Rebel Fire (14 page)

A sudden shaft of guilt and sadness penetrated Sherlock's heart. He wanted Matty to be there with them. He wanted Matty to be
safe
. His mind kept sidling around to images of what might be happening to his friend, and he kept having to force them away. Ives and Berle had no reason to hurt Matty. He was their insurance policy.

The question was, did Ives and Berle think as logically as Sherlock?

Looking around to distract himself, Sherlock noticed a man nearby. He was standing by himself, holding what appeared to be a violin case, but instead of gazing at the crowd he was looking in the other direction, out to sea. He was thin, with black hair longer than was usual in a man, and his jacket and trousers appeared to be of corduroy. Sherlock guessed him to be in his thirties. He raised a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, and Sherlock noticed that his fingers were long and thin. He suddenly looked sideways at Sherlock, and he smiled, touching his forehead in a casual salute. His eyes, Sherlock noticed, were green, and the wideness of his smile revealed a gold tooth set far back in his mouth.

“The start of an adventure,” he called. His voice held a slight Irish brogue.

“Eight days at sea with nothing to do but walk around and read books,” Sherlock called, emboldened by the excitement of their departure into talking to a complete stranger. “Not much of an adventure.”

“Ah, but think of the miles and miles of water that will lie beneath us as we travel. Think of the wrecks of other ships that litter the bottom of the sea, and the strange creatures that swim there, in and out of the portholes and around the bones of drowned sailors. Adventure is all around, if you know where to look.” He raised the case that he carried. “And if all else fails, I can take some time to practise my music on deck, beneath the stars, and serenade the mermaids.”

“Mermaids?” Sherlock asked sceptically. “More likely to be dolphins, or some other kind of marine life.”

“A man can dream,” the stranger said. He nodded genially at Sherlock, tipped his cap, and moved away through the crowd. Sherlock kept track of his long black hair for a while, but eventually lost him in the press of people.

“If you want to wander off and explore,” Amyus Crowe said from behind him, “you go ahead. We're gonna be on this ship for a week or more, an' I have no intention of shepherding you all that time. As long as you don't fall overboard, there ain't nowhere you can go. I'm gonna go back to Ginny's cabin an' introduce myself to her companion, make sure the woman's not a drunk or a lunatic or both. We'll meet up in our cabin, by an' by, an' then we'll see what's happening for dinner.”

Sherlock wandered up towards the front of the ship—the bows, as sailors called them. He passed the bridge on the way—the raised area where the captain stood, immaculate in his uniform and peaked cap, along with the helmsman who steered the vessel via a huge wheel, the same size and construction as the wheel of a cart, as far as Sherlock could tell. Behind them was a small cabin, shielded from the wind and the rain, but the majority of the bridge was actually open deck. Set to one side was a strange metal object on a pole, something like an alarm clock with extra-long hands that could be moved around the face, but instead of being marked with hours and minutes the face of the device had words—“Ahead,” “Full Steam,” “Stop,” and “Slow.” It took only a few seconds before Sherlock worked out that it must be a communications device, allowing the Captain to give his orders to the engine room, far below the deck. The hands, as they were moved to cover particular words, probably rang different bells down in the engine room which the stokers would then respond to.

Further ahead, just before the bows, was a roofed-over enclosure, like a long barn. It even smelled like a barn. Sherlock took a look inside, through one of the openings that lined its walls, and was surprised to see animals, all penned together in a small space. It had been built up in three stories, with cows, pigs, and sheep clustered on the bottom, ducks and geese in the middle, and chickens on top. Each animal was protesting against the vibration and the cold sea wind that whipped across the ship. Presumably they would provide eggs and milk, and even meat, as their numbers were gradually whittled down. By the end of the voyage, the barn, like the coal-storage area, would probably be almost empty. Sherlock hadn't expected there to be live animals on board, but he supposed it made sense. Fresh food could not be expected to keep for the period of the voyage, especially if storms or mechanical breakdown delayed them. Presumably, somewhere else on the ship, vegetables and fruit were either being stored or, perhaps, even grown, and somewhere else would be barrels filled with fresh water. And presumably several hundred bottles of wine, champagne, port, brandy, and whisky for the first-class passengers.

