* * *
Monday morning came to pass just as Mycroft had predicted it would, with one notable exception. When Mycroft’s carriage arrived at Edwardes Square, Sherlock was ready and waiting. He was less sullen than Mycroft had assumed and his Latin a good deal better than he had hoped.
“Now tell me what Dr. Bell said of Charles’s demise, along with any other pertinent information you might have for me,” Sherlock said when he was done reciting.
Mycroft dutifully filled him in—though he did not mention that he had entered through de Matalin’s window and stolen from her, or that he had made copies of Charles’s fingerprints, for he had not yet informed Sherlock about William Angel or his cards.
As Mycroft’s carriage reached the docks, Sherlock repeated Dr. Bell’s phrase: “He said physicians found ‘a compound of unknown origin’ in Charles?” he asked. “You are certain that is what he said?”
“Sherlock, please,” Mycroft said with an exasperated sigh as Sherlock opened the carriage door. “Now. When you spend time with Douglas, give him his due as having lived longer. Take his lead. Your belief that he is simply a good-natured sot with a proclivity for hand-to-hand combat is not only regrettable but damaging, for you do not yet see the use he can be to you.”
But he knew that Sherlock was not really listening, that his mind was already on what he referred to, in street parlance, as “the case.”
And he had to admit to himself, if to no one else, that it was beginning to consume him too.
34
THE LONDON DOCKS WERE AN ENORMOUS EXPANSE THAT went from the Ratcliffe Highway to the River Thames, where they boasted three entrances: Hermitage, Wapping, and Shadwell. Sherlock, walking about, was conscious of what a small portion he had run past a few days before. Seeing it in its immensity was a whole other proposition. Just one dock had enough width, length and breadth to comfortably host some five hundred ships. Between dockworkers and their bosses, he estimated more than three thousand men were employed here, with another few thousand desperate souls clamoring for whatever scraps of labor were left. The din of mechanism and human toil—the clang of steel, whistles, rattling chains, snapping ropes, commands and curses, loading and unloading—was deafening.
The air smelled of fog and soot: here and there a ship’s engines would roar to life, its smokestack coughing up plumes of black smoke.
As he walked by the cacophonous bustle, Sherlock could taste the fumes at the back of his throat. He placed his scarf over his nose and mouth but moments later thought better of it. That small act had attracted a passel of ne’er-do-wells like sharks to blood. With impure motives—most likely having to do with his wallet or pocket watch—a half-dozen scoundrels began to follow him.
Sherlock was not keen to engage in fisticuffs with six strangers, mostly because he wished to reach Douglas in one piece, and with his wits still firmly planted in his head. He wrapped the scarf around his neck once more, then hunched his shoulders and dug his hands into his pockets. Best to simply hold his breath and continue on to Shadwell Dock, where he would try to locate Douglas as quickly as possible.
* * *
Shadwell boasted only fifty ships—a pittance, in comparison to its bigger brothers. But its warehouses were immense, with the largest more than seven hundred feet long. Bustling through and amongst the men, and looking self-important, were customs officers, whose job seemed to Sherlock both thankless and endless, for there were too many shipments for a mere army of men to plow through.
In the cacophony of Shadwell Dock Stairs, in a light but persistent drizzle as the fog turned wet, Sherlock attempted to maintain an air of calm indifference while walking ever faster.
Finally—when the sound of his pursuers’ feet was so close that he could hear the syncopated rhythm of their steps—he spotted Douglas. He was conversing with a short, burly Chinese dockworker who looked something like Huan, but who was as dark-browed and circumspect as Huan was sunny and expansive.
“Ah, there you are, Sherlock,” Douglas said as their eyes met. “You brought company.” Douglas’s gaze shifted impassively from Sherlock to his retinue of malefactors. Sherlock barely had to look behind him to know that that one look had dissolved them like a foul mist into the surging crowd. Was it simply that Douglas was a tall, imposing Negro with a no-nonsense demeanor? Or had one or more known him by reputation and decided the game was not worth that particular candle?
