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With hindsight, it was all so painfully inevitable. The spring had been a wet one, interminable rain for weeks on end, and most of the country was flooded or not far from it; all rivers were high and pulling fast, and every pond was leeching over its banks. The case we had been called away on, up into the northern borderlands of Wales, related to an old soldiering acquaintance of mine. The rushing water, everywhere, brought Switzerland and the triumphant return – at that time, only a year or so previous – ever-pressingly to mind.
But then, with hindsight a great many things are obvious which had not, at the time, been so; it is Holmes' greatest irritation that, when he lays out his chain of reasoning, we mere mortals understand it so perfectly that it seems he has done nothing very clever at all, when of course we ourselves had seen nothing of it at all until the grand reveal.
Then again – in the end, Holmes himself had foreseen none of it either.
I am ahead of myself; I apologise. I was at the time living with Holmes in Baker Street after his rather dramatic resurrection approximately one year previously, and had no intention to cease doing so. An unusual housemate he may well be, but he is an unusual man and a most uncommon friend and I had no desire to lose him ever again. We lived together, if not in peace and tranquility (which neither of us would have greatly enjoyed) then happily, and delighted with one another's presence. Though there was nothing to be done about it, I loved him; we were happy; that was that.
The case arrived in the form of a letter – and for me, which was if nothing else rather novel. Colonel Winter, late of the ---shires, was suffering somewhat from threatening letters being left around his house and grounds. I say only somewhat, for though the example letter he enclosed made my skin crawl and raised Holmes' eyebrows so far I thought them likely to fall off his face, we rather got the sense that he thought the whole thing a tremendous inconvenience, and was only attempting to assuage the rather reasonable fears of the house's other inhabitants: his wife, their daughter, her governess, and his nephew. The Colonel wrote to me rather than Holmes on a rather tenuous personal connection: his nephew having served under the same banner as I shortly before my discharge, we knew one another slightly, if not well. The name, at least, was familiar to me, and I suspected that, had I not known it and disdained to take up the case on that basis, the Colonel would not have been very much grieved.
Holmes found the whole affair of interest, however, so any hopes the Colonel may have haboured for peace in his home were swiftly dashed and we relative strangers were away on the next train to Gwynedd without delay. We occupied much of the journey in attempting to coax free from my beleaguered brain any useful recollections of my last weeks in Afghanistan and more specifically of young Captain Winter, though this was slow going and frustrating for us both, as it was both many years ago and not a time I often willingly return to. Eventually I put up my hands and told him he would have to make his own impressions of the man, as I had none to give him, and we settled in silence for the remainder of the journey. Holmes stared out of the window, and I occupied myself with a novel – though I looked at every word, I absorbed nothing from them.
The home of the Winters was a grand old pile, crumbling at the corners and very likely untouched in both structure and aesthetic for the last hundred years. It was set back from the road, far from the nearest town, in a little forest near the edge of the mountains. A river, running high and fast with the recent rain washing down from the hills, curved through the woodland and under the road we came in on; the dogcart made such a rattling as we crossed the rickety wooden bridge that I half feared it would crumble beneath us, but the driver merely swayed with the motions and exhibited no alarm. The butler, an aged domestic who seemed almost part of the house itself, took our coats and umbrellas, glanced disdainfully at our shoes (sodden from the short hop from train to cart to house), and directed us to the drawing room, where Mrs Winter was waiting to receive us.
She rose at our entry and flew forward to press Holmes' hand; he allowed it with good grace, for – as I knew – it allowed him opportunity to examine her at close quarters. She was, I estimated, a good deal younger than her husband and likely only ten years older than Captain Winter, but her hair was lined with grey at the temples as though prematurely aged. She was slight in build, but plump at the wrists and waist; her step was light and fast, but she had the habit of picking up her skirts to move as though unused to their length and volume, and encumbered by them. She was also, for all her fine English clothing cut from fine green Welsh wool, unmistakably Indian.
“Mr Holmes,” she said, voice strained with fear and relief but unaccented, “I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you have come. I suspect my husband has misrepresented to you how things are with us, and they have worsened besides. Even he was glad, this morning, that you were on your way. We are quite in your hands.”
Holmes smiled reassuringly and pressed her hand, gently detatching her from his person and lightly returning her to her seat. “Madam, any services I can do you shall be done,” he said, settling into an armchair opposite. “You must tell Doctor Watson and I all that has occurred, and we shall see if we can't shed a little light into this darkest hour of yours.”
Mrs Winter took a deep breath and seemed to settle. “It began some weeks ago,” she said, as though reading from some internal history. “We have only been in this country since the new year – now that our daughter is six, we wanted an English governess for her, and I am-” she flushed lightly and rested her fingertips on her stomach. I made a slight noise of understanding and a note of it; Holmes flicked his long fingers to signal that she should continue. “We had experienced no particular difficulties at first; securing Emma – Miss Davies, our governess – was a matter of inviting her up from Shrewsbury, and she has been very dear to us since. The locals, I dare say, saw me as something of a curiosity at first, but soon became used to the sight of me and I have attracted no more notice than might be expected as the lady of a house like this, and a newcomer to the area. Truly, Mr Holmes, we had nothing to complain of until the beginning of March, when these letters began to arrive.”
Holmes folded his hands under his chin. “How did Miss Davies come to your notice?”
“We placed an advertisement in the newspaper-”
“Which?”
“The Times. An agency in London recommended her, as she had experience and was willing to travel to such a rural place as this.”
“And your nephew? He has been with you all these months?”
“Yes, indeed. James was at a loose end after Christmas, as he had recently resigned his commission and not yet secured an alternative employment, and since the deaths of his parents it was perfectly natural that he should remain with us. It was only to be temporary, but what with everything that has happened since, he insists upon staying to look out for us.” She said it quite easily; I could detect no irritation, no sense that the man was outstaying his welcome or intruding upon their home, but Holmes hummed lightly to himself.
“You said, Mrs Winter, that things had worsened since your husband wrote to Doctor Watson. I see that another medical man has come and gone before us-” Mrs Winter gave a start, eyes wide, “-and, of course, your husband is absent when he ought with all propriety to be greeting the guests he himself invited. What is the nature of the illness?”
Her face crumpled and she pressed the backs of her tapered fingers to her mouth. “It is an illness, Mr Holmes, that our doctor cannot identify, nor do anything to cure. He will return tomorrow, and if there is no change he will seek a specialist, but I fear he will be too late! And – it is not my husband who suffers. It is my daughter. Charles will not leave her.”
“I should be happy to examine her,” I said, already half-standing from my chair and reaching for my Gladstone. “If it would ease your mind.”
Holmes nodded at me over his shoulder, and Mrs Winter clasped her hands. “If you would – thank you, Doctor. Any news would be a comfort.”
I left Holmes extracting further details of the letters and contracted the butler to point me to the invalid's room. I found her chatty and cheerful in bed but pale and ashen, with dark circles under her eyes which had no place in a child's face. Her father, a grand old fellow of broad shoulders and at least six feet tall with leonine white hair, was sitting hunched in a chair by her bedside. He was curled over her hand, which appeared miniscule in his paw, and seemed entirely crushed by this development – nothing like the bright, blustering confidence his nephew had shown when I knew him, and which I sensed the Colonel had also once had.
I introduced myself, and the Colonel roused enough to shake my hand and thank me for coming. He gave up the bedside to me for my examinations and settled against the wall by the door, watching his daughter with hopeless exhaustion. Miss Winter shook my hand very smartly, in that childishly grown-up fashion which never fails to charm.
“My name is Maria Winter,” she told me. “It is very pleasant to meet you, sir.”
“The pleasure is all mine,” I replied, and she returned my grin before looking to her father to ensure he had not missed this perfect display of good manners; he managed to raise a smile for her, but not without difficulty.
