And, as he had now trained Mycroft like a half-daft terrier to fetch whatever he deemed necessary, what need was there for him to change course?
As for his education, he had managed to graduate the upper sixth and was safely if unhappily ensconced at Downing College, Cambridge, Mycroft’s alma mater. In exchange, Mycroft had promised that leisure time would be spent in London, rather than “abandoned to the intolerable doldrums of country life with our dreary progenitors,” as Sherlock so charitably put it.
Mycroft stared down at the financial documents in his hands and frowned. Whatever it was the Queen required, could he perhaps find a moment to broach the subject of incipient economic collapse? If he could but get her ear on the matter…
Mycroft heard Huan’s knuckles rap against the trap door. He looked up from his papers and tried to shake off the feeling of disorientation and nausea that seemed to plague him as of late.
From the window he spied the National Standard Theatre, where he and Sherlock had arranged to meet. The area was both down-at-heel shabby and oddly genteel, crowded with public houses, pleasure gardens, shops and bazaars.
“Your brother, he cares for theatre?” Huan called out.
“He is fond of it, in his manner,” Mycroft said. “Although when I took him to see The Bells at the Lyceum, he mentioned neither the acting nor the writing, but went on about the costumes and makeup!”
As the carriage drew nearer and Huan fought for preeminence among cabs, carts and brewers’ drays, Mycroft could see three figures underneath the theatre’s great colonnade. One he recognized immediately: the profile reminiscent of a bird of prey, the tall, angular, even consumptive frame. If his identity had been in doubt, the instrument case that lay nearby—which Mycroft knew held a vielle, the five-string precursor of the violin, and Sherlock’s latest passion—would have clinched it.
The two shorter, well-planted fellows were Sherlock’s best and likely only friends, a strange set of twins named Eli and Asa Quince. They had longish hair the color of wet sand, and features so punctiliously carved that they could have been mistaken for ventriloquists’ dummies.
Despite the frigid November morning, there they were—the three eccentrics of Downing College in their shirtsleeves—practicing a combat of their own design that incorporated boxing but which also involved a short staff. They were using the columns as obstacles and barricades. And although the theater would not open for several more hours, why the proprietor was not coming after the boys with the pointy end of a broom was a mystery to Mycroft.
Sherlock was beating the stuffing out of them.
His limbs might’ve recalled a scarecrow, had he been less subtle in his dealings and less deadly in his aim. At nearly nineteen, he had become a rather ferocious athlete.
Mycroft watched his brother, uncommonly pleased to see how well he tucked his chin in and kept his wrists slightly bent to avoid injuring himself in a hit. Even his elbows were remaining closer to his body.
“Master Sherlock, he has gotten stronger, no?”
“Yes, Huan, it seems he has.”
Sherlock must’ve distinguished the sound of the carriage from amongst all the others because he whisked round to look—just as one of the twins attempted to brain him with a short staff. But Sherlock was too quick. He ducked out of the way, pivoting to avoid a right hook, then with a side pass managed to land his own staff in the vicinity of the twin’s spleen, while a left hook to the second twin’s jutting chin sent him sprawling atop his brother.
“Ah! You see the jabs coming fast,” Huan was declaring all the while. “Long reach, feet move, quick mix, good mind! Well done, Master Sherlock!” he bellowed upon the final blow, punctuating his praise with a round of applause.
Sherlock glanced blankly down at his vanquished friends. Then, instead of extending his hand in a sportsmanlike gesture—as Mycroft had dared to hope—he gathered up his vielle case, his short staff and his jacket, which lay on the ground along with the rest. Slipping it on, he removed the briar pipe from the pocket, packed and lit it.
At last, pipe between his teeth, and without a word of goodbye, he sprinted towards the waiting carriage.
5
“THERE THEY ARE!” SHERLOCK SAID BY WAY OF GREETING as he slid inside Mycroft’s carriage. In one long move, he deposited instrument and short staff, reached across Mycroft, snatched the newspapers off the seat and propped them on his jutting knees.
“No farewells to friends?” Mycroft asked.
