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“Oh no,” the boy thought. “No, please, not now, please.”
She lay on the floor across the threshold, pale, unmoving. Her hair was wild and her nightgown disheveled. She usually didn’t get so far when she was unwell, and when she did, she usually better chose her places to collapse.
Rain wetted her hair, her head and shoulders outside the door. Her lower body was dry. A bell pull had gone unanswered. Of course. Wouldn’t be the first time Lucy took advantage of the missus being indisposed to sneak out to meet her beau. Wouldn’t be the last. Or perhaps it would.
The woman on the floor was so very still and her face limp and slack. Was it tonight? Was tonight the night? The boy approached her slowly, a sick terror pooling in his chest. He commanded himself to breathe against the rising clenching sensation that overtook his whole body. If she is…deceased…then the gut punch is coming. It will be unavoidable. Delaying it won’t help. It will ruin his plans for reading that evening. It will ruin the days to come. Then, perhaps, when the first sharp agonies begin to ebb, it will even be for the best. He no longer believed in a God who might strike him down for such a thought - he’d heard so much worse said out loud.
Carefully he bent over her, scarcely daring to touch. He thought he saw her shiver, some movement of her chest. Her cool grey eyes were half open and very dilated. He reached for her wrist to check for a pulse, as he had done before, and nearly screamed when she grabbed him.
“Where is it?” she said in a croak. “You said you were bringing it. I waited for you! You’re useless, Richard, you’re never there when I need it. You lied to me!” She gave a little retching sob.
The boy’s name was not Richard. It was Sherlock, and he was only seven years old, much too small to haul the shuddering dead weight of his mother back up to her bedroom. He did what he could, which was to drag her out of the doorway so she wouldn’t be trod upon. He put a cushion from the sofa under her head and a wool coat over her chest and shoulders. He brought a bucket from the kitchen and placed it beside her in case she needed to be sick later.
He hardly gave her a second look as he climbed the stairs back to his own room. He had a book waiting on venomous insects that he’d been looking forward to all day - their way of life was far removed from his own, and escape to their world would be a comfort. He resolved not to snitch on the nursemaid’s little desertion, for who could blame her? Besides, he could possibly leverage that silence into a favour in time of need, and at least she’d be back tomorrow to help. Unlike his brother, who was away at school for months to come.
***
He waited for the certain signs that the young man was completely unconscious before he began to wash the site of the incision, in preparation of the first cuts. His hands were clean, and he had to be certain they weren’t shaking.
Not for the first time he thought that perhaps he should not be the one to perform such a delicate operation on someone who had become dear to him, but then, he could think of no one else he trusted for this work. And certainly the patient himself would have no one else.
He looked down on the sleeping face, with a scar that was relatively new and had never been explained. What did he get up to in Trinidad that would have brought him to this place? He was the most brilliant assistant the doctor had ever had, and yet that brilliance did nothing to save him from the idiocy particular to youth when in a state to think themselves invincible. Why should a callow young Englishman fear the tropical mosquito? There were good reasons, but they would have been theoretical to him until it was too late. No sense of urgency.
There was no flinch at the first cut. Nor at the necessarily violent opening of the ribs. The dosage of the anaesthesia had been correct, thankfully. Holmes’s dangerously damaged heart beat steadily if slowly, silken to his touch as he peered in close, instruments at the ready. He lost track of time as he did the best he could to shore up the sagging serous pericardium - it was a job of slow, aching precision. Several times he paused to flex stiffening fingers and wipe his magnifying goggles with a clean cloth. Several times he mopped up seeping blood that stained the sheets on the table.
Dr. Joseph Bell leaned on the table, breathing deeply to calm himself. As far as he could tell now, the surgery had been a success. It was of limited use, of course, not a miracle cure. His recovery would be painful and difficult, and there was much that could still go wrong in the long healing process. Bell knew he had done the utmost to mitigate the risks of infection and complication, yet they both knew this was a desperate risk of last resort and there would be no guarantees. The lad still had a bomb in his chest, and surely could not be as sanguine about that as he had seemed. But that was the way of Mycroft Holmes, wasn’t it?
