Echoes of Sherlock Holmes

by Laurie R. King

  Shouts, then. Followed by gunfire.

  Holmes hit and fallen. No noise from him but a muffled groan. He never made noise when he fought. Almost never made a noise when he was hit.

  Sewall had come from the right, following Holmes. Somewhere in the distance, more confusion; perhaps Sewall’s men engaging with Chercover’s.

  Holmes down.

  A hail of bullets drowned out the horrible buzzing. I found it oddly comforting. That noise was a continual part of my existence. The reason I could only be happy in the tumult and confusion of London was knowing that something terrible would eventually happen.

  I found myself laughing at this carnage in the tranquil Sussex countryside.

  And that laughter brought me back to myself. I had conquered fear many times. Bloodlust, always so close to me, and its attendant emotionless calm, were my friends now.

  One, two, three deep breaths. I pushed myself up and onto my feet. The thought of action, of volition, was a sweet, raging song in my blood. I drew my pistol—my companion in many a battle—and ran, crouching, along the hedge to where it stopped, just three feet from the corner of the house. I was now directly across from where I had seen Holmes go down. A clear path seemed to spread before me, but some blessed instinct told me to hold. If it was in fact so clear, Holmes himself would have fled.

  There. One of Sewall’s men was positioned behind the low stone wall that stretched to my left, his rifle seeking potential enemies. In the melee beyond the walls, the shrieks of wounded and dying men were terrible.

  I stepped back into the shadows, then glanced at my friend. He was tying a handkerchief around his left forearm, his pistol cast aside, bullets spent. I could see blood, glistening black in the fading light, on his sleeve. Holmes’s long legs were tucked up to his chest, and while he had made himself almost invisible, I could not understand why Sewall didn’t simply shoot Holmes. He knew his location—

  Ah. Sewall was also out of ammunition, his last bullet having found its mark in my friend’s arm. He did not dare go find more, for fear of me. And he didn’t dare approach Holmes for fear of the bees swarming around the hives between them.

  Sewall did not know I only had one bullet left. There had been no time to arm ourselves properly before we left London.

  I had to choose between shooting Sewall—and giving away my position to the man with the rifle—or shooting the rifleman and leaving Holmes to Sewall’s nonexistent mercies.

  There was no choice at all.

  I stood up, stepped from behind the wall to find my angle, and raised my pistol. Gunshots filled the air, but they were a secondary concern, now. Once you have a plan in mind, and are fully dedicated to its achievement, it is really no matter at all to disregard your surroundings and get to work. I have found this to be true not only in soldiering and medicine, but in all things in life, except for writing.

  Before I could take the shot, Sewall went down, with a blood-curdling screech. A cloaked figure ran toward him from the right, scrambling over the wall. Even more upheaval outside the little farmhouse yard, a skirmish growing into a pitched battle.

  I turned and fired on the sharpshooter. I hit him, just as his bullet found my left shoulder.

  I felt a sharp blow, biting pain, and the cold rush of air into an open wound in the muscle of my right shoulder; warm blood spilled down my arm. More gunshots, and I ran, keeping as low a profile as I could. An unfortunate familiarity with being shot told me that this, unlike my wound in Afghanistan, did not threaten to be a mortal one. What I’d do when I reached Holmes, I did not know; perhaps I could move him to safety.

  Cries from around me, and more gunshots—too many of both. Holmes yelled, “Mycroft, for the love of God almighty, stop firing!”

  “This matter is beyond you, Sherlock!”

  “It will be a matter bloody well within me, if one of your lunatics shoots me!”

  Mycroft Holmes—outside of London?

  I reached the wall along which Holmes the younger was hiding. Bullets continued whizzing past, shouts increasing, the screams of horses adding to the chaos.

  The same cloaked form that shot Sewall was now beside Holmes. A flash of bright metal—someone was trying to cut Holmes’s throat!

  “Unhand him!” I reached them and seized the cloaked shoulder, pulling for all I was worth, which thanks to the bullet in my shoulder, wasn’t much. “Damn it!”

  It was Miss Hartley.

