Laurie King: Pirate King: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes

Being a tall woman leaves one ill prepared for the sensation of smallness. I felt myself shrinking with this cruel figure towering over me, growing small, and weak.

And he knew it. I saw in his eyes the dawning of cruel delight. His lips parted, but-

“Edith, no !”

Samuel whirled away – God, he was fast for a big man! – before my arm could move. Edith, sprinting across the tiles, skidded to a halt not because of her mother’s command, but because of the blade in Samuel’s hand.

Seeing the threat was nothing more than a little girl in a boy’s caftan, Samuel straightened, and said something to the guards. They laughed; Edith flushed; Mrs Nunnally gathered her child in. The pirate’s lieutenant turned back to me – and the sky fell in.

That was what it felt like. Impossible motion from the upper reaches of my vision, a sound like a roomful of teeth crackling down on a million tiny bones, and then a huge hand smashed out of the heavens. All the musical notes in the world shouted at once; as I cowered down, my hunched back was pummelled by a rain of sharp, dry objects.

Things stopped falling. My head beneath my arms seemed to be in one piece. I tentatively raised one arm – then remembered Edith, and staggered upright.

The child stood, her mother at her back, both of them untouched but gape-jawed with shock. I, too, was aware of that familiar swaddled sensation that accompanies a severe blow. I bent to pick up a length of silver-dry timber that my foot had kicked. There seemed to be quite a bit of the stuff scattered around. Numbly curious, I looked upward, past first one, then another blonde girl, both wearing the same flabbergasted expression as Edith. Beyond them a third face looked down, from the rooftop. Yet I could see her clearly. For some reason, the wooden grating seemed to have a hole in it. A large hole. Through which I could see Annie. Her big blue eyes were wide, too – but not with shock, or horror.

With triumph.

Unwillingly, I made my gaze descend, to see what caused that expression.

And saw an overturned piano.

From under its edges protruded a pair of shiny black boots.

* * *

Isabel’s mother broke first, with the sort of dangerous giggle that pleads for a slap. Fannie and June followed, their laughter freer, as if this might be one of Mr Fflytte’s clever tricks.

The guards put an end to it. No one but me understood their urgent command for silence, but all grasped the intent of those weapons.

The house shuddered into silence, broken only by the whimper of Isabel’s mother.

The larger of the two men walked over to his engulfed boss. Samuel’s disbelief had frozen him to the spot for one crucial second; now the instrument neatly covered all but a few inches of his footwear. A glance under the other edge convinced the man that he did not want to see further. He told his partner, “He’s dead.”

The man gave forth a rich curse, and followed it with, “What do we do now?”

“We hold them until someone comes.”

“No one will come.” I spoke in Arabic; the guards goggled as if the fountain had made a pronouncement. I went on, my voice inexorable, speaking a language designed for pure rhetoric. “No one will come but the British and the French armies. They will find you here and they will kill you. They will fall on you and they will arrest you and they will arrest your families, then they will stand you before a line of men with rifles and they will shoot you dead, your sons and your brothers and your mothers, if you do not leave us this instant, if you-”

I’ll never know if my words alone would have broken their will and sent them bolting for the door, because instead of the Army falling on them, an afrit came down, a ghost or perhaps the spirit of their dead leader: A great billowing white cloud filled the air over their heads, giving out a ghostly moan. Both men snapped up their shotguns and fired, both bores. The next moment, as one panicked guard was beating away the shredded bed-sheet, a regiment of harpies fell upon him, pounding at him with flower pots and broomsticks and the upper half of the tagine crock, descending on him like the Red Queen’s deck of cards, screaming and pummelling him to the ground. The other guard dropped his empty shotgun to rip at the revolver in his sash, and my hand threw the weapon it held – except as it left my grip I realised it was not my knife but the scrap of wood. I scrabbled for my blade. His gun went wildly off, once, before the blade reached him and he grabbed his shoulder and went down, the revolver skittering across the tiles to Edith’s feet. She picked up the heavy weapon and pointed it at him, her hands wavering but determined.

Panting and wild-eyed, twenty-one English women in dressing gowns and galabiyyas surveyed a tableau of ruination. The lovely tiles were buried under blood, death, dirt, and débris.

I thought my heart would burst with pride.

The man with my knife in him groaned – reminder that the battle was by no means over. I flew to the kitchen, where the house-keeper and her girls cowered in one corner. The younger one cried out when I appeared but I ignored them, upending drawers and overturning jugs to gather all the knives I could find. Back in the courtyard, I distributed the blades along with a couple of sturdy pestles, and we waited for the next phalanx of guards to pour in. We waited, as the pounding of our hearts gradually slowed. We waited, until we could hear over the heart-beats. Hear the boom of the surf, the nervous cheep of a bird, and some peculiar noises, coming from above.

Annie’s head vanished from the ruins of the sky-light; I stepped forward to relieve Edith of the guard’s revolver. In three minutes, Annie burst from the stairway. “I don’t think they heard! The men are doing some kind of bashing about – they had just come out onto their rooftop when I … did that. ” She gestured at the entombing piano.

We waited, collective breath held. Incredibly, the violin started up, and with it, our hopes.

“Tie them and gag them,” I said. “Use bed-sheets. And the cook and her girls, we’ll have to tie them as well.” I roughly bound the knife wound on the one guard, more to save the tiles than him, and ordered my fellow Amazons to get their shoes and to bring all the clothes from the dressing-up box to the roof.

“Don’t stop to fuss with your hair,” I called after them.

“What shall I do?” asked Annie at my elbow.

“Get the girls singing, and have Maude put brown make-up on everyone’s faces and hands. And see if you can think of a distraction. Holmes heard the gunshots – that’s him covering up our noise – but if we can divert their guards’ attention for a moment, it’ll give the men a chance.”

“I may be able to think of something,” she said.

I returned to the kitchen, dropping to my heels in front of the bound cook. “I am sorry we had to tie you up,” I told her in Arabic. “Once we are out of the city I will have someone come back to set you free. And I will leave a knife in the courtyard, for you to cut your bonds. Thank you for all your service, these past days.”

The Arabic startled them into stillness, the coins I placed on the table widened their eyes. I laid a small knife on the ground near the fountain: It would take a while for one of them to reach it, but I would not wish them helpless forever.

I snatched up various table-cloths and towels on my way to the roof, where I found the girls valiantly singing along to Holmes’ tunes, mixing up the words but belting out the music unabated. Maude had her lips pursed as she smeared brown paint onto pink faces, assisted by Mrs Hatley and Bonnie, both of them old hands at the make-up box. I turned to Annie, who was waving the girls into greater enthusiasm. She was wearing a tan galabiyya , the hood thrown back so that her pale hair and English skin shone out.