Fic for k_e_p: Waiting
Title: Waiting
Recipient: k_e_p (language-escapes)
Author: gardnerhill
Characters/Pairings: ACD; Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Irregulars, Inspector Lestrade
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Warnings: Profanity.
Summary: Watson is laid low, and a lot of people are affected by that. Part of my “Oubliette” series.
Word Count: 5250
Course it was all over the street by morning - Peelers bounced the River Street gang headquarters at midnight, caught ‘em red-handed with one of their pidgeons, and the gang-boss Jake Willerton was dragged off to chokey. And when we heard who Jake nobbled, oh didn’t we laugh. He’d a been safer stealing a bloody lion from the London Zoo than keeping Dr. Watson for ransom - yeh, that Dr. Watson, Mr. Holmes’ very own shadow. We was in high spirits that day and no mistake - a bloke as mean and wicked as Jake Willerton makes everyone happier when bad things happen to him. All day we told bigger and bigger stories about how Mr. Holmes must a come down on the gang like a angel with a flaming sword to get his chum back. We couldn’t wait to hear Mr. Holmes tell us the story from his own mouth.
But that day went past, and the next, and the next. And none of us seen Mr. Holmes, nor Dr. Watson. None of us was called to that door to run an errand, nor given a shilling to look for nothing. And we didn’t see the Doc in our streets or houses lookin’ in on folks what can’t afford no regular doctoring (that’s how that bastard Jake got ‘im, Doc stayed too late in places coppers don’t go after dark - and even then he didn’t make it easy, they say he gave four or five of the gang what-for before they had ‘im).
Finally we sent Big George to ask the old lady - she likes ‘im, gives ‘im the most scones cos he’s such a little titch, brings out the mother in her. He came back with a pocketful and the news that the Doc was bad hurt and bad sick from that night, and Mr. Holmes wasn’t doing no crimefighting till he was better. We got a lot less jolly after that. Jake and his gang ain’t none too gentle with their pidgeons, and some have even died afterward from the beating they took. It weren’t right, a decent bloke like Dr. Watson being that way, and the thought of ‘im dying and Mr. Holmes walking about on his own… well, that weren’t right neither, it’d be like seeing a man without a shadow.
Weren’t nothing none of us could do but wait. Some of the little kids still pray so they done that, but the rest of us know what good that rot does. Big George thought we should buy ‘em the biggest bullseye we could get from Vitti’s sweetshop, he can’t think of nothing a bullseye don’t make better. (It did make him feel better when he stuck it in his mouth coming back from the shop.)
But Bobbie said something that cheered us all up. “One good thing though, if Doc dies,” she says, pulling out her cigar stub. “They’ll hang Jake Willerton for sure this time.”
***
Pennington, old man! Haven’t seen you around for a few nights! Straightened out that legal knot, eh? Well done. But what am I doing talking business without the proper atmosphere? Melton! Two whiskey-and-sodas, and bring them to the billiards room!
Your family’s the same then? Ah, that’s good. Me? Oh, the bank’s a madhouse as always - foreign money coming in and going out at all hours, telegrams to send, shipping labels to notarise, a hundred people to keep in line. It’s absolutely wrecking my health, and I hardly remember what the children look like, they’re usually abed by the time I go home for supper. It’s almost as bad for Helen - she’s got the servants to handle and the governess to oversee and those silly social and church clubs with which females are expected to waste their time. Ah, thank you, Melton. Shall you rack, Pennington, or shall I? Oh well, as I like to say, it’s the price we pay for being the greatest empire in history. And I do bring home all sorts of funny stamps from around the world for Peter’s collection.
Nice break, old sport.
You’ve heard about Watson, I suppose? Poor old chap. Ran into the sort of creatures one tends to run into when one walks in certain neighborhoods. It’s been three weeks and he hasn’t been well enough to come back here. Beastly bad luck for him, but really. What proper medical man goes into those slums? There’s charity places for those people; anything better just encourages that lot to breed faster, and there’s enough of them as it is. If you ask me, Watson's been hanging around police and detectives too long, thought he’d be treated the same by that riff-raff. He’s deuced lucky he wasn’t killed. Maybe this will teach him a lesson about associating with people out of his class. Ha, I’ve got you on the run now!
Thurston, old cock! Good to see you. Just have to finish handing Pennington here his head and then I must hear about your latest investments. Will you dine with me tonight?
***
Tea. Clean bed-linens. Meals. Clean nightshirts. Newspapers. Clean porcelain. Up and down the stairs all day - thank goodness the Doctor’s ensconced in Mr. Holmes’ bed, for that means one less flight of stairs for the staff and I to manage.
Mr. Holmes is very terse with me, which means he can only be worse to Billy and Bridgid. He suffers us to come in, barely glances at the papers I bring up (turns straight to the police section to see the progress of one particular case) but still strews them around the room, and lets my good tea grow cold on the dining table set for one man.
I’d be sterner with him about his manners if Mr. Holmes weren’t already in enough distress, and the reason lies coughing and groaning in his own bed. Poor Dr. Watson is in such pain - he took a terrible beating from those ruffians and caught a bad cold in the horrid pit where they kept him, and if anything makes broken ribs worse it’s coughing. Mr. Holmes has the doctor wrapped like a mummy to keep his ribs together; it’s so tight he can barely breathe, but it’s better than what could happen.
Mr. Holmes is angry, of course. So am I - the Doctor shouldn’t have been in those foul alleys carrying nothing but his Gladstone bag, when Mr. Holmes never goes there without at least his lead-headed cane and oftener the one with the sword hidden inside (he’s sure I don’t know about his secret weapon collection, but who does he think dusts the umbrella-stand and hat-rack?). And the Doctor was there only because those young hooligans Mr. Holmes employs live there, and if it weren’t for Dr. Watson dispensing an odd bit of headache powder or a few stitches in those nasty places most of them wouldn’t see a doctor from one year-end to the other. And now it’s gotten him hurt and ill.
I want to say something to Mr. Holmes, anything - the Doctor took far worse hurt when he was in the Army and he lived through that, it’s only a chill, it’s only a few cracked ribs, he was only a captive for a few hours - but it’s not my place. And we both know how quickly these things can turn tragic; a turned ankle goes gangrenous, a little needle-prick while sewing becomes blood-poisoning, a broken rib gets shaken loose by a coughing fit and stabs into the vitals for a mortal wound. No one wants to tempt Fate.
