Boots clattered on the rocks, then disappeared.
‘What now?’ Sherlock asked after they had heard nothing for a few minutes.
‘I think we need to meet up with my father and Rufus and Matty. Somehow.’
Sherlock nodded. ‘All right.’
He turned his head. Her eyes were only an inch away from his.
He wanted to kiss her, but instead he just said, ‘Let’s go.’
The gorse and the heather were rough underfoot. The stems kept catching on Sherlock’s shoes as they trudged across the moorland. Virginia’s shoes were a lot more practical than his and he had to struggle to keep up.
They both looked around as they walked, checking the buildings behind them and the low wall they were slowly approaching in case anyone had seen them, but they were alone. The whole landscape seemed strangely deserted. Sherlock worried that a figure would spring up from somewhere, point at them and shout, but nothing happened.
The setting sun cast their shadows across the heather, purple on purple. The air was cold, and it smelled of flowers. Despite the lateness of the year a handful of bees buzzed slowly around, moving from bloom to bloom in search of pollen.
‘What are you thinking?’
He turned his head. Virginia was looking at him questioningly. She had noticed his preoccupation.
‘I was just thinking about bees,’ he explained.
‘Bees?’ She shook her head disbelievingly. ‘We’re separated from our friends, we’re on the run from a gang of murderers and you’re thinking about bees? I don’t get it.’
He shrugged, suddenly defensive. ‘I understand bees,’ he said. ‘They aren’t complicated. They do whatever they do for obvious reasons. They’re like little clockwork machines. They make sense.’
‘And you don’t understand people?’
He kept walking, not answering for a moment. ‘Why is any of this happening?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Because Bryce Scobell decided that he didn’t like the American Indians and decided to wipe them out instead of just moving somewhere there weren’t any Indians? Because your father was sent to catch him and became obsessed with finding him no matter how many people he lost along the way? Because Scobell became obsessed in turn with taking revenge on your father and followed him to England instead of hiding peacefully somewhere else in the world? I don’t understand any of it! If people just acted logically, then none of this would be happening now!’
‘Scobell is mad, according to my father,’ Virginia said quietly. ‘He doesn’t have any morals, any scruples. He does whatever he needs to in order to get what he wants.’
‘The madness aside,’ Sherlock said quietly, thinking about his own father, ‘that’s the only thing about this whole business I do understand. It’s a very logical attitude.’
‘It’s only logical if you’re the only person who acts that way,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘If everyone in the world acts that logically, then everyone fights everyone else, civilization falls apart, chaos ensues and only the strong survive.’
They walked on in silence for a while. Sherlock could feel Virginia staring at him, but he didn’t have anything to say.
A sudden movement and a burst of noise startled them both, but it was just a bird launching itself from cover and flying away.
By now they were nearly at the stone wall that they had seen earlier. Sherlock looked over his shoulder once more, expecting to see the same empty landscape he had seen every other time, but there were people moving down by the chapel. At that distance he couldn’t tell whether they were locals or Scobell’s men, but he wasn’t willing to take a chance. Before he could do anything, Virginia grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards the wall. It was only waist high, and she jumped over it lithely and vanished from sight. He vaulted the wall and dropped down beside her.
Sherlock got to his knees and peered over the top of the wall, looking down the slope. There were still people around the chapel.
‘Come on,’ Virginia urged. ‘We need to keep moving. We need to get to my pa.’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but carefully. Stay out of sight.’
Together they scurried along in the wall’s shadow, keeping low so that the stones shielded them from anyone looking in their direction.
Sherlock peered ahead. In the distance, across an undulating stretch of ground, was a wooded area.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to get to cover before nightfall.’
Despite being rife with tension the walk towards the trees was quiet and even boring. Sherlock was exhausted after all that he’d suffered that day, and he found that just putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again, was one of the most tedious things he’d ever had to do. Every now and then he would stumble over a stone, or put his foot in a pothole, and he would nearly fall over – much to Virginia’s amusement.
He kept alert for movement that might mean they had been spotted, but apart from the birds that circled in the sky and the occasional rabbit the only thing that Sherlock saw was a majestic stag standing on a rise in the ground. Its antlers spread like small trees stripped of their leaves. It stared impassively at them, head turned to one side. When it was certain they were not a threat it lowered its head to the ground and began to eat the heather.
The sky dimmed from blue to indigo and from indigo to black as they walked. Stars began to twinkle: first one or two, and then, within a few minutes, too many to count.
Remembering the stag, and how it had casually dismissed them from its mind to chomp at the vegetation, Sherlock realized that he was hungry. No, he was starving. Apart from the oatcakes at Amyus Crowe’s cottage, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
Virginia was biting her lip. She looked hungry too.
What were his options? Try to chase a rabbit down the next time one broke from cover? Unlikely that he would succeed. Throw Matty’s knife – which was still in his pocket – and hope to hit a rabbit? He didn’t know much about throwing knives, although he’d seen it done at fairgrounds, but he suspected that the knives had to be carefully balanced so that they spun smoothly, end over end. Matty’s knife had a handle that was much bulkier than the blade. He wouldn’t be able to aim it properly.
He remembered the first ever lesson that Amyus Crowe had given him, back in Hampshire in the woods that surrounded Holmes Manor. Crowe had taught Sherlock which fungi were safe to eat and which were poisonous. If he could find some mushrooms, then they could eat. He glanced around. There wasn’t much chance of finding them in open moorland, but perhaps when they got into the trees he could find some growing on rotten logs in piles of leaf mould.
He looked up to see how far they were from the wood. The treeline was probably half a mile away.
‘Look,’ Virginia said. ‘We can sleep there for the night.’
Sherlock followed the direction in which she was pointing. At first he saw nothing, but then he spotted a small stone building in the shadow of the trees. For a second he thought it was someone’s house, but after a moment he noticed how small it was, the absence of glass, and the door-less entrance. It was a hut, built to shelter shepherds from storms.
‘Well spotted,’ he said.
‘Any chance of some food?’ Virginia asked. ‘I’m starved after all that walking.’
Sherlock thought for a moment. He supposed he could safely leave Virginia for a bit while he scouted for mushrooms.
He told her so. She looked sceptically at him. ‘Mushrooms? You tryin’ to poison me?’
‘Trust me – your dad is a good teacher.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘He may be a good teacher, but are you sure he knows what he’s talkin’ about?’
‘Only one way to find out.’