  While my brain struggled to catch up with my eyes, she shoved me over. I fell hard, momentarily paralyzed by shock and confusion, and watched as she ran toward a horse.

  Then I scrambled to my knees. “Are you all right? Did she—?”

  But the only wound I could see was where Sewall’s bullet hit. I immediately went about stanching it, then paused, realizing that Miss Hartley was escaping.

  “Let her go, Watson,” Holmes said. “All is well.”

  “How can that be?”

  “I have what we need. Help me up.”

  I did so.

  Suddenly, Mycroft Holmes was beside us, a lantern in one hand, pistol in the other.

  “Stop her!” Mycroft bellowed, then raised his pistol, aiming at Miss Hartley.

  “Mycroft!” I cried out. “What in God’s name—?”

  Sherlock hurled himself at his brother. Mycroft lifted a ham-sized fist, and attempted to land a punch, but toppled over as Sherlock tackled him. The pistol flew away, and I watched, astonished. Mycroft’s blows were accompanied with bull-like bellows; if they landed, they might have shattered an anvil. I suddenly realized that Sherlock’s silent speed and unorthodox fighting style had been developed specifically for fighting his brother. The titans of myth might have fought such a battle. Both brothers fanatically, in their own ways, devoted to order. Both crossing each other’s purposes now.

  Despite the fascination of the horror of brother fighting brother, I picked up Mycroft’s discarded pistol and fired it into the air.

  Finally, the combatants fell apart. The madness left Mycroft’s eyes as he became aware of what one of his lieutenants was calling to him: they were arresting what remained of Chercover’s defeated force.

  Sherlock, panting and holding his arm, could not leave well enough alone. “Sorry, brother. She was so clever—possibly the only woman to best you?”

  Mycroft wheeled around on him. “You pestilential little weasel! How dare you?”

  “I dare, as I dare everything,” Sherlock replied, all insolence.

  “No matter. You need not hang for treason. My men will find her. We have Chercover.”

  “She’s fleeing his organization,” Sherlock said. “She’s no use to you now, and will not trouble you again.”

  “Hrrmph.” Without another word, Mycroft stalked away.

  If, at times, I found Sherlock Holmes baffling and Mycroft Holmes entirely beyond my ken, then the two brothers together were a mystery for the ages. I knew there was something of great import being communicated in their bickering, but for the life of me, I could not fathom it.

  “Don’t worry, Watson,” Sherlock Holmes said, seeing my utter confusion. “He threatens me with hanging, or a knighthood, every month or so when we are talking. With any luck, he won’t speak to me for years. More than likely, though, he’ll need me and come crawling. Or rather, stride in imperiously, and I’ll make him squirm before I give him whatever he wants.”

  Holmes looked under his jacket and made a face at the wound above his wrist. “Not so bad as some; my coat saved me worse. Should be a cinch for you to—” He glanced at me holding my shoulder. “Oh! Well, after you have stitched yourself up first, of course.”

  “What about the rest of the case?” I said helplessly.

  “Oh, we don’t need Mycroft for that.” He smiled and reached into a deep coat pocket. Something clanked, and shone in the lantern light—the object I had believed was a knife at Holmes’s throat.

  “Anna Hoyt’s chatelaine!” I cried. “So now, you can find the treasure!”<
br />
  “Well . . . not quite. Arabella Hartley got here first.”

  “But if so, why did she stay so long?”

  Holmes was rapt in examining the chatelaine, trinket by trinket individually. Nothing more than might interest an antiquarian, there were the usual scissors, pomander, thimble, seal. There was only one key on the chain now—presumably used to open the treasure’s hiding place.

  The seal had an engraving: “Isaiah 56:5.”

  “A hint from Anna Hoyt herself. And Miss Hartley knew,” Holmes said. “Somewhere around here, she found the wall hiding the jewels.”

  Holmes shook the decorative little needle case; there was no rattle of needles inside the narrow cylinder. Invariably curious, he removed the top, and drew a slip of paper from inside the etui. Reading by Mycroft’s abandoned lantern, we saw the following:

  It is not safe for me here. But I will not leave England before trying to assist you. And if you should live, take this small token, with my thanks—AH.

