Death Cloud

Chapter Seventeen

Sherlock stepped to one side. Mr Surd swung around to track him. The metal tip of the whip scraped along the ground as the man moved.

Surd’s face was a mask of polite indifference, but the scars criss-crossing his scalp were red and inflamed with anger.

“Did the Baron give you a hard time?” Sherlock taunted. “Letting us escape like that couldn’t have done much for your reputation. I’ll wager the Baron discards useless servants like any other man throws away a used match.”

Surd’s face remained impassive, but his hand flicked and the whip lashed out. Sherlock jerked his head to one side a split second before the metal tip would have sliced his ear off.

“That’s a neat circus trick, but there’s any number of better tricks out there,” Sherlock went on, trying not to let his voice waver and betray him. “Perhaps Maupertuis could hire a knife-thrower next time.”

Again the whip flickered out, its tip snapping past Sherlock’s left ear with a crack that momentarily deafened him. He thought it had missed, but a sudden warm splatter of blood on his neck and a growing icy pain at the side of his head suggested that the metal tip had made contact. He staggered to one side, holding his hand to his ear. The pain wasn’t that great, not yet, but he wanted to change their positions and he wasn’t quite there yet.

“Every taunt that you throw in my direction is another strip of flesh I’ll peel from your face,” Surd said calmly. “You’ll be begging me to kill you, and I’ll just laugh. I’ll laugh.”

“Laugh while you can,” Sherlock said. “Perhaps I can persuade the Baron to employ me in your place. At least I’ve proved I’m more competent than you.”

“I’ll keep you alive just long enough for the girl to see what I’ve made of you,” Surd went on as if Sherlock hadn’t said anything. “She won’t want to look at you. She’ll scream at the sight of you. How will that feel, boy? How will it feel?”

“You talk a good fight,” Sherlock said. He took another step to one side. Surd moved as well.

The wooden boxes containing the trays of pollen were directly behind Sherlock now. He reached behind with his right hand, and let his questing fingers close around the edge of one of the trays. It was cold from the ice beneath it.

“What are you doing, boy?” Surd asked. “You think there’s anything there that will save you? You’re wrong. Wrong.”

“The only thing that will save me is my brain,” Sherlock said, bringing the tray around in front of him. Pollen spilt from it, yellow and powdery, making him cough. Surd struck out with his whip again, aiming for Sherlock’s right eye, but Sherlock held the tray up like a shield and the whip curled around it, the metal tip sinking into the wood and sticking. Sherlock tugged hard, pulling the handle of the whip from the grasp of the surprised Surd and throwing it to one side.

Surd bellowed like a bull and rushed forward, arms spread wide. Sherlock grabbed another tray from the box and smashed it over Surd’s head. The man reeled back, enveloped in choking yellow powder. If Surd survived, he would have even more scars on his scalp.

Of course, if Surd survived then Sherlock would probably be dead.

He stepped forward and grabbed Surd’s ears. Bringing his knee up, he banged Surd’s face down on to it. Surd’s nose broke with a crack just as loud as the one from his whip. He staggered backwards, blood waterfalling down his mouth and chin.

Before Surd could attack again, Sherlock grabbed the whip from the floor and pulled the metal tip from the wooden tray, disentangling the leather thong. As Surd, raging like a madman, surged out of the cloud of pollen towards Sherlock, he lashed out with it. He’d never used a whip before, but watching Surd had shown him how to do it. The whip curled out towards the bald thug, the metal tip slicing across his cheek. Surd was flung back by the impact.

Straight into one of the beehives.

It fell, and Surd fell with it, into it. The wooden slats burst apart as they hit the stone floor together, covering him in the gooey, waxy interior of the hive.

And bees. Thousands of bees.

They covered his face like a living hood, crawling into his nose and mouth and ears, stinging everywhere they went. He screamed; a thin, whistling sound that got louder and louder. And he rolled, trying to crush the bees but succeeding only in knocking another hive over.

Within moments, Mr Surd was invisible beneath a blanket of insects that were stinging every square inch of flesh they could find. His screams were muffled by the bees filling his mouth.

Sherlock backed away, horrified. He’d never seen anything like this before. He’d been fighting for his life, but what was happening to Surd was so terrible that he felt sick. He’d killed a man.

“I can’t leave you alone for a moment, can I?” Matty said from behind him.

