Eye of the Crow (2 page)

“Irregulars!” hisses Malefactor. And in an instant they are gone.

When five o’clock comes, Sherlock wants to stay in the square; never go home. Why should he go home to sadness, to hopelessness, to Rose and Wilber Holmes? Better to be
here on the streets near the thrills and the successes, where he’s seen so many fascinating and frightening things. He saw Lewis Carroll, one day, carrying his
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
in his very hand; another time, Disraeli, the greatest politician in the land, strolling quietly through the Square; Anna Swan the Giantess with her head high above the crowd, the amazing high-rope star, Blondin, and the one and only Mr. Dickens, his black goatee streaked with gray, his eyes on fire. He’s seen the Square packed with protestors shouting at the government to change its ways, and filled with citizens roaring for the feats of the Empire. He’s seen the black-faced chimney sweeps, the deformed beggars, and the pick pockets of the streets. Why should he go home?

But he always goes. When Big Ben, the clock tower at the Parliament Buildings, strikes 5:00, he flies, intent on getting back before his parents, so they will think he’s been to school. For many months now, he’s been truant. In his heart, he knows they more than suspect him: they see right through him. It can’t continue. If he doesn’t go to school, he will have to work. The family needs his contribution. He will have to accept his lot among the poor working classes of London.

Dark clouds are gathering.

Sherlock realizes that his heart is racing, that it’s been pumping faster since the moment he opened
The Illustrated Police News.
Something is burning inside him.

He looks down at the newspaper: he crushes it tightly strangling the word
murder
in a fist.

A DARK PAST

B
ig Ben strikes 5:00. Sherlock starts to run, following the familiar route over the wide stone bridge,
The Police News
still in his hand.

He has it timed. Two hundred sprinting strides across the bridge through the crowds take less than two minutes. East along the brown Thames, past ominous old Clink Prison to Borough High Street, is a thousand fast footfalls: eight minutes. Borough is a wide thoroughfare and as respectable as Southwark gets, but his home is off it, seven narrow streets farther south, near a terrible neighborhood known as The Mint.

Dark, stone railway bridges loom here and there over the streets. The piercing screams of steam locomotives often cut through the air, making pedestrians jump out of their skins.

Sherlock sticks to the warren of alleys and lanes along Boroughs west side, keeping up his speed so the urchins, the beggars, the thieves of the slums can’t knock him down and rob him.

It starts to drizzle. A London day isn’t complete without a little rain.

He always smells his neighborhood before he sees it: fish and vegetables being sold at the intersection near his street, sour odors wafting from the tanneries nearby hanging rabbit meat, pigs’ heads, or cold mutton at the local butcher shops. He hears familiar curses in the air.

As he nears home, his fear of being recognized grows. If anyone sees him, slows him down, he won’t make it on time. He took too long reading about the murder, but he couldn’t stop himself

Folks around here know he should be in school and will tell his parents if they spot him. He drops his chin down to his chest as he rushes on, wishing he could withdraw his head into his neck-tied collar like a turtle.

“Sherlock!” a voice shouts.

It sounds like someone his age: maybe a schoolmate. He keeps running. But a little farther on, he slows when he sees a group of boys he knows, playing skittles in a lot where a building was recently knocked down, in preparation for another new rail line. The boys are using an old human skull for a ball, bowling it into bones they have set up as pins, all unearthed from a pauper’s gravesite, and …

Suddenly Sherlock crashes headlong into something and goes sprawling off the foot pavement onto the street. He glances up.

It’s Ratfinch.

He’s the neighborhood fishmonger, and today he’s carrying two barrels full of eels on his cart. They are tasty when fried over the fire with drippings, but they’re slimy now, wriggling around on the boy as he lies on his back, stunned. His coat is drenched.

“Master ’olmes? … What in the …? Ain’t you supposed to be …?” Ratfinch has a huge scar on his left cheek, made by a fishing hook. The wound cuts all the way across his face in a deep groove.

Sherlock springs to his feet, grasping at the eels, trying to grip the big slippery worms and drop them back into the monger’s barrels – a passerby rights the containers on the street. The boy is growing frantic. Now he’s
very late.
He mumbles an apology and escapes, wiping his coat with his hands as he scrambles away, praying the old material will dry quickly.

“Holmes!” yells one of the boys from the skittles game, rushing toward him. Sherlock lowers his head and runs.

Their home is just off the main thoroughfare, in a row of shops that line the road leading to the frightening lanes of The Mint. Almost everything is made of brick or stone here, but these buildings, built in the late 1600s, are all made of wood: the ground floor shops with bulging, latticed windows, the first floor flats above, with small, decaying insides.