Maria was a pretty child, with her mother's Roman nose and darker colouring, but the neat dimples and easy smile I recognised from her cousin. I could see immediately that she was unwell, though she kept up an air of cheer and a bright, rattling conversation that spoke largely of how well-loved she clearly was in her home; she had every faith that she would be looked after, and would get better very soon. For all that, it was clear that she was dehydrated and weak, and I was worried that, if she did not soon recover, it would be very bad for her indeed. I felt, though, that the symptoms were oddly familiar; impulsively, whilst examining her tongue, I leant closer and detected an unusual scent on her breath. It sent a chill through me, to my very core.
“Colonel,” I said, as levelly as I could, “I should like a glance at some notes of mine to remind me of a similar case; could I perhaps trouble you to find Mr Holmes, and ask him to bring me my notes on Mr Elton?”
“Certainly – I could bring them myself, if you would-”
“No, no,” I said quickly, “I packed in an abominable rush this morning and wouldn't know where to direct you. Holmes knows my habits better than I do – it will take him a moment, I'm sure.”
The notes, I knew well, were on my desk in Baker Street; I had to hope Holmes knew it too. The Colonel departed, and Maria and I chatted idly about her studies, and how she liked life here in Gwynedd. It didn't take Holmes long to appear before us in a rush, clutching a notebook from my case which I knew to be blank, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
I met him halfway between the door and the bed; he had, somehow, ensured that the Colonel and his wife had not accompanied him, but we put our heads close together anyway. “Poison,” he said lowly.
I nodded. Elton had died of it, in a case we had taken the previous month; I knew Holmes would remember. “Arsenic, I suspect. I thought it better kept quiet until we knew more. It must be someone with access to her food and water, after all – and only hers.”
Holmes' eyes sparkled and he clapped me on the shoulder. “Very good, Watson. You handled it just as I would have wished.” I flushed with pleasure, as pleased with his hard-won praise as he ever was with mine, so easily given, and delighted by the rumble of his murmuring in my ear. He was leaning down to me a little, such that I felt tucked into the shell of him, mantled under his wing; protected and secret, as though sheltering from an awful wind against the trunk of some grand old tree. “How is the patient?”
I tilted my head and hummed. “Very likely to recover, if she can eat and drink without ingesting more.”
Holmes heard the unspoken other half of my statement and his lips thinned with determination. “I see. Watson, I have an essential task for you, though I fear it won't be what you expected when you came here. I need you to misrepresent this illness to our good hosts: it must be an illness only, with no mention of poison. Further, if you would be so good to make it sound rather worse than it is.”
“Holmes!” I protested. “Her parents are distraught.”
Holmes patted my shoulder. “It is necessary, dear fellow. Whilst I am gathering data, there remains only one person to whom I should entrust the feeding and care of this child, and that person is your good self. I shall need you to remain with her at all times and ensure that she eats and drinks only that which you and I have personally guaranteed will do her no harm – you may say that this is a diet you are prescribing or some such – but to justify your perpetual presence, she shall have to be a little more ill than she is.”
I sighed and rubbed my jaw. “Very well, Holmes. Will you be alright without me?”
Holmes grinned. “I shall muddle through, I'm sure. It's the best you can do for me, Watson, and my work will be much easier for knowing that one avenue of it is defended by my trusted companion.” Before I could respond, he wheeled away from me and went to Maria's bedside. “Good day to you, Miss Winter. Do you think you could suffer to keep my friend Doctor Watson occupied for the duration of our visit? He has an excellent collection of stories, and should like nothing more than a captive audience and a good excuse.”
Maria beamed at him; I scowled; his lips twitched, fighting a smile. “I like stories,” she told him, rather confidingly, and Holmes nodded sharply.
“Then it is decided – I entrust him to your care.” To me, he said: “I'll bring up water and something to eat; by whatever contrivance you like, you mustn't let anyone else touch it. I'll come at once, if you need me.”
With those parting words, he left without a second glance. I settled myself in the chair by Maria's bedside, bad leg stretched out before me – the weather had been making it ache for weeks now, and I had built up the habit of sprawling rather rudely from the outset rather than wait for the stiffness to take over. Maria tucked her hands under her chin and looked at me expectantly, eyes wide and impatient.
I chuckled gently and reached out to tidy some hair off her forehead. “Alright. What story would you like for starters?”
We spent the day thus: Holmes brought a water carafe halfway through my first tale of adventure in the streets and alleys of London, which I contrived to keep at my elbow where it might not be upset or tampered with without my knowing, and not long afterwards Colonel Winter reappeared to sit on his daughter's other side. Together, we regaled her and one another with stories of our times in India and Afghanistan; the Colonel had been in that part of the world rather longer than I, and with rather more pleasant souvenirs, and so I allowed him a greater share of the conversation. It was clear to me that he adored his family, and that he was adored by them in turn; his daughter hung on his every word, and he spoke with such warmth and joy of his triumphant return to India from Afghanistan to find Mrs Winter waiting for him – to hear him tell it, turning down suitors for every direction in expectation of his return for her hand – that it was impossible not to see the depths of their mutual affection. When Maria had worn herself out with the excitement of guests, adventures, and a mild case of poisoning and was sleeping fitfully between us, he told me in low tones of how he had disregarded the letters at first, for they had only seemed to threaten him, and how he could not bear the thought that some unknown animosity to himself might rebound upon his beloved womenfolk.
I believed him wholeheartedly, but though he offered still I refused any suggestion that he might fetch some more water, or some little treat that might tempt an invalid, for his daughter – or even any tea for myself. The risk was unbearable, and I knew what Holmes would say besides.
At length, Holmes appeared to summon the Colonel to dinner, tossing to me an apple and promising further delights if I could only be patient, and not starve for an hour or so. I was rather tempted to bowl the fruit back at him, and his eyes sparkled in delight for all that his lips barely twitched; my heart squeezed rather embarassingly in my chest, and I had to wave them both off for fear that I would say something regrettable if I did not.
True to his word, after the family had eaten he brought me a tray of rather excellent food, and filled me in on his investigations while I ate.
“First, may I assure you, the cook is not responsible for the poisonings; leaving aside the difficulty of poisoning just one serving when producing enough for the entire family, she has been visiting her sister this past week and was quite unaware that the young lady had taken ill. We may therefore take it as read that the food was contaminated somewhere between the kitchen and the table, and that you, Watson, may dine with impunity provided you trust the person carrying to you your dinner – that is to say, me.”
“Very glad to hear it,” I said around an excellent roast potato; Holmes' mouth twitched into a flashing grin. He had brought the second chair around to my side of the bed in order to better indulge his habits of watching me intently, hands steepled under his chin, as he gave his explanations; he was ever hungry for praise and attention, no matter how readily I gave him both, and he seemed to catalogue my every move in search of my approval and interest. His nearness was intoxicating. I adored and dreaded such interest in me, for what I might inadvertently reveal.
“The letters began some time after the family's arrival, so there must have been some other catalyst for the threats to begin; crafted though they are to seem like an ordinary prejudiced attack upon a man for an unusual domestic situation, it is unlikely that their sender sat upon their hatred for two months before expressing it.” Holmes held up a finger. “It is a blind, dear boy – or at the very least, not the whole truth. Something else inspired these attacks, some revelation or other event which spurred more than usual hatred.”
I thought about this for a moment, then pointed my fork at Holmes. “The baby,” I said, and Holmes' eyes lit up. “If the Winters left India when they knew they were expecting a child, the pregnancy would be sufficiently developed to show signs to the wider world from about a month ago; they might even have made some kind of announcement to that effect which could have got around, even if it was only given to the immediate family.”
Holmes clapped his hands together, delighted, and I blushed. “Excellent, Watson, really very good! Quite my thoughts exactly. The letters began four days after the dinner at which the new arrival was announced to Captain Winter and Miss Davies, and as our catalyst it will do very nicely.”
