Work Text:
Upon my return to London, Joddy met me at Dr Rangostin's door with a cheery good morning for Mrs Jacobson and a letter for Miss Meshle.
Before we continue, it should be known that three of the five people in the previous sentence do not exist. Dr Rangostin, Scientific Perditorian, lives only on calling cards and the brass plate beside the door, a fiction meant to inspire confidence in clients who would not ordinarily trust their affairs to a fifteen-year-old girl. Mrs John Jacobson is Dr Rangostin's assistant and the current nom de guerre of said fifteen-year-old girl, whereas Miss Ivy Meshle, now retired, was once both Dr Rangostin's secretary and the original alias of the fifteen-- No, fourteen-year-old girl, as she had been at the time. It had been only two weeks since my birthday tea, after all.
I, of course, am the fifteen year-old girl.
That leaves young Joddy as the very real boy-in-buttons. I was rather pleased with him for remembering to address me as Mrs Jacobson even as he held a letter for Miss Meshle: when I had changed pseudonyms a few months beforehand, it had taken some effort to train the boy, somewhat more enthusiastic than he was bright, to cease addressing me by the one name and begin using the other.
The letter for Miss Meshle was addressed in an unfamiliar masculine hand. I would have presumed it was from a potential client but for the grey wax seal: grey wax, for friendship. A curious choice, given that Miss Meshle had no social connections beyond my former landlady. Mrs Tupper, however, had never known my place of employment, nor would she have written in a masculine hand.
Using the long stiletto that serves me as a corset busk, defensive weapon, and letter opener, I unsealed the missive.
Dear Miss Holmes, it began, much to my dismay. Of course, it was no longer strictly necessary that I keep my true name secret—I had reconciled with my brothers and confessed my aliases to them not two weeks before—and yet seeing my name here, where it should not be, was a shock.
"Thank you, Joddy," I said, endeavouring not to betray my disquiet. "I'll be in Dr Rangostin's office if anyone needs me." My staff had long known my name was neither Jacobson nor Meshle, but they were not privy to the whole of my secrets. Scientific Perditorian was my true avocation, even if this particular establishment had been built on deception. Would my staff still respect me and keep my secrets, if they knew their employer was merely fifteen years old?
With Dr Rangostin's door locked behind me, I was free to peruse the letter in earnest:
Dear Miss Holmes,
Please forgive me for writing to you at your place of employment—this is the only address I have for you. (Indeed, imagine my surprise when your brother told me that the person I had consulted about his missing sister was none other than his missing sister herself!)
I know I am nearly a stranger to you, but I write to offer our sympathies on your mother's passing. If the company of two kindly-hearted strangers would be a comfort to you, I beg you give your leave for my wife or I to call upon you -- or, if your situation does not allow for the reception of visitors, to please accept our invitation to call upon us. (I know it is not usual for someone in mourning to make social visits, but we ask you to look upon us as family: your brother Sherlock is as close to me as a brother, and my warm feelings toward him necessarily extend to include you, as well. This is true even without speaking of the great debt I owe you, a debt which of course would move me to make the greatest exertions on your behalf, should they be required or desired.)
My wife in particular wishes to make her sympathies known: she, too, was alone in London, orphaned in ambiguous and confusing circumstances, at an age not so different from your own.
If either of us could be an assistance or comfort to you, please do write to us post-haste. Our door is always open to you.
With warmest regards,
Dr John Watson
I hardly knew what to do with the letter's kindness. I had met Dr Watson only twice -- twice to speak to him, that is, as the time I had brought him an injured client and straightaway fled again hardly counted. Even on the briefest acquaintance he had struck me as a profoundly warm man. I did not remember my own father, only his likeness and his funeral, and had never particularly noticed his absence. But on meeting Dr Watson, I had found myself abruptly yearning for a fatherly affection I had never known. Unfortunately, such a thing was impossible, as he acted on my brother's behalf.