  “She saved you,” I said.

  “She did. Though it was not in her best interest to do so.”

  Perhaps he didn’t notice the smear of lip rouge on his cheek, but I certainly did. “And left you the chatelaine as a memento?”

  “Not only that.” He held up a heavy leather sack. A smell of mildew overwhelmed me when he opened it, and the soft sound of clanking coin could be heard from inside. “Quite a lot of gold, actually. And as Sewall is under arrest, Miss Hartley, as the lawful inheritor, has apparently disbursed funds as she’s seen fit.”

  “This will certainly set us right enough,” I said. “That much gold will get our feet under us!”

  “Indeed, Watson.” Holmes looked around the place with such an air of contentment as I had never seen before. His quiet calm affected me similarly. He reached over to a bloom, and, with infinite gentleness, ran his finger along the bee lingering there in the lantern light. “Ubi mel, ibi apes. Where there is honey, there are bees. A hive is a kind of utopia, is it not? One could learn much from the study of bees.”

  And so, in spite of our wounds, and our failure in locating the treasure for our client, it had been a very successful outcome. Sewall, the would-be smuggler, was in prison; a dangerous revolutionary gang was eradicated; and Miss Hartley had safely fled to start a new life.

  We found our way to the train and were back in London before midnight. After stitching up our wounds and eating a cold dinner, we retired.

  I slept for nearly eighteen hours. The next evening, Holmes and I determined to celebrate our good fortune. The mood was festive, and the wine flowed freely. We shook hands as we parted, I to find Dermody, and Holmes to visit a philosopher friend to discuss bees. We vowed we could now proceed as we’d always planned, live more quietly, and settle into a comfortable life, now that our situation was not so precarious.

  It was with a great sense of pride and purpose that I paid off Dermody. He agreed that we were square, and we shared a drink to commemorate the occasion. A good-natured argument broke out and a small wager was placed. Pleased at being found correct, I allowed Dermody to make another, about the color of the scarf of the next gentleman to walk in.

  You may imagine what followed. I must, for I have no clear memory of the rest of the evening.

  I woke the next afternoon in Margaret Hudson’s bed, searing pain behind my eyes and a coppery taste of blood and bile in my mouth. A tooth was loose and my stomach was distinctly unwell. The wallpaper pattern seemed to slither up the wall, and my shame and self-disgust threatened to swallow me once again.

  Mags appeared, a cup of tea in her hand. Noble woman, she had laced it heavily with brandy and honey. She didn’t say a word, and while I expected to see pursed lips or hear some rebuke from her, I saw only concern and love in her face. “That chaos in your sitting room . . . was that you, too?”

  “What chaos?” But a terrible memory, one that had resulted in me finishing off the brandy bottle at home, suddenly emerged from my mental fog. My medical bag up-ended, several vials of morphine gone. “No, no. No, that was Holmes.”

  My friend had fared no better than I. Sadness, anger, frustration welled up inside me, and there might have been tears, if it had not been for Margaret.

  “Bloody Sherlock Holmes,” she said. I recognized her ruse of disparaging him so that I might think of something other than my own misery.

  “He’s just a man, with weaknesses, as any of us,” I said. “Oh, Mags—”

  “Here, now. None of that.” She pulled a pen and paper from her apron pocket. “Write it down. Set yourself your own example. You said it yourself, you’re just a man, with weaknesses, same as all of us.” She paused at the door. “We can only keep striving to find our better selves.”

  BEFORE A BOHEMIAN SCANDAL

  by Tasha Alexander

  Although he could not deny its effectiveness, cruelty as an art repulsed him. He viewed it as unbecoming to a gentleman of his status. This status was precisely what had insulated him from, as yet, ever having to employ it. Others could take care of any unpleasantness with which he preferred not to deal. Usually. Tonight, however, as he pressed his back harder against the scarlet silk hanging on the wall of the reception room to which he and his friends had retired, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, hereditary Crown Prince of Bohemia, feared cruelty would prove the only way out of a most inconvenient predicament.