“No need,” Sherlock said. “We meet Friday at Kensington to prepare for those dreary Latin orals. The language perished nearly two millennia ago—what need is there for me to resurrect it?”
“Now you are being a dunderhead,” Mycroft exclaimed. “There are treatises of law, medicine and crime that you would do well to become familiar with, for surely they fall within your realm of interests—and they are most certainly in Latin.”
“I follow the trail of my passions,” Sherlock opined. “If said passions happen to lead back to Latin, I shall thank Providence that I learnt it once upon a bygone time. Until then, it occupies a necessary chamber of my brain, for which I thank neither it nor Providence, but simply wish it to go on its un-merry way.”
With that, he lay back, opened up the Daily Telegraph, removed his pipe from between his teeth, and exhaled a long, bilious cloud of smoke.
Mycroft coughed. “It is even more acrid than those cheap cigarettes you used to smoke,” he complained, waving a hand in front of his nose.
“A pipe is more efficient,” Sherlock said, without taking his eyes off the newspaper. “Saves me an average of forty-seven seconds’ preparation.”
“We could stop at Regent Tobaccos. You will find many aromatic options from which to choose—”
“Dependent on some pretentious tobacconist? No thank you. My shag, I can pick up anywhere.”
“A finer quality pipe, then.”
“Briar has an inherent ability to absorb moisture, and a natural resistance to fire…”
“Now there’s a shame,” Mycroft said sourly. “But surely,” he continued on a different tack, “as nearly every man smokes, being able to tell one scent from the other, possibly even one ash from the other, could be a helpful tool for someone keen to develop the art of deduction…”
When a concept penetrated, Sherlock would execute a hardly perceptible jerk of the head, as if he’d just thrown a thought into the uppermost drawer of his mind to be extracted when needed.
“So. What have we here,” he murmured. “The Daily Telegraph, Daily News, Daily Chronicle…” He turned to Mycroft. “Next time perhaps add The Illustrated, as well as The Graphic. Even a week old, it serves.”
“Is that all?” Mycroft asked acerbically.
As Sherlock perused the crime column in the Daily News, he frowned. “Heard it, solved it, insipid, yet another theft in St. Giles, imagine that; some days are barely worth opening one’s eyes for—wait, there is something!” he declared. “‘Shocking discovery,’ Russell Square, throat slit… promising!” He carefully tore the column out, pocketing it.
“I take it the Savage Gardens Murders do not interest you?” Mycroft asked.
Sherlock’s expression was full of disdain. “The executions are altogether too overwrought. Someone has set out to make a point or to teach a lesson, which makes the motive pedestrian. And the only reason he, or most likely they, have not been apprehended as of yet is that no one much cares for the victims! Is it too much to ask that a motive be chock-full of intrigue, that killers show a modicum of finesse, and that victims be, if not noble, then at least somewhat worthy…?”
Mycroft sighed. He detested hearing his own unfiltered thoughts coming out of his brother’s mouth. “You are not saying, because they are Oriental, that they have no value, I hope?” he reproved Sherlock.
“I am saying it probably has to do with lucre or some battle over territory and the like. In other words, a colossal bore.” Sherlock was about to turn a page when somethin
g appeared to occur to him. He glanced out of the window. Then he looked over at Mycroft.
“We are not moving,” Sherlock said.
“No,” Mycroft replied. “We are not.”
“Why?”
“Where is your overnight bag?”
Sherlock eyed him, perplexed. “To what purpose?”
“To the purpose of remaining ten days in the city!”
“But I have all I need. My music, my short staff, my hat, my shag…” He patted the waistcoat pocket that held his tobacco.
“An overcoat?” Mycroft asked, incredulous. “Latin texts? A change of clothing? An umbrella?”
“Mycroft, do not be histrionic. You know perfectly well that it will not rain today. After that, should it get a bit wet, surely the Quinces have all the umbrellas I might need, to say nothing of Latin textbooks, as each twin has his own…”
“Tell me you brought a shaving kit, at least.”
“Whiskers have returned all the rage, and if need be, I can borrow yours, should you invite me to dinner—”
“No, you most certainly cannot. There,” Mycroft indicated the sign of a shop just down the road. “Go purchase a small shaving kit. Or return to Downing.”
