Young Sherlock Holmes: Knife Edge (2 page)

The land got closer and closer: a grey-green counterpoint to the heavy grey clouds that hung over their heads. Eventually they were sailing past dark hills on the starboard side of the ship.
Usually, when the
Gloria Scott
made port, the sailors were joyful, looking forward to a spell on land, but now they seemed to be morose. Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the look of
the countryside.

Far ahead Sherlock could see the quay and stone houses of Galway. He could see people moving around. Several other ships were already docked, but there were enough spaces left for the
Gloria
Scott
to join them easily. Even so, it took over an hour for the ship to berth. People bustled around the quayside – dock workers, gawkers, tradesmen eager to replenish the ship’s
stores and men and women offering accommodation in the town. Lines were thrown from ship to land and tied to bollards and to stanchions.

And that was it. Sherlock was home – or as near to home as the
Gloria
Scott
was going to carry him.

A covered carriage was waiting by the quayside. Sherlock could just about discern a figure inside wearing a top hat. Whoever it was was staring up at the ship. Maybe an official from the docks,
waiting to board so that he could discuss official details with Captain Tollaway. The driver was sitting up on top and in front of the carriage, swathed in a blanket.
He looked as if he might be
asleep.

The next hour or so was taken up by making sure everything in the
Gloria Scott
was fastened down, tied up or covered with a tarpaulin. At some stage Sherlock caught sight of someone
coming aboard via the gangplank. He glanced at the carriage but the door was still closed and the top-hatted figure was still visible inside. A shiver ran up Sherlock’s back,
and it took him
a moment to trace the random thought that had triggered the feeling. Perhaps the occupant of the carriage was someone working for the Paradol Chamber, sent to make sure that Sherlock hadn’t
got back from the South China Seas alive. Well, if it was, then there was little he could do apart from dive off the starboard side of the ship and try and swim to land unobserved, and
what would
that achieve? He got back to his work, but the crew were finishing their tasks, obviously eager to disembark and get on with whatever it was that sailors did in a fresh port. Mr Larchmont gave the
queuing crew the latest instalment of their wages, and then they were allowed to disembark. As Sherlock took his pay the ship’s master said: ‘I’ll hold off filling your position
for a day,
laddie. Just in case.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Sherlock said. ‘Thanks.’ In his heart he knew that he wouldn’t be coming back to the
Gloria Scott
, but Mr Larchmont had been good to
him, and he didn’t want to reject the man’s kindness out of hand.

Sherlock walked down the gangplank, already feeling that unsteadiness that came from using legs on land that were conditioned to the swaying of
a ship’s deck.

As Sherlock approached the covered carriage, a hand beckoned him from the carriage’s window. He crossed to it warily. Surely the Paradol Chamber had punished him enough?

It wasn’t anyone from the Paradol Chamber. In the watery sunlight that filtered into the carriage from outside, Sherlock could just about make out a plump, jowly face staring down at him
from out of the
darkness.

‘Hello, Sherlock,’ a voice said. It was deep, resonant, and very familiar.

‘Hello, Mycroft,’ Sherlock said, trying to contain the emotions that roiled within his chest. ‘You didn’t have to meet me, you know?’

Mycroft Holmes shrugged: a rippling of his corpulent frame in the darkness. ‘I felt it to be my brotherly duty. Despite the fact that leaving London makes me feel like
a crab that has been
somehow removed from its shell and is being allowed to run around unprotected while hungry gulls circle overhead, I wanted to save you the trouble of making your own way home.’

‘And you wanted to check that I actually
was
coming home,’ Sherlock added. ‘Rather than staying aboard the
Gloria Scott
and making a life for myself on the
open ocean.’

‘You have a fine
mind,’ Mycroft rumbled. ‘Or at least, you did have before you left. Devoting it to memorizing sea shanties and the various different types of knots that
sailors must master would be a waste.’

Sherlock smiled. ‘Actually, you would be surprised how many things you need to know in order to be a sailor. It’s not just knots and sea shanties. There’s being able to predict
the weather from the
look of the sky or the behaviour of the birds, there are the various languages you need to be able to speak a smattering of in order to make the most of your time ashore,
there’s the ability to bargain over the buying and selling of your cargo, there’s the medical knowledge you need to know so you can treat fungal infections, cuts, burns, digestive
problems and scurvy . . .’ He paused, thinking.
‘But you’re right – there
are
a lot of knots.’

