by Janina Woods
Now, the work some people would describe as tedious began. It was true that this detective work was usually associated with my brother - but I had always been one step ahead of Sherlock, so why not in this matter? Where he needed to see the evidence, I could deduce the sequence of events from just the rough details laid out to me. And I was oh so rarely wrong - which is exactly why my failure in Milan weighed so heavily on my conscience and soul. It forced me to go back to actually applying myself in the field now, testing my own skills to make sure I could still employ them. No one else seemed to realise my internal struggle, but I felt humiliated regardless.
After I took a deep breath and pushed these thoughts as far away as possible, I carefully cleared away the rubble to reach the floor. Plank after plank, ceramic shards and decorative metal wandered through my fingers, none particularly interesting on its own. Then I laid eyes on a sparkling, round piece of metal: A pocket watch with a battered lid, chain torn. It could be opened still and showed a picture of Watson’s late wife Mary. The hands of the watch stood still, but I pocketed it regardless.
With Victoria’s help I worked my way down to the stone flooring. She hadn’t once asked about the sand, but I could feel that she simply didn’t want to discuss these details in public. I would have to do my fair share of explaining later. We then moved to the altar, where I had originally found the clay figurine. Shards of some sort of pottery vessel were left on the charred ground, clearly remnants of the small bomb I had suspected to be the cause of the incident, as the material didn’t match up with anything else we had found so far. We picked up all the pieces we could find and placed them into a little box one of Victoria’s agents politely carried after us.
“I didn’t expect this to survive the blast,” I mumbled.
With my fingertips I carefully picked up the ceramic plate with the painted ankh, which had been partially hidden underneath a piece of cloth. It was still intact, though slightly scratched, and gleamed as if mocking me.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Victoria said.
I agreed. It was an odd thing to leave behind, but it had to be significant. An ankh means life... eternal life? The symbol itself was old, but the plate seemed new. How did it connect with the playing figures... or indeed any of this? I inspected the fragments of the small explosive device for any clues. Burnt cloth, broken pottery shards and twisted metal parts clearly told of the small, round device that had almost been our downfall. There was writing on the shards. Curious. But it was too dark in the twilight of the church to make out much of importance - for that I would have to clean and arrange the broken parts correctly.
The police force became impatient, voices growing louder by the minute. I turned my attention away from the bomb remnants and took in my surroundings, committed them to memory. The old, deserted church, covered in layers of dust, was now shrouded in an additional layer of sand. The restoration work had been abandoned for quite a while, probably due to a lack of money. There were no valuable items in sight, and what had been decorative tinsel around the altar was smashed by the collapsed wooden planks.
It was the perfect place to lay a trap because you could be sure that no one else would want to enter here except us. And even if anyone did: The clay figurine would have been of no interest to anyone else. So it had definitely been set up for us. What a devious and... yes, I admit, clever thing to do. I sometimes tended to underestimate the intelligence of my adversaries.
“We have everything?” Victoria asked as she glanced at the policemen.
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Dr. Watson is probably worried about you.”
I laughed. “He knows that there’s nothing to worry about. I am very well capable of looking after myself.”
Victoria smiled and gestured to the exit of the church. I went ahead while she gave instructions to some of her agents. The cold air assaulted me as I stepped out of the large doorway and I drew my shoulders upwards to protect my neck from the breeze. How I missed my own coat and scarf. Victoria emerged from the church after a few minutes, and I followed her into the carriage that had brought us here. A tall agent with black hair deposited the box with the bomb fragments on the seat opposite to me and wished us a good return journey.
After we returned, Victoria convinced me to join her for a light luncheon. We fell into a pleasant exchange of information about the last twelve years, in which I learned a great many things about the woman, who was still the subject of my admiration. I wasn’t surprised about the fact that she never had a partner during all these years. It only showed that she would never move past Sherlock, and subsequently there would never be a place for me. Now there was a weird atmosphere between us, comprised both of the closeness and trust of old friends, and the heartbreak of jilted lovers - even though we had never shared that particular bond.
After the meal we sought out Watson. He had fallen asleep and I thought it better to let him rest while we caught up. Frankly, I could’ve done with some sleep myself, but alas, I had no time to waste on such a thing. That was something you did when the mission was over.
“Ah... there you are,” the doctor mumbled sleepily and sat up slowly, after I shook his shoulder to wake him. “I am feeling much better now. That dreadful headache is all but gone. For how long...”
“Almost four hours, Dr. Watson,” Victoria answered readily. “We took the liberty of examining the site of the explosion without you, as you clearly needed more time to recuperate. I wanted to go alone, but Mycroft insisted.”
So she was now calling me by my first name in the presence of Watson. Well, if he was observant that should’ve told him more than I ever wanted. But maybe he simply didn’t notice? The doctor carefully swung his legs out of bed and winced slightly. When he lifted the blanket, I could see that blood had seeped through the dressing on his leg.
