A Letter of Mary Read Online Free Page A

my face, because he took the box and opened it to show me the manuscript. That was what his family had owned for so long, not the box, he said, which had been his father's. He told me, if I understood him right— he would insist on speaking English, though my Arabic's better than his was— that it had been in a sort of pottery mould or figurine when he was a child. It broke when he was twelve, and the whole family was terrified that something awful would happen— sounds like a sort of household god, doesn't it? They hadn't known there was anything inside the figure. Nothing much happened, though, and after a while his father put the manuscript into a box he had been given by some European. It came to this man when his parents were killed during the war, and as he himself had no children, he and his wife decided to bring it to me. I tried to give it back to him, but he was deeply offended, so in the end I took it. Haven't seen him since."

    The three of us sat contemplating the appealing little object that sat on the table amidst empty cups and the remains of the cheese tray. It was about six inches long, slightly less than that in depth, and about five in height, and the finely textured blond wood of its thick sides and lid was intricately carved with a miniature frieze of animals and vegetation. A tiny palm tree arched over a lion the size of my thumbnail; its inlaid amber eyes twinkled haughtily in a shaft of sunlight. There was a chip out of one of the box's corners, and two of the giraffe's shiny jet spots were missing, but on the whole, it was remarkably free of blemish.

    "I think, Miss Ruskin, that the box alone is an overly valuable gift."

    "I suppose it is of value, but it pleases me to give it to you. Can't keep it— too many things disappear when one is on a dig— and can't bring myself to sell it. It is yours."

    " 'Thank you' sounds inadequate, but if you wanted to be sure it has a good home, it has found one. I shall cherish it."

    An enigmatic smile played briefly over her lips, as at a secret joke, but she said, only, "That's all I wanted."

    "Shall we have a glass of wine to celebrate it? Holmes?"

    He went off to the house, and I tore my eyes away from the beguiling present.

    "Can you stay for supper?" I asked. "Your telegram didn't say when you had to be back, and the housekeeper has left us a nice rabbit pie, so you wouldn't have to face my cooking."

    "No, I can't. I'd like to, but I have to be back in London by nine— dinner with a new sponsor. Have to talk up the glory that was Jerusalem to the rich fool. Plenty of time for a glass of your wine, though, and a stroll over your hills." She sighed happily. "We used to come down to the coast every summer when I was a child. The air hasn't changed a bit, or the light."

    We took our glasses and walked over the hills to the sea, and when we returned to the cottage, Holmes asked her if she wanted to see the beehives. She said yes, so he found her a bee hat and gloves and overalls, things he himself rarely used. She was at first nervous, then determined, and finally fascinated as he opened a hive and showed her the levels of occupation, the queen's quarters, the neat texture of the honeycombs, the logical, ruthless social structure of the colony. She asked numerous intelligent questions, and she seemed both relieved and reluctant to see the internal workings disappear again behind their wooden walls.

    "Had a nasty experience with bees one time," she said abruptly, and pulled off the voluminous hat. "Lived in the country. My sister and I were close then, played lots of games. One was to leave coded messages, in the Greek alphabet sometimes, or little treasures— bits of food— inside this abandoned cistern. Must've been mediaeval," she reflected. "Storing root crops. We called it 'Apocalypse,' had to lift the cover off, you see? Happy times. Golden summers. One day, my sister hid a chocolate bar in Apocalypse, went back for it the next day, and a