“Sherlock Holmes, may I present my friend Ahn Zhang,” Douglas said, his expression growing equitable again.
Zhang put out his hand, which Sherlock accepted.
“Mr. Zhang is here to look at your incisions,” Douglas continued.
“My what?” Sherlock bleated, suddenly alarmed.
“The symbols,” Douglas clarified.
“Oh. Certainly,” Sherlock replied and began to pull his vielle out of its case.
“Not here. Ahn? Whenever you are ready…”
Zhang said nothing but began walking briskly from the dock onto a nearby quay, with Douglas behind him, and Sherlock third in line, laying the vielle back into its case as he went.
In the distance, the ships and their masts rocked in the wind. Zhang, eyeing them, turned and glanced at Douglas. “Home for you, yes?” he said, indicating the ships.
“Oh yes,” Douglas responded with a wistful smile. He pointed. “You see that clipper, first in line, wooden planking over an iron shell? That’s The Ambassador. Full of herself, cranky and overmasted. Took us one hundred and fifteen days to get to Foochow. I have never been so glad to touch solid earth in my life. Even so, she’s a lovely old girl. Sixth from her is the Fiery Cross, you see there? The one with but a single topsail. Did well in light breezes but could not utilize the Cape. A shame, for it put her out of the running as a merchant vessel, which she most certainly is. And that pretty one beside her is the Flying Spur, all teak and greenheart…”
“How can you tell one from the other from here?” Sherlock asked, as they appeared to him splotches in the distance, topped with various flags flapping in the sodden air.
Douglas laughed. “I take it you see no purpose to them, or you would know the answer immediately. And you?” he asked Zhang. “Have you sailed much?”
Zhang shook his head, his expression moving from closed to impenetrable. “Sail once, Shanghai to London. Never again.”
At last they came to a small ship so weathered that Sherlock was surprised she could stay upright. She sat high in the water, her green copper sheathing very nearly level with the waterline, which indicated she was empty of goods.
They clambered aboard and then below into her musty belly, where Zhang lit a match and set it to a copper lantern so tarnished that it glowed mint green. As the men’s long shadows were cast across the bare, warehouse-like room, Zhang sat down on the dirt-encrusted floor, and Douglas joined him.
Sherlock crouched beside them and was opening the vielle case again when Douglas stopped him.
“What now?” Sherlock asked with some impatience.
“In Chinese calligraphy,” Douglas explained, “a tiny fraction of a squiggle can change the meaning substantially. If Zhang does not think you can copy adequately, the entire exercise is useless.”
Zhang mimed a squiggle in the air, and another that looked exactly like the first. “That,” he said, “and that. Different word.”
Lantern in hand, Zhang scratched a symbol into the dirty floor before him, then passed the light to Sherlock. Sherlock eyed the design and copied it. Zhang stared at Sherlock’s handiwork, then drew another symbol beside it, more complex than the first.
Zhang followed every stroke that Sherlock made and nodded approvingly. “Good eye, steady hand,” he said.
Douglas smiled. “Show him,” he said to Sherlock, indicating the vielle case.
Sherlock pulled out the instrument and handed it to Zhang, who studied it carefully, while Sherlock and Douglas watched him with equal intent.
“These are flowers,” he said at last.<
br />
“Flowers?” Douglas asked. “What sorts of flowers?”
Zhang shrugged. “Flower flowers. Méiguī. Rose,” he said, pointing to various groupings of symbols. “Yùjīnxiāng. Tu-lip. This one, don’t know name in English. It orange.”
“Orange?” Douglas repeated. “There are many orange flowers, I’m afraid…”
“Don’t know name in English,” Zhang insisted. “That one da-li-hua…” he said, sounding out the Chinese pronunciation.
“Dahlia?” Douglas volunteered.
Zhang nodded. “That one zǐsè. Violet. This others, only know name in Chinese. Lǎbā shuǐxiān,” he said, indicating one.
“But how does that help us?” Sherlock interrupted. “If you cannot translate the names into English, what use are you?”
