The Beekeeper's Apprentice: or, On the Segregation of the Queen (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes Book 1)

by Laurie R. King

I did not think of myself as a detective; I was a student of theology, and I was to spend my life in exploration, not of the darker crannies of human misbehaviour, but of the heights of human speculation concerning the nature of the Divine. That the two were not unrelated did not occur to me for years.

“Madam, there is no treachery in the truth. There may be pain, but to face honestly all possible conclusions formed by a set of facts is the noblest route possible for a human being.”

You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool as well were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.”

(Always carry a length of rope; it’s the most useful thing in the world.)

“That’s what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.”

“A hive of bees should be viewed, not as a single species, but as a triumvirate of related types, mutually exclusive in function but utterly and inextricably interdependent upon each other. A single bee separated from its sisters and brothers will die, even if given the ideal food and care. A single bee cannot survive apart from the hive.”

Here we stand; I can no other.

“Simchu eth Yerushalaim w’gilu bah kal-ohabeha,” I recited: Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her.

“When faced with the unthinkable,” I said shakily, “one chooses the merely impossible.”

“cAl naharoth babel sham yashavnu gam-bakinu… Im eshkahek Yerushalaim tishkah y’mini….” “You sang that the other night, did you not?” asked Holmes. “What is it?” “A psalm, one of the more powerful Hebrew songs, full of sibilants and gutturals.” I translated it for him. “By the waters of Babylon, where we lay down and wept when we remembered Zion…We hung up our lyres, for our captors required songs of us, and our tormentors demanded mirth. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand wither, May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you.”

It is a truism of the actor’s art that one can play only oneself on the stage. To be fully effective the actor must have a sympathy for the character’s motives, however unsympathetic they might appear to an outsider. To a large extent, the actor must become the character if the act is to be effective,

“I was merely going to say that I hope you realise that guilt is a poor foundation for a life, without other motivations beside it.”

When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eye to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice.

Women never cease to amaze me.”