Mrs Watson, too, I had met twice. I had come to her home in disguise and under false pretenses -- although in the very best cause, that being the deliverance of her husband. Nevertheless, I had felt ashamed to accept her tea and kindness whilst frauding her so. Her husband knew of and had forgiven my trickery, but would Mrs Watson forgive my deceit of her?
I can hardly say how strongly Dr Watson's letter affected me. I had just returned from two weeks at Ferndell Hall—a vacation, of sorts, after an tense and lonely year spent in hiding from my brothers—and yet the hall I had once called home offered no comfort. I had been happy enough there as a child, spending my days searching out birds' nests in the grounds or reading in the library when it rained, but the place had greatly changed in my year's absence. Mycroft, apparently still stewing about the fictitious Ruggles, the gardener Mum had never hired, had brought in an over-gardener and several under-gardeners to tame the grounds. Gone were my beloved brambles and gorse, and gone, too, were the birds' nests that they had sheltered. My private hideaway under the willow in the dell was also closed to me -- I had grown and the tree had sagged until between the two there was no longer any admittance for me into the hollow among its roots. If I crouched in the stream, I could just reach some of the cherished childhood treasures I had once kept in that hollow: three acorn caps and a cufflink, a paltry showing for fourteen years of life.
As for the house itself... I seemed to find no rest in its walls. I spent long, listless days in my mother's rooms, once as holy to me as a shrine, contemplating her flower studies on the walls. Now that I knew how to read the language of flowers, it seemed that everywhere I looked, I saw water willow: as a border on a study, a sprig of greenery behind the main subject, or a spiky contrast to a softer bloom. Water willow, meaning freedom. Mum's dreams were displayed on these walls, many times over, and yet I had not wit enough to read it before. The old ballad played in my head, taunting me in Mum's voice:
What care I for my house and land?
What care I for my money-o?
What care I for my--
Only daughter, my traitorous mind substituted for the traditional lyric.
Stop it, Enola. You have done very well on your own.
I had long ago forgiven Mum for abandoning me, but even so, her death made it sting anew -- a more permanent kind of abandonment than merely running off with the Romany. Fresh with grief for her, I could not help but search her walls for the soft and enveloping moss of maternal love. There were many paintings of various kinds of greenery among the flowers, but not one of them was a study of moss. Nor did I see wood sorrel or cinquefoil, signs of maternal affection and tenderness. Ferndell's forest abounded with all three, I knew, but my mother had never made a study of any of them. She had loved me as well as she was able and provided assiduously for my independence -- a thing she valued above all else, even me. And yet the lack of cushioning moss or tart sorrel on her walls hurt more than I expected.
Before I returned to London, I rifled Mum's armoire for pieces that might be useful in my many investigatory disguises. Much of her wardrobe was out of fashion, but many characters I might wish to emulate are not very up-to-date. I packed visiting gowns and walking costumes, frocks for a squire's wife and rational dress for a Suffragist-- and on a whim, deeming them potentially useful, another set of the widow's weeds Mum had worn for my father, eleven years before.
It was these last I chose as I dressed to call on the Watsons. I was ill-pleased with the result: Mum's mourning clothes did not suit me, if indeed, mourning can be said to suit anyone. She had been in her fifties when my father died, and the cut of her clothes were both matronly and eleven years out-of-date; furthermore, they were cut for a less stick-like figure than mine. But with my dress improvers and hip regulators, Mum's mourning gown would do.
I did not have any calling cards with my own name, so I presented to Mrs Watson's maid-of-all-work a card with Miss Violet Everseau crossed out and Enola Holmes added below in my uncertain script. The card was an act of cowardice, saving me the trouble of picking the correct moment for my disclosure that I had deceived Mrs Watson too, and not just her husband. At least if Mrs Watson should choose to take my deception badly, I would learn of her displeasure right away, before I could break my heart with my hopes. I stood nervously in her parlour while the maid took my card to her mistress, and noted the nonsensical bouquet of lavender and heliotrope: distrust and faithfulness. The bouquet's incongruity was strangely soothing in my agitated state: Mrs Watson had presumably picked the blooms simply because she liked them. I found myself wishing that she might like me, as well.
