Wormwood. Chapter Seven.
Wormwood. Chapter Seven.
Author: ghislainem70
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1868
Warning: reference to suicide; graphic depictions of violence (entire work); explicit sex (entire work)
Summary: Sherlock, John and Lestrade become entangled in a mystery of the London art and theatre worlds
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs. Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Wormwood. Chapter Seven.
The clues, the clues. Now that he knew this was Moriarty's game, not Irene's, there was a different order of logic involved.
The photograph. Irene in the bathtub.
Poppies.
Ophelia.
Millais.
A bathtub.
A riverbank.
Beatrix/Beatrice.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Alighieri.
The Divine Comedy.
La Vita Nuova.
Shakespeare.
Hamlet.
Hair.
A wig.
The Queen of Hearts.
A playing card.
One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things is not like the others.
Sherlock had volumes of Dante and Shakespeare spread out before him as well as a huge reference work with coloured plates on the Pre-Raphaelites.
Every few moments, though, his processes were interrupted. Thoughts, images, feelings. John.
This was so very uncommon, unprecedented really, to be unable to pour the entirety of his nearly boundless mental abilities into the direction of his own choosing. His brain, ordinarily a flood of flashing neurons felt slowed, lazy, sluggish. There was an obstacle here, an impediment. And although a woman's life depended on it, he could not find a way to overcome it. In fact he was almost certain he never would, no matter how long or hard he tried.
It's like a computer virus. And every new defense I put up, he somehow overcomes.
* * *
That very first day, meeting at 221b. The instant John hesitated over the clutter, he responded with a small flurry of activity, even a half- intended promise to "straighten up a bit."
Mrs Hudson: "There's another bedroom upstairs. If you'll be needing two bedrooms."
Sherlock: swiftly turning his back to John, he mustn't see the fire of -- hope? Desire? Need? In Sherlock's pale eyes.
John: "Of course we'll be needing two."
* * *
A moment later, Lestrade calling him to an irresistibly fascinating murder scene, yet he hesitated on the stair. He wanted John, by his side. He could not understand why he felt this, not yet; but although he might not understand them he did know that this was, in fact, feeling. To feel. It had been a long time since he had had feelings.
He spent the next twenty minutes in the cab showing off outrageously, to be rewarded by John's praise: "That. Was. Amazing."
And at that very instant, God, how he wanted to force such a confession from John's lips with his own mouth on him. The images astounded him with their power, even then.
* * *
Finally he closed his eyes. Ophelia fading. Fingers twisted in John's russet hair, dampened with sweat from their passion.
No.
Ophelia.
Dante.
Hair.
Hair?
* * *
A few hour's later, Angelo's. John prying a little, possibly flirting -- a little? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? God, was he making himself so incredibly obvious? That transparent? Candle on the table. Stupidly blurting out, self protectively, mustn't let this get out of control --"John, I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work and while I'm flattered by your interest -." Turning the tables, the best way to confuse him --
But John, unfazed, his warm, wise eyes holding Sherlock's --"-It's all fine."
* * *
In the hall of 221b, grinning with sheer happiness after tearing through London streets, glorious, "Mrs Hudson, Doctor Watson will take the room upstairs."
John turning to answer the door to Angelo's sharp knock (that redundant cane) -- and as soon as John turned away, Sherlock's head tipping back, eyes closing, in that moment of possibly praying.
* * *
That first night Sherlock spent in John's company, John killed a man. Killed him for Sherlock. And smiled about it. His strong hand rock steady. The dizzy feeling that realization induced, something like being overcome by a euphoria-inducing drug, but purer and finer than that, made him want that night never to end.
"Dinner?" He asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Boasting that he could predict fortune cookies. Please, let him just stay until the morning.
"What are you so happy about?" John already attuned to Sherlock's moods, basking a little in Sherlock's joy.
"Moriarty," Sherlock says, the only thing that comes to mind, because surely it would be wrong to say, "You, John."
Just to say his name, "John." He had always caressed the syllable, deep, low, a little breathless, as a lover would, long before they ever touched, ever kissed.
Waiting and watching for John's steely will to relent, months of waiting for a single touch, watching, waiting like a bird of prey. Finally laying almost a trap for him, catching him at last.
