Stone Cold (3 page)

‘That’s good.’ Matty glanced sideways at Sherlock. ‘It’s not that I don’t like ’im – it’s that he don’t like me. An’ besides, he
keeps tryin’ to teach me stuff, like readin’ an’ writin’. I don’t need that stuff.’

Sherlock thought back to his argument with his brother only an hour or so before, when he had told Mycroft that he didn’t need to learn about dead languages or old books. Wasn’t that
more or less a refined version of what Matty had just said? Perhaps he should be less picky about the facts he allowed into his brain.

He shook himself to get rid of the uncomfortable thought.

‘Now, let’s get some food,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Where do you recommend?’

‘Borough Market’ll be closin’ down now. There’ll be plenty of pies an’ apples goin’ spare.’

‘Spare?’ Sherlock questioned.

‘Well, if the stall-owner’s back is turned. The way I see it, we’re doin’ them a favour. If we didn’t take the food then, they’d only ’ave to carry it
’ome again, then back to the market next day, an’ the chances are that it might have gone off overnight an’ someone’ll get stomach ache from eatin’ it.’

‘You’re right,’ Sherlock said. ‘We’re actually providing a public service.’ He clapped Matty on the shoulder. ‘Let’s go, and on the way you can
tell me more about Oxford.’

They left five days later, after Mycroft had written to, and received a reply from, his friend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He showed the reply to Sherlock over lunch one day. It
said:

Mycroft’s only response as he took the letter back from Sherlock was, ‘I had forgotten about the toad.’

‘What happened to it?’ Sherlock asked innocently.

‘It became something of a college mascot,’ his brother replied, ‘that is, until an unfortunate incident with a senior master’s dog.’

‘It was eaten?’ Sherlock was aghast. He hadn’t intended any harm to come to the creature.

‘No – the dog tried to eat it, but choked. The master pulled it out of the dog’s throat and threw it into the river in a fit of rage. Misplaced rage, of course, as the toad was
perfectly happy in the water – happier, I suspect, than it had ever been at college. Certainly happier than the dog, who would never eat anything after that without carefully inspecting it
and turning it over several times first.’

Mycroft had offered to pay for Sherlock to take the train to Oxford, but, remembering his conversation with Matty, Sherlock had declined. He had rather taken to the idea of a slow journey by
barge, experiencing the landscape as they went – two friends, together. When he explained this, Mycroft had made a ‘harrumph’ noise, and muttered, ‘How uncivilized. How
uncomfortable.’

Sherlock spent the last day before they left London revisiting his favourite places – the bridges over the Thames, the bookshops of the Charing Cross Road, the London Zoo and the hustle
and bustle of Paddington Station. He would miss London. He would miss it terribly, and he vowed, as he walked up Baker Street away from the station, to come back and live there one day.

On the appointed day, Sherlock took what few possessions he had – some clothes, his violin and a few books – and joined Matty on his barge in Camden Lock. They set off in silence,
with Matty very aware of his friend’s mixed feelings about leaving. Matty, by contrast, was happier than Sherlock had seen him in a while. Matty was, in so many ways, the exact opposite of
Mycroft Holmes. He was thin where Mycroft was fat, intuitive where Mycroft was logical and, critically, restless and active where Mycroft was settled and lazy. The only point of similarity they had
was their fondness for food.

Harold, Matty’s horse, walked steadily along the towpath, pulling the barge slowly and sedately along the Grand Junction Canal. Matty stood at the back, steering with the rudder to ensure
that they neither ploughed bow-first into the bank nor drifted out into the centre of the canal, pulling Harold into the shallow water. Sherlock sat cross-legged at the front, watching out for
obstacles and tunnels, and letting his mind drift. They passed fields and forests, roads and rivers. Whenever they passed a barge travelling in the opposite direction, usually laden with coal or
wood or metal pipes, Sherlock would raise a finger to his forehead, and the man on the other barge would do likewise. Whenever they came to a lock – one of the gated enclosures that allowed
the water level of the canal to rise and fall in line with the landscape – Sherlock would leap out and guide Harold to a stop, throw his weight into closing the first set of massive wooden
gates behind the barge while Matty carefully steered, then he would open the water sluices set into the equally massive second set of gates to let the water on the other side pour into the
enclosure, raising the level of the water inside and therefore the barge until the second set of gates could be opened. Even as he was rushing around, opening and closing gates and winding metal
pump handles, Sherlock marvelled at the inventiveness of the mechanisms. How incredible that human ingenuity had come up with something so complicated, so useful and so clever!

The two of them ate when they were hungry – buying food from farms or taverns that they passed – and slept when it was too dark to keep moving safely. Rather than measuring their
journey by the towns and villages they encountered, as he would have done if travelling by road or rail, Sherlock found himself tracking their progress by the names of the various locks they
travelled through and the rivers that either passed under them or joined with them. The ones that stuck in his memory were Black Jack’s Lock, Iron Bridge Lock and Lady Chapel Lock, the River
Musbourne, the River Bulbourne and the River Chess. About the only major population centre that he was aware of was the market town of Aylesbury, where the two of them stopped for a day to look
around and to buy cheese and pies.

They came off the Grand Junction Canal eventually, on to the Oxford Canal.

