Chapter Text
“Oh, lighten up Sherlock!”
James Moriarty walked alongside Sherlock Holmes through the forest on the Holmes family estate, though the other man barely acknowledged him.
Lost in thought.
Bugger.
“At least clue me into what's happening in that head of yours.”
Sherlock's eyes flicked to him. “I'm not certain myself,” he admitted.
James gasped. “The great Sherlock Holmes, confounded at last! Finally, a mystery he cannot solve!”
“It's not like that,” Sherlock protested. “I need to think!” He waved a vague hand in James’ direction. “And I can't do that with you chattering on right now.”
James rolled his eyes. “You have my silence, oh great clever one.”
He cast about the forest behind them. It was late at night, slivers of moonlight shining through the tree branches. The shadows could hide any number of assailants, and as the conspiracy unraveled, James was paranoid of watchful eyes.
“Sherlock,” he said, turning back towards his friend, “d'you think we're—”
He froze mid-sentence.
Sherlock was gone.
“Sherlock?” James slowly turned in a circle, eyes scanning the path and forest around him.
“Are you having a laugh, Holmes?”
As if.
It was the sort of thing James would do, under slightly better circumstances.
But not Sherlock.
“If you got yourself kidnapped,” He began, raising his voice, “I'm not going to save you this time!”
That was a lie. Sherlock would know it was a lie. But the woods remained silent around him, except for the faint sound of nighttime insects.
James swore under his breath and started walking again. It was impossible for Sherlock to have outpaced him so quickly in the moments he was turned away, not without him noticing.
So was some unseen assailant snatching the man while both were distracted, but he had no better explanation—
He heard something.
James paused, listening.
Was that… music?
He slowly turned again, head cocked. It came from somewhere in the woods to his right.
Someone singing, and strumming a stringed instrument.
James glanced back and forth down the path one more time before shrugging and plunging into the undergrowth, following the sound.
As he drew closer, the music became clearer. The singer was vocalizing, a mixture of humming and soft vocal sounds, no lyrics that James could hear.
He stepped into a clearing, the moonlight clearly illuminating a bed of red carnations covering every inch of ground.
And at the center, seated on a fallen log, the musician.
He faced away from James, eyes closed as his fingers strummed a metal-stringed mandolin. He had curly brown hair and pale skin. He wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up, dark brown trousers with suspenders over his shoulders, a red handkerchief tied around his neck.
Finishing the song with a final melancholic chord, the musician opened his eyes, sighing as he stared into the darkened woods.
Before James could move, he turned and saw him.
The musician jumped. He would have dropped his instrument, if it hadn't been for the strap looped across his back.
“Lovely song,” James said, casually hooking his thumbs into his pockets. “Hope I didn't scare you too badly, creeping up like that.”
The musician relaxed slightly. “I… I thought you were someone else.”
James glanced around the clearing. Aside from the two of them, it was empty. “In all honesty, I was hoping you were someone else, too, though I have never known him to be musically inclined. Regardless, have you seen a young, confident but remarkably helpless-looking fellow by the name of Sherlock Holmes?”
The musician shook his head, fingers absently plucking at the strings of his mandolin. “No one, besides you.” His eyes darted to the ground, and he flinched, as if seeing the carnations for the first time. “Did Hermes send you?”
“‘Hermes’,” James repeated, skeptical. “Greek god of travelers, Hermes?”
“I know of no other.”
“Some sort of code name?”
The musician frowned, confused. “No….”
“Huh,” James mused, “I suppose I've heard stranger. What's your name, then, Zeus?”
“You're mocking me.”
James held up his hands placatingly. “No, no, just curious is all, really! Here, my name's James Moriarty.”
The musician watched him for a long moment, weariness evident. Finally he tapped his fingers on the body of the mandolin. “Orpheus,” he said softly. “My name is Orpheus.”
“Orpheus? Like the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus?”
“I see my reputation precedes me,” Orpheus muttered, a tinge of annoyance in his voice.
James raised his eyebrows. “‘Your reputation’—you say that as if you are the Orpheus in the tale.”
“And you say that as if it's difficult to believe.”
James smirked. “A myth from thousands of years ago, and you expect me to accept that you are that same hero alive and well, not a day older than I am.”
