by Andrew Lane
Enthused by this strategy, they headed towards the centre of the village. Whenever they passed either an individual kid with unkempt hair and dirty clothes or a group of them together, Matty slipped off the cart and went to talk to them. Each time he came back he shook his head and said that they weren’t talking, but Sherlock couldn’t help notice that whenever their cart was pulling away, the lone kid or one of the group would slip off. They all headed in more or less the same direction.
‘Should we follow one of them?’ Rufus asked after a while. The cart was parked on a stretch of dirt road near the centre of the village.
‘No,’ Sherlock and Matty said together.
‘They’re probably reporting back to another kid, an older one who acts as a central point for messages,’ Sherlock explained.
‘He’ll send a runner to Mr Crowe,’ Matty added. ‘If we get near that older kid, he’ll just up sticks and run for it, and then we’ll be back at square one.’
‘Given the scale of Mr Crowe’s intelligence network,’ Sherlock said, ‘we’re better off waiting here. Once the messages get to him, he’ll send someone to check us out.’
Sure enough, some time later a dirty, untidy child approached them. His feet were bare and almost black with dirt.
‘Afternoon!’ Rufus said, touching his forehead.
‘Got some questions for you,’ the boy said in a thick Scottish accent.
‘Go ahead.’
‘What’s the name of the lassie’s horse?’
‘The lassie?’ Sherlock asked.
‘The girl,’ Matty explained. ‘Virginia.’
‘Oh.’ Sherlock raised his voice. ‘It’s called Sandia.’
‘Aye. An’ what’s the name of your horse?’
Sherlock smiled. It had become a joke between him and Virginia. ‘He didn’t have a name for a long time, but eventually I called him Philadelphia.’
‘Aye,’ the lad confirmed. ‘An’ what’s your middle name?’
‘Scott,’ Sherlock said. ‘I’m Sherlock Scott Holmes.’
‘Come on then. I’ll take you where you want to go.’ As Rufus flicked the reins to get the horse’s attention, the kid added, ‘Best leave the cart. We’re headed uphill.’
He led the way off the road and upward, scrambling from rock to rock or clump of grass to clump of grass. Sherlock, Matty and Rufus followed as best they could. The way was steep, and Sherlock’s abused body found it hard to cope. After a few minutes his breath came in gasps and he could feel a rasp deep in his chest. His ankles started aching, where the rope had pulled on them, and after ten minutes spikes of pain were lancing up his calf muscles. But he kept on going. He had no choice. He could tell that Rufus was struggling too.
Their path led them past several cottages that were perched on the hillside, looking down on the town and on the sea. Every now and then Sherlock looked over his shoulder at the scenery. The sea was a slowly billowing sheet – grey now, seen from above, rather than the green that it had been when looked at on the way into the village – and he could see darker areas where, he guessed, the sand beneath the surface dropped suddenly away. The line where land met water was a stone quayside, and fishing boats were tied up along it, their masts dipping and bobbing as the waves rolled in. All in all it was an extraordinarily peaceful sight. Despite the pain in his legs and in his chest, Sherlock felt something inside him loosen its tight grip on his heart. Matty seemed to feel the same.
They passed a stone chapel and a graveyard – the highest point of the village proper. After that they were ascending through tall grass and thistles. The sound of seagulls crying accompanied them. Glancing backwards, to the sea, Sherlock realized that they had climbed so high that he was looking down on the seagulls.
After twenty minutes of hard hiking they came to an area where the hill rose up on either side of them and they were walking into a narrowing gorge where the ground sloped up slightly ahead but rocky cliff faces loomed on their left and right. Over his shoulder the boy said, ‘Difficult climb up ahead. Get ready.’
He was right. After a few hundred feet of gradually rising ground, with the cliff faces closing in on both sides, they came to a section where the ground ahead of them rose sharply for a stretch of perhaps ten feet. It wasn’t as steep as the cliff faces to either side, but it was still pretty steep. There was no choice but to scramble up using hands and feet. Once they got to the top, Sherlock looked back. He was surprised how high they were. Far in the distance he could see the dark line where grey sky met grey ocean.
