On a snowy Christmas Eve in Victorian London, a ragged street urchin named Wiggins races through the fog-shrouded streets with urgent news for the world’s greatest detective. But when his courage lands him in icy danger, Sherlock Holmes himself becomes the rescuer, and a quiet evening by the fire at 221B Baker Street becomes a night that will change Wiggins’ life forever. A tender and thrilling holiday tale that captures the warmth, wit, and humanity behind the legend of Holmes.

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Snow pummels the high street, dampening the back of my thin trousers. The hole in my left boot sticks to the wet cobblestones. Slipping on the uneven ground, I catch myself by throwing out one hand, in its threadbare glove with two missing fingers, and sling around the corner into Baker Street. Distracted by a passing hansom cab, I barrel straight into a hunched old coal monger. Greasy hair frames his face, his mouth missing most of its teeth, and fierce brows drawn over angry brown eyes.

“See here, boy,” he snaps, “watch where you’re going!”

One gaunt hand thrusts out of the patched coat to grasp me by the collar, but I’m too quick for him and wriggle out of the way of those long fingers, their chipped and uneven nails blackened from work. “Heave off, mister, I got business ‘round these parts!” I snap at him.

“Business?” He scoffs at me and swipes his hand across his nose. “What business you got ‘round here? Ain’t nothing this lot wants with a scruffy urchin boy! Get off with you!” He slings the coal sack I made him drop over his shoulder and shoves me out of his way. I stick out my tongue at him and inch toward the wrought-iron railing outside the door of 221B. Nobody cares what happens in 221A, since they’re nobodies from nowhere. I can smell Mrs. Hudson’s Christmas cooking from the street. Roast goose and berries ripe enough to burst in my mouth, along with the faint whiff of the brandy the Christmas pudding has been soaking in for a month.

Not about to put up with his guff, I say, “If’n ya don’t clear off, mister, I’ll set Mister Holmes’ dog on ya!”

“Oh, you will, will you?” His scraggly brows raise over his dark eyes and his fat mouth twists into an unpleasant leer. “Has a mean dog, has he, this Mister Holmes?”

I give my threadbare jacket over an equally thin waistcoat a tug of importance. “Yeah, a right big hound, and he won’t be likin’ yer stoppin’ me, neither! Not when I got business with him.”

“Important man, Mister Holmes?” he presses.

The wind buffets us a little and almost bowls me over; to think, this here fool ain’t never heard of the greatest detective in the entire world! I spy on the wharfs for him, and he pays me a shilling, and I’ve just spent all afternoon on the watch for a seaman with a shaved head and busted knee like he said. “Ain’t you know nothin’?” I ask. “Where you from, anyway?”

“Here an’ there,” he says. “Best be off to him then, hadn’t ya?”

A handful of snowflakes drift down from the white sky and alight on my lashes. I strut past him and reach the bottom step before a tingle of suspicion creeps up my spine, slowing my steps. Suspicion turns me back to the coal peddler, my eyes narrowing to see beneath the grotesque features. His disguises are gettin’ better all the time. “Here now, you’re not foolin’ with me, are you, Mister Holmes?”

The crooked back unfurls, and the short, squat man becomes a tall, thin one in a too-large overcoat for a mere instant. Beneath the false nose, I imagine the hooked one, and the slender smile that lights up his brown eyes. His raspy voice turns into a weedy one, full of mock disapproval. “Wiggins, I told you to look sharpish! What lies! You know very well the dog isn’t mine, and his nose is more important than his teeth. Now come along, keep up; I have little time. Did you find our villain?”

He collapses into the old man once more and I fall into step with him, edging away from Baker Street and up an alley that stinks of filth. I tug my cap lower on my brow. “Yes, sir. He went to wharf six, just as you said, and bought a boat for this evening at half past seven. That’s when I came to fetch you!”

“Dash it, then we must make a run for it.” Sherlock Holmes chucks his coal sack into a corner and breaks into a run. My arms pump to keep up with his long stride.

Panting, I ask, “Have you got a pistol, sir? Hadn’t you better fetch Doctor Watson?”