I frowned. “Four days isn't terribly long for word to get out,” I mused. “And isn't that rather in favour of the prejudice motive? The letters were rather unpleasant on that point, and with the attack upon Miss Winter...”
Holmes waved a hand quickly. I tracked its agitated movement; he was a little jittery about the fingertips, and I divined that though he might have sat with our hosts for dinner, he certainly had not eaten any of it. “Possibly, possibly, but think: until this point, Miss Winter was certainly no threat, no object of peculiar interest or hatred. This unknown new Winter, whoever he or she might be, has changed that, and until-”
“Holmes,” I interrupted sharply, and at his wounded look canted my head at Miss Winter, who was watching us both rather sleepily – but with rapt attention.
“Ah. Good evening, Miss Winter,” Holmes said, slightly wrongfooted.
“How do you feel?” I inquired, saving him from further niceties. Holmes likes children, but best knows what to do with them when he can toss one a shilling and ask for some trifling errand to be done. Little girls in sickbeds are rather outside of his remit.
Maria screwed up her face. “Thirsty,” she rasped out, which I was expecting; I held out a glass of water for her to sip, and she wriggled up the bed to sit against the headboard.
“Would you like something to eat?” I asked, finding the apple Holmes had given me earlier and which I had saved against the possibilty of his being unable to find uncontaminated rations, or even simply forgetting to do so. She nodded, and so I began to carve it into easily nibbled slices. “Mr Holmes has been making good progress into your father's mysterious letters,” I said.
Holmes glanced at me in brief surprise at this tacit permission to go on recounting his investigations, but Maria's eyes lit up and her gaze settled on Holmes with such fixity that I had to place the slice of apple directly in her palm for her to acknowledge its very existence. “Really?” she gasped. “Have you got it all worked out already?”
Holmes smiled, a little shyly. “I have one or two points yet to resolve,” he said diffidently, which made me smile. Maria was alternating between nibbling delicately at her apple slices and stuffing as much of the fruit into her cheeks as possible, until she resembled a little mouse preparing for winter; as she was presently in the latter stage, I ate one of the slices myself. “The issue,” Holmes went on, spreading his palms between us, “is establishing who benefits from fear in this household, which seems otherwise to be quite content.”
“I can think of none,” I admitted. In truth, I had ceased speculating in my own mind in favour of watching Holmes' long fingers, and wondering if he, too, might be persuaded to eat a little if I simply placed the fruit in his hands. “There seems no reason to disturb them at all.”
“At present,” Holmes said thoughtfully, vision turned somewhere inward. I cut two slices and gave one to Maria. At her inquisitive look, I pressed my fingertip to my lips and placed the other quite casually in Holmes' outstretched hand. “It's a matter of change, Watson, a future alteration which will fundamentally alter the household.”
Maria and I watched avidly; idly, Holmes nibbled at his apple, for all purposes apparently entirely unaware that he was doing so. Maria stifled a giggle, and I winked at her. “Mother is going to have a baby,” Maria offered, and Holmes nodded absently.
“I wonder that it might not be more than that,” Holmes mused. I was now alternating apple slices between the two of them; Holmes was eating fast enough that I was very nearly worried about how much he had eaten the day before. It seemed to be calming his jittering, but I knew my time was limited before he awoke to his surroundings once more. “Miss Davies and the Captain seem rather fond of one another-”
“As is rather natural for two young people living together in an isolated place,” I pointed out.
Holmes made a face and dismissed this. “Well, fine. But this might not necessitate a change to the household in components; I see no need for fear in it.”
“Papa says he should ask Miss Davies to marry him, but Cousin James says he hasn't any money,” Maria said. “No, thank you, Doctor Watson. May I have some more water?”
Obligingly I dropped the slice I had offered her into Holmes' palm and turned to pass over her glass instead. Holmes blinked, and then frowned down at the apple slice as though he'd never seen one before. “Watson, you know I won't eat on a case,” he complained.
I shrugged, replacing Maria's glass and lifting her coverlets to get her settled back under them, tucking them close around her shoulders. “You ate the last five,” I countered, pinching the slice for myself and doing my best to look smug as I chewed.
Maria giggled at the pinched, dissatisfied look on Holmes' face, but I remained entirely unrepentant. “Go to bed, Watson,” he told me at length. “I shall keep watch and consider a few matters – safely removed from your cunning, I think.”
I clapped him affectionately on the shoulder and stood, feeling rather pleased with myself. It did not last: my leg had been grieving me more than usual of late, thanks to the wet, cold weather, and I had spent the whole day travelling in the rain and sitting sedentary and still in a chair, and the entire joint had seized with stiffness and disuse. It failed completely to take my weight and I managed only to stagger one step before crashing heavily to my hands and knees. It was loud, and rather dramatic, and sent stabbing pains radiating outward from my hip as far as my ankle, and through my jolted shoulder to the elbow.
“Watson!” Holmes exclaimed; I heard Maria gasp.
I turned my head into the shoulder of my jacket and swore extensively, inventively, and entirely silently. I despise nothing more than the reminders of my weakness; as the physical power in our partnership versus Holmes' mental acuity, it is mortifying to find even that unavailable to me, and I cannot stand pity, especially from a child. Yet more particularly from Holmes.
Then I took a deep breath, and turned to offer a minimising smile to my companions. Maria was sitting up in bed, blankets all untucked; Holmes had frozen, arms outstretched, as though unsure how to proceed. “Dear me, I've been sitting still entirely too long,” I said, as brightly as I could manage. “Lie back down, Maria; I only need to get my feet under me again.”
Hesitantly, as if I might fall further and need her help at any moment, Maria lay back, holding her blankets under her chin. Gritting my teeth, I put my weight on my good leg and forced the other into a position in which I could use it without depending on the joint's good humour. It was an effort, and I wobbled worryingly before a sturdy, silent hand appeared under my elbow and held me steady until I was back on my feet.
I looked down at Holmes. He still clutched my elbow, face upturned to me in almost childish, helpless supplication. His eyes were wide, deep, and sorrowful; I saw that he knew he could not help me, and that it hurt him to know it. For all that he says I am a man of action, there has never been a problem of interest to him that he has not worried at until it unravelled before him; he is a man of activity, and no activy of his or mine could help me now.
My mouth thinned into a narrow line. His pity was insufferable, though I could see it was well-meant. I patted his arm in apology and concession, and watched his eyes shutter his hurt away somewhere internal. “Good night, old man. I'll come to you before breakfast,” I said lowly.
He gave my elbow a squeeze and dropped it, lowering his head to his chest, face hidden from me. “Sleep well, Watson.”
I exchanged good nights with Maria and hobbled as little as I was able to as I left the room. In the dark, empty corridor beyond I dropped the pretense; leaning heavily on the wall, I let my lame leg drag badly and shuffled, worn and useless, to the room set aside for my rest.
I will not bore you with the following day; though Holmes doubtless darted to and fro about the countryside and thoughout the house like a terrier after a rat, I saw none of it, confined as I was to nursemaid and guardian. I resented it very little – I am fond of children and enjoyed the day, and I saw the necessity of my presence – but I could not shake the feeling that Holmes had set me aside where I could do no harm and cause no inconvenience in my lameness. I own the notion is uncharitable, for if he was doing any such thing it was doubtless meant for my health and wellbeing rather than his ease and I well knew it, but my fall had rattled and embarrassed me, and I took it rather poorly.
I slept uneasily, exhausted by pain but unable to rest, and shuffled back to Miss Winter's room rather earlier than I was expected. Holmes had not slept, of course, and vanished as soon as I appeared to follow up on some overnight revelation, though he brought breakfast for Miss Winter and myself as soon as the hour was civilised enough. Miss Winter was much improved, I thought; she had not consumed enough of the poison to be permanently troubled by it, and needed only to shake those last symptoms of dehydration and nausea to be quite well again. Her parents and governess were overjoyed, and all was put down to my expert intervention. My hand, I believe, has never been so often nor so fondly pressed.