"Miss Holmes...!"
Dr Watson was standing in the door, beaming with pleasure, his wife just beside him. He shook his head in wonderment. "It is Miss Holmes, isn't it? I've been racking my brain for a week, trying to figure out how I could be so thick as to not recognise Holmes' sister when she was right in front of me. But if I didn't know better, I would swear I've never seen you before in my life."
"John," Mrs Watson reproved, but affectionately. She came forward to take my hands. "Miss Holmes, I'm so glad you've come. I'm so very sorry about your mother."
"Thank you," I said, unable to express my confused feelings about Mum's passing -- not that she had condoned such a euphemistic word as passing.
"Won't you please have a seat? There will be tea in a minute."
"Here, this seat is most comfortable," Dr Watson said, seeing me to the sofa and retreating to a nearby chair.
"Thank you. I hope I'm not calling at an inconvenient time."
"Absolutely not," Dr Watson said, his eyes still fixed on me. He slapped his knee. "By Jove, you really do have the same cleverness for disguise as your brother! Mary, I never would have recognized her as Miss Meshle."
"This is Miss Everseau's card," Mrs Watson said, with an expression of perplexity. "Am I to understand that you...?"
"I was Miss Everseau, yes. I am very sorry for the fraud, Mrs Watson. I never would have practiced upon you, only I needed more information about Dr Watson's disappearance, and I couldn't…" I stopped, at a loss for how to explain to my brother's friends how very afraid I had been of his finding me.
"And you couldn't risk me telling Mr Holmes I had seen you, I understand completely," Mrs Watson said, laying the card aside.
"You do?"
"My dear," Mrs Watson said, with gentle reproach. "I would trust Mr Holmes with my life. I trust him routinely with my husband's. If a friend of mine was in distress, there is no one whose counsel I would recommend above Mr Holmes's. But neither am I in the habit of turning a woman over to her relatives, if she is hiding from them."
Her speech quite shocked me; I had never dreamed she might be an ally to me against her husband's dearest friend.
"But you're quite reconciled with your brother now?" Dr Watson asked, and I turned to him. "I don't wish to pry into your family affairs, but neither do I want to accidentally betray some confidence of yours to him."
I gaped at Dr Watson. "You'd take my part against my brother?"
Dr Watson had the grace to look embarrassed. "I don't like to think I'd take sides; I'd do my best to deal with you both fairly while I tried to reconcile you. Plead his case to you, and yours to him. That's what I planned to do last autumn, if Dr Rangostin found you: give you safe harbour, if you did not wish to be returned to your family. Holmes was very concerned that you had fallen into some distress or extremity that you couldn't extricate yourself from. It would have been a great relief to him to know you were safe and under my protection, even if I declined to tell him where."
I was having difficulty processing Dr Watson's words. "You would have hidden me from him?"
Dr Watson looked somewhat affronted. "Rather than see you fend for yourself on the streets of London? Yes, of course. You don't know the terrible things Holmes and I have seen in our adventures. Or, perhaps you do-- I pray you don't. But you would have had safe harbour with me. If Holmes or his brother had objected, I would have made them see reason, you can be sure of it."
There was a fierce conviction in his voice, and stunned, I turned to his wife for confirmation. She reached out and took my hand. "I do hope that if you ever find yourself in extremity again, you'll turn to us first. We'd be honoured to be counted among your friends."
It was too much; I burst into tears.
"Oh, my dear," Mrs Watson said, and coming to sit beside me, she drew me into her arms. I found myself sobbing against her soft breast -- and when I realised that I had no similar memories of being held by my own mother while I cried, I cried harder. "There now... My dear..." Mrs Watson said, gently rocking me and petting my hair.
"I've done very well on my own," I sobbed, as if I were a much younger child.
"Of course you did," she said, still comforting me. "But why should you have to?"