‘Could you climb inside?’ Mycroft asked. ‘I am getting a crick in my neck looking down at you like this.’

Sherlock walked around the front of the carriage to the other side. Sailors who were still leaving the
Gloria Scott
stared at him with undisguised curiosity, obviously wondering what
made him so important that a carriage was waiting
for him. The horses sniffed at him as he passed. They didn’t seem over-exerted, which meant that they hadn’t come far, pulling the
carriage. Galway was in the West of Ireland, which meant that Mycroft had either sailed all the way around the coast from the other side or, more likely, he had taken a ferry from England to
Dublin, on the east coast of the island, and travelled across via carriage.
As the horses were still fresh, he obviously hadn’t just arrived in Ireland. He must have been staying somewhere
local. The entire thought process took less than a second. As he came to his conclusion Sherlock glanced up at the blanket-swaddled driver, but all he could see of the man’s face was a pair
of closed eyes. Reaching the other side, he opened the door and climbed in.

Once he got
used to the relative darkness of the interior, he glanced critically at his brother. Mycroft’s face was as familiar to Sherlock as his own, but his brother had put on weight.
Quite a lot of weight, from the look of it. His cheeks were almost invisible beneath layers of fat, and he seemed to have developed several more chins, none of which were defined by any underlying
bone. He had a walking
stick of black ebony, topped with silver, upon which he rested his hands. It was thicker than most such sticks Sherlock had seen. He supposed that it would have to be, to
take his brother’s weight without snapping, and that told him more than he wanted to know about the changes in his brother’s health over the past year.

‘You’re looking well,’ Sherlock said eventually.

‘You are being
too kind. Either that or your observational facility has withered in the time you have been away. I am neither looking well nor feeling well. I fear I have the beginnings of
gout in my right foot, and I may need recourse to spectacles in the near future. Or a monocle, perhaps.’ He looked Sherlock up and down. ‘You, however, have developed muscles in places
where I had no idea that muscles could
develop. Your eyes are washed out by all the sun that you have experienced, and your hair is unfashionably long. I perceive that you haven’t started
shaving yet, which is a small blessing I suppose, but I cannot believe that it will be long before you will be sporting an unappealing moustache and a small goatee beard.’ He paused,
considering. ‘I see traces on you of various ports of call –
Dakar, Borneo, Shanghai, of course, and, if I am not very much mistaken, Mombasa and the Seychelles as well. The rough skin
on your hands indicates that the Captain has allowed you to work your passage on the
Gloria Scott
, which is what Amyus Crowe and I had assumed would happen. Your general muscular
development suggests a great deal of climbing, but the change in your poise, the way you
hold yourself, suggests a different form of activity.’ He cocked his head to one side.
‘Gymnastics? No, I think not. More likely to be an Eastern martial art along the lines of karate or judo.’

‘
T’ai chi
,’ Sherlock said softly.

‘I have heard of it. I see from the calluses on the fingers of your left hand that you are still practising that abominable instrument, the violin, although I
am unsure how, given that you
left it at Holmes Manor.’ He shuddered slightly, the rolls of fat around his neck shivering like a disturbed blancmange. ‘I cannot tell, but I do hope that you have not picked up any
tattoos on your travels. I find the idea of disfiguring one’s skin with a design that can never be removed abhorrent in the extreme.’

‘No, Mycroft – no tattoos. And, just to put
your mind at rest, I have contracted no strange tropical diseases either.’

‘I am relieved to hear it.’ He suddenly reached out a hand and put it on Sherlock’s knee. ‘Are you . . . all right, Sherlock? Are you
well
?’

Sherlock took a moment before answering. ‘What is the phrase that doctors use when conveying news to relatives? I am “as well as can be expected”, I suppose.’

‘You survived.
That is what counts.’

‘Not unchanged, Mycroft,’ Sherlock said.

‘If you had remained at home in England then you would have changed anyway. It is called “growing up”.’

‘If I had remained at home in England, then
some
things would not have changed. Or at least, they would have changed in a different way.’

‘You mean Virginia, of course. Or at least, the burgeoning relationship between
you and her. You obviously received at least one of the letters I sent.’

Sherlock glanced sideways, out of the window, before Mycroft could see the sudden gleam of tears in his eyes.

