Thanks to CowMow, celeryy, KateRobin, katdemon, Mrs Dizzy, Featherbrained, MuteBanana, Vitawash, Dizzybunny, Voldemort's Spawn, coloradoandcolorado1, conchepcion, PhoenixCrystal, BeatnikFreak, Amalia Kensington, Aelan Greenleaf, ToMyDearestForsaken, Jazroxu, Francesca Wayland, ThisLooksLikeAJobForMe, Nocturnias, Windowbird, Elliesmeow and PurpleYin for reviewing Chapter 11! The feedback is great. :)
This chapter gets a little dark with discussion of murder. I try not to get too specific, but consider this a general Rated M for violence/death warning for the chapter.
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Molly carefully made her way up the worn path from the rocky shore, trailing behind Sherlock's long strides. Donovan and two sailors whose names she did not know followed, hauling a good-sized box of items for trade.
Pistols for herbs, ferns and beetles, Molly thought with a near-giggle. I have fallen in with the oddest pirates perhaps ever.
The tiny island, formed from the remnants of an ancient volcano, rose from the sea. As they'd landed, the village was still mostly invisible, only the tops of a few small homes peeking over the landscape. Fields stretched lushly green around the path, with very few tall growths. Molly inhaled deeply, smiling. The air was warm and sweet, with traces of smoke. The only sounds were those of birds she could not name, their cries alien and exotic to her.
Molly was lost in appreciating the natural beauty of the island and did not realize Sherlock had come to a dead stop in front of her. Her face planted against his back, and they both stumbled.
He swiveled around, his lips pinched in irritation. His frown did not appear to be directed at her, however, as his eyes dismissed her and scanned the horizons. Molly watched in fascination as his face shifted, his bright eyes flashed, and she could actually see the great wheels of his mind turning.
"What? What is it now? We going to stop and lose time for a bloody tick or something?" Donovan crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.
"Weapons out," Sherlock responded, ignoring her insolence. He rotated, taking in the territory around them, his whole body tensed.
Donovan drew the guns from her belt and readied them. The two nameless sailors set down the heavy box, one drawing a crude sword, the other a battered pistol.
Molly's stomach dropped, and she looked around for any sign of an intruder, or angry locals. She saw nothing.
"Sherlock, what is it? Where – or what?"
He held up his hand for silence, and she obeyed, the anxiety churning her belly.
He breathed, sniffed the air, and cocked his head to the side, listening.
"Wait here." He set his apothecary case for samples down on the ground and took off at a run toward the village.
"Is this how it usually goes?" Molly asked the master gunner.
"Yes. No. He's always running off, leaving people behind. Even you, it seems. Don't suppose he's that worried about us." Donovan looked across the fields and up the path as she spoke, searching for the threat the captain seemed to have sensed. Her pistols remained in the air, ready to fire if anyone attacked.
After a few minutes, Sherlock came jogging back down the path. His eyes were lit up with the fire of discovery, but he didn't appear to be pursued.
Donovan lowered her weapons, and the sailors followed suit.
"Good news! No navy here, or law. The smoke was lingering from a hut burning down and there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for the suspicious quiet."
Molly released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Oh that's wonderful, thank you. I was a bit worried there for a minute!"
"There is a bit of bad news, you see," Sherlock continued.
Donovan's eyes narrowed. "What's that then?"
"It appears that everyone in the village has been murdered. Butchered, some would say. Let's go have a look, shall we?"
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"Why the 'ell are we still here?" One sailor whispered the other.
"There's no danger. Whoever has done this has obviously gone." Sherlock strode into the village and pointed to the remains of a small building on the outer edge of the row of rough houses.
"Probably just a storage area for grain. It didn't smell like a normal hearth fire, though it took me a minute to recognize it." He bent down and touched a piece of blackened wood. "The fire began last night, was put out by a brief rain a few hours ago." He poked a damp splinter. "Only a few wisps of smoke left."