Miss Davies, I saw, was roughly of an age with Captain Winter; small, with dark hair and light eyes and a Welsh accent that tended to slip out when she was excited or merry, she was utterly artlessly charming, and I could well see why Miss Winter hung, enchanted, from her arm, why the Colonel and his wife had found her so eminently suitable, and why Captain Winter might want to make her his wife. She made any party a happy one, and inspired such devotion in her charge that Miss Winter insisted on reading her next story to us merely to prove to her tutor that she had not forgotten how.
Only Captain Winter did not, at one point or another in the day become my companion in the tea parties, story times and card games with which Maria and I filled our time. In fact, for all that it was my acquaintance with him which had brought us here, I did not see him at all until that evening, when Maria was declared well enough to sit up to the table with the adults at dinner for the soup course before being packed back off to bed. He was my opposite, and when I cheerfully chastised him for making me sit across from a stranger, he laughed in just the manner I had recalled from the mess on those few occasions we had had of dining together. The sound stirred the memory like a blow, as sure and sharp as if he had reached out and flicked me on the temple, and it made me blink and falter. I felt Holmes' eyes on me, and tried to ignore them.
“My apologies, Doctor Watson, but it's all been in appreciation of your fine skills.” I tried to demur, but he waved it aside, all mirth. “Truly! If you hadn't been so badly wanted as a doctor, you would have been wanted as assistant detective. As I can't do the one, I was called upon for the other, and I may say I am entirely worn out by it! How you manage, Mr Holmes, rushing about all over the place and seeing things I never could – or how you manage, Doctor, to keep up with him as he does – I shall never know.”
Holmes smiled at his plate, thin and not very happy. “You've been helping Holmes with his enquires?” I said, rather more jealously than I should have liked.
Winter smiled and pushed his fair hair off his forehead in a show of exhaustion. His eyes were pale, a washed-out watercolour blue, and more lined than I remembered: not with mirth, but not sorrow either. There was a hard edge to his jaw and brow I had not remembered in him, a harsh undercurrent that seemed alien to my recollections and his cheerful demeanour. I tried to set it aside; doubtless, after my experiences, I looked different to him too.
“Very poorly, I don't doubt. But I can point at the places the letters were found and at local landmarks as well as the next man, and was glad to have something to do. The army makes men of action – we're not made for sitting around.”
I mustered a smile in concession, unsure how he had intended me to regard his comment in light of how I had spent my day. In fact, in an effort to avoid a repeat of the previous night's disgrace, I had spent more time that day on my feet and shifting my position, though I did not doubt that moving to Miss Winter's nursery for tea would not count for action with the Captain.
“Action indeed,” Holmes murmured, stirring his soup. He was eating, I noticed, if only in small, delicate sips, and I wondered if he had reached some kind of conclusion. “I suppose we should be grateful that the army does not breed your impatience in all its officers, Captain Winter.”
The table fell silent as we ignorants gazed uncomprehendingly between Winter's sudden stillness and Holmes' idle, casual movements. “I beg your pardon, sir,” Winter said stiffly, voice low. “If I have, today, in some way offended you, then-”
“Offended!” Holmes said with a laugh. “My dear sir, today you have been all that is helpful and dutiful in every regard but one – and that is only that you have not delivered to me my poisoner, which you are uniquely well-placed to do.”
“Poison?” Mrs Winter exclaimed, fingers fluttering to her necklace. “Surely you do not mean-”
“Oh, yes,” Holmes said, his voice low and calm and unhurried, like some great beast in the undergrowth whose prey is within striking distance. “Miss Winter was undoubtedly poisoned; Doctor Watson identified it at once, and has been assiduously ensuring that the dose was not repeated. There are, I think, some advantages to patient inaction.”
Mrs Winter reached out and laid a hand on her daughter's shoulder; Maria stared up at her cousin, still and solemn beside her.
“The poisoning was an act of a man who felt he could wait no longer; the letters had failed to produce a result, and so stronger measures must be taken. He felt his time was limited, that it was no longer possible to sit idly and allow events to take their course. He was constrained by a deadline – and what deadline could be more unavoidable than the birth of a child?”
“A child-? You mean, our child?” the Colonel said, his face pale and his shoulders set broad and defensive.
Holmes hummed agreement. “But whyever should anyone dread such a happy occasion?” He spread his palms, then folded them in his lap, addressing his remarks most politely to the Colonel, at whose right hand he sat. “A person who should lose out if the child were born, and particularly if it were born a healthy boy – for no such fuss was made for the lovely Miss Maria.”
“An inheritor, then,” I said, watching Captain Winter's stone-still face with a leaden feeling in my stomach. “Someone near enough to the Colonel to stand to gain a great deal in his will – but not if a son were born first.”
“Precisely, Watson,” Holmes said. It gave me no joy.
“But my estate – all of it – will go to my wife and daughter as it stands,” the Colonel said, brows furrowed. “No-one else stands to gain more than a trifling bequest: a little for Miss Davies, for instance, and-”
“You would have given me nothing?” Captain Winter interrupted. The Colonel blinked at his nephew as though seeing him for the first time. “Truly, after everything – I served with you, and you treated me as a son, and you would have given me nothing?”
“A bequest, James,” the Colonel began, voice faint and hesitant, “you would have had a bequest.”
“Trifling, you said,” Winter spat. “I am to be satisfied with a trifling bequest, so that some – some camp follower you brought back from an uncivilised country can live here,” he gestured about him in sharp, angry movements and sneered, “where she doesn't belong, with your mongrel-”
“That will do!” the Colonel bellowed, his voice found at last. He slammed his palms on the table; the silverware rattled and Miss Davies yelped. “Never again will you speak to me, never again will you be permitted in this house, you will leave at once!”
“Good God, man, you're pathetic,” Winter snarled. “They've blinded you, these women, until you think they're deserving – do I deserve to live like this? On charity, with nothing, unable to make Miss Davies my own since you won't give me a damned penny? You've made a savage your queen and a true Englishman your dog.”
“By God, I'll whip you like one,” the Colonel growled. He stood from his chair and made to round the table towards the Captain.
Winter glanced at our unfriendly faces; in an instant, like a cornered animal, he struck. He snatched Maria from her chair and leapt backwards. “If she's so precious,” he spat, “let's see what you'll pay for her.” And with no consideration for his cousin's terrified shrieking, he darted at once from the room.
“Quick, Watson!” Holmes called, but I had already overturned my chair and was hard on the man's heels. I could hear Holmes behind me, and another set of footprints I did not pause to place, over the sound of Mrs Winter's cries of despair and fear, all echoing through the wood-panelled halls and resounding in my head.
I had gone somewhere else, I fear. I cannot truly describe it. The case had made everything surface-level: the faces around me, the sickness and creeping dread, the pain ever-present in my shoulder and leg, all reminded me of India and Afghanistan and the horrors I had borne there. Running, then, it was as though I had excised all those years between then and now – I was again Captain Watson of the Fifth, and my friends were behind me, my enemy before me, and the screams were all around.
We raced through the hall and out into the grounds. It was raining again and dark, the sensation like that of running through a hail of tiny bullets, but I went blankly onwards like an automaton, a greyhound after a rabbit who knows nothing at all but the chase. Winter hailed someone; I could barely hear his voice over the thundering rain and the blood rushing in my ears, but another fellow came out and raced alongside him. They were heading for the river, and the little wooden bridge that spanned it. Where the terrain sloped towards the water they slowed to keep their footing on the wet grass, but I made no such consideration.
