Snake Bite

CHAPTER SEVEN

It felt to Sherlock as if his heart had suddenly frozen over, and that the slightest movement might cause it to shatter. ‘He’s sick?’ Sherlock repeated. ‘But — but he was fine yesterday. I saw him.’ Despite the icy paralysis of his heart, he found that his mind was racing. Facts and memories were spinning past his mental gaze. Wu Chung hadn’t seemed ill on the Gloria Scott. When he had walked down the gangway and stepped on to dry land he had been fine — happy at the prospect of seeing his family, if slightly nervous. If there was some disease that was striking down the sailors then surely it should have taken hold on board the ship while they were at sea — and Sherlock should have been ill as well. All the sailors should have been ill — they had been together at sea for weeks on end. No, if he was ill then it was more likely that the cook had caught some local disease the moment he had stepped on to the quayside. But could a disease act that quickly? Sherlock asked himself.

The woman plucked at his sleeve. ‘Please, you must help!’

Cameron took a step backwards. ‘Look, Sherlock, if there’s some illness here then we should stay away. I’ve seen diseases go from person to person so fast in this town you would have to run to keep up.’

Sherlock looked around desperately, hoping someone else would interrupt with an offer of assistance, perhaps a passing doctor, but all of the locals were ignoring what was going on. They wouldn’t even make eye contact.

‘Is anyone else ill?’ Sherlock asked, ignoring Cameron’s suggestion.

The woman shook her head. ‘Nobody.’ She stepped back, obviously hoping that Sherlock would follow her. ‘Not me, not our son, and none of the neighbours in the street as far as I know.’ She glanced around bitterly. ‘Not that they are taking much notice now,’ she said, louder. ‘They’re frightened that Wu Chung has brought back some strange disease from foreign places. Cowards!’

Sherlock turned to glance at Cameron. ‘Look,’ he said urgently to the American boy, ‘Wu Chung is a friend of mine. Probably the best friend I’ve made for a while, apart from you. If he needs my help then I have to give it.’

‘If you want to do something to help,’ Cameron replied, shaking his head, ‘then you should get one of the local healers to take a look at him. You can’t do anything by yourself.’

Sherlock’s gaze switched from Cameron’s implacable expression to the near-panic on the face of Wu Chung’s wife, and back. ‘Let’s at least take a look. It might be something he ate.’

He gestured to the Chinese woman to lead the way into the house. She nodded, a flicker of gratitude momentarily displacing her worry.

‘And you can tell the difference between a stomach ache and a contagious illness how exactly?’ Cameron asked as Sherlock followed her into the darkened entrance.

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, ‘but I have to do something to help. Even if it’s just to reassure him. Or her.’

Cameron hesitated, shrugged, and followed Sherlock in. ‘This is stupid,’ he said quietly. ‘This is so stupid. My mother would have kittens if she found out.’

The interior of the house was cool and shadowed. It smelt strange, like sweet smoke. The walls were made from rough plaster, and there were paintings hanging on them, not on canvas and framed as they would have been in England, but on scrolls with wooden batons top and bottom to stop them from curling up. In the corners of the rooms, and set in niches in the walls, were small wooden figurines — dragons and fat men with loincloths. There were no chairs, just cushions on the tiled floor, and the tables were set low to the ground so that people could kneel at them or sit cross-legged.

‘You said you know my husband? We have never met, have we? You don’t live in Shanghai?’

‘I was on the ship with him,’ Sherlock replied. ‘The Gloria Scott. I said I would come and see him, once he had settled back at home.’

‘Ah — then you are Sherlock! He told us about you.’ She smiled briefly, before her face settled back into lines of concern. ‘He said that he hoped you would join us for a meal, because he had some news for you — but then he suddenly collapsed.’

‘Yes, I am Sherlock — and this is my friend Cameron.’

She nodded: a little bob of the head that seemed to involve her shoulders as well. ‘I am Tsi Huen.’

She led them down a passageway to what was obviously a bedroom. The bed, like the tables in the first room, was set close to the floor. In contrast the windows were high up, well above the height of a man’s head.