“You think I like getting into fights?” Sherlock said, aware that his voice was trembling on the edge of hysteria. “They just seem to happen to me.”

“Well, you seem to acquit yourself all right,” Matty conceded.

“I know what to do,” Sherlock said, trying to get his voice under control. He indicated the clouds of yellow pollen dissipating through the cavernous space inside the fort. “There’s trays of pollen stacked up in those boxes. We need to spread that pollen through this place.”

“Why?” Matty asked.

“Remember what you told me about the bakery in Farnham?” Sherlock asked.

Matty’s eyes lit up with understanding. “Got you,” he said. Then his face clouded over. “But what about us?”

“We have to stop this, and stop it now. We’re less important than the hundreds, maybe thousands of people who will die if we don’t stop it.”

“Even so...” Matty said. He suddenly grinned at Sherlock’s shocked expression. “Only kidding. Let’s get on with it.”

Together they grabbed as many trays of cold yellow pollen from the ice boxes as they could and ran through the aisles between the hives, letting the powder spill out in expanding clouds behind them. Within ten minutes the air was full of floating motes, and they could hardly see ten feet ahead of them. It was hard to breathe without choking. Sherlock grabbed Matty by the shoulder.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Blinded by clouds of pollen, they groped their way towards the corridor to the stairs, fighting their way through the yellow clouds, trying not to knock over any of the hives.

Sherlock’s foot kicked against something soft, and he almost fell over. Looking down he saw a puffy mass of red-splotched flesh that he just about recognized as Mr Surd’s face. Surd’s eyes were invisible in swollen folds of skin, and his mouth was full of dead bees.

In spite of everything, Sherlock felt a powerful urge to help the dying man, but it was too late. Feeling cold and sick inside, he kept going.

He came up against a stone wall. Left or right? He chose left, and guided Matty after him by grabbing his shirt and pulling.

It seemed like hours but was probably less than a minute before they found the corridor. Sherlock turned and looked back. There was nothing behind him but a roiling wall of yellow powder hanging in the air.

He reached out and took an oil lantern from the stone wall of the corridor. Weighing it in his hand, he thought about the bees, innocent of anything apart from just being themselves.

He had no choice.

He threw the lantern. It arced away into the cloud of pollen, and vanished. Moments later he heard the shattering of glass as it hit the flagstones.

Followed by a massive whump! as the pollen caught fire.

An unseen fist pushed Sherlock in the chest. He flew backwards, down the corridor. The very air in front of him seemed to be burning, and he felt his eyebrows and the hairs on his eyelids singeing. He hit the ground hard, and rolled. Matty landed on top of him.

The corridor behind them opened out on to an inferno of flames. Covering his mouth with his hand, Sherlock led Matty up the stairs to the top of the fort. Air rushed past them, feeding the fire beneath.

Guards were rushing back and forth, bellowing and panicking on the top of the fort. The sky was dark, with just a red line on the horizon showing where the sun had been. They paid no attention to the two boys who ran past them, climbed down the stairs to the sea and then into their rowing boat.

As they rowed away, Sherlock turned back to look. The entire fort was ablaze. Maupertuis’s thugs were throwing themselves off the top and into the water. Some of them were on fire, falling like shooting stars through the darkness into the sea.

It was a sight that Sherlock would never forget.

The journey to the English coast was a blur of aching arms, flash-burned skin and sheer exhaustion. Later, Sherlock would wonder how he and Matty ever made it without capsizing or getting lost and drifting out to sea.

Somehow Amyus Crowe had worked out where they would end up. Perhaps he had calculated it based on tides and wind direction, or perhaps he had just guessed. Sherlock didn’t know, and frankly didn’t care. He just wanted to be wrapped up in a blanket and helped to a comfortable bed, and for once what he wanted was what actually happened.

He woke the next morning with the gulls crying outside the bedroom window and the sun glinting off the sea and making rippling patterns on the ceiling of his room. He was starving. Throwing off the bedcovers he dressed in clothes that weren’t his, but were the right size and had been left on the back of a chair, waiting for him. He walked down stairs that he didn’t remember climbing up, to find himself in the parlour of a tavern that obviously rented out its rooms to travellers. And adventurers.

