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Sherlock Fanfiction: Homo Faber (Part I)
Title: Homo Faber
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
saki101
Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Mike Stamford, Victor, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Slash
Word Count: ~13.1K total (posted in two parts due to length)
Disclaimer: Sherlock is not mine and no money is being made.
Summary: What if Dr Frankenstein had had Dr Watson to keep him right? A story in which Sherlock's mother's maiden name is Frankenstein and Dr Watson has been invalided home towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars...
Notes: A stand-alone AU fusion fix-it fic written for the Springlock Exchange 2014 for swimmingbirdrunningrock's great prompt: John's the detective, Sherlock's the doctor. AU, fic or ficlet? Go wild. This connected to a thought I had had upon seeing Frankenstein with Mr Cumberbatch in the role of the scientist: every genius needs a John Watson.
Excerpt: “We are all egoists,” he said. “Every child likes to hear the story of his beginnings, the tale of his parents’ courtship, the events surrounding his birth, the parts of his story he cannot know himself.”
On AO3
Homo Faber
Part I
Sweet smoke hung heavy in the air above the heads of the five men gathered in the tiled room. One amongst the lounging figures stood and stretched. He was taller and broader than most men. Thick, dark hair fell to his shoulders, its waves nearly obscuring a long, thin scar that followed his hairline and disappeared into the shadow beneath his jaw. He moved to the shelves by the door with a slight unevenness of gait. Some had returned from the wars with such mementos. Others acquired them less heroically, a fall from a horse, a near miss in a duel, a drunken tumble down the stairs. One of the other men watched through the wreaths of smoke from his pipe, shook his head when the tall man lifted a decanter from the shelf. Another of the group looked up and raised his glass. The tall man brought the decanter back with him.
“We are all egoists,” he said. “Every child likes to hear the story of his beginnings, the tale of his parents’ courtship, the events surrounding his birth, the parts of his story he cannot know himself.” He refilled the glasses of all of his companions, save one.
That man drew his pipe away from his mouth. “You never were a child,” he said.
***
“Colonel?”
“Come in and shut the door, Michael. By some miracle, I am alone.”
Dr Stamford closed the door to the small sitting room, took in the desk covered with papers and reached behind him to turn the key in the lock.
Colonel Watson winced as he sank into one of the two armchairs in the room. He motioned his visitor towards the other. “How have they all found me? I’m not even officially in charge of anything yet.” He rubbed a hand across his face, sighed and looked up at Michael. “I think a more customary greeting would have been: ‘How was the journey down from London? Would you care for a drink to clear out the dust from the road?’”
The glasses made a pleasant sound as they touched. “I should have just retired,” Colonel Watson said.
Michael settled into his chair. “You would have been bored senseless in a week and challenging someone to a duel over a card game in two, John.”
John swatted his leg. “I’ve changed a bit since we used to compete to see who could saw through a thigh bone faster,” John said. He held out his drink. The amber liquid trembled in the glass. “I can’t trust myself in the operating theatre anymore.”
“You’ll set up the hospital, make sure it’s run properly and save lives that way,” Michael replied.
John glared at the desk. “Filling out requisitions and reports?”
“You see things, John. Always have. More of your patients survive because you really see them, not a bleeding hunk of meat to hack bits off of or a bloodless example from a treatise.”
John looked out the window. “Some people think I’m supposed to see other things as well. The vicar came to call.”
Michael snorted.
“No,” John said, wagging a finger. “Not about the state of my soul, but the state of the churchyard.”
Michael raised an eyebrow.
John balanced his glass on the arm of his chair. “Graves have been disturbed these past few months and the good divine is not satisfied with the efforts of the local constable. The reverend thought I might solve the mystery where this fellow Lestrade has failed.” John took a sip from his glass. “My being a man of penetrating insight apparently.”
“Your reputation precedes you,” Michael chuckled.
“I have no civilian reputation,” John exclaimed, slamming his empty glass down on the side table.
Michael waited for the anger to subside. John Watson’s temper had always been like a summer storm.
“Sorry,” John said, grabbing the whiskey bottle by the neck and leaning towards Michael. “Except with a couple old friends with very long memories.” Glasses recharged, John continued, bottle still in hand. “Shouldn’t he be complaining to the ‘lord of the manor’ about affairs of the village, not some stranger like me?”
“Ah,” Michael said, setting down his glass much more gently. “Sherlock, Dr Holmes, that is, is nearly as much of a stranger here as you are. He’s been studying in London and abroad for years. He returned, rather begrudgingly, only a few months ago when his maternal grandfather died and the castle became his.”
“Castle?” John echoed.
“Closer to a castle than a manor,” Michael replied, “the creation of some whimsical ancestor. Has a bit of the German fairy tale about it.”
“It is habitable?” John asked. “We aren’t setting up shop in some picturesque ruin, are we?”
“It is picturesque, but more than habitable, if you exclude Sherlock’s tower out in the garden, I suppose.” Michael retrieved his glass. “He began outfitting the wing for the infirmary as soon as I mentioned your idea to him. Last week, he wrote to say that the refurbishments were nearly complete.”
John tilted his head and regarded his old friend. “I didn’t withdraw my resignation until a few days ago.”
Michael took a thoughtful sip of whiskey. “You said yourself that General Sholto didn’t want to accept your resignation and Sherlock, well, he decides to do things and expects the universe to fall in line.”
“Former military?” John asked.
“Former deity, more like,” Michael said.
John scowled.
“You need to meet him,” Michael concluded.
***
Dear Harry,
You won't mind, I hope, that I still write to you, although there is no address I know that can bring my meandering thoughts to you now.
I need to write them down; I will never sleep otherwise. I may not sleep in any event. There were too many impressions. Triage after a pitched battle is the only thing I can liken it to, the bombardment of the senses, the urgent need to understand, to make decisions.
I am a scientific man, a military man. I must order my thoughts. Order and method are my tools. If I apply them, maybe then I can sleep…
There are rooms waiting for me, above the infirmary I saw today, with walls of reference books and glass doors opening onto a narrow balcony overlooking a proper physic garden. This is nothing new, although perhaps newly brought to order after a period of neglect. And there is a laboratory such as I have never seen, those at Bart’s are like the clutter on a kitchen table by comparison. The array of glassware alone was dazzling, Dr Holmes’s explanation of his current experiment more so.
The breadth of his knowledge, the range of his travels and research, the ideas he linked together regarding just that one experiment, were staggering, all the more so in light of his youth.
I tore open the skin of my thumb on a thorn by one of the garden gates. It is neither red nor hot now. Dr Holmes applied a tincture to the wound twice, the first time straight from the alembic. It is a compound of his devising derived from iodine. The wound is already dry. What I can do just with this tincture. The lives and the limbs I might save.
The things I can learn there.
I hope he understood my dumbfounded expression to be admiration at his accomplishments. I couldn’t find words, although I may have uttered one or two. He looked at me intently for a moment, then went on.
