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During the years in which I believed my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes dead at Reichenbach (and had truly lost my dear Mary to a virulent ‘flu that had struck her at the very beginning of her pregnancy) I had made a habit of paying regular visits to Aldershot to call upon my friend Corporal Henry Wood (whose unhappy life can be read in the story of “The Crooked Man”); the man’s own understanding of tragedy, losing a beloved, and the terrible cost of fighting for Her Majesty was a balm to my own sorrow. As I had once described our association to Holmes, we were rather like two old wolves licking each other’s wounds, for Wood often told me what a comfort it was to talk to a fellow old soldier who knew the meaning of pain and loss, and looked at him as a comrade instead of with pity at a misshapen cripple.
Today we took our ease in Wood’s lodgings on Hudson Street, a small but clean set of rooms on a quiet throughway. He produced a bottle of stout, which turned the packet of sandwiches I had brought into a feast. Wood was still as grotesquely bent as ever – his broken body was beyond modern medicine’s ability to straighten – but he did not look as haggard and gaunt as when Holmes and I first laid eyes upon him. The efforts of his former sweetheart and fellow sufferer at the same ruthless hands, the widow Nancy Barclay, had borne good fruit. (I myself wrote a letter or two to the Army board on Corporal Wood’s behalf – who were impressed not by my credentials as a veteran of Afghanistan but by the name of the man with whom I was now irretrievably associated; I knew Holmes would have been pleased at the use of his name to such an end and accepted the doors that it opened.) The end result was that Wood now had a small but steady income in the form of a pension, enough for the man’s few needs, and no longer relied solely upon his Indian fakir tricks to bring in the pennies. A clean room, regular meals, freedom from subsistence drudgery and a soul no longer burdened by hatred and grief had worked wonders on the man.
Even Teddy had filled out. Wood’s pet mongoose had free run of the rooms, as he would have had in any self-respecting bungalow in India, and the little chap was in and out of everything, looking more like a German sausage these days than like a whipcord with red eyes. “You haven’t been performing your death-dance lately, have you Ted?” I asked, scratching the beast when it slithered up my leg and stared at me.
Wood grinned. “Nor has he, Captain Watson. He eats as well as me these days. So does Nog. ‘Course, she can’t kill the rats herself, Teddy does that for her.”
“Nog?” But then I remembered, even as I realised that he’d said “Nag” with the Indian pronunciation. Teddy’s part in Wood’s show had been to fight a cobra (with its fangs removed) for the entertainment of the audience. “Nag” was the Indian word for “cobra.” “Is she here? Do you have a cage for her?”
For answer Wood thumped the floor hard. “Old girl’s deaf as a post, but she’ll feel the boards.”
The next thing I knew I was staring into the shining black shoe-button eyes of a hooded cobra, which had slithered down from the rafters and right into Henry Wood’s lap.
Wood took her firmly behind the head with thumb and finger just where the hood started. “Her fangs are gone and she’s harmless, so I give Nag the run of the place, same as Teddy. Teddy’s so well-fed now he won’t even look at Nag, let alone fight her. I’m not the only one who’s gotten an easy life from my pension, Doctor! And she scares the rats and mice away that Teddy doesn’t catch himself, though she can’t bite ‘em. I’ve got the cleanest rooms on this street.”
In truth, I hardly heard that last part of Wood’s conversation, for I was enthralled with this close-up look at the creature. Perhaps because I knew her to be perfectly safe and under Wood’s control, I felt no fear at all at being this close to a famously poisonous serpent, and all my attention was on her appearance.
She was an Indian cobra, and not her larger cousin the king-cobra – she bore two dark spots banded with a pale ring on the front of her hood, rather than the spectacled clown-face that leers from the back of the latter’s hood. Her body’s scales repeated in a speckled pattern of grey and cream and brown almost like a tweed, clearly useful for hiding in dry grass for prey. Her eyes were shining black beads of solid colour.
I did not expect the next words out of my mouth. “She’s … beautiful.”
Wood grinned. “It’s true, ain’t it? Touch her back, Doctor.”
Heart pounding, yet unable to resist the challenge, I extended a hand. Nag opened her fangless mouth and hissed at me but Wood had her. I rested my fingers on the cobra’s back and almost jumped. I knew snakes were not slimy, but I had at least expected the scales to be rough. But the pebbled skin was as sleek and smooth as the softest leather, under which strong muscles moved like a man flexing his forearm.
Nag hissed at me again. “There, there, old girl,” I said as if soothing a frightened dog, keeping my strokes light as if afraid of tearing that leather-soft scaly skin. “I won’t hurt you – and I’ll thank you to return the favour.”
Wood chuckled. “Used to charge the bravest fellows a shilling extra to pet her, but they were too rough – kept grabbing her like they wanted to wrestle or throttle poor Naggie. She’s much happier as a retired rat-catcher, aren’t you?”
When I withdrew my hand, Wood let go of Nag after giving the cobra a bit of ham from his sandwich. She poured onto the floor and was gone in seconds.
“She even saved me from an attack, once,” Wood said, watching her go. “I was coming home from my performance and some alley-rat stuck a knife under my nose demanding my basket. I gave it to him.”
Both of us roared. I hardly needed Wood to describe the shriek his would-be assailant made when he opened his prize, nor the way he’d looked as he’d fled leaving his knife behind.
“I’ve seen a poisonous snake used as a murder weapon,” I said, still laughing, “and I know they’re used as treasure-guards in Indian palaces. But this may be the first time I’ve heard of one saving a man.”
“Well, it’s true. She saved me that night.” Wood stared thoughtfully into the fire that he kept blazing in every weather, even the hottest part of summer. “A lot of people have saved me, Watson. You among them. I’m a lot luckier than I ever thought I was, after all.” He exhaled. “I only wish I could ease your life a little, the way you’ve done mine. You’re marching through your own ravine right now.”
I pinched my lips together. He was right; these days I felt as if I walked in perpetual mourning. “This does help, Wood. These visits, the talks. I look forward to them. It’s the only thing I anticipate with pleasure any more.” Teddy snuffled at my waxed paper, looking for remnants of my lunch, and I stroked his rough furry back – a rougher back than his ophidian flatmate.
I’d have deduced Wood for a former soldier for nothing else but his next gesture. He leaned over and offered me a cigarette. Smiling my thanks, I put it to my lips.
“Just say the word, Captain,” Corporal Wood said, striking a match for me as well, “and we head for the Musket and Shot, get absolutely boiled-owl and start throwing punches at the youngsters. Nothing better for clearing the head.”
I laughed again for the second time that day – the second time that month. “I’ll keep that in mind, Corporal.”