Perhaps he had trapped John too well. Too thoroughly.
Lestrade's mouth on John's.
* * *
With fierce effort of will, he drew a curtain over the scene and stared at his clues. A flimsy curtain that would not hold in the slightest.
Finally he realizes two things. Queen of Hearts and the blonde wig, lock of hair shorn from it.
How do they fit? They do not fit, not in any obvious way like the others - poppies, heroin; Ophelia, drowning, (possibly) unrequited love for Hamlet; Beatrice/Beatrix, the ideal and unconsummated love of Dante; both possibly meant to be allegories of Irene and Sherlock’s own past; The Queen of Hearts. . .Moriarty taunting him, implying that Irene was the Queen of Sherlock's heart?
"I'll burn the heart out of you."
* * *
How Moriarty could be so utterly ignorant. Their old tale was easily told and not an uncommon one from those days, anyone at that age, really. Sparring wits at Cambridge. Who would earn the higher marks, who was most brilliant. Pranks and practical jokes of complex design, pretentious college crap. No one else in the whole world interesting enough for their little club of two. Flatmates within a week.
And within a year, a spiral into self destruction. Games with drugs.
And then Irene decided she wanted Sherlock's body as well as his mind. Wanted all of Sherlock, her exclusive property. She would not rest until she won. Arguments, pleading, intensely humiliating for both. Fumbling, failed experiments.
For Sherlock lusted in his own way after her mind, but never her body. It was strange to say, since he had experimented with both boys and girls by this time, finding it all rather sordid. boring, really. Drugs were really what it was all about, then.
But Irene, he cared for too much to deceive that way, even to keep her with him.
Irene's melodramatic suicide attempt, a last bid for his attentions, or the ultimate punishment.
Mycroft sending her out of the country, an exile, before she killed him, Mycroft said, in their destructive cycle of guilt and drugs.
* * *
Scanning Dante, Hamlet, The Pre-Raphaelite tome for references to the Queen of Hearts. Books scattered, searching on his mobile. Refusing to think about the shattered laptop.
It was now 7:30 a.m. He had been up all night.
If the sundial in "Beatrix Beata" meant anything, then he had until nine o’clock.
And here it was at last.
"The Queen of Hearts" was a sentimental sketch made by the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti of his wife Elizabeth Siddal, before her death.
And "Beatrix Beata" was a painting of Rossetti' wife, Elizabeth Siddal, idealizing their lost love, completed after her death.
Elizabeth Siddal.
He turned back to Millais' "Ophelia." The model shivering in the cold bathwater, falling ill.
Elizabeth Siddal.
Elizabeth Siddal, an artist's model, discovered working in a milliner's shop, becoming the muse of the Pre-Raphaelites. At least until other, younger and more alluring discoveries were made. "The stunners," Rossetti called them, to Siddal’s anguish. Elizabeth Siddal, who Rosetti had promised and disappointed in love for more than ten years before finally relenting, marrying her in what would be the final years of her short life.
Elizabeth Siddal, who the coroner's inquest in 1862 found died by accidental overdose of laudanum - a potion of opium, from poppies. But Rossetti had burned her suicide note. Suffering from postpartum depression following the birth of a stillborn daughter, distraught by her husband's emotional abandonment (Rossetti now fascinated by the far better educated and more alluring Jane Morris.)
Rossetti, so overcome with remorse and grief at Elizabeth’s death, that he buried with her corpse the only copy of his unpublished poems, odes to Elizabeth and their love, wrapped in her hair, the casket closing over it.
Rossetti, in 1869, forming the irresistible desire to have his unpublished poems back, and leaving the dirty work of obtaining an order for Elizabeth's body to be exhumed to the nefarious offices of his agent and confidant, the notorious Charles Augustus Howell.
Howell reporting to Rossetti, who was half mad with guilt and self-reproach that Elizabeth's body remained fresh and untouched by death, that her hair had grown to fill the coffin. Suppressing mention of the worm that had eaten through that volume of poetry.
After that, some said that Siddal was a vampire and a watch had to be put over her grave.
Her grave.
Sherlock checked in the book once more, and hailed a cab.
On the way, he texted Lestrade.
"Highgate Cemetery."