One of the many reasons Mr. Holmes is lucky to have me as his landlady is that I am rather deaf, especially when it is convenient. I also don’t speak nor understand a word of French. So when I am clearing away an untouched single meal in the main room and Mr. Holmes is in his bedroom talking to the Doctor in a tone of voice no man uses with a mere friend, I don’t hear any laws being broken. I hear the love in that tone, but there is fear there too; I take the tray downstairs and make sure he does not see my tears.
I run a respectable Presbyterian household; but I made no rebuke when I saw Bridgid give a start and put away her rosary when I walked into the scullery. I knew the Doctor wouldn’t mind.
***
“Oi, Jake. You’ve a visitor.”
Three words I’d never wanted to hear, in all my time in and out of chokey.
When I was a todger that meant the old man come to clip me ‘round the ear for getting caught, mam bawling at what a wicked ungrateful sod I’d turned out to be (if she wasn’t too drunk to come with Da or wasn’t busy spending the money I’d nicked), or me brothers or sisters tweaking me for being stupid enough to run into Old Bill.
Those words turned my stomach to lead, when the coppers here taking a punch at me only made me grin and cuss them even more. But I was for it now.
I’d heard of him (who hasn’t, round our lanes?). Lestrade gets all the back-pats for a big foiled robbery or a caught murderer, but the whispers say it was Sherlock Holmes did the work and backed away from the spotlight like a gang-chief who didn’t want no attention on him. He’s gotten a name, and he’s feared in our circles. So naturally some of our pidgeons bring him up like he was their big brother gonna get us for catching them.
Same with this bloke we caught - a chap with a decent coat and a nice doctor’s bag someone must a give him, no posh doctor’d be seen around our streets and no kind of doc at all that time of night except a fool drunk of a student. But whoever gave him a nice bag ‘ud give a bit of brass to keep him alive, and that’s right up River Street’s line of work. He fought like a street-rat too, not like a gentleman - put three of us down and gave me a shiner before we nobbled him. So we laughed when he waved the name Sherlock Holmes like it was a magic wand would scare us off. As if Mr. High and Mighty would be friends with a charity quack, and spoil his fine Eye-tie shoes walking around in our alleys!
Except that that street-quack with the nice bag and the mean right hook was his doctor chum after all. I felt my bloody insides turn to water when one of the Peelers looked in the hole and said “Christ, it’s Dr. Watson!” We know that name too. Word’s out, see - no one touches that ‘un any more than we’d nobble a copper. And I not only touched him, I laid him low. Of all the sodding luck.
So I wasn’t in any good spirits when I was put in the cell, and none of it helped by some of the Peelers having a go at me.
Now here was Himself in the flesh, no doubt to even the score for what I done to his pal.
I don’t show no one I’m afraid of ‘em, so I stood up and stared him right in the eyes, grinning. “Awfully sorry about that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Thought he was lying. Guess he did know you after all.”
I expected a curse, a blow, a shout for a turnkey to let him in. But all he done was stand and stare at me through the bars like he was at the bloody zoo. Nothing on that face, not a scowl nor a sneer. He just looked at me, his eyes everywhere at once, and it was like he was made of ice.
When he did talk, though? Nothing like I expected. He was calm like he was reading the lesson at the pulpit. “I will talk to Lestrade and see that he orders his men to leave you alone. Incarceration is all I require for now.”
My grin fell off my face. Those damn’ coppers don’t hit prisoners nowhere you can see when they’re dressed - they made sure not to give me another shiner or knock out my teeth. How the hell could he see what wasn’t to be seen?
He was still talking. “Further, your last captive despises those who beat prisoners. I want no such retribution in his name, and I will see it stopped.”
“That’s very civilised of you both, I’m sure.” Hard not to sneer, for that was pure English-sodding-gentleman in both of them, and I’d seen just how English-gentleman that doc was when he was fighting.
But when he answered me, I had to keep myself from shuddering. His voice never raised, never got angry, but it was like a sea of solid ice, and I was the ship it squeezed. “The law will provide all the retribution I desire. The man you assaulted is very ill right now.”
Now I felt like a sea of ice myself. A few years here and there in prison’s one thing - I get out, knife the bastard who thought he could boss my gang with me gone, and get back to running my street. Some of the pidgeons don’t do so well after, but who’d ever nicked me when one died? A couple of my rabbits get caught and strung up, the coppers pat themselves on the back, and I go on. This one, though, if he died. I felt the rope tighten around my neck.
The sea-ice kept talking to me. “If you are a praying man, Jake Willerton, I strongly suggest you beg the Deity to spare Dr. Watson, for your own sake if for no other reason. Whether John Watson dies or lives will mean the difference between you watching me in the front row as they pull the sack over your head three months from now, or you watching your last sunrise from a barred window forty-five years from now.”
I sat down at that one - right on the floor I sat down. If any bloke could make that sentence stick it would be Sherlock bloody Holmes and oh Christ. Prison for life? Oh bloody fucking bloody Christ not life. Life - that was years in a wet brick hole, walking a treadmill till my legs fall off, forgetting what real clothes feel like, getting one scrap of meat every Sunday to go with the bread and gruel, turning into a toothless old geezer by the age of 50 while younger bucks ran my gang - or, if was lucky, getting sent out for tunnel and gas-main and mine work too dangerous for free men to do while the fumes rotted my lungs. I’ve seen lifers. Hanging ‘ud be a blessing next to becoming that.
I lifted my head to snarl at Mr. Sherlock Holmes that I hoped his friend died. But he was gone already.
The turnkey smirked at me. “He’ll be back for the trial, never you fear.”
I jumped up and slammed my hands against the bars. “Fuck your poxy whore of a mother, peeler!” I needed to take a swing at somebody, have somebody hit me. A good bloody fight would stop this sick cold pit in my gut.
The copper’s teeth set and his eyes blazed, but he made no move toward the keys on his belt. “Can’t lay a hand on you, Jake. Mr. Holmes said.” He turned his back on me.