Now, I find myself thinking on other things, too. There is a bowl of green apples in the room in which I write. The vicar left them. They are a little lighter than the colour of the silk waistcoat Dr Holmes wore, not at all practical for the laboratory, but tailored perfectly to his form and embroidered with leaves. He assessed me with eyes the same colour as the silk or so they seemed. When he bid Michael and I good-day at the edge of the drive, they seemed blue. There are people I have known for months and could not attest to the colour of their eyes. In the course of a morning, I noted the changeability of his.
I feel ill at ease with myself.
The wagon will arrive early tomorrow to take my trunks. I will call at the vicarage along the way, the innkeeper assures me it is a minor detour off the road to the castle. (See how matter-of-factly I use that term now?) The good cleric seems to view me as some sort of military governor, I shall have to make clear that my authority is only over the patients and medical staff in my new hospital and that only for as long as these wars continue to produce wounded and dying and Dr Holmes continues to allow us the use of his remarkable premises.
Michael has already collected his things from the inn and returned there for the night. I was invited to do so as well, but I claimed to have pressing correspondence to answer. I needed to get away, to order the tumult in my mind.
I do feel better for writing some of it down. There are not enough hours in the night to record all I saw and heard and tomorrow there will be more.
Good-night, Harry.
***
“Oh, Dr Stamford, how good to see you,” Mrs Hudson said, holding the door wide. “Come in before the skies open up.”
She leaned out the door. “Billy, don’t forget to light the fire when you bring the bags upstairs,” she called to the lanky boy leading the horse round to the stables.
“No, ma’am,” Billy called back before he disappeared past the long row of blueberry bushes.
Mrs Hudson turned to beam at Michael. “Colonel Watson told me your blessed news,” she said. “Clarissa is such a pretty name and how is Mrs Stamford?”
“Very well indeed and well-tended by both newly-made grandmothers, two sisters and one sister-in-law,” Michael replied, taking off his hat and bowing slightly. Mrs Hudson had taught the cook the recipe for the best scones in three counties and he appreciated her art.
“Good time for a journey, then,” she said. “Colonel Watson has been looking forward to your visit. He hardly takes a moment to sit down, but now you’re here, he may. He asked for tea to be served in the orangery. I take that as a good sign, but you may have to pull him away from the infirmary nonetheless. You know how to get there through the house?”
Michael peered out the door at the grey sky. “I usually walk round. Do you think I’ll make it?”
“Come,” Mrs Hudson said, gesturing towards a door behind the staircase, “I’ll show you a shortcut.”
***
An informal letter tonight, Harry, no time for proper composition. I am run off my feet and I drop into bed exhausted, barely managing to undress. It is a good exhaustion though, not the frenzy of death and life near the front. I have the time to know my patients as more than a diagnosis and it makes a difference – to us all.
Two days after I arrived, the first patients came. They were pale and thin, their injuries, for better or worse, already treated, hastily near the front and for longer back in England. They were the ones without friends or family to take them in for the last stages of either recovery or decline. Unable to fend for themselves, their beds in the city wards were still needed for the more recently wounded or stricken.
I lost one, a Bruce Parkington, the day after he arrived. I’m not sure he ever realised where he was. He had no fever, but his mind had gone with his legs and his sight. Behind his sealed lids, he saw visions that made him cry out and flail at things that were not there. He’d been a strong man with broad shoulders and arms still roped with muscle, although all the fat had gone. A haemorrhage of the brain took him.
The vicar came out for a service. I hope to see less of him for many reasons.
A week later we welcomed our second wave, a dozen more, recently returned from abroad, their frames less wasted, their conditions less stable.
You would doubt me, I know, but those remaining of the first six were already responding to treatment. The walls of the infirmary are almost all window. It reminds me more than a little of a greenhouse and the men seemed to thrive in the sunlight and fresh air. I prefer blankets to closed windows and the colours and fragrances from the gardens seemed to play a part. I had had no need for surgery yet. I used Dr Holmes's tincture of iodine on several suppurating wounds, which was painful for the patients, but the results were little short of miraculous. He has provided me with more.
He doesn’t come to the infirmary every day, but when he comes he always has a contribution to make. He has given me the freedom of his laboratory and I have made more use of my botanical knowledge than I have since medical school. Between the physic garden, the larger grounds and the greenhouses, I think half the plants in the world grow here. Dr Holmes found me attempting a preparation with willow and he showed me how to use some of the equipment stored in the cupboards, the likes of which I have never seen. That evening he joined me for dinner and handed me a page from one of his notebooks with instructions for a much more effective preparation. The relief in suffering it provides, from fever and from pain is nearly as incredible as what the iodine does for infection.
Michael has been to visit. It was wonderful to see him. I gave him the recipe for the willow, with the permission of Dr Holmes, who joined us briefly for tea. He had prepared a case of his tincture of iodine for Michael as well. Apparently, this is an arrangement they have had for nearly a year. Michael uses it on his own patients. His colleagues are obstinate in their refusal to try it. More of Michael’s patients survive and he is broadening the minds of the young doctors he is training as best he can, being but one among their teachers.
He also brought a hand to Dr Holmes, a right hand from one of the most eminent surgeons in London who had recently collapsed from an asthma attack at Bart’s. I was more than a little surprised when, after tea, Michael opened the metal case he had set down by his chair to reveal the hand sitting on a bed of straw in a niche carved out of a solid block of ice. We adjourned to the laboratory and my amazement increased as Sherlock...(I can picture your eyebrow going up. Lower it.) Dr Holmes has requested that I call him thus and he has taken to calling me John when we are not in the infirmary. You would look askance at such hasty familiarity, I know, but the battlefield forms bonds at a different pace than civilian life and we are waging battle, he and I, although the idyllic gardens and the porcelain tea service might mislead one in that regard ~
To continue: once in the laboratory, Sherlock took the hand Michael had brought and set it on a tray. Into the stump of the wrist, he inserted two copper wires. I glanced at Michael, but whatever Dr H...Sherlock was doing did not seem familiar to him either. From one of the cupboards, Sherlock took a wooden box that I had not seen there before. It was inscribed in Italian, if I am not mistaken, and inside was a compact machine with a small crank like a music box. He attached the copper wires to the machine and proceeded to crank vigorously. The fingers of the severed hand twitched. I gasped quite audibly. Michael smiled at Sherlock and asked him when Volta’s device had arrived.
Michael and I took turns at the crank while Sherlock tested the reflexes. The fingers stopped spasming in unison, those being pricked with a needle Sherlock wielded jerking higher and more rapidly away from the point than the other fingers of the hand. We repeated the experiment more than a dozen times.
Finally, I asked whether the hand was still alive and Sherlock replied that that indeed was the question. “Or does it still remember being alive?” Sherlock asked and repacked the hand in its icy box and took his leave of us.
