Sitting in the woods outside Farnham, Sherlock could see the ground fall away from him towards a dirt track that snaked away through the underbrush, like a dry riverbed, until it vanished from sight. Over on the other side of the town, on the slope of a hill, a small castle nestled in the trees. There was nobody else around. He had been sitting so still for so long that the animals had grown used to him. Every so often there would be a rustling in the long grass as a mouse or a vole moved past, while hawks circled lazily in the blue sky above, waiting for any small animals stupid enough to emerge into an area of clear ground.
The wind rustled the leaves of the trees behind him. He let his mind wander, trying not to think about the past or the future, just living in the moment for as long as he could. The past ached like a bruise, and the immediate future was not something that he wanted to arrive in a hurry. The only way to keep going was not to think about it, just drift on the breeze and let the animals move around him.
He had been living at Holmes Manor for three days now, and things had not got any better than his first experience. The worst thing was Mrs Eglantine. The housekeeper was an ever-present spectre lurking in the deep recesses of the house. Whenever he turned round he seemed to find her there, standing in the shadows, watching him with her crinkled-up eyes. She had barely exchanged three sentences with him since he had arrived. He was, as far as he could tell, expected to turn up for breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, say nothing, eat as quietly as possible and then vanish until the next meal; and that was going to be the shape of his life until the holidays were over and Mycroft came to release him from his sentence.
Sherrinford and Anna Holmes — his aunt and uncle — were usually present at breakfast and dinner. Sherrinford was a dominating presence: as tall as his brother but much thinner, cheekbones prominent, forehead domed in front and sunken at the sides, bushy white beard descending to his chest but the hair on his head so sparse that it looked to Sherlock as if each individual strand had been painted on to the skin of his scalp and then a coat of varnish applied. Between meals he vanished into his study or to the library where, from what Sherlock could tell from scraps of conversation, he wrote religious pamphlets and sermons for vicars across the country. The only thing of any substance that he had said to Sherlock in the past three days had been when he had fixed Sherlock with an ominous eye over lunch and said: “What is the state of your soul, boy?” Sherlock had blinked, fork raised to his mouth. Remembering Mr Tulley, the Latin Master at Deepdene, he said: “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” which he was pretty sure meant: “Outside the Church there is no salvation.” It seemed to work: Sherrinford Holmes had nodded, murmured: “Ah, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, of course,” and turned back to his plate.
Mrs Holmes — or Aunt Anna — was a small, bird-like woman who seemed to be in a state of perpetual motion. Even when she was sitting down her hands constantly fluttered around, never settling for more than a moment anywhere. She talked all the time, but not really to anyone, as far as Sherlock could tell. She just seemed to enjoy conducting a perpetual monologue, and didn’t seem to expect anyone to join in or to answer any of her largely rhetorical questions.
The food, at least, was passable — better than the meals at Deepdene School. Mostly it was vegetables — carrots, potatoes and cauliflower that he guessed had been grown in the grounds of the Manor House — but every meal had some kind of meat, and unlike the grey, gristly and usually unidentifiable stuff that he had been used to at school this was well flavoured and tasty: ham hocks, chicken thighs, fillets of what he had been told was salmon and, on one occasion, big flakes carved from a glutinous shoulder of lamb that had been placed in the centre of the table. If he wasn’t careful he would put on so much weight that he would start to look like Mycroft.
His room was up in the eaves of the house, not quite in the servants’ quarters but not down with the family either. The ceiling sloped from door to window to match the roof above, meaning that he had to stoop while moving around, while the floor was plain wooden boards covered with a rug of dubious vintage. His bed was just as hard as the one at Deepdene School. For the first two nights the silence had kept him awake for hours. He was so used to hearing thirty other boys snoring, talking in their sleep or sobbing quietly to themselves that he found the sudden absence of noise unnerving, but then he had opened his window in order to get some air and discovered that the night was not silent at all, just filled with a subtler kind of noise. From then on he had been lulled to sleep by the screech of owls, the screaming of foxes and the sudden flurries of wings as something spooked the chickens at the back of the house.
Despite his brother’s advice, he had been unable to get into the library and settle down with a book. Sherrinford Holmes spent most of his time in there, researching his religious pamphlets and sermons, and Sherlock was scared of disturbing him. Instead he had taken to wandering in ever-increasing circles around the house, starting with the grounds at the front and back, the walled garden, the chicken coop and the vegetable plot, then climbing the stone walls that surrounded the house and moving to the road outside, and finally expanding outward into the ancient woods that nestled up against the rear of the house. He had been used to walking, exploring the forests back home, either alone or with his sister, but the woods here seemed older and more mysterious than the ones he was used to.
