Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud Read online

  He passed a booth where two puppets were on display in a window, operated by a puppeteer whose body was hidden inside the booth. Their heads were carved out of wood, with exaggerated noses and chins, and their clothes were made out of bright ribbons. As Sherlock watched, one puppet laid its head on the edge of the window – nearly doubling up to do so – and the other puppet then instantly chopped it off with a miniature axe. The head fell away and bright red ribbons exploded outward, simulating the spurting of blood. The crowd cheered and waved their hats.

  There was a pond over to one side of the fair, and a duck being thrown in by a man in a brightly coloured waistcoat and top hat. Its leg was tied to a weight by a thin length of cord, and the weight was holding it down. Around the edge of the pond, dogs were snarling and slavering at the end of ropes and leather leashes. Seeing money being exchanged all around the crowd, Sherlock had a terrible feeling that he knew what was coming next. The man in the waistcoat stepped backwards and raised his hand. The crowd grew quiet, expectant. The dogs redoubled their efforts to get free, and their growling was enough to cause the ground to shake. The man’s hand dropped to his waist, and the dogs were let loose by their owners. As a mass they plunged into the pond, trying to seize the quacking bird and sending water spraying everywhere. Terrified, the duck fluttered back and forth across the water as far as the cord and the weight would let it, evading their lunges. For their part the dogs avoided going too far out of their depth, with the exception of one brave terrier which paddled frantically across the pond, chasing the duck. Sherlock turned away before it sank its teeth into the duck’s neck. It was a foregone conclusion, the only uncertainty being which owner would win the prize.

  Sickened, Sherlock turned away.

  He walked past stalls selling hot sausages and cold toffee-covered apples on sticks, orange-flavoured biscuits and puffy, salted pork crackling. He wasn’t sure if the feeling he had in his stomach was hunger or nervousness. Or both.

  The crowd was growing thicker and more raucous, and Sherlock felt himself pushed and jostled from behind. People around him were jeering and grumbling. A voice rose above them, shouting: ‘Who will take on the undefeated champion? Who has the courage to pit themselvesagainstNatWilson, the Kensal GreenWonder? A sovereign if you win; nothing but scorn and derision if you lose!’ He stumbled to one knee. Pulling himself to his feet he was knocked sideways. Something hard slammed into his back. He turned, and found that he was suddenly at the front of the crowd. The thing that he had stumbled against was a wooden pole, one of four that marked out the corners of a square. Ropes had been strung between the poles. A man wearing nothing but leather breeches stood in the centre of the ring, posturing and gesturing to the crowd. His chest and arms were corded with muscle. Another man, this one in a dusty suit and a Homburg hat, was staring straight at Sherlock.

  ‘We have a challenger!’ he cried. The crowd applauded.

  Sherlock tried to back away, but people were pushing him from behind. Hands pulled the ropes apart to form a gap, and Sherlock was pushed through into the grassy enclosure.

  ‘No!’ he shouted, realizing that somehow he was the challenger. ‘I don’t—’

  The barker cut across him. ‘Standard Broughton Rules,’ he chanted. ‘No padding and no knuckledusters. Anything goes except hitting a man when he’s down. When a man is down he gets thirty seconds to rest and eight additional seconds to come to scratch. The fight is over when one man can’t stand up.’ He glanced at Sherlock, who was looking wildly around, trying to find a gap in the crowd through which he could escape. ‘Kid,’ he murmured, ‘I don’t rate you for more than a minute unaided. If you can last five, I’ll double the prize. Got to keep the punters entertained.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be here!’ protested Sherlock.

  ‘It’s a little late for that,’ the barker replied.

  ‘But this is an accident!’

  ‘No.’ The man smiled, revealing black, rotting teeth. ‘This is a massacre.’

  The barker headed for the side of the ring, where more people held the ropes apart for him. Sherlock tried to follow him, but the ropes snapped back up into place and the men, women and children in the crowd jeered as he approached. Stones were flung at him, causing him to back away into the centre of the ring.

