The Italian Secretary

by Caleb Carr

  At the speed we were moving, the sudden twinge of nervous weakness that this remark sent coursing throughout my body was magnified greatly, and I nearly stumbled. Righting myself and hurrying on, I said only, ‘No, Holmes! You do not mean to persist in this idea that—’

  Holmes threw a dismissive hand back towards me as he sped along the ancient wall. ‘Not now, Watson – say what you will, if we are not quick enough, David Rizzio will be offered some form of revenge, against one who is as innocent as was he himself !’

  I meant to pursue the argument; but my mind was drained of coherent thought by the almost incredible sight upon which we came – or, more precisely, which burst upon us – as we gained the south-western corner of the palace and could finally see the west gate. The gate itself was afire; but that unexpected phenomenon was as nothing in comparison to the sight of yet another human form enveloped in flames. This one was still alive, and dashing madly about the grounds inside the mangled, sagging iron bars and scroll-work of the gateway, releasing terrible, high-pitched screams, as though he (or was it she?) had been disgorged from that eternal inferno that roils beneath us.

  Chapter XV

  STRANGE DOINGS IN THE WEST TOWER

  Both Holmes and I slowed as we approached this unfortunate creature; and I was able to see that the fire that was consuming the upper part of its body and head, along with its hands, was of a distinctly chemical variety, so brilliant were the flames and so high was their heat. I made ready to give Holmes my rifle and run to the piteous victim’s aid – but my friend held me back for a moment.

  ‘You would show as much mercy, Watson,’ said my friend, ‘and far more wisdom, if you put a bullet through his head right now.’

  ‘“His”?’ said I. ‘Holmes, you know who it is?’

  ‘One who did not understand the nature of the explosive device with which he rent the gate,’ Holmes replied. ‘Just as he did not understand a similar device that he threw at our feet on the train.’

  ‘Lord Francis!’ said I. ‘Of course – Sadler concocted yet another charge with the gun-cotton!’

  ‘Yes – and neither man had any idea what they were unleashing.’

  I pushed the rifle into Holmes’s arms. ‘I must attend him.’

  Holmes caught me again: ‘Nitric and sulphuric acids, Watson – he will be dead before you reach him, and you shall only succeed in injuring yourself.’

  I broke loose of the man’s grip. ‘I am a doctor, Holmes – you must not detain me …’

  Although Holmes did give up his attempt to stop me at that, his analysis of the situation proved only too accurate. During the full minute it took me to reach the man, Lord Francis stumbled about the gravel pathway inside the ruined gate, still shrieking most piteously, waving his flaming hands through the air and trying to extinguish the fire on his face. It soon became apparent that the terrible heat was scorching his vocal chords, for the screams became first hoarse, and then nearly silent; and by the time I reached him, there was nothing recognisable in the fellow, save his clothing and the two terrible eyes that stared at me, displaying at once dreadful comprehension of what was happening. I stopped, removing my jacket and intending to at least try to smother the fire; but another look at those gleaming eyes told me that they had, in the merest instant, ceased to see what was before them. With a terrible rigidity, Lord Francis Hamilton fell forward, arms in the air, hands and fingers formed into the characteristic claws of the burn victim, eyes and mouth fully open. He hit the gravel squarely, and the speed with which he did finally wrote a finish to most of the chemical fire, leaving only that same terrible stench of burning wool and flesh that had hung heavy over the murdered intelligence man.

  Looking up at the gate, I saw that the flames that had similarly consumed it were suddenly dying away – and I noted that two faces had been revealed by the reduction in the firelight. The men’s expressions were alike in their horror, although it was evidently not horror of the paralysing variety: They took flight quickly, leaving me to wonder forever if I had in fact recognised them as having been two from among the merry crowd of drinking soldiers with whom we had passed the previous evening. I have always elected to believe that I was mistaken; whatever the case, the several policemen who soon appeared on the other side of the gate, moving at a full run with their whistles blaring, took my mind from the issue.