* * *
The grey London morning was filled with mist and the cemetery was not open to the public. Sherlock climbed over the wrought iron railing from an alleyway, searching.
Highgate Cemetery has a mysterious allure, being the quintessential cemetery. It was full of sentimental and oppressive statuary of the Victorians, angels and wreaths, mournful children, obelisks, crypts. Many of the eminent Victorians were laid to rest here, but Sherlock unerringly found the one he sought.
Elizabeth Siddal.
She was buried in the Rossetti family plot. No sentimental inscription was made: "Also to the memory of Elizabeth Eleanor, wife to their eldest son Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who died February 11th, 1862, aged 30 years."
Here, resting gently against the gravestone, was a white envelope. It was addressed,
"Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
He opened it.
"My dear,
Please allow me to introduce myself.
I am a man of wealth and taste.
Forgive me.
I hope you enjoyed my collection.
I enjoy death in all of its manifestations.
Irene shall soon be in my permanent collection.
Unless . . . but you know what you have to do."
Yes. Solve the mystery. So far, Moriarty had never cheated in their little games. Well, not precisely. "I’m so changeable!"
He could not afford to think of that.
Just then Lestrade approached. Before Sherlock could start to explain his discovery, Lestrade held his hand out.
"Sherlock, promise me you’ll kill me later."
Sherlock stared.
"I can’t find John."
Now this sentence should not even exist in the English language. Why on earth should Lestrade have any reason to look for John, let alone be unable to find him. But apparently it was Lestrade’s business and Sherlock had been the last to know.
"Well," he whispered.
"I gave him the key to my flat."
Sherlock’s fists clenching and unclenching.
"And I went there just now and the key is in the door, the door is open, and John’s bag is there. But he isn’t."
Sherlock mumbled something about maybe he went back to 221B to get something and failed to latch the door. While his blood ran cold.
Lestrade shook his head, his eyes grim. And trembling, held out a card to Sherlock.
A colorful card of a painting, from the Tate Britain gallery shop.
"The Funeral of Hephaestion."
To be continued . . .
Back to Chapter Six: ( Read more at my LJ ) Next Chapter (Eight): .( Read more at my LJ )
Author: ghislainem70
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1868
Warning: reference to suicide; graphic depictions of violence (entire work); explicit sex (entire work)
Summary: Sherlock, John and Lestrade become entangled in a mystery of the London art and theatre worlds
Disclaimer: I own nothing. All honours to Messrs. Gatiss, Moffat, BBC et al.
Wormwood. Chapter Seven.
The clues, the clues. Now that he knew this was Moriarty's game, not Irene's, there was a different order of logic involved.
The photograph. Irene in the bathtub.
Poppies.
Ophelia.
Millais.
A bathtub.
A riverbank.
Beatrix/Beatrice.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Alighieri.
The Divine Comedy.
La Vita Nuova.
Shakespeare.
Hamlet.
Hair.
A wig.
The Queen of Hearts.
A playing card.
One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things is not like the others.
Sherlock had volumes of Dante and Shakespeare spread out before him as well as a huge reference work with coloured plates on the Pre-Raphaelites.
Every few moments, though, his processes were interrupted. Thoughts, images, feelings. John.
This was so very uncommon, unprecedented really, to be unable to pour the entirety of his nearly boundless mental abilities into the direction of his own choosing. His brain, ordinarily a flood of flashing neurons felt slowed, lazy, sluggish. There was an obstacle here, an impediment. And although a woman's life depended on it, he could not find a way to overcome it. In fact he was almost certain he never would, no matter how long or hard he tried.
It's like a computer virus. And every new defense I put up, he somehow overcomes.
* * *
That very first day, meeting at 221b. The instant John hesitated over the clutter, he responded with a small flurry of activity, even a half- intended promise to "straighten up a bit."
Mrs Hudson: "There's another bedroom upstairs. If you'll be needing two bedrooms."
Sherlock: swiftly turning his back to John, he mustn't see the fire of -- hope? Desire? Need? In Sherlock's pale eyes.
John: "Of course we'll be needing two."
* * *
A moment later, Lestrade calling him to an irresistibly fascinating murder scene, yet he hesitated on the stair. He wanted John, by his side. He could not understand why he felt this, not yet; but although he might not understand them he did know that this was, in fact, feeling. To feel. It had been a long time since he had had feelings.