The threat hit its mark. There would be no more arguing.
Sherlock opened the door of the cab and walked towards the shop, a ribbon of charcoal smoke trailing in his wake.
He is getting more difficult, Mycroft grumbled to himself. Perhaps he let Sherlock get away with too much. Perhaps instead of allowing him to lounge about with his nose buried in agony columns and tales of murder, his briar pipe polluting the rooms like a bad spell of winter fog, what he needed was a dose of how the other half lived. Being made to volunteer even a few hours at Cyrus Douglas’s school might be the ticket.
I could take him to Douglas, make my appointment with the Queen, then have a bite to eat before retrieving him.
Mycroft was particularly fond of that last notion. Even breaking bread with Sherlock had become a chore. Either he ignored the food laid before him and said not a word, or else would criticize everything, from chewing to digestion, in minute detail.
The Albion might have an open spot, Mycroft mused. I haven’t dined there in a fortnight…
He stared out of the window again. The twins had by that time picked themselves up and hobbled off. But just then, hurrying towards the Standard, Mycroft noticed a rather pinched and austere little man in a much-mended overcoat.
Mycroft knew him by sight: Sherlock’s chemistry tutor, Professor John Cainborn, the only instructor that, to his knowledge, Sherlock admired. When it comes to biologics, Sherlock had once crowed, the man is an alchemist! It was Cainborn who had given Sherlock a new perception on the study of matter; Cainborn who allowed Sherlock the liberal use of the Cambridge chemistry laboratories; Cainborn who had suggested that he take up the vielle as a form of meditation so that his analytic brain might have the rest that sleep or lesser distractions could not give.
Cainborn who smoked a briar pipe, which had doubtless sparked Sherlock’s own interest.
Cainborn and Sherlock passed one another on the street. Sherlock gestured towards his transport as a foray into polite conversation, and as he did, Mycroft witnessed a strange metamorphosis in his brother. Sherlock drew into himself, no doubt so as not to give offense by his greater height, his long body bent to greet the smaller man, his head nodding in agreement with whatever the professor was saying. And the handshake, when they parted, seemed genuine from both men.
A pang of jealousy took Mycroft unawares.
Both continued walking in their opposite directions, but then Cainborn turned his head to look back at Sherlock, almost as if he wished to be certain he was gone. Not a moment later, a Chinese gentleman of middle years approached the professor. He wore the traditional Han garb of green silk with deep blue brocade, decorated with Chinese dragons.
He and Cainborn shook hands as if their meeting was by happenstance, but their body language betrayed them. Mycroft could not help but notice how tense their limbs were, how strained their smiles, how white Cainborn’s knuckles as he held his pipe aloft.
Why would two grown men in a casual encounter whisper to each other in a fractious back and forth upon a busy thoroughfare? And what business could a rich Han merchant possibly have with a university professor of chemistry?
It was Cainborn who seemed in charge, from the manner in which he leaned forward, insistent, while the other man leaned back like a recalcitrant dog on a leash.
Then Cainborn turned and looked directly at the cab and at Mycroft. The Chinese man followed suit, his expression suddenly fretful. He whispered something to Cainborn, who whispered back; then both men hurried off in opposite directions.
Mycroft watched the Chinese gentleman cross the road and climb aboard a canary-yellow landaulet. By the time Sherlock walked out of the shop, it had darted away.
Curious, Mycroft thought. Nonetheless, he determined that he would not inform Sherlock of what he had seen. He refused to undercut whatever his brother found to admire in education, even if it happened to be a strange little man in a much-mended overcoat.
6
THE DEVIL’S ACRE WAS A PATCH OF MALODOROUS SWAMPLAND off the River Thames that comprised Old Pye Street, Great St. Anne’s Lane, and Duck Lane. Douglas had to admit that it was fit for nothing beyond “indescribable infamy and pollution,” as Charles Dickens had once described it. The fact that it lay more or less between the three pillars of British society—Westminster Abbey representing the Church, Buckingham Palace the Crown, and the Houses of Parliament the State—did nothing to soften the blow of being born, raised, or forgotten in such a dismal place, this haunt of unimaginable squalor.
