Part 14 (2/2)

'Mr Surd,' Baron Maupertuis's voice said from out of the dark. Although he whispered, his voice carried to every corner of the room. It was a voice used to command. 'We need to accelerate our plans. Give the order. Release the bees from the Fort. By the time they find their way to the mainland and across country, the uniforms will have been distributed. And then confusion will reign!'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The Baron's words echoed chillingly around the dining room. Out in the darkness there was a rustle of activity as a servant left with his orders. Sherlock glanced at Virginia. Her face was pale, but her mouth was set in a determined line. He reached across to squeeze her hand. She gave him a slight smile.

Her spirit gave Sherlock the courage to carry on.

'It's a grandiose plan,' he said towards the darkness, 'but it just won't work.'

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the strange creaking noise that Sherlock remembered from the house in Farnham, like the sound of sea-dampened s.h.i.+p's rigging being strained by the wind and by the pitching and tossing of the s.h.i.+p's hull.

'You seem very sure of yourself,' the Baron's voice came back. 'For a child.'

'Think about it. Just because two men have died as a result of your schemes, that doesn't make your plan foolproof. All kinds of things could wash the chemical from the uniforms, for instance. Remember, it rains in England. It rains a lot. Some of the soldiers will have their uniforms laundered before the bees can get to them especially the officers.' He was getting into his stride now, his mind sparking with ideas as to why Maupertuis's colossal scheme was doomed to failure. 'Some soldiers might prefer their old uniforms, and keep them, or get their regimental tailor to make them a new one rather than using the ones you've sent out. I don't know about France and Germany and Russia, but people in England don't like being told what to do and what to wear. They find ways around orders like that.'

'What about the bees themselves?' Virginia added unexpectedly. 'How many of them will actually get to the mainland? How many bees do you need to cover all those areas where the Army are based? Have you got enough? And what happens if there's a cold spell and the bees die off, or if there's something in England that eats the bees, or if they just settle down, build a hive and become part of the natural order there? The chances are they'll end up interbreeding with the local bees, the British bees, and lose all traces of the aggression that your plan depends on.'

'All of these factors have been accounted for,' the Baron replied in his dry-as-dust voice, but to Sherlock he sounded unsure of himself for the first time. 'And even if some uniforms are laundered, and some bees die, what of it? Many of the attacks will be successful nevertheless. Widespread death will occur. The British Army will be paralysed by fear. Paralysed Paralysed.'

'You just don't understand the way the English think, do you?' Sherlock scoffed. His mind ranged back over his lessons at school, over what he had read in the newspapers, curled up in a chair in his father's study, or heard from his brother Mycroft. 'Have you ever heard of the Charge of the Light Brigade?'

The sound of creaking in the darkness stopped abruptly. Sherlock had the sudden sense that many ears were listening intently to what he said.

'Oh yes,' the Baron hissed. 'I have heard of the Charge of the Light Brigade.'

'In 1854,' Sherlock continued, regardless, 'during the Crimean War, the soldiers of the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, the 17th Lancers and the 8th and 11th Hussars were ordered to charge the Russian lines during the Battle of Balaclava. They were charging down a valley that had Russian cannons on each side and in front of them, and they just kept on going. They followed orders, without panicking and without mutinying. I'm not saying that mindless obedience to orders is a good thing, but discipline is built into the British soldier like a rod of iron right down their backs. I know that my father is an officer. They don't panic. Not ever. No, even if there are deaths it'll be treated just like an outbreak of smallpox or cholera. Don't you understand? They will ignore it They will ignore it. That's what the British do do. That's why the British Empire is so widespread and so strong. We just ignore the things we don't like We just ignore the things we don't like.'

'You speak well,' the Baron said, 'but I do not believe you. Obviously you want to believe that your Empire is built on rock-solid foundations, but you are wrong. The foundations are rotten, and the edifice will crumble if it is pushed hard enough. You want to believe that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday, but it will not. The world will change, and the balance of power will tip in favour of my a.s.sociates in the Paradol Chamber.'

The Paradol Chamber? What was that? As Maupertuis was talking, Sherlock memorized what might have been an important slip of the tongue that Mycroft would want to know about.

a.s.suming that Sherlock ever got the chance to see his brother again.

'You want to believe that your brother will continue to be an important man in the British government,' Maupertuis continued, 'but he will not. He, like the rest of his colleagues, will be swept away by the tide of history. When this b.u.mptious little country of yours is a mere province of a European superpower that can rival America in its size and power, then Mycroft Holmes and his ilk will be surplus to requirements. Their kind will not be needed in the new world order. They will find themselves at the mercy of the guillotine or the garrotte. They will not survive.'

Maupertuis's voice had descended to a low hiss by now, so carried away was he with this venomous diatribe directed against a country and a people that he so obviously hated. Why did he hate Great Britain so much? Sherlock found himself wondering what might work best a reasoned argument, or provoking the Baron into a more emotional state. Either way, the outcome was uncertain. The chances were that the two of them were going to die.

'He is mad,' Virginia said quietly but firmly to Sherlock. 'Stark, staring mad. His plan is obviously nuts, and the outcome he wants is impossible. Like it or not, Britain is a world power. He can't reverse that.'

'I am surprised,' the Baron hissed, 'that you are defending this country so strongly, girl.'

Virginia looked up as he spoke, surprised at her sudden inclusion in the Baron's thoughts. 'Why surprised?' she asked. 'I don't like to see innocent people killed. Is that unusual?'

