Rebel Fire (16 page)

Sherlock grinned. Suddenly the voyage seemed like it might be a lot more interesting than he'd expected. “It sounds good,” he said. “When do we start?”

“We start now,” Stone said decisively, “and we run on until lunchtime. Now, pick up the violin. Let's see how good your stance is.”

For the next three hours, running from the end of the breakfast session to halfway through lunch, Sherlock learned how to stand properly, how to hold a violin, and how to hold a bow. He even played a few notes, which sounded like a cat being strangled, but Rufus (“Call me Rufus,” he had said when Sherlock called him Mr. Stone. “When you say ‘Mr. Stone' it makes you sound too much like a bank manager for my liking”) told him that it didn't matter. The purpose of the morning's session, he pointed out, was not to learn how playing the violin
sounded
but to learn how it
felt
. “I want you to be relaxed, but ready. I want your arms and fingers and shoulders to know all the shapes that a violin can make against them. I want that violin to feel like an extension of your own body by the time we've finished.”

By the end of the time, Sherlock's body was aching in places he didn't even think he had muscles, his neck was cramping, and the tips of his fingers were tingling from where he'd been pressing the catgut strings down. “I've just been standing in one spot!” he protested. “How come I feel like I've been running a race?”

“Exercise isn't necessarily about moving,” Rufus said. “It's about muscles tensing and relaxing. You don't often see fat musicians. That's because although they're sitting down or standing in one place, their muscles are continually at work.” He paused, face creasing in thought. “Except for percussionists,” he said eventually. “They get fat.”

“What next?”

“Next,” Rufus said, “we have luncheon.”

While Rufus returned his violin case to his cabin, Sherlock went looking for Amyus Crowe. The big American had emerged from wherever it was he had been sequestered, but there was no sign of Virginia. As they all sat at the communal table, Sherlock introduced Crowe to Rufus Stone.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” Crowe said, shaking Rufus's hand. “You're a musician, I perceive. A violinist.”

“You heard me?” Rufus said, smiling.

“No, but you've got fresh dust on your shoulder. In my experience dust on a man's jacket means one of three things: he's a teacher, he plays billiards, or he plays the violin. There ain't any billiards table aboard this ship, to my knowledge, an' I'm not aware there are enough children on this ship to make it worthwhile settin' up a classroom.”

Sherlock checked the shoulder of his own jacket. Indeed, there was a fine patina of dust across it. He rubbed some between his thumb and forefinger. It was an amber-brown colour and felt sticky.

“This isn't chalk,” he said. “What is it?”

“Colophone,” Rufus explained.

“A form of resin,” Crowe interrupted. “Called ‘rosin' by musicians. It's collected from pine trees an' then boiled an' filtered before bein' formed into a cake, like soap. Violinists coat their bows with it. The adhesion the resin causes between the strings and the bow is what makes the strings vibrate. Of course, the resin dries out and becomes a dust, which is deposited on the shoulder as that's the bit of the body closest to the instrument.” He glanced at Sherlock's jacket and frowned. “You've been playin' the violin as well. No, you've been
learnin'
the violin.”

“Rufus—Mr. Stone—has been teaching me.”

“You don't mind, Mr. Crowe?” Rufus asked. “I only offered to help us both pass the time.”

“I never put much store in music,” Crowe rumbled. “The only tune I know is your national anthem, an' that's only because folks stand up when it's played.” He glanced at Sherlock from beneath shaggy eyebrows. “I was intendin' to continue our studies while we were on the ship, but Virginia ain't taking too well to the voyage.” He shook his head. “I can't rightly recall if I mentioned it but her mother—my wife—died on the last transatlantic voyage we made. That was from New York to Liverpool. The memory weighs heavily upon her mind. An' on mine.” He sighed. “Memory's a funny thing. A person can slide memories of just about anythin' to one side an' ignore them, but sometimes the slightest thing can set them off again. Usually it's smells an' sounds that recall memories the best. Ginny's not talked about her mother for a while now, but the smell of the ocean an' the smells of the ship have brought it all floodin' back.”