Despite the marvels I had already witnessed in my time at the castle, I gaped at Michael when Sherlock departed.
Michael just said, “Yeah, he’s always like that.”
***
It’s been weeks since I’ve sat down to write to you, Harry. In the interim we’ve reached what is our current capacity of thirty patients. We have discharged several whose persistent fevers we were able to dispel and another who could walk again after we finally cleared up an infection from a deep wound in his leg and their beds have all been refilled. There are two further patients who should be ready to leave us in another week or so. The pain relief we could provide while they were healing, one from an amputated arm, the other from an amputated hand has allowed them to benefit from the bounty of Mrs Hudson’s kitchen. One was an accountant, the other a clerk, before their military service, and neither lost their dominant hand. There was a position for an accountant open at Bart’s, so that lad will be off there. The other has had an offer from a cousin in Canada ready to pay his passage to join in the cousin's business there. Obviously, not all will be so fortunate, but their stories have cheered us and cheer, like the sunshine, helps everyone.
I also performed a surgery, more delicate than I ever had time for at a field hospital.
What of the tremor in my left hand you ask? It appears to have gone away. I should have mentioned that to you sooner. It is a noteworthy development. Sherlock pointed it out to me one day when I was mixing a salve in the laboratory. I actually had not noticed. I keep wondering whether it will come back, but it hasn’t so far.
The surgery was on a young soldier whose wounds were the most recent of any of the patients we have had so far. Ethan, such is his name, had been near supply wagons when a cannon ball hit. He had been slashed by the splintering wood. He had lost blood, but no arteries were severed nor either eye lost. He was a fair lad on one side and the other side of his face was in ribbons. It created a nightmarish effect when he turned his head, if one had approached him from his uninjured side. We quickly vanquished the infection, which was not well-established. (I cannot express my joy at this ability. I do not think it will ever fade.) I asked Ethan if he was willing to have me operate to try to lessen the disfigurement by stitching the tattered flesh together. Sherlock has potions which send a person into a deep sleep. They are poisons and one must be very careful of the dosage. We used it for the accountant’s amputation and it was such a different experience to be able to remove the limb carefully because the patient wasn’t screaming in agony from the cutting. Perhaps that is why the tremor did not reassert itself.
Above the infirmary, in addition to my rooms, there is a large solarium with a glass roof and tall, wide windows. It was added to the building when the infirmary was being readied, expressly to provide a strongly-lit room for operations. We waited for a clear morning. Ethan was brave about the potion, which smelled dreadful and held the possibility of death if we miscalculated. I cut and stitched more like a tailor than anything else. I used a fine silk thread. Half-way through the procedure I realised Sherlock was next to me, watching. I had not heard him enter, but he is a man who can be both silent and quick in his movements. There is something of the king cobra in him. Slowly, I finished my work, especially careful around the edge of the eye, hoping the cuts would heal without pulling the eyelids down.
I had started at ten and it was gone two when I attempted to straighten up from my labours. My back was very stiff and would not right itself completely.
Sherlock looked from the sleeping lad’s face to my hands and back. “Quite extraordinary,” he said. “Like fine tatting more than anything. I shall be most interested to follow the progress of his recovery, Dr Watson.”
My back finally straightened the last bit as my chest puffed out. I couldn’t help it. It was the best work I have ever done and I knew that he addressed me with my title not as a formality, but as a compliment.
I studied my handiwork. Even if it does not heal as well as I hope, the disfigurement will still be far less than if it had been allowed to heal without intervention. I moved a chair from near the windows to Ethan’s side to wait his return to consciousness. I had some willow paste to hand for the pain.
Sherlock glanced at it. “It can increase bleeding,” he said. “I can prepare you something else for the pain, which does not have that effect.” He bent closer to Ethan’s face to study the stitches more carefully. I was pleased with how little bleeding there was. “You might wish to tie his hands. The stitches will be itchy; he might tear them in his sleep.”
It was a good suggestion and it spoke of practical experience of which I had seen no evidence. I have bound the limbs of delirious patients that they might not hurt themselves, but I had not thought of it in this context and had nothing with me for the purpose. He unwound his neckcloth and took up a scalpel from my tray. One stroke divided the material. He handed half across to me and used the other to loosely tie Ethan’s hand to the side of the operating table. “He’ll be able to move a little. It will frighten him less when he awakens,” Sherlock said.
I stood holding my piece of fine linen. It was still warm from his throat. Sherlock turned to leave. At the door, he paused. “Only moisten his mouth with water,” he said. “The anaesthesia can upset the stomach, he might vomit.”
I nodded. It works somewhat like alcohol on the system. Many’s the drunkard that’s died that way.
“I’ll be back shortly with the analgesic,” he said, “and I’ll send word to the kitchen for some sustenance for you. You’ve worked through dinner and will need strength to tend to your patient.”
One of Ethan’s fingers twitched. I secured his wrist and sat down to wait. I left my hand resting on his forearm, thinking it might reassure him even in his sleep. It seemed to work. His eyes shifted beneath their lids, but he didn’t move any more until Sherlock had been and gone again and my food had arrived and been eaten.
***
Dear Harry,
Michael’s been again and he’s brought a very young doctor with him from Glasgow. The lad doesn’t even have whiskers yet, that’s how young he is and timid with it. Born into a family of doctors it seems, began his studies earlier than most. Observant though and kind with the patients, not shy to lay his hand on and very clean. Sherlock and Michael and I are in accord about the importance of hygiene and I consider it an important factor in our patients’ recovery time, indeed in their survival rate. We are in the minority among our colleagues.
Dr Hooper’s the young fellow’s name. I didn’t quite catch the first name. Mallory, I think.
We needed another doctor because we’ve moved the laboratory to make room for six more beds. I was stretched with thirty, especially now we’re getting the patients almost directly from the ships bringing them home. With another doctor, even a newly fledged one like Hooper, we’ll be able to manage.
Sherlock has converted an abandoned potting shed tucked in behind a stand of azaleas into a laboratory. It didn’t take the carpenters he hired long to refurbish it with new windows, shelves, cupboards and lab fittings. It has a little wood stove for heat. There was already a water pump inside. Some of the stronger patients lent a hand. It appeared to lift their spirits. They seemed sorry when it was done. I’ve seen a couple walking about the garden looking like they’re scouting for other places to expand. I’ve found myself doing it. If Dr Hooper works out and we got another orderly, I think we could manage fifty.
I’m pleased to report that I have been sleeping better for weeks now. It was hard the first month or so. I spent many late nights and early mornings with my candle reading from the selection of books in my rooms. Some are in languages I don’t read, but most are in English or French and I have attempted to use my Latin on a few of the Italian ones. It didn’t work so well, but I pieced together some of the basic principles of Volta and Galvani from them. At least I have an idea what the little machine we used on the hand was.
