat Jesuitic estimation, they were both acquainted with faith – the taut blind trust that there was something out there, immovable, out of scope yet accessible through roads strange and obscure, with no small effort on their part and, now and then, a chance grace crossing their paths.
It came down to faith in truth, truth by any other name and to each their own, and Lestrade had felt ready to entrust his lover with this part of himself, come what may of the experience.
But when he had mustered up his guts and sent Sherlock a text asking if he'd like to hear some old music with a little group of people, share a hot drink perhaps, stop on their return walk to check on the stars, there had been no answer. Why had he even believed there might be one? Sherlock did not do people. Still, Lestrade checked his phone, surreptitiously, only turning it off when Father Mulligan tried the altar mike with a cautious rat-tat.
After the usual greetings and encouragement for everyone to join the mirth, they all launched forth on Silent Night. The words hailed back to a world of past senses, the warm damp scent of his mother's winter cape against his cheek; the rough lilt of his father's voice, never shaking off its Dorset burr even after he'd moved his family and prospects to London. The herbed batter pudding, his Gran mixing a spoonful of snow into the milk every year for tradition's sake. Lestrade, who had been peering up at the red stained window over him – the Slaughter of the Innocent, so much for a change of scene – closed his eyes and let the cluster of voices rock him gently between past and present. The carols were sung or spoken in the case of more recent poems. He winced at Good King Wenceslas, remembering another Wenceslas and a duet questioning in his office that had led to Sherlock snatching the pen from his hand once the lady, still protesting too much, had been led away, to kiss Greg's lips hard and long. That had been their beginining; was this the end, because Sherlock had once more declined to follow in Lestrade's footsteps?
But there was the Sussex carol, his favorite, and he thought he could trust his voice enough to join in. His lungs too, now he'd taken the pledge and patch. Cautiously, his eyes still shut, he let himself be pulled in by the billowing tide of sounds.
On Christmas night all Christian sing
To hear what news the angels bring...
His memory jammed; he tumbled to a halt as his neighbour's voice, deep and strong, carried on the song.
News of great joy, news of great mirth,
I've caught you a serial killing nurse.
Lestrade's eyes snapped open in time to see several heads turn sharply to their row. Sherlock was standing next to him, his face a study in discrete mirth as he brushed down the half-melting snow from his coat and pulled off his gloves. He gave Miss Gunnings his patented roguish wink, to which she, astoundingly, responded in kind, and took Lestrade's hand in his.
"How did you –", Lestrade began, but the next verse was already rolling on.
Then why should men on earth be so sad...
He could feel Sherlock's hand warming to flesh under his touch. It held all the answers, Lestrade thought, more than Sherlock's mind ever would tonight. He squeezed it back.
Since Our Redeemer made us glad.
Had to run from Croydon, traffic's rough
And you'd just turned your mobile off.
More heads turned to their aisle. Father Mulligan's arm rose in its snow-white sleeve, visibly intent on bringing the song to a pause and castigating the newcomer's aplomb – then thought better of it. Bless the ould alliance between Law and Church, Greg thought dizzily. Or Sherlock's silky baritone, buttressing the men's voices most oomphily.
Then out of darkness we see light, Lestrade threw his voice in again. They did. And would, one way or another, even if their way was crooked in the eyes of men on so many accounts. He lifted their twined hands to his lips and kissed Sherlock's knuckles as the carol slowed down to its silver, fluent end.
Glory to God and peace to men
Both now and evermore. Amen.
Father Mulligan led the song to its rest, allowing it to blend into soft-edged silence before he spoke again. "We've sung of terror and peace, and darkness and liberty," he said quietly. "These are words of import, and to some of us" – his eyes met Lestrade's under the red stained window – "they may speak more urgently than to others. But they're a little abstract all the same. So I'll just read out a last carol, by a lady whose name, in fact, happens to be Carol. It begins with a garden in winter."
He cleared his throat. Lestrade lent an absent ear to the first stanza, then stole a glance aside, worried that Sherlock might grow impatient at what sounded like an elegant nursery's rhyme. But Sherlock was sitting upright, eyes to the priest, a study in rapt attention.
Bring me for my Christmas gift
a single golden jar ;
let me taste the sweetness there,
but honey leave
to feed the winter cluster of the bees.
Then the evening was over, ushering them into a not so silent night as the parishioners lingered in happy murmurous knots and Sherlock pulled him by the hand to where Father Mulligan stood.
"Ah, Mr —"
"Padre, this is Sherlock Holmes. My – partner." Yes, it seemed the only appropriate word in the end. "Sherlock, this is Father Mulligan."
"Welcome to our church, Mr Holmes. I'm glad you could make it despite the, er, seasonal traffic jams."
Sherlock leant forward, his gaze a pool of argent clarity under the moon. Father Mulligan gazed back, mesmerized, while Lestrade gave his lover a cautionary pinch. Now was not a good time to deduce that the Bishop was really a father of five, or Miss Gunnings a closet kleptomaniac who dipped her knitting needles in Dove liquid soap to pilfer the collection boxes.
"How can they still make honey if they're flightless and the garden is locked in ice?" Sherlock asked eagerly. "Do they stack pollen before they hibernate? Or invent a substitute chemical, like a scented hormone? Do they have endocrine glands, Padre?"
Lestrade blinked. Father Mulligan, a more dependable soul-reader, smiled.
"The bees in the Bee Carol? Ah, you'll have to ask Ms Duffy, I'm afraid: I'm a hardcore Londoner myself. But there must be an answer – the Bible has them make honey in the cleft of rocks, so I dare say nothing's past their minds."
Or Sherlock's, Lestrade thought as they walked out into the street. Match made in heaven, that. And his own mind was drifting back to that Dorset village, a creased memory now, and the line-up of hives under his grandmother's garden wall. Would they still be there, gleaming like small igloos under their coat of frost? His Ma would know when he called on the 25th.
"Or you could take Boxing Day off, too," a voice said at his side.
Let me taste the sweetness there. "Yes," Lestrade said simply, and stopped to raise his face, not to the cold edge of wind or the black holes between the stars, but to the blessing of Sherlock's touch – confident in his faith that, year in year out, in terror as in peace, it would be there for him.