The Dark Lady Read online

  “You should be more careful,” said the ringleader. “Stick to playing with dolls. Go and play in the garden. Just stop going around asking questions!”

  “Did you hear that, Sherlock?” Lupin said sarcastically. “No more questions.”

  “It’s a terrible pity,” said Sherlock, feigning disappointment. “So what should we do now?”

  “Just get out of here!” cried the bully.

  “But which do you recommend? Dolls or play in the garden?” Lupin said, then he burst into laughter.

  “Maybe you don’t understand me, but this is no joke!” growled the boy.

  “But you look like one!” Sherlock said.

  “He does, doesn’t he!” Lupin nodded. “A joke that isn’t even funny.”

  I turned to look at him in astonishment. And so did the bully. “What did you say?” the bully said. “You’re calling me a joke?!”

  “Well, you obviously are,” Lupin said calmly. “You and all your friends,”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, but I do have to agree. You’re not even particularly good at being bullies,” said Sherlock.

  There was a metallic click. Something flashed in the shadows. The bully had pulled a shiny knife out. “You don’t seem to understand who you’re dealing with,” he said, lifting the blade up to Sherlock’s face.

  “On the contrary,” Sherlock answered, as calm as ever. “You don’t seem to understand who you’re dealing with.”

  Out of nowhere, Sherlock threw an overhand punch to the thug’s face. The blow was so powerful that it knocked the boy to the ground almost instantly.

  The seconds that followed seemed to last an eternity. Little Spirou and another thug hurled themselves at Lupin and knocked him to the ground with a fast punch and a kick. Sherlock instantly kicked the knife out of the lead bully’s hand and then charged the two remaining bullies, his fists flying.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the leader struggling back to his feet. “You stay where you are!” I cried, delivering a well-aimed kick. He collapsed back onto the ground without a sound.

  “Let’s get out of here!” cried Lupin. By this stage, the kitchen boy, Spirou, had run off and Lupin was left with only one opponent. I watched Sherlock. He stood up to the two thugs like a professional boxer. He held his fists up in both attack and defense, had his legs slightly apart, and was shifting his weight from one foot to another while dodging every punch they threw at him. Or at least most of them. But when one of them delivered a hard punch to Sherlock’s chin, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  “Irene!” Lupin cried. My eyes opened to see him dispatch his remaining opponent with a quick one-two punch combination. He then grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the top of an alley.

  “But Sherlock!” I cried, turning to our friend, who was still fighting.

  “He’ll look after those two all by himself, don’t you worry!” Lupin laughed, pulling me along. But I wriggled away. For a moment, it looked like the two thugs were getting the upper hand.

  “Sherlock!” I cried and instinctively ran to him. I didn’t see the carriage coming. The coachman pulled hard on the reins. The horses’ hooves missed me by just a few inches. The driver was now standing and waving his fist at me. Behind the glass in the carriage I saw a woman’s face. She was all dressed in black, and looked both sad and elegant.

  All this lasted only an instant. When I turned back to look at Sherlock, I realized how wrong I’d been about him needing my help. One of the thugs was running away while Sherlock punched the other one repeatedly.

  Lupin grabbed my arm. “What did I tell you, Irene?” he said. “He’s fine! Come on, let’s go!”

  This time I let him lead me away, and we started running at breakneck speed through the streets of Saint-Malo. Lupin held my hand tightly and led me through dozens of twisting, turning alleys without ever slowing down.

  After we finally slowed down, my heart felt like it was about to burst and there was a dull pain in my chest. Lupin, however, was laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked between breaths.

  “Well,” he said, with hardly even a hint of breathlessness, “that was fun!”

  “Fun?! Being threatened at knifepoint by a gang of criminals is fun!?” I cried.

  “Criminals? Them? They wish!” Lupin boasted. “Did you see how easily we took care of them?”

  “Yes, but, Sherlock — we left him alone!”

  Lupin nodded. “But it was more important to get you out of there.”

  “I know how to take care of myself, thank you!”

  Lupin laughed. “I think the one you kicked would agree with you there! He’ll have your boot mark on his cheek for quite some time!”

  Lupin looked at me with those deep, sparkling eyes. He said nothing for a moment. Then he pulled me close to him.

  “Lupin?” I said.

  “Yes?” he said.

  I grabbed his chin and turned his head until he finally noticed that three more thugs were sprinting toward us.

  Lupin sighed. “And where did they come from?”

  “I don’t know, but what do we do now?” I asked.

  “We put our backs against the wall,” he said.

  The three came boldly toward us, taking up the whole width of the narrow, sun-flooded alley.

  I don’t know why, but until then I’d always imagined that things like this only ever happened at night. Or in novels, like Robert Louis Stevenson’s books.

  Lupin let go of my hand. “Don’t worry,” he said, standing between me and the thugs. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Lupin threw back his shoulders, lifted his fists, and ran at the thugs screaming like a madman. I suppose he was trying to scare them. And for a second, it seemed to work. The three stopped and exchanged a puzzled looked. But they were soon over their surprise and came at him more aggressively than ever. Lupin stopped in his tracks and took a half step back uncertainly.