Continuing on the subject of body parts: Michael brought Sherlock a head on the same day he brought Dr Hooper to us. Yes, a head. Not a skull. A head, hair and all. Quite a luxurious head of hair actually with only a hint of grey. I envied the previous possessor of it. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of London with a brother who teaches at Bart’s. Poor fellow was trampled to death by his neighbour’s horse. Head intact though. Brother said he wanted to donate his body to science, no consecrated ground mumbo jumbo for the philosopher we are told. Michael spoke up and said he knew just the scientist to put the body to good use. If Sherlock attaches wires to it and gets the eyelids to open, I do not want to be there. He’s spirited it off to his tower, in any event. Michael said Sherlock has another laboratory there, but I’ve never seen it. I can’t see when he works in it, unless he never sleeps, because I see him in the physic garden, or his potting shed or in the infirmary every day, far more than I did when I first arrived. He sits with me at luncheon or dinner several times a week as well, although he doesn’t eat much.
He has a sweet tooth though and Mrs Hudson uses that to advantage. Apparently, it is part of her life’s work to get Sherlock to eat and she makes all sorts of pastries stuffed with fruits and nuts to tempt him even though there is a cook, Mrs Turner, whom she instructs in the making of sweet sauces for meat and fish or vegetables. Oddly, I find myself joining in with her. I’ve noticed that if I have Sherlock deeply engaged in conversation, and he enjoys explaining things if one can just get him started, and I place a few morsels of food on his plate, he will eat them almost absentmindedly. Mrs Hudson has caught me doing this and given me a conspiratorial wink. Sherlock is less pale and not quite as rail thin as when I arrived, but some days the shadows under his eyes are very dark and I do suspect that sleep has been ignored in favour of some scientific pursuit or other.
I was going to stop here as I’m not sure I want to put this in writing, but I’ve developed a habit before I go to bed of walking around the gardens. It started innocently enough. We recommend to the patients that are ambulatory that they walk in the gardens if the weather permits, so one clear evening when the moon was high and bright, I took my own advice. The grounds of the castle are extensive. I don’t believe I have explained that in any detail. There is a stream that waters the property, it has a cascade with a small mill on it. There are fields of oats and they can be ground there. Nearby farmers bring their grain as well and instead of payment, leave a portion of wheat or barley or rye for the kitchen. There are woods on the far side of the stream and it’s on a path through them, wide enough for a cart, that the farmers come to the mill. The woods have many other paths, however, that lead to clearings and meadows and two small hills that overlook the property in one direction and down to the village in the other. This is without mentioning the formal gardens, the kitchen gardens, the orchards, the stables, the dairy, the pastures... It is vast and it is all in working order. It’s true that the part with the most people living and working on it are far from the main house and the formal gardens around it, but one might wander for many an evening and find plenty to see and even people to share a pipe or an ale with if one had a mind to, without retracing one’s steps.
I had done it all once when I was new, which is how I know. Even met the man who keeps it all ticking over, by the name of Lestrade, he of the inadequate constabulary work. It is an extra office he agreed to take on. Fine fellow, been overseeing the place for thirty years and his father before him. He has an eye for detail and for people. If a fox eats one chicken he knows about it. He knows if one partridge is poached. There is a gamekeeper named Dimmock who reports to him about that bit, but Lestrade knows. And he knows who drinks too much ale and needs a word not to disturb the peace of his neighbours or his own wife and children. One might think such a man would resent Sherlock coming along and turning part of the place into a hospital and seeming to pay no mind to all the rest of it, but he doesn’t. He admires him. Says he might have to chase around some to find Sherlock, but he’ll always help Lestrade solve any problem he can’t solve himself. I flattered him a bit when I said those must be very few. The man radiates a clear-sighted sincerity. He knew what I was doing, but he raised his glass to me and smiled. Said, that like his grandfather before him, Sherlock expected people to manage on their own most of the time, but to have the sense to know when they can’t and to ask for help.
“His grandfather always said Sherlock was like him,” Lestrade began. “Doesn’t matter what his name is, he’d say. Sherlock’s a Frankenstein more than a Holmes. That’s why this place needs to be his. When he’s done with his wandering, when he’s gleaned what he needs from the wider world, he’ll come here and do something great. Mark my words.” Lestrade set down his ale. “And I have.” He looked at me steadily. “The old man was a wise one, gave Sherlock the run of the place. He was a wild young thing, riding, climbing, swimming, running. You never knew where you would find him. He was everywhere and he discovered everything. He knows each nook and cranny and he never forgets it no matter how long he’s been away. His grandfather died knowing Sherlock would come back and he knew I would keep everything here safe for him until he did. And I have.” Lestrade took a long draught of his ale, looked at me over it. “You see it in him, too,” he said. “I can tell by the way you’re listening to me. Maybe you’ll help him. Maybe this hospital thing will be part of the greatness. We’ll wait and see.”
“Most people have to die to have words like that said about them,” I remarked. “They’re lucky if it happens even then.”
I tried for you, Harry. I did. It took me by surprise. I never thought I’d need to say them so soon.
“I’m a big believer in saying things while I have the chance,” Lestrade replied.
There was a knock on the door. A young boy pushed it open. “The trap near the henhouse is sprung,” he announced, breathlessly.
Lestrade stood. “We have our fox,” he said.
“No, sir,” the boy replied. “We have a hound.”
Lestrade glowered.
“Not one of ours,” the boy continued. “A big, shaggy creature. Doesn’t belong to anyone I know of.”
“Let’s see, then,” Lestrade said, grabbing his jacket and a long staff by the door.
I set down my glass and followed him out. “Thank you,” I said, pulling the door shut behind me.
“Want to come?” he asked.
“No, I’d best get back,” I replied. “It’ll be a story for next time.”
He smiled at that and headed off with the boy and I headed to the gardens. When I reached the ones by the infirmary, I walked on past until I stood beneath the tower where Sherlock did whatever he did instead of sleeping. There was light coming from the windows on the top floor. I stood staring rather foolishly. I don’t know what I expected, what I was waiting for, but after a while, I saw a shadow pass by one of the windows. For some reason the story of Rapunzel came to mind. It was the tower, I suppose, because Sherlock has neither unusually long nor golden hair. But he was high above me in his tower and if I was to reach him I would need to climb. I wished to climb. I realised it with a shock and turned to leave, embarrassed at the imagery, embarrassed at the desire. From behind me, music began to play. The window must have been open; the sound was very clear and plaintive. I thought then of the sirens upon their rocks because I wanted more than ever to climb to the top of that tower where I had not been invited. I walked a few paces further away and then ran.
Well, Harry, that was several weeks ago and every night, except for the one when I went to hear the story of the hound from Lestrade, I have walked straight to the tower and stood, looking up at the lighted windows, waiting for a shadow to appear, listening for the music of a lone violin.
***
Part II may be found
here.