“I’ve prepared a change of clothes for you. Take your time to get dressed and meet us in the dining room. We have found some... clues in the church we should look at together,” Victoria said and exchanged a glance with me. “I will send one of my men to change the bandage.”
We left the doctor to wake up properly and walked together through the spacious villa, towards the dining room on the second level. A number of agents were posted throughout the building - a smart precaution, but probably unnecessary. And even if we couldn’t exclude the possibility of another attack, who could even protect us from these supernatural forces? I didn’t voice these concerns and we reached our destination in silence.
Someone had placed the evidence box on a large table in the middle of the room, so we took out the pieces and assembled them as well as we could. There were a lot of parts missing, but what we spread out on a sheet of white cloth slowly painted a picture. The round pottery container had once roughly been the size of two fists and densely packed with a highly flammable powder. I touched the remnants briefly to my tongue and confirmed my earlier suspicion of gunpowder.
The noise of a door hinge alerted me to the presence of Watson. Now clad in the Secret Service uniform, he carried himself... rather differently. With a raised head and drawn back shoulders, motions more controlled and precise, almost all traces of the soft doctor were miraculously gone. What remained was the military man he had once been, surfacing once again in the constraint of the uniform. Enhancing the picture of a veteran was his limping gait - which was evidence of the large wound he had sustained in the explosion. I wondered briefly what was going on in the good doctor’s head at that moment. But if the situation was troubling to him, he didn’t give any indication, but joined us at the table to inspect the dusty, dirty assortment of rubble.
“We removed what was left of the explosive device from the church, so the police can get to work,” Victoria explained and gestured to the various pieces. “But also so we can examine it properly and get a clue as to who built it.”
“I can’t
believe we know so little about who is behind all this,” Watson said bitterly, without addressing me directly, but it stung nonetheless.
“The evidence is inconclusive. We know of the assassin, but she may just as well be a henchman in this. It reeks of plotting and scheming, and she didn’t seem the type,” I elaborated. “I told Victoria the story behind our journey to Rome and the way forward. You can speak freely in her presence.”
“The way forward? But we hit a dead end, didn’t we?” the doctor asked confusedly.
“We picked up the parts of the bomb - everything we could find that had not been blown to smithereens. It leads us to believe that we have to get to Egypt as fast as possible.”
Watson looked like he blanked out for a moment.
“Egypt?” he exclaimed. “Please tell me this is a joke! There is no way Holmes is in Egypt!”
“My brother is not only very probably in the country of the Nile, but if the signs on the remnants are to believed, could also be in great danger,” I said gravely, the tension and sincerity of my voice leaving no doubt that it was all too real. “Are you prepared to make the journey in your current state, Dr. Watson?”
He straightened his posture, just like a soldier would do before addressing a higher ranking officer. “It sounds... a bit farfetched, I admit. But if you believe that this is the only chance we have to rescue Holmes, I have faith in your judgement.”
“Good,” I answered and ignored Victoria, who looked at me expectantly. No doubt she expected me to ask her to join us. Well, I had no intention of doing so.
The idea of Egypt always had a slightly mysterious aura to it - something with which many British were so enthralled lately, they decorated their homes with as many Egyptian artifacts as they could find. I had never understood the fascination, but it also hadn’t passed me by unnoticed.
“But even if these objects point to Egypt, it’s an impossibly large country. How would we even find Holmes?” Watson asked.
“The bomb has given us all the clues we need. So conveniently even, I am suspecting another trap, but it’s the only trail we have, and it would be a folly not to follow it. We’d only risk Sherlock’s life,” I explained. “I draw your attention to this part.”
I picked up a piece of string with a pair of small pliers and held it up to the bright light of a chemical lamp on the table. Watson couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary and told me as much.
“This was used to detonate the bomb. I suspect it was secured with the ceramic tile and our actions dislodged it. But the deviousness with which it was set up is not important - the material itself is.” The others listened to my account and eyed the dirty, ragged string I dangled in front of their eyes. “The fibres are exceptionally long and strong. Ordinary natural fibres have much shorter strings, which make them less durable. But this cotton is remarkably solid. Only one type of cotton has these qualities: We call it by its Latin name Gossypium barbadense or more commonly ‘Egyptian Cotton’.”
“Remarkable,” Watson whispered reverently.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the monograph my brother has written on the strength of natural fibres and their inherent differences. If he knew I had read it and used the information to unravel the clues, leading to his very own rescue, I would never hear the end of it.”
Victoria laughed softly in response.
“Which brings me to the second clue,” I continued, put the string down and pushed some shards of what seemed to be a broken pot, into the light. “We couldn’t find enough to completely reconstruct it, but the parts we have tell a frightening story.”
The surface was littered with small paintings, which I knew to be hieroglyphs. They were dusty, but rather new in origin, which made them easier to decipher.