  If only she would stop talking, he thought, chastising himself for ever having found her wide blue eyes beguiling. He had not expected an affair of three days to prove so difficult to end, but his subtle attempts to brush off Magda had made not the slightest impression upon her. Firmly up against the wall, his exit was blocked by an inconvenient buffet table on one side and a large potted palm on the other. He dared not step forward, as doing so would put him even closer to her. She was laughing, a coarse, throaty chortle unsuited to a woman of her profession—opera singers should never sound rough—and suggested, too loudly, that they return to his suite.

  “Magda, darling, you do realize, I hope, that this—” Irene Adler, celebrated contralto, stopped mid-sentence as she approached, looked each of them over in turn, and raised a single arched eyebrow before continuing. “—this dalliance will never amount to anything. I could see the horror writ on your companion’s face from across the room. As he stands a good two heads above you, perhaps you were not in a position to notice.”

  Magda had spun around to face the newcomer. “Miss Adler, forgive me, I—”

  “No need to apologize to me, darling. Run along and drink some hot lemon when you get home. Your voice sounds as if it were in shreds.”

  Tears filled the younger woman’s bright eyes, but she managed to hold them in check as she turned and looked up at the crown prince. “Wilhelm, I am most—”

  “No, no, that won’t do at all,” Miss Adler said, the rich musicality of her voice giving every phrase she spoke the sound of an aria. “Go, Magda, before you make a spectacle of yourself. Crown princes do not permanently ally themselves with girls from the opera chorus, and whatever the two of you shared is clearly over.”

  The prince shifted his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Magda, my dear, I am most sincerely sorry if I—” The young woman did not stay to hear the rest of his apology—the only fortunate choice she had made since meeting him, as Wilhelm had not the slightest idea what he planned to say next. Even if he had, the sight of Irene Adler, whose performance as Rosina in The Barber of Seville had dazzled him earlier in the evening, would have robbed him of his words. Her superb figure, shown off to great effect by a violently fashionable gown cut from emerald green silk, would mesmerize any man, but it was her eyes, identical in color to her dress, that he found irresistible.

  “I shan’t apologize now she is gone,” she said. “I may have been rude, but the situation called for it. Subtlety is lost on Magda.”

  “I am most heartily grateful,” the prince said. “I ought to have handled the situation more
deftly.”

  “Quite right,” she said. “Are you generally so hopeless with the ladies?”

  “I did not realize while watching you onstage that you are American.”

  “You did not answer my question.”

  “I never expected to be rescued by Rosina,” he said. “I should have thought she would be the one to require rescuing.”

  “No. I shall never require rescuing.”

  “A fact that, if true, makes you all the more astonishing.”

  “I should like very much to be able to return the compliment, but so far you have revealed yourself to be nothing more than a typical prince, easily seduced by a pretty face—eyes, to be specific—and helpless to take care of himself.”

  “I am not used to being insulted to my face.” He was not smiling, but amusement danced in his eyes.

  “Surely you would prefer it to knowing it’s done behind your back?”

  “Eyes are my weakness, yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “Even when you were trying to rid yourself of Magda you could not stop gazing into hers, and now you are doing the same to me.”

  “We have not been properly introduced,” he said. “I know you, of course, the divine prima donna whose talent is in demand at every opera house in Europe. I am Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, hereditary Crown Prince of Bohemia.”

  “I have never cared for the name Wilhelm and shall call you Sigi instead. Siegmund is one of my favorite characters in Wagner’s Ring, and the name derives from Sigismond, does it not?”

  “I would not dare contradict you.”

  “Wagner’s greatest hero, Siegfried, is the son of Siegmund, conceived after a single night of grand passion.”

  “Are you suggesting my own greatness will come through a son, not myself?”

  She shrugged. “One can never predict what might come from a grand passion. Although I do sing Erda in The Ring, a goddess of infinite wisdom who has the ability to see the future . . .”

  The prince stepped closer to her. “Then I ought to take any predictions you make rather seriously, as you perfectly embody every role you play.”