Dr. Bell took a moment to contemplate the unusual silence of the waiting room. He was used to having someone about there, probably several anxious someones - a parent, a spouse, a sweetheart, a child, a sibling, a dear friend. There was always someone clutching a damp handkerchief, someone praying, someone staring into the middle distance and trembling. He knew both the sobs of relief when he came into the room smiling, and the blanching and wails when his face was sombre and grim.
There was no one waiting for news of Mycroft Holmes. Holmes had asked for discretion and Bell was glad to give it, but he hadn’t quite realised that meant that Holmes would tell precisely none of the many people who cared about him.
Shaking his head at that, Dr. Bell decided that while he had time to wait for his patient to finish sleeping his chloroform dream before he awoke in need of morphine and fluids, the best thing he could do was make his notes as precise and detailed as possible. That would be the second thing Holmes would ask for upon waking (after the morphine).
***
The letter she wrote was courteous. The wording of it was straightforward and simply told the story of what had happened.
What she did not say in the letter was how grateful she was that she and her father had been allowed to return unharmed and unimpeded to London. She could not have counted on that grace or charity. So of course she put the best face on it that she could.
Her father wept for his daughter’s disgrace, and for the family alliance that ended so terribly. He kept vigil by her bunk when the smallpox rose up in her, and he turned away in sorrow when he saw her scars, and yet still held her hand.
When she recovered, she longed to write more. She longed to say more. I would love to see you again, Mr. Holmes. I am not the beauty you remember, Mr. Holmes, so if that is what you value most about me, you will be disappointed. (I do think better of you than that, my dear.) I do hope you are taking care of your heart. I gave you a list of what you need for it, and I trust you’ve taken the time to procure it in my absence, for I cannot be providing for you always.
I know you did everything you could. Or so you said. There is something in me that doubts, that wonders if there might have been a late double cross. If you had got in over your head. You are in deep in realms where good intentions often cause unintended harm. I will say no more of this until there is a time where you and I can speak freely.
Ai Lin wrote a sketchy outline of this in her cabin of her father’s ship bound for London. There would be days yet on the sea. She’d like to see Mycroft again, of course she would.
When she closed her eyes to try to sleep and didn’t take opium, she saw Bingwen Shi. She saw what she’d been forced to witness as his wife, to share in his punishment for treason; she heard the sounds he made while his body was slowly cut apart while he yet lived, and the pulsing, twisting gore of his agony and degradation. There would never be a time when that horror would leave her dreams.
It is not something one can ever discuss with a suitor, even an unsuitable one.
***
Cyrus Douglas sat on the edge of the courtyard, watching Huan put some of the boys from Nickolus House through paces they could never have imagined. Bruised and embarrassed at first, gradually they learned that the rhythmic, acrobatic dance-fighting of capoeira wasn’t a circus act out of reach for them, but a skill they could develop themselves - slowly, carefully, with the humility of starting with bare basics.
Little George Fowler had finally managed to make a passable berimbau to accompany them, and it was the happiest Douglas had seen him since Charlie’s death.
Douglas himself was sitting out this circle - he had done his practice for the day to keep in shape, but a stray kick to the chest had him reeling, and he resolved that it was not a day to push his luck. It’s not an easy thing to carry the leaden seeds of one’s own death so close to the heart - well, everyone carries that seed until the day it blooms, but his was more literal than most. Watching the boys learn, even if he had to stay in the shadows and not join the challenge, was usually a balm to his spirits, but today his aches plagued him and reminded him of a worse wound to the heart that could also never fully heal. Would his son be good at this, he wondered? Would Annie be delighted to watch by his side? Perhaps the shards of lead in his chest would one day deliver him to a reunion with them, and if so, he would bless them.
A hand on his shoulder broke his reverie for a moment. He knew that grip, and he knew the bottle of Baccarat in the corner of his eye. Mycroft was always modest about his financial contributions, and not nearly as deft in concealing them as he thought. “Hello, my friend.”