***
Picture: 2011 National Theatre production of Frankenstein
Author:
saki101Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Mike Stamford, Victor, OCs
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Slash
Word Count: ~13.1K total (posted in two parts due to length)
Disclaimer: Sherlock is not mine and no money is being made.
Summary: What if Dr Frankenstein had had Dr Watson to keep him right? A story in which Sherlock's mother's maiden name is Frankenstein and Dr Watson has been invalided home towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars...
Notes: A stand-alone AU fusion fix-it fic written for the Springlock Exchange 2014 for swimmingbirdrunningrock's great prompt: John's the detective, Sherlock's the doctor. AU, fic or ficlet? Go wild. This connected to a thought I had had upon seeing Frankenstein with Mr Cumberbatch in the role of the scientist: every genius needs a John Watson.
Excerpt: “We are all egoists,” he said. “Every child likes to hear the story of his beginnings, the tale of his parents’ courtship, the events surrounding his birth, the parts of his story he cannot know himself.”
On AO3
Sweet smoke hung heavy in the air above the heads of the five men gathered in the tiled room. One amongst the lounging figures stood and stretched. He was taller and broader than most men. Thick, dark hair fell to his shoulders, its waves nearly obscuring a long, thin scar that followed his hairline and disappeared into the shadow beneath his jaw. He moved to the shelves by the door with a slight unevenness of gait. Some had returned from the wars with such mementos. Others acquired them less heroically, a fall from a horse, a near miss in a duel, a drunken tumble down the stairs. One of the other men watched through the wreaths of smoke from his pipe, shook his head when the tall man lifted a decanter from the shelf. Another of the group looked up and raised his glass. The tall man brought the decanter back with him.
“We are all egoists,” he said. “Every child likes to hear the story of his beginnings, the tale of his parents’ courtship, the events surrounding his birth, the parts of his story he cannot know himself.” He refilled the glasses of all of his companions, save one.
That man drew his pipe away from his mouth. “You never were a child,” he said.
***
“Colonel?”
“Come in and shut the door, Michael. By some miracle, I am alone.”
Dr Stamford closed the door to the small sitting room, took in the desk covered with papers and reached behind him to turn the key in the lock.
Colonel Watson winced as he sank into one of the two armchairs in the room. He motioned his visitor towards the other. “How have they all found me? I’m not even officially in charge of anything yet.” He rubbed a hand across his face, sighed and looked up at Michael. “I think a more customary greeting would have been: ‘How was the journey down from London? Would you care for a drink to clear out the dust from the road?’”
The glasses made a pleasant sound as they touched. “I should have just retired,” Colonel Watson said.
Michael settled into his chair. “You would have been bored senseless in a week and challenging someone to a duel over a card game in two, John.”
John swatted his leg. “I’ve changed a bit since we used to compete to see who could saw through a thigh bone faster,” John said. He held out his drink. The amber liquid trembled in the glass. “I can’t trust myself in the operating theatre anymore.”
“You’ll set up the hospital, make sure it’s run properly and save lives that way,” Michael replied.
John glared at the desk. “Filling out requisitions and reports?”
“You see things, John. Always have. More of your patients survive because you really see them, not a bleeding hunk of meat to hack bits off of or a bloodless example from a treatise.”
John looked out the window. “Some people think I’m supposed to see other things as well. The vicar came to call.”
Michael snorted.
“No,” John said, wagging a finger. “Not about the state of my soul, but the state of the churchyard.”
Michael raised an eyebrow.
John balanced his glass on the arm of his chair. “Graves have been disturbed these past few months and the good divine is not satisfied with the efforts of the local constable. The reverend thought I might solve the mystery where this fellow Lestrade has failed.” John took a sip from his glass. “My being a man of penetrating insight apparently.”
“Your reputation precedes you,” Michael chuckled.
“I have no civilian reputation,” John exclaimed, slamming his empty glass down on the side table.
Michael waited for the anger to subside. John Watson’s temper had always been like a summer storm.
“Sorry,” John said, grabbing the whiskey bottle by the neck and leaning towards Michael. “Except with a couple old friends with very long memories.” Glasses recharged, John continued, bottle still in hand. “Shouldn’t he be complaining to the ‘lord of the manor’ about affairs of the village, not some stranger like me?”
“Ah,” Michael said, setting down his glass much more gently. “Sherlock, Dr Holmes, that is, is nearly as much of a stranger here as you are. He’s been studying in London and abroad for years. He returned, rather begrudgingly, only a few months ago when his maternal grandfather died and the castle became his.”
“Castle?” John echoed.
“Closer to a castle than a manor,” Michael replied, “the creation of some whimsical ancestor. Has a bit of the German fairy tale about it.”
“It is habitable?” John asked. “We aren’t setting up shop in some picturesque ruin, are we?”
“It is picturesque, but more than habitable, if you exclude Sherlock’s tower out in the garden, I suppose.” Michael retrieved his glass. “He began outfitting the wing for the infirmary as soon as I mentioned your idea to him. Last week, he wrote to say that the refurbishments were nearly complete.”
John tilted his head and regarded his old friend. “I didn’t withdraw my resignation until a few days ago.”
Michael took a thoughtful sip of whiskey. “You said yourself that General Sholto didn’t want to accept your resignation and Sherlock, well, he decides to do things and expects the universe to fall in line.”
“Former military?” John asked.
“Former deity, more like,” Michael said.
John scowled.
“You need to meet him,” Michael concluded.
***
Dear Harry,
You won't mind, I hope, that I still write to you, although there is no address I know that can bring my meandering thoughts to you now.
I need to write them down; I will never sleep otherwise. I may not sleep in any event. There were too many impressions. Triage after a pitched battle is the only thing I can liken it to, the bombardment of the senses, the urgent need to understand, to make decisions.
I am a scientific man, a military man. I must order my thoughts. Order and method are my tools. If I apply them, maybe then I can sleep…
There are rooms waiting for me, above the infirmary I saw today, with walls of reference books and glass doors opening onto a narrow balcony overlooking a proper physic garden. This is nothing new, although perhaps newly brought to order after a period of neglect. And there is a laboratory such as I have never seen, those at Bart’s are like the clutter on a kitchen table by comparison. The array of glassware alone was dazzling, Dr Holmes’s explanation of his current experiment more so.
The breadth of his knowledge, the range of his travels and research, the ideas he linked together regarding just that one experiment, were staggering, all the more so in light of his youth.
I tore open the skin of my thumb on a thorn by one of the garden gates. It is neither red nor hot now. Dr Holmes applied a tincture to the wound twice, the first time straight from the alembic. It is a compound of his devising derived from iodine. The wound is already dry. What I can do just with this tincture. The lives and the limbs I might save.
The things I can learn there.
I hope he understood my dumbfounded expression to be admiration at his accomplishments. I couldn’t find words, although I may have uttered one or two. He looked at me intently for a moment, then went on.