He spent the next twenty minutes in the cab showing off outrageously, to be rewarded by John's praise: "That. Was. Amazing."
And at that very instant, God, how he wanted to force such a confession from John's lips with his own mouth on him. The images astounded him with their power, even then.
* * *
Finally he closed his eyes. Ophelia fading. Fingers twisted in John's russet hair, dampened with sweat from their passion.
No.
Ophelia.
Dante.
Hair.
Hair?
* * *
A few hour's later, Angelo's. John prying a little, possibly flirting -- a little? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? God, was he making himself so incredibly obvious? That transparent? Candle on the table. Stupidly blurting out, self protectively, mustn't let this get out of control --"John, I think you should know that I consider myself married to my work and while I'm flattered by your interest -." Turning the tables, the best way to confuse him --
But John, unfazed, his warm, wise eyes holding Sherlock's --"-It's all fine."
* * *
In the hall of 221b, grinning with sheer happiness after tearing through London streets, glorious, "Mrs Hudson, Doctor Watson will take the room upstairs."
John turning to answer the door to Angelo's sharp knock (that redundant cane) -- and as soon as John turned away, Sherlock's head tipping back, eyes closing, in that moment of possibly praying.
* * *
That first night Sherlock spent in John's company, John killed a man. Killed him for Sherlock. And smiled about it. His strong hand rock steady. The dizzy feeling that realization induced, something like being overcome by a euphoria-inducing drug, but purer and finer than that, made him want that night never to end.
"Dinner?" He asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Boasting that he could predict fortune cookies. Please, let him just stay until the morning.
"What are you so happy about?" John already attuned to Sherlock's moods, basking a little in Sherlock's joy.
"Moriarty," Sherlock says, the only thing that comes to mind, because surely it would be wrong to say, "You, John."
Just to say his name, "John." He had always caressed the syllable, deep, low, a little breathless, as a lover would, long before they ever touched, ever kissed.
Waiting and watching for John's steely will to relent, months of waiting for a single touch, watching, waiting like a bird of prey. Finally laying almost a trap for him, catching him at last.
Perhaps he had trapped John too well. Too thoroughly.
Lestrade's mouth on John's.
* * *
With fierce effort of will, he drew a curtain over the scene and stared at his clues. A flimsy curtain that would not hold in the slightest.
Finally he realizes two things. Queen of Hearts and the blonde wig, lock of hair shorn from it.
How do they fit? They do not fit, not in any obvious way like the others - poppies, heroin; Ophelia, drowning, (possibly) unrequited love for Hamlet; Beatrice/Beatrix, the ideal and unconsummated love of Dante; both possibly meant to be allegories of Irene and Sherlock’s own past; The Queen of Hearts. . .Moriarty taunting him, implying that Irene was the Queen of Sherlock's heart?
"I'll burn the heart out of you."
* * *
How Moriarty could be so utterly ignorant. Their old tale was easily told and not an uncommon one from those days, anyone at that age, really. Sparring wits at Cambridge. Who would earn the higher marks, who was most brilliant. Pranks and practical jokes of complex design, pretentious college crap. No one else in the whole world interesting enough for their little club of two. Flatmates within a week.
And within a year, a spiral into self destruction. Games with drugs.
And then Irene decided she wanted Sherlock's body as well as his mind. Wanted all of Sherlock, her exclusive property. She would not rest until she won. Arguments, pleading, intensely humiliating for both. Fumbling, failed experiments.
For Sherlock lusted in his own way after her mind, but never her body. It was strange to say, since he had experimented with both boys and girls by this time, finding it all rather sordid. boring, really. Drugs were really what it was all about, then.
But Irene, he cared for too much to deceive that way, even to keep her with him.
Irene's melodramatic suicide attempt, a last bid for his attentions, or the ultimate punishment.
Mycroft sending her out of the country, an exile, before she killed him, Mycroft said, in their destructive cycle of guilt and drugs.
* * *
Scanning Dante, Hamlet, The Pre-Raphaelite tome for references to the Queen of Hearts. Books scattered, searching on his mobile. Refusing to think about the shattered laptop.
It was now 7:30 a.m. He had been up all night.
