Young Sherlock Holmes: Death Cloud Page 20

  ‘All of these factors have been accounted for,’ the Baron replied in his dry-as-dust voice, but to Sherlock he sounded unsure of himself for the first time. ‘And even if some uniforms are laundered, and some bees die, what of it? Many of the attacks will be successful nevertheless. Widespread death will occur. The British Army will be paralysed by fear. Paralysed.’

  ‘You just don’t understand the way the English think, do you?’ Sherlock scoffed. His mind ranged back over his lessons at school, over what he had read in the newspapers, curled up in a chair in his father’s study, or heard from his brother Mycroft. ‘Have you ever heard of the Charge of the Light Brigade?’

  The sound of creaking in the darkness stopped abruptly. Sherlock had the sudden sense that many ears were listening intently to what he said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the Baron hissed. ‘I have heard of the Charge of the Light Brigade.’

  ‘In 1854,’ Sherlock continued, regardless, ‘during the Crimean War, the soldiers of the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, the 17th Lancers and the 8th and 11th Hussars were ordered to charge the Russian lines during the Battle of Balaclava. They were charging down a valley that had Russian cannons on each side and in front of them, and they just kept on going. They followed orders, without panicking and without mutinying. I’m not saying that mindless obedience to orders is a good thing, but discipline is built into the British soldier like a rod of iron right down their backs. I know that – my father is an officer. They don’t panic. Not ever. No, even if there are deaths it’ll be treated just like an outbreak of smallpox or cholera. Don’t you understand? They will ignore it. That’s what the British do. That’s why the British Empire is so widespread and so strong. We just ignore the things we don’t like.’

  ‘You speak well,’ the Baron said, ‘but I do not believe you. Obviously you want to believe that your Empire is built on rock-solid foundations, but you are wrong. The foundations are rotten, and the edifice will crumble if it is pushed hard enough. You want to believe that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday, but it will not. The world will change, and the balance of power will tip in favour of my associates in the Paradol Chamber.’

  The Paradol Chamber? What was that? As Maupertuis was talking, Sherlock memorized what might have been an important slip of the tongue that Mycroft would want to know about.

  Assuming that Sherlock ever got the chance to see his brother again.

  ‘You want to believe that your brother will continue to be an important man in the British government,’ Maupertuis continued, ‘but he will not. He, like the rest of his colleagues, will be swept away by the tide of history. When this bumptious little country of yours is a mere province of a European superpower that can rival America in its size and power, then Mycroft Holmes and his ilk will be surplus to requirements. Their kind will not be needed in the new world order. They will find themselves at the mercy of the guillotine or the garrotte. They will not survive.’

  Maupertuis’s voice had descended to a low hiss by now, so carried away was he with this venomous diatribe directed against a country and a people that he so obviously hated. Why did he hate Great Britain so much? Sherlock found himself wondering what might work best – a reasoned argument, or provoking the Baron into a more emotional state. Either way, the outcome was uncertain. The chances were that the two of them were going to die.

  ‘He is mad,’ Virginia said quietly but firmly to Sherlock. ‘Stark, staring mad. His plan is obviously nuts, and the outcome he wants is impossible. Like it or not, Britain is a world power. He can’t reverse that.’

  ‘I am surprised,’ the Baron hissed, ‘that you are defending this country so strongly, girl.’

  Virginia looked up as he spoke, surprised at her sudden inclusion in the Baron’s thoughts. ‘Why surprised?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like to see innocent people killed. Is that unusual?’

  ‘Your country was beholden to this one for over two hundred years,’ the Baron pointed out. ‘Everything in America was ruled from London. You were just another county, like Hampshire or Dorset, only larger and further away. You had to rebel against British control and throw off the yoke of Westminster.’

  ‘And we did it in a clean fight,’ she pointed out. ‘Not by tricks and schemes and secret plans. If we’ve got to have wars then that’s the way they should be – fair and open and clean. There should be rules for war, like there are for boxing.’

  ‘Naive,’ the Baron murmured. ‘So naive. And so pointless. You and the boy will die before you ever find out that your precious world order will be overturned.’