***
All right. I’ve given my lads a good scolding and I’ll stop not-seeing what they were doing to Jake. Mr. Holmes don’t want him touched, he don’t get touched. Still and all, that bastard’ll wish he just got the stuffing knocked out of him once Mr. Holmes is through with him.
Doubt that’ll slow the River Street gang much. The trouble with Jake Willerton’s lot is they’re blooming cockroaches, swarming everywhere in slums and alleyways - tread on one and a dozen take his place. Nothing neat in that police work, no need for sharp wits and clever minds, just a stout stick and copper-tipped boots. So it’s not surprising that Mr. Holmes hasn’t had much dealing with that sort of crime.
But I ought to have warned the Doctor, that I ought. He confided in me, see, while we two was having a friendly game of snooker at his club a while back, only I hadn’t known at the time that he was confiding. Broke his heart, he said, seeing those street-kids Mr. Holmes pays for messages or errands with their ribs showing, or red-eyed from tending babes all night while their mam’s sick or drinking or both, or limping from badly-set bones from factory accidents, or coughing like coal miners. Look like grown men before they’ve started shaving, Gilbert, he said, and it’s not right. You can’t save ‘em all, Doctor, and you’d go mad trying, said I. (See, I know the rough life those brats lead, know it by heart you could say.) Maybe not all, he said, but maybe something. And before long he’d drop by and see to that squad of Mr. Holmes’ urchins after he’d made his rounds of his regular practise: a bit of stitching or headache powder here, a pulled tooth there, a few buns from the bakery to keep ‘em from stealing the bloody things.
Well, a few stitches and a bit of willowbark turned into regular vists into the hovels, and making sure not just that Mr. Holmes’ kids were better but that their brothers and sisters got birthed safely so their mums lived, and bringing apples and ham as well as bread, and telling them to boil water from the pump when folks were sick.
It was kind of him, but foolish too. You drop a farthing in one of those streets and beggars boil out of hiding. Word got out, the way it does, that there’s a free doctor nearby - a free doctor with food - and there’s a swarm of the lame, halt and blind with their hands out. And again it was a stitch here, a powder there, an apple, a bun, a childbirth, a bone-setting.
So the Doctor stays later and later cos he’s got the devil of a time saying no to such folk, his stuff runs out before they do. He’s a solid bloke with a good right cross and he’s a friend of Mr. Holmes, so I wasn’t very worried for his safety.
Not until that ‘phone call from Baker Street just as I’m ready to end my day and head home to the wife and kiddies, and it was Mr. Holmes telling me cool as you please that Dr. Watson's been nabbed by the River Streeters. (I never did tell Mr. Holmes that my first thought was Thank God it’s Jake’s lot. The River Street gang are kidnappers for ransom so they keep their victims alive, but other bastards down there, like the Ship and Red Wall gangs, just murder their targets and rob the corpses.)
I was prepared to tie Mr. Holmes to a chair if that’s what kept him out of the River Street raid. (Less of the brilliant deductions involved and more of the copper-toes, you see.) Imagine my surprise when he agreed that he should let Scotland Yard handle this alone. That only made me want to do the best police job in my career that night - we both knew he was trusting his friend’s life to me.
St. Michael himself must have come along with us, for it went like clockwork. Caught Jake and a good lump of the gang at their headquarters - and under the floor behind a drain was Dr. Watson, half-naked and bruised up and shaking in the cold. Alive, in other words.
It was a treat, seeing Mr. Holmes straighten up when he walked into the station an hour later, all that worry he’d refuse to admit dropping off all at once. We all laughed to hear him scold the Doctor for being late for supper and putting the landlady out. Dr. Watson smiled bright as a sunrise - black eye and battered ribs and all. Ah, maybe this scare will make both of them see sense, and Dr. Watson will confine his medical attentions to his proper practise in safe streets.
I knew Mr. Holmes had been worried sick when he said that I’d done an exemplary night’s work. Ha! He’ll never forgive himself for that one when he realises what he said, and to whom - and I’ll make sure he never forgets that he said it, either!
Watson's still a bit under, but like I said he’s a tough bloke. He’ll be right as rain. I’ll be waiting with a snooker cue when he is.
***
My visit to Jake Willerton has very likely given that man the exact dread that grips me at weak moments these days. If Watson dies Willerton will hang for it. I too only see darkness before me and a drop into nothing, if Watson dies.
So speaks the anguished lover and not the clear reasoner, Sherlock. (My mind at its most rational chastises in a tone very like Mycroft’s speaking voice.) Dr. Watson has survived far worse injury and illness, which you would remember were you not hypothesising ahead of the facts - a trait you despise in others. You have allowed a handful of grit to mar your lens, and you do not even regret it.
I have my retort to that Mycroft-voice - three of them, in fact. Three times during my exile only one thing kept me alive - kept me from succumbing to an attacker’s head-blow, and from bleeding to death when I was stabbed in the thigh, and was the sole thing to remain in my mind during my all-night torture session courtesy of Nilsson’s hirelings: You must come home to him. You must prove his grief a lie. The light in those eyes will rekindle your own spirit, but you must survive to come home to him. He is the reason I am breathing still. (Thank God I finally had the courage to tell him so.) That lens-grit has turned out to be a damned useful thing after all, brother mine.
A cough, a groan of pain, a shallow breath. It is Watson's litany these days. He’s wrapped tightly against lung damage from his slowly-healing ribs, and he is sweating from the heat cast off by the fire blazing in my room that roars defiance against pneumonia finding a clawhold here. He says little about his discomfort; a soldier to his core, he scorns any acknowledgement of his pain as self-pity.
I have been playing a good deal of Gilbert and Sullivan lately, though my own mindset begs for Wagner or at least Beethoven (those I thrash out during the still hours of the night, up in Watson's room lest I awaken him from sleep that is already shallow). The music provides a diversion from his pain and he loves such airs, even if I have privately resolved to strike Sir Arthur Sullivan should I ever meet the man.
Watching and waiting for him to recover is like watching a rose bloom via nonstop observation. Minute by minute Watson appears to have both improved and worsened, with little or no progress to be seen day by day. It is maddening as well as exhausting.
