Eye of the Crow

“Good morning, you two. Let’s see what’s in the news.”

He unfolds the paper. The front page shouts at him.

MURDER!

Under the headline is a lurid drawing of a beautiful young woman lying on a London street, soaked in a pool of blood.

The crows shriek and fly off. Sherlock reads on.

It had happened east of the old part of the city in the dead of night. No one had seen it or even heard a scream. A long, sharp knife had been used.

Sherlock turns the page. He devours the story: a lady of mysterious social status, no name revealed, no known enemies. He realizes with a start that she looks like his mother.

The boy hears people talking as they walk by.

“That poor woman.”

“Must have been a street person, a foreigner.”

“There’s that dreadful boy sitting there again. I wish he’d move on.”

“Were they crows? That’s not a good sign.”

“Dodgers they are. Nothing but gypsies, I say. Here they come! I’ll call the constables.”

Sherlock glances up. It’s the Trafalgar Square Irregulars. He can almost smell them.

“Master Sherlock Holmes, I perceive,” says a dark-haired, tough-looking boy at the head of a dirty gang who are smaller copies of their leader. He is dressed in a worn-out long black coat with tails, a dark stovepipe hat is perched at an angle on his head, and he carries a crude walking stick in his hand. “I think you’re sitting in our spot.”

They’ve never sat here, nor will they today. They gather around and loom over him.

“My dear Malefactor …” replies Sherlock. He waves at the Irregulars, “… and friends.”

“At least I have some.”

“Quite.”

“Move! Or we’ll beat on you again.”

“’alf-breed Jew-boy!” snarls a nasty one named Grimsby, of whom Holmes is always wary. His yellow, sharp-pointed teeth look like a ferret’s, ready to bite.

Sherlock gets to his feet and straightens his third-hand clothes. He hates Malefactor; hates him with the deepest admiration.

“Seen this?” he asks, holding up The Illustrated Police News.

“Slit ’er from stem to gudgeon, ’e did! Right steady job!” shouts Grimsby.

The boys laugh.

“It isn’t funny,” says Malefactor, silencing them. “It isn’t right.”

“What’s the word?” asks Holmes, aware that the young swell mobsman and his gang know every rumor that creeps through the alleys of London.

“For the streets to know … and keep to themselves,” says Malefactor. “I don’t like the –”

“I know,” sighs Sherlock, “I know … you don’t like the look of me.”

There is something vaguely similar about the two boys, though the gang leader is a little older and speaks with a barely detectable Irish lilt. It goes beyond their dark looks. It is in their way of expressing themselves and the careful manner they dress in their tattered clothes. They both know it, but Malefactor doesn’t like it.

“You’ll never be an Irregular. Not you, Sherlock Holmes.”

“And yet, I’m as irregular as I can be.”

A constable is coming, dressed in his coxcomb helmet and long blue overcoat with a neat vertical line of shining buttons. He carries a hard wooden truncheon in his hand. He is watching the carriages rolling past, looking for his opportunity to approach.

“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

Big 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.