  ‘You like operating in the shadows, don’t you?’ Virginia continued, and there was a hard-edged tone in her voice that made Sherlock glance at her, wondering what she was up to.

  ‘The successful fighter strikes from the shadows and then hides in them again, so that the bigger, stronger foe does not know where to strike,’ the Baron whispered. ‘That is the warfare of the future. That is how a smaller foe can overcome a much larger one. By stealth.’

  ‘You prefer the shadows? Then let’s see how you like the sunlight,’ she cried, and leaped to her feet. Sherlock sensed a flurry of activity at the shadowed end of the room as Mr Surd prepared to strike out with his metal-tipped whip, but Virginia darted to one side and the whip sliced into the back of the chair she had just vacated. She grabbed the black velvet curtains that lined the room and pulled on them, hard. Sherlock heard a ripping sound as the velvet tore loose from the curtain rail, and then, with a sound like a distant rainstorm, a whole sheet of material fell to the ground in a slow avalanche of soft cloth, letting bright sunlight spill into the room.

  Black-clad and masked figures around the room shielded their eyes, but Sherlock’s gaze was drawn to the figure of the Baron, sitting in an oversized chair at the other end of the table. It was, indeed, the same pink-eyed, white-haired man that he had seen in the carriage back in Farnham. He squinted into the light, shielding his face with one hand while the other hand came up with a pair of glasses with darkened lenses which he slipped over his sensitive eyes. His arms were thin and twisted, like the branches of an old oak tree, and his head lolled on his shoulders. He was wearing what seemed to be a military uniform: black, with ornate gold braid decorating the chest and the cuffs. There was something around his forehead, a wooden frame of some kind. His head suddenly straightened up and his eyes glared at Sherlock from behind the dark lenses so intensely that Sherlock could almost feel their heat. He noticed that there were cords leading upward from the frame, and that those cords had pulled taut at the exact moment that Mauper-tuis’s head had straightened up.

  Mr Surd was standing beside the Baron, the scars on his head livid in the light from the window, like a nest of worms across a naked skull. He stared at Sherlock and Virginia with the promise of death in his eyes, brandishing his whip.

  ‘No!’ the Baron hissed. ‘They are mine!’ Sherlock’s gaze was drawn inexorably back to the twisted body of Baron Maupertuis. There were more ropes attached to smaller wooden frames on the Baron’s wrists and elbows, and a larger wooden frame encasing his chest. Thicker ropes led up from the chest-frame, and as Sherlock’s gaze tracked them upward, towards the ceiling of the room, he realized that all the ropes were attached to a massive wooden beam like a gibbet that hung suspended above the Baron. The end of the beam closest to Sherlock joined a smaller cross-beam covered with metal hooks and metal wheels on tiny axles. The ropes passed through these hooks and wheels, and Sherlock traced them back to where masked, black-clad servants held the ends. There must have been twenty, perhaps thirty ropes, all connected to parts of the Baron’s body. And as Sherlock watched, incredulous, some of the servants pulled on their ropes, exerting all their strength, while others either let theirs go slack or just took up the slack without actually pulling. And as they did so, the Baron jerked upright.

  He was a puppet: a human puppet, entirely operated by others.

  ‘Grotesque, yes?’ the Baron hissed. His mouth and his eyes appeare
d to be the only parts of his body that he could move by themselves. His right hand came up and gestured at his body, but the movement was caused by a series of ropes attached to his wrist, his elbow and his shoulder, and smaller cords fixed to rings on his knuckles, all moving not because the Baron wanted them to but because his black-clad servants were anticipating what he would do if he could. ‘This is the legacy I was left with by the British Empire. You mentioned the Charge of the Light Brigade, boy. A tedious, pointless engagement based on misunderstood orders in a war that should never have been fought. I was there, on that overcast day, with the Earl of Lucan. I was his liaison with the French cavalry, who were on his left flank. I saw the orders when they arrived from Lord Raglan. I knew that they were badly phrased, and that Lucan had misunderstood them.’