‘It runs between Oxford an’ Cambridge,’ Matty yelled from the rear of the barge as they made their laboured turn into the offshoot, ‘prob’ly for all them students
that get thrown out of the one an’ fancy their chances at the other. You might need to know that one day!’

‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Sherlock said laconically.

As they got closer to Oxford, Sherlock began to see signs of increasing wealth – bigger houses, set in their own grounds, and buildings made of cut stone transported from distant quarries
rather than rough stones cut locally. The clothes that people were wearing were better quality as well, with straw boaters increasingly replacing flat caps.

One house, which they passed at dusk one day, particularly caught his attention. It was illuminated by the setting sun, making it shine with a macabre crimson light. The various sharp
decorations along the edge of the roof looked like teeth raking at the darkening sky. There was something about the structure of the building – the way the wings joined on to the main body,
and the way the lines of differently coloured stone that marked the divisions between the floors ran across the frontage, that made him feel uneasy, even faintly nauseous. No two lines seemed to be
exactly parallel, and no angles summed to exactly ninety degrees, giving the house a strange, lopsided feel. It didn’t appear to be falling down however. It seemed more as if it had been
deliberately built that way – constructed using a geometry that wasn’t based on the rules that Sherlock had been taught at school. There was something about the way the windows gaped,
black and empty, which made him think of many eyes all staring down at him pitilessly, measuring him up and finding him wanting.

He shook himself. He’d been travelling for too long without any distractions, and he was hungry. His imagination – usually the quietest part of his mind – was running wild.

‘Can you see that place?’ Matty called.

‘Yes,’ Sherlock said, more quietly than he had intended. It was as if he didn’t want the house to hear them.

‘Weird, ain’t it?’

‘Yes.’ He felt as if he needed to keep his answers as short and direct as possible, to avoid attracting attention. ‘It’s just a badly designed house,’ he said
sharply. ‘Nothing to get panicked about.’

‘’Arold don’t like it,’ Matty pointed out, and indeed the horse did appear to be shying away from the building, as far as the rope that connected him to the barge would
allow. Matty was having to steer the boat further out into the canal just to stop them from being pulled into the bank.

Sherlock glanced back towards the house as the inexorable progress of the barge carried them past its baleful gaze. The building almost seemed to shift with them as they moved, keeping its
frontage facing them and its black windows fixed on them. Just as he was about to look away, the light from the setting sun illuminated a shape on the roof that was distinct from the chimneys and
the carved decorations. It looked for all the world like a gargoyle, a stone demon poised up there, overlooking the house’s grounds, but who would decorate their house with just one gargoyle
– and why put one on a house anyway? Gargoyles were generally found on churches or cathedrals, and usually came in groups rather than individually. Weren’t they meant to be water spouts
for when it rained? Who would put just one water spout on a roof?

Even as the thoughts crossed Sherlock’s mind, the massive figure shifted. It moved to one side, and its right arm reached up to catch the edge of a chimney, stabilizing it against a sudden
gust of wind that ruffled the waters of the canal and briefly caught the side of the barge. The figure looked to Sherlock as if it was about seven feet tall, with a chest like a barrel and a head
that was bald and strangely lumpy, rather than smooth like a man’s scalp should have been. Its arms appeared overly long too. He shuddered, feeling an inexplicable fear. Then he blinked, and
suddenly the figure was gone. The roofline was once again just chimneys and spiky decorations.

A trick of light and shadow – it must have been. He took a deep breath, suddenly aware that he had stopped breathing for a few moments.

‘Did you . . . ?’ he called, then bit down on the words he had been going to say.

‘Did I what?’ Matty asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Do you want to stop for the night? It’s getting dark. We’ve got some sausage left, an’ some cheese.’

‘Let’s keep going for half an hour more.’ Sherlock glanced again at the house. ‘I want to get some more distance under our belt before we stop.’

‘You’re the boss,’ Matty said cheerfully, then added, more quietly, ‘even though it’s my barge an’ my ’orse.’

They kept going until the house was out of sight and Harold had calmed down, then they stopped and tied the barge up for the night. The sky was cloudless, speckled with stars, and the two of
them lay back on the barge’s deck and ate their provisions as Harold noisily munched grass from the bank. They talked about everything and nothing, important things and trivial things, all
mixed together. Sherlock hesitantly put forward his plans of moving back to London once he had finished at Oxford and working for, or with, the police, and Matty for the first time talked about his
dreams of finding a girl, getting married and having a large family. They slept there, on the deck of the barge, and if Sherlock dreamed then he didn’t remember the dreams.

The next day they arrived in Oxford.

They tethered the barge on the outskirts of the town and walked in. By the time they got to the centre, Sherlock had fallen in love with the place. The various colleges – Christ Church, of
course, but also Balliol, Jesus, Merton and many others, were scattered through the town like plums in a plum duff. The town itself was the usual mixture of shops, taverns, houses, official
buildings and storehouses, but the college buildings were magnificent ancient stone edifices, like walled medieval mini-towns in their own right. Students in black robes and flat black caps were
everywhere: walking, riding bicycles or standing around in groups and conversing. Sherlock noticed that the students appeared to stay in their own groups, and the townspeople just talked to each
other. There was little mixing between the two. He filed that away for later consideration.