“I say what I know!” Zhang replied, agitated. “That one, rose! That one, violet! That one, tulip! That one, dolly-ah! This, I know only in Chinese!”
“Tell us in Chinese, then!” Sherlock fumed.
“You write down?”
“No! Just… say them. Speak them out. I can remember.”
“All of them? See how many!” Zhang protested, indicating the vielle case.
“Then say them slowly!” Sherlock declared. “And for pity’s sake, enunciate, for I cannot be expected to reproduce the yowling sounds of such a language unless I am—”
“Sherlock!” Douglas warned, but it was too late. Zhang rose to his feet. Douglas did the same, and shook his hand. “Thank you, my friend. You have been invaluable to us.”
Zhang brushed the dirt from his trouser legs.
“You crazy boy!” he announced to Sherlock before disappearing up the ladder.
Sherlock watched him go. “How,” he demanded, incensed, “has he been ‘invaluable’? Flowers? And not even in English. I did not mean to be rude—”
“Certainly you did,” Douglas interjected. “For you are surely clever enough to hold your tongue when necessity warrants. Or perhaps,” he added acerbically, “you have not yet learned the phrase Humilitas occidit superbiam?”
“‘Humility kills pride’?” Sherlock responded, barely able to contain his disdain. “This had nothing to do with either pride or humility. I was simply trying to get on with the task at hand, and to not waste any more of our valuable time!”
“Nearly everything has to do with pride or humility when a human being is involved. You and I—for better or worse—are invested in this madness. Therefore, the only one who truly gave up ‘valuable time,’ for no other reason than to help, was Zhang. Ahn Zhang could have been a handy resource, had you simply been polite.”
“Had he simply done as I directed…” Sherlock replied.
Douglas inhaled deeply. “Sherlock. Listen to me. The Chinese landed in Liverpool in 1834, when the first vessels from China docked there to trade in cotton and silk.”
“I am aware—”
“No, you most certainly are not. For you are as interested in Chinese culture as I in knitting. My point is this. That was less than forty years ago. Which means the most recent laborers, those who came in the late 1860s to work the Blue Funnel Line…”
“Probably all know one another,” Sherlock concluded glumly.
“Perhaps you might practice, instead of sullen stubbornness, a certain detached amusement,” Douglas went on. “The two perspectives are related, in that they both think less of other human beings than might be warranted. But, whereas detached amusement is tolerable, sullen stubbornness is not. Oh, people will still find you arrogant, but they will not be quite so insulted from the start, and some might even be strangely charmed.”
“You are intimating that my reputation with the Chinese population is now sealed?”
“I am not intimating anything. I am saying it direct. Within an hour everyone will know of the ungrateful gweilo.”
“Gweilo?”
“Ghost man. White man. You.”
As they climbed back up to the deck, everything seemed to Sherlock a personal affront: the gunmetal sky; the endless stream of bodies jostling his shoulder as they hurried past; the incessant smell of mold; the wind whipping his hair and provoking little tremors of cold that seemed an outward manifestation of his inward misery.
The work he had done to gather the symbols! Completing each little jot and tittle to perfection, rushing from one station to the next, and for what?
For nothing.
Douglas must have noticed his anguish, for he said: “All is not lost. You accurately copied what you saw. That is no small feat. As Ahn Zhang said, ‘steady hand, good eye.’”
Sherlock was not fond of this compliment. He regarded it a rather pedestrian talent for the sort of vocation he wished to pursue. But he also thought it best to engage. After all, he had already soured one connection; he did not wish to make it two.
“My great-uncle, on my mother’s side, was Horace Vernet,” he replied.
“The French painter?” Douglas exclaimed as they reached the quay. “Mycroft never mentioned it!”
“No. He would not have. Mycroft does not wish to be reminded that a few drops of French blood are skulking about our veins like cat burglars, waiting for the opportune time to—well, to do something French, I suppose. In any event, neither the steadiness of my hand, the keenness of my eye nor my pedigree does me much good at present.”