I could hear Maria's hiccoughing cries as I approached, jolting on Winter's shoulder as he half-ran, half-picked his way down the slope. I caught the girl under the arms and put my knee in Winter's back; as he let go to catch himself, I hauled Maria free and turned back towards the house. Holmes had veered towards Winter's companion, and I was mildly surprised to see Miss Davies running towards Maria and I, her skirts held up in both hands and an expression of terrified fury on her face. Maria reached out, still sobbing, and I propelled her gently but firmly away from the water and up the bank to the safety of her governess.
Then I was punched firmly in the kidneys, and reawoke to my situation. Holmes was grappling the stranger, but Winter had made it to his feet once more. We battled and wrestled – I know this much, and no more, for my recollection is patchy, like snapshots in an album. I recall his expression of rage; the droplet on his eyelash as he attempted to strangle me; the feel of his lapel in my fist as I pushed him away. And then the mud as it slid beneath my heel, the world as it swung away from me, the cold water at my back.
I have never felt cold quite like it. This was mountain water, merciless and fast, and its currents were strengthened by the recent heavy rain. The shock chased the air from my lungs and the water ripped me away towards the bridge. I managed to raise my head enough to gasp, but my clothes dragged at me and it was hard work to keep my face above water. At every moment, it grew harder still, as the cold seeped into the masses of unresponsive, useless scar tissue which adorn my shoulder and leg and made them slow, weak, and numb. Within seconds, I could hardly move my fingers, and my leg hung dead in the water.
I am a strong enough swimmer. It is not a frequent hobby, but a skill I do possess. I had never feared drowning before.
Tumbled and tossed by the water, I could neither control nor slow my travel on the current. The bridge loomed out of the darkness and I struck out blindly, entirely by accident wrapping myself around one of its struts at some speed. The blow knocked every ounce of breath from me and I could only hang draped around it like a wet rag, winded and useless. My chest burned but I could not inhale; the river washed against my half-open mouth but I could do nothing to prevent it.
I watched Holmes on the bank. He had subdued his first assailant and was now finishing off mine; I could see the Colonel approaching with a footman and the butler to help control the scene. Holmes leaned back, panting, and wiped the wet hair from his brow. In the dark and the rain, he looked gothically handsome with his sharp features and smug grin of success. He glanced around him – for me, I realised, though I had no breath to call him nor energy to signal him – his movements growing sharp and agitated when I was nowhere to be seen.
“Watson!” he called, glaring into the rain. I longed to reply: his voice, when he called again, and again, cracked and grew almost shrill. Then he turned, and his face grew even paler, for he had seen me. I gazed at him, my vision growing dark and spotty for lack of air, believing as I did that he might read my desperation and fear in my eyes and save me but knowing that, if he did not, there was nothing else I would wish last to see. His mouth shaped my name, and then he was running, again, heedless of the wet ground and the danger to himself, but he held my gaze steady in his own until my vision grew dark, and I knew no more.
What follows I can only relate as I recall it. In the light of day I know many of my memories to have been false and illusory, but they were real to me at the time. I can only write the truth as I saw it, and beg your forbearance for how it may seem now.
I surfaced first to a candlelit room, Holmes, and a stranger, from whom I recoiled rather violently. Holmes was quick to reassure me, pressing gently but insistently at my shoulders until I lay back and repeatedly and patiently telling me that this intruder was a doctor, and to be trusted with my well-being. I slumped back – my ribs ached viciously, and if Holmes had decided this fellow would do, then he very probably would – and apologised for my rudeness. My fellow medico poked and prodded at me, but I cannot now bring his face to mind: I was watching Holmes, constantly and avidly, and drinking in the reassurance of his presence.
I needed distraction, in my unaccountably nervy state, and so Holmes provided me with the denouement that Maria's abduction had cheated of him. “He was hoping they would go back to India and leave the property to him,” Holmes said, his gaze holding mine but often darting away to examine the doctor, and whatever he was doing or finding about my person. I was lying in my bed, warm and dry in a clean nightgown; I did not ask how this came to be. “Well,” Holmes shrugged, “that is what he would have said, at any rate. He would not have much minded if his cousin had not survived. I believe he meant to strike at Mrs Winter, but erred; he then elected to play the hand he had dealt himself.”
“What a vile fellow,” I said, throat rasping. Holmes' eyes softened, his mouth ticking up a little at the corner, and he helped me to sit up and sip from a glass of water without even glancing at the doctor who offered to help in his place. “Where is he now?” I asked, and winced as my ribs were prodded rather ungently.
Holmes' brows contracted, as though wincing with me. “They will catch up with him in the morning, I don't doubt – Doctor, are you sure no ribs have been broken?”
The doctor said something rather ascerbic about that being what he was trying, despite all obstacles, to ascertain, but I'm afraid we both ignored him abominably. “Holmes, you surely don't mean to let him go?” I expostulated, fighting the ache in my chest and the sighing of the doctor to sit up as far as I was able. I learned in the process that my scarred shoulder was largely numb across the entire ball of the joint, and poorly equipped to hold me: Holmes applied gentle pressure, and I folded like a house of cards.
“Not remotely, my dear fellow,” Holmes said, swift and firm. He repaid the minor blow by taking my hand very earnestly in both his own; his fingers felt unnaturally cold against my skin, such that I wondered if any blood was flowing in them at all. My skin burned by comparison. “The man is dangerous and abhorrent – but he is also arrogant, and a fool. It will hardly tax the local force to mop him up in the morning, and – Watson, he is not important. You must understand, he does not – he does not matter.”
Holmes held my gaze so intently, occasionally pressing my hand in his as though to be reassured of its continued existence, that I felt as though I was missing something: some secret, or code, which he could not give to me directly, but only guide me towards until I picked it up on my own. It made me, almost unreasonably, sad. I was not equal to the task of it, now or perhaps ever, and I did not see that he was offering this mystery gift to any other. I worried. I could not bear him to be lonely.
I felt as though we were sliding away from one another, our hands reaching out but fingertips just brushing, missing each other by inches. I knew my hand was safe in his, just as I knew the doctor was speaking to him about something – fever, possibly, or something else – but to me it felt we were not there. In some great void, perhaps, on different trains running parallel and opposing and the two of us staring forever through the glass, catching eyes for an instant and ripped away. Or falling, ascending – him to his ivory tower, me to the horrid solidity of earth without him. I heard him calling my name; there was sensation in my hand, but at distance, as it had felt before the bullet was removed from my shoulder but after it had been ruined forever; I caught a glimpse of his eyes, wide and worried, and then fell away from him to a place unknown.
When I had first awoken, I had known where I was; this was not an experience I was to repeat for some time. I was untroubled by this, the second time I awoke in gloom to the sight of a thin-faced, oddly-comforting fellow sitting in the chair at my side. I felt that this stranger would take care of me; perhaps he was a nurse, or one of my fellow trainees whom I trusted, but would know better in the light. He helped me to sit and drink; settled me back against the pillows; and wiped at my superheated brow with a cool cloth. It was all very well-done: here was a man blessed with a bedside manner to make every patient believe himself the caretaker's most beloved companion. I smiled, and told him so.
He half-smiled, incredulous and confused, and then his brow darkened to a frown. “Watson,” he said, his tones familiar but out of my reach, “my dear fellow – do you not...know me?”
I was embarrassed – that he considered me dear, but I did not know him; that I felt as though I should, but could not – and stumbled and stammered my way around some very weak phrases, but there was no escaping it. “I am sorry,” I said, genuinely contrite; his face shuttered, and went blank. “I – I think I am unwell.”
“You are,” my companion told me, wiping more sweat from my temples and brow. His tone was level – deliberately so, I thought. “Hypothermia, injured ribs, and a standing level of exhaustion have left you feverish. My dear fellow,” he added, all in a rush, “I wish you had told me how your leg was troubling you, I would have made – accommodations, done anything, I did notice, but I had supposed that you would tell me of your limits before you reached them.”
