The Italian Secretary

by Caleb Carr

  ‘Let us hope so,’ said I. ‘And I suppose I must concede an additional consideration – had your brother known all, and alerted Lord Francis in some way, we at the very least could have depended on the villain not to return. He would be well away by now, would he not?’

  ‘Forgive me, Doctor,’ said Robert Sadler, and we all turned to him. ‘But I don’t think such is the case. It’s the money, you see – we eventually made so much of it – mounds, indeed. And we could hardly go to a bank—’

  Holmes made a noise of deep, amused comprehension, as I asked, ‘And so – you did what with it?’

  ‘The west tower, sir,’ replied Sadler. ‘The Queen’s old bedchamber – it’s inside the mattress. And from what you and Mr Holmes have said, Will may have started to remove it, even last evening, before we met at the Fife and Drum. He said nothing to me of it, but it’s no’ likely that he would, if his intent was to make off with it.’

  ‘The Italian gentleman,’ Watson,’ said Holmes. ‘The spirit that walked abroad last night, humming a most anachronistic tune – which it does now seem likely that Lord Francis taught him.’

  ‘I care no’ for the money, any longer,’ Sadler continued, ‘but Lord Francis will never let Will cheat him of it – and it matters little to a man like that who tries to stand in his way, I promise you. He will come here and claim what he believes is his, in this palace that he yet believes is the rightful property of his family. I’ve oft heard him refer to “this tribe of German degenerates” when speaking of the Queen and her family – I honestly believe that the man may be mad, Mr Holmes, nobleman or no …’

  Holmes’s face had grown steadily darker through this speech – and it was not difficult to understand why. His brother was now travelling alone with this man that Mrs Hackett had rightly called a monster (alone, that is, save for the presence of a young officer whose usefulness we had already been given good reason to doubt); and Mycroft was in this predicament because Holmes had, once again, put the solution to a case above all other considerations. It seemed, somehow, not only unlikely but quite impossible that so damnably clever a rogue as Lord Francis would not wheedle what truth Mycroft possessed out of the elder Holmes brother, over the course of even a short journey; and that from those few facts he would quickly divine something closely resembling the extent of his current peril. And if I suddenly felt anxiety of my own at this prospect, how much more must Holmes have been feeling?

  I would never know; for he bore up under any strain he felt just as he did in all such situations and under all nervous pressures: actively.

  ‘We can only concern ourselves, Mr Sadler, with what we can do here,’ he said, ‘and your information will, I suspect, prove invaluable in this regard. Hackett – if you would, assemble your son and niece, and let us resume this meeting downstairs, away from these windows! We have a long day and night ahead of us – it is essential that we all know our parts by rote. Quickly, now!’

  The order was taken seriously (even if Holmes’s dread of the outer windows of the palace was as yet obscure), and before long we were in the royal dining-room below, which would serve as our impromptu headquarters throughout the rest of the day. I do not use the military reference lightly; for as the hours spun away, failing to produce any sign of Mycroft Holmes or even any communication from him, the sense of urgency grew, as did new doubts as to whether or not our antagonists would be able to produce new confederates to assist in the effort to safely carry off whatever disreputable lucre Likely Will Sadler had not taken the previous evening. Thinking of this, it occurred to Holmes that we ought to go up and examine the store of remaining monies, in order to determine how probable it was that our enemies would number more than one or two: If relatively little of the store was left, after all, it seemed at least possible that Will Sadler would let the rest go, in the interest of making good his escape. There was also the chance that Likely Will would honour his thieves’ covenant with Lord Francis, and that the both of them might depart, after dividing what had already been taken; Robert seemed to think this likely, although if the roles of the two villains had been reversed, he said, he would have voiced an opposite opinion. But, with the matter arranged as it was, there seemed momentary cause for hope.