Wu Chung was lying on the bed. Sweat covered his pockmarked face, and he was shaking. As Sherlock got closer he could see that the cook’s eyes were bloodshot.

‘My friend Sherlock!’ he exclaimed. He was obviously trying to sound hearty, but his voice was thin and strained.

‘Wu Chung — what happened?’

He shook his head. ‘I do not know. I went to sleep last night. I woke with a start early this morning, before the sun came up. I don’t know what it was that woke me, but when I tried to get out of bed I found that my legs would not hold me. I collapsed, and I started to shake. It feels like fire is running through my veins! And my mouth is drier than a desert!’

A boy came in through the doorway. He was about the same age as Sherlock and Cameron: Chinese, of course, thinner than Wu Chung but with similar features and hair. Wu Chung’s son, Sherlock assumed. He was carrying a pitcher of water which he held out towards his father. The expression on his face was like his mother’s: panic, barely under control.

‘Here, drink this. I got it for you from the well.’

Wu Chung grabbed at the pitcher and drained it in three great gulps. He wiped his hand across his damp mouth. ‘That helps,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He glanced up at Sherlock, and smiled. ‘I was hoping that I would see you,’ he said. He patted the bed beside him. ‘Come, Sherlock, sit. There was something I wanted to tell you, and there is a message I need you to take for me.’

‘What is it?’ Sherlock asked.

‘The thing I wanted to tell you was that I won’t be on the Gloria Scott when she sails.’

‘I know you don’t feel like it,’ Sherlock said, trying to sound reassuring, ‘but you’re going to get through this. I promise.’

‘No, I mean I was offered another job.’

‘As a cook?’ Sherlock asked, surprised.

‘Yes. On board that big ship we saw in the harbour yesterday. The American one.’

‘The USS Monocacy?’ Sherlock shook his head, trying to imagine Wu Chung cooking for hundreds of American Navy personnel rather than a few tens of English sailors. ‘How did that happen?’

Wu Chung glanced over at his wife, and smiled. ‘Talking to Tsi Huen yesterday, when I arrived home, she persuaded me not to go away for such a long time again. She told me that I needed to be here for Wu Fung-Yi while he is growing up.’ Wu coughed, blocking his lips with the back of his hand. ‘I knew she was right, so while she cooked dinner I walked back to the harbour to see if anyone else was looking for a cook. In a bar near the wharf I found that the American warship was seeking an assistant cook. I signed up straight away.’ He smiled. ‘They desperately need a man who knows what he is doing. I have discovered that the new Head Cook has ordered far too many barrels of fresh water. Hundreds of them! The ship is heading up the Yangtze River — they will have all the fresh water they want! I told him it was too much, but he wouldn’t listen to me.’

‘Did you tell Captain Tollaway that you wouldn’t be coming back?’

‘I sent a message to Mr Larchmont. I know he and the Captain will understand.’ He glanced up at his wife. ‘I have spent too long away already. I have missed so much of their lives. The American ship is sailing up the Yangtze River for the next few weeks. I will be back before anyone misses me, and then I will look for other opportunities in Shanghai.’

‘But when does it sail?’ Sherlock asked. He felt saddened at the fact that he would not be sharing the voyage back to England with his friend.

‘Tomorrow,’ Wu said. His face was ashen. ‘But I will not be able to make it. Not the way I am feeling now. And a cook who is ill is a cook that nobody wants preparing their food. I need you to take a message to the Captain of the Monocacy. Tell him that he will need to find another assistant cook.’

If he can, at such short notice, Sherlock thought, but he smiled reassuringly at Wu Chung. ‘I’ll take the message,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you can find another job locally without much trouble.’

Wu shook his head. ‘Not the way I am feeling right now.’

‘Have you eaten anything that might have caused this?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Nothing that my family haven’t eaten as well.’ His face spasmed, and he suddenly twisted sideways and brought up the water that he had drunk moments before on to the floor. Tsi Huen stepped forward to take his shoulders.

As he settled back into the bed, pale and shaking, Sherlock noticed something on his back. He only saw it for a moment, as Wu Chung’s cotton shirt shifted, but it caught his attention.