Most of my thoughts are lamentably predictable and non-productive; self-castigation (as if I could keep Watson from following his medical conscience, and make him leave our Irregulars to the fate of so many other paupers!), anger at his recklessness, rage at the creatures who maltreated him, pride that he did not leave his assailants unscathed. Strongest of these mental intruders is an overwhelming desire to order Watson to confine his perambulations to the peaceful streets of his practise. How he would laugh at that last one were I to divulge it - I, the man who made him spend a long night in a room inhabited by a deadly snake, who left him to protect others on a moor wracked with murder, who blithely had him share a near-fatal dose of a madness-inducing drug, was suddenly concerned for his safety?
Grief is the most insidious of my unwelcome mind-visitors, and I must constantly banish it from my thoughts like a barkeep repeatedly tossing an abusive drunk out of a respectable tavern; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and I refuse to mourn this man until I myself have declared him dead.
My best defense against all these foul goblins is to focus on ensuring greater safety for him in the future (for Watson will return to those same vile streets, as unable to avoid trying to ease the pain there as I would be incapable of walking away from an unfinished case). I plan to recruit several of the Irregulars to accompany him in the lanes they know so well, and must weigh the pros and cons of each youth before making my selection. And I will make it clear to Watson that he is to equip himself with a stout walking-stick at the very least as an ironclad condition of continuing his extracurricular house calls.
A warm hand rests on my own - too warm, he is running a slight fever. “Brooding again, my dear.” Watson coughs with another groan. “You should keep busy. Talk to Lestrade, take a case.”
I lace my fingers with his warm damp ones. “Right now the only case I wish to follow is the one being built against your assailants.”
“Dull. A commonplace little kidnapping and assault.” Cough, groan, several shallow breaths. “Unworthy of your gifts.”
I stroke his damp hair. “Nevertheless. I will take another case when my Benedick can accompany me once more.”
He smiles. The flush on his cheekbones is not just his fever. Another shallow breath. “My dear Beatrice. It’s even hotter in here than in Lehoullier’s vineyard.”
I am instantly flooded with warmth that has nothing to do with the fireplace. That time we spent in an Aquitaine winery in July 1894 is sealed in our memories as the place where our camaraderie became love, our consanguinity romance, our affection passion. In lieu of the impossibility of a Christian ceremony and a churchman consecrating our union, we made our vows to each other in the style of Bacchanalian revelers, sacred even as the acts we performed were profane indeed. “C’est vrai, mon cher Jean,” I reply to make him smile and flush with pleasure again.
“And here I am in your bed day and night, and unable to,” cough, groan, breath, “do a damned thing about it.”
I nod. This cruel irony had not escaped me either. “Another crime for which I will see Jake Willerton punished.”
“I don’t believe current British law will allow you to add that to his charges.”
I snort. “The law is a ass, Watson.” This particular law, especially; Wilde had been languishing in Reading for a year already.
A squeeze. His eyes are on mine; bright with fever, brighter with love. “We will be all right, Holmes.” Cough, breath. (no groan is he getting better?) “You will have cases worthy of your gifts and I will write them down. And as for the occasional unworthy case…” Cough. Breath. Breath. “One recipient, at least, is extremely grateful for your involvement in such a commonplace kidnapping.”
Matching his whimsical banter, I reply as airily as if I were declaiming to a room full of Scotland Yard’s dullest men. “There were one or two points of interest about it.”
A short laugh, groan, cough. Three breaths. “And who else in all of London could have found me so quickly…” Cough, groan, three shallow breaths. “…from looking at a pair of scratched surgical scissors retrieved from a pawnshop?”
I stroke his hand with my thumb. “One other man, certainly - and Mycroft would have done so in half the time.” (It had taken me nearly a full minute to deduce Watson's fate from my appalled perusal of his scissors.)
“Mycroft,” Cough, stifled groan (or no groan? Is he getting better?), “would react rather badly to me thanking him the way I did you.”
I let out a bark of laughter, feeling instantly lighter for a moment. Once again my Watson has lifted me out of my morass. Even when he is the invalid in the room, he heals me.
Of course he won’t die of this ridiculous chill or a few cracked ribs. His body may be weakened from his war wounds but his courage and spirit are more than a match for anything thrown at him. It’s only a matter of waiting this out.
“I have indulged you long enough, my dear Benedick.” I let go his hand, kiss his damp forehead and stand. “I request permission to change the repertoire to feature Bach for the following hour. I will then be free to assist you in bathing.”
“Assisting?” His droll tone makes that word sound obscene. “For ‘assisting,’ my dear Beatrice, you may play Richard sodding Wagner.” Cough. Three breaths.
***
We got the word to come to Baker Street - there’s a case! We all of us gave a cheer as we headed there. Mr. Holmes has his shadow back, and that means scones and shillings in our pockets again.
***
Good Lord, Thurston, does the man never learn? No sooner is old Watson upright but he’s back to tagging along with those detective chappies into those ghastly slums. Can’t you say something to him?
***
Well and hale once again. That is a relief. The laundress won’t be half-relieved either - nothing like a sick-room to double the linen-load. And it’s less work, somehow, laying out two meals on that table that both get devoured instead of the one untouched plate.
***
Oh Christ. It’s bloody life for me now. Oh bloody Christ.
***
Next time the Doctor shows up, I’ll teach him a neat trick or two with a snooker cue that he can do with his walking-stick. It’ll be less work for my lot if he uses those moves on the next gang of bastards.
***
This note is dated the previous night so Hopkins sent it off just before midnight; he doesn’t trust the Kent constabulary to deal with this case, so it’s something quite out of the ordinary. Stationery from the Palace Arms inn - took the first available writing-paper so the body was found in the inn or close by. Abuts the river, as I recall (Watson is dressed, packed and armed, headed out to hail the cab to the train station, all is well), so may have to question the river-folk in the area. Best disguises will most likely be farm-labourer or groom looking for local work. If all goes well we will be pulling into the Ramsgate station just at sunrise…
***
In early April of 1896, I developed a cold in the chest; this, on top of some cracked ribs from an altercation with one of the dockside’s many street-gangs, laid me low for many weeks; but a day came when I was able to take a deep breath without pain, my cough had lessened, and I once again slept soundly through the night. By early summer I was back to assisting my friend and partner, Sherlock Holmes, on his many cases.