Douglas looked up with a genuine gratitude - Mycroft might be supercilious sometimes, but right now, he was badly needed. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Mycroft. “I don’t say this often, but it’s a pity my brother isn’t here. He could learn to fall impressively on body parts he doesn’t even remember he has.”
Douglas burst out in laughter. “Yes, for the first few minutes. Then he’d probably become unfairly good at it just to spite you, and it would work.”
“Surprised not to see you out there,” Mycroft said. “Let’s watch a few rounds and then go have our brandy. I did of course stop by Regent on my way here.”
“Mm. We may be able to imbibe out here in the sunlight,” Douglas said as the boys finished their rounds and Huan waved them off back into the building, giving his usual cheerful salute to Douglas and Holmes.
“Or go a couple of rounds ourselves. Our young musician there still seems keen to play for someone.”
“Traditionally done in white trousers and shirtless,” Douglas said ruefully. “When I change my shirt before others, I do get asked questions.”
“They’d be impressed if they knew the truth, or even a fraction of it.”
“It is certainly an advertisement for the martial arts, I can’t argue with that. And also for the art of surgery.” Holmes took a long, shivering sigh then, and Douglas looked at him questioningly.
“Let’s have that brandy now.”
In the comfortable room, with the snifters filled and cigars lit, Holmes stood before Douglas and said quietly. “I have been withholding a truth. You may not want to drink civilly with me for a while afterwards. You might treat me like I’m made of glass, and I won’t be able to bear that.”
“Out with it, Holmes,” Douglas said. “You know I’ve never been shy to speak up when I feel you’ve wronged me.”
“One of the countless things I value about you, my friend.” To Douglas’s astonishment, Mycroft loosened his cravat and his collar, opened his waistcoat and then his shirt underneath it. And then the room seemed to tilt as Douglas took in what he was seeing. Mycroft’s pale chest was crossed with livid scars not entirely unlike his own.
“Damage caused by rheumatic fever in my childhood, exacerbated by an asymptomatic case of malaria in Trinidad. The worst cannot be repaired, but the grim reaper has a few more small obstacles now…”
“You were gone for a month,” Douglas said, putting it together very quickly.
“Dr. Bell did his best, which is very good indeed,” Holmes said. “But it’s beyond even him to artificially speed a recovery.”
“Your fainting spells. The tinctures and teas Ai Lin gave you.”
“She has the skills of deduction equal to mine in medical matters. There’s no hiding anything of the sort from her.”
“And yet you hid it from me.”
“It was unjust. I’ve done you a great wrong, and I am sorry. I should have been honest from the beginning about the severity of my condition…but…there were many different ways in which I was afraid.”
Douglas went through a long series of emotions very quickly - anger was there, yes, what would it take for this ridiculous man to stop concealing so much of importance? But there was concern and there was grief - could he lose someone else he cared for soon, and suddenly?
He let Mycroft read all of that in his face - open and naked, and crowned with a pinprickle of tears. When he was sure Holmes had absorbed the magnitude of what he had done, he decided to lighten the mood.
“And what did Sherlock say?”
“Oh I certainly haven’t told him. He’ll take to planning scares and shocks to come into his inheritance sooner.”
Douglas laughed and laughed, more for this demonstration of the working of Holmes’s mind than because he thought it was actually funny. Then he shook his head. “No, you know better. He’s a petulant brat but he loves you. And would rather cut out his own insolent tongue than admit he craves a sign of your love as well but there’s no hiding it.”
That reminder of Sherlock’s hurt cut Mycroft to the quick. “I will make such amends as I can,” he said. “For now I need to make amends to you. A debt I can never repay, and I cheated your brave heart with my cowardice. You needn’t forgive me, but I hope you will.”
With a snifter in hand, Douglas moved forward. He set the glass down on the table and laid his hand flat over Mycroft’s heart - beating as surely and capably as it could. He indicated with a nod, and, his hand shaking, Holmes returned the gesture, his hand over Douglas’s chest - scar to scar, wound to wound, life to life.