  The other fighter strode over, his gaze flickering around the crowd and drawing their applause. He was at least six inches taller than Sherlock, and bigger around the chest. His hands looked like two leather bags filled with walnuts. ‘Up to scratch,’ he grunted.

  ‘What?’

  The fighter indicated two parallel lines that had been cut into the grass, about three feet apart. ‘You stand behind one; I stand behind the other. When the bell goes, we fight. That’s the way it goes.’

  ‘I don’t want to fight,’ Sherlock protested.

  ‘That’s your choice, boy,’ the fighter snarled. ‘I still got to make it last five minutes, an’ your head’ll look like minced meat if you don’t protect yourself.’ He eyed Sherlock critically. ‘An’ it’ll prob’ly look that way even if you do,’ he added. He shoved Sherlock towards the nearest line in the grass. ‘Hands up, protect your face. An’ keep standin’ up. If you fall, I’ll kick you till you stand again.’

  ‘I thought the referee said no hitting a man when he was down.’

  The fighter shrugged. ‘Didn’t say nothin’ about kick-in’.’

  Sherlock, disbelieving, moved to his mark. The fighter stood with his booted feet on the other line. Sherlock glanced around, looking for someone, anyone who might help, but the faces looking back at him were flushed, sweaty and distorted by aggression. There was no way out.

  A bell rang.

  Sherlock stepped back just as his opponent’s fist swished past his nose. He brought his hands up to defend himself, backing away as the other man stepped forward. The crowd roared. He’d seen pictures of boxers in books, watched a few fights in the Deepdene gymnasium, even sparred a little himself, and he took up the position that he remembered – hands clenched into fists and held high in front of him – but his opponent obviously hadn’t read the same books and lumbered forward, swinging his arms in sideways from shoulder height. Sherlock took a blow to his own left shoulder – the one that Clem had hurt the other night – and felt agony pouring down his arm like liquid metal. His hand dropped uselessly to his side. How had this happened? Only a minute ago he’d been anonymous in the crowd, and now he was the centre of all attention! It was almost as if something, someone, had been guiding the crowd, pushing them to this very moment.

  The other fighter stepped closer, ready to punch upward into Sherlock’s face, so Sherlock stepped backwards and lashed out with his right fist. Incredibly, he connected with the man’s nose. He felt something crack under his fingers, and blood waterfalled down the man’s chin and chest. The other fighter jerked backwards and breathed out explosively, spraying blood over Sherlock’s shirt, then punched his right hand straight out into Sherlock’s chest. The impact knocked Sherlock backwards. Pain radiated across his ribs. For a moment he thought his heart had stopped. He tried breathing in, but his lungs wouldn’t work. He bent double, trying to force some air into his throat. A hand grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him across the grass. The impact of his body on the ground forced the last remnants of air from his lungs, and he was suddenly sucking great breaths again. He rolled away as a foot smashed into the ground where his head had been, and scrambled to his feet.

  The other fighter’s face was a mask of blood, broken only by two narrowed and furious eyes and the snarling line of his teeth. He stepped towards Sherlock and punched twice, left hand to Sherlock’s ribs and right hand to the side of Sherlock’s head. Pain filled Sherlock’s world, red and raw. Everything seemed so far away. He was falling, but he didn’t feel the impact as he hit the ground.

  Darkness claimed him, and he went willingly.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Sherlock woke up his head was aching. The pain seemed to be ce
ntred around his right temple, and it pulsed sickeningly in time with his heartbeat. It was like a massive soft, throbbing lump in the centre of his head that he couldn’t see past and couldn’t climb past. He lay in the dark for a while, not thinking, but just drifting back and forth with the pain, waiting for it to recede. Eventually, it did.

  The last thing he remembered was being knocked unconscious on the meadow beneath Farnham Castle by the fairground fighter. And now he was in a comfortable bed, with his head supported by feather pillows. That meant he wasn’t still at the fairground, lying on the muddy grass ring or bundled into a tent to recover. Unless, of course, he was hallucinating, which was a distinct possibility given the fact that he’d suffered a head wound.