“For a townie you really can sit still, can’t you?”
“So can you,” Sherlock responded to the voice behind him. “You’ve been watching me for half an hour.”
“How did you know?” Sherlock heard a soft thud, as if someone had just jumped down from the lower branches of a tree on to the ferns that covered the ground.
“There are birds perching in all the trees except for one — the one you’re sitting in. They’re obviously frightened of you.”
“I won’t hurt them, just like I won’t hurt you.”
Sherlock turned his head slowly. The voice belonged to a boy of about his own age, only smaller and stockier than Sherlock’s lanky frame. His hair was long enough to reach his shoulders. “I’m not sure you could,” he said as calmly as possible under the circumstances.
“I can fight dirty,” the boy said. “And I got a knife.”
“Yes, but I’ve been watching the boxing matches at school, and I’ve got a long reach.” Sherlock eyed the boy critically. His clothes were dusty, made of rough cloth and patched in places, and his face, hands and fingernails were dirty.
“School?” the boy said. “They teach boxing at school?”
“They do at my school. They say it toughens us up.”
The boy sat himself down beside Sherlock. “It’s life that toughens you up,” he muttered, then added: “My name’s Matty. Matty Arnatt.”
“Matty as in Matthew?”
“I suppose so. You live up at the big house down the road, don’t you?”
Sherlock nodded. “Just moved in for the summer. With my aunt and uncle. My name’s Sherlock — Sherlock Holmes.”
Matty glanced critically at Sherlock. “That’s not a proper name.”
“What, Sherlock?” He thought for a moment. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Do you know any other Sherlocks?”
Sherlock shrugged. “No.”
“What’s your dad’s name, then?”
Sherlock frowned. “Siger.”
“And your uncle? The one you’re staying with?”
“Sherrinford.”
“Got any brothers?”
“Yes, one.”
“What’s his name?”
“Mycroft.”
Matty shook his head in exasperation. “Sherlock, Siger, Sherrinford and Mycroft. What a bunch! Why not go for something traditional, like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John?”
“They’re family names,” Sherlock explained. “And they are traditional. All the males in our family have names like that.” He paused. “My father told me once that one branch of the family originally came to England from Scandinavia, and that’s where those names come from. Or something like that. “Siger” could be Scandinavian, I suppose, but the others actually sound to me more like place names in old English. Although where “Sherlock” comes from is a complete mystery. Maybe there’s a Sher Lock or a Sheer Lock on a canal somewhere.”
“You know a lot of stuff,” Matty said, “but you don’t know much about canals. There’s no Sher Lock or Sheer Lock that I’ve ever come across. So what about sisters? Any silly names there?”
Sherlock winced, and looked away. “So, do you live around here?”
Matty glanced at him for a moment, then seemed to accept the fact that Sherlock wanted to change the subject. “Yeah,” he said, “for the moment. I’m kind of travelling.”
Sherlock’s interest perked up. “Travelling? You mean you’re a Gypsy? Or you’re with a circus?”
Matty sniffed derisively. “If anybody calls me a ’Gyp-tian I usually punch them. And I don’t belong to no circus, either. I’m honest.”
Sherlock’s brain suddenly flashed on something that Matty had said a few moments earlier. “You mentioned that you didn’t know any Sher Lock or Sheer Lock. Do you live on the canals? Does your family have a barge?”
“I’ve got a narrowboat, but I ain’t got a family. It’s just me. Me and Albert.”
“Grandfather?” Sherlock guessed.
“Horse,” Matty corrected. “Albert pulls the boat.”
Sherlock waited for a moment to see whether Matty would go on. When he didn’t, Sherlock asked: “What about your family? What happened to them?”
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“It’s one way to find things out.”
Matty shrugged. “My dad was in the Navy. Went off on a ship and never came back. I don’t know if he sank, or stayed in a port somewhere around the world, or returned to England and didn’t bother with the final few miles. My mum died a few years back. Consumption, it was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They wouldn’t let me see her,” Matty went on as if he hadn’t heard, staring ahead into the distance. “She just wasted away. Got thinner and paler, like she was dying by inches. Coughing up blood every night. I knew they’d be coming to put me in the poorhouse when she died, so I ran away. No way I’d go into the Spike. Most people who go in there don’t come out again, or if they do they don’t come out right in the body or in the head. I took to the canals rather than walk cos I could get further away in a shorter time.”
“Where did you get the boat from?” Sherlock asked. “Was it something that belonged to the family?”