I was baffled by this little speech, half apology and half accusation; all the more, for I knew nothing of what he meant. “I'm sure, then, it isn't your fault,” I tried.
“That doctor nearly boxed my ears for it,” he said gloomily, picking up my hand in his own like a sulking child seeking comfort in a beloved toy. I very nearly laughed at him for it; mostly, it was wholly endearing.
“Do you work me very hard, then?”
“Dear boy, far harder than I have any right to.” He picked up my hand and held it, very lightly, against the corner of his mouth, so that I felt it against the back of my hand when he smiled but could not see it behind our fingers, entwined.
I smiled back, far more openly, and felt his little gasping intake of breath.
“Dear boy,” he repeated, almost to himself. “I will be better, I promise you. I will do anything. But you must rest and recover.”
I settled against my pillow, head turned to face him but eyes heavy and half closed. He made to return my hand to me, but I kept it tangled in mine. “Will you stay?” I asked sleepily.
Holmes' mouth ticked up at the corner in that familiar half smile. “As long as you like.”
I came to myself howling, crying out for relief and comfort. It blinded me, such that I could barely see the hands that reached out to press me back to the bed. I would have lashed out in panic at it, but that one hand settled against the source of my searing agony, my ruined shoulder, and I could not bear the pain. I fell back like a puppet with cut strings and saw the hands flutter about me through the haze like pale, fretful doves, clearly horrified by what effect they had wrought.
“Watson, Watson, my dear fellow, forgive me,” Holmes was saying, his fingers gently stroking at my temples and brow in light, frightened motions. My vision slowly cleared as the pain ebbed somewhat, and I saw him looking down over me, as worried and as guilty as I have ever seen him. “I am more sorry than I can express.”
I lay back, breathing heavily, and fought to calm myself. I was here for my own benefit; he had not meant to hurt me. “It's not as bad as it looks,” I told him, with some difficulty. He looked blankly at me. “My shoulder. It's not as bad as it looks.”
Holmes shook his head. “There is no need to mitigate my actions to me, Watson,” he said, solemn and self-sacrificing. “I know the effect it has had on you; I should have known better. It is a serious wound for any man to suffer.”
I knew he was right, and yet it filled my heart with dread to hear him say so. I must confess that this is the recollection which feels to me most dreamlike, for I knew Holmes as perfectly and imperfectly then as I ever had, but I also believed myself most strongly to be in a time and place where I had not known him at all. I did not question it; my fevered mind offered me no logical respite from the horror.
I was in the field hospital in the east once more, and there was no guarantee that I would leave it.
“It is not so grevious,” I said again, now with some agitation. Holmes frowned at me, and I attempted once more to regulate myself. It was imperative that I remain calm, clear-headed, and entirely reliable if anyone were to trust my opinion of my fate, and I was very much determined that they should do so. “Holmes,” I said levelly, reaching out to catch his wrist, “the wound is not so very bad. I heard the doctors talking and it may sound dreadful, but the thing is not unsalvageable. Many men have survived shattered bones before me, and worse ones than mine-”
Holmes was shaking his head, a look of horror on his thin face. It was late, I knew – the room was very dark outside the circle of lamplight in which we dwelt, and very quiet, for the hospital's other occupants were asleep and the orderlies not on their rounds – and his expressions were more unregulated than I had ever seen them. He looked drawn, thinner than usual, more weary and tired, and the sadness and fear which beset him passed more clearly across his face than he would ordinarily allow. “Watson, my dear, dear boy, you are not going to die,” he told me; his voice was shaky, but his tone would brook no disagreement – from me, or the universe at large. “The doctor told me he expects a full recovery.”
I ignored this; it did not tally with the world as I was then seeing it. My doctors had talked in hushed tones, not far enough from me to be indecipherable, of my chances: of the shattered bone, the tattered flesh, the improbability of cleaning and salvaging the whole without loss from fever or gangrene. I knew my prospects, and not even Holmes' certainty could save me from them.
“Holmes,” I said, shaking his wrist slightly; he turned his hand and fitted his fingers to mine so that he could grip me in return, as urgently as I pressed his hand. “You must – you must promise me.”
“Anything,” Holmes said in an instant. “Dearest fellow, anything at all.” His eyes were wide, pupils dark and vast in the lamplight, and he bent over our joined hands solicitously. I trusted him beyond measure. I knew he would do as I asked.
“You must promise me that you will not let them amputate,” I told him firmly.
His brow furrowed; his mouth traced out the word in bewilderment; and then his face cleared and settled into purest, most sorrowful fear. “Watson-” he managed, but no more.
“They will say it is necessary to save my life,” I told him, which I knew for I had heard them discussing the possibility. “I haven't very long to get better before they do. But you must ensure that they do not amputate the arm. The injury may be survivable, and I cannot do without it.”
Holmes' eyes were wet. They shone full sorrowful, tears on the horizon like storm clouds over the sea. “No,” he murmured, shaking his head. He reached out to stroke my brow and his fingers, where they touched my overheated skin, shook as though he were suffering some terrible internal earthquake. “Watson, no.”
“You promised!” I cried, battling up onto my good elbow as best I could. He soothed me back with the hand on my forehead, hushing me gently, but he could not meet my reproachful gaze. “You told me, anything. You have to stand for me in this, for I am alone and there is no-one else who could.”
Holmes closed his eyes, swaying slightly as though from a blow. His voice, when he spoke, was taut and sorely tried. “Dear boy. I will always stand for you, in any matter on earth. But you cannot ask me to choose a fate which may – which you may not survive.”
“And have me live a cripple?” I replied, unsympathetic to his pain if he would not save me from mine. “Holmes, I have nothing to commend me – no brains, no talent, no peculiar skill. I am an unremarkable man, but I am a good doctor, and for that a man needs both hands. If it were the wound in my leg I might bear it, perhaps with a chair, but who would see a doctor so patently unhealed? You cannot allow them to take my arm, Holmes. I am nothing if I cannot be useful.”
Holmes breathed in, a deep, shuddering breath, and pressed our joined hands to his forehead so that I could not see his face. His shoulders shook, but he remained silent and still. “I am a selfish man,” he said eventually, his voice muffled but steady. “To have you at my side I would have you suffer far worse; it is unforgivable of me. I am sorry for it. But I cannot repent of it entirely, and I cannot let it go. You are as much a part of me, I fear, as your arm is of you: if you are nothing if you are not useful, I am nothing if I do not have you beside me. So you see,” he said, turning his head to look at me oddly, sideways, our hands still tightly pressed to his face as though he feared I would vanish away from him if he let go, “you shall always be useful. And you are always, always, a great deal more besides.” He smiled at me, wan and heartbroken, and I would have allowed him anything if only he would stop. “Never mind, old fellow,” he murmured, gentle and bracing as though I had only fallen and grazed my knee like a child, “it will be all right. I shall not let anyone hurt you in any fashion, and you shall wake in the morning as whole and hale as ever you were.”
I was reminded, suddenly, of the prayers I had said as a child before I slept: now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep... It had ill-comforted me in my infancy. But with Holmes' steady gaze keeping watch over me, I felt a great deal more certain of my security. If I should die before I woke, I felt certain he would remonstrate most strongly with whichever angel was so unfortunate as to sing me to my rest; and a man who would argue with the heavenly host would certainly advocate for me in the face of mere doctors.
I smiled at him. “Thank you, Holmes.”
He smiled back, truer and more quietly pleased than before. “For you, Watson, anything.”
I would not speak to him, then.
He sat before me in lamplight, in the dreaming hours, at the side of my bed where he had never sat when he was alive, and with gentle, cajoling words attempted to gain my attention, which he had also not particularly cared to do before. I lay on my side, facing from him, and stared away into the dark without responding.