Now, I find myself thinking on other things, too. There is a bowl of green apples in the room in which I write. The vicar left them. They are a little lighter than the colour of the silk waistcoat Dr Holmes wore, not at all practical for the laboratory, but tailored perfectly to his form and embroidered with leaves. He assessed me with eyes the same colour as the silk or so they seemed. When he bid Michael and I good-day at the edge of the drive, they seemed blue. There are people I have known for months and could not attest to the colour of their eyes. In the course of a morning, I noted the changeability of his.
I feel ill at ease with myself.
The wagon will arrive early tomorrow to take my trunks. I will call at the vicarage along the way, the innkeeper assures me it is a minor detour off the road to the castle. (See how matter-of-factly I use that term now?) The good cleric seems to view me as some sort of military governor, I shall have to make clear that my authority is only over the patients and medical staff in my new hospital and that only for as long as these wars continue to produce wounded and dying and Dr Holmes continues to allow us the use of his remarkable premises.
Michael has already collected his things from the inn and returned there for the night. I was invited to do so as well, but I claimed to have pressing correspondence to answer. I needed to get away, to order the tumult in my mind.
I do feel better for writing some of it down. There are not enough hours in the night to record all I saw and heard and tomorrow there will be more.
Good-night, Harry.
***
“Oh, Dr Stamford, how good to see you,” Mrs Hudson said, holding the door wide. “Come in before the skies open up.”
She leaned out the door. “Billy, don’t forget to light the fire when you bring the bags upstairs,” she called to the lanky boy leading the horse round to the stables.
“No, ma’am,” Billy called back before he disappeared past the long row of blueberry bushes.
Mrs Hudson turned to beam at Michael. “Colonel Watson told me your blessed news,” she said. “Clarissa is such a pretty name and how is Mrs Stamford?”
“Very well indeed and well-tended by both newly-made grandmothers, two sisters and one sister-in-law,” Michael replied, taking off his hat and bowing slightly. Mrs Hudson had taught the cook the recipe for the best scones in three counties and he appreciated her art.
“Good time for a journey, then,” she said. “Colonel Watson has been looking forward to your visit. He hardly takes a moment to sit down, but now you’re here, he may. He asked for tea to be served in the orangery. I take that as a good sign, but you may have to pull him away from the infirmary nonetheless. You know how to get there through the house?”
Michael peered out the door at the grey sky. “I usually walk round. Do you think I’ll make it?”
“Come,” Mrs Hudson said, gesturing towards a door behind the staircase, “I’ll show you a shortcut.”
***
An informal letter tonight, Harry, no time for proper composition. I am run off my feet and I drop into bed exhausted, barely managing to undress. It is a good exhaustion though, not the frenzy of death and life near the front. I have the time to know my patients as more than a diagnosis and it makes a difference – to us all.
Two days after I arrived, the first patients came. They were pale and thin, their injuries, for better or worse, already treated, hastily near the front and for longer back in England. They were the ones without friends or family to take them in for the last stages of either recovery or decline. Unable to fend for themselves, their beds in the city wards were still needed for the more recently wounded or stricken.
I lost one, a Bruce Parkington, the day after he arrived. I’m not sure he ever realised where he was. He had no fever, but his mind had gone with his legs and his sight. Behind his sealed lids, he saw visions that made him cry out and flail at things that were not there. He’d been a strong man with broad shoulders and arms still roped with muscle, although all the fat had gone. A haemorrhage of the brain took him.
The vicar came out for a service. I hope to see less of him for many reasons.
A week later we welcomed our second wave, a dozen more, recently returned from abroad, their frames less wasted, their conditions less stable.
You would doubt me, I know, but those remaining of the first six were already responding to treatment. The walls of the infirmary are almost all window. It reminds me more than a little of a greenhouse and the men seemed to thrive in the sunlight and fresh air. I prefer blankets to closed windows and the colours and fragrances from the gardens seemed to play a part. I had had no need for surgery yet. I used Dr Holmes's tincture of iodine on several suppurating wounds, which was painful for the patients, but the results were little short of miraculous. He has provided me with more.
He doesn’t come to the infirmary every day, but when he comes he always has a contribution to make. He has given me the freedom of his laboratory and I have made more use of my botanical knowledge than I have since medical school. Between the physic garden, the larger grounds and the greenhouses, I think half the plants in the world grow here. Dr Holmes found me attempting a preparation with willow and he showed me how to use some of the equipment stored in the cupboards, the likes of which I have never seen. That evening he joined me for dinner and handed me a page from one of his notebooks with instructions for a much more effective preparation. The relief in suffering it provides, from fever and from pain is nearly as incredible as what the iodine does for infection.
Michael has been to visit. It was wonderful to see him. I gave him the recipe for the willow, with the permission of Dr Holmes, who joined us briefly for tea. He had prepared a case of his tincture of iodine for Michael as well. Apparently, this is an arrangement they have had for nearly a year. Michael uses it on his own patients. His colleagues are obstinate in their refusal to try it. More of Michael’s patients survive and he is broadening the minds of the young doctors he is training as best he can, being but one among their teachers.
He also brought a hand to Dr Holmes, a right hand from one of the most eminent surgeons in London who had recently collapsed from an asthma attack at Bart’s. I was more than a little surprised when, after tea, Michael opened the metal case he had set down by his chair to reveal the hand sitting on a bed of straw in a niche carved out of a solid block of ice. We adjourned to the laboratory and my amazement increased as Sherlock...(I can picture your eyebrow going up. Lower it.) Dr Holmes has requested that I call him thus and he has taken to calling me John when we are not in the infirmary. You would look askance at such hasty familiarity, I know, but the battlefield forms bonds at a different pace than civilian life and we are waging battle, he and I, although the idyllic gardens and the porcelain tea service might mislead one in that regard ~
To continue: once in the laboratory, Sherlock took the hand Michael had brought and set it on a tray. Into the stump of the wrist, he inserted two copper wires. I glanced at Michael, but whatever Dr H...Sherlock was doing did not seem familiar to him either. From one of the cupboards, Sherlock took a wooden box that I had not seen there before. It was inscribed in Italian, if I am not mistaken, and inside was a compact machine with a small crank like a music box. He attached the copper wires to the machine and proceeded to crank vigorously. The fingers of the severed hand twitched. I gasped quite audibly. Michael smiled at Sherlock and asked him when Volta’s device had arrived.
Michael and I took turns at the crank while Sherlock tested the reflexes. The fingers stopped spasming in unison, those being pricked with a needle Sherlock wielded jerking higher and more rapidly away from the point than the other fingers of the hand. We repeated the experiment more than a dozen times.
Finally, I asked whether the hand was still alive and Sherlock replied that that indeed was the question. “Or does it still remember being alive?” Sherlock asked and repacked the hand in its icy box and took his leave of us.
