His neck was throbbing, and his ankles had been scraped raw by the rope. Whenever he took a breath he could feel a catch in his throat, as if the cartilage had been pushed in. Worse than the physical damage, however, was the feeling of helplessness that had flooded over him when he was hanging there, in the tenement room. He’d been close to death before, but he’d always felt that there was something he could do, some way he could fight. Before he had remembered the knife in his pocket –
If he hadn’t kept Matty’s knife, if his friend hadn’t told him to hang on to it, then he wouldn’t have had any way out. He would be dead by now.
On such trivial things survival can rest. The thought made him feel uneasy. He looked at Rufus, who was also injured, and wondered if he felt the same.
It took half an hour, and two wrong turns, before they were back at the park near Princes Street.
‘Right,’ Rufus said. ‘Where now?’
Sherlock looked at Matty. ‘Do you want to tell him?’ he challenged. ‘After all,
‘Nah.’ Matty smiled. ‘You go ahead.’
‘They’re hiding in a place called Cramond. I’ve looked on the map, and I know the way. It’ll probably take us an hour or so to get there.’
‘We’ll grab some food first,’ Stone said, ‘and clean ourselves up. I don’t know about you lads, but I’m starved.’
After they had done both, Matty purloined a scarf from somewhere, and Sherlock used it to cover the marks on his neck. Then, with Sherlock directing, Rufus steered the cart out of the city. It took a while to get past the houses and out into the countryside, and for the first half-hour or so Sherlock was aware of the dark shape of Edinburgh Castle looming over them, perched on its massive crag of rock. The low grey skies matched Sherlock’s mood. What had started as an adventure to find his friends now seemed like something much darker and more unpleasant. There were people out there who wanted to hurt Amyus Crowe, that much was sure. The question was, why? But whatever the reason, it looked as if Sherlock had unwittingly led them right to him. All he could do now was to get to Amyus Crowe before his enemies could work out where he was.
Sherlock looked back along the road as they moved. He was looking for carts or carriages or horses keeping their distance but not dropping too far back. He couldn’t see anything, but he felt that he had to do more to identify possible followers. Twice he got Rufus to pull off the road and hide the cart behind a barn for twenty minutes while he carefully watched every vehicle and rider that went past. He didn’t recognize anyone, and nobody looked confused at the fact that the people they were following had suddenly vanished.
At one point, while they were waiting, Sherlock leaned across to Rufus. ‘I thought you might have been taken by the Paradol Chamber, back on the train,’ he said.
‘Why would you think that? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since Moscow – apart from that attempt they made to have you diagnosed insane and locked away.’
Sherlock grimaced, remembering. ‘I thought I saw Mr Kyte at Newcastle Station. He was standing behind a pile of luggage, and he was staring straight at me.’ He paused, aware of a tightness in his chest. ‘I thought maybe the Paradol Chamber had decided to take some kind of revenge against us for messing up their plans. I think they still want to get even with me, and with you.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Rufus said, shrugging, ‘I didn’t see Mr Kyte on the station. If I had, I would have taken that great red beard of his and shoved as much of it as I could as far down his throat as I could reach. Take my advice, Sherlock – never trust a red-headed man, or a red-headed woman. They’re born for trouble.’
‘Virginia has red hair,’ Sherlock pointed out.
Rufus turned to fix Sherlock with a warning expression. ‘In that case, my friend, you have a problem.’
Uncomfortable at the way the conversation had turned back to him, Sherlock said quickly, ‘What do you think these people want with Mr Crowe?’
‘The same thing you seem to think the Paradol Chamber want with us – revenge.’
‘But what’s Mr Crowe done to them?’
‘Amyus Crowe is a complicated beast,’ Rufus replied. ‘On the one hand he’s civilized and fair-minded and very genteel. On the other . . .’ He paused. ‘Let’s put it this way – I think if we knew more about Mr Crowe’s past we might not like everything we found.’
‘He told us that he used to be a spy for the Union against the Confederacy during the War Against the States,’ Sherlock protested. ‘And after that he was responsible for tracking down Confederate criminals who had looted and pillaged civilian towns during the War.’
‘Yes,’ Rufus admitted, ‘he did tell us that. But he didn’t tell us the lengths he went to in order to recover those criminals, and he didn’t tell us how many of them he managed to bring back to face trial and how many happened to die in shootouts before he could take them captive. Remember, Sherlock, the man is a bounty hunter. He hunts men for money.’ He sighed. ‘Except that in this case it would appear that men are hunting him, and not for money. They want payback.’
‘You don’t like him, do you?’
Rufus smiled. ‘Ah, you picked up on that, did you? No, he’s not the kind of man I would choose to sit with over a tavern table, with beer in our glasses and tobacco in our pipes. I don’t think we would have much to talk about, but I think we would have a lot to argue about. I have a strong respect for the sanctity of human life, whereas I think Mr Crowe would have no problems in taking another man’s life for little provocation. What’s worse, he doesn’t like music.’
Sherlock was quiet for a while, digesting what Rufus Stone had said. He couldn’t find fault in his logic or his description of Amyus Crowe, but neither could he square the harsh words with the genial smile that he had seen on Mr Crowe’s face or the way he had taken Sherlock under his wing and looked after him. Were all people like this – complicated, not easily understood? If that was the case, what about Rufus Stone himself? Or Mycroft?
Or himself.
He thrust the thought aside. He would rather believe that what people displayed on the surface was what they really were.
‘How many of these Americans do you think are over here in England, hunting Mr Crowe?’ he said eventually.
‘Impossible to say,’ Rufus mused. ‘There were three in the tenement room. Add that to the driver of the leader’s carriage – assuming he was part of the gang, and not just someone hired for the day – and we get two left that we know of. Trouble is, there might be others we
‘There were two carrying me,’ Sherlock said.
‘And two carrying me,’ Matty added.
‘So that’s at least four people still at large. Problem is, if the man in charge came over here with money, then he could just hire whatever support he needed of any nationality. There’s people in every major town and city in the British Isles that would murder their own grandmothers for an evening’s drinking and gambling.’ He sighed. ‘There’s no end of bad men out there, and a precious shortage of good men to fight them.’
‘That’s all right,’ Sherlock said. ‘One good man is worth ten bad ones.’
Matty snorted, and Rufus eyed him sceptically. ‘If only the world worked that way, things would be a lot better.’
‘When I grow up,’ Sherlock murmured, ‘I’m going to
‘You know,’ Rufus said, smiling at him strangely, ‘I think you just might. You and your brother between you, but in radically different ways.’
‘But I’m not going to work for the Government like Mycroft does.’
‘Why not?’ Matty asked.
‘I don’t like taking orders,’ Sherlock said darkly. ‘Not from anyone. I know that sometimes I have to, but I don’t like it.’
When they got back on the road there was nobody in sight. It looked as if they had got away from the city without being spotted.
The landscape was a mixture of rough patches of scrubland and outcroppings of rock. The terrain undulated such that they were never on a level road for more than a few minutes, and their path detoured to get around some of the bigger rocky areas.