“Not so,” Douglas corrected. “Thanks to your abilities, we now know that the symbols are flowers, and we have the names of four: rose, violet, tulip, and dahlia.”
“And lǎbā shuǐxiān,” Sherlock repeated dully.
“Daffodil,” Douglas replied.
This took Sherlock by surprise. “How do you know?” he asked.
Douglas paused a moment, then said, “They were my wife’s favorite. I brought back bulbs from one of my voyages. She tried to grow them on our windowsill, to no avail. And so, I began to search them out for her at the Chinese market in Port of Spain. The Chinese farmers knew how to give them their proper cooling times. They grew to be as big as kittens,” Douglas said with a smile.
“We have five now,” Sherlock mused, surprised that this small victory breathed a bit of life into him again.
“As for the other symbols,” Douglas went on, “I will scout out someone else to translate, though I shall have to do so without your assistance.”
Sherlock agreed. “And quickly,” he added as he handed Douglas his vielle case. “For how long will this list be valid? Surely they have some other trusted ‘someone’ to collect in Charles’s stead two weeks from now.
“You must promise to apprise me of whatever Mycroft has discovered,” Sherlock concluded, and Douglas turned back and smiled.
“I promise that Mycroft will apprise you of whatever he deems fit, and that you are surely a vital part of this endeavor. And I promise that I shall not ask for promises from you in return, as you are not yet ready to grant them.”
With that, Douglas nodded his goodbye and walked off.
Sherlock, watching him go, wondered at such an unusual man, one whose fundamental right-mindedness was not merely unnerving but impossibly naive.
Ah, well. Douglas’s life and livelihood were none of his affair.
Five symbols translated, ten to go, he thought. And that very afternoon, he would pay another visit to The Water Monkey to see what else he might discover.
35
WHILE SHERLOCK AND DOUGLAS WERE AT THE DOCKS, Mycroft finally paid a visit to his solicitor, where he made quick work of his will. Upon his demise, the entirety of his worldly goods were to be left to Cyrus Douglas to manage as he saw fit. Sherlock’s education would be paid for, and he would receive a stipend of one hundred pounds per annum, enough to get by but not enough to fritter away, until he turned twenty-five. From there, the sum in question would increase as variables did, such as marriage, children, et cetera.
Children.
The loss of children in his future was what Mycroft mourned the most. Those ghosts: a little boy with gray eyes like
his father, a little girl with blue, like her mother.
Or perhaps ebony-haired children, with eyes the color of tourmaline, a warm brown with golden flecks…
But never mind, he reprimanded himself. It was too late for him. He would never marry. It would not be fair to a future bride to make her so soon a widow.
That done, he walked down Fleet Street, into rain so fine that it felt like the spray from a faraway ocean, and was immediately assailed by the bustle of enterprise.
No one strolled down Fleet Street. The district’s many denizens all seemed to possess direction and purpose. Its bankers, accountants, barristers, newspapermen and tavern keepers were the embodiment of England’s burgeoning middle class, and proudly so. No paltry, half-hearted soaking could quell the confident hum of this busy thoroughfare. Mycroft had hoped that its hive-like vitality would energize him, put a spring back into his step.
Unfortunately, the opposite was true. He felt lost. What good was all this damnable gumption? To what end was industry if one was to remain so painfully, so irrevocably alone?
Mycroft was deep in these morose thoughts when he spotted a familiar figure under an umbrella so wide it looked like a great black octopus. Charles Parfitt was holding onto it with both hands; his cheeks were two red flames of embarrassment that began at his neckline, and rose and spread from there into his temples and beyond, for the enormous parapluie was taking up the whole of the pavement. So engrossed was he with apologizing to inconvenienced passersby that he was all but spinning in place. Mycroft hurried over to him.
“Parfitt! What is that thing you are wielding?” he asked, laughing.
Parfitt looked extremely relieved to see him. He extended his arms so that the contraption was now fully shielding Mycroft, while he himself stood in the drenching rain.
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