  After identifying Lord Francis’s corpse for the officers, I left them to the unpleasant duty of watching over it, while I returned to the spot where I had left Holmes. All I found there, however, was the rifle I had been carrying. Looking about and calling my friend’s name, I became suddenly conscious of something most unusual in the front façade of the palace:

  Movement in the windows of the west tower.

  On the uppermost floor, in the Scottish Queen’s rooms, someone had torn both the heavy draperies and the shutters away, exposing the windows: And through them, I could just make out, by the highly erratic light of a long-tapered candle within, the distinctive if wavering outline of Miss Mackenzie’s body. She had her hands clasped before her, as if she were standing in prayer; but the agitated manner in which she was shaking her arms and head, as well as working her mouth, suggested something very different. She began to move back, ever more perilously back, towards the glass of the now-exposed window panes; and as I helplessly began my own mesmerised walk towards the tower (I do not know what I intended to do, for if she were to fall, I could scarcely have broken the plummet), I expected of course to next see the form of whoever was so grievously tormenting her.

  But the figure remained hidden from my view. At first, assuming that it was Will Sadler, and that he was attempting to so manoeuvre Miss Mackenzie that her fall would appear a suicide, I ran to various new vantage points on the lawn, trying to find one from which I might train the rifle on young Allie’s pursuer; but no location offered any better view into the tower than the first. It then struck me that firing any shots would be most risky: What if the person trying to subdue the girl was not an enemy at all? What if it was Andrew Hackett – or perhaps even Holmes – trying to rescue Allie from her own hysteria? But surely neither Andrew nor Holmes would have kept moving towards the girl when her retreat was so clearly reaching a dangerous pass. Finally my racing mind turned to the possibility (the most frightening of all) that Miss Mackenzie was not retreating from a real pursuer – whether friend of foe – at all; perhaps she was retreating from a figure that was an invention of her own frayed nervous system and horrified imagination; a phantasm of her mind’s making, but one as real, to her, as such visions often are to those who have been driven past mere hysteria and nervous exhaustion. Yes, I finally told myself, as her ‘assailant’ went on being imperceptible from the ground; this was surely what was taking place—

  And then one of the windows in a room just above the main entrance to the palace flew open, emitting, in a curious cloud, a heavy blanket, which billowed in the breeze and drifted slowly towards the ground. I watched it do so for an instant, then looked back up at the window to see:

  Holmes.

  ‘Watson!’ he cried. ‘Rouse yourself, man! Take those officers – form a sling with which to catch the girl, for he means to drive her through that window, and I cannot reach her in time!’

  ‘He?’ echoed I, dumbfounded. ‘Holmes, who is—’

  ‘Now, Watson!’

  I was able to clear my head of questions and comply, less concerned with explanations, at last, than with the life of the endangered girl who, in a very few seconds, clearly would back directly through and out of the window, which offered no balcony or terrace to catch her, but only a straight and fatal pitch to the gravel path below the tower.

  The policemen, having heard Holmes’s summons, raced towards me, and together we did indeed use the blanket to form a broad sling beneath the window – and a good thing, too, for an instant later Miss Mackenzie screamed with the terrible recognition that she had retreated too far, and tumbled through the sash of the ancient wind
ow in a great burst.

  The girl hurtled towards the earth, where I, with the help of the stout policemen (who thereby more than made up for their commander’s having refused to help us earlier in the evening), succeeded in catching her in the thick, luxurious weave of the blanket. Though she was momentarily stunned, a quick review of Miss Mackenzie’s condition revealed it to be otherwise sound.

  ‘Upon my honour, Doctor,’ said one of the officers. ‘She’s a comely enough lass. What can have driv’n her to it, eh?’

  ‘I fear that I cannot tell you,’ replied I.

  ‘Ach,’ said another of the men, ‘there’s no great mystery here – that’s Allie Mackenzie, Will Sadler’s girl!’

  General agreement on this point followed, along with statements that revealed awareness as to the girl’s delicate condition – no doubt the result of bar-room boasting by Likely Will Sadler, in a further demonstration of his swinish character.

