Charlie’s fun facts
So...I recently finished reading Moriarty the Patriot. And. I had a lot of feelings, a lot feelings generally, but Charles Dickens the homing pigeon is stuck in my mind. Even more specifically, I’ve thinking about the sorts of notes that Mycroft Holmes, Director of Military Intelligence and all-round stern, unflappable superior could have been sending to Albert James Moriarty, former Earl, now languishing in ill repute in the Tower of London.
The conclusion I’ve come to? Facts about homing pigeons. Hear me out.
I feel, and maybe this is just me, but I feel that Mycroft is about as emotionally constipated as it is possible to be and still remain upright. He doesn’t want to feel, so he does not. But hey, Albert is charming. Albert is clever. Albert can keep up with Mycroft, maybe even get a few steps ahead of him. Albert is his M, his trusted subordinate; Albert is manipulating him from the very beginning into some larger scheme Mycroft can only catch glimpses of, but maybe it’ll be interesting, so he just sits back and allows it to happen.
But somewhere along the way, whoops-a-daisy, Mycroft has feelings about Albert. He has not identified them as of yet, but they are positive, usually, and they are strangely sore, when Albert falls from grace and decides that he wants to be locked away in the Tower of London like the melodramatic thespian he’s always been. But what is one to do, when one of the, like, maybe three people one cares for is punishing himself for crimes that, while heinous, had really good motives?
Why, write him letters and send them via homing pigeon, obviously. Never let it be said that Albert is the only one capable of being dramatic here.
But what does one write to such...an acquaintance? subordinate? friend?.....perhaps a stronger word Mycroft dare not even think, lest he bring misfortune down upon them both?
Albert strews around some bread, left over from his lunch, for the cooing pigeon on his windowsill before he liberates the little roll of paper from the case attached to its leg. He unfurls it carefully, slowly, blinking as he reads and then re-reads, something close to laugh tickling at the back of his throat.
Did you know that in the year 1870, a homing pigeon made the flight from Perpignan to Brussels in a mere ten hours?
The note is unsigned, but the handwriting is familiar.
