Note: This story is my response to a challenge issued in October 2003 to Bees on the RUSS-L list to create a repastiche involving Russell and Holmes on a 'cruise.' I hope you enjoy it.

The Study of Falling

by Lesley C. Johnson

a.k.a. 'the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant'

Chapter 1

Natural Gravity

"Novelty, pleasure and information may be considered as the three objects which principally occupy the mind of every traveller who contemplates an excursion into foreign countries."

Such were the words of one Mr. L. Cassar Pullicino in his handy Guide or Handbook for Travellers to Sicily and Malta, which lay atop the sprawl of many less elucidating tomes on my worktable in the Bodleian. Novelty and information I was sure we could expect, but pleasure was sometimes optional in one of Mycroft's assignments.

It was only six weeks after our wedding when Holmes' brother had asked us to look into a little problem for him in Malta. Our investigation was to begin in Sicily, with further travel dependent on our initial findings. At least in the Mediterranean, I thought to myself, we could expect to sleep in something marginally more comfortable than a goat's hair tent. And if time and events permitted, Holmes had promised, we would see the Tuscan villa I had inherited upon attaining my majority.

While there was apparently no urgency in Mycroft's little puzzle, I was surprised when Holmes had suggested taking the slower route by water to travel to our destination. Normally he chafed under any delay in carrying out his tasks once he was set them. Forced confinement on board a slow ship, albeit a luxuriously fitted-out pleasure vessel, was not a situation to which I would have expected him willingly to submit. In fact all of our working experiences together thus far made me believe that, if anything, he would have been happy crammed into the cargo hold of a tramp steamer if it would shorten the travel time. Try as I might, I could not picture Holmes resting contentedly on a deck chair for days on end, and I had said as much to him when we were working out the details of the voyage. In response he had merely smiled enigmatically and said something about it giving us time to prepare.

I was to take the train directly from Oxford to Southampton where Holmes, after a detailed consultation with his brother in London, would meet me, having already had our trunks delivered to our stateroom. (Anticipating what might prove to be the most diverting and comfortable of circumstances under which Holmes and I had ever begun a case, I had recklessly decided to pack no books at all and even brought nothing to read on the train journey.) Our four-and-a-half-day sea voyage was to take us down the French coast, past Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean.

My week at Oxford had been a successful and productive time -- I had tracked down some obscure references in the stacks of the Bodleian and worked them into the lacunae of my current thesis. Now I felt I could safely walk away from the framed structure of my argument for several weeks without fear of it falling down before I returned.

I had also made use of the opportunity to spend time in the company of a number of the married women of my College and, as an enquiring neophyte, had enjoyed several rather informative, even surprising, conversations over drinks in private rooms.

This Oxford journey had been my first separation from Holmes after our rather precipitous rush into the married state and the accompanying disorienting rearrangements to our households. There had been no question as to where we would live -- we were in complete agreement on that point. Holmes had surprised me again (the first time had been in the bolt-hole with the Vernet) with an unexpected interest in the details of domestic accoutrements, actually consulting with me on the ordering of certain new pieces of furniture for various rooms in the cottage.

These included a desk and bookshelves of my own for the 'Great Room,' as I had jokingly referred to the now all-purpose sitting room. However, this comment had only earned me an intense fifteen minute interrogation by Holmes as to whether I might prefer to keep my theological texts and all related work at my own still empty farmhouse. He had pointed out helpfully that my property was situated a few minutes closer to the train station, which would be a great convenience when my studies took me back and forth to Oxford. I had at last ended his tirade by the easy expedient of wrestling him down onto the sofa and, eventually, distracting him with another topic. After a rather more harmonious discussion, we had further agreed on a new wardrobe and a larger bedstead for the private upstairs room he had formerly occupied himself and that we had chosen as most suitable to accommodate the two of us.

I will confess that when I found myself once again seated at my usual table at Bodley, and the meditative if dusty peace had settled around me, I stared vacantly into space for some time, keenly aware of the profound but invisible change in my life.

I was still essentially myself, still possessed of the same knowledge, passion and thirst for study into the theological questions before me. Yet I was not the same person. My now complete union with Holmes was effecting a transformation, a sea change in my sense of identity. No longer one discrete half of a partnership, I was becoming integral to this new entity that was our marriage. While I sat there before my books I felt him flowing in my blood.