  Further speculations along these lines were interrupted by Holmes:

  ‘Watson! Get up the spiral stairs – I’ll block the hidden passage! Don’t waste an instant – and don’t forget that weapon!’

  He was gone again before I could confirm that someone had been in the tower with the girl; but the possibility of capturing whomever the threatening party had been put new resolve in my actions. After instructing the slightly bewildered policemen to look after Miss Mackenzie, I fetched the Holland and Holland and headed quickly for an extremely old doorway – so narrow that one needed to turn sideways to move through it – in the base of the tower. It opened only with tremendous difficulty and an enormous groaning sound; but once inside, I found that I was but a few short steps below the base of the stone spiral stairs. Up these I now sped, the sound of my boots on stone echoing all about me – but not so loudly that I could not recognise, about halfway up, that my own steps were being answered by another’s, moving in the opposite direction. Assuming it to be Miss Mackenzie’s as-yet-unidentified assailant, I halted and raised the rifle, bracing myself against the staircase’s stone wall, in order to mitigate the pain that the recoil of a high-powered weapon could sometimes cause in my old shoulder wound.

  As I waited, the approaching steps picked up speed, and I began to hear low mumblings accompanying them. At first, I thought that whatever words the man was speaking were simply being muttered indistinctly; next, I reasoned that the quick bouncing of sound off curved stone caused their incoherence; but finally, I could not escape a far more obvious conclusion:

  That the man was not, in fact, speaking English.

  Trying to ignore this consideration – for, native or no, this fellow was certainly a confederate of Sadler’s, and therefore to be treated as a dangerous opponent – I awaited the villain’s arrival, keeping the rifle’s iron sights trained on the centre of the stairs. Disengaging the gun’s safety, I waited until what turned out to be his short figure was fully before me – and then, just as I was about to squeeze off a round, I noticed something:

  Although I could see only a silhouette, even that limited image revealed a pronounced mass of flesh above the man’s left shoulder; a growth that, under ordinary circumstances, I should have had no trouble labelling a hump …

  Whether out of horrified recognition of this detail, or out of concern lest the fellow escape, I quickly fired the rifle. The noise produced within that confined stone space was massive, a concussive assault on the eardrums so painful as to be almost unbearable – but not so disabling that, as the man turned to race back up the stairs, I did not hear him shout some terrified, obscure oath. I could not make out the exact words – but they did indeed have the unmistakable patter of a foreign tongue, and one such in particular: It was a Maxim-gun-like verbal speed that I have only ever detected in a certain nation in southern Europe …

  ‘I’ve missed him,’ I murmured, not surprised by the fact, given the haste with which I had fired, but unwilling, all the same, to face the truth of what I had heard and seen. The fellow continued to race back up the stairs, and soon Holmes called down them:

  ‘Watson! Are you all right?’

  ‘Quite!’ answered I, although the rifle’s recoil had indeed sent a stinging shock through my shoulder. ‘Stay where you are, Holmes! He is headed your way!’

  ‘No!’ answered my friend. ‘He is beyond me already – I see him, however!’

  And then I heard multiple footsteps, a cacophony of new echoes and confusion. Grimacing and clutching my shoulder, I continued up the stairs at a run.

  ‘Gaelic,’ I murmured to myself as I ran. ‘It might have been Gaelic …’

  And, indeed, the language I had heard the fugitive speaking might well have been Gaelic, for all I knew of that ancient tongue – save that I did know that it was generally spoken in obscure parts of Scotland, rather than in urbane Edinburgh. But it served as a way to avoid further consideration of the much more likely linguistic candidate that had already occurred to me, as well as to take my mind from the unwelcome sight that had registered in my mind immediately prior to my firing the Holland and Holland. Acceptance of the image became increasingly unavoidable, however, and the struggle to avoid it slowed my pace greatly, until I finally could not prevent a full halt. Drifting back against the stairway wall, I slid down its stone blocks to rest on my haunches and catch my breath. Only the sound of Holmes’s distant voice – ordering someone to halt – roused me from this unsettling reverie: I stood quickly and continued up the stairs to the palace’s main floor, dashing about the Great Gallery and calling Holmes’s name. Receiving no answer, I returned to the stairs and ascended them again, running headlong into Queen Mary’s rooms and calling to Holmes once more – with increasing desperation, I will confess. But still there was no reply; and in the deathly quiet of those paradoxically alive yet utterly dead chambers, my nerves (or so it seemed) began to play tricks upon me: I imagined that I heard music, an incoherent form of music, played upon some outmoded instrument – and the sound was emanating, I soon realised, from the Queen’s old supper-room …