Instead of pressing Sherlock on the matter, Mycroft made a brief ‘harrumph’ sound, then said: ‘Before you ask, Father is still in India with his regiment. I have received a
series of letters from him, so
I know that he is fit and well. Mother is . . . stable . . . but her health is still fragile. She sleeps a lot. As for our sister – well, what can one
say?’ He shrugged. ‘She is as she always is. I am afraid to tell you, by the way, that Uncle Sherrinford has had a bad fall. He broke an arm and several ribs. Aunt Jane is looking after
him, but at his age a fall like that can accelerate the inevitable
end that we all come to.’

Sherlock took a few moments to process the information. He felt a twinge of sadness. He hadn’t got to know his uncle very well, but he had liked the man. Sherrinford had embodied a
kindness, a Christian morality and an obsession with research that had impressed Sherlock in the time he had spent at Holmes Manor.

‘What about you?’ he asked eventually. ‘Are you
still living in Whitehall and working in the Foreign Office?’

‘Sherlock, I suspect I shall be living in the one and working in the other until the day I die. When you add the Diogenes Club, where I spend most of my lunchtimes and evenings, the three
locations form a triangle which defines my life.’ He stared at Sherlock for a few moments in silence. ‘We should have a discussion some time
about your future, but I have a feeling that
we will need a geometric figure with considerably more vertices than a triangle to describe it.’

‘I’m not sure I like the idea of being
defined
by any shape, Mycroft. As far as I can see, my future is amorphous. Shapeless.’

‘You will need to earn money somehow. You will need to live somewhere. Thought must be given to these things.’

‘But
not now,’ Sherlock said.

‘I agree. Not now.’ Mycroft reached up with his walking stick and rapped it against the roof of the carriage. ‘Driver! You there! Take us back to the hotel.’ As the
carriage lurched off he looked back to Sherlock. ‘I have taken rooms at the local tavern. The beds sag but the food is acceptable. I trust you do not object to spending a night or two here
before we
return to England?’ He paused for a second, and when he spoke again his voice was uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘You
are
coming back to England, aren’t
you?’

Sherlock nodded. ‘I am,’ he confirmed. ‘I have been to sea and come back. I don’t want to make either a habit or a career out of it.’ Just to provoke his brother a
little he added: ‘Maybe I’ll join the circus next – for the experience.’

‘There are some experiences that can be taken on trust,’ Mycroft said. ‘That is one of them.’

As the carriage clattered away from the harbour, and into the town, Sherlock asked: ‘How exactly did you know when the
Gloria Scott
would be arriving in Galway? And if it comes to
that how did you know that it
would
be arriving in Galway? There are other ports where we might have docked.’

‘Ah.’ Mycroft shifted uncomfortably. ‘You have, as is your wont, arrived straight at the heart of the issue. There is a job here that I need to do, and I need your help to do
it.’

Galway was a small town with plenty of character. As the carriage clattered along the winding cobbled streets, past shop fronts and taverns, past women in shawls and men in
rough corduroy jackets and flat caps, Sherlock kept having to remind himself that he was home – well, nearly home – and not in some far-flung foreign port.

Mycroft was silent for a while after his admission.
He seemed to be avoiding Sherlock’s gaze, and instead stared out of the carriage window with a pensive expression on his face.

‘I must confess,’ he said eventually, ‘that I have not told you the entire story.’

‘You surprise me,’ Sherlock murmured. He had already worked out that there was more to Mycroft’s presence in Galway than his brother had revealed.

Mycroft glanced at him with
a raised eyebrow. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

‘You once told me that you rarely do anything for only the one reason. You consider it lazy and wasteful of time and of resources.’ Sherlock gazed at his brother, who was attempting
to keep a fixed expression of supercilious amusement on his face and failing. ‘I know that you hate travel, and that you hate having your normal routine disturbed.
I would have expected you
to send someone else to meet me – perhaps Rufus Stone.’ He paused, considering. ‘In fact, now that I come to think of it, Galway is not a port I would normally have expected the
Gloria Scott
to visit. I recall that we were originally scheduled to make landfall in Liverpool, but the Captain’s plans changed. In fact, I remember that he had a visitor, an
Englishman,
when we docked at Cadiz. They had a meeting in the Captain’s cabin. Shortly after that he said that we would be changing our itinerary.’ Sherlock felt a small bud of anger
begin to unfold in his chest. ‘Mycroft, did you ask the Captain to change his course and call in at Galway just because you had other business in Ireland, in this town, and it was
convenient
for you to combine your trip
here with meeting me and checking that I was all right?’