Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [91]
Ever practical, Virginia immediately began to saddle two horses. ‘What are we going to do, Sherlock? We’re in a foreign country! We don’t even speak the language!’
‘Actually,’ he blushed, ‘I do.’
‘Do what?’
‘Speak the language. A little, anyway.’
She turned and gave him a funny look. ‘How come?’
‘My family is descended from a French line on my mother’s side. She used to insist that we learn the language. It was our family heritage, she said.’
Virginia reached out to touch his arm. ‘You don’t talk about her,’ she said. ‘You talk about your father and your brother, but not her.’
‘No,’ Sherlock said, feeling his throat close up. He turned away so she wouldn’t look him in the eye. ‘I don’t.’
Virginia tightened the final strap on the horses. ‘So, given that you do speak the language, where do we go? Do we ask for help?’
‘We head for a port,’ Sherlock said. ‘Maupertuis gave the instruction to release the bees. If we don’t stop them, they’ll kill people. Maybe not as many as Maupertuis expects, but some British soldiers will still die. We have to stop them being released.’
‘But—’
‘One thing at a time,’ he said. ‘Let’s get to the coast. From there we can send a telegram to my brother, or something. Anything.’
Virginia nodded. ‘Saddle up then, master swordsman.’
He grinned. ‘You were pretty magnificent in there as well.’
She grinned too. ‘I was, wasn’t I?’
Mounting their horses, they rode away from the chateau just as shouts began to ring out and an alarm bell began to peal. Within moments, Sherlock knew, they would be too far away to catch.
In the nearest village they stopped to ask where they were. They were both hungry, but they had no French money, and all they could do was look longingly at the sausages hanging up in the shop windows and the bread rolls, as long as Sherlock’s arm, that were stacked up on trays. A farmer told Sherlock that they were a few miles from Cherbourg. He pointed them to the right road, and they kept going.
Virginia glanced over appraisingly at him at one point. ‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘You ride like it’s a bicycle, not a living creature, but still – not bad.’
They stopped again, half an hour later, on the edges of a pear orchard, and filled their pockets with pears which they ate as they rode on, the juice trickling down their chins. The countryside flashed by, familiar and yet different from what Sherlock was used to in England. His head pounded like the thundering of his horse’s hoofs. He needed to work out what they were going to do when they reached Cherbourg.
By the time they got there, he had no clearer an idea.
The town was built on the side of a hill that led down towards the glittering blue waters of a harbour. The hoofs of the horses clattered on the cobblestones, and they were forced to slow down to an amble so they could get through the crowds that were thronging around the various stalls and shops lining the winding streets. It was a scene that could have been anywhere along the south coast of England, apart from the style of the clothes, and the preponderance of cheeses on the stalls.
Sherlock and Virginia dismounted and, reluctantly, left their horses tethered to a fence. Someone would look after them. He tested his language skills to the limit by asking whether there was a telegraph office around, and was devastated to find that the nearest one was in Paris. How were they going to get word to Mycroft now?
They had to find a ship and get back to England. That was their only hope.
They found the harbourmaster’s office, and asked about ships or boats sailing to England. There were several, the harbourmaster told them. He laboriously went through the names. Four were local boats that took goods for market – cheeses, meats, onions – back and forth. He could put in a good word for them with their captains.
The fifth was a British fishing boat that had docked unexpectedly that morning.
It was named Mrs Eglantine.
Hearing the name was like having a bucket of cold water thrown into his face. For a frozen moment Sherlock was convinced that Mrs Eglantine – his uncle