He talked of anything, everything: cases I did not remember and had doubtless invented for him, a monograph he was reading about bees, whether the cook might be prevailed upon to cook pheasant in a way I have only ever seen Mrs Hudson do, and which is my favourite. This last most tempted me to respond, for even with written instructions our cook had never been able to replicate the dish for Mary and I, and after Mary's death I had lost interest in asking for it. I had largely lost interest in food of any kind, and I did not welcome my subconscious clumsy attempts to resurrect it.
Eventually, however, the strain of lying so long on my bad hip was too much, and I rolled onto my back to ease it. Holmes brightened hopefully, leaning a little closer, but though I noticed this I made an effort not to look at him and instead stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Sleep would come, eventually. It always did.
“Watson,” he said, “how are you feeling?”
Despite my best efforts, I rolled my eyes to glower, somewhat incredulously, at him.
“Yes, of course,” Holmes said, rather chastened. “My apologies, dear boy. Might I get you something?”
I did not look at him.
“Perhaps a drink.”
My eyes were sore and itchy, but would not shut and let me rest.
“Watson, please speak to me,” Holmes implored. He reached out his hand towards my own; I snatched it from him before he could touch me, and he flinched.
“If I speak to you,” I asked the ceiling dispassionately, “will you then leave me be and let me rest?”
Holmes blinked. “If you wish, I will let you rest now – I only wanted to know how you were.”
I sighed, resigned. “Seems a funny sort of unfinished business, Holmes – to look in on me in my sorrow, when you're at least half the cause of it.” I covered my face with my hands, and wished myself anywhere at all if it were not here, alone in a bed bought for two and accompanied by ghosts. “You're dead, Holmes; you died, and Mary died, and I've no need to be reminded of what I lost. But every night I bring you back, and I don't sleep, and you sit there just as you were. Just as you were – even in my dreams you don't love me. God.” I shook my head under my palms, disgusted with myself. “Go away, Holmes,” I said, throat tight with grief. “You're not coming back. Just be dead, and let me be.”
He recoiled as if pained, but I could not bear it – I would rather suffer my poor hip than his sorry expression, by my side where he could not really be. I rolled over, away from him again, and stared into the darkness; the room was silent, and all stillness. But then I could not see him, nor hear him, and for all that I wished him gone from me I could not bear to be without him, to be in a world where he was not, and my heart clenched against the idea that he had vanished the moment I turned my back. I could scarce breathe against the dread of it: that I should turn, and find myself alone, was suddenly worse than all alternatives, however painful. My poor Mary – she had said herself, with what was very nearly her last breath, how sorry she was that all who loved me had left me, and the sensation of it was a noose about my neck. I shuddered with fast breaths; my hands shook; I threw myself onto my back, and my eyes met Holmes'.
He sat there still, his expression haunted and horrified. Guilt clung to him, drawing his face yet longer and thinner, carving lines around his mouth and into the corners of his eyes. His eyes were wet; he said nothing.
I was not comforted. His guilt was nothing to me. It would not bring him back; it would not save me from my sorrows, nor from myself. I disgusted myself, clinging thusly to dreams and hallucinations because I could not face reality, like a frightened child who might know no better. I did know. I had been brave, once; I was a shadow of the man who had gone east, and even of him who returned to England wounded and weary. And yet I kept living, for all that there was no profit in it. I hardly knew why.
I turned over again, bitterly vitriolic at my wretched weakness, and how pathetically I shamed myself by it; I pressed my face into the pillow, and dreamed I felt Holmes' long, gentle fingers smoothing the blankets over my shoulder.
Many of my other recollections are far patchier: if they are to be trusted, I was visited shortly after dawn by Miss Davies and Maria, but I grew agitated at the presence of a child in whatever place I imagined myself to be, and frightened her by my uncertain mind and half-conveyed fears. I recall little more than her face, scared and unhappy, as Miss Davies and Holmes together bundled her from my sickroom in an attempt to soothe us both. I know our hosts looked in on me, though not for very long – Holmes was more protective of my fragile mental state than a wolf over its cubs – and I remember watching the dawn with him at my side in perfect quiet. I also spent some time in attempting to persuade Holmes to let me see my brother, confusing the present with a school holiday I had spent laid out with some manner of 'flu and which my brother had spent arguing with our mother and drinking. He had been sent down; he had not handled our father's death well; and I was not permitted to see him. I see now that he was very likely in no fit condition to be seen by a nine-year-old boy, but at the time I had only wanted to see my childhood hero and most beloved playmate. I wanted him again that night, and begged and pleaded and promised to be good, if only Holmes would let me see Harry.
“You shall see him, I am sure,” Holmes only told me, stroking a damp cloth over my brow. “Only not yet, my dear boy. My brave dear heart, not yet.”
“I want Harry,” I repeated.
Holmes smiled at me very sadly. “I am afraid you will have to make do with me for a little longer. I am sorry for it.”
After that, I slept – well into the day, for it was full light before I woke and there was a tray of food on the sideboard which I assumed had been meant for Holmes' lunch, and which had been left entirely untouched. I blinked at it absently, and huffed gently to myself in resignation to his habitual disregard of that which was most precious to me: his own self.
“Watson,” Holmes called me gently, and I rolled my head on the pillow to look at him.
“Good afternoon, Holmes,” I said, and his eye gained a hopeful spark which marginally improved his appearance. “You look dreadful.”
The corner of his mouth tipped up in a smile, but it did little to mitigate the effect overall: he looked gaunt and haggard, exhausted beyond reason as though he had sat sleepless vigil over me for a week rather than just the night. His eyes seemed to brighten the longer we spoke, but when I had first met his gaze they were dull, and deeply unhappy. There was an air about him of anxiety, as though he had been held hostage by fears until he could hardly hold his head up under the strain. When I reached out to press his hand in concern he shuddered, slumped a little as though he were setting down some small part of a great burden, and abruptly clung to my hand as though it were the only thing tethering him to the earth.
“There speaks the professional opinion,” he said wryly, reaching out to smooth my hair and feel the temperature of my brow. I could tell, both from my own feelings and his pleased expression, that whatever fever I had been sustaining had run its course.
I hummed. “I've no doubt I look little better – but really, old man, you might have had a nap at some point. Even eating something would likely help. Go and lie down. Doctor's orders.”
Holmes' grip tightened on my fingers. “You might have needed me for something. I've sat longer vigils,” he said, ignoring my last request altogether.
“I am grateful,” I said. “But there's really no call to run yourself into the ground for my sake.”
Holmes chuckled to himself darkly. “My dear fellow, your sake is the only reason worth considering.” I frowned at that: he had frequently done more for a case, or even a puzzle he thought interesting or a concerto he had yet to master, but Holmes only pressed my palm again. “Watson, I use you too freely, and I do not let you rest as I ought. I can only apologise. This case, the weather, all of it – I could have foreseen some incident of this kind, and I did not even consider it, let alone make allowances.”
By the start of his speech I was frowning; at its conclusion, I was very nearly cross. “Holmes, I am no invalid,” I protested. “Further, I'm a grown man and a doctor at that: if anyone is to know and decide my limits, it shall be me. I'll not thank you for excluding me when you believe I cannot manage.”
“My dear Watson,” Holmes said, sounding apologetic, “I do not mean to say you cannot manage – nor that you are in any way weak or infirm. I only want-” He stopped, and shrugged expressively. “I wish you had not been hurt,” he finished, rather lamely.
I reached out and patted his arm, for it was a powerless feeling I knew well from the various scrapes Holmes had managed for himself. “If wishes were horses, dear fellow,” I reminded him, and he made a face – at the sentiment, or my clichéed expression, or more likely both. “I'd have done nothing differently – I'd have come, and given chase, and everything else, even knowing the outcome. Besides, I shall be right as rain presently. I hardly even feel my ribs now.”