Yet Douglas loved it, as much as he loved Regent Street, albeit for different reasons. Regent Street was a place of possibilities, of striving. Its grand buildings and imposing promenade assured humanity that hope sprang eternal; that Providence could still be kind. The Devil’s Acre offered no such assurances. There was nothing salubrious about its choleric streets. Its buildings, like its residents, tended to be hollow-eyed, grimy, and thin. But if one paid attention, from out its refuse-filled labyrinths one could pluck, here and there, a wildflower.
Hurrying to keep his appointment, Douglas stepped gingerly around horse dung, broken cobblestones, sleeping sots and stagnant pools of dubious origin as he recalled the first time he and Mycroft Holmes had spoken of this strange new fever dream of his.
Though summer, that day had been nothing of the kind: drizzly and cold, with wind gusts that set one’s teeth on edge and that only London could concoct. They’d been back but a month from the stifling wet heat of Trinidad. With Regent Tobaccos closed on Sunday, he and Mycroft had made themselves at home. They had dragged their favorite leather chairs as close to the hearth as could be managed without setting themselves ablaze, and had opened an Armagnac, a twenty-year-old Favraud.
At the time, Douglas was still convalescing. He could feel, or imagine he felt, the bullets lodged near his heart: two tiny pellets that could mean instant death, should they shift one eighth of an inch to the left. And although he had kept up with his capoeira exercises, engaging in mock battles with Huan each day to remain flexible, his days of brute labor, of packing and unpacking heavy shipments of tobacco and spirits, even for his own little shop, were ended.
He and Mycroft Holmes had been discussing alternatives.
His first thought had been to open an orphanage for colored children, to be named after the four-year-old son he had lost. But in the final analysis it seemed statistically less helpful than aiding slightly older boys (of whatever hue) to secure the sort of apprenticeships that could care for them and their families for a lifetime.
“It is not enough to provide them with just any employment,” he had told Mycroft. “We must keep them from the factory and the chimney and the mines and any other toil that destroys body and soul.”
“How many boys would you take in?�
�� Mycroft had asked mildly.
“Fifteen? Twenty?” he’d replied with a shrug.
He hadn’t fully considered the logistics. It was still a dream fueled mostly by ideals and twenty-year-old Armagnac.
“There are thousands upon thousands in the city who are in need,” Mycroft had countered. “Changing the fortunes of but twenty at a time seems a fool’s errand—”
“Not to those twenty whose fortunes are changed,” Douglas had retorted.
“Then why not more? Why not fifty? One hundred? Two hundred at a sitting? Surely I can afford it.”
“But I cannot,” Douglas had countered. “I cannot maintain two hundred boys, as well as a staff. Even if I could, I do not care for the institutional setting; it is not what I envision.”
“The poetry in your soul may not envision it, Douglas, but I urge you to rethink for their sakes. If twenty boys ‘whose fortunes are changed’ are happy, surely two hundred would be happier still!”
But Douglas had been firm in his resolve. “We would need to ascertain that the boys were instructed properly and paid a decent stipend to boot.”
“And what do their employers receive in exchange?”
“Intelligent, willing apprentices, along with a temporary subsidy for their upkeep—another expense I wish to take on myself.”
“I see,” Mycroft had said. “And where are we contemplating locating this establishment?”
Douglas told him.
“The Devil’s Acre?” Mycroft had laughed. “All attempts at slum clearance have merely sloshed the poverty around like so much curdled milk. Even a stray dog knows better than to seek therein a scrap of food, lest he become someone’s supper. And if you dare to build something,” Mycroft had gone on, seemingly enjoying himself, “come first nightfall the Deserving Poor will cart off everything of value, down to the last nail!”
“Holmes, please,” Douglas had protested—for he still called him Holmes then, as there was not yet the muddle of a younger Holmes to contend with. “You are sounding like a phlegmatic old country squire. Besides, I would not be alone in this. Urania Cottage is in Shepherd’s Bush. And there are the ragged schools—”
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