Despite the marvels I had already witnessed in my time at the castle, I gaped at Michael when Sherlock departed.
Michael just said, “Yeah, he’s always like that.”
***
It’s been weeks since I’ve sat down to write to you, Harry. In the interim we’ve reached what is our current capacity of thirty patients. We have discharged several whose persistent fevers we were able to dispel and another who could walk again after we finally cleared up an infection from a deep wound in his leg and their beds have all been refilled. There are two further patients who should be ready to leave us in another week or so. The pain relief we could provide while they were healing, one from an amputated arm, the other from an amputated hand has allowed them to benefit from the bounty of Mrs Hudson’s kitchen. One was an accountant, the other a clerk, before their military service, and neither lost their dominant hand. There was a position for an accountant open at Bart’s, so that lad will be off there. The other has had an offer from a cousin in Canada ready to pay his passage to join in the cousin's business there. Obviously, not all will be so fortunate, but their stories have cheered us and cheer, like the sunshine, helps everyone.
I also performed a surgery, more delicate than I ever had time for at a field hospital.
What of the tremor in my left hand you ask? It appears to have gone away. I should have mentioned that to you sooner. It is a noteworthy development. Sherlock pointed it out to me one day when I was mixing a salve in the laboratory. I actually had not noticed. I keep wondering whether it will come back, but it hasn’t so far.
The surgery was on a young soldier whose wounds were the most recent of any of the patients we have had so far. Ethan, such is his name, had been near supply wagons when a cannon ball hit. He had been slashed by the splintering wood. He had lost blood, but no arteries were severed nor either eye lost. He was a fair lad on one side and the other side of his face was in ribbons. It created a nightmarish effect when he turned his head, if one had approached him from his uninjured side. We quickly vanquished the infection, which was not well-established. (I cannot express my joy at this ability. I do not think it will ever fade.) I asked Ethan if he was willing to have me operate to try to lessen the disfigurement by stitching the tattered flesh together. Sherlock has potions which send a person into a deep sleep. They are poisons and one must be very careful of the dosage. We used it for the accountant’s amputation and it was such a different experience to be able to remove the limb carefully because the patient wasn’t screaming in agony from the cutting. Perhaps that is why the tremor did not reassert itself.
Above the infirmary, in addition to my rooms, there is a large solarium with a glass roof and tall, wide windows. It was added to the building when the infirmary was being readied, expressly to provide a strongly-lit room for operations. We waited for a clear morning. Ethan was brave about the potion, which smelled dreadful and held the possibility of death if we miscalculated. I cut and stitched more like a tailor than anything else. I used a fine silk thread. Half-way through the procedure I realised Sherlock was next to me, watching. I had not heard him enter, but he is a man who can be both silent and quick in his movements. There is something of the king cobra in him. Slowly, I finished my work, especially careful around the edge of the eye, hoping the cuts would heal without pulling the eyelids down.
I had started at ten and it was gone two when I attempted to straighten up from my labours. My back was very stiff and would not right itself completely.
Sherlock looked from the sleeping lad’s face to my hands and back. “Quite extraordinary,” he said. “Like fine tatting more than anything. I shall be most interested to follow the progress of his recovery, Dr Watson.”
My back finally straightened the last bit as my chest puffed out. I couldn’t help it. It was the best work I have ever done and I knew that he addressed me with my title not as a formality, but as a compliment.
I studied my handiwork. Even if it does not heal as well as I hope, the disfigurement will still be far less than if it had been allowed to heal without intervention. I moved a chair from near the windows to Ethan’s side to wait his return to consciousness. I had some willow paste to hand for the pain.
Sherlock glanced at it. “It can increase bleeding,” he said. “I can prepare you something else for the pain, which does not have that effect.” He bent closer to Ethan’s face to study the stitches more carefully. I was pleased with how little bleeding there was. “You might wish to tie his hands. The stitches will be itchy; he might tear them in his sleep.”
It was a good suggestion and it spoke of practical experience of which I had seen no evidence. I have bound the limbs of delirious patients that they might not hurt themselves, but I had not thought of it in this context and had nothing with me for the purpose. He unwound his neckcloth and took up a scalpel from my tray. One stroke divided the material. He handed half across to me and used the other to loosely tie Ethan’s hand to the side of the operating table. “He’ll be able to move a little. It will frighten him less when he awakens,” Sherlock said.
I stood holding my piece of fine linen. It was still warm from his throat. Sherlock turned to leave. At the door, he paused. “Only moisten his mouth with water,” he said. “The anaesthesia can upset the stomach, he might vomit.”
I nodded. It works somewhat like alcohol on the system. Many’s the drunkard that’s died that way.
“I’ll be back shortly with the analgesic,” he said, “and I’ll send word to the kitchen for some sustenance for you. You’ve worked through dinner and will need strength to tend to your patient.”
One of Ethan’s fingers twitched. I secured his wrist and sat down to wait. I left my hand resting on his forearm, thinking it might reassure him even in his sleep. It seemed to work. His eyes shifted beneath their lids, but he didn’t move any more until Sherlock had been and gone again and my food had arrived and been eaten.
***
Dear Harry,
Michael’s been again and he’s brought a very young doctor with him from Glasgow. The lad doesn’t even have whiskers yet, that’s how young he is and timid with it. Born into a family of doctors it seems, began his studies earlier than most. Observant though and kind with the patients, not shy to lay his hand on and very clean. Sherlock and Michael and I are in accord about the importance of hygiene and I consider it an important factor in our patients’ recovery time, indeed in their survival rate. We are in the minority among our colleagues.
Dr Hooper’s the young fellow’s name. I didn’t quite catch the first name. Mallory, I think.
We needed another doctor because we’ve moved the laboratory to make room for six more beds. I was stretched with thirty, especially now we’re getting the patients almost directly from the ships bringing them home. With another doctor, even a newly fledged one like Hooper, we’ll be able to manage.
Sherlock has converted an abandoned potting shed tucked in behind a stand of azaleas into a laboratory. It didn’t take the carpenters he hired long to refurbish it with new windows, shelves, cupboards and lab fittings. It has a little wood stove for heat. There was already a water pump inside. Some of the stronger patients lent a hand. It appeared to lift their spirits. They seemed sorry when it was done. I’ve seen a couple walking about the garden looking like they’re scouting for other places to expand. I’ve found myself doing it. If Dr Hooper works out and we got another orderly, I think we could manage fifty.
I’m pleased to report that I have been sleeping better for weeks now. It was hard the first month or so. I spent many late nights and early mornings with my candle reading from the selection of books in my rooms. Some are in languages I don’t read, but most are in English or French and I have attempted to use my Latin on a few of the Italian ones. It didn’t work so well, but I pieced together some of the basic principles of Volta and Galvani from them. At least I have an idea what the little machine we used on the hand was.
