Sherlock Holmes and the Dance of the Tiger (2 page)

“What is that?” Nicholas II asked.
 
Alexander III looked out the window in the direction of the boy’s eyes to see a man carrying a small white package wrapped in a handkerchief.
 
In an instant the man threw the package under the horses’ hooves.

BOOM!
 
There was an explosion so great that it knocked the thrower of the package into the fence.

“AEEEE!”
 
People were screaming and running—those that were not left on the ground in pools of their own blood.

“No!
 
Nicholas, do not look!” Alexander III commanded, taking his son under his arm as he shielded him with his own body.
 
While keeping his head back, the Czarevich could see through the window that there were bodies strewn everywhere.
 
The three of them were unharmed due to having been in the bulletproof carriage.

Police Chief Dvorzhitsky stepped over the bodies to arrive at the carriage, opening the door slightly at the Czar’s nod to report.
 
“One of the Cossacks has been killed.
 
Let us leave the area at once, your highness.”

“No,” the Czar replied, proceeding to get out of the carriage.

Alexander III bit his lip.
 
One was never to argue with the Czar’s authority, but inside he was screaming.
 
Alexander III touched the Czar’s arm, imploring his father with his eyes to stay in the carriage.
 
He had no doubt that his meaning was understood.
 
But the sovereign turned away, proceeding to get out of the carriage.

“Dlya matushki-Rossii!”
 
For the Mother Russia!
 
There was a scream.
 
And then Alexander III saw it.
 
A man standing by the canal fence raising both his arms.
 
In an instant there was something at the emperor’s feet.

KBOOM!
 
A second explosion.

“Help!”
 
The Czar was half-lying, half sitting on his right arm.
 
Both of his legs were shattered, and blood poured out from what was left of his limbs.
 
Twenty or more people lay scattered about on the sidewalk and the street, some crawling, some attempting to free themselves from bodies which had landed atop them.
 
Debris and body parts were everywhere, the red blood vivid against the white snow.

Police Chief Dvorzhitsky, also wounded, in a matter of minutes managed to orchestrate applying tourniquets to the Czar’s body in an attempt to stop the bleeding, followed by moving Alexander II to one of the open sleighs, as it wasn’t possible to navigate placing the wounded man in the more confined carriage.
 

Alexander III looked to his son Nicholas, tears streaming down the child’s face as both watched the patriarch of their family, his legs torn away, his stomach ripped open, and his face mutilated.
 

Czar Alexander II was returned to his study where, almost twenty years earlier to the day, he had signed the Emancipation Edict freeing the serfs.
 
Alexander the Liberator was given Communion and Last Rites while his family, the Romanovs, looked on.

“I will never forget,” Alexander III murmured as he held his father’s bloody hand, looking into a face he did not recognize except for the eyes.
 
Grief filled his being for the father he loved while hatred filled his heart for the men responsible.
 

“Proklyat'ye!”
 
He cursed the man who had murdered his father in his mind.
 
You have just killed the only person in the world who was on your side!
 
These vermin do not understand your liberal principles, Father.
 
They were not educated by a pacifist romantic poet as you were.
 
Clearly the idiocy of that education must now be clear to you as you lie dying, your life’s blood draining from your body.

Czar Alexander II squeezed his son’s hand, a smile of pride revealed somehow through his mutilated features.
 

And then Alexander II, King of Poland, Grand Prince of Finland, and Czar of Russia died.

Things will be very different now.
 
In his moment of grief, Alexander III, the new Czar of Russia, the largest country in the world covering more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, knew precisely what he would do.
 

I am now one of the most powerful sovereigns in the world
.
 
He was the ruler of over one hundred million people and the leader of both the Imperial Royal Army and a brutal police force.
 
Alexander III had never known a people to hate their own ruler more than the Russian people.
 
They did not deserve his father.
 
He might not agree with his father’s politics—or his personal morals—but no one could have worked harder.
 
Alexander II had instigated elected judges in the judicial system, abolished capital punishment, promoted local self-government, ended some of the privileges of the nobility, and promoted universities.

And the very people Alexander the Liberator had done this for had killed him.

All of which I will now reverse
, the new Czar promised himself.
 

Perhaps it is the greatest irony in the history of the world that the terrorist who threw the bomb wanted freedom for his people.
 
Energized with a savage anger, he felt the bomb gave him power.
 
And it did.
 
The future of Russia and her ninety-seven million inhabitants was determined in that moment when this violent act destroyed any hope of democracy for his people, sentencing tens of
millions
to death in the century to come.
 

In the process of eliminating any democratic structure, there was no system in place to fight tyranny when it arrived.

This member of the revolutionary “People's Will” thought he was killing his enemy, but, instead, he opened the door for the enemy to enter.

Czar Alexander III was a man of principles.
 
He counted himself a sensible man:
 
he knew what he was dealing with.
 
He had been taught his views by the blood of his father and those determined to bite the hand which fed them.

The new emperor of Russia now knew what his people needed:
 
a supreme ruler.
 
The only hope was no deviation:
 
one language, one ruler, one religion.
 
And anyone who deviated would be dealt with in the harshest manner—before they could plot and plan and hurt someone else.

Czar Alexander III vowed then to destroy the democratic systems.

Constitutional monarchy?
 
Alexander III felt a tear roll down his cheek as he released his father’s now cold hand.

I will rule with an iron hand.
 