“Hardly,” Matty said, snorting. “Let’s just say I found it and leave it at that.”
“So how do you get by? What do you do for food?”
Matty shrugged. “I work in the fields over the summer, picking fruit or cutting wheat. Everyone wants cheap workers, and they don’t worry about using kids. During the winter I do odd jobs: a bit of gardening here, replacing lead tiles on church roofs there. I make do. I’ll do anything apart from chimney-sweeping and working down the mines. That’s a slow death, that is.”
“You make a good point,” Sherlock conceded. “How long have you been in Farnham?”
“A couple of weeks. It’s a good place,” Matty conceded. “People are reasonably friendly, and they don’t bother you too much. It’s a solid, respectable town.” He hesitated slightly. “Except...”
“Except what?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, pulling himself together. “Look, I’ve been watching you for a while. You ain’t got any friends around here, and you’re not stupid. You can figure stuff out. Well, I seen something in town, and I can’t explain it.” He blushed slightly, and looked away. “I was hoping you could help.”
Sherlock shrugged, intrigued. “I can give it a go. What is it?”
“Best I show you.” Matty brushed his hands on his trousers. “You want to go around the town first? I can tell you where the best places are to eat and drink and just watch people going by. Also where the best alleys are to run away down and the dead ends you want to avoid.”
“Will you show me your boat as well?”
Matty glanced at Sherlock. “Maybe. If I decide I can trust you.”
Together, the two of them headed down the slope towards the road that led into town. The sky above them was blue, and Sherlock could smell smoke from a fire and hear someone in the distance chopping wood with the regularity of a pocket watch ticking away. At one point, as they briefly crossed into a copse of trees, Matty pointed to a bird hovering high above them. “Goshawk,” he said succinctly. “Tracking something.”
It was a good few miles into town, and it took them nearly an hour to make it. Sherlock could feel the muscles in his legs and lower back stretching as he walked. He would feel stiff and achy tomorrow, but for now the exercise was clearing away the dark depression that had settled over him since he had arrived at Holmes Manor.
As they got closer to the town, and as houses began to appear with more and more regularity along the sides of the road, Sherlock began to detect a musty, unpleasant smell drifting across the countryside.
“What is that smell?” he asked.
Matty sniffed. “What smell?”
“That smell. Surely you can’t miss it? It smells like a carpet that’s got wet and not been allowed to dry out properly.”
“That’ll be the breweries. There’s a good few of them scattered around along the river. Barratt’s Brewery is the largest. He’s expanding cos of the troops that are newly billeted at Aldershot. That’s the smell of wet barley. Beer’s what turned my dad bad. He joined the Navy to get away from it, but there it was the rum that got to him.”
They were on the outskirts of the town proper now, and there were more houses and cottages than there were gaps. Many of the houses were constructed from red bricks, with either roofs of thatched reeds tied down and bulging like loaves of bread or dark red tiles. Behind the houses, a gradual slope led up to a grey stone castle which perched above the town. The slope led up further, past the castle, to a distant ridge. Sherlock couldn’t help wondering what use a castle was in that position if any attacker could get above it and rain arrows, stones and fire down on it for as long as they liked.
“They have a market here every day,” Matty volunteered. “In the town square. They sell sheep and cows and pies and everything. Good place to check when they’re clearing up at the end of the day. They’re always in a hurry to get out before the sun goes down, and all kinds of stuff falls off the stalls, or gets thrown away cos it’s a bit rotten or wormy. You can eat pretty well just on the stuff they leave behind.”
“Lovely,” Sherlock said drily. At least meals at Holmes Manor were something to look forward to, although the atmosphere over lunch and dinner was not.
The town proper surrounded them now, and the street was filled with so many people that the two boys had to keep stepping off the pavement and into the rutted road to avoid being bumped into. Sherlock spent most of his time looking out for piles of manure, trying to ensure that he didn’t end up stepping in one. The general standard of dress had improved, with decent jackets and cravats on the men and dresses on the women predominating over the breeches and jerkins and smocks that had been worn by the people they passed out in the countryside. Dogs were everywhere, either well kept and on leads or mangy and rough — strays looking for food. Cats kept to the shadows, thin and big-eyed. Out in the road horses pulled carriages and carts in both directions, grinding the manure deeper and deeper into the rutted earth.
As they reached an alleyway that ran sideways off the main road, Matty paused.
“What’s the matter?” Sherlock asked.
Matty hesitated. “That thing I saw.” He shrugged. “It was down there, a few days back. Something I don’t understand.”