No one knows these streets better than me, but Holmes gets there in double time. He throws out his hand to halt me in an alley and peers around a filthy corner across the wharf. It’s one of my favorite places. It reeks of a thousand smells, from the fish sellers who chuck the guts back into the Thames and along the rocky shore to the Jewish bakery that gives me a bun or two if the nice girl is behind the counter. Dogs bark from behind tall fences, and the rattle of wagons fills the distance. It’s not far to my hunkering place in the church crypt, where I keep a candle, a pile of old blankets (hidden among the bones so no one steals them) and a tin can full of old buttons and string. I ain’t got much else.

“Watson’s shut up safe and warm at home with his wife, where he ought to be,” Holmes says with a hint of regret. Though he’d never admit it, he misses Doctor Watson, married nine months now.

A gaunt hand shoots out to grip my arm and squeezes it with eagerness. “There he is,” Holmes says under his breath, “with Lady Hubert’s diamond too, or my name isn’t…” He glances at me with a twinkle in his eye and merriment in his twitching lips, but then he turns serious and the thin fingers, so adept with a violin, tighten on my shoulder. “Wiggins, the last time we did this, you got into trouble. This time, you steer clear of him, do you hear me? I haven’t got time for nonsense. He’s slit two throats already. Run to the high street and signal Inspector Lestrade. He’s in a hansom cab parked under the street lamp. Tell him I have the fiend in sight, and to send two policemen up the river. Then, go to Baker Street and stay there. Tell Mrs. Hudson I said to give you mincemeat pie. When I get back, I’ll have a shilling for you.”

This is the most exciting thing to happen in London in months. A right fiend broke into the richest woman in town’s house and stole her jewels right out from under her nose. The policeman who came along heard her cries from the house, saw him passing, and tried to stop him, but landed in the morgue. The other victim was someone Holmes thought had helped him hide for a few days. I want to be there at the arrest.

I trace our footsteps, unsurprised to find his bag of coal has gone missing, since there’s a lot of sticky fingers in the poor part of town, and send the beady-eyed inspector on his way. The snow thickens on my way to Baker Street, but I only go a few alleys before I shake my head and turn around, increasing my pace. Mister Holmes has become reckless since his friend moved out of 221B. He ought not to be alone for this. I can be his second set of eyes and a second pair of fists if he needs them. Though only fourteen, I have a mean right hook.

There’s a shorter route along the waterfront, and I take it, careful not to stumble on the slick, wet stones that drop off into the Thames. Shouts rise in the distance, and I head toward them, my breath creating mist in the air. Out of nowhere, a huge shape lumbers over a fence into my path and crashes into me. I fall backward against the alley, a little dazed, and look up into the face Holmes sent me to spy on at the wharf. My ears ring with “Don’t let him escape!” in the distance. Before he can shove me aside and run past me, I bring up my knee and double him over with a kick in the gut, but he’s a mean old bastard. He smacks me upside the head so hard my vision blurs. Rough hands the size of wagon wheels grip me by my worn lapels and toss me off the dock. The freezing water surges over my head and carries away my favorite (and only) cap. Choking, I surface, but I ain’t never been good at swimming. I can’t even yell for help. Water goes into my eyes and up my nose, suffocating me.

As I surface again for an instant, blurs run past me in pursuit of him, and footsteps pound on the wharf. I sink again, the lights blurring above me. The cold eats at my bones. I expect to drown.

Then a shadow looms above me, leaning way out, and a strong but lean hand grasps the scruff of my collar. Holmes hauls me up with inhuman strength and drags me onto the dock, where he turns me onto my side and pounds the water out of me. I spit up a great quantity of it, my eyes tearing up from the effort, and hear his angry voice in my ear. “Wiggins, you fool! I told you to go home where it’s safe!”

“Y-you didn’t have Dr. W-Watson,” I stammer, shivering from the cold.

He takes off the overlarge overcoat and wraps it around me, turning his head to greet Lestrade, who emerges from the gloom behind us with a rare smile of satisfaction. Snow buffets us both and dampens the street lamps. “We got him,” the Inspector says. “But we searched his pockets and found no trace of the diamond. Where would he stash it?”