I will cancel the policy my father signed only this morning
.

Autocracy will be unlimited.

March 1882

Crack!

“Aim with your thumb, girl,” Sherlock Holmes admonished.
 

Snap!
 
She popped the whip.
 
The jar shattered where it sat on the post behind Scotland Yard.
 
Mirabella Hudson, niece to the Great Detective’s landlady and chief bottle washer of his laboratory, glanced to the water’s edge to see a police rowboat in the distance patrolling the Thames.
 

The odor of hops and malt from the Lion Brewery filled her nostrils, still strange to her after a country upbringing in Dumfries in southern Scotland in the county of Dumfriesshire, the sounds and smells of her family farm unimaginably different from London life.

“I abhor repeating myself to the inattentive.”
 
Sherlock Holmes tapped his finger on his chin in obvious perplexity while studying her stance.
 
“I know there was nothing lacking in my precise and expert explanation so I must ask myself why you fail to perform, Miss Hudson.”

Mirabella breathed deeply:
 
even the scent of the coal and the Thames—an odor which could charitably be described as “muddy” on its best day—excited her.
 

Everything about this city of over four million people of every nationality thrilled her.
 
This city of universities, government, sinister underground crime, newspapers, silk-weaving, fashion (in equal parts elegant and disturbing), tanning, exotic foods, and manufacturing.

And what was manufactured that was not manufactured in London?
 
Soap, bricks, precision instruments, furniture and clothing, and even ships and railroads!
 
In seeing London she had been allowed to see the world.

I thank my lucky stars
.
 
Even on this cold day in early spring—or late winter, some might say, depending on one’s optimism.
 

“Miss Hudson!” Sherlock commanded.
 
“I am speaking to you!”

I could hardly call that volume speaking.
 
But I am not one to split hairs.
 
“Yes, Mr. Holmes?” she murmured.

“I said why do you fail to perform?”

“I am trying, Mr. Holmes.
 
This is only my third practice with the whip.
 
Please do allow me time to master the skill.”

“There is no time, Miss Hudson!
 
While you daydream and spin about in your game of play, criminals prey on the innocent.
 
For every moment you are idle, someone is being hurt.
 
Do not fail me, girl,” he admonished.
 
Her tormentor standing before her had the physique of a middle-weight boxer and was in the prime of his life, both physically and mentally.
 
He commanded, “Again!”

“Yes, sir.”
Whirrr!
 
Mirabella snapped the whip and missed the jar altogether, the sound of the popper slicing through the air, rising above the tugboat horns and the children shouting as they played ball.
 
The crisp air, longing for spring, made every sound and smell more vivid in her mind.

Mirabella knew that she was fortunate by anyone’s estimation.
 
Due to her independent streak and her difficulty in keeping her opinion to herself, she was wholly unsuited to domestic work and had been dismissed from her first London position.
 
She had been unemployed and unemployable when her Aunt Martha, with whom she lived, found her a position with one of her tenants:
 
Sherlock Holmes.
 
Mr. Holmes was a young detective, not even thirty years of age, but fast gaining a name for himself.

Thankfully no one wished to work for Mr. Sherlock Holmes or her present position might not have been available.
 
Sherlock had, one might say, difficulty in social situations.
 

“I directed you to wrap the popper around the jar, not to wave at it.
 
Are you deaf, girl?”
 

“I am not,” she murmured, her eyes now fixated on her target.
 
But there is every likelihood I will be soon
.
 

“In that case, if you could be so good as to strike the target,” he commanded.

Her arm was already sore as she lifted the bullwhip over her head, fully two thousand grams in weight!
 
Sherlock had insisted that, though the heavier bullwhips did not lend themselves to fast movement, they were more accurate.
 

And then the humor of her situation struck her involuntarily.
 
How have I arrived at this strange and unforeseeable place so quickly?
 
She smiled to herself as she estimated the speed of wind blowing eastward by the breeze hitting her cheek.

Initially, she had simply kept the laboratory clean and documented fingerprints—if anything involving Sherlock Holmes could be termed simple.
 
Then Sherlock had needed a female operative.
 
Mirabella quickly learned that the Great Detective had more in store for her than washing jars and labeling specimens:
 
pistol shooting, fencing, boxing, and
Jiu-Jitsu.
 
And as if that weren’t enough, finally, the ultimate persecution:
 
Miss de Beauvais Finishing School for Distinguished Young Ladies.

“Miss Hudson!
 
If you could strike in this century, I would be much gratified!”

Her concentration broken, her arm fell, four meters of cord landing on her feet.

She stared at the formidable man before her, so devoid of the social niceties, which annoyed her all the more because she knew very well that he knew how to behave—he simply chose not to do so in her presence.
 
Though the Great Detective did not favor the company of women, he was generally able to wrap them around his little finger.
 
He was almost gentile in the company of noblewomen and “proper” ladies—a class within which he clearly did not place his oppressed assistant.

“Do you not hear me or are you merely inept, Miss Hudson?”

“How could I not hear you, Mr. Holmes?” reiterated Mirabella with a curtsey, turning towards him.
 
She whispered under her breath, “You never stop talking.”

“Ah, the mystery is solved:
 
I must conclude from your reply that you are listening; it is your ability which is wanting.
 
And, my dear girl,” he added, brushing his dark, wavy hair out of his eyes, “when you do it correctly I will cease speaking.
 
Silence is therefore unlikely.”’