Wormwood. Chapter Eight.
Title: Wormwood. Chapter Eight.
Author: ghislainem70
Word Count: 1930
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: reference to suicide, explicit sex (entire work), graphic depictions of violence (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.
Sherlock was still as a statue, only his eyes moving and shifting with those quick vibrations that reflected his mercurial thought processes. The sluggishness of before was banished.
Lestrade held his breath.
Finally Sherlock sent a text to Lestrade's phone: "Either of those two places is where you will find Irene, hurry, you only have until 9:00!" He called over his shoulder as he jumped back over the wrought iron fence and disappeared into the London fog.
Lestrade read the text. It said:
14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge.
7 Gower Street. Near British Museum.
* * *
Mycroft now was texting both Sherlock and Lestrade: Where is Doctor Watson?
* * *
Sherlock returned to 221B and devoured the Tate gallery programme's photograph and notes of the painting, "Funeral of Hephaestion." Why were there no other clues?
Was Moriarty waiting to send more clues? Or was this puzzle harder, were all the clues in the painting itself? Alexander and Hephaestion. Lovers. Warriors.
When Haephestion died (of a fever, possibly poison), ancient sources reported: "Alexander's grief was uncontrollable...he flung himself on the body of his friend and lay there stretched upon the corpse all day and the whole night too, until he was dragged away by force by his Companions."
On the day of Hephaestion's funeral, Alexader gave orders that the sacred flame in the temple should be extinguished, normally done only upon the Greak King's own death. Alexander was showing the world that his heart was dead.
Sherlock shivered.
And now, finally, here was a new clue, an anonymous email. No point trying to trace it. "Troilus and Cressida." This was all.
The mystery was falling into a familiar pattern then. Too familiar?
He pulled down his Shakespeare, and found the passages at once:
Patroclus: Who keeps the tent now?
Thersites: The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound.
Patroclus: Well said, adversity! and what need these tricks?
Thersites: Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
Patroclus: Male varlet, you rogue! What's that?
Thersites. Why, his masculine whore.
* * *
Achilles: My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in to-morrow's battle . . .
This night in banqueting must be spent. Away, Patroclus!
[exit]
Thersites: With too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I'll be the curer of madmen.
* * *
[after Patroclus is slain by Hector]
Nestor: Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles .. . . [Enter Ulysses]
Ulysses: Oh, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles
Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance:
Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood. .
.
Achilles: Where is this Hector?
Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.
Sherlock dropped the book. Too much brain and too little blood? Too much blood and too little brain? Old Thersites seemed to mock him.
Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood.
The painter, then; what of the painter? Here was a puzzle, too. Juan Luna y Novicio, 1879. From the Philippines, curious. No reference anywhere to a model. Perhaps it was painted abroad? Yes, here it was, Paris. Also the artist traveled to Rome and Venice. What associations would the painter have with London? None that he could see. Unclear he had ever even been to London.
Juan Luna liked to paint his wife. (Like Rossetti). But he was obsessed with ideas that she was unfaithful. In 1893 killed his wife, his mother in law, and wounded his brother in law with a pistol, in a fit of jealous rage.
Jealousy.
The Parisians, always indulgent of affairs of the heart, acquitted Luna on grounds of temporary insanity brought on by rage at his wife's (supposed) infidelity.
What did Moriarty know of his jealousy? For he was self-aware enough, at this point, to perfectly comprehend that he was jealous about John. Whether his degree of jealousy was slight or excessive he really had no idea and did not care. But it was there, almost with a life of its own.
He felt like he could possibly just kill Lestrade. Yes. That was the feeling, precisely . . .
No, not now, Sherlock. Hephaestion.
The items in Hephaestion's funeral pyre. Offerings from Alexander's conquered empire. Afghanistan. Okay then, so far so obvious: John. Also, Roxelana, the woman who Alexander took for a wife from Sogdiana; near Samarkand. Modern Uzbekistan? Causing intense pain and jealousy to Hephaestion, possibly?