"Are you sure? Did you…look?" Molly swallowed and looked around. She saw no bodies on the ground. The village was eerily silent, but for the sounds their small group made as they shifted nervously. The two common sailors appeared ready to bolt back to the shore any moment.
Without speaking, Sherlock opened the door to the nearest home. He nodded his head toward the inside, and Molly approached warily. As she neared the door, the overwhelming stench of death hit her nostrils.
Peering into the small house, her brain couldn't make the pile inside the room make sense. She saw limbs, and blood, and faces, but it didn't add up right. They weren't people anymore; they were parts.
Molly backed out quickly and knelt on the ground, burying her face into her hands. She focused on a pebble on the ground, afraid to look up, afraid to see anymore.
"Bit of a mess. Problem, Doctor Hooper?" Sherlock's voice sounded puzzled. "Given your experience with the dead, I must say I'm a bit surprised by your reaction. Have you yourself not removed parts of the human body in your autopsies?"
"Yes, but it's not the same as…as that." Nausea rolled through her. She tried very hard to not think about how small some of the body parts were.
"Not all the bodies resemble those." Sherlock closed the door and headed for the next nearest home.
"We need to leave, captain," Donovan yelled. The gunner had planted her feet near the edge of the village and refused to budge. "Sick bastard," she grumbled under her breath.
The braver of the two sailors opened the door to the first home, peeked inside, and then ran to vomit in the nearest bushes.
Sherlock opened several doors, jogging from home to home, scanning the contents before moving on.
"At least forty men came through, I'd say, judging by the vast amount of footprints trampling through here. Boots of British, Spanish, French, American, Turkish and Mexican origin. Quite the variety of pirates. Oh yes, they were pirates for sure. Who else would have such a varied crew- and clearly they had a large ship at their disposal. Not afraid of running into the Portuguese, but they did choose the smaller island. Predators. And they came up and left via the other path, ah yes of course. Obvious now." The captain spoke as he wandered, and it wasn't until he returned to stand by Molly's bent head that she realized he was speaking to her.
"Can we leave? Please?" Molly's voice was barely more than a whisper.
"I think that would be best. Woudn't like to chance the arrival of someone from Flores or elsewhere, finding us here. Take a look at this one before we go, though. It's interesting." Sherlock pointed toward a neat cottage a few dozen paces from where they stood. Realizing Molly was shaking, he knelt and lifted her up gently. "I need you to take a look, doctor."
Molly nodded. She brushed the hair off her face, and her lips tightened with resolve.
He opened the door to the home, which appeared to be two small rooms, a common living area with a stove and a table, and a bedroom at the back. A dead man in his forties was slumped on the floor.
On the bed, a woman's body was laid out. She hadn't been carelessly slashed apart and executed in the manner of the other villagers.
No, Molly thought. Someone took their time with her.
The cuts disturbed her with their precision; it was as though a surgeon had begun an operation and then abandoned it in favor of simply rummaging through the poor woman's organs. What horrified Molly was the bleeding around the initial wounds, indicating she'd been alive when the 'surgery' was begun.
The final terrifying aspect of the sight was how familiar it all was.
"The fiend of Spitalfields."
Sherlock's voice startled her out of her sickened shock.
"What- yes, that's what I was thinking," Molly replied, her own voice distant to herself. "What did you know of him? Most of the details were kept out of the scandal sheets."
"I was a detective before I- well, before. They wouldn't let me assist with the Spitalfields murders; they didn't know me then, what I could do for them. Said they had their best men on the case; I presume you were their best man, though they didn't realize it. My brother Mycroft located information about the bodies, but the murders stopped and I never made any progress."
"What's a detective?" Molly frowned, and turned to Sherlock.
"I'll explain when we're back on the ship. Take in every detail you can, right now with your eyes. We can analyze the data back on the ship. There's no time for an autopsy, I'm afraid. Now, doctor."