  ‘What happened?’ Sherlock asked.

  ‘My horse was caught up in the charge, and spooked by the cannon fire. I was thrown from the saddle, and I tumbled to the ground in front of hundreds of British horses. They galloped right over me. I doubt they even saw me. I felt my bones break as the hoofs came down on me. My legs, my arms, my ribs, my hips and my skull. Every major bone in my body was fractured, and most of the minor ones. Inside, I was like a jigsaw puzzle.’

  ‘You should have died,’ Virginia breathed, and Sherlock wasn’t sure whether she spoke the words with pity or regret.

  ‘I was found by my compatriots after the British were torn to pieces by the Russian cannon,’ Maupertuis continued. ‘They carried me from the battlefield. They tended my wounds. They put me back together as best they could, and helped my bones to heal, but my neck was broken and although my heart still beat I could not move my legs. They didn’t dare carry me too far, so I lay there in a tent in the stinking heat and the frozen cold of the Crimea for a year. A whole year. And for every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week and every month that I was there, I cursed the British and their stupidity in just following orders no matter how stupid those orders were.’

  ‘You chose to be there,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘You were wearing uniform. And you lived when hundreds of good men died.’

  ‘And every day I wish I had died with them. But I live, and I have a purpose: to bring the British Empire to its knees. Starting with you, child.’

  As he spat the words, Maupertuis seemed to float up in the air and land lightly on the table. The ropes above him tautened, pulled on by his black-clad puppeteers. A creaking noise filled the room as the ropes and the wood took the strain of the Baron’s weight. Somehow the servants had divined what he wanted them to do. Sherlock assumed they had been working with him for so long that they knew instinctively the way his thoughts were going and could translate them into instantaneous action. As Maupertuis’s feet touched the table, Sherlock sprang up from his chair. Beside him, Virginia did the same.

  ‘Baron!’ Mr Surd called. ‘You don’t need to do this yourself. Let me kill the children for you!’

  ‘No,’ the Baron hissed. ‘I am not a cripple! I will erase these interfering brats myself! All those months, all that time spent paralysed and designing this harness – it will not be wasted. I will kill them myself! Do you understand?’

  ‘At least let me kill the girl,’ Surd insisted. ‘At least let me do that for you.’

  ‘Very well,’ the Baron conceded. ‘Then I will deal with the boy.’

  Seemingly weightless, Maupertuis drifted towards Sherlock, his feet moving but barely touching the surface of the table. He extended his hand towards the boy, and for a moment Sherlock thought that the Baron was inviting him up to the table, but instead cords and wires suddenly pulled taut inside the sleeve of the Baron’s uniform and a shining blade slid out of a scabbard hidden along his forearm. His twig-like fingers closed around a padded hilt, not so much controlling the blade as giving it some guidance.

  Sherlock backed away towards the suit of armour that stood beside the door. He grabbed the sword from its mailed grip, knocking the armour to the floor.

  Sherlock was barely aware that Mr Surd was walking out of the darkness, his metal-tipped whip dangling menacingly from his hand, but then the Baron sprang off the table towards him, swinging his sabre. The scaffold-like structure that held him was on wheels, and there were more servants behind it, pushing and pulling it along and swinging it around. Maupertuis could go anywhere in the room within seconds, faster than Sherlock could move.

  The Baron swung his sabre. Sherlock parried clumsily, feeling the impact tear at the muscles in his shoulder. Sparks flew from the point where the blades clashed. The Baron leaped into the air, cleaving his blade down towards Sherlock’s head. Sherlock rolled to his left and the Baron’s blade tore through the back of the chair where Sherlock had been sitting only moments before, splintering the wood and sending bits of the chair in all directions.

  Sherlock glanced desperately to his right. Virginia was backing away from Mr Surd, who was uncoiling his whip. He sent it lashing out at her, like a striking snake. She flinched away, too late. A gash opened up on her cheek. Blood sprayed in a flower shape across her skin.