He thought back to John's conduct before leaving, the probing questions about Irene and the flowers: "She wants to, what, pick up where she left off?" "No, that's not it." But John hadn't believed him, and Sherlock had been too hurt about Lestrade to correct him, to make it clear. So wrapped up in the puzzle, neglecting as always to take care of John's feelings. He was always doing that. At first he had never even known that he did it, or rather failed to do it. Now he could not always help it, but he was starting - had been starting, he thought - to recognize when he had, in fact, hurt John's heart.
And what about my heart?
Not now Sherlock. Alexander Afghanistan Hephaestion Roxelana Luna funeral Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare Achilles Patroclus male whore?
Another email. This time a .pdf facsimile of a very old edition of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the Alexander Pope edition.
Alexander Pope? Alexander. Alexander. Hephaestion. Alexander Pope, Catholic. Poet, critic, epigramist: "And die of nothing but a rage to live."
* * *
Lestrade was now here in 221b with Irene, looking pale and with dark shadows under her eyes, a little groggy. She wanted to run to him, but one look at his face stopped her from making any move to touch him. She knew him that well.
Sherlock barely looked up. "Irene," he acknowledged. "Which was it," he shot to Lestrade, fingers flying over his mobile.
"Gower Street. How did you --- " he stopped. Sherlock had shut them out. Lestrade went to lead Irene away but she looked thoughtfully at Sherlock's stricken face and shook her head, quietly creeping to a chair by the fireplace and curling up in it, watching him with her dark eyes.
Now Lestrade quietly and quickly told Sherlock about the meeting that morning between Moriarty's wife and John.
Lestrade said he would be heading the team at Scotland Yard and to call at once if he thought he had any new clue. Sherlock's upper lip curled scornfully and Lestrade understood that later, Sherlock intended to make him pay.
For everything.
Now Mycroft was here as well, frowning magisterially at Irene. Sherlock said, "Well, Mycroft, you very nearly run the entire British secret service and cannot keep one single man under competent surveillance? Please explain, if you can." He did not look up from his researches.
"We did have a man on him. Two, in fact. But he had said that he didn't want to be penned in and I am pretty sure that John discovered that he was being watched. He threw his mobile into a trash can in one of his usual pubs, slipped out the back and into the nearest tube station before they found he was missing. The men in question are being . . .disciplined."
Someone knew where he was going, though. He was taken at Lestrade's door. "How would Moriarty know that John was going to Lestrade's?" Sherlock asked.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Moriarty seems to have formed the definite opinion that Lestrade has some sort of -- attachment to John. She is a wickedly perceptive woman in her own way," Mycroft said with an inappropriate degree of admiration. "So Moriarty may have anticipated that John could go to Lestrade if he was not at 221b." Sherlock frowned.
"You know well enough that Lestrade does have such an attachment, and that at this point, the attachment is obviously quite mutual," he spat.
Mycfroft found such specific discussion of the painful topic of interpersonal relations between men, particularly those with whom he had a close working relationship, to be deeply awkward. He limited his response to a mumbled, "I don't know that I would go as far as that, old boy. Frankly I would not."
* * *
Sherlock continued with his researches, becoming frantic. Quietly, Irene slipped onto the floor and began looking through the clues too. There was a period of silence while they worked in silence.
"Sherlock."
"Hmmm."
"When you found me, it wasn't about Ophelia, or Beatrice, or Hamlet, or any of those things. It was about who the picture depicted, really depicted - in my case, the model Elizabeth Siddal."
"Yes."
"So, why is this not also about the model, who was the model for Hephaestion?
"Doesn't work, not painted in London, the painter was from the Phillipines. It is a rare non-British work in the exhibit."
"Surely that means something? Has he been taken out of the country?"
Sherlock shook his head violently. "It cannot be, Moriarty is in London, his wife is in London, I believe that they are holding John in London. There are no records at all, at least here in Britain, about the conditions under which ‘Funeral of Hephaestion’ was painted."
They were starting to despair.
"Alexander Pope," said Irene. "No one uses his edition of Shakespeare. It is only in reference libraries or Shakespeare scholars who would know anything about his edition today."
"Hmmm..."
"Sherlock, don't you remember?"
"Remember what?"
"Professor Ormond. Classics. The Illiad?"
"No, I believe I was seriously intoxicated that term. So were you."
"But, Sherlock, The Illiad. It was the translation by Alexander Pope."
Sherlock straightened. "Yes, yes I believe you are right."