  I approached that location with the greatest hesitation; but approach it I did. The sight of the pool of ‘everlasting blood’ near its entrance did little to give me heart; but, rifle in hand, I pressed on, stepping ever closer to the sound of the eerie music, and finally spying, through the small doorway to the room—

  Holmes.

  He was seated close by the window through which Miss Mackenzie had tumbled, by the room’s old dining-table. An ancient stringed instrument was perched across one of his knees, and several sheets of musical score were perched on the other. He seemed lost in a peculiar reverie, and the strangeness of both the scene and the rooms in which it was taking place had the effect, oddly, of freeing my mind of both speculative thought and fear: I moved towards my friend like one numbed by a quick blow.

  ‘Holmes?’ I said. ‘All’s well?’

  ‘Watson!’ he said, in a rather arrestingly cheerful voice; but he did not turn. ‘Yes, quite well – and with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said I, setting the rifle down. ‘But—’ It was difficult to know what subject to speak of: There were so many that I wished to avoid.

  ‘What of Miss Mackenzie?’ asked Holmes, who did not seem to share my trepidation.

  ‘In a swoon, but she will recover fully.’

  ‘You and your partners in that exercise are to be congratulated – you executed it flawlessly.’

  I tried to say something, but found myself only nodding. And then, as I stared at the old wooden walls around us, I suddenly thought to ask: ‘Should we not see to Mycroft and the others?’

  Holmes chuckled. ‘My brother will be doing us that favour, I suspect, quite soon. I was able to chase the man we were pursuing from this room – I can only suppose that he was trying to retrieve as much of their loot as he could – and down towards the others. But I had no hope of catching him, for he is as agile as an ape. I did, however, take the precaution of checking on Mycroft’s position prior to returning here, from a
window in the north wing. They are all quite well, and several more policemen are even now pursuing Likely Will Sadler. As well as searching the palace grounds for the – confederate that you and I came so close to apprehending.’

  ‘Ah,’ I noised, greatly relieved; for it seemed that we would not have to further discuss the subject of the mysterious fellow (or was he, in fact, so very mysterious?) who had escaped us both. ‘And so – the matter is concluded?’

  ‘In so far as this palace is concerned, I believe we may say so – yes. And I should not wonder if we are not both the proud owners of elegant tie-pins before long. Your Queen will be grateful, Watson.’

  He continued to pluck and toy with the old musical instrument, forcing me finally to enquire: ‘Holmes, what is that thing?’

  ‘This? You do not recognise it?’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘It is a lute, Watson. The favoured instrument of medieval balladeers – among others …’

  ‘And what is that music you are attempting to play on it?’

  Holmes held up the long, lined sheets of paper, bowing his head. ‘This – is rather curious. A handwritten transcription. I found it atop the bed just now, along with the lute.’ He looked momentarily puzzled. ‘Yet I did not notice them last night …’

  And with that, evidently satisfied that he had properly tuned the thing at last, Holmes began to play the lute again, keeping his eyes fixed on the sheets of music. The tune seemed obscure, at first; but then—

  I was on the verge of naming it when Mycroft Holmes appeared at the doorway of the bedchamber without. ‘Sherlock!’ he cried. ‘And you, too, Doctor! In the name of Heaven, did you not, perhaps, think to let us know that you were well? And what of … of …’

  Mycroft’s words trailed away as he looked about and began to grasp just where he was. His heavy jowls rippled as he nodded several times in profound comprehension; and then he slowly approached the low doorway to the little supper-room. ‘So,’ he said, his voice quite controlled now. ‘These are – her rooms?’