The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘We know what you should have done,’ remarked Mycroft severely, ‘and what you actually did.’

  ‘Then, if you know, I will say no more,’ Charlotte responded. ‘After waiting as long as I could I had to assume Sherlock was ill or away. During the days of waiting I continued with my duties as a governess and to improve my cordial relations with the Prince – ’ (‘Hmph,’ snorted Mycroft) ‘but in the end I could wait no longer. Having made a mental map of the three acres of cellarage under the palace at Norvius from one of the documents I had taken from the library, I got up at two in the morning. Armed with a torch, I went into the banqueting chamber and walked over in darkness to the vast fireplace where, in earlier days, they had roasted whole oxen. I felt the elaborate carvings on one side of the great fireplace and eventually found what I was looking for. Pressing one side of a lion’s head about half-way up resulted in a whole piece of panelling beside the fireplace opening. I looked down and there was a flight of dusty stone steps, leading into blackness. I descended with some trepidation. I had reasoned it was safe to explore the acres of cellarage, old torture chambers and the like below – but irrational fears will arise. I knew what I would find would be of human origin.’

  ‘An arms cache, most probably,’ Mycroft observed.

  Charlotte smiled. ‘How could I have doubted you would guess?’

  ‘Come to a conclusion,’ pointed out Mycroft.

  ‘Come to that conclusion, then,’ agreed Charlotte. ‘Well, if you and Sherlock concluded that, then you are at the heart of the mystery. So – I descended the stone stairs. I went left, following recent footprints in the dust, though at one point I quailed as in that low passageway something brushed round my legs. Two strange eyes peered up at me from the ground. It was, of course, the sinister black cat which, during the past few days, had become less hell-cat and rather more an affectionate pet. The beast had been hungry. I had continued to feed it. It grew friendly. In other ways, I might mention, a more humane policy had also begun to crack the determined evilness of my other charges, the Princesses Ulrica and Cunegonde. Followed by my furry friend, then, I continued to follow the tracks of the others who had been there before me – not long before, I deduced. They had evidently been dragging some heavy items with them. I walked along (the cat padding after me), always following the tunnel where there were footmarks and the overhanging cobwebs had been disturbed. There was another tunnel leading off at one point, the dust undisturbed from the end at which I stood, but, training my torch along it, I saw signs of disturbance further up. There was what looked like a bloodstain there, too, and I believe from the smell that there were cells at that end – occupied, for I heard a groan. I believe someone had been dragged, bleeding, from the other end of the passageway, and imprisoned.’

  ‘Then I fear the reports of unrecorded arrests and detentions in Kravonia may be true.’ said Mycroft.

  ‘Ristorin, trying to tackle the increasing power of the Kravonian People’s League, is almost certainly going well beyond anything we might think right,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Shocking,’ John said. ‘Surely the King must know.’

  ‘King Weland is a broken man,’ Charlotte told him.

  ‘Proceed, Charlotte,’ instructed Mycroft.

  ‘I went on,’ she reported, ‘until I was, I imagine, somewhere under the kitchens. There I saw on my right a wooden door, slightly scored around the bottom, and it was plain from the scuffled dust under my feet that whatever had been brought down into the cellars from the secret door in the banqueting hall had been hauled into that room. The door was secured with a seemingly ancient, rusty padlock, but from the scratches around the lock it was obvious it had been opened recently. I also opened it, with my skeleton keys, and entered the room.

  ‘The room was about ten feet square. From the chains attached to its walls I assumed that it had once been used as a prison cell. But facing me I saw by the light of my torch two fully assembled guns of the Gatling kind, standing on crates and pointing straight at me! And all around, more crates, evidently containing rifles, ammunition and several wooden boxes, marked, in German, “Dynamite”. Between them Herr Krupp and the Birmingham Small Arms Factory appeared to have supplied enough weaponry to defeat three regiments! I looked no further,’ Charlotte reported. ‘I replaced the padlock and crept back to the staircase below the banqueting hall. I did not think Chancellor Ristorin would be very pleased with me if he caught me near his torture chamber. I mounted the stairs and re-entered the upper part of the palace.’

  ‘Extraordinary place for an arsenal,’ murmured John. ‘Very dangerous.’

  ‘It was not the palace arsenal,’ Charlotte explained. ‘It was the secret arms store of the Kravonian People’s League.’