Crackling energy emanated from the captain. His eyes moved over the woman's body, and Molly did the same, automatically.
After a moment's staring, Molly turned away again. "I think I've seen everything I can without- without cutting."
"Excellent." Sherlock took her hand, and led Molly out of the home, which had become stifling hot and unpleasant smelling in the summer humidity.
The two brawny men paced anxiously on the path, one of them still spitting out the sour taste of vomit.
"Oi! Captain!" Donovan's voice called. "Come 'ere! You need to see this."
Sherlock followed the sound of his master gunner's shout. He found her standing behind a row of houses, on the edge of a ravine that led down to the ocean. The houses faced outward toward the water.
Molly walked after the captain quickly, hands still shaking and head swimming with the details she'd memorized hastily.
Sherlock stood staring at the back side of the house, surprised into silence for once.
His blue eyes widened and Molly noticed his throat swallowing several times.
Across the half-dozen clustered houses facing the sea, written in dark brown "paint" that could only be blood, were the huge words:
TELL THEM SHERLOCK HOLMES WAS HERE.
The pleasant whitewashed walls of the warm family homes had been turned into a message that could be seen for miles.
"Don't suppose anyone's got some flint for starting a fire?" the captain asked mildly.
"No. And there's no spark left in the hut fire. It's dead." Donovan shrugged. "Maybe we could shoot it until the buildings catch fire?"
"A stupid idea even for you, Donovan," Sherlock responded.
"Do people from the other islands come here often?" Molly asked, hoping the isolation of the area would buy them time.
"Every day," he said.
Donovan glared at him and stormed back to the path. "We're getting' the fuck out of here. I'll not stay and wait to get nabbed for no one, not even the captain."
Molly slipped her hand back into Sherlock's. "We need to leave here," she said softly. "We can't help anyone and there's no way to paint over it or destroy this many buildings quickly. I don't know what's going on. But please. This is a bad place now. We need to go."
He nodded briskly, and clasped Molly's hand tighter. They joined the three on the path, grabbing Sherlock's sample case on their way back to the shore.
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Sherlock ordered Donovan and the two nameless sailors to say nothing of what occurred on the island, but he had little faith in their ability to keep a secret for long.
As they entered his quarters in grim silence, Sherlock handed Molly a sheet of coarse paper from his desk. Even as the Hudson had moved away from the waters around Corvo, they had observed two small fishing vessels in the distance. It was only a matter of time before someone saw the message. They had left in the nick of time.
"Write down everything you can remember right now before you forget. The average human memory on visual matters is only 62% accurate. You must maximize our data." Sherlock sat down on the bunk heavily, his hands steepled in thought.
Molly scribbled down every detail she had noted on the woman's corpse. She began with the woman's face and worked her way down to the feet, the least damaged part of the victim. Feeling utterly drained, she threw down the pencil after a half hour.
"That's it, that's everything." She rubbed her eyes and stood.
"I'll add my memories as well and we'll analyze it after we eat."
"Eat?" Her stomach revolted at the thought.
"I'm hungry."
She looked at Sherlock with incredulity. "Now you're hungry?"
He shrugged and smiled slightly. "I don't eat much when I work, it slows me down, but I'm forced to admit, since you and I have…well, my need for substantial meals has increased."
"Sherlock, why would it say that on the houses? That message?"
He stood and laid his hands on her shoulders. "I don't know. Yet. I think it's safe to say, someone wanted to get my attention. And they have succeeded."
"But who? Another pirate, you said? Do they normally do this sort of thing?" Molly's nose wrinkled. The defenses she'd developed over the years in morgues were finally functioning, now that she was away from the terribly mutilated forms in the village. She could breathe, at least, and she started to think. "And can there be another person out there who kills like the Spitalfields butcher?"