Her words undid me, releasing all the pent-up worry and loneliness of the past year. The terror of my first days in London, the night I had almost died of a garroting, the pervasive fear of discovery and losing my liberty -- all of it seemed to crash over me like a flood.
Reader, I wailed.
"There now," Mrs Watson said. "You're among friends now."
The more intense the tears, the shorter the bout; it was not so terribly long before my sobs had trailed off to little hiccups of embarrassed misery.
"Here, my dear," Dr Watson said gently, and pressed a clean handkerchief into my hand. "Let me pour you some tea. How do you take it?"
I did what I could to make myself presentable. I'm sure I was a fright, not at all like the elegant and beautiful Miss Everseau. I saw that I had left a wet patch on Mrs Watson's bodice, and I patted at it in embarrassment.
"Never mind that," Mrs Watson said kindly, her arm still around me. "London rain has done far worse."
"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me," I sniffled.
"I imagine it's been a very difficult year," Dr Watson said kindly, handing me my cup and saucer. I took it gratefully.
"And you've just lost your mother," Mrs Watson added. "It'd be a trying time for anyone."
"Mum didn't want me to mourn her," I sniffled. "That's why she went away."
I saw Dr Watson's eyebrow go up as he glanced at his wife. But whatever his thoughts were that made him react so, he only said, "Mourning is for the living, my dear. It's to honour the dead, yes, but also to give ourselves space to learn to live with the loss. If you wish to mourn your mother, you should do so, regardless of her wishes."
"I haven't been. Mrs Jacobsen isn't in mourning. Nor any of the others."
"Mrs Jacobsen is...? Your current alias?" he asked.
"Dr Rangostin's personal assistant, yes."
"You've given yourself a promotion...! Well done. You'll be at the top of the firm, soon." He seemed amused with his joke, and his amusement made me smile, as well.
"Whose clothes are these, then?" Mrs Watson asked, touching the old-fashioned sleeves of my gown.
"My mum's. That she wore for Father."
"Hmm..." Mrs. Watson reached out and smoothed a lock of hair away from my face, a supremely tender gesture. "If you like, I'll take you to Jay's in Regent Street, and we can get you something that suits you better. Should you decide you wish to wear mourning for your mum after all, that is-- That's your choice to make, not hers."
I was capable of buying clothes on my own -- indeed, I had outfitted several distinct characters over the last year. But the thought of Mrs Watson taking me shopping, as if I was a niece or daughter that she cared for... I found myself blinking back tears again.
"I don't... spend much time as Enola," I confessed.
"Do you wish to?" Mrs Watson asked.
I was unable to answer the question. Being Enola had been impossible this past year, with my brothers looking for me and nowhere to take shelter as myself. The Enola I had been before my mother left...I had gone back to Ferndell, and learned that that younger Enola, innocent finder of birds' nests, was as lost to me as Mum.
"Never mind that," Dr Watson said gently. "You can come visit us and be Enola any time you wish. Or if not Enola, then come visit us as Mrs Jacobson or Miss Meshle, as needs must. We will welcome any of them. May I refresh your tea? Mary?"
"Yes, John, thank you," Mrs Watson said, and held out her cup and saucer. "Or Miss Everseau," she added to me, as Dr Watson refilled her cup and mine. "She is always welcome here, too. How could she not be, after saving John?"
I smiled in wet gratitude, and she pressed my hand.
"Yes, about Miss Everseau," Dr Watson said. "I confess, I am dying to know how you found me in Colney Hatch. Holmes hasn't the least idea. He says if it hadn't been for you, I'd be there still."
"Oh," I said, momentarily distracted from my troubles by the question of how to order the story. "It was the bouquet. Although I confess, some of it was only luck -- the first lead I followed let me straight to your kidnapper."
Dr Watson smiled in indulgent amusement. "You know what your brother would say to that. No such thing as good luck, only good management. If she was in the first place you looked, then you chose where to look very well."
I flushed in pleasure at his compliment.
"I'll call for more tea and refreshments," Mrs Watson said, "and then you can tell us how it all happened."