The Illiad.
He did remember. He had actually loved the Illiad, the passionate lives of the ancient Greeks, the shining and eternal love between Achilles and Patroclus. Achilles. and his lover, Patroclus. Dying at the hands of Hector, mistaken for Achilles for bravely wearing his armor.
"A pleasure now? revenge itself is lost;
Patroclus, loved of all my martial train,
Beyond mankind, beyond myself is slain! . . .
'Tis not in fact the alternate now to give;
Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.
Let me revenge it on proud Hector's heart,Let his last spirit smoke upon my dart; on these conditions will I breathe; till then,
I blush to walk among the race of men.
A flood of tears, at this, the goddess shed;
"Ah then I see thee dying, see thee dead!
When Hector falls, thou diest." -- "Let Hector die,
And let me fall! Achilles made reply.
Far lies Patroclus from his native plain!
He fell, and falling, wish'd my aid in vain.
Achilles entering the fray at last, dragging the corpse of Hector before the gates of Troy in fury at the loss of his lover.
Sherlock smiled, a carnivorous smile it was.
Alexander Pope.
He returned to his mobile.
* * *
The life of Alexander the Great. Alexander and Hephaestion believed themselves the earthly reincarnation of Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander laid a wreath on the tomb of Achilles at Troy, Hephaestion on the tomb of Patroclus.
Alexander
Achilles
Hephaestion
Patroclus
Troilus and Cressida
The Illiad
Alexander Pope. Editor of Shakespeare, translator of Homer. Troilus and Cressida. Alexander and Hephaestion. The Illiad. Achilles and Patroclus.
Hephaestion is the image of Patroclus.
Alexander Pope. Who, upon making his fortune was able to buy his dream house, a villa in Twickenham, in 1719.
"Twickenham. 19 Cross Deep. St James Independent School for Senior Boys," he announced.
To be continued . . .
Back to Chapter Seven: ( Read more at my LJ ) Next Chapter (Nine): ( Read more at my LJ )
Author: ghislainem70
Word Count: 1930
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: reference to suicide, explicit sex (entire work), graphic depictions of violence (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.
Sherlock was still as a statue, only his eyes moving and shifting with those quick vibrations that reflected his mercurial thought processes. The sluggishness of before was banished.
Lestrade held his breath.
Finally Sherlock sent a text to Lestrade's phone: "Either of those two places is where you will find Irene, hurry, you only have until 9:00!" He called over his shoulder as he jumped back over the wrought iron fence and disappeared into the London fog.
Lestrade read the text. It said:
14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge.
7 Gower Street. Near British Museum.
* * *
Mycroft now was texting both Sherlock and Lestrade: Where is Doctor Watson?
* * *
Sherlock returned to 221B and devoured the Tate gallery programme's photograph and notes of the painting, "Funeral of Hephaestion." Why were there no other clues?
Was Moriarty waiting to send more clues? Or was this puzzle harder, were all the clues in the painting itself? Alexander and Hephaestion. Lovers. Warriors.
When Haephestion died (of a fever, possibly poison), ancient sources reported: "Alexander's grief was uncontrollable...he flung himself on the body of his friend and lay there stretched upon the corpse all day and the whole night too, until he was dragged away by force by his Companions."
On the day of Hephaestion's funeral, Alexader gave orders that the sacred flame in the temple should be extinguished, normally done only upon the Greak King's own death. Alexander was showing the world that his heart was dead.
Sherlock shivered.
And now, finally, here was a new clue, an anonymous email. No point trying to trace it. "Troilus and Cressida." This was all.
The mystery was falling into a familiar pattern then. Too familiar?
He pulled down his Shakespeare, and found the passages at once:
Patroclus: Who keeps the tent now?
Thersites: The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound.
Patroclus: Well said, adversity! and what need these tricks?
Thersites: Prithee, be silent, boy; I profit not by thy talk; thou art thought to be Achilles' male varlet.
Patroclus: Male varlet, you rogue! What's that?
Thersites. Why, his masculine whore.
* * *
Achilles: My sweet Patroclus, I am thwarted quite
From my great purpose in to-morrow's battle . . .
This night in banqueting must be spent. Away, Patroclus!