  Three against one . . . he’s doomed! I thought.

  But I was wrong. A dark figure suddenly appeared behind the thugs. He grabbed two of them and effortlessly threw them up against the alley wall. The third thug was so surprised by the attack that he froze, unsure of whether to attack Lupin or run from the newcomer.

  “Mr. Nelson!” I cried. I ran toward him. By this point, Lupin was fighting with the last thug — a muscular boy who obviously knew how to fight. He and Lupin traded a few hard punches, then Lupin jumped back to dodge a punch and ended up right beside me. He shot a glance in my direction. The intense expression on his face vanished for an instant, and he smiled. “Get out of here! Go on!” Then he threw himself back into the fight.

  Mr. Nelson kneeled down in front of me like I was still a child. He looked straight into my eyes. “Are you all right, Miss Irene?” he said quietly.

  I nodded, staring back. Where had he come from? How had he done it? He took my hand and walked me past the two thugs he’d knocked down and took me away from the alley. “Mr. Nelson, Mr. Nelson,” I said in a panic. “What about my friends?!”

  I saw his huge shoulders lurching in front of me as he led me away. “Oh, don’t worry about them, Miss Irene. From what I saw, I believe they can handle themselves.”

  Chapter 15

  A MESSAGE

  The church bells were ringing. It felt as though they’d always been ringing. I rolled over in bed, listening to the beat of my heart as it echoed in my ears along with the bell.

  Without moving, I counted ten low tolls followed by two higher ones. That meant it was ten-thirty this Sunday morning.

  “Lupin,” I said. And then, “Sherlock!”

  I slid out from between the sheets and looked out the window. Huge, slow, gray clouds were covering the sun. I could hear my parents chatting happily about something downstairs. My mother laughed, and it calmed me a little.

&
nbsp; I just hoped that Mr. Nelson hadn’t told them anything about what had happened the day before. I quickly washed, put on a light dress, and tiptoed down to breakfast.

  “What a beautiful smell!” I said with a smile. “I couldn’t resist coming down any longer!”

  “Irene!” Mother cried. “What’s wrong with your hair?”

  I ran a hand through my hair and I realized I’d completely forgotten to comb it. It must have been standing up all over the place.

  With a laugh, Father ruffled it up even more. “Your mother and I couldn’t decide whether to come and wake you up or not.”

  I bit into a still-warm bread roll. It was like a door to my stomach suddenly swung open. After a long, tense night, I was famished.

  “It is not proper for a young lady of your age to spend so much time in bed,” said Mother, as prim and uptight as ever. If only she’d known what this young lady had been doing the day before. How I’d helped fight off a gang of thugs. How my two friends had battled them hand to hand. And how we’d been rescued by Mr. Nelson!

  As if he could sense my thoughts, Mr. Nelson came into the room. The giant butler carefully avoided exchanging even the slightest glance with me. He poured me a cup of tea and exchanged a few words with Father. “Today I suggest you don’t go boating, sir,” Mr. Nelson said. “The sky is dark and the seagulls are flying low.”

  Father sighed. The bad weather had arrived with diabolical precision, making it all the more likely that instead of going out in a boat, we’d end up taking tea somewhere in town that Mama considered to be, as she put it, “suitable for our family.”

  “Do I have to come, too?” Father asked Mama, both confirming my suspicions and proving that they’d already discussed it.

  I took a long, slow sip of tea, enjoying the warmth and sweetness as it cascaded around my mouth and then down my throat. “Will Lady Martigny be there?” I asked.

  “Pardon?” asked my mother.

  “At tea today,” I said, taking another sip.

  “The lady who suffered the theft,” Father reminded her.

  “I know who Lady Martigny is,” she replied. “But I wasn’t in charge of the invitations for the tea this afternoon.”

  “Such a pity,” my father said to me. Then he made a funny face that almost made me spit my tea out all over the table.

  “Irene!” said Mother, jumping to her feet.

  “I beg your pardon! I beg your pardon!” I quickly said, then gulped down the last of my tea, excused myself, got up from the table, and ran out of the room. “I’ll see you later!”

  As I left, I heard my mother say, “Leopold, did you see that? I really think that we should . . .”

  My father must have shushed her because I heard him say, “You’re mistaken. We don’t need to do anything at all.” I was so lucky to have a father like him.

  “Miss Irene!” Mr. Nelson called after me from the garden door as I was about to open the gate out into the street. Dressed in his elegant butler clothes with his starched cuffs, it seemed impossible that he was the same person who, just the day before, had saved me from a group of thugs.

  “What’s wrong, Horatio?” I asked.

  I saw him hesitate. It was the first time I’d ever called him by his first name. I’d hardly noticed myself doing it. It had come so naturally. I was wondering whether I should apologize or say nothing, but finally decided to retrace my steps back to where he was standing. I spoke again before he could respond. “I want to thank you for yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh,” he said. “There’s no need, Miss Irene.”

  The bells began to strike eleven o’clock, and Mr. Nelson and I waited patiently for them to finish.

  “I wanted to say to you, Miss Irene,” he said, “that if today you intend to go looking for your friends . . .”I nodded. That was precisely where I was going. “Then I think you will find them just outside the town, at the old barracks.”