  And so, just after tea, Holmes, Hackett, and I assembled and began the ascent to Queen Mary’s former rooms: the most ancient and untouched part of the palace, site of the supposed haunting by David Rizzio, and the reason for which Sir Alistair Sinclair and Dennis McKay had lost their lives in manners at once brutal and absurd. (Neither Mrs Hackett nor Miss Mackenzie would, quite naturally, even consider making the trip; and we thought it best to leave Robert Sadler and young Andrew Hackett behind, to comfort and, if necessary, protect the women, should the matter come to a head before we were quite prepared.) With Hackett bearing a razor-edged gutting-knife and a torch, and myself, now, having raided the gun room of the palace for something more substantial than the Palm-protector (I chose a side-by-side twelve-bore, with a wide choke), we remaining three had some hope that we might approximate a considerable force, when we finally entered the rooms that had long ago provided the stuff of which our current troubles had been spun.

  ‘Of course,’ Holmes said, as we began to ascend the stone circular stairs in the north-east corner of the tower, ‘all our reasoning is predicated on the notion that David Rizzio has played no part in all these matters. A presumption hardly proved, as yet …’

  Hackett attempted something like a smile in reply, although the effort was based solely and rather obviously on a desire to avoid the further appearance of ill manners; I, however, was under no such constraints:

  ‘Given the predicament in which we all find ourselves, Holmes, and particularly given the possible peril in which you have placed your own brother, I should not have thought levity even a possibility.’

  ‘Levity?’ the man answered. ‘I am perfectly serious, Watson.’

  ‘Are you?’ I had not even the strength or the will to debate this increasingly, indeed, this tediously baffling issue. ‘Well, I suppose that we shall know the truth soon enough.’

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘Of course.’ With the light of the palace hall fading beneath us, Hackett ignited his all-too-dim torch, which cast fearsome shadows on the stone walls of the ever-narrowing stairway. ‘If,’ I continued, somehow feeling the need to whisper, ‘we find that the loot of the criminals is untouched, why, we will know that what we heard last evening was, indeed, your friend, the spirit of Signor Rizzio – who, evidently, continues to take an interest in the latest Italian music!’

  I regretted the flippant remark almost as soon as I made it; and that feeling would deepen dramatically within a matter of minutes …

  Chapter XII

  ‘THE BLOOD THAT NEVER DRIES’

  Immediately upon our entering the series of rooms that had once been the private realm of the last Scottish Queen, it became clear that the century between her death and the expansion of the palace by Charles II had been more than enough time for the notion that there was something other-worldly about the chambers to take root. It was not a hallowed feeling, precisely, for Death does not always hallow the places it visits; but the rooms were nevertheless overpowering in their sense of tragedy, injustice, and even cruelty. Charles II – who had been forced, by the tragedies of his own early life, to become a man of greater personal sensitivity than most in our own age comprehend – had acted to prevent the physical collapse of Mary Stuart’s chambers, but he had not tried to alter their essence, architecturally or otherwise; and none of the members of the various dynasties that had ruled Britain in the years since had meddled with this policy (beyond, that is, allowing it to degenerate into a state of out-and-out neglect). Thus, it was with a heightened sense of stepping back – no, that hackneyed phrase will not do, for in truth the feeling was more one of being grasped and dragged back – into a terrible past, one that was beyond the power of kings or commoners to change, that one now ventured into the upper
reaches of the west tower. Time, to be sure, had continued to work upon the rooms; but one rather got the feeling that Time had been allowed to do so, since the decrepitude that it brought did nothing but reinforce the sense of brutal misfortune that was the legacy of and the memorial to the terrible act that had made the tower infamous, so long ago.

  There was no ambient light of any kind: The window-shutters in each of the rooms – starting with the antechamber, into which the stone staircase disgorged us – had been closed and fixed generations earlier, and far more efficiently than in the rooms immediately below. They had then been covered with much heavier curtains, such that we continued to see solely by the light of Hackett’s relatively small torch; although what we saw was, in truth, far less important than what we felt. The basic appointments of the chamber – panelled walls and ceilings, wooden floors, rotted textiles, decrepit furnishings – were proportionally more unnerving than those below, the more so for being Tudor rather than baroque in style. And yet, as I inspected the appointments further, it occurred to me that there is, in houses, a certain moment at which decay seems to slow dramatically, so long as the building’s walls and roof remain intact (as was the case with the palace’s west tower); indeed, the process of decrepitude seems at some point almost to stop, as though not only Time, but vermin of every variety, have taken all they can take and destroyed all they can destroy, leaving behind what amounts to the bleached bones of a formerly warm, living habitation. And Queen Mary’s rooms had, apparently, long ago reached this archaeological nadir.