Recipient: k_e_p (language-escapes)
Author: gardnerhill
Characters/Pairings: ACD; Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Irregulars, Inspector Lestrade
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Warnings: Profanity.
Summary: Watson is laid low, and a lot of people are affected by that. Part of my “Oubliette” series.
Word Count: 5250
Course it was all over the street by morning - Peelers bounced the River Street gang headquarters at midnight, caught ‘em red-handed with one of their pidgeons, and the gang-boss Jake Willerton was dragged off to chokey. And when we heard who Jake nobbled, oh didn’t we laugh. He’d a been safer stealing a bloody lion from the London Zoo than keeping Dr. Watson for ransom - yeh, that Dr. Watson, Mr. Holmes’ very own shadow. We was in high spirits that day and no mistake - a bloke as mean and wicked as Jake Willerton makes everyone happier when bad things happen to him. All day we told bigger and bigger stories about how Mr. Holmes must a come down on the gang like a angel with a flaming sword to get his chum back. We couldn’t wait to hear Mr. Holmes tell us the story from his own mouth.
But that day went past, and the next, and the next. And none of us seen Mr. Holmes, nor Dr. Watson. None of us was called to that door to run an errand, nor given a shilling to look for nothing. And we didn’t see the Doc in our streets or houses lookin’ in on folks what can’t afford no regular doctoring (that’s how that bastard Jake got ‘im, Doc stayed too late in places coppers don’t go after dark - and even then he didn’t make it easy, they say he gave four or five of the gang what-for before they had ‘im).
Finally we sent Big George to ask the old lady - she likes ‘im, gives ‘im the most scones cos he’s such a little titch, brings out the mother in her. He came back with a pocketful and the news that the Doc was bad hurt and bad sick from that night, and Mr. Holmes wasn’t doing no crimefighting till he was better. We got a lot less jolly after that. Jake and his gang ain’t none too gentle with their pidgeons, and some have even died afterward from the beating they took. It weren’t right, a decent bloke like Dr. Watson being that way, and the thought of ‘im dying and Mr. Holmes walking about on his own… well, that weren’t right neither, it’d be like seeing a man without a shadow.
Weren’t nothing none of us could do but wait. Some of the little kids still pray so they done that, but the rest of us know what good that rot does. Big George thought we should buy ‘em the biggest bullseye we could get from Vitti’s sweetshop, he can’t think of nothing a bullseye don’t make better. (It did make him feel better when he stuck it in his mouth coming back from the shop.)
But Bobbie said something that cheered us all up. “One good thing though, if Doc dies,” she says, pulling out her cigar stub. “They’ll hang Jake Willerton for sure this time.”
***
Pennington, old man! Haven’t seen you around for a few nights! Straightened out that legal knot, eh? Well done. But what am I doing talking business without the proper atmosphere? Melton! Two whiskey-and-sodas, and bring them to the billiards room!
Your family’s the same then? Ah, that’s good. Me? Oh, the bank’s a madhouse as always - foreign money coming in and going out at all hours, telegrams to send, shipping labels to notarise, a hundred people to keep in line. It’s absolutely wrecking my health, and I hardly remember what the children look like, they’re usually abed by the time I go home for supper. It’s almost as bad for Helen - she’s got the servants to handle and the governess to oversee and those silly social and church clubs with which females are expected to waste their time. Ah, thank you, Melton. Shall you rack, Pennington, or shall I? Oh well, as I like to say, it’s the price we pay for being the greatest empire in history. And I do bring home all sorts of funny stamps from around the world for Peter’s collection.
Nice break, old sport.
You’ve heard about Watson, I suppose? Poor old chap. Ran into the sort of creatures one tends to run into when one walks in certain neighborhoods. It’s been three weeks and he hasn’t been well enough to come back here. Beastly bad luck for him, but really. What proper medical man goes into those slums? There’s charity places for those people; anything better just encourages that lot to breed faster, and there’s enough of them as it is. If you ask me, Watson's been hanging around police and detectives too long, thought he’d be treated the same by that riff-raff. He’s deuced lucky he wasn’t killed. Maybe this will teach him a lesson about associating with people out of his class. Ha, I’ve got you on the run now!
Thurston, old cock! Good to see you. Just have to finish handing Pennington here his head and then I must hear about your latest investments. Will you dine with me tonight?
***
Tea. Clean bed-linens. Meals. Clean nightshirts. Newspapers. Clean porcelain. Up and down the stairs all day - thank goodness the Doctor’s ensconced in Mr. Holmes’ bed, for that means one less flight of stairs for the staff and I to manage.
Mr. Holmes is very terse with me, which means he can only be worse to Billy and Bridgid. He suffers us to come in, barely glances at the papers I bring up (turns straight to the police section to see the progress of one particular case) but still strews them around the room, and lets my good tea grow cold on the dining table set for one man.
I’d be sterner with him about his manners if Mr. Holmes weren’t already in enough distress, and the reason lies coughing and groaning in his own bed. Poor Dr. Watson is in such pain - he took a terrible beating from those ruffians and caught a bad cold in the horrid pit where they kept him, and if anything makes broken ribs worse it’s coughing. Mr. Holmes has the doctor wrapped like a mummy to keep his ribs together; it’s so tight he can barely breathe, but it’s better than what could happen.
Mr. Holmes is angry, of course. So am I - the Doctor shouldn’t have been in those foul alleys carrying nothing but his Gladstone bag, when Mr. Holmes never goes there without at least his lead-headed cane and oftener the one with the sword hidden inside (he’s sure I don’t know about his secret weapon collection, but who does he think dusts the umbrella-stand and hat-rack?). And the Doctor was there only because those young hooligans Mr. Holmes employs live there, and if it weren’t for Dr. Watson dispensing an odd bit of headache powder or a few stitches in those nasty places most of them wouldn’t see a doctor from one year-end to the other. And now it’s gotten him hurt and ill.
I want to say something to Mr. Holmes, anything - the Doctor took far worse hurt when he was in the Army and he lived through that, it’s only a chill, it’s only a few cracked ribs, he was only a captive for a few hours - but it’s not my place. And we both know how quickly these things can turn tragic; a turned ankle goes gangrenous, a little needle-prick while sewing becomes blood-poisoning, a broken rib gets shaken loose by a coughing fit and stabs into the vitals for a mortal wound. No one wants to tempt Fate.