[exit]
Thersites: With too much blood and too little brain, these two may run mad; but, if with too much brain and too little blood they do, I'll be the curer of madmen.
* * *
[after Patroclus is slain by Hector]
Nestor: Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles .. . . [Enter Ulysses]
Ulysses: Oh, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles
Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance:
Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood. .
.
Achilles: Where is this Hector?
Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.
Sherlock dropped the book. Too much brain and too little blood? Too much blood and too little brain? Old Thersites seemed to mock him.
Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood.
The painter, then; what of the painter? Here was a puzzle, too. Juan Luna y Novicio, 1879. From the Philippines, curious. No reference anywhere to a model. Perhaps it was painted abroad? Yes, here it was, Paris. Also the artist traveled to Rome and Venice. What associations would the painter have with London? None that he could see. Unclear he had ever even been to London.
Juan Luna liked to paint his wife. (Like Rossetti). But he was obsessed with ideas that she was unfaithful. In 1893 killed his wife, his mother in law, and wounded his brother in law with a pistol, in a fit of jealous rage.
Jealousy.
The Parisians, always indulgent of affairs of the heart, acquitted Luna on grounds of temporary insanity brought on by rage at his wife's (supposed) infidelity.
What did Moriarty know of his jealousy? For he was self-aware enough, at this point, to perfectly comprehend that he was jealous about John. Whether his degree of jealousy was slight or excessive he really had no idea and did not care. But it was there, almost with a life of its own.
He felt like he could possibly just kill Lestrade. Yes. That was the feeling, precisely . . .
No, not now, Sherlock. Hephaestion.
The items in Hephaestion's funeral pyre. Offerings from Alexander's conquered empire. Afghanistan. Okay then, so far so obvious: John. Also, Roxelana, the woman who Alexander took for a wife from Sogdiana; near Samarkand. Modern Uzbekistan? Causing intense pain and jealousy to Hephaestion, possibly?
He thought back to John's conduct before leaving, the probing questions about Irene and the flowers: "She wants to, what, pick up where she left off?" "No, that's not it." But John hadn't believed him, and Sherlock had been too hurt about Lestrade to correct him, to make it clear. So wrapped up in the puzzle, neglecting as always to take care of John's feelings. He was always doing that. At first he had never even known that he did it, or rather failed to do it. Now he could not always help it, but he was starting - had been starting, he thought - to recognize when he had, in fact, hurt John's heart.
And what about my heart?
Not now Sherlock. Alexander Afghanistan Hephaestion Roxelana Luna funeral Troilus and Cressida Shakespeare Achilles Patroclus male whore?
Another email. This time a .pdf facsimile of a very old edition of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the Alexander Pope edition.
Alexander Pope? Alexander. Alexander. Hephaestion. Alexander Pope, Catholic. Poet, critic, epigramist: "And die of nothing but a rage to live."
* * *
Lestrade was now here in 221b with Irene, looking pale and with dark shadows under her eyes, a little groggy. She wanted to run to him, but one look at his face stopped her from making any move to touch him. She knew him that well.
Sherlock barely looked up. "Irene," he acknowledged. "Which was it," he shot to Lestrade, fingers flying over his mobile.
"Gower Street. How did you --- " he stopped. Sherlock had shut them out. Lestrade went to lead Irene away but she looked thoughtfully at Sherlock's stricken face and shook her head, quietly creeping to a chair by the fireplace and curling up in it, watching him with her dark eyes.
Now Lestrade quietly and quickly told Sherlock about the meeting that morning between Moriarty's wife and John.
Lestrade said he would be heading the team at Scotland Yard and to call at once if he thought he had any new clue. Sherlock's upper lip curled scornfully and Lestrade understood that later, Sherlock intended to make him pay.
For everything.
Now Mycroft was here as well, frowning magisterially at Irene. Sherlock said, "Well, Mycroft, you very nearly run the entire British secret service and cannot keep one single man under competent surveillance? Please explain, if you can." He did not look up from his researches.
"We did have a man on him. Two, in fact. But he had said that he didn't want to be penned in and I am pretty sure that John discovered that he was being watched. He threw his mobile into a trash can in one of his usual pubs, slipped out the back and into the nearest tube station before they found he was missing. The men in question are being . . .disciplined."