The way ahead narrowed even more, and jinked around to the right so that the point of the gorge – if it even came to a point – was hidden. They kept trudging on, exhausted by the climb.
Sherlock looked back again after a few minutes. He could see the edge of the place where they had scrambled up, but nothing beyond that apart from the sky. The ground dropped away too steeply.
Finally, once they had moved beyond the jink in the gorge, a lone cottage came into sight. Built of the usual grey granite, weather-beaten by years of storms, it nestled into the hillside as if it had grown there. The cottage was set back into a V-shaped notch where the canyon came to an abrupt end, and the ground in front of it was littered with rocks of different sizes that had fallen from the cliffs over the years. On either side, steep faces of rock rose up to the point where the hillside began again. If this was where Amyus Crowe was hiding, Sherlock approved of his choice. The only approach to the cottage was uphill, and from the front. To either side and at the back there was a sheer face of rock. Anyone trying to climb down it would be risking their life.
The boy leading the way stopped within sight of the cottage windows. He stood there, with Sherlock, Rufus and Matty clustered behind him, until one of the windows opened and closed again. A signal that it was safe to approach. Sherlock suddenly had a picture flash into his mind of Amyus Crowe sitting in the cottage with a large gun in his hand, pointed out of the window. If someone had approached the cottage without stopping to be identified or being signalled to continue, Sherlock had no doubt that he would open fire.
The boy turned round and said, ‘The big man says it’s all right to go in.’
‘Thank you,’ Sherlock said. On an impulse he delved in his pocket and took out a half-shilling. ‘We appreciate the help,’ he added, holding the coin out.
The boy looked at it wistfully. ‘The big man pays us well enough,’ he said, keeping his hands by his sides. ‘He says that anyone who takes coins from two masters can’t be trusted by either one of them.’
Sherlock nodded and pulled his hand back. ‘Good advice,’ he said.
The boy walked off downhill, whistling.
‘What now?’ Matty asked.
‘Now we find out what all this is about,’ Sherlock said as he set off towards the cottage.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Those last few yards were perhaps the hardest that Sherlock had ever walked. He didn’t know what kind of reception he was going to get – whether Amyus Crowe was going to be pleased to see him or not, he didn’t know if Virginia was going to be there or whether she had been hidden somewhere else, and most of all he didn’t know whether Mr Crowe and Virginia were ever going to return to Farnham or whether this was just a temporary pause before they left the country. He didn’t have enough evidence on which to base a deduction, and that made him uncomfortable.
He reached the door, heart pounding. It was closed. He knocked.
‘Come on in,’ a familiar voice called.
Sherlock pushed the door open and led the way in. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adapt to the darkness inside – a deliberate ploy on Crowe’s part, he assumed. When he could see properly, he realized that Amyus Crowe was standing on the far side of the room. He was wearing a dark suit and holding a gun.
‘Well done,’ Crowe said. ‘You solved the riddles. Ah thought you would.’
‘It wasn’t hard,’ Sherlock said, shrugging.
‘Not for you, perhaps.’ Crowe s
witched his gaze to Sherlock’s companions. ‘Young Master Arnatt, welcome to mah temporary accommodation. And Mr Stone as well – make yourselves at home, all of you. Ah’ll stay within sight of the window if you don’t mind. Ah’m not expecting any more guests, but a man can never tell when visitors might arrive. Can I offer you a drink – some water, perhaps?’
‘After that walk,’ Rufus Stone said, ‘a drink would be most welcome. I don’t suppose you have any beer? Or cider, perhaps? A flagon of cider would go down very well just at the moment.’
Crowe smiled. ‘Ah might be able to find somethin’ of that kind around.’ He raised his voice. ‘Virginia, you can come out now. We have guests.’
A door behind Crowe opened and Virginia slipped into the room. Her hair seemed to glow like fire in the relative darkness. Her eyes were fixed on the floor, uncharacteristically shy, but she raised them after a few seconds and looked at Sherlock.
And then she was racing across the floor towards him, and her arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him. He’d dreamed about what kissing her would be like, but the reality was so much more than he had ever imagined. The weight of her body in his arms, the warmth of her lips locked against his, the smell of her hair . . . he felt overwhelmed. His mind was unsure what to do, but he suddenly realized that his body was already kissing her back without instructions.