Orpheus—if that was really his name—scowled. “If you think I'm lying, why don't you just—”
“Excuse me, good sirs!”
James and Orpheus jumped as another man strolled into the clearing to James' right. About James’ height, he wore a dark coat over a lighter tunic, the buttons at the collar left undone. He carried a staff casually in one hand, and a wide-brimmed hat covered his head.
Sweeping off the hat as they faced him, the newcomer dipped into an exaggerated bow. “Mat Cauthon, at your service!”
He straightened with a grin. “Now, I don't mean to interrupt a good brotherly quarrel. But could you kindly point me in the direction of the nearest road? I seem to have gotten myself a bit lost.”
James blinked. Aside from his clothing, the man was nigh identical to Orpheus! “Brothers!” he scoffed, “we've only just met. If anything, I think the two of you are brothers.”
Orpheus’ head darted between them, scowl changing to befuddlement. “I thought the same of you and him!”
James reflexively glanced down at himself, as if that would confirm the musician's words. But he would need a mirror for that. “What, so we're all identical? Is that it?” His eyes darted between the two of them suspiciously. “Are the two of you having a laugh?”
“I've never seen either of you before in my life,” Mat said. “I think I would know if I had identical triplet brothers.”
“So do I!”
Orpheus plucked a string on his instrument, but said nothing.
“How is this even possible?” James asked, folding his arms. “How do we go our whole lives without knowing of each other, than one night we stumble together in one forested clearing?”
“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills,” Mat said, though the smirk on his face suggested he was trying to be witty.
“What does that mean?”
Mat just shrugged. “Something an Aes Sedai always said to us when we tried to ask her why.”
James stared at him incredulously. “‘Aes Sedai’? I've never heard of—don't tell me both of you are mad!”
“Nah, I've seen what madness looks like and I'm bloody positive it isn't me.”
Orpheus strummed a somber chord on his mandolin.
Mat swept out his hand, still holding the hat. “The two of you haven't proper manners anyway! What are the names of my long-lost brothers?”
James made a mock bow. “James Moriarty.”
Orpheus barely glanced up. “Orpheus.”
If this Mat Cauthon thought the musician's name or somber disposition strange, he did not show it, simply nodding in approval at their answers.
“Now that that's over with,” Mat said, “the nearest road?”
James gestured vaguely back where he had come. “We're on my friend Sherlock's family property—trespassing, mind you—but the road's near the house.”
He started, remembering how he had ended up here in the first place. “You wouldn't happen to have seen a young fellow who acts confident but is remarkably helpless? Can't throw a proper punch to save his life, helpless? I appear to have misplaced him and he has a knack for finding the nearest spot of trouble and throwing himself neck-deep inside.”
“Can't say I have,” Mat replied. “Though if you're looking for the troublesome sort….” He grinned and placed his hat back on his head. “Now, the road?”
James sighed. He would have to come back and look later. Perhaps Sherlock already returned while he was arguing with these two.
“Right. This way.” He backed up a few steps, not entirely ready to turn his back on either of them.
Mat crossed the clearing, moving easily through the bright red blossoms, though he paused when he came near the fallen log. “Orpheus, was it?”
The musician frowned at him. “Yes….”
“A gleeman, are you?”
“I… don't know what that means.”
Mat waved a hand vaguely at the sky. “Gleeman! Wandering musician and storyteller?”
Orpheus shrugged. “In a way.”
“Got a destination in mind, then?”
The musician hesitated. James narrowed his eyes at Mat.
“Care to join me on the road?” Mat asked, offering his hand to Orpheus. “I'll buy you a drink at the next tavern.”
For a moment, it appeared that Orpheus might turn him down. The thought certainly crossed his mind and in turn his expression. But instead, he exhaled slowly and took the offered hand, allowing Mat to pull him to his feet.
“Right,” James said as both joined him at the edge of the clearing. “Now that our merry band's settled. This way.”
He turned and started walking back the way he had come, eyes roving the forest for any sign of Sherlock. Madness, all of this! He might have thought himself dreaming, or drunk.
But all of this was too real to be a hallucination.
One stranger identical to himself was… not impossible, certainly. A distant cousin, perhaps, he wasn't the most versed in the new science of genetics, but it wasn't out of the question.