  Sherlock desperately wanted to rush to help, but the Baron landed lightly on the floor in front of him. Springing to his feet, Sherlock slashed his blade sideways, trying to cut one of the ropes and cords that held the Baron up, but the black-clad servants pulled their master backwards, out of Sherlock’s reach. The Baron’s white, skull-like face split open in a grimacing smile. His pink, rat-like eyes seemed to glow with triumph. He sprang, his right foot sliding on the carpet and his right arm, holding the sabre, extending forward in a perfect thrust while his left foot braced his body. Sherlock could hear grunts from the servants in the shadows as they threw their weight into the mechanism holding the Baron up. The blade hurtled towards Sherlock’s throat. He tried to parry, but his feet tangled in the folds of the carpet and he sprawled backwards, head thudding against the ground.

  ‘I was the greatest fencing master in the whole of France!’ Maupertuis gloated. ‘And I still am!’

  Virginia cried out, and Sherlock glanced involuntarily in her direction. Surd had her pinned by the wall. Another cut had been opened up across her forehead. The redness of the blood was dulled by the copper of her hair, glinting in the sunlight that spilt through the undraped window. Sherlock tried to move towards her but the Baron’s sabre came flashing out of nowhere, slashing through Sherlock’s shirt collar and carving a line of fire across his chest. Pushing himself to his feet he backed rapidly away, his blade weaving in front of him in a desperate attempt to block the Baron’s thrusts.

  With a heaving of wooden machinery and a creaking of ropes, the Baron’s body levitated and flew forward in a way that no merely human swordsman could match. He swung his sabre horizontally, like a scythe. Despite his claims to be a master swordsman all thoughts of swordsmanship appeared to have vanished from his mind. He was just hacking mindlessly at Sherlock now, and Sherlock’s arms were tiring from the effort of blocking the blows. His muscles burned and his tendons felt as tight as violin strings.

  Something flew through the air past Sherlock’s head, and he turned to look. It was a metal gauntlet, part of the suit of armour he had knocked over earlier. Virginia had scooped it up off the floor and thrown it at Mr Surd, who was shielding his face. Virginia picked up a metalled boot and flung it. The metal toe caught Mr Surd above the eye, and he swore.

  Sherlock moved backwards as Maupertuis strode forward, the ropes above the broken man creaking under the strain. How did the black-clad puppeteers manage to coordinate their movements so well? Maupertuis walked as well as anyone without those terrible injuries. There was even a swagger in his step.

  The Baron raised his sword up past his left ear and slashed diagonally downward at Sherlock’s head. Sherlock blocked the blow. Sparks from the point where the two swords clashed flew away like tiny glowing insects, stinging Sherlock’s neck and shoulders.

  It was hopeless. Maupertuis was a master swordsman, even handicapped as he was b
y having his every move performed by anonymous servants. Either those servants were themselves master swordsmen – which Sherlock could almost believe – or they and the Baron had trained together for so long that they instinctively operated as a single organism, without the need for communication or thought. How many thousands of hours had Maupertuis spent drilling them until they worked almost as extensions of his will?

  Sherlock edged backwards, but his elbow and shoulder banged against something hard. The wall! He had retreated as far as he possibly could.

  Maupertuis’s elbow jerked back and his sword flashed forward like lightning. Desperately, Sherlock slid sideways, and the blade sliced through the collar of his jacket and on, grinding into the gap between two blocks of stone. Sherlock tried to pull away, but he was pinioned, stuck like a butterfly on a board.

  He braced himself, waiting for Maupertuis to withdraw the blade ready for a final strike so that he could slide down and escape, but instead Maupertuis brought his left hand up. Wires and cords writhed like tendons, and something slid out of the Baron’s left sleeve. For a moment Sherlock thought it was a knife, but there was something strange about the tip. It looked more like a metal disc with a serrated edge.

  Something whirred in the darkness behind Maupertuis and the wheel began to spin, scattering glittering shards of light in all directions. Sherlock could feel the air brushing past his face as the Baron brought the saw-toothed wheel closer and closer to his right eye.

  Despair washed over him. Sherlock was no match for the Baron. He couldn’t last against this kind of punishment for more than a few moments.