‘Lean forward,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Lean forward!’

Tsi Huen and her son glanced at each other, puzzled. Wu Chung stared at Sherlock for a moment, then he nodded. His wife and son helped him as he sat up in the bed and leaned forward. Sherlock peeled the damp cloth away from his shoulder.

There, below Wu Chung’s neck and above his right shoulder blade, were two red marks. One was small and neat while the other was larger and had ragged edges. The two marks were about an inch apart, and the skin all around them was marked with a red rash.

Tsi Huen gasped. ‘Snake bite!’ she cried. She leaped back from the bed, staring horrified at the tiled floor. ‘Fung-Yi — get back! It might be under the bed.’

Sherlock’s body wanted to jump back as well, but his mind was fascinated by the idea that there might be a venomous reptile underneath the low bed. With body and mind fighting, he froze in place. It took Cameron grabbing his shoulder and physically pulling him to make him move.

Wu Chung drew his knees up to his chest and glanced around nervously. ‘I didn’t feel any bite,’ he said.

Safely five feet away from the darkness underneath the bed, Sherlock dropped to his knees and peered into the shadows, ready in case something lashed out at him. But there was nothing. The space beneath the bed was empty.

He stood up, shaking his head. ‘If there was a snake there then, it’s gone now.’

‘Of course there was a snake!’ Tsi Huen exclaimed. ‘You saw those marks!’ She wailed in anguish. ‘How could this happen to us?’

Looking around the room, Sherlock wondered the same thing. ‘The windows are so high that I can’t see how a snake could climb up there,’ he mused, ‘and this bedroom is at the end of a corridor. The snake would have had to slither a long way to get here, and then slither a long way to get back. Why would it do something like that?’

‘Maybe it got in through a hole,’ Cameron suggested.

Sherlock looked around the room, at the line where the walls met the tiled floor. ‘Look at it,’ he said. ‘I can’t see any holes.’

‘There are no holes,’ Wu Chung’s son, Wu Fung-Yi, said proudly. ‘Mother made me fill them all up with clay so that rats and mice can’t get in. I check every week to make sure that no more holes have appeared.’

‘Good boy,’ Wu Chung said weakly, lying back down in the bed. His face was grey and sallow.

‘When did you last check?’ Sherlock asked.

‘Yesterday,’ the boy said.

Cameron looked around. He hefted his stick. ‘I’ll check the other rooms, in case it’s still here.’ He looked at Tsi Huen. ‘If that’s all right with you?’

She nodded. ‘Be careful.’

‘Look under all the furniture,’ Sherlock cautioned.

Wu Chung’s son stepped forward. ‘I will help,’ he announced. ‘Two sets of eyes are better than one.’ He nodded soberly at Cameron.

Tsi Huen seemed about to object, but a look from her husband made her close her mouth. ‘Let him go,’ Wu Chung said, voice weak. ‘He is a brave boy, and I am very proud of him.’

Cameron and Wu Fung-Yi left the room, cautiously glancing around. Wu Chung gestured Sherlock and Tsi Huen closer to the bed.

‘Best that he is not here,’ he said. ‘I do not want him to see me like this.’ He coughed, and Sherlock was shocked to see blood on his lips. ‘Maybe it would have been better if I was ill. With a snake bite, there is no recovery. Do not let him back in. No child should have to watch his father die.’

Tsi Huen cried out, then stifled the cry with the back of her hand. Her eyes were wide and scared.

‘You’re not going to die,’ Sherlock said with more firmness than he felt. Looking at Wu, he thought the man might be right, and he suddenly felt tears springing to his eyes. ‘We need to get you a healer,’ he said. ‘Where can we find one?’ He caught Tsi Huen’s eye. ‘Cameron and I will go and fetch the healer. We’ll take Wu Fung-Yi with us.’

Tsi Huen nodded her gratitude, tears in her eyes. Sherlock could see that she knew what Sherlock was doing — giving her a chance to say goodbye to her husband, if indeed he was dying.

Cameron and Wu Fung-Yi came back into the bedroom. ‘No snakes,’ Wu’s son announced proudly. ‘We checked everywhere.’ He glanced over at his father, and his eyes were suddenly sorrowful. He suspected what was happening as well.