“I'm sorry,” Sherlock said. It seemed inadequate, but he couldn't think what else to say.

“Bad things happen to people,” Crowe said. “It's the one acknowledged truth of the human condition.” He sighed. “I'm goin' to trust you to spend time on that translation your brother gave you,” he said. “An' I'll try to spend an hour or two a day with you, talkin' over what your eyes an' ears can tell you while you're on this here ship, but the opportunities for proper consideration are scant. The rest of the time is your own. Use it as you will.”

The rest of the meal was conducted in uncomfortable silence. As soon as it was finished, Sherlock excused himself. He had a feeling that he'd somehow disappointed Amyus Crowe, and he didn't want to add to that disappointment by going straight back to his violin lessons. Judging by the slight nod that Rufus Stone gave him as he left, the violinist understood.

He spent an hour in a chair on the deck, reading through the difficult Greek of Plato's
Republic
. The process of translating from Greek to English in his head was so laborious that he hardly understood the sense of what he was reading—he could get the words right, but by the end of the sentence he'd lost track of where it had started and what it was trying to say.

He looked up at one point, wrestling with a particularly difficult transitive verb, to see a white-uniformed steward standing beside him holding a tray. It was the same man who had helped him with directions and who had served at dinner the night before.

“Is there anything I can get for you, sir?” the steward asked.

“A Greek dictionary?”

The steward's lined, tanned face didn't change. “I'm afraid,” he said, “that I cannot help you there, sir. We do have a library on board, but I do not believe there is a Greek dictionary upon its shelves—especially a dictionary of
ancient
Greek, which is what I suspect you need.”

“Do you know
every
book that's in the library?” Sherlock asked.

“I have been with this ship ever since she launched,” the steward replied. “Not only do I know every book in the library, I know every cocktail on the menu, every plank on the deck, and every rivet in the hull, yes?” He nodded his head. “Grivens is the name, sir. If you need anything, just ask.”

Sherlock's gaze was drawn towards the hand that held the tray. It was tattooed from the wrist upward, the design disappearing into the man's sleeve. It looked to Sherlock like a pattern of tiny scales, coloured a delicate, gold-flecked blue that shone in the sunshine.

The same colour that Sherlock had seen on the wrist of the figure that had been observing him from the shadows the day before. Coincidence, or not?

Grivens noticed the direction of Sherlock's gaze. “Is something wrong, sir?”

“Sorry.” Sherlock thought quickly. It was obvious that he'd spotted something odd, but he had to cover for his gaffe. “I was just noticing your … your tattoo. My … brother … has one just like it.” In his mind he formed a quick apology to Mycroft, who was the last person in the world Sherlock would expect to have a tattoo. Except perhaps for Aunt Anna.

“Had it done in Hong Kong,” Grivens explained. “Before I joined the
Scotia
, that was.”

“It's beautiful.”

“The man who did it was a wrinkled little Chinaman in the back alleys of a marketplace in Kowloon,” the steward continued. “But he's famous among sailors all over the world. I swear there's nobody to touch him, not anywhere else. There's colours he uses that nobody else can even mix. Anytime I see a tattoo done by him on another sailor, or if another sailor sees my tattoo, we just nod at each other, 'cause we know we've both been to that same little Chinaman. It's like being in a club, yes?”

“Why do so many sailors have tattoos?” Sherlock asked. “As far as I can tell, every member of this crew has a tattoo of some kind, and they're all different.”

Grivens glanced away, out to sea. “It's not something we tend to talk about, sir,” he said. “Especially to passengers. The thing of it is, and forgive me for being indelicate, but if there's a shipwreck then it might take some time for the bodies of the sailors to wash ashore—that's assuming they ever do. There have been instances where bodies couldn't be identified, even by their closest relatives. The action of saltwater, harsh weather, and the fishes of the deep, if you take my meaning. But tattoos last a lot longer. A tattoo can be recognized long after a face is gone. So that's how it started—a means of identification. Gives us some measure of comfort, knowing that after we're gone at least our families have a fighting chance of being able to bury us properly.”