She broke contact suddenly, not pushing him away but stepping back. He might have taken it as a rejection except for the fact that her hands were resting on his arms. She gazed at him from those bottomless violet eyes, and he saw that she was on the verge of tears.
‘You came looking for us,’ she whispered.
‘I had to,’ he said simply. The words came out of nowhere, unplanned. ‘I can’t live without you.’
‘Much as ah hate to break up this reunion,’ Amyus Crowe rumbled, ‘there’s a whole heap of talking that needs to be done, an’ I do believe that Mr Stone might expire here on the mat if he don’t get a drink inside him. Ginnie, be a darlin’ and get refreshments for our guests.’
Virginia’s hands squeezed Sherlock’s arms for a second, and then she let go. She backed away, still maintaining eye contact. He felt as if he could drown in those eyes. It was as if she was sending him a message, but he didn’t know what it was. Perhaps she didn’t either. Perhaps the important thing was that there was a message, not the content.
Virginia dropped her gaze, and Sherlock felt like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been released. He turned to look at the rest of the room, at the others, and the world seemed to have changed. Everything looked the same, but it was different. He couldn’t explain it.
Amyus Crowe was staring at him with a strange expression on his face. He raised a shaggy eyebrow. ‘A handshake will suffice for me, if that’s all right with you.’
Sherlock smiled. ‘I’m glad you’re all right,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re both all right. When we found your cottage was deserted, we were worried.’
Crowe nodded. ‘Couldn’t be helped. Ah got wind that someone was in the vicinity askin’ ’bout me and mah girl. Normally ah’d go in search of the people askin’ questions an’ ask them some of mah own, but when ah heard the descriptions of the fellows doin’ the askin’ ah decided that discretion was the better part of valour, an’ made a run for it.’
‘They’re as dangerous as that?’ Stone asked. ‘I have to say that young Sherlock here dealt very well with two of them – a black-haired fellow who appears to be deficient in the hearing department and a friend of his with a face like a potato.’
‘That’ll be Ned Fillon an’ Tom Payne.’ Crowe suddenly seemed to realize that he was still holding the gun and placed it on a table by his side. ‘They ain’t anything more than small fry. It’s the man they work for that scares the bejazus out of me.’
‘I think we met him,’ Sherlock said. ‘I couldn’t see his face, but I heard him speak. He talked really quietly.’
‘I saw him,’ Stone said, ‘and I really wish I hadn’t. He had tattoos all over. People’s names.’ He looked briefly at Virginia, but Crowe shook his head slightly, warning Rufus off. Only Rufus and Sherlock noticed.
‘Bryce Scobell,’ Crowe said heavily. ‘So he’s here.’ He sighed. ‘Ah was hopin’ that he might have just sent his men over to find me, but ah guess ah was too optimistic in that regard. He wants me so badly that he’s made the journey from America himself. You saw him in Farnham, ah suppose?’
‘I’m afraid he followed us here,’ Sherlock admitted. ‘To Edinburgh.’
Even in the dim light Sherlock could see that Crowe’s face seemed suddenly to grow paler and even more immobile than usual. To Sherlock the signs were clear. Crowe was in the grip of some strong emotion. His hand reached out to rest on the pistol on the table, and his gaze flickered towards the window, through which the approach to the cottage was visible. ‘Ah would have expected,’ the big American said, choosing the words carefully, like a man stepping on stones to cross a dangerous river, ‘that you’d cover your own tracks well enough that he couldn’t come after you. Does he know about this cottage?’
‘No.’
‘It’s only a matter of time.’ Crowe shook his head angrily. ‘Sherlock, how on earth could you be so careless as to let him follow you?’
‘He heard Matty and me talking about Edinburgh before we even set off,’ Sherlock said nervously. ‘He had some kind of listening tube in the cottage.’
‘Ah.’ Crowe nodded. ‘Clever.’
‘He kidnapped Rufus on the train,’Matty added, ‘and then he kidnapped me and Sherlock, but we escaped.’
‘Escaped?’ Crowe’s face twisted into a grimace. ‘Ah doubt it. He let you go.’
