Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [98]
An unseen fist pushed Sherlock in the chest. He flew backwards, down the corridor. The very air in front of him seemed to be burning, and he felt his eyebrows and the hairs on his eyelids singeing. He hit the ground hard, and rolled. Matty landed on top of him.
The corridor behind them opened out on to an inferno of flames. Covering his mouth with his hand, Sherlock led Matty up the stairs to the top of the fort. Air rushed past them, feeding the fire beneath.
Guards were rushing back and forth, bellowing and panicking on the top of the fort. The sky was dark, with just a red line on the horizon showing where the sun had been. They paid no attention to the two boys who ran past them, climbed down the stairs to the sea and then into their rowing boat.
As they rowed away, Sherlock turned back to look. The entire fort was ablaze. Maupertuis’s thugs were throwing themselves off the top and into the water. Some of them were on fire, falling like shooting stars through the darkness into the sea.
It was a sight that Sherlock would never forget.
The journey to the English coast was a blur of aching arms, flash-burned skin and sheer exhaustion. Later, Sherlock would wonder how he and Matty ever made it without capsizing or getting lost and drifting out to sea.
Somehow Amyus Crowe had worked out where they would end up. Perhaps he had calculated it based on tides and wind direction, or perhaps he had just guessed. Sherlock didn’t know, and frankly didn’t care. He just wanted to be wrapped up in a blanket and helped to a comfortable bed, and for once what he wanted was what actually happened.
He woke the next morning with the gulls crying outside the bedroom window and the sun glinting off the sea and making rippling patterns on the ceiling of his room. He was starving. Throwing off the bedcovers he dressed in clothes that weren’t his, but were the right size and had been left on the back of a chair, waiting for him. He walked down stairs that he didn’t remember climbing up, to find himself in the parlour of a tavern that obviously rented out its rooms to travellers. And adventurers.
A stretch of open ground led away from the front of the tavern, and then the ground dropped sharply towards the sea. Sherlock had to screw his eyes up against the brightness of the sun. Matty Arnatt was sitting at a table outside, wolfing down a huge breakfast. Amyus Crowe was beside him, smoking a pipe.
‘Mornin’,’ Crowe said amiably. ‘Hungry?’
‘I could eat a horse.’
‘Best not let Ginnie hear you say that.’ Crowe indicated a seat at the table. ‘Sit yourself down. Food will be ready soon.’
Sherlock sat. His muscles ached and his ears still rang from the explosion, and his eyes were dry and itchy. Somehow, he felt different. Older. He’d seen people die, he’d caused people to die, and he’d been drugged with laudanum and tortured with a whip. How could he go back to Deepdene School for Boys now?
‘Did everything get sorted out?’ he asked eventually.
‘Your brother got the message we sent, and he went straight into action. I believe there’s a Navy ship headed out to the Napoleonic fort, but from what you murmured last night I guess they won’t find much but ashes. And even if the British government can persuade the French to check out Maupertuis’s chateau, I think they’ll find it empty. He’ll have got out, with his servants. But his plot has fallen apart like a house of cards in a strong breeze, thanks to you and Matthew here.’
‘It would never have worked,’ Sherlock said, remembering the confrontation between him, Virginia and the Baron. ‘Not the way he wanted it to.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I think some people would have died, and you saved them. You can thank yourself for that. And your brother will thank you too, when he arrives.’
‘Mycroft is coming here?’
‘He’s already on the train.’
A woman in an apron came out of the tavern carrying a plate that seemed to be laden with every possible item that a person could want for breakfast, plus several that Sherlock didn’t even recognize. She smiled, and