“Oh.” Sherlock nodded. “That makes sense, I suppose. Thanks.”

Grivens nodded. “At your service, sir. Are you going to be here for a while?”

“Where else would I go?”

“I'll check back with you later, then. See if you need anything else.”

He moved away, looking for other passengers to serve, but leaving Sherlock thinking. If this was the man who had been watching him from the shadows—if he
was
being watched from the shadows, which was itself an assumption based on a scuffle and a movement—then why was he so concerned as to whether Sherlock would be staying there on deck? Did he want to search Sherlock's cabin for some clue as to what Sherlock knew? Or did he intend going after Amyus Crowe and Virginia? Whatever the answer, Sherlock couldn't stay there. He quickly got up and headed off along the deck and down the stairway to the corridor where his cabin was located.

The door to his cabin was open a crack. Was it the steward, searching it, or was it Amyus Crowe inside?

Sherlock moved closer, trying to look through the crack to see what was happening. If it was Grivens, then he would go and fetch Amyus Crowe, tell him what was going on.

Something shoved him hard in the small of his back. He fell forward, stumbling into the cabin. Another push and he was on the floor, just managing to miss the edge of the bunk bed by twisting his head and curling up. The carpet burned against his face as he hit it. He curled round, looking up at the doorway.

Grivens shut the door behind him. His faded blue eyes were suddenly as cold and as hard as marbles.

“You think yourself clever, yes?” he snapped. Sherlock caught his breath at the abrupt change of attitude from servitude to anger. “I've broken better men than you in half. You think I didn't realize you were going to follow me here to see if I was searching your cabin? I noticed you examining my tattoo, and I could tell by your eyes that you recognized it from yesterday, when I was watching the two of you. So I made you think I was going to search your cabin, and I lured you back here.”

“To do what?” Sherlock asked. He was finding it difficult to catch his breath lying on the floor, twisted around like that.

“To get you off this ship. You, then the other two.”

“Off this ship?” Sherlock's mind took a second or two to catch up. “You mean—
throw
us off? Into the
Atlantic
? But we'll be missed!”

“The captain might even turn around, steam back and look for you, but it won't do any good. You won't last half an hour in that water.”

Sherlock's mind was racing, trying to work out how this had happened. “You're not part of this. You
can't
be. The men we're following wouldn't have known which ship we were going to take—if we were going to take one at all.”

“All I know is they paid me to keep an eye out for three travellers—a big man in a white hat and two kids. Maybe with another man—a fat man—maybe not. A third of the money now and two-thirds if they see a report in the papers of three or four passengers vanishing overboard.”

“But how did they know we'd take this ship?” Sherlock asked. Then he realized. “They paid off someone on
every
ship?”

Grivens nodded. “Every ship leaving for the next few days, anyway. That's my guess. They found most of us in the same place—a bar where the ships' stewards gather between voyages.”

“But how much would that cost them?”

Grivens shrugged. “Not my problem, as long as they have enough left to pay me when I get to New York. They didn't seem short of cash. They said they'd pay extra if I could get you to tell me how much you know about their plans. You can do it the easy way, without pain, and I'll do you the favour of making sure you're unconscious when I throw you over the side, yes? Or you can do it the difficult way, in which case I'll have to snip your fingers off with a cigar cutter, one by one, until you tell me, and then throw you overboard still conscious.”

“I'll shout out!” Sherlock blustered. “People will hear.”

“Didn't I mention?” Grivens said. “I started off as a ship's chandler, making sails, before I became a steward. Your fingers never forget the feel of an iron needle going through canvas. I'll sew your lips shut with thick twine, boy, just for the pleasure of looking into your frightened eyes when I throw you overboard.” He paused. “Now, answer the question. How much do you know about the plans of these Yanks?”