Matty was affronted. ‘Sherlock broke the legs of those two men – Fillon and Payne.’
Crowe shrugged. ‘If that enabled him to follow you here, Scobell would consider that a small price to pay.’
‘He was torturing me for information,’ Sherlock pointed out. ‘It would have been easier just to keep on torturing me until I talked rather than trade two of his men for the information.’
Crowe didn’t look any less angry, but his hand moved away from the pistol. ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘Are you sure you weren’t followed here?’
‘Very sure,’ Sherlock said firmly.
‘What’s so bad about this Scobell bloke?’ Matty asked. ‘Apart from the fact that he likes hurting people. There’s blokes in this country who like hurting people. Can’t imagine this Scobell is much worse.’
Sherlock nodded in agreement. Matty’s words put him in mind of Josh Harkness, the blackmailer whom Mrs Eglantine had been working for. Harkness had been a nasty piece of work; could Bryce Scobell be that much worse?
‘There’s a load of different examples ah could give you,’ Crowe replied, ‘but ah’ll let one suffice.’ His eyes seemed not to be looking at Sherlock, or any of the others, but to be fixed on something that only he could see. ‘Scobell was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Confederate Army. He weren’t right in the head, even then. Ah don’t think there’s a word for what he was, what he is. Not evil, exactly, but he don’t have emotions like guilt, or regret, or shame like the rest of us. He don’t even feel things like anger or happiness. He just seems to sail through life with a complete indifference to anythin’ except his own survival. He’s convinced that he’s the most important thing in the world, and that everythin’ else exists to make his life easier an’ better.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Ah first heard about him when he was sent to deal with an uprisin’ among the native tribes. They’d taken advantage of the confusion surroundin’ the War Between the States an’ they were attackin’ families, settlers, anyone they could isolate an’ kill. Scobell was under the command of Colonel John Chivington at the time, and they were sent with a troop of militia to stop the Arapaho an’ the Cheyenne from mountin’ these attacks.’
Virginia came into the room with a tray containing five glasses and a plate of oatcakes. None of them had even se
en her leave, so caught up were they in her father’s story. She gave the beer to Crowe and Rufus Stone, then passed glasses of water to Sherlock and Matty. Everyone helped themselves to the oatcakes.
‘This was about five, six years back,’ Crowe went on. ‘Chivington used to be a pastor in the Church, but his forbearance for his fellow man didn’t extend as far as the Indians. He hated them with a passion most men reserve for scorpions an’ rabid dogs. Scobell, his second-in-command, didn’t hate them, but he regarded them as a lower form of life that didn’t belong in his world. Between the two men there wasn’t a single friendly thought. Under Chivington and Scobell, the militia attacked not just the Cheyenne and the Arapaho but the Sioux, the Comanche and the Kiowa as well.
Crowe sipped at his beer. Nobody broke the heavy silence in the room.
‘The Indians were gettin’ the sharp end of the stick,’ he continued, ‘an’ they decided they wanted peace, so a meetin’ was arranged with the authorities. The Indians left the meetin’ thinkin’ they had a peace treaty, but nothin’ had actually been signed. Few days later, a chief named Black Kettle camped his people near Fort Lyon. They weren’t doin’ anybody any harm – they was just followin’ the buffalo along the Arkansas River. They lived off the buffalo, you see – used them for meat, for clothes, for oil, for everythin’.’
Crowe halted for a moment and looked out through the window. His hand moved towards the gun, but whatever he had seen must have been innocent – a bird, maybe, or an animal crossing the open ground – because he pulled his hand back and started speaking again.
‘They reported to Fort Lyon, just like they was supposed to, and then camped on Sand Creek about forty miles north. Their camp was in a dip in the ground, surrounded by low hills. Not long after they arrived, Chivington and Scobell rode into Fort Lyon and told the garrison commander that they was goin’ to attack Black Kettle’s tribe. The garrison commander told them Black Kettle had already surrendered, but Scobell persuaded him that this was an ideal opportunity to rid the world of more Indians. He seemed to be able to influence people like that. Next day Chivington led his troops, most of them drunk, I’ve heard, and surrounded the camp. On Scobell’s advice, Chivington took four artillery pieces with him.’