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed John. ‘What audacity! To place their weapons right under the palace itself! How could they have got them there? Surely the palace was guarded?’

  ‘The individual who placed them in the palace cellars knew how to get in and out unobserved – knew the secret of the tunnel from the hillside into the city, a precaution in case of siege, and of the network of old doors and passageways honeycombing the building. And where he was uncertain, he knew where the old plans were kept in the library.’

  John thought. ‘Only Chancellor Ristorin would dare put a secret cache of arms in the cellars, so close to where he carried out his nasty activities. Is he in league with the republicans?’

  ‘That thought crossed my mind,’ Charlotte told him. ‘But if he is involved, he is not the prime mover.’

  ‘Sherlock, without of course knowing the details of your search of the cellars, did speculate about whether Ristorin was backing both sides, the King’s and the republicans’,’ observed Mycroft.

  ‘Speaking of Sherlock – where can he be?’ wondered Mary.

  ‘Even Mycroft and I cannot detect where Sherlock’s activities are now taking him,’ Charlotte said. ‘However – to continue. I retired that night to sleep the sleep of the just. As far as I was concerned, one part of the mystery was solved. At the foot of my bed the great black cat who had accompanied me on my adventure slept. Ah, there he is,’ she announced, as Betsey came into the room with a telegram which had just been delivered. The large black beast which slid in at the same time, strolled across the room and sat down on the mat in front of the fire. He licked his paw and gazed around him with big, yellow, arrogant eyes.

  ‘I can’t say I like him very much,’ Mary observed in an undertone to her husband. But John’s eyes were on Charlotte as she scanned the telegram.

  ‘Sherlock’s gone back to the Priory,’ suggested Mycroft.

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte agreed. She read out, ‘Unusually fatigued by analysis Kravonian matter. Have returned Priory to recuperate. Much regret not being with you tonight. Kindly inform Mr Pemberton-Jones of Dulwich items he seeks are in Lost Property Office Baker Street. He may collect but must not, repeat not, take them to Embassy. Congratulations Order of St Stanislaus. Most urgent you talk Mycroft Her Majesty, Kravonian constitution, position Prince Rudolph.’

  ‘Very disappointing Sherlock cannot be with us,’ said John Watson. ‘But, Charlotte, do please continue with your adventures.’

  ‘Before you do, though, please register Sherlock’s urgent request that you and I should speak – ’ said Mycroft to his sister who responded, though with a look which somewhat belied her innocent words. ‘Of course Mycroft. Would I do otherwise?’ She continued on a more pleasant note, ‘And so – on with my tale.

  ‘Next morning, telling no one, I left by coach for Ersting. The coachman had been found for me by my friend the innkeeper. Few drivers were prepared to take the bad roads, or run the risks of a journey to Ersting. Those who were not afraid of breaking an axle were afraid of witchcraft. And those not afraid of either were afraid of the brigands who haunt those territories.

  ‘It was a cold, clear day as we left Norvius. The town sparkled under winter sunshine. The coachman grumbled, saying if we were caught b
y early snows in Ersting he wouldn’t answer for the consequences. But we went on at a cracking pace, at first through fields and cultivated land where the small villages showed every sign of prosperity and then, after a midday stop for refreshment, and to rest the horses, into the ever-deepening forests which marked the boundary of the area known as Ersting. The roads became darker as the forest thickened. They were rougher too, cracked and broken by the roots of trees. I began to understand that old, primitive fear of the woods which so characterises the tales and legends of northern Europe. The few villages we went through became poorer. Where we passed through small hamlets people came to their doorways and stared at us as if they had never seen a carriage before. Rounding a bend at one point I thought I saw a horseman galloping off into the trees. The coachman now began to grumble in earnest. The horses were tired. The snow was threatening. The town to which we were going, Jatyi, was the headquarters of John Land, the leader of the People’s League. I told him that he had known when we set out where we were going and presumably that the journey would tire his horses. He wished to turn back. I wished to go on. We went on.