One of the many reasons Mr. Holmes is lucky to have me as his landlady is that I am rather deaf, especially when it is convenient. I also don’t speak nor understand a word of French. So when I am clearing away an untouched single meal in the main room and Mr. Holmes is in his bedroom talking to the Doctor in a tone of voice no man uses with a mere friend, I don’t hear any laws being broken. I hear the love in that tone, but there is fear there too; I take the tray downstairs and make sure he does not see my tears.
I run a respectable Presbyterian household; but I made no rebuke when I saw Bridgid give a start and put away her rosary when I walked into the scullery. I knew the Doctor wouldn’t mind.
***
“Oi, Jake. You’ve a visitor.”
Three words I’d never wanted to hear, in all my time in and out of chokey.
When I was a todger that meant the old man come to clip me ‘round the ear for getting caught, mam bawling at what a wicked ungrateful sod I’d turned out to be (if she wasn’t too drunk to come with Da or wasn’t busy spending the money I’d nicked), or me brothers or sisters tweaking me for being stupid enough to run into Old Bill.
Those words turned my stomach to lead, when the coppers here taking a punch at me only made me grin and cuss them even more. But I was for it now.
I’d heard of him (who hasn’t, round our lanes?). Lestrade gets all the back-pats for a big foiled robbery or a caught murderer, but the whispers say it was Sherlock Holmes did the work and backed away from the spotlight like a gang-chief who didn’t want no attention on him. He’s gotten a name, and he’s feared in our circles. So naturally some of our pidgeons bring him up like he was their big brother gonna get us for catching them.
Same with this bloke we caught - a chap with a decent coat and a nice doctor’s bag someone must a give him, no posh doctor’d be seen around our streets and no kind of doc at all that time of night except a fool drunk of a student. But whoever gave him a nice bag ‘ud give a bit of brass to keep him alive, and that’s right up River Street’s line of work. He fought like a street-rat too, not like a gentleman - put three of us down and gave me a shiner before we nobbled him. So we laughed when he waved the name Sherlock Holmes like it was a magic wand would scare us off. As if Mr. High and Mighty would be friends with a charity quack, and spoil his fine Eye-tie shoes walking around in our alleys!
Except that that street-quack with the nice bag and the mean right hook was his doctor chum after all. I felt my bloody insides turn to water when one of the Peelers looked in the hole and said “Christ, it’s Dr. Watson!” We know that name too. Word’s out, see - no one touches that ‘un any more than we’d nobble a copper. And I not only touched him, I laid him low. Of all the sodding luck.
So I wasn’t in any good spirits when I was put in the cell, and none of it helped by some of the Peelers having a go at me.
Now here was Himself in the flesh, no doubt to even the score for what I done to his pal.
I don’t show no one I’m afraid of ‘em, so I stood up and stared him right in the eyes, grinning. “Awfully sorry about that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Thought he was lying. Guess he did know you after all.”
I expected a curse, a blow, a shout for a turnkey to let him in. But all he done was stand and stare at me through the bars like he was at the bloody zoo. Nothing on that face, not a scowl nor a sneer. He just looked at me, his eyes everywhere at once, and it was like he was made of ice.
When he did talk, though? Nothing like I expected. He was calm like he was reading the lesson at the pulpit. “I will talk to Lestrade and see that he orders his men to leave you alone. Incarceration is all I require for now.”
My grin fell off my face. Those damn’ coppers don’t hit prisoners nowhere you can see when they’re dressed - they made sure not to give me another shiner or knock out my teeth. How the hell could he see what wasn’t to be seen?
He was still talking. “Further, your last captive despises those who beat prisoners. I want no such retribution in his name, and I will see it stopped.”
“That’s very civilised of you both, I’m sure.” Hard not to sneer, for that was pure English-sodding-gentleman in both of them, and I’d seen just how English-gentleman that doc was when he was fighting.
But when he answered me, I had to keep myself from shuddering. His voice never raised, never got angry, but it was like a sea of solid ice, and I was the ship it squeezed. “The law will provide all the retribution I desire. The man you assaulted is very ill right now.”
Now I felt like a sea of ice myself. A few years here and there in prison’s one thing - I get out, knife the bastard who thought he could boss my gang with me gone, and get back to running my street. Some of the pidgeons don’t do so well after, but who’d ever nicked me when one died? A couple of my rabbits get caught and strung up, the coppers pat themselves on the back, and I go on. This one, though, if he died. I felt the rope tighten around my neck.
The sea-ice kept talking to me. “If you are a praying man, Jake Willerton, I strongly suggest you beg the Deity to spare Dr. Watson, for your own sake if for no other reason. Whether John Watson dies or lives will mean the difference between you watching me in the front row as they pull the sack over your head three months from now, or you watching your last sunrise from a barred window forty-five years from now.”
I sat down at that one - right on the floor I sat down. If any bloke could make that sentence stick it would be Sherlock bloody Holmes and oh Christ. Prison for life? Oh bloody fucking bloody Christ not life. Life - that was years in a wet brick hole, walking a treadmill till my legs fall off, forgetting what real clothes feel like, getting one scrap of meat every Sunday to go with the bread and gruel, turning into a toothless old geezer by the age of 50 while younger bucks ran my gang - or, if was lucky, getting sent out for tunnel and gas-main and mine work too dangerous for free men to do while the fumes rotted my lungs. I’ve seen lifers. Hanging ‘ud be a blessing next to becoming that.
I lifted my head to snarl at Mr. Sherlock Holmes that I hoped his friend died. But he was gone already.
The turnkey smirked at me. “He’ll be back for the trial, never you fear.”
I jumped up and slammed my hands against the bars. “Fuck your poxy whore of a mother, peeler!” I needed to take a swing at somebody, have somebody hit me. A good bloody fight would stop this sick cold pit in my gut.
The copper’s teeth set and his eyes blazed, but he made no move toward the keys on his belt. “Can’t lay a hand on you, Jake. Mr. Holmes said.” He turned his back on me.