  So powerful had this impression grown, even before we had so much as reached the doorway to the ill-fated Queen’s bedchamber, that it required Holmes’s practised eye to point an interesting feature out to me:

  ‘A laboratory of decay, eh, Watson? All the elements – dust, detritus, cobwebs …’

  ‘You have a point, I suppose, Holmes?’

  ‘Only that we seem to be remaining remarkably free of it all.’

  And then I stopped, looking up and down my clothing and lifting a hand to feel the top of my head. ‘Interesting,’ said I. ‘And look behind us – Hackett, flash your torch this way, will you? See how it has all been carefully cleared and maintained – almost like a pathway through some dark jungle.’

  ‘Aye, Doctor,’ Hackett replied. ‘Many of their customers are wealthy folk, who come here after an evening’s dining and entertainment – the master makes sure that they don’t have to complain of cobwebs or spiders on their clothing, even if they see such all around them. Dust, as well – if you look at the floor, you’ll see that he keeps the path free of anything that might tarnish the ladies’ shoes.’

  ‘It was the first proof that we were indeed on the correct trail, last night,’ Holmes added. ‘I collected more filth under the bed than I did out here, where it seems so plentiful. Lord Francis and Likely Will are able artists of fraud, I will allow them that much.’

  I turned to face, at last, the fateful bedchamber. ‘Very well, then, Hackett – let us see all that we have come to see …’

  Inside the bedchamber, I was particularly unnerved to discover that a gaming table still sat by the window seat, with other chairs gathered round and dust-covered cards of a very old style, as well as ancient crockery, lying atop it. Obviously, it was another sham dreamed up by the criminal trio; but I imagined its effect was quite potent, for one could not help the feeling that one was staring at the remains of a diverting game, an amusement that had been interrupted centuries ago by those brutish noblemen, some in full armour, all intent on murdering a poor soul who had never done them any harm. We walked slowly to the very low doorway into the Queen’s little supper-room, situated in the north-west turret of the tower: One could still see that it must have been a charming, warm little chamber, where the Queen might have suckled the infant that would one day become the first man to combine the crowns of Scotland and England into one legitimate honour (although, as I knew, James had actually been born in Edinburgh Castle, perhaps because the Queen feared some new tragedy of the type against which the Palace of Holyrood had already proved so terribly insecure). I was about to step into this, the first inviting part of the west tower that I had encountered, when Holmes caught my arm.

  ‘Mind, Watson,’ he said, pulling me back. ‘Sadler has gone to a great deal of trouble to renew that pool – it would be a shame if you were to thoughtlessly tread it all over the tower …’

  Looking down, I could see that, just where I had intended on putting one foot, there was a glimmering, rather sticky pool of blood, the crimson of life in its colour having given way to the claret-like depth of age: It had been there, I estimated, at least through the day.

  ‘“The blood that never dries”?’ said I, in an especially hushed tone.

  ‘If it is not,’ replied Holmes, smiling, ‘then I should not care to know what it is.’

  I nodded, and then looked back at the small pool. ‘Is it human? I suppose you have conducted a reagent test already.’

  ‘I have not bothered,’ said he. ‘Whether it is human or animal is not really our concern, and is something, too, that we shall likely find out soon enough. Although, if it is human, I suspect that we may be able to fix a string of new crimes to our antagonists.’

  ‘You do not think they would have used the blood of their two murder victims?’

  ‘They cannot have done so for all of the several years during which they have been engaged in their enterprise.’