He approaches their lodgings at a desperate sprint and slips down the little alley that turns off their street and goes along the back of the shops. It is barely wider than his scrawny shoulders. He whips past the back of the butcher’s,
the baker’s, and then his own building, the old hatter’s smells drifting out. He climbs over the crumbling brick wall at the rear. There is a rickety staircase a few steps away that rises to the only entrance to their flat. He ascends on the fly. At the top, on a sort of tiny landing, barely wide enough for a man to stand on, Sherlock can see back down the alley in the direction he has come. What he glimpses when he looks turns his face whiter than its usual hue: his parents, hand in hand, entering the passageway. They often meet on Borough and come home together. He is just seconds ahead!

The family door is never locked. No one would steal anything they have. His long white fingers fumble at the latch as his parents come closer. He presses his thumb down on the metal, lifting the little bar inside to release the catch. But he is too anxious, lets go too soon, and it catches again. He leans on the wooden door, but it won’t open. He hears them talking, getting closer. He struggles with the latch once more. His hands are shaking. He calms himself, presses the latch down slowly, gently pushes the door open, and slips inside. The flat is a small room with a smaller one leading off to his right. The boards squeak as he rushes across the main room, throws himself on his little frame straw bed against the wall, and seizes one of his father’s books from the shelf above him. He is still breathing hard.

The latch gently lifts. The door creaks open and closes.

“Sherlock? Are you home?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Hello, son.”

“Father.”

Wilberforce Holmes – tall, lean and dark – examines him closely. His powers of observation are at least as acute as his son’s: his gift to him. But he doesn’t need to be a detective to sense what is amiss about the boy today.

“What do I smell?” he asks suspiciously. “Fish?”

“Ratfinch is nearby” says Sherlock nonchalantly get ting up so he can put his back to his father. “I just passed him.” The boy grimaces to himself, realizing that this doesn’t make much sense. The fishmonger’s smells, mixed with all the other odors outside, wouldn’t penetrate these walls.

His father observes him. “Are you out of breath?”

“No.”

How long can he keep his back turned? His coat is still wet in front from the eels, but only in front. Will they believe it’s the rain? How often does it rain on just one side of your clothes?

“How was school?” continues his father.

“Instructive.”

His parents don’t smile. There is silence as they look at each other, still holding hands.

“So … what did you study today?” asks his mother, forcing a happier tone.

“Same old things.”

Mr. Holmes has had enough. “Should I ask your headmaster?”

“No … don’t … I … I was rushing home from over the river to get here first.” He confesses. “I collided with Mr. Ratfinch.”

The disappointment is written on their faces.

“At least try,” pleads his mother as she sighs and undoes her purple bonnet, a fancy hat for a woman of her station, a relic now becoming worn, from her earlier life. Her face is still attractive, though the lines are deepening, and her hands are growing rougher.

An image of the murdered woman, as pretty as his mother once was, appears in his mind. Sherlock pushes it aside and tries to think only of Rose, long ago. He glances at the fading little painting they keep on their rough sideboard … his beautiful young mother, the nightingale.

He often imagines her in those golden days.

Her name was once Rose Sherrinford and she had been the jewel in her parents’ life, their only daughter, destined for heaven on earth. The Sherrinfords were country squires with a mixture of French in their blood. Along with her refined education and beauty, Rose carried with her a dowry of many thousands of pounds, a prize for any properly placed young English gentleman. But she was a restless spirit who dreaded living an arranged life. She loved to sing and dreamt of joining The Royal Opera Company at Covent Garden, though she knew it was an “improper” role for a high-born young lady. All her parents would allow her was training. The best voice coaches in England molded her and soon she sang like an angel, but only at social gatherings at home. She memorized all the great roles, idolized the famous
mezzo-sopranos, and never missed a production at the Opera House. She bristled at the way her parents caged her. But they were sure these feelings would pass – a man of position would sweep her away from all her un natural inclinations.

Then the Jew arrived.

Wilber Holmes was a genius. Chemistry was his forte, but the mysteries of all the sciences were unlocked with mere flicks of his mind. Ornithology intrigued him the most. He loved the power of flight. But as the son of a poor immigrant Jew, an Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe at that, there was little opportunity to fly. Wilber’s father had changed the family’s very name to make them feel at home and proclaim their loyalty to England:
Holmes.
And he called his son Wilberforce (“It’s unusual – be proud of the way it marks you.”) after the great English believer in racial equality, and walked the boy to the Jews’ Free School each day, prodding him to win top honors. But it wasn’t enough. Despite Wilber’s skill, the road to higher education – the chance to really get somewhere – looked blocked. In his youth during the 1840s, people of his race and social class were not allowed into the great schools of Oxford and Cambridge.

Still, the young man searched for a chance. He found one at The University College of London, a younger city school, and as he neared the end of a stellar student career, he became a teacher in training.
Professor Holmes,
he often wrote on scraps of paper, and smiled.