  ‘Jatyi lies on a broad and sluggish river. There is a small port with a dilapidated wooden pier there, mostly used by fishing craft. We went in the darkness along the unpaved main street, full of small narrow houses in need of repair. It was dark, the sort of gloom that presages snow. I saw no lights in any of the houses. No one was about. Only the smoke rising from some chimneys persuaded me there was anyone in the village at all. At the end of the street the land widened out into a small area of fields (beyond them thick unbroken forest stretched away). Just before the fields began, a little to the right of the village, lay the church. This wooden building is surrounded by a small graveyard of curiously carved headstones. I indicated that it was at the church I wished the coachman to stop. He turned round, pointed at the sky, and said, “Look up there – full of snow. We could be stuck in this awful spot for weeks if the snow comes tonight.” And he shuddered. “Look up at the church spire, too. See that? No cross.”

  It was true the wooden spire of the church carried no cross. As I walked up the path through the graves to the church porch under lowering skies, I must admit my heart quailed. I shivered, and not only with the cold, which was piercing. The coachman was out of sight, now. I imagined he had gone inside the coach and was huddled under my rugs, refreshing himself, no doubt, from a bottle of spirits. But I had come all this way to find out what was going on in Jatyi and knew I had to meet the so-called John Land.

  ‘I went into the empty church. It was heavily panelled, with a high, vaulted ceiling, and even colder than the world outside. Benches on either side of the aisle led to a bare altar covered with a red cloth, embroidered in black. In the middle of aisle were the remains of a fire. There was no need to ask why, in this nominally Roman Catholic area, the altar bore no cross or other religious impedimenta, or to wonder at the absence of the holy statues and pictures one might have expected to find. No need, either, to question whether the stories of the chasing out of priests and black magic were true. They plainly were. In various niches about the church were carved figures of a kind I have never seen before. One, black with age, was of a crone carrying a sack; another showed a man with an axe, wearing a wolf’s-head cap. There was a girl dancing, with her arms curved above her head. There were images of animals, foxes, deer, a bear. It is sinister to stand in a church, where one expects to find the icons of Christianity, and find the emblems of another religion. But I saw no evidence of that shoddy Satanism we sometimes find in places where people need to find a sordid excuse for their all-too-human perversions. There were no upside-down crosses, no pentacles – nothing of that kind. As I gazed about me, looking for the man I had come to meet, I wondered if the people of this part of the country had not so much taken to Satanism as revived some only half-abandoned earlier religion they had once practised, some faith based on animals and forests and many gods.

  ‘Then, silently, the church began to fill up. There were young men in fur coats with rifles, women in shawls, there were old men and women, and children. Most of poverty-stricken Jatyi, ragged and dirty, was entering the church on some pre-arranged signal. One woman was dragging in a goat. I stood still by a bench near the aisle, with the incurious glances of these people passing over me. They began to sing. It was a sombre song, grim even, and it grew louder and louder. To my horror I saw that they were rebuilding the fire in the church aisle and had tethered the goat near the altar. I guessed they were about to make a sacrifice. I must confess that at that moment my knees were jelly. I was surrounded by roughly dressed Ersting peasants, all accustomed to a hard and brutal life. I had intruded on a ceremony. And in the crowd were many armed men – if these toughened outlaws were typical of the Kravonian People’s League, then I feared for King Weland and his court. The singing continued. The crowd, by then numbering a hundred (and more were arriving) continued to ignore me, but they were pressing ever closer as the church filled. I had better do something, I thought. But what?

  ‘Then came a voice behind me, speaking English with that faint trace of a Highland accent I knew very well. It said, “You are Miss Holmes? You wanted to meet me?”

  ‘I turned to see a tall, fair man in his thirties, wearing a fur cap and leather jacket lined with sheepskin. There was a gun at his belt. Much of his face was hidden by a big, blond beard. I replied, as calmly as I could, “You are John Land.”

  ‘He smiled. It was, I noticed, a familiar smile. When he took me by the arm I had been so unnerved by my wait in the church I nearly jumped out of my skin. “No need to tremble,” he said. “You must be tired and hungry. Let me take you somewhere more private.” People stepped aside for us as he took me across the church into what must once have been the sacristy – but thick coats hung on the pegs instead of church vestments, there were rifles stacked on the floor instead of a humble collection of clerical umbrellas and galoshes. Judging by the piles of bedding on the floor, troops slept in there at night. Jatyi’s church had become both a centre for pagan rights and a barracks. We sat down at the table in the middle of the room. John Land poured some spirits from a jug into two enamel mugs and cut me a slice of black bread from a loaf on the table. “Rough fare,” he commented.