Someone knew where he was going, though. He was taken at Lestrade's door. "How would Moriarty know that John was going to Lestrade's?" Sherlock asked.
"I'm afraid Mrs. Moriarty seems to have formed the definite opinion that Lestrade has some sort of -- attachment to John. She is a wickedly perceptive woman in her own way," Mycroft said with an inappropriate degree of admiration. "So Moriarty may have anticipated that John could go to Lestrade if he was not at 221b." Sherlock frowned.
"You know well enough that Lestrade does have such an attachment, and that at this point, the attachment is obviously quite mutual," he spat.
Mycfroft found such specific discussion of the painful topic of interpersonal relations between men, particularly those with whom he had a close working relationship, to be deeply awkward. He limited his response to a mumbled, "I don't know that I would go as far as that, old boy. Frankly I would not."
* * *
Sherlock continued with his researches, becoming frantic. Quietly, Irene slipped onto the floor and began looking through the clues too. There was a period of silence while they worked in silence.
"Sherlock."
"Hmmm."
"When you found me, it wasn't about Ophelia, or Beatrice, or Hamlet, or any of those things. It was about who the picture depicted, really depicted - in my case, the model Elizabeth Siddal."
"Yes."
"So, why is this not also about the model, who was the model for Hephaestion?
"Doesn't work, not painted in London, the painter was from the Phillipines. It is a rare non-British work in the exhibit."
"Surely that means something? Has he been taken out of the country?"
Sherlock shook his head violently. "It cannot be, Moriarty is in London, his wife is in London, I believe that they are holding John in London. There are no records at all, at least here in Britain, about the conditions under which ‘Funeral of Hephaestion’ was painted."
They were starting to despair.
"Alexander Pope," said Irene. "No one uses his edition of Shakespeare. It is only in reference libraries or Shakespeare scholars who would know anything about his edition today."
"Hmmm..."
"Sherlock, don't you remember?"
"Remember what?"
"Professor Ormond. Classics. The Illiad?"
"No, I believe I was seriously intoxicated that term. So were you."
"But, Sherlock, The Illiad. It was the translation by Alexander Pope."
Sherlock straightened. "Yes, yes I believe you are right."
The Illiad.
He did remember. He had actually loved the Illiad, the passionate lives of the ancient Greeks, the shining and eternal love between Achilles and Patroclus. Achilles. and his lover, Patroclus. Dying at the hands of Hector, mistaken for Achilles for bravely wearing his armor.
"A pleasure now? revenge itself is lost;
Patroclus, loved of all my martial train,
Beyond mankind, beyond myself is slain! . . .
'Tis not in fact the alternate now to give;
Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.
Let me revenge it on proud Hector's heart,Let his last spirit smoke upon my dart; on these conditions will I breathe; till then,
I blush to walk among the race of men.
A flood of tears, at this, the goddess shed;
"Ah then I see thee dying, see thee dead!
When Hector falls, thou diest." -- "Let Hector die,
And let me fall! Achilles made reply.
Far lies Patroclus from his native plain!
He fell, and falling, wish'd my aid in vain.
Achilles entering the fray at last, dragging the corpse of Hector before the gates of Troy in fury at the loss of his lover.
Sherlock smiled, a carnivorous smile it was.
Alexander Pope.
He returned to his mobile.
* * *
The life of Alexander the Great. Alexander and Hephaestion believed themselves the earthly reincarnation of Achilles and Patroclus. Alexander laid a wreath on the tomb of Achilles at Troy, Hephaestion on the tomb of Patroclus.
Alexander
Achilles
Hephaestion
Patroclus
Troilus and Cressida
The Illiad
Alexander Pope. Editor of Shakespeare, translator of Homer. Troilus and Cressida. Alexander and Hephaestion. The Illiad. Achilles and Patroclus.
Hephaestion is the image of Patroclus.
Alexander Pope. Who, upon making his fortune was able to buy his dream house, a villa in Twickenham, in 1719.
"Twickenham. 19 Cross Deep. St James Independent School for Senior Boys," he announced.
To be continued . . .
Back to Chapter Seven: ( Read more at my LJ ) Next Chapter (Nine): ( Read more at my LJ )