"Statistically, yes, I suspect that sort of murderer is more common than we realize. But we can't ignore the similarity either. The killer was never caught. They stopped, so I believed they were either imprisoned for a different crime, or killed. But if they simply sailed away and found new hunting grounds… That is an intriguing possibility. I have not endeared myself to the pirate brotherhood," Sherlock said with an eyeroll, "I would be more surprised to find a single friend in their numbers than to find a dozen enemies."
He drummed his fingers in agitation, and his eyes were steely even as he was deep in thought.
Basil knocked the cabin door. "Sir?"
"Ah! Bring it in."
The cabin boy kicked the door open lightly and carried in a tray of food that he dropped unceremoniously on the table. He grinned at Molly, and darted out.
"Now sit down and eat," Sherlock ordered. He held a chair out, and she obeyed, smoothing the dress out as she sat. It was a miracle she'd kept it from getting dirty on their trip ashore.
"There has to be something that will help me deduce the source of the message. Even the message itself was painted by several different hands, so the writing style is no help," Sherlock said before biting into a chunk of bread.
Molly played with her fork and felt more calmness return with the normalcy of a meal. As normal as could be found on the Hudson, anyway. Sitting down to dine on dried out beef with lumpy gravy while discussing a massacre didn't feel nearly as strange as it should. She was relieved to see Sherlock eating without nagging from John on the matter.
She forced herself to eat, understanding now why Sherlock found eating so distracting and annoying to deal with, when presented with a case.
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After poring over their collaborative efforts on the bodies information for hours, Molly gave up. The candles burned low and she hadn't made any progress on the analysis.
"Sherlock, my eyes are too tired. You need to rest, too," she said firmly, squeezing his shoulder. He lifted his head to snap at her, she saw, but he clamped his mouth shut.
He paused and tilted his face away from her.
"I can't. There has to be something. I'm missing something."
"There may be, but it's dark and you'll do better with sleep." Molly placed her hands on her hips and tried to look taller. "It's science and you know it. You need to sleep. At least lay down with me and keep me warm."
She smiled hopefully. She really could use the feel of him around her. The bodies in the village would join the haunting images she'd been unable to shake off over the years of the savaged dead who'd found their way beneath her own knives.
Sherlock looked down into Molly's warm brown eyes, and felt the pull of her.
It's weak, he thought. To give in. You need to fix the problem. Solve it. If you sleep, you'll lose visual accuracy.
But everything was written down. He would lose nothing, and therefore his logic was flawed.
Sherlock realized he didn't care if it was weak. At the moment, he just wanted to feel her, even though he wasn't particularly aroused.
Molly slipped off her dress, hung it up on the hook, and crawled into their bed. He watched her hips move gently as she climbed onto the bunk and snuggled under the blankets.
Sherlock stripped off his clothing and shoes, and laid beside her, wrapping one arm around her back as she faced him. His hand moved over her skin without purpose, tracing vague shapes over the soft flesh as she sighed and snuggled against his chest. He held her until she fell asleep, her mouth parted and her face relaxed into innocence.
He gazed down at her, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He extricated himself carefully from the covers, and tucked the blanket tightly over her body.
Sherlock dressed quietly, and picked up his violin case and the sheath of papers they had written on. He slipped out the door, lit a lamp outside, and found his way up to the forecastle in the dim light.
He couldn't sleep. He just couldn't. He had tried, for a minute or two. He'd held Molly tight and made her happy and safe, and she fell asleep. And that was something.
There was a case to solve, an unknown enemy waiting for him. As long as the invisible threat was out there, committing atrocities under his name, everyone on the Hudson wasn't safe and that included Molly Hooper.
Sherlock stroked the neck of his violin and positioned the bow. The crewmen trying to rest down below would complain about the wailing of his instrument in the morning, but he had a lot of thinking to do this night.
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Sort of a grim chapter, I know. Anyway, next chapter, Sherlock explains to Molly exactly what a "detective" is, and how he came to be a pirate. :)