'Your country was beholden to this one for over two hundred years,' the Baron pointed out. 'Everything in America was ruled from London. You were just another county, like Hamps.h.i.+re or Dorset, only larger and further away. You had to rebel against British control and throw off the yoke of Westminster.'

'And we did it in a clean fight,' she pointed out. 'Not by tricks and schemes and secret plans. If we've got to have wars then that's the way they should be fair and open and clean. There should be rules for war, like there are for boxing.'

'Naive,' the Baron murmured. 'So naive. And so pointless. You and the boy will die before you ever find out that your precious world order will be overturned.'

'You like operating in the shadows, don't you?' Virginia continued, and there was a hard-edged tone in her voice that made Sherlock glance at her, wondering what she was up to.

'The successful fighter strikes from the shadows and then hides in them again, so that the bigger, stronger foe does not know where to strike,' the Baron whispered. 'That is the warfare of the future. That is how a smaller foe can overcome a much larger one. By stealth.'

'You prefer the shadows? Then let's see how you like the sunlight,' she cried, and leaped to her feet. Sherlock sensed a flurry of activity at the shadowed end of the room as Mr Surd prepared to strike out with his metal-tipped whip, but Virginia darted to one side and the whip sliced into the back of the chair she had just vacated. She grabbed the black velvet curtains that lined the room and pulled on them, hard. Sherlock heard a ripping sound as the velvet tore loose from the curtain rail, and then, with a sound like a distant rainstorm, a whole sheet of material fell to the ground in a slow avalanche of soft cloth, letting bright sunlight spill into the room.

Black-clad and masked figures around the room s.h.i.+elded their eyes, but Sherlock's gaze was drawn to the figure of the Baron, sitting in an oversized chair at the other end of the table. It was, indeed, the same pink-eyed, white-haired man that he had seen in the carriage back in Farnham. He squinted into the light, s.h.i.+elding his face with one hand while the other hand came up with a pair of gla.s.ses with darkened lenses which he slipped over his sensitive eyes. His arms were thin and twisted, like the branches of an old oak tree, and his head lolled on his shoulders. He was wearing what seemed to be a military uniform: black, with ornate gold braid decorating the chest and the cuffs. There was something around his forehead, a wooden frame of some kind. His head suddenly straightened up and his eyes glared at Sherlock from behind the dark lenses so intensely that Sherlock could almost feel their heat. He noticed that there were cords leading upward from the frame, and that those cords had pulled taut at the exact moment that Mauper-tuis's head had straightened up.

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, brandis.h.i.+ng his whip.

'No!' the Baron hissed. 'They are mine 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.sed 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 antic.i.p.ating 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 year year. And for every second, every minute, every hour, every day, every week and every month that I was there, I cursed the British and their stupidity in just following orders no matter how stupid those orders were.'

'You chose to be there,' Sherlock pointed out. 'You were wearing uniform. And you lived when hundreds of good men died.'

'And every day I wish I had died with them. But I live, and I have a purpose: to bring the British Empire to its knees. Starting with you, child.'

As he spat the words, Maupertuis seemed to float up in the air and land lightly on the table. The ropes above him tautened, pulled on by his black-clad puppeteers. A creaking noise filled the room as the ropes and the wood took the strain of the Baron's weight. Somehow the servants had divined what he wanted them to do. Sherlock a.s.sumed they had been working with him for so long that they knew instinctively the way his thoughts were going and could translate them into instantaneous action. As Maupertuis's feet touched the table, Sherlock sprang up from his chair. Beside him, Virginia did the same.

'Baron!' Mr Surd called. 'You don't need to do this yourself. Let me kill the children for you!'

'No,' the Baron hissed. 'I am not a cripple! I will erase these interfering brats myself! All those months, all that time spent paralysed and designing this harness it will not be wasted. I will kill them myself! I will kill them myself! Do you understand?' Do you understand?'

'At least let me kill the girl,' Surd insisted. 'At least let me do that for you.'

'Very well,' the Baron conceded. 'Then I will deal with the boy.'

Seemingly weightless, Maupertuis drifted towards Sherlock, his feet moving but barely touching the surface of the table. He extended his hand towards the boy, and for a moment Sherlock thought that the Baron was inviting him up to the table, but instead cords and wires suddenly pulled taut inside the sleeve of the Baron's uniform and a s.h.i.+ning blade slid out of a scabbard hidden along his forearm. His twig-like fingers closed around a padded hilt, not so much controlling the blade as giving it some guidance.

Sherlock backed away towards the suit of armour that stood beside the door. He grabbed the sword from its mailed grip, knocking the armour to the floor.

Sherlock was barely aware that Mr Surd was walking out of the darkness, his metal-tipped whip dangling menacingly from his hand, but then the Baron sprang off the table towards him, swinging his sabre. The scaffold-like structure that held him was on wheels, and there were more servants behind it, pus.h.i.+ng and pulling it along and swinging it around. Maupertuis could go anywhere in the room within seconds, faster than Sherlock could move.

The Baron swung his sabre. Sherlock parried clumsily, feeling the impact tear at the muscles in his shoulder. Sparks flew from the point where the blades clashed. The Baron leaped into the air, cleaving his blade down towards Sherlock's head. Sherlock rolled to his left and the Baron's blade tore through the back of the chair where Sherlock had been sitting only moments before, splintering the wood and sending bits of the chair in all directions.

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