This was a lie, and Holmes could almost certainly see how still I was holding myself, how little I fidgeted and how I drew deliberate and slow breaths to avoid the pain. “You've broken two of them,” Holmes told me; I made a face and swore under my breath before I could stop myself, and Holmes let out a little gasping laugh, far more like a sob than any humour, and pressed his forehead to our joined hands.
“Holmes?” I said, trying to sit up and only managing to shift slightly and curse my blasted ribs. He drew his head up at once to settle me back into the pillows, but would not meet my eye. “Holmes, my dear fellow, whatever is the matter?”
“Watson, if I had this case over again I would do everything differently,” he told me, all in a rush. “It was unutterably vain of me to take Captain Winter about with me when I already suspected him, and to let him dine with us and with Miss Winter-! It was pride to the point of stupidity and it set the child in danger. And you were hurt.”
“Not very badly,” I said, as soothingly as I could manage, but he only shook his head.
“I thought you would drown,” he said, rather sharply, his eyes fixed on my chest. He was watching me breathe, I realised, as though he were still worried I might stop doing so. I shut my mouth, and let him speak. “For a moment, indeed, I though that you had. When I pulled you from the water you were not moving; there was water in your mouth; and you were so cold I could barely feel your heartbeat. But you had not drowned, and so I thought you might freeze to death; then, I supposed you might succumb to this fever, for your body in its time of trial repeated on you those tricks it learned from enteric fever in a field hospital, and which had so nearly kept you from my life altogether. And then-” he stopped, and breathed. It was all I could hear between us: breaths, heartbeats, none but our own.
“Then you spoke, in your fever, of other times,” he went on, not without difficulty, and I felt lead settle deep in my stomach.
I had not ever wanted to speak to him of those other times: my recoveries from other ills, physical and emotional, and the moments in which I had wondered at the reason or purpose of my doing so. “Those times are past,” I said, heart in my mouth. “They do not trouble me as they used to.”
“They trouble me,” Holmes snapped, “very greatly indeed.” With what seemed a very grave effort, he closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath. “Watson, please, I want only never to lose you, and I cannot see my way to it.”
I squeezed his hand in mine. “All that you want is all that I want,” I said gently. “Only let me be with you, and I shall be happy for all of my days.”
Finally, Holmes looked at my face. His eyes were red-rimmed – for exhaustion or sorrow, I did not know – but it made me hum a little sympathetic, sorry noise, and reach out to cup his cheek. If I were not so tired, I doubtless would not have attempted it and risked our friendship so, but Holmes leant into it like a cat seeking affection and closed his tired eyes. “My poor dear fellow,” I murmured, “how I've frightened you.”
Holmes huffed, half-laughter. “I've frightened myself, I think,” he admitted. “But I've never been in love; I am sorry that I'm hardly any good at it.”
His eyes snapped open the moment he heard my breathing stop; with an effort, I fought my surprise so as not to upset him again. It could not be: he had made no sign, given no indication, and I was only, well, myself. I had nothing to offer him – how could he want it all the same?
“My dear fellow,” Holmes said, speaking with half his mouth pressed to the heel of my palm, “you yourself were hardly forthcoming on the matter. I know only because you told me in the night – in fact, I hardly know it at all. I am endeavouring to be hopeful.”
He was, I could see it: his hand trembled in mine, and he was chewing the tip of his tongue. He was not as sure as he pretended to be. I could hardly believe it; I hardly knew where to begin, or what to do, but he had no reason to be afraid.
I picked up our joined hands and kissed his fingers. Holmes let out a startled little laugh, and pressed his smile into my palm.
“Never?” I said quietly, and he shook his head. I let my fingertips find the hinge of his jaw; I stroked the thin skin below his ear, and felt him shiver. Uncharted territory, and myself ever the adventurer. I shook my head in reply. “My dear fellow, I do not deserve it.”
“On the contrary – you are the only one in all the world,” Holmes said. “My own dear boy, it is I who is undeserving.”
I smiled up at him. “We could be here hours on that line,” I said, and his grin widened. “I may be a little disbelieving of my good luck for a while yet. Suffice it to say, I shall count myself very fortunate to be loved by you, and to love you entirely in return. My brave dear heart,” I added softly, shifting my hand to thumb at the wetness collecting over the bags under his eyes.
“What do you remember of the night?” Holmes asked, briefly detangling from me to tidy the moisture from his face before settling back into my hands.
“This and that,” I said honestly. “I think you said that – my brave dear heart – unless I was dreaming.”
“I shall say it again when you are not, if you like,” Holmes offered, “and every day thereafter.”
“My dear Holmes,” I said emphatically, and then laughed when he yawned expansively in reply. “Come and lie down, my heart,” I said, patting the covers by my side. “You'll wake if I need you, and you need the rest.”
Holmes stretched, his spine crunching worryingly after so long hunched in the chair, and I winced with him. “You've saddled yourself with an old man, Watson,” he said ruefully as he stood.
“I'm three years your senior, sir,” I said, and he snorted. “Besides, I might like being able to keep up with you for a change.”
To reach the far side of the bed Holmes ought, by rights, to have circled the room; he thus took me quite by surprise when he slung one leg over my hips and placed his hands either side of my head so that he could climb over me and save time. He did not surprise me so very much, however, that I could not take the opportunity it presented to seize him by the waistcoat lapels and draw his face down to mine so that, at last, my ribs would be no obstacle to my kissing him.
He made a small, startled noise, and then sighed against my mouth. Mindful that he himself had confessed to inexperience in this general field, and raised as I was not to start things which I was unable to finish, I kept the kiss sweet and chaste – but I did make the effort to pour into it all those things which I felt but had yet to say. Holmes made another noise I'd never heard from him, and chased my lips with great enthusiasm the very moment I drew away. I allowed him another kiss, then gentled him away so that I could smile, very smugly, at the starstruck expression on his face.
He licked his lips. His gaze flickered between my mouth and my eyes. “I don't think we're so very old, after all,” he said, rather hopefully.
I laughed, which hurt; he winced in commiseration with me and went easily when I pushed him off me. He settled himself all along my side, head propped up on one hand to watch my face; the other hand he wrapped around my own, long fingers resting over my pulse point. “I shall hold you to your promise there, Holmes, but you may have to be patient with me.”
“For you, Watson, anything.”
We were interrupted then by the creaking of the door; Holmes concealed our joined hands in the small gap between our bodies, but did not shift very far from my side. “Come in, Miss Maria,” he called. “Doctor Watson wants to see how you're improved.”
Maria stuck her head around the door rather uncertainly, but brightened considerably when I waved at her. “I want to see if you're better, Doctor,” she said cheerfully. “I'm sorry you were sick.”
“Thank you – I'm much better, now. Mr Holmes has been looking after me.”
Maria scrambled into Holmes' abandoned chair and beamed at us. “Good,” she pronounced. “It's been boring today – everyone's been so busy, and there's nothing to do.”
I smiled at this, and felt Holmes' thumb tapping on the back of my palm as he did on tables and chair arms, sometimes, when something had amused him. “Hasn't Miss Davies any lessons for you to do?” I asked.
“No,” Maria sighed, “she's been crying a bit, and then I helped her burn some letters and things – that was fun,” she said, cheering herself up at the memory, and I felt Holmes shaking with silent laughter behind me. “She didn't want the things Cousin James had given her anymore, and kept saying we were all better off without him. But she's still sad.”
“Yes, I see that she would be. But you'll be a good girl, and look after her, won't you?” I said, and Maria nodded proudly.
“Just like you looked after me, and like Mr Holmes looks after you,” she said.
“Perhaps,” Holmes said, his voice low, “even better.”
I squeezed his hand, and gave him a sharp look – none of that. “As well as ever you can,” I said firmly, and he pressed my fingers apologetically in return. “None of us can ask for better than that.”