However, I had not yet found perfect equilibrium. I surprised myself, and Holmes even more so, with an unexpected new deference in any little variance of opinion between us. But we were in that period of adjustment that I supposed all newly married people experienced. Holmes himself displayed an uncharacteristic gentle patience. No doubt these would prove to be temporary conditions and eventually we would resume our usual habit of weekly verbal sparring matches. But I knew that I was, perhaps in a way I had not felt since I was twelve years old, secure and happy. And I smiled to myself as I reviewed the events of the day of our wedding.

The formal and legal details of the marriage ceremony I had left to Holmes to organize, other than our necessary joint visits to my solicitors and his to discuss estates and wills. Here there were surprises on both sides at the magnitude of the combined estate resulting from our merger (To me it became even more apparent that Holmes' fondness for his secret bolt-holes was an eccentricity rather than pure necessity. He could easily have bought the entire block in which each hideaway was located. In fact, some of the buildings he did own).

Holmes brought in Uncle John as consultant and Best Man, and the two comrades set about the task of making the arrangements, armed with the knowledge that I was not the type for ornate or showy display. I was sent back to Sussex with Mrs. Hudson to prepare for my transition to matrimony. We had many long and instructional conversations about marriage in general and Holmes in specific. She confided to me some details of Holmes' kindnesses to her over the years that we both marvelled at. I told her what I knew of my parents' wedding and shared with her the few photographs I had.

Less than a fortnight later, at ten o'clock on a bright cool morning, accompanied by Mrs. Hudson and brother Mycroft, and dressed in a deceptively simple, elegant white dress and modest veil (both ingeniously produced by the Elves on unforgivably short notice), I found myself standing in the vestibule of a civil office, and then the door was pulled open.

My impressions and memories of what followed in that short half-hour are somewhat jumbled by the unexpected flood of emotions that had overwhelmed me.

First I saw an abundant display of predominantly white flowers transforming the interior bureaucratic office into an enchanting arbour. My arm was taken by the grey eminence that was Mycroft. He led me in through the doorway and I saw the huppah, the traditional wedding canopy of my mother's faith, and my heart swelled. I saw a beaming Uncle John attired in a distinguished dove-grey morning coat matching that worn by the groom, then I found Holmes' eyes and held myself to them as to a lifeline.

The civic official formally stated the purpose of our gathering and declared his legal authority to perform the ceremony. No one present voiced knowledge of any impediment to our being married, and so Uncle John took the opportunity to speak in favour of it. Showing firm control over obvious strong emotion, he read a brief homily that he had prepared. With a smile of pure affection for us both he concluded with a paraphrased quotation from Plato's The Republic,

"And the woman who has such qualities is to be chosen as the companion and colleague of the man who has similar qualities and whom she resembles in capacity and in character. And ought not the same natures to have the same pursuits? The same education which makes a man a good guardian will make a woman a good guardian; for their original nature is the same."

The official then asked us for our consent to be joined.

Holmes turned to me and recited the English vow of commitment. But then, with emotion unsteadying his voice, he pronounced in perfect Aramaic and again in English the Judaic declaration:

"'Haray aht m'kudeshhet li b'taba'at zu k'dat Moshe v'Yisrael.' 'By this ring you are consecrated to me, as my wife, in accordance with the traditions of Moses and Israel.'" And he knew to place the unadorned gold band on my right index finger, but I felt rather than saw this, as my eyes were full of tears.

My voice when I responded was barely above a whisper. The official spoke again, declaring that we were man and wife. Holmes lifted the veil from my face and I saw the powerful emotions in his eyes as he bent to kiss me. Then Uncle John stepped forward and placed something on the floor. With his eyes still locked on mine, Holmes smiled, raised his right foot, and I heard the muffled crash of the cloth-wrapped wineglass shattering under his heel. Mycroft, Watson and Mrs. Hudson all shouted "Mazel Tov!" A burst of rather teary laughter escaped me and I cleaved unto my new husband for support.

Neither Holmes nor I were devoutly observant, I reflected as I gazed into the middle distance above my cluttered work table, but I had learnt that his understanding and deep respect for the traditions of faith and culture were as strong as my own.

(Despite all this, I'm sure it will reassure readers of Dr. Watson's chronicles to know that Holmes, in his customary unromantic manner, now adamantly maintains that, at his first view of me in the doorway, he thought I resembled nothing so much as a benighted doe standing before the headlamps of a rapidly approaching motorcar.)

A week later we had returned to cross the threshold of our Sussex cottage as husband and wife. By way of greeting Holmes warned Mrs. Hudson that her easy life with one agreeable employer was over -- that she was now under the command of an untried duumvirate, and that she had best be on her guard.