***
All right. I’ve given my lads a good scolding and I’ll stop not-seeing what they were doing to Jake. Mr. Holmes don’t want him touched, he don’t get touched. Still and all, that bastard’ll wish he just got the stuffing knocked out of him once Mr. Holmes is through with him.
Doubt that’ll slow the River Street gang much. The trouble with Jake Willerton’s lot is they’re blooming cockroaches, swarming everywhere in slums and alleyways - tread on one and a dozen take his place. Nothing neat in that police work, no need for sharp wits and clever minds, just a stout stick and copper-tipped boots. So it’s not surprising that Mr. Holmes hasn’t had much dealing with that sort of crime.
But I ought to have warned the Doctor, that I ought. He confided in me, see, while we two was having a friendly game of snooker at his club a while back, only I hadn’t known at the time that he was confiding. Broke his heart, he said, seeing those street-kids Mr. Holmes pays for messages or errands with their ribs showing, or red-eyed from tending babes all night while their mam’s sick or drinking or both, or limping from badly-set bones from factory accidents, or coughing like coal miners. Look like grown men before they’ve started shaving, Gilbert, he said, and it’s not right. You can’t save ‘em all, Doctor, and you’d go mad trying, said I. (See, I know the rough life those brats lead, know it by heart you could say.) Maybe not all, he said, but maybe something. And before long he’d drop by and see to that squad of Mr. Holmes’ urchins after he’d made his rounds of his regular practise: a bit of stitching or headache powder here, a pulled tooth there, a few buns from the bakery to keep ‘em from stealing the bloody things.
Well, a few stitches and a bit of willowbark turned into regular vists into the hovels, and making sure not just that Mr. Holmes’ kids were better but that their brothers and sisters got birthed safely so their mums lived, and bringing apples and ham as well as bread, and telling them to boil water from the pump when folks were sick.
It was kind of him, but foolish too. You drop a farthing in one of those streets and beggars boil out of hiding. Word got out, the way it does, that there’s a free doctor nearby - a free doctor with food - and there’s a swarm of the lame, halt and blind with their hands out. And again it was a stitch here, a powder there, an apple, a bun, a childbirth, a bone-setting.
So the Doctor stays later and later cos he’s got the devil of a time saying no to such folk, his stuff runs out before they do. He’s a solid bloke with a good right cross and he’s a friend of Mr. Holmes, so I wasn’t very worried for his safety.
Not until that ‘phone call from Baker Street just as I’m ready to end my day and head home to the wife and kiddies, and it was Mr. Holmes telling me cool as you please that Dr. Watson's been nabbed by the River Streeters. (I never did tell Mr. Holmes that my first thought was Thank God it’s Jake’s lot. The River Street gang are kidnappers for ransom so they keep their victims alive, but other bastards down there, like the Ship and Red Wall gangs, just murder their targets and rob the corpses.)
I was prepared to tie Mr. Holmes to a chair if that’s what kept him out of the River Street raid. (Less of the brilliant deductions involved and more of the copper-toes, you see.) Imagine my surprise when he agreed that he should let Scotland Yard handle this alone. That only made me want to do the best police job in my career that night - we both knew he was trusting his friend’s life to me.
St. Michael himself must have come along with us, for it went like clockwork. Caught Jake and a good lump of the gang at their headquarters - and under the floor behind a drain was Dr. Watson, half-naked and bruised up and shaking in the cold. Alive, in other words.
It was a treat, seeing Mr. Holmes straighten up when he walked into the station an hour later, all that worry he’d refuse to admit dropping off all at once. We all laughed to hear him scold the Doctor for being late for supper and putting the landlady out. Dr. Watson smiled bright as a sunrise - black eye and battered ribs and all. Ah, maybe this scare will make both of them see sense, and Dr. Watson will confine his medical attentions to his proper practise in safe streets.
I knew Mr. Holmes had been worried sick when he said that I’d done an exemplary night’s work. Ha! He’ll never forgive himself for that one when he realises what he said, and to whom - and I’ll make sure he never forgets that he said it, either!
Watson's still a bit under, but like I said he’s a tough bloke. He’ll be right as rain. I’ll be waiting with a snooker cue when he is.
***
My visit to Jake Willerton has very likely given that man the exact dread that grips me at weak moments these days. If Watson dies Willerton will hang for it. I too only see darkness before me and a drop into nothing, if Watson dies.
So speaks the anguished lover and not the clear reasoner, Sherlock. (My mind at its most rational chastises in a tone very like Mycroft’s speaking voice.) Dr. Watson has survived far worse injury and illness, which you would remember were you not hypothesising ahead of the facts - a trait you despise in others. You have allowed a handful of grit to mar your lens, and you do not even regret it.
I have my retort to that Mycroft-voice - three of them, in fact. Three times during my exile only one thing kept me alive - kept me from succumbing to an attacker’s head-blow, and from bleeding to death when I was stabbed in the thigh, and was the sole thing to remain in my mind during my all-night torture session courtesy of Nilsson’s hirelings: You must come home to him. You must prove his grief a lie. The light in those eyes will rekindle your own spirit, but you must survive to come home to him. He is the reason I am breathing still. (Thank God I finally had the courage to tell him so.) That lens-grit has turned out to be a damned useful thing after all, brother mine.
A cough, a groan of pain, a shallow breath. It is Watson's litany these days. He’s wrapped tightly against lung damage from his slowly-healing ribs, and he is sweating from the heat cast off by the fire blazing in my room that roars defiance against pneumonia finding a clawhold here. He says little about his discomfort; a soldier to his core, he scorns any acknowledgement of his pain as self-pity.
I have been playing a good deal of Gilbert and Sullivan lately, though my own mindset begs for Wagner or at least Beethoven (those I thrash out during the still hours of the night, up in Watson's room lest I awaken him from sleep that is already shallow). The music provides a diversion from his pain and he loves such airs, even if I have privately resolved to strike Sir Arthur Sullivan should I ever meet the man.
Watching and waiting for him to recover is like watching a rose bloom via nonstop observation. Minute by minute Watson appears to have both improved and worsened, with little or no progress to be seen day by day. It is maddening as well as exhausting.