If the sundial in "Beatrix Beata" meant anything, then he had until nine o’clock.
And here it was at last.
"The Queen of Hearts" was a sentimental sketch made by the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti of his wife Elizabeth Siddal, before her death.
And "Beatrix Beata" was a painting of Rossetti' wife, Elizabeth Siddal, idealizing their lost love, completed after her death.
Elizabeth Siddal.
He turned back to Millais' "Ophelia." The model shivering in the cold bathwater, falling ill.
Elizabeth Siddal.
Elizabeth Siddal, an artist's model, discovered working in a milliner's shop, becoming the muse of the Pre-Raphaelites. At least until other, younger and more alluring discoveries were made. "The stunners," Rossetti called them, to Siddal’s anguish. Elizabeth Siddal, who Rosetti had promised and disappointed in love for more than ten years before finally relenting, marrying her in what would be the final years of her short life.
Elizabeth Siddal, who the coroner's inquest in 1862 found died by accidental overdose of laudanum - a potion of opium, from poppies. But Rossetti had burned her suicide note. Suffering from postpartum depression following the birth of a stillborn daughter, distraught by her husband's emotional abandonment (Rossetti now fascinated by the far better educated and more alluring Jane Morris.)
Rossetti, so overcome with remorse and grief at Elizabeth’s death, that he buried with her corpse the only copy of his unpublished poems, odes to Elizabeth and their love, wrapped in her hair, the casket closing over it.
Rossetti, in 1869, forming the irresistible desire to have his unpublished poems back, and leaving the dirty work of obtaining an order for Elizabeth's body to be exhumed to the nefarious offices of his agent and confidant, the notorious Charles Augustus Howell.
Howell reporting to Rossetti, who was half mad with guilt and self-reproach that Elizabeth's body remained fresh and untouched by death, that her hair had grown to fill the coffin. Suppressing mention of the worm that had eaten through that volume of poetry.
After that, some said that Siddal was a vampire and a watch had to be put over her grave.
Her grave.
Sherlock checked in the book once more, and hailed a cab.
On the way, he texted Lestrade.
"Highgate Cemetery."
* * *
The grey London morning was filled with mist and the cemetery was not open to the public. Sherlock climbed over the wrought iron railing from an alleyway, searching.
Highgate Cemetery has a mysterious allure, being the quintessential cemetery. It was full of sentimental and oppressive statuary of the Victorians, angels and wreaths, mournful children, obelisks, crypts. Many of the eminent Victorians were laid to rest here, but Sherlock unerringly found the one he sought.
Elizabeth Siddal.
She was buried in the Rossetti family plot. No sentimental inscription was made: "Also to the memory of Elizabeth Eleanor, wife to their eldest son Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who died February 11th, 1862, aged 30 years."
Here, resting gently against the gravestone, was a white envelope. It was addressed,
"Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
He opened it.
"My dear,
Please allow me to introduce myself.
I am a man of wealth and taste.
Forgive me.
I hope you enjoyed my collection.
I enjoy death in all of its manifestations.
Irene shall soon be in my permanent collection.
Unless . . . but you know what you have to do."
Yes. Solve the mystery. So far, Moriarty had never cheated in their little games. Well, not precisely. "I’m so changeable!"
He could not afford to think of that.
Just then Lestrade approached. Before Sherlock could start to explain his discovery, Lestrade held his hand out.
"Sherlock, promise me you’ll kill me later."
Sherlock stared.
"I can’t find John."
Now this sentence should not even exist in the English language. Why on earth should Lestrade have any reason to look for John, let alone be unable to find him. But apparently it was Lestrade’s business and Sherlock had been the last to know.
"Well," he whispered.
"I gave him the key to my flat."
Sherlock’s fists clenching and unclenching.
"And I went there just now and the key is in the door, the door is open, and John’s bag is there. But he isn’t."
Sherlock mumbled something about maybe he went back to 221B to get something and failed to latch the door. While his blood ran cold.
Lestrade shook his head, his eyes grim. And trembling, held out a card to Sherlock.
A colorful card of a painting, from the Tate Britain gallery shop.
"The Funeral of Hephaestion."
To be continued . . .
Back to Chapter Six: ( Read more at my LJ ) Next Chapter (Eight): .( Read more at my LJ )