“Do you want to show me?”
Instead of replying, Matty ran off down the alley. Sherlock sprinted to catch up with him.
The alley dog-legged into a side street narrow enough that Sherlock could touch the buildings on either side. People were leaning out of upper windows and talking to one another just as easily as if they were leaning over garden fences. Matty was staring up at a particular window. It was empty, and the door below it was shut. The place looked deserted.
“It was up there,” he said. “I saw smoke, but it moved. It came out of the window, crawled up the wall and vanished over the roof.”
“Smoke doesn’t do that,” Sherlock pointed out.
“This smoke did,” Matty said firmly.
“Maybe the wind was blowing it.”
“Maybe.” Matty seemed unconvinced. His brow was furrowed as he recalled what had happened there. “I heard someone screaming inside. I ran off, cos I was scared, but I came back later. There was a cart outside, and they was loading a dead body into it. There was a sheet over the body, but it got caught in the door and it got pulled off. I saw the body. I saw its face.” He turned to Sherlock, and his face was a mask of fear and uncertainty. “He was covered in boils — big red boils, all over his face and neck and arms — and his face was all twisted, like he’d died in agony. Do you think it was the plague? I’ve heard about it, ravaging the country in the past. Do you think it’s come back?”
Sherlock felt a chill run across his shoulders. “I suppose this might be the start of another outbreak, but one death doesn’t make a plague. It could have been scarlet fever, or any number of other things.”
“And that shadow I saw moving over the roof — what about that? Was that his soul? Or something come to take it?”
“That,” Sherlock said firmly, “was just an illusion caused by the angle of the sun and a passing cloud.” He took Matty by the shoulder and pulled him away. “Come on — let’s go.”
He guided Matty away from the house and down the narrow street. Within moments they were back on the main road through Farnham. Matty was pale and quiet.
“Are you all right?” Sherlock asked gently.
Matty nodded. “Sorry,” he said, shamefaced. “It just... spooked me. I don’t like disease, ever since...”
“I understand. Look, I don’t know what it was that you saw, but I’ll give it some thought. My uncle’s got a library — the answer might be in there. Or in the local newspaper archives.”
They walked across a small bridge and back into town. The street led past a set of wooden gates set into a stone wall. An animal of some kind was lying by the gates, legs outstretched stiffly, not moving. Its fur was dirty and dull. For a moment Sherlock thought it was a dog, but as they got closer he could see the pointed snout, the short legs and the alternating stripes of black and white — now lighter grey and darker grey — that ran down its head. It was a badger, and Sherlock noticed that its stomach was nearly flat against the road. It had been run over, probably by the wheel of a cart.
Matty slowed down as he approached. “You should be careful going past here,” he confided, as if he was perfectly safe and it was Sherlock who had to worry. “I don’t know what they do in there, but there’s guards inside. They got billy clubs and boat hooks. Big blokes too.”
Sherlock was about to say something about the likelihood that the men were just providing some protection for the wages of the workers within when the gates swung open. Two men stepped out into the road; their faces were battered, scarred and grim but their clothes were immaculate in black velvet. They looked left and right, checking the boys out momentarily and dismissing them, then gestured to someone inside.
A carriage pulled by a single black horse nosed out of the courtyard. Its driver was a massive man with hands like spades and a head that was bald and covered in scars. They closed the gates, then jumped on the back of the carriage, hanging on as it moved away.
“Let’s see if the gent will give us a farthing,” Matty whispered. Before Sherlock could stop him, he was running towards the carriage.
Surprised, the horse shied back against the shafts that connected it to the carriage. The driver tried to regain control, slashing at it with his whip, but he just made things worse. The carriage slewed around as the horse tried to prance away from Matty.
Through the carriage window, Sherlock was momentarily shocked to see a pale, almost skeletal face framed with wispy white hair staring at him with unblinking eyes that were small and pink, like the eyes of a white rat. He felt an instant flash of instinctive revulsion, as if he had reached out for a lettuce leaf on his dinner plate and touched a slug instead. He wanted to move, to back away, but that pale, malevolent gaze held him pinioned, unable to move. And then the burly driver managed to regain control and the horse cantered past the two boys, taking the carriage and its occupant with it.
“Didn’t even get a chance,” Matty moaned, dusting himself down. “I thought that bloke was going to have a go at me with that whip.”
“Who was the man in the carriage?” Sherlock asked, his voice unsteady.
Matty shook his head. “I never even got a look at him. Did he look rich?” he said hopefully.
“He looked like he was three days dead,” said Sherlock.