  ‘“More than welcome,” I said, coughing as the fiery spirit went down.

  ‘“Why have you come here? What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked.’

  Charlotte, in the pleasant sitting-room, where the fire burned brightly and the clock ticked, smiled at the shocked John and Mary Watson. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘a bizarre scene, you’re thinking. Outside the former sacristy they were slaughtering a goat in a Christian church. Inside your friend was drinking raw spirits with an anarchist. But you will be more surprised yet, though perhaps Mycroft will not.’ She continued her story, saying, ‘Land had asked me why I wanted him and I thought this no moment to beat about the bush. I told him bluntly I knew him to be Prince Oscar of Kravonia, thought to be dead. I said his brother, Crown Prince Rudolph, had asked me to look into why Ursula of Holstein had refused to marry him. “John Land,” I said, “because the wedding was cancelled, Kravonia’s enemies are readying themselves for attack. Whatever you think about the government of Kravonia, presided over by the King, your father, and the Council of Ten, it will hardly help your cause to have the country in the hands of the Russian Tsar. He is no democrat, as you know. Will Kravonia be better off as part of the tyrannical Russian Empire?”

  ‘He said nothing, though I know my words hit home. I told him only what, since his brother’s wedding had failed to take place and the Tsar had begun manoeuvres on the borders of Kravonia, he must often have thought himself. He took a gloomy swig from his mug. Meanwhile, the singing outside went on. Through the half-open door I could see people dragging the goat close to the fire in the aisle. “How did you know I was here?” he asked. “Did my father tell you?”

  ‘I shook my head. “Most think you dead – even y
our brother, who still mourns you. Have you no pity for Rudolph?”

  ‘“I much regret the necessity for secrecy. But if Father told you nothing, how did you find me?”

  ‘“I concluded,” I told him, “that the monster shown to Ursula of Holstein in the tower did not exist. Your little sisters, at the instigation of the Countess Seraphine, who has too much influence over them and pretends to be a witch (I don’t know whether she believes it herself or not), led the hapless young woman to the tower to see the supposed monster. Fairly soon after my arrival I assumed Seraphine had hired an actor to play the part of the monster. It was a crude self-interested attempt to destroy the Holstein alliance by a woman too short-sighted to see that if the marriage did not take place Kravonia’s enemies would come round about her ears. All she wanted was to be a royal queen, a royal marriage for herself, whether to her brother-in-law, the King, or Rudolph.”

  ‘“Rudolph!” he exclaimed.

  ‘“I presume she believed she could marry Rudolph by appealing to his conscience in some way and by bribing or threatening the Council of Ten to support her plan and persuade Rudolph it was his duty.”

  ‘“Telling each member that if she did not get her way they might soon find themselves a Council of Nine,” he observed gloomily.

  ‘I smiled. “Seraphine is cunning, ambitious, very determined and not very intelligent. A fatal combination. Her one aim was to make herself Queen. And be warned – she still may. And she is young enough to bear a child. If she succeeds in marrying your father and bearing him a son, she will have then to get rid of your brother Rudolph to make her own child King. Please consider that charming prospect when you decide what you must do.”

  ‘Prince Oscar – John Land – looked at me soberly. But I continued, “Seraphine’s plot was crude and unlikely to succeed. The young Countess could be terrified by hearing tales of witchcraft and hereditary madness – convinced, perhaps, she should not marry Rudolph. But none of this, I thought, would deter her parents for a moment. Dynastic marriages have been conducted, forced on the parties concerned if need be, in the face of far worse things than that. Where there is a will to an alliance a girl of twelve will be married to an old man, a dwarf to a giant, a madman to a nun. Those who arrange these things are not scrupulous. As a rational woman I could not, of course, believe your sisters to be witches, or that there was a gibbering monster in a tower somewhere, still less that the monster was your good self. These things are for frightening children. But even if the palace had been stuffed with authentic monsters, witches and madmen, I doubted if that would have sent the Holsteins and their entourage away from the castle at dawn next day. Yet – something had. I concluded it must have been the interview, the night before they left, between the Count and Countess of Holstein and your father, the King, which persuaded Ursula’s parents there was no point in a wedding between their daughter and Rudolph. No one else was present – not Ursula, nor Rudolph, nor Ristorin. So, what was said, I asked myself?