Eye of the Crow

Then everything comes back. The sound returns in a rush, time speeds up and he is running, crying out to Irene, his only friend.

But just as he nears her, he sees the first policeman, then another, then another, rushing to the scene. Sherlock halts as if a door has been slammed in his face. He turns and slips into the crowd.

Minutes later he is behind the pillars of an old bank a few streets away, standing in the shadows, ashamed and distraught, crying like he has never cried before.

NEW MORNING

He has nowhere to go. Nothing he can do. He can’t even speak with his parents. The extreme danger involved in his being anywhere near them now is obvious. He slips away to last night’s hiding place in that little lane near the rotting vegetables. Later he moves a few alleys farther north, props himself up against the gray stone wall of a building behind a broken-down horse trough and just sits there. All day he stares off into space, his eyes red and his brain numb. He can’t think anymore.

A sharp pain in his side wakes him in the morning. Malefactor is standing over him, instructing Grimsby

“Kick him again!” comes the order.

The little thug winds up for another boot to the ribs. Sherlock sees this one coming, but doesn’t flinch. Why should he? What is there to live or die for? He doesn’t care if Malefactor has him beaten to death right where he lies.

“Cease!” cries the gang leader, holding his walking stick high. The hard boot stops in midair. Grimsby looks disappointed and so does his general. A beating isn’t worthwhile if Holmes won’t resist.

“Don’t you have the self-respect to fight back?” asks Malefactor.

Sherlock merely sits up against the wall, rubbing his ribs. Malefactor kneels down and brings his face up close.

“You did not protect her!” he shouts, his yellow teeth flashing. He looks angrier than Sherlock has ever seen him. “You nearly killed my –” he stops himself, “an angel!”

Nearly?

Sherlock bounces to his feet.

“She’s alive?” he cries, returning Malefactor’s gaze.

“In the St. Bart’s ’ospital, she is, but …” pipes up a small Irregular.

Malefactor swings around and whacks the little boy across the mouth with his walking stick. The lad howls and shrinks away. The leader whirls back on Holmes.

“That is not the point! Your guardianship of Miss Irene Doyle was irresponsible and inadequate. I do not …”

But Sherlock is gone. Grimsby and Crew find themselves on the ground, knocked backwards, as the tall, thin boy darts through the encircled gang and flies away.

“Come back here!” bellows Malefactor. “Irregulars! Seize him!” But it is too late. The race is won before it begins.

St. Bartholomew’s is the oldest hospital in London, there in one form or another for more than seven hundred years. Sherlock runs until he is out of breath, until the sprawling ancient brick building comes into view beside the Smithfield Market. It is gathered around several blocks, with courtyards in the middle. There are many entrances. Sherlock goes past the main ones and selects a small door in a dark medieval archway. He doesn’t need to summon the courage to be here in plain view. He has to see Irene.

He has never been in a hospital before. They are mostly for the working classes, but not for the very poor, not for street people. Perhaps the nurses will throw him out. He’s splashed some water from a public pump over his face and rubbed the black off, tried to comb his torn hair with his hands, taken off his cap, stood up as straight as he can. But he is worried he won’t be allowed in the building for long.

Irene’s stay here will be brief. She was brought to a hospital because she was alone and unconscious; because it was a sudden and severe accident. Otherwise, she would have been taken back to Montague Street. People like Irene Doyle usually convalesce at home with physicians attending them around the clock.

Where will she be in the big building? He enters and rushes past the open door of a cavernous outpatient room with distraught folks sitting on wooden benches under an arched ceiling. Then he slips up a wide, stone stairway. He passes rooms for hospital matrons, others for students, chemical laboratories, physicians’ offices, and dun-colored doors with “Sister This-and-That” painted in clear letters. He tries to look like he has a purpose for being in these high, wide halls with the whitewashed walls. Everything smells clean. But he’s heard hospitals breed disease.

Maids move past him carrying mops, and nurses come by in uniforms bearing bottles of medicines. A few summon slight smiles, others questioning looks. Sweeping by big rooms, Sherlock sees rows of patients in beds, some lying still, others moaning. Outright cries of pain echo from other floors.

It suddenly occurs to him that he might be acting rashly. All Malefactor had said was that Irene was alive. Maybe she is unconscious, clinging to life? Maybe she is disfigured, crippled, unable to walk.

ACCIDENT WARD reads a sign over the big double doors of a wing. He enters, and from the hall, sees her in the third room. She isn’t moving, her blonde hair spread out around her on the pillow. There are flowers beside her, evidence that her father has been to visit and will soon be back. He has to act quickly.

He tiptoes into the big room, feeling afraid. The other patients appear to be asleep.

“Irene?” he whispers, without expecting a response. But one comes.

“Sherlock?” she asks in a faint voice, her half-open eyes searching for him.

His heart leaps. But what he sees almost makes him turn away. Both her eyes are blackened, there are cuts and bumps on her face, gauze on her lip, and her left arm, resting across her stomach, is heavily bandaged.

She tries to lift her head and force a smile. It looks terribly painful.

“Don’t move,” he says.

“I’m all right.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For doing this to you.”

“You? The murderer did this, not you. And we’re going to catch him.”

The words on the chart above her bed read: “mild brain trauma, bruised right cheekbone, fractured left humerus, fractured left metacarpal, cracked 3rd right rib.” Sherlock swallows.

Irene isn’t going to catch the villain. She isn’t going to have anything to do with him. Not now. Not ever.

He stands above her, not listening as she speaks. She is planning what they should do next, what he might investigate while she recovers.

“My father thinks it was an accident.”

Staring down at Irene’s battered face, he feels tears welling in his eyes.

He interrupts her.

“I think I should go.”

“Pardon me?” she asks, taken aback, trying to turn her head to see him better.

“I should go. I’m sorry for this. This will never happen again. Ever.”

“Sherlock? … What are you …?”

But he is gone out the door. The tears are flowing now, rolling down his cheeks. He grinds at his face to wipe them away, rubbing his smelly coat sleeve into his skin until it turns red.

He has brought Irene into a desperate world, one of murder and hatred and greed. It was wrong. Malefactor was right. It isn’t a place for her. It is for people like the killer, the Irregulars … and Sherlock Holmes.

I hope I never see her again, he tells himself as he hurries down the stairs. He stops at the little door where he entered and straightens up, willing his sadness away and replacing it with anger. If