Something flickered at the edges of his vision. He turned his head quickly. A dark figure faded back into the shadow of a lifeboat. Sherlock took a couple of steps forward, but the figure had vanished. He shook his head. It was probably just one of the passengers.

Moving further forward, Sherlock watched for a while as the coast slipped away on their right-hand side. The ship would undoubtedly hug the coast as it headed west, around Cornwall, and then strike out to the coast of Ireland. Once past there, it would head out into open waters, across the three thousand or so miles of ocean that lay between that coast and the harbour at New York for which they were bound.

He was surprised how stable the ship felt. There was barely any swaying from side to side. Perhaps things would be different out in the Atlantic, but the ship's size and weight seemed to protect it against the relatively small waves here along the English coast. Sherlock couldn't help remembering the small boat in which he and Matty had sailed from Baron Maupertuis's offshore Napoleonic fort to the coast near Portsmouth. That journey had been grim, and he had no intention of experiencing anything like that again.

He suddenly felt very lonely. England, and everything that meant to him—his home, his family, even his school—was slowly falling away, and all that was ahead of him were surprises—a new world, a new set of people and customs. And danger. He didn't know what the men who were keeping John Wilkes Booth captive wanted, but they obviously had a plan, and it was one that they were willing to kill to keep secret. And here he was, just a boy, getting involved with intrigues beyond the limits of his world.

And Matty. What about Matty? Sherlock doubted that he was as comfortable as the three of them looked likely to be, here on the SS
Scotia
. Matty was probably tied up, or at least confined to a cabin somewhere. Maybe his captors had come to a deal with him—since they were all aboard a ship and he couldn't escape, if he promised not to cause trouble they would let him roam free—but Matty could be stubborn, and he might have refused.

That was assuming he was still alive. Amyus Crowe and Mycroft had both deduced that he was, but Sherlock was acutely aware that deductions were just projections into a sea of fantasy based on a few known facts. If the facts were wrong, or if the projection wasn't done in the right direction, then the final destination would be wildly inaccurate. And Matty might be dead. The Americans might have decided they didn't want the burden of a live captive throughout the journey, and just slit Matty's throat and dumped him by the side of the road back in England. The message might just have been a hoax, a wild attempt to stop Amyus Crowe from interfering, but with nothing to back it up.

Morosely Sherlock wandered back along the rails that lined the deck. He had to ask directions of a steward at one point: a thin man with an immaculate uniform and short blond hair beneath his cap. Having found out where he was going, he walked past groups of excited travellers, past the two funnels and the two huge, trunklike masts, past the long, low shape of the communal first-class saloon with its windows looking out onto the deck, and back to the stern of the boat. The white wake of their passage trailed behind them like the tail of a comet. Sea birds followed them, diving into the wake for disturbed and disoriented fish.

At the back of the boat, a narrow stairway led down into the depths of the ship. Roughly dressed men hung around the top of the stairs smoking and casting glances forward at the better-dressed passengers. Sherlock guessed these were the steerage passengers, crammed into unsanitary and cramped conditions belowdecks, sleeping in rough hammocks or on benches, but paying much less for their tickets. People looking to start a new life in America, rather than travellers on business or pleasure as the first- and second-class passengers mainly appeared to be.

He sensed a presence beside him. Before he turned, he knew that it was Virginia.

“How's your cabin?” he asked.

“Better than I had on the way to England,” she replied. “Father will tell you that the food and the accommodations were better, but don't let him fool you. We weren't travelling steerage, but we weren't first class either, and just because it was an American ship instead of a British ship don't automatically make it better.”

“What about your companion?”

“She's an elderly widow heading out to join her son, who moved to New York five years ago. She's got a maid in the servants' area, an' she's planning to start readin' the Bible now an' finishin' when we get to New York. Good luck to her, I say.”