  The news surprised me. That was where Lupin and his father lived, but I’d never been there. Like Sherlock, Lupin seemed to spend as much time as possible away from his home.

  “Thank you, Horatio,” I answered. “But how did you know?”

  “This morning when I went into town for the shopping,” Horatio said, “I met Master Lupin at the bakery, Miss.”

  “And how was he?” I asked.

  “He seemed well. He told me to give you the message that today he and Sherlock will be at the old barracks.”

  “He really told you that?”

  “Yes, Miss Irene. And then he added ‘for training.’”

  “Training? For what?”

  “This he did not tell me, Miss Irene.”

  I nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Nelson,”

  “Or Horatio?” he said, with a barely perceptible smile. “I have no objection to you calling me Horatio, if you wish.”

  “How about Horry?” I said with a smile.

  He immediately raised a hand. “No, Miss Irene. I do not think it is appropriate to overdo these things.” Our smiles grew into shared laughter.

  I walked back to the gate. As I opened it, I looked back one last time. I wanted to know how Mr. Nelson had managed to show up at just the right moment the day before in the alley. I wanted to ask if it was just good luck.

  But when I looked back toward the house, Mr. Nelson had already gone back inside.

  Chapter 16

  THÉOPHRASTE

  I soon arrived at the barracks. The townsfolk of Saint-Malo continued to call it the “old barracks” since no soldiers had set foot in the place for many years. Judging by the condition of the walls and an old tower nearby, it probably hadn’t been used since the battles between Napoleon and Lord Wellington. It was just outside Saint-Malo, but still so close to the wall that it really was still a part of the town. It overlooked the sea where Ashcroft Manor stood, near where we’d found the body of the dead man. A narrow lane led from the main road to a large, sunny courtyard, where a few chickens were scratching the dirt.

  “Is anyone here?” I asked, looking toward the windows that were overgrown with ivy. “Lupin? Sherlock?” The only response I heard was clucking. When I moved closer to the house and crossed the area where the chickens were, they squawked and ran off.

  “Anyone home?” I called again.

  I saw an enormous, wild tree beside the road. It spread out over the courtyard and pushed up against the wall of the building with its long, gray and white branches. Its leaves created a flickering mesh of shadows on the gravel.

  “You must be Irene,” the tree seemed to say as I walked by.

  Then I noticed that there was a man high up among the branches. He was crouching like a cat with his hands resting on his knees. His feet were bare. He had a wiry, slender body and a ponytail of black hair tied back with a black kerchief.

  I shaded my eyes with my hand to see him better. “Good morning,” I said after a moment.

  “Good morning to you,” said the man, with a smile that I recognized instantly. He had the same open and warm smile as Lupin.

  “You must be Théophraste!” I exclaimed, immediately putting one hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry. I meant to say Mr. Lupin. I beg your pardon!”

  The man in the tree laughed loudly and then climbed down the tree quicker than I thought possible. In no time at all, he was standing on the ground next to me.

  “You can call me Théo, if you like, young lady,” he said. “So . . . are you the Irene that my son keeps talking about?”

  My cheeks instantly turned the color of a tomato. “Well, um, yes,” I muttered. “I suppose I am.”

  “I thought so! Come on, then,” he said. “The boys are out back.” I followed him without hesitation, watching his bare feet tread lightly upon the gravel. I followed him inside. We went through a curtain over the doorway and into a huge sitting room piled h
igh with books and exotic-looking objects.

  Soon we found ourselves on a veranda that overlooked the sea. I glanced around and saw a big jade lion and a Tibetan gong. Two elephant tusks were on the wall, crossed like swords.

  “Arsène told me about what happened yesterday,” said Mr. Lupin.

  “Really?” was all I managed to say.

  “He said that the three of you had a lucky escape from those thugs.”

  I nodded, not knowing exactly what to say.

  “And do you know why it was lucky?” continued Théophraste Lupin. I shook my head. “Because you haven’t had the proper training.”

  We stepped off the veranda and the man led me to where my friends were. Sherlock was wearing white bandages on his fists and was punching a large bag hanging from a length of rope.

  Lupin also had gauze on his hands, but he was pushing up against the bag, making it continuously spin around. After a few more punches, they swapped places.

  “Fighting, Miss Irene,” said Lupin’s father, “is an art. Just like music or dance. You need to study hard and apply yourself. Nothing can be left to chance.”

  I laughed awkwardly, wondering what would happen if my mother ever heard any of this.

  Lupin’s father spotted my embarrassment immediately. He visibly stiffened. “Do you find it embarrassing to be here, Miss?” he asked. “Or perhaps you felt it was rude that I greeted you from the top of my meditation tree?”

  “Oh, no! Not at all!” I said quickly. And I meant it. “It’s just that it never occurred to me that punching people could be an art!”

  Théophraste crouched down so that I was a little taller than he was. Neither Lupin nor Sherlock had even noticed us and continued to punch the bag. “It’s because you only see the surface of the thing, Miss,” he said quietly in that tone of voice people only use for important things. “Every movement of the body can be an expression of grace, energy, or balance. It’s all about the harmonious use of the body.”