  No, he told himself firmly: he had to work on the assumption that what he was feeling, hearing and seeing was true, and not just some fabrication of a bruised brain.

  The diffuse light filtering through the curtained windows told him that it was still morning. He wasn’t in his own bed; that was for sure. His own bed was harder, and his pillows were lumpier. He must have been found by someone from Holmes Manor and brought back there, but left in a more comfortable bed: one that the doctor and the maids could get to more easily, perhaps. He strained, trying to hear movement outside the window, but there was nothing apart from what might have been distant birdsong.

  How much trouble was he in? The thought brought an unplanned groan to his lips. He’d disobeyed his uncle’s clear instructions, and he suspected that any attempt to explain that he thought he was meeting Amyus Crowe would be dealt with harshly. Worse, he had become involved in a common fist fight. Worse than that, he had lost. That might not have concerned Sherrinford or Anna Holmes, but if Sherlock’s father ever got to hear about it he would be furious. One of his favourite sayings was: ‘A gentleman never starts a fight, but he always finishes it.’

  If he was lucky, his uncle would confine him to his room for the next month, and restrict his meals to bread and water. If he was lucky. If he was unlucky . . . well, he wasn’t sure, but he suspected that the punishment would be dire. A thrashing, perhaps? A beating with a cane or a leather belt? His uncle would probably do it in sorrow rather than in anger, but wasn’t there some Biblical quotation about ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’?

  This wasn’t going to be good.

  Sherlock reached up to touch his head. His fingers encountered swelling, and when he pressed against it a spike of pain shot through him.

  He sat up cautiously. Neither his head nor his stomach were happy at the movement, but they didn’t complain too much.

  The room he was in was lined with wood panelling, and the bed was a four-poster with an embroidered canopy overhead. It wasn’t one he was familiar with, and the decoration looked out of step with what he remembered from Holmes Manor. He looked down at himself. He was still dressed, although his jacket had been removed. He glanced around, and found it hanging from a clothes hanger on the back of the door.

  Throwing back the sheet that covered him, he pushed himself gradually upright. The world seemed to slosh back and forth for a few moments like water in a bucket before stabilizing. His shoes had been removed, but he saw that they were sitting together at the bottom of the bed. He lurched across to them and did his best to slip his feet into them without bending over. Bending over would be a bad idea, he thought.

  He crossed to the window and drew back the curtain but the view that greeted his eyes was nothing at all like the landscape around Holmes Manor.

  The ground outside was flat and barren, denuded of grass or plants. The earth was reddish brown and dry, and as far as the eye could see it was covered in wooden boxes on four sturdy legs. They were a bit like chicken coops but smaller, and each one had a small hole at the bottom, just before the point where a wooden base separated the box from its supports. The boxes were spaced apart in a regular grid. A quick multiplication in Sherlock’s mind told him that he was staring at something like five hundred boxes.

  Smoke seemed to be curling above some of the boxes, but the wind must have been eddying in strange ways because the smoke from different boxes was moving in different directions. Some of the plumes were trailing upward, some to the left and some to the right, and some were just hanging around the entrance to the boxes as if trying to get in or out.

  A figure moved from behind one of the boxes. It was clad in a loose one-piece overall that seemed to be made of canvas, and its head was covered in a mask made of muslin thin enough to see through, held away from its face by wooden hoops. The figure moved to another box and carefully lifted the lid. More smoke puffed outward and enveloped its head. It didn’t seem to mind. It bent closer, gazing into the box, then closed the lid again and pulled what looked like a wooden tray from underneath. The figure gazed at it for a few seconds, then walked a few steps and placed the tray on to a pile of similar ones.

  His brain finally waking up properly, Sherlock realized what he was watching. The cloud he had seen leaving the body of the man in the woods around Holmes Manor, the smoke Matty had witnessed, the pollen he’d taken to Professor Winchcombe – it was finally making sense. This was not smoke but bees. Small black bees. And that meant the boxes were beehives and the man in the mask was a beekeeper.

  But what kind of bees were they, and what were they for? Making honey? Defence? Or something else?

  More importantly, where in heaven’s name was he?