“Do you want to take a walk around the deck?” he asked nervously.

“Why not? Might as well make ourselves acquainted with the place. After all, we're goin' to be spending the next eight days here.”

They wandered forward along the other side of the ship to the one Sherlock had come back along. When they got to the first-class saloon, Sherlock gestured to Virginia to stop.

“I just want to take a look inside,” he said.

The door opened outward and was on a stiff spring, presumably to stop it being pulled open by the wind on a regular basis. Sherlock tugged it open and glanced inside. The room was empty apart from two white-clad stewards laying silver cutlery on the single long table that dominated the room. Fifty or so chairs were set around the table—matching, presumably, the number of first-class passengers. The stewards glanced up at him, nodded, and continued on with their work.

The saloon was panelled in dark wood, with mirrors set around it to increase the illusion of depth. Where there weren't mirrors there were artistic murals set into the wooden panels. Oil lamps hung from the panels on sturdy supports.

“So we all eat in here?” he said.

Virginia nodded. “All in together,” she replied. “It was the same on the boat we came out on.”

“Lords and ladies mixing with industrialists and theatrical impresarios,” he went on. “Very democratic. Nowhere for the
hoi oligoi
to escape from the
hoi polloi
.”

“No cabin service,” Virginia agreed. “People eat here or they don't eat at all.”

One of the stewards began to set out place cards around the table. Sherlock wondered where Mycroft's bribe had placed them. Now they were at sea, all bets were off. Despite the payment, they could be seated at the far end of the table, away from the captain and the doors, and over the engines, and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it apart from complain. Sherlock presumed they were at the mercy of the purser, a man who had already demonstrated that he could be bribed.

Sherlock stepped back and let the door swing shut. Something moved in the corner of his eye. He glanced sideways, towards where the first-class saloon ended at an alley running between it and the nearest funnel. A figure was just ducking back into the alley. He didn't recognize it—sailor or passenger, he couldn't be sure. The only thing he caught was the sun hitting a flash of iridescent blue around the figure's wrist as it withdrew into the shadows. A blue shirt cuff, maybe? He wasn't sure.

He ran quickly down to the end of the saloon and glanced around the corner, but the alley was clear. A hatch halfway along led down into the depths of the ship. Whoever had been watching them was gone, but Sherlock knew that it wouldn't be left at that. This was the second time he'd spotted someone watching him from the shadows. Someone on this ship was interested in them, and that could mean only one thing.

The Americans who had kidnapped Matty had someone on the ship.

 

E
IGHT

The daily routine of the voyage to New York was established within the first eighteen hours, as far as Sherlock could tell. Despite the huge size of the ship, the areas where the passengers could go were pretty restricted. Once a person had walked the deck, taken a meal, checked out the smoking room and the library, and had a couple of conversations with other passengers about the unusually calm weather, all the options had been exhausted. Between meals most people seemed to spend their time either alone on deck, reading a book in a comfortable chair, or gathered in small groups at tables in the smoking room or the bar, playing bridge or whist. When the sun went down the stewards went around the ship turning the oil lamps on, but setting them as low as possible, and everyone headed for their cabins to sleep.

Sherlock had spent the first few hours watching his home country recede from him until it was just a dark line on the horizon. He missed the moment when it actually vanished. He must have blinked, or turned to watch something else, but one moment England was there and the next the ship was alone on an endless ocean, heading towards the sunset, with the white wake that stretched away behind them the only thing to indicate they were moving.

He and Amyus Crowe and Virginia had joined the rest of the passengers for dinner, but while Amyus Crowe talked easily with everyone around him, Sherlock found that he had nothing to say. He ate his food and watched everyone else, wondering who they were, where they had come from, and where they were going. Amyus Crowe had already taught him some of the ways one could tell a person's occupation—the stains on their sleeves, the patterns of wear on their jackets, the calluses on their hands—and he was pretty sure that he'd already pegged one man as an accountant and two others as horse trainers.