“Given his uneven stride, I’d look in his left boot,” Holmes says. “Now be a good man and fetch me a hansom cab before this lad freezes to death.” He pulls me to my feet and leads me, trembling, up the alley and inside the cab. I’m so cold my teeth rattle from shivering, and I clench them together to avoid the noise. By the time we reach Baker Street, my hands and toes have gone numb.

Mrs. Hudson throws open the door to greet us, about to scold him for being late to Christmas Eve dinner, but one look at me and her resolve fades into concern. She bundles me into the kitchen, orders me to peel off my wet clothes, and get warm at the fire. Then she finds a few of Holmes’ things that almost fit, if I roll up the pant legs five inches, and takes me up to his flat, the warmest place in the house. Wrapped in a blanket, I sit at his fireside and stare around me in wonder at the horrendous mess of newspapers, clippings, files, discarded shoes, chemical experiments, wigs, match-boxes, and pipes.

Holmes emerges from his bedroom, freed of his disguise and back to his flinty-eyed, angular self. He’s so tall, I fear I’ll never be able to look him in the eye. One hand gropes along the mantel for a Persian slipper and, to my surprise, he removes a pouch of tobacco from it and packs it into his favorite pipe. We sit together in silence. Clouds of flavored smoke rise from his pipe, while he rests his fingers on either side in temple shape. The fire flickers, warming first one side of me and then the other, and my mouth waters when Mrs. Hudson finally brings in our supper. Rich sauce drips from the roasted goose and puddles in a slick of crimson on the plate. Plus, roasted potatoes and sugar-drizzled canned vittles.

I tuck in with eagerness, savoring every drop and using my fingers to swipe the last bit from my plate. I try not to stare at him, often looking at his deerstalker cap hung across the back of his winged chair. An artist drew a picture of him in it for The Strand. I couldn’t afford a copy, but found a torn one in the gutter. I keep the illustration folded up in my tin. Someday, when I have shillings in my pocket, and a warm bed, I’ll buy a deerstalker like Mister Holmes’.

It’s so warm in here, the thought of going back out into the cold and sleeping in the crypt fills me with dread. But my clothes look to be dry, and I reach out to feel them with reluctance.

Holmes leans back with a sigh of contentment and says, “Your clothes won’t be dry for hours yet, boy, you may as well stay the night. The settee is warm enough if you stoke the fire. I’m afraid you can’t have Watson’s room, as it’s a bit… buried under my research at the moment.”

My eyes look at the faded red settee as if it’s a bed fit for a king. Mrs. Hudson clears our plates with a smile onto a tray. Holmes goes to the window to draw the curtain, after watching the snow whirl about the street lamps. After a time, he says, “It seems the right night for it,” and takes out his violin. A divine look comes over the sharply defined face, his eyes softened and his soul goes elsewhere as his long, thin fingers draw forth glorious, haunting music. A Christmas hymn. I don’t know the words, but it puts a lump in my throat.

Once finished, he puts it away in its golden case and shuts the bedroom door behind him. I snuggle up on that settee and sleep better than I have in months. Only his stirring in the morning wakes me, and I hasten to bank up the fire. My clothes are well and truly dry, but somehow I stay for most of the day and another night. Holmes just has little things for me to do that he says no one else can do properly, and at the end, he says he will want me often enough I should sleep in a little cot in the kitchen. “I am sure Mrs. Hudson can keep you busy with chores,” he says.

Another lump comes into my throat. I’m so grateful I don’t know what to say, in case it causes my voice to break. Without looking at me, Holmes tosses the deerstalker in my direction. “I have no use for that, and never wore it,” he says. “Only once for the sketch. If you don’t want it, find someone who does. Sell it for a shilling if you like.”

It feels like gold in my fingertips. I follow Mrs. Hudson down the stairs to the warm, safe kitchen full of wonderful things, and when she’s not looking, I put it on and look at myself in the mirror in the hall.

It doesn’t fit, not yet, but it will someday.

I’m blessed to know Mister Holmes.

About the Author: Charity Bishop writes historical fiction, historical fantasy, and suspense novels that explores the darkness in human hearts, and the light that refuses to be extinguished. Discover her books.