Continuing on the subject of body parts: Michael brought Sherlock a head on the same day he brought Dr Hooper to us. Yes, a head. Not a skull. A head, hair and all. Quite a luxurious head of hair actually with only a hint of grey. I envied the previous possessor of it. He was a professor of philosophy at the University of London with a brother who teaches at Bart’s. Poor fellow was trampled to death by his neighbour’s horse. Head intact though. Brother said he wanted to donate his body to science, no consecrated ground mumbo jumbo for the philosopher we are told. Michael spoke up and said he knew just the scientist to put the body to good use. If Sherlock attaches wires to it and gets the eyelids to open, I do not want to be there. He’s spirited it off to his tower, in any event. Michael said Sherlock has another laboratory there, but I’ve never seen it. I can’t see when he works in it, unless he never sleeps, because I see him in the physic garden, or his potting shed or in the infirmary every day, far more than I did when I first arrived. He sits with me at luncheon or dinner several times a week as well, although he doesn’t eat much.
He has a sweet tooth though and Mrs Hudson uses that to advantage. Apparently, it is part of her life’s work to get Sherlock to eat and she makes all sorts of pastries stuffed with fruits and nuts to tempt him even though there is a cook, Mrs Turner, whom she instructs in the making of sweet sauces for meat and fish or vegetables. Oddly, I find myself joining in with her. I’ve noticed that if I have Sherlock deeply engaged in conversation, and he enjoys explaining things if one can just get him started, and I place a few morsels of food on his plate, he will eat them almost absentmindedly. Mrs Hudson has caught me doing this and given me a conspiratorial wink. Sherlock is less pale and not quite as rail thin as when I arrived, but some days the shadows under his eyes are very dark and I do suspect that sleep has been ignored in favour of some scientific pursuit or other.
I was going to stop here as I’m not sure I want to put this in writing, but I’ve developed a habit before I go to bed of walking around the gardens. It started innocently enough. We recommend to the patients that are ambulatory that they walk in the gardens if the weather permits, so one clear evening when the moon was high and bright, I took my own advice. The grounds of the castle are extensive. I don’t believe I have explained that in any detail. There is a stream that waters the property, it has a cascade with a small mill on it. There are fields of oats and they can be ground there. Nearby farmers bring their grain as well and instead of payment, leave a portion of wheat or barley or rye for the kitchen. There are woods on the far side of the stream and it’s on a path through them, wide enough for a cart, that the farmers come to the mill. The woods have many other paths, however, that lead to clearings and meadows and two small hills that overlook the property in one direction and down to the village in the other. This is without mentioning the formal gardens, the kitchen gardens, the orchards, the stables, the dairy, the pastures... It is vast and it is all in working order. It’s true that the part with the most people living and working on it are far from the main house and the formal gardens around it, but one might wander for many an evening and find plenty to see and even people to share a pipe or an ale with if one had a mind to, without retracing one’s steps.
I had done it all once when I was new, which is how I know. Even met the man who keeps it all ticking over, by the name of Lestrade, he of the inadequate constabulary work. It is an extra office he agreed to take on. Fine fellow, been overseeing the place for thirty years and his father before him. He has an eye for detail and for people. If a fox eats one chicken he knows about it. He knows if one partridge is poached. There is a gamekeeper named Dimmock who reports to him about that bit, but Lestrade knows. And he knows who drinks too much ale and needs a word not to disturb the peace of his neighbours or his own wife and children. One might think such a man would resent Sherlock coming along and turning part of the place into a hospital and seeming to pay no mind to all the rest of it, but he doesn’t. He admires him. Says he might have to chase around some to find Sherlock, but he’ll always help Lestrade solve any problem he can’t solve himself. I flattered him a bit when I said those must be very few. The man radiates a clear-sighted sincerity. He knew what I was doing, but he raised his glass to me and smiled. Said, that like his grandfather before him, Sherlock expected people to manage on their own most of the time, but to have the sense to know when they can’t and to ask for help.
“His grandfather always said Sherlock was like him,” Lestrade began. “Doesn’t matter what his name is, he’d say. Sherlock’s a Frankenstein more than a Holmes. That’s why this place needs to be his. When he’s done with his wandering, when he’s gleaned what he needs from the wider world, he’ll come here and do something great. Mark my words.” Lestrade set down his ale. “And I have.” He looked at me steadily. “The old man was a wise one, gave Sherlock the run of the place. He was a wild young thing, riding, climbing, swimming, running. You never knew where you would find him. He was everywhere and he discovered everything. He knows each nook and cranny and he never forgets it no matter how long he’s been away. His grandfather died knowing Sherlock would come back and he knew I would keep everything here safe for him until he did. And I have.” Lestrade took a long draught of his ale, looked at me over it. “You see it in him, too,” he said. “I can tell by the way you’re listening to me. Maybe you’ll help him. Maybe this hospital thing will be part of the greatness. We’ll wait and see.”
“Most people have to die to have words like that said about them,” I remarked. “They’re lucky if it happens even then.”
I tried for you, Harry. I did. It took me by surprise. I never thought I’d need to say them so soon.
“I’m a big believer in saying things while I have the chance,” Lestrade replied.
There was a knock on the door. A young boy pushed it open. “The trap near the henhouse is sprung,” he announced, breathlessly.
Lestrade stood. “We have our fox,” he said.
“No, sir,” the boy replied. “We have a hound.”
Lestrade glowered.
“Not one of ours,” the boy continued. “A big, shaggy creature. Doesn’t belong to anyone I know of.”
“Let’s see, then,” Lestrade said, grabbing his jacket and a long staff by the door.
I set down my glass and followed him out. “Thank you,” I said, pulling the door shut behind me.
“Want to come?” he asked.
“No, I’d best get back,” I replied. “It’ll be a story for next time.”
He smiled at that and headed off with the boy and I headed to the gardens. When I reached the ones by the infirmary, I walked on past until I stood beneath the tower where Sherlock did whatever he did instead of sleeping. There was light coming from the windows on the top floor. I stood staring rather foolishly. I don’t know what I expected, what I was waiting for, but after a while, I saw a shadow pass by one of the windows. For some reason the story of Rapunzel came to mind. It was the tower, I suppose, because Sherlock has neither unusually long nor golden hair. But he was high above me in his tower and if I was to reach him I would need to climb. I wished to climb. I realised it with a shock and turned to leave, embarrassed at the imagery, embarrassed at the desire. From behind me, music began to play. The window must have been open; the sound was very clear and plaintive. I thought then of the sirens upon their rocks because I wanted more than ever to climb to the top of that tower where I had not been invited. I walked a few paces further away and then ran.
Well, Harry, that was several weeks ago and every night, except for the one when I went to hear the story of the hound from Lestrade, I have walked straight to the tower and stood, looking up at the lighted windows, waiting for a shadow to appear, listening for the music of a lone violin.
***
Part II may be found
here.
***
Picture: 2011 National Theatre production of Frankenstein