Most of my thoughts are lamentably predictable and non-productive; self-castigation (as if I could keep Watson from following his medical conscience, and make him leave our Irregulars to the fate of so many other paupers!), anger at his recklessness, rage at the creatures who maltreated him, pride that he did not leave his assailants unscathed. Strongest of these mental intruders is an overwhelming desire to order Watson to confine his perambulations to the peaceful streets of his practise. How he would laugh at that last one were I to divulge it - I, the man who made him spend a long night in a room inhabited by a deadly snake, who left him to protect others on a moor wracked with murder, who blithely had him share a near-fatal dose of a madness-inducing drug, was suddenly concerned for his safety?
Grief is the most insidious of my unwelcome mind-visitors, and I must constantly banish it from my thoughts like a barkeep repeatedly tossing an abusive drunk out of a respectable tavern; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and I refuse to mourn this man until I myself have declared him dead.
My best defense against all these foul goblins is to focus on ensuring greater safety for him in the future (for Watson will return to those same vile streets, as unable to avoid trying to ease the pain there as I would be incapable of walking away from an unfinished case). I plan to recruit several of the Irregulars to accompany him in the lanes they know so well, and must weigh the pros and cons of each youth before making my selection. And I will make it clear to Watson that he is to equip himself with a stout walking-stick at the very least as an ironclad condition of continuing his extracurricular house calls.
A warm hand rests on my own - too warm, he is running a slight fever. “Brooding again, my dear.” Watson coughs with another groan. “You should keep busy. Talk to Lestrade, take a case.”
I lace my fingers with his warm damp ones. “Right now the only case I wish to follow is the one being built against your assailants.”
“Dull. A commonplace little kidnapping and assault.” Cough, groan, several shallow breaths. “Unworthy of your gifts.”
I stroke his damp hair. “Nevertheless. I will take another case when my Benedick can accompany me once more.”
He smiles. The flush on his cheekbones is not just his fever. Another shallow breath. “My dear Beatrice. It’s even hotter in here than in Lehoullier’s vineyard.”
I am instantly flooded with warmth that has nothing to do with the fireplace. That time we spent in an Aquitaine winery in July 1894 is sealed in our memories as the place where our camaraderie became love, our consanguinity romance, our affection passion. In lieu of the impossibility of a Christian ceremony and a churchman consecrating our union, we made our vows to each other in the style of Bacchanalian revelers, sacred even as the acts we performed were profane indeed. “C’est vrai, mon cher Jean,” I reply to make him smile and flush with pleasure again.
“And here I am in your bed day and night, and unable to,” cough, groan, breath, “do a damned thing about it.”
I nod. This cruel irony had not escaped me either. “Another crime for which I will see Jake Willerton punished.”
“I don’t believe current British law will allow you to add that to his charges.”
I snort. “The law is a ass, Watson.” This particular law, especially; Wilde had been languishing in Reading for a year already.
A squeeze. His eyes are on mine; bright with fever, brighter with love. “We will be all right, Holmes.” Cough, breath. (no groan is he getting better?) “You will have cases worthy of your gifts and I will write them down. And as for the occasional unworthy case…” Cough. Breath. Breath. “One recipient, at least, is extremely grateful for your involvement in such a commonplace kidnapping.”
Matching his whimsical banter, I reply as airily as if I were declaiming to a room full of Scotland Yard’s dullest men. “There were one or two points of interest about it.”
A short laugh, groan, cough. Three breaths. “And who else in all of London could have found me so quickly…” Cough, groan, three shallow breaths. “…from looking at a pair of scratched surgical scissors retrieved from a pawnshop?”
I stroke his hand with my thumb. “One other man, certainly - and Mycroft would have done so in half the time.” (It had taken me nearly a full minute to deduce Watson's fate from my appalled perusal of his scissors.)
“Mycroft,” Cough, stifled groan (or no groan? Is he getting better?), “would react rather badly to me thanking him the way I did you.”
I let out a bark of laughter, feeling instantly lighter for a moment. Once again my Watson has lifted me out of my morass. Even when he is the invalid in the room, he heals me.
Of course he won’t die of this ridiculous chill or a few cracked ribs. His body may be weakened from his war wounds but his courage and spirit are more than a match for anything thrown at him. It’s only a matter of waiting this out.
“I have indulged you long enough, my dear Benedick.” I let go his hand, kiss his damp forehead and stand. “I request permission to change the repertoire to feature Bach for the following hour. I will then be free to assist you in bathing.”
“Assisting?” His droll tone makes that word sound obscene. “For ‘assisting,’ my dear Beatrice, you may play Richard sodding Wagner.” Cough. Three breaths.
***
We got the word to come to Baker Street - there’s a case! We all of us gave a cheer as we headed there. Mr. Holmes has his shadow back, and that means scones and shillings in our pockets again.
***
Good Lord, Thurston, does the man never learn? No sooner is old Watson upright but he’s back to tagging along with those detective chappies into those ghastly slums. Can’t you say something to him?
***
Well and hale once again. That is a relief. The laundress won’t be half-relieved either - nothing like a sick-room to double the linen-load. And it’s less work, somehow, laying out two meals on that table that both get devoured instead of the one untouched plate.
***
Oh Christ. It’s bloody life for me now. Oh bloody Christ.
***
Next time the Doctor shows up, I’ll teach him a neat trick or two with a snooker cue that he can do with his walking-stick. It’ll be less work for my lot if he uses those moves on the next gang of bastards.
***
This note is dated the previous night so Hopkins sent it off just before midnight; he doesn’t trust the Kent constabulary to deal with this case, so it’s something quite out of the ordinary. Stationery from the Palace Arms inn - took the first available writing-paper so the body was found in the inn or close by. Abuts the river, as I recall (Watson is dressed, packed and armed, headed out to hail the cab to the train station, all is well), so may have to question the river-folk in the area. Best disguises will most likely be farm-labourer or groom looking for local work. If all goes well we will be pulling into the Ramsgate station just at sunrise…
***
In early April of 1896, I developed a cold in the chest; this, on top of some cracked ribs from an altercation with one of the dockside’s many street-gangs, laid me low for many weeks; but a day came when I was able to take a deep breath without pain, my cough had lessened, and I once again slept soundly through the night. By early summer I was back to assisting my friend and partner, Sherlock Holmes, on his many cases.