‘We’re going for a healer,’ Sherlock announced.

Tsi Huen wrote a quick note on a scrap of paper with an inked brush. ‘Here,’ she said, giving it to Cameron. ‘This is the address, and a note for the healer. Be quick. Be as quick as you can.’ She frowned at Cameron. ‘You can read hanzi?’

He nodded, and scanned the note. ‘I know where this is,’ he confirmed.

Sherlock gazed over at Wu Chung. He nodded a farewell. The cook nodded back, smiling weakly.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

The daylight outside was blinding, and it took a moment for their eyes to adjust. Cameron led the way quickly down the street. Wu Fung-Yi brought up the rear, glancing back at the house where his father lay ill. Possibly dying.

‘Are there a lot of poisonous snakes in China?’ Sherlock shouted to Cameron as they ran.

‘Some,’ Cameron called back over his shoulder. ‘Usually out in the countryside. I’ve not heard of any coming into the towns. Not without ending up in a cooking pot, anyway.’

‘The Chinese eat snakes?’ Sherlock questioned.

Cameron nodded. ‘The Chinese eat anything.’

At first Cameron led the way through the crowded streets, but Wu Fung-Yi kept trying to overtake him. ‘I know where we are going!’ he shouted.

Cameron jostled his way back to the leading position a couple of times, but eventually Sherlock caught him by the shoulder. ‘Let him be at the front,’ he said. ‘He needs to feel like he’s doing something to help his father.’

‘I suppose so,’ Cameron said, shrugging. ‘I’d probably feel the same.’

Eventually they arrived at a small shack that was set apart from the other buildings in the area. Charms and trinkets hung on strings from the roof, gently swinging in the breeze. Sherlock noticed that the garden around it, front and back, contained plants that were different from the flowering shrubs that everyone else seemed to cultivate. These plants mostly didn’t have flowers, or if they did then the flowers were dull and limp. They were thin, unimpressive things, more like weeds than anything that someone would want to keep around.

Wu Fung-Yi ran up to the doorway. There was no door: just a thin blanket that hung down over the opening. He banged on the door frame.

‘Please!’ he called. ‘Honourable sir — we need your help!’

As Sherlock and Cameron joined Wu Fung-Yi, an elderly man pulled back the blanket. He was, perhaps, the oldest human being that Sherlock had ever seen. His skin was the texture of leather that had been crumpled up and left to dry out in the sun. His eyes were almost invisible behind a landscape of wrinkles that reminded Sherlock of cracks in the mud of a dried-up pond. He had a thin, white moustache that hung down on either side of his mouth to his collarbones. His head was almost bald apart from a white ponytail, barely larger than the strands of his moustache, which decorated the back of his head. When he opened his mouth to speak, Sherlock saw that he only had one tooth left, and his gums were black.

‘Who are you, to disturb my sleep?’ he grumbled in a high-pitched voice.

Wu Fung-Yi bowed quickly. ‘My apologies, venerable healer. My father is ill. My mother sent me to beg for your help.’

The old man stared at Wu Fung-Yi for a long moment, his eyes mere glints of light in the dark folds of his eyelids. Stepping out into the garden, he moved his head to stare at Sherlock and Cameron. He was holding a wooden stick in his hand, and used it to support his weight. It was twisted, like a tree root. ‘So, foreign devils as well,’ he said casually. ‘Interesting days. Interesting days indeed.’

Wu Fung-Yi turned to look at the two boys. ‘They were visiting,’ he said, half apologetically. ‘They followed me here.’

Cameron seemed about to argue, so Sherlock poked him in the back. He shut his mouth, and handed over the scrap of paper that Tsi Huen had given him.

The old man unfolded it and read it. He nodded slowly. ‘Snake bite, eh? Very serious. Very expensive to treat.’

Wu Fung-Yi bristled. ‘We can pay!’ he protested.

‘If he can’t I can,’ Cameron said. He turned to look at Sherlock. ‘Hey, I may think this whole thing is stupid but I’m not going to let your friend die if I can help it.’