But two of them?
Meeting seemingly by happenstance?
James smelled a conspiracy.
One or both of these men had to be lying. But for what? What could they possibly hope to gain by crossing his path?
James didn't know, but he would certainly advise the good Cordelia Holmes to keep the doors and windows bolted tight this evening. Or at least, he would when he was certain Sherlock was found—
He emerged from the forest and froze midstep, staring across the moonlight lawn, the immaculate orchards, the manicured gardens to the house beyond. Golden candlelight dancing in the windows marked it in the night.
“What have we stopped for?” Mat came up next to James, Orpheus on his other side. The musician had slung his mandolin across his back, one hand clutching at the strap. “Is that the house?”
“It is… a house,” James answered, perplexed. He glanced over his shoulder at the forest. “I don't understand. We followed the exact same path. But this is not the Holmes estate.”
Mat hummed softly. “Maybe you didn't lose your friend Sherlock after all. Maybe he lost you. Let's go say hello, shall we?”
He started across the grass, Orpheus trailing after him. James hesitated, taking in the unfamiliar grounds.
None of this made any sense.
Perhaps he was dreaming.
Hissing through his teeth, he took off at a swift walk to catch up with the other two. “What the hell do you mean ‘Sherlock lost me'? I never left the woods, was barely off the path for a few minutes!”
“The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, my friend!” came Mat's answer.
“Is that another way of saying ‘God works in mysterious ways’? Because I've heard plenty of that!”
“Maybe!”
“That doesn't make any sense! What ‘Wheel'?”
They reached the house, and Mat marched up to what must've been the rear door to the gardens and orchards located behind the house. He made a disbelieving guffaw at James’ question. “Now who's having a laugh?”
Before James could respond, he rapped sharply on the door. The sound seemed very loud in the late night silence both within the house and outside of it.
A few tense moments passed, long enough that James wondered, briefly, if the house was empty.
If it, like the Holmes estate had, been left to collect dust.
Or perhaps they simply weren’t expecting visitors at this hour of the night.
James checked the sky at the thought. It hadn’t been that late of a night walk, had it? The sun had gone down, yes, but the moon was bright enough to see by.
The notion that they had lost track of time was the most mundane thing to have happened this entire evening.
Mat raised his fist again and pounded on the door.
“I don’t think they were expecting visitors from the back,” he remarked, stepping back.
A moment later, it opened.
Just a crack, enough for the person on the other side to peer out at them with a suspicious eye.
Mat swept off his hat and took a bow. “Good evening my fair lady—”
Slam!
All three flinched back as muffled running footsteps receded, with a barely indiscernible shout echoing from inside.
“—Mister Hayward Mister Hayward Mister Hayward—!”
Mat huffed and glanced back at James, placing his hat back on his head. “That’s no way to treat a guest. Who’s this Hayward fellow d’y’reckon?”
“The master of this house, no doubt,” James mused. “But I don’t see the need to fetch him so quickly. Someone who runs an estate like this should have staff that understands that. Least she could’ve done is invited us in first.”
Mat shrugged. “We do make an odd trio, don’t we? Identical young men, but each dressed remarkably different.”
“This was your idea.”
“Oh I know that. But in times like these you can never be too careful. Probably thinks we’re thieves.”
James raised an eyebrow. “What sorts of thieves ask to be let in?”
“The kind that don’t want you to think they’re a thief, of course!” Holding his staff in the crook of his elbow, Mat began ticking a list off his fingers. “First, you get invited in as a guest. You go through all the pleasantries, the host lets down their guard, and then—!”
He snapped his fingers. “Into your pocket goes their silver spoons. And they won’t notice until you’re long gone.”
James scoffed. “You make it sound simple.”
“May have skipped a few steps here and there, but that’s not the point.”
“And that is—?”
The door opened again, this time swinging wide as a man, still dressed in his nightclothes, threw it open. A woman in a long nightdress stood behind him, peering around his shoulder. A few more people stood inside the mudroom that led into the rest of the house, a couple also in nightclothes but the rest in what were clearly staff uniforms.
James fixed on the man. Mister Hayward, no doubt.
A man about his age.
About his height.
And, most importantly, the spitting image of the two men beside and behind James.
This was way worse than he thought.