Young Sherlock Holmes_ Fire Storm - Andrew Lane [76]
Sure enough, some time later a dirty, untidy child approached them. His feet were bare and almost black with dirt.
‘Afternoon!’ Rufus said, touching his forehead.
‘Got some questions for you,’ the boy said in a thick Scottish accent.
‘Go ahead.’
‘What’s the name of the lassie’s horse?’
‘The lassie?’ Sherlock asked.
‘The girl,’ Matty explained. ‘Virginia.’
‘Oh.’ Sherlock raised his voice. ‘It’s called Sandia.’
‘Aye. An’ what’s the name of your horse?’
Sherlock smiled. It had become a joke between him and Virginia. ‘He didn’t have a name for a long time, but eventually I called him Philadelphia.’
‘Aye,’ the lad confirmed. ‘An’ what’s your middle name?’
‘Scott,’ Sherlock said. ‘I’m Sherlock Scott Holmes.’
‘Come on then. I’ll take you where you want to go.’ As Rufus flicked the reins to get the horse’s attention, the kid added, ‘Best leave the cart. We’re headed uphill.’
He led the way off the road and upward, scrambling from rock to rock or clump of grass to clump of grass. Sherlock, Matty and Rufus followed as best they could. The way was steep, and Sherlock’s abused body found it hard to cope. After a few minutes his breath came in gasps and he could feel a rasp deep in his chest. His ankles started aching, where the rope had pulled on them, and after ten minutes spikes of pain were lancing up his calf muscles. But he kept on going. He had no choice. He could tell that Rufus was struggling too.
Their path led them past several cottages that were perched on the hillside, looking down on the town and on the sea. Every now and then Sherlock looked over his shoulder at the scenery. The sea was a slowly billowing sheet – grey now, seen from above, rather than the green that it had been when looked at on the way into the village – and he could see darker areas where, he guessed, the sand beneath the surface dropped suddenly away. The line where land met water was a stone quayside, and fishing boats were tied up along it, their masts dipping and bobbing as the waves rolled in. All in all it was an extraordinarily peaceful sight. Despite the pain in his legs and in his chest, Sherlock felt something inside him loosen its tight grip on his heart. Matty seemed to feel the same.
They passed a stone chapel and a graveyard – the highest point of the village proper. After that they were ascending through tall grass and thistles. The sound of seagulls crying accompanied them. Glancing backwards, to the sea, Sherlock realized that they had climbed so high that he was looking down on the seagulls.
After twenty minutes of hard hiking they came to an area where the hill rose up on either side of them and they were walking into a narrowing gorge where the ground sloped up slightly ahead but rocky cliff faces loomed on their left and right. Over his shoulder the boy said, ‘Difficult climb up ahead. Get ready.’
He was right. After a few hundred feet of gradually rising ground, with the cliff faces closing in on both sides, they came to a section where the ground ahead of them rose sharply for a stretch of perhaps ten feet. It wasn’t as steep as the cliff faces to either side, but it was still pretty steep. There was no choice but to scramble up using hands and feet. Once they got to the top, Sherlock looked back. He was surprised how high they were. Far in the distance he could see the dark line where grey sky met grey ocean.
The way ahead narrowed even more, and jinked around to the right so that the point of the gorge – if it even came to a point – was hidden. They kept trudging on, exhausted by the climb.
Sherlock looked back again after a few minutes. He could see the edge of the place where they had scrambled up, but nothing beyond that apart from the sky. The ground dropped away too steeply.
Finally, once they had moved beyond the jink in the gorge, a lone cottage came into sight. Built of the usual grey granite, weather-beaten by years of storms, it nestled into