  Behind him, the door to the bedroom opened. He turned quickly. Two men were standing inside the doorway. They were dressed in immaculate black velvet clothes of an old-fashioned cut – breeches, stockings, waistcoats and short jackets – and their faces were covered with black velvet masks with slits cut in at eye-level for them to see through.

  One of them gestured over his shoulder. His meaning was clear – Sherlock was to go with them. For a moment he rebelled – he’d never been good at following orders given with no explanation – but a moment’s thought suggested that if he didn’t do what they said then they would just pick him up and carry him. And they probably wouldn’t be careful either.

  It also occurred to him that going with them was probably the only way to find out what was going on.

  Heart pounding, but keeping a calm, even bored expression on his face, Sherlock walked over to the door. The two footmen backed away to let him through.

  The hall outside the bedroom door was opulently decorated in rich reds and purples, with a distinctive coat of arms woven into the wallpaper and embroidered on the velvet curtains. One footman led Sherlock down a wide flight of white marble stairs, while the other one followed behind. Sherlock’s footsteps were the only noise: the footmen’s shoes were muffled, and barely produced a whisper on the treads.

  At the bottom of the stairs the first footman led Sherlock towards a closed door beside a heavy teak cabinet. He pulled it towards him, and gestured Sherlock through. With only a moment’s hesitation, the boy complied.

  The door shut behind him with a muffled but definitive thud.

  The room inside the doorway was large, shadowy and cool. All the windows were covered with thick curtains. Only a few diagonal shafts of light penetrated the gloom, and in their meagre light Sherlock could just make out one end of a massive wooden table with a heavy chair set in front of it. All else was darkness apart from the glint of what might have been objects made of metal hanging on the stone walls.

  It seemed obvious what was expected of him. Feeling nervous beads of sweat trickling down his back, he walked forward and sat in the chair.

  For a long while there was silence, apart from the rapid beating of his heart. He strained his eyes against the darkness, but he couldn’t make out anything apart from the surface of the table immediately in front of him. And then, gradually, he began to distinguish a faint noise: a rhythmic creaking, like the rigging of a ship as it pitched and tossed on the waves of some phantom ocean. It seemed to come and go, almost as if a faint breeze was pushing intermittently against canvas, and pull
ing the wet ropes tight and then letting them hang loose again. He couldn’t work out what it was. Surely he couldn’t be on a ship? He’d seen ground outside the bedroom window, and the floor wasn’t rising and falling. So what was that noise?

  ‘You were at the warehouse.’ A man’s voice, barely more than a whisper, spoke from the darkness at the other end of the table. There seemed to be a trace of an accent there – the word ‘the’ came out more like ‘zee’ – but Sherlock couldn’t work out which country the speaker hailed from. ‘Why were you at the warehouse?’

  ‘Who are you?’ Sherlock said firmly, his voice underpinned by a bravado that he didn’t feel.

  ‘Why were you at the warehouse?’ the voice persisted. Sherlock had to strain to make out the words above the creaking.

  ‘My uncle will be worried about me,’ Sherlock blustered. ‘There will be search parties out, looking.’ He didn’t know if that was true or not, but it seemed like a good thing to say. It might throw his mysterious interrogator off his stride.

  ‘I will only ask you once more, and then there will be consequences. Why were you at the warehouse?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Something came flashing out of the darkness, thin and black and uncurling like a striking snake. It caught his right cheek before withdrawing into the dark. He flinched, feeling blood trickling down his skin a moment before the pain blossomed through his flesh.

  ‘Why were you at the warehouse?’ the voice insisted.

  Sherlock touched his hand to his burning cheek, then took it away and looked at it. Blood stained the lines on his palm. ‘You hurt me,’ he said, not quite believing it.

  The whip flicked out of the darkness again. This time he caught sight of the tip just as it whistled past his face. There was a knot in the thin leather lace. The crack of the knot hitting its full extent and pulling back coincided with the agony of it slicing through the top of his right ear. He cried out, clapping a hand to the side of his head. This time he could feel blood pooling in his palm and trickling down his wrist.