Eye of the Crow

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.

Then everything changed.

An admirer of his abilities took him to the opera. There he looked up from his seat to the nearest balcony and saw her, in a gleaming white box above him, her blonde hair shining and blue eyes glistening, the soaring violins of Rossini’s The Thieving Magpie a perfect background for her beauty. She was mouthing every word, dreaming she was on that stage.

He couldn’t help staring. Somehow, she felt his gaze. Soon she was looking back at a dark man with dark hair and eyes, the intelligence, the gentleness and kindness just glowing there. Her free spirit flew to him.

“You were at the front of your form when you tried. The headmaster wanted you for pupil teacher.”

The boy shakes himself out of his daydream. His mother is still talking.

“You shall go out to work with your hands if you don’t attend,” adds his father sadly. “We pay much more than we can afford to keep you there, you know that. Most boys are gone well before your age.”