‘Thanks,’ Sherlock said. ‘I appreciate that.’

‘Let me get the things I will need,’ the old man said. Rather than turn back inside the shack, as Sherlock had expected him to do, he walked across to his garden. Bending over with the flexibility of a man a third his age, he took hold of various plants, checked their leaves and stems, and either pulled them out of the ground or left them and moved on. Eventually he had ten or so plants dangling from his hand.

‘Medicine,’ he said, waving the plants at the boys. ‘Very good for snake bites and insects.’

The return journey was slower than the journey there. The old man walked faster than Sherlock had expected from the look of him, but he couldn’t run. Or wouldn’t run: Sherlock wasn’t sure which. He even stopped once or twice to talk to people that he recognized on the way, and Wu Fung-Yi had to virtually drag him away from the conversation in order to get him going again.

When they got to East Renmin Street, Tsi Huen was standing outside the door of the house. Her hands were fluttering like birds as she gazed along the street. When she caught sight of the three boys and the elderly healer her hands leaped up to her throat in relief.

‘How is Father?’ Wu Fung-Yi called as he got closer.

She winced. ‘No better.’ She placed her hands together and bowed to the ancient healer as he got to the doorstep. ‘Thank you for coming. I am in your debt.’

He bowed his head to her. ‘Let us see what can be done,’ he replied. ‘I make no promises.’

He entered the house, using his cane for support. Tsi Huen followed him, hands still fluttering. Wu Fung-Yi moved towards the door, but Sherlock put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Wait here, with us,’ he said. ‘The healer needs to work, and you might distract him. Besides, your mother needs to worry about your father, not about you.’

Wu Fung-Yi turned to look at Sherlock. His eyes were shiny with tears. ‘But… but he might die.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘Yes, he might, and if he does you shouldn’t be there. You should remember him the way he was.’

The time seemed to trickle past slowly. The three of them sat outside, waiting. At one point Cameron wandered off, and returned a few minutes later with a watermelon which he proceeded to cut up with a pocket knife. The boys sucked the moisture out of the slices. There was little talking.

Tsi Huen came out of the house a short while after they had finished the watermelon. She looked tired, strained.

‘How…?’ Wu Fung-Yi started to ask, but he couldn’t finish the question.

Tsi Huen shrugged. ‘He is very ill,’ she said quietly. ‘The healer is doing everything he can.’

She went back inside, and the boys went back to waiting.

After another hour or so, the healer came to the door. He gestured to Sherlock. ‘You — foreign devil — you look intelligent. You remember where my house is?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sherlock replied. ‘I think so.’

‘Very important — you need to go there now, quickly, and get a plant from the garden. It is a tall plant, up to your waist, with small blue flowers and leaves that are curled up. You understand?’

I understand,’ Sherlock said. He nodded towards Wu Fung-Yi. ‘But shouldn’t he go? I mean, he knows the town better than I do. He won’t get lost.’

The healer gazed at Wu Fung-Yi with an unreadable expression on his face. ‘He needs to be here,’ he said quietly. ‘In case…’

‘I understand.’ Sherlock glanced at Cameron. ‘But even he knows the town better than I do.’

‘Yes,’ the healer said, ‘but he does not look as intelligent as you do. He might bring back the wrong plant. Now go.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sherlock ran off, retracing the journey that he and the other two boys had made earlier. He ran as fast as he could, heart pounding in his chest and veins pumping in his neck and his temples. When he got to the old man’s shack he stopped for a second, hands on knees as he sucked as much air into his burning lungs as he could. As soon as he was able to move again he ran into the garden and quickly sorted through the plants. Too tall… too short… flowers not blue… leaves not curly… yes! There was one plant, over near the fence, which matched the healer’s description. Sherlock pulled it from the soil and ran back with it.

When he got to Wu Chung’s house, Cameron and Wu Fung-Yi were standing outside with Tsi Huen. She was sitting on the front step, crying. Wu Fung-Yi’s hand was resting on her shoulder. He was crying as well.

Cameron walked over to Sherlock.

‘He’s dead,’ he said, and the sound of the two simple words was like stones dropping heavily to the ground.