A stretch of open ground led away from the front of the tavern, and then the ground dropped sharply towards the sea. Sherlock had to screw his eyes up against the brightness of the sun. Matty Arnatt was sitting at a table outside, wolfing down a huge breakfast. Amyus Crowe was beside him, smoking a pipe.

“Mornin”,” Crowe said amiably. “Hungry?”

“I could eat a horse.”

“Best not let Ginnie hear you say that.” Crowe indicated a seat at the table. “Sit yourself down. Food will be ready soon.”

Sherlock sat. His muscles ached and his ears still rang from the explosion, and his eyes were dry and itchy. Somehow, he felt different. Older. He’d seen people die, he’d caused people to die, and he’d been drugged with laudanum and tortured with a whip. How could he go back to Deepdene School for Boys now?

“Did everything get sorted out?” he asked eventually.

“Your brother got the message we sent, and he went straight into action. I believe there’s a Navy ship headed out to the Napoleonic fort, but from what you murmured last night I guess they won’t find much but ashes. And even if the British government can persuade the French to check out Maupertuis’s chateau, I think they’ll find it empty. He’ll have got out, with his servants. But his plot has fallen apart like a house of cards in a strong breeze, thanks to you and Matthew here.”

“It would never have worked,” Sherlock said, remembering the confrontation between him, Virginia and the Baron. “Not the way he wanted it to.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I think some people would have died, and you saved them. You can thank yourself for that. And your brother will thank you too, when he arrives.”

“Mycroft is coming here?”

“He’s already on the train.”

A woman in an apron came out of the tavern carrying a plate that seemed to be laden with every possible item that a person could want for breakfast, plus several that Sherlock didn’t even recognize. She smiled, and put the plate in front of him.

“Tuck in,” Crowe said. “You deserve it.”

Sherlock paused for a moment. Everything around him seemed simultaneously overly sharp and yet slightly distanced.

“You OK?” Crowe said.

“I’m not sure,” Sherlock replied.

“You’ve been through a lot. You were knocked out, and you were drugged with laudanum, not to mention several fights and a long stretch of rowing. That’s all bound to have an effect on your system.”

Laudanum. Remembering the strange dreams that he’d had after he had been drugged, while he was being taken to France, Sherlock felt a twinge of — what? Melancholy, perhaps. Wistfulness. Surely not... longing? Whatever the feeling was, he pushed it away. He’d heard stories about people becoming dependent on the effects produced by laudanum, and he had no desire to go down that route. None at all.

“How’s Virginia?” he asked to break the mood.

“Annoyed that she missed all the fun. And missing her horse, of course. She wants to look around the town, but I said she can’t go alone. I guess she’ll be glad you’re awake.”

Sherlock gazed out at the sea. “I can’t believe it’s all over,” he said.

“It’s not,” Crowe said. “It’s part of your life now, and your life keeps on goin”. You can’t separate these events out as a story with a beginnin’ and an end. You’re a different person because of them, and that means the story will never really finish. But as your tutor, the question I have is, what did you learn from it all?”

Sherlock thought for a minute. “I learned,” he said eventually, “that bees are fascinating and sorely neglected creatures. I think I want to know more about them. Perhaps even try to change people’s opinions of them.” He grimaced. “I probably owe them that, having killed so many.” He glanced over at Matty Arnatt. “What about you, Matty? What did you learn?”

Matty looked up from his breakfast. “I learned,” he said, “that you need someone to look after you, otherwise your logical ideas are going to get you killed.”

“Are you volunteering for the position?” Amyus Crowe asked, eyes crinkling with good humour.

“Dunno,” Matty replied. “What’s the pay like?”

As Amyus laughed, and as Matty protested that he was serious, Sherlock gazed out at the constant, timeless sea, wondering what would happen next in his life. He felt as if he had been diverted on to a road that he hadn’t known existed. What would he find at the end of it?

Something moved to one side of his vision, attracting his attention. He glanced past the tavern, to where the road led away in two directions. A carriage was approaching — a black carriage drawn by two black horses. For a moment he thought that Mycroft had arrived, and he started to get up.

And then with a chill he saw a bone-white face and pink eyes glaring at him through the glass before a gloved hand firmly pulled down the blind as the carriage passed by, and he knew that he was right: things never would be the same again. Baron Maupertuis and the Paradol Chamber were still out there, and they would never rest.

Which meant that he could never rest either.