  Hackett spoke up: ‘Pardon me, sir, but young Rob did make a practice of storing the blood of any animals he culled within the park, if it could pass for human – I know as much because I found a bottle of boar’s blood, once, in one of the coldest of the cellars. He told some tale about his mother using such for blood pudding, but he was lying, there was no doubt of that – and I never found his hiding places thereafter.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Holmes, starting to pull the disintegrating old covers from the bed, ‘but that was before Lord Francis took absolute control of the endeavour, Hackett! I have no doubt that if the incentive for profit was sufficient, that man would have preyed upon this city’s less fortunate for the satisfaction of all his base desires, carnal and pecuniary; yes, he would fit the role of a latter-day ghoul, not waiting for bodies to be in the ground before draining their blood for his own purposes … But for now, let us see … Here we are!’

  The bared mattress of the bed bore a carefully bound-up slit in one of its sides, and when Holmes removed the leather lacing, something – ancient straw, horse-hair, goose-down, what have you – ought to have come spilling out of the side. But nothing at all emerged – not, that is, until Holmes put his hand into the slit and removed a bag of coins. Opening it quickly, he made a noise of appreciation and said, ‘Quite a collection. Various nationalities and denominations … but for the most part’ – he withdrew a coin – ‘sovereigns. A wise choice …’

  ‘And how many bags would you say the bed contains, in all?’ I asked.

  Holmes inserted his arm nearly up to the elbow, then said, ‘I can only tell you, Watson, that I am glad I passed the night beneath the bed, rather than upon it. But perhaps you would care to …?’

  Shrugging once – for I did not, to be honest, begin to suspect what he was hinting at – I turned round and rather cavalierly threw myself onto the mattress: not the most painful experience I have ever endured, but certainly one of the most shocking, given what one expects of even aged, dilapidated beds.

  ‘Good Lord, Holmes!’ I cried, getting to my feet as though I had leapt into scalding water. ‘It’s everywhere – almost the entire surface of the thing!’

  Holmes nodded. ‘And nearly to the bottom,’ he added, examining to that depth.

  Even the normally imperturbable Hackett went wide-eyed with wonder. ‘The devil,’ he said, in a faint whisper. ‘I never dreamed it could be so much …’

  ‘We would be hard-pressed to say just how much,’ Holmes replied, ‘but I should not put it at any less than a con
siderable fortune. Certainly, Dr Watson and I have known men to kill for only a portion of this collection – how easy must it have been for one such as Lord Francis to do so, when the business was putting him so close to achieving the wealth that he evidently feels is the proper due of a man with his pedigree.’

  ‘“Close”?’ said I. ‘My dear Holmes, you must be joking – there is a princely sum here, certainly!’

  ‘You forget the need to split that sum three ways,’ answered Holmes. ‘No, Watson,’ he went on, replacing the sack that he had removed, lacing the opening back up, and stepping over to where I was standing. ‘If such a man’s lust for wealth can ever be sated’ – Holmes glanced down at the glistening pool of blood on the floor – ‘certainly, this store would not be enough. Not so long as his partners are alive …’ Reaching down, Holmes dipped a finger into the thick pool and then rubbed the substance between the finger and its opposing thumb, examining the stain it produced. ‘“The blood that never dries,”’ he murmured; and then, after remaining silent as Hackett and I replaced the spreads that had covered the bed, he turned to me. ‘You have not yet noticed it, Watson.’

  ‘It? The blood?’ I looked at the pool, then about the room. ‘What is there to notice, save that – that—’ I felt my brow screw up in some confusion. ‘Just a moment, Holmes …’

  ‘Well done, old man.’

  ‘It – it’s not in the right location.’

  ‘Indeed – given all the distractions you’ve endured, you have shown admirable speed of perception.’

  ‘Excuse me, sir?’ said Hackett, obviously interested but quite perplexed.

  ‘The blood, Hackett – it shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Well, of course, sir—’

  ‘No, no,’ Holmes clarified. ‘It shouldn’t be here, Hackett – in this spot.’

  ‘The Queen’s party were dining within the smaller chamber, there,’ said I, pointing at the very supper-room that I (not yet recalling the full details of the story whilst in the spot) had found so charming. ‘Darnley and the nobles came up the hidden stairs, which must be—’