Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [87]
Mr Surd was standing beside the Baron, the scars on his head livid in the light from the window, like a nest of worms across a naked skull. He stared at Sherlock and Virginia with the promise of death in his eyes, brandishing his whip.
‘No!’ the Baron hissed. ‘They are mine!’ Sherlock’s gaze was drawn inexorably back to the twisted body of Baron Maupertuis. There were more ropes attached to smaller wooden frames on the Baron’s wrists and elbows, and a larger wooden frame encasing his chest. Thicker ropes led up from the chest-frame, and as Sherlock’s gaze tracked them upward, towards the ceiling of the room, he realized that all the ropes were attached to a massive wooden beam like a gibbet that hung suspended above the Baron. The end of the beam closest to Sherlock joined a smaller cross-beam covered with metal hooks and metal wheels on tiny axles. The ropes passed through these hooks and wheels, and Sherlock traced them back to where masked, black-clad servants held the ends. There must have been twenty, perhaps thirty ropes, all connected to parts of the Baron’s body. And as Sherlock watched, incredulous, some of the servants pulled on their ropes, exerting all their strength, while others either let theirs go slack or just took up the slack without actually pulling. And as they did so, the Baron jerked upright.
He was a puppet: a human puppet, entirely operated by others.
‘Grotesque, yes?’ the Baron hissed. His mouth and his eyes appeared to be the only parts of his body that he could move by themselves. His right hand came up and gestured at his body, but the movement was caused by a series of ropes attached to his wrist, his elbow and his shoulder, and smaller cords fixed to rings on his knuckles, all moving not because the Baron wanted them to but because his black-clad servants were anticipating what he would do if he could. ‘This is the legacy I was left with by the British Empire. You mentioned the Charge of the Light Brigade, boy. A tedious, pointless engagement based on misunderstood orders in a war that should never have been fought. I was there, on that overcast day, with the Earl of Lucan. I was his liaison with the French cavalry, who were on his left flank. I saw the orders when they arrived from Lord Raglan. I knew that they were badly phrased, and that Lucan had misunderstood them.’
‘What happened?’ Sherlock asked.
‘My horse was caught up in the charge, and spooked by the cannon fire. I was thrown from the saddle, and I tumbled to the ground in front of hundreds of British horses. They galloped right over me. I doubt they even saw me. I felt my bones break as the hoofs came down on me. My legs, my arms, my ribs, my hips and my skull. Every major bone in my body was fractured, and most of the minor ones. Inside, I was like a jigsaw puzzle.’
‘You should have died,’ Virginia breathed, and Sherlock wasn’t sure whether she spoke the words with pity or regret.
‘I was found by my compatriots after the British were torn to pieces by the Russian cannon,’ Maupertuis continued. ‘They carried me from the battlefield. They tended my wounds. They put me back together as best they could, and helped my bones to heal, but my neck was broken and although my heart still beat I could not move my legs. They didn’t dare carry me too far, so I lay there in a tent in the stinking heat and the frozen cold of the Crimea for a year. A whole