“The writing is not complete, of course. But one name is repeated all over again: Seth. The Egyptian God of chaos and war, the desert and storms. They also call him ‘The Trickster’.”
“You can read hieroglyphs?” Watson asked in surprise. “But, how?”
“Only rudimentary. A while ago I studied the Rosetta stone and several other texts out of the desire to expand my knowledge,” I responded. “It’s not a skill I can employ very often, but even though the circumstances are dire, I am nonetheless happy that it could help me now. Though the rest of the text is not as clear, it talks of something happening at the full moon - which is in two weeks - and a... desert wind, whatever that means. I cannot decipher everything, but something is about to happen in Egypt, and I fear for my brother’s life - now more than ever before.”
“That might all be logical, but there’s just one detail you haven’t taken into account at all. The vast amount of sand in the church. There’s no way that much could’ve fit into the bomb, and I didn’t find another source.”
Why did Victoria have to still be so perceptive? My mind readily supplied a number of excuses, but I just knew they wouldn’t be any good. And I didn’t want to lie to her either. Then the doctor surprised me by speaking out first.
“Our journey has been accompanied by... strange happenings. Forces that defied any reason. We’ve encountered one of these incidents in the church,” he explained, voice calm but determined. “I know it sounds strange, but ever since Dover these forces have tried to thwart our progress and have made many attempts on our lives. If I tell you that we were assaulted by a small sandstorm in the church, would you believe me?”
I scrutinised Victoria’s face for any sign of ridicule, but I found merely disbelief.
“Mycroft?” she asked and turned to me. “Is that true?”
I took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, yes.”
She shook her head. “What kind of incidents?”
“Several times we encountered a violent wind or some kind of gale that had no natural origin,” I added and intentionally left out the story about my arm. This was unbelievable enough already. I wondered then why the burning feeling hadn’t warned me about the trap, like it had in the streets of Milan. But no, that was pitiful. Me, relying on such a... thing?
“I can’t believe you would lie to me, but it sounds rather... fantastical.”
“Then don’t worry about it. We’ll leave soon, and then this won’t affect you any longer.”
“What are you talking about? I’m coming with you!” Victoria announced.
“You will do nothing of the sort,” I said icily, having fully expected this turnout. “This doesn’t concern you beyond the boundaries of your city.”
“You will not keep me from Sherlock! No matter the... forces that work against you!” she shouted. “This mission is now mine as much as yours!”
“Mission? Oh, dear...” I laughed bitterly. “Victoria, this ‘mission’ isn’t sanctioned by headquarters. I already appropriated critical gear, a royal train and convinced an agent to act against orders to get here. Haven’t you read the telegrams? They must have informed you by now!”
“They have.”
“Well, I guess everything’s settled then.”
“It is. I’m coming with you,” she slammed her fist down onto the tabletop, making the fragments of the bomb jump on impact.
“I won’t drag yet another person around, who is only weighing me down!” I exclaimed, my head already growing warm.
“Excuse me?” I heard Watson harrumph, but ignored him outright.
“We were never supposed to meet again, so just pretend it never happened.”
“I can forget you, Mycroft, but I will never forget Sherlock! You can’t stop me from helping him!”
It took all I had in me not to take a step back. If I had ever needed any proof of my love for Victoria, I would have found it in the way her words stabbed my heart, cruelly and efficiently.
“Fine. Do as you like. But don’t expect me to look out for you. The same goes for you, doctor,” I spat, ange
r colouring my pronunciation.
“Fine,” Watson mirrored my tone of voice, straightening his posture, then exchanged a look with Victoria, who just shook her head disappointedly.
“No matter what you say - you need me. I can secure transport to get us closer to Egypt, which will leave in the morning,” Victoria said. “Be assured that I will support you to the best of my abilities.”
“But only two weeks? We need at least one to reach the other continent, and only if we can catch a ship across the Mediterranean Sea in time. We don’t even know the schedules... if they even match up with ours!” Watson let out with a frustrated sigh, the tension in the room now higher than ever before. “This is impossible!”
“Don’t underestimate the power of the Secret Service. I can arrange for something, I just know it.”
“Then get to it,” I dismissed her like a servant.
Victoria huffed, but didn’t give in to my taunt. “I have sent for a proper dinner. We can figure out our options before then. You should rest while you can. I’m not happy about the fact that you are about to travel with all those injuries, but I won’t be the one to stop you.”
We stared at each other, not at peace, but in a silence that expressed a temporary truce. I took a deep breath and first smoothed down my hair in a well-practiced gesture, then did the same to my clothes, straightening them in an effort to regain composure. In the process my hand brushed against the contents of my jacket pocket. It contained the first clay figurine, the ceramic plate and another item.
“I pulled your watch from the rubble, doctor,” I said and handed the battered piece of round metal to the man. “It’s broken, unfortunately, and the chain is torn. But I believe you might want to hold onto it, regardless.”