The Sins of the Wolf

by Anne Perry

  “No….” It was a long time since a woman had embarrassed him in this way, but honesty compelled him to admit he deserved it.

  “You had better come in, all the same.” She turned back to the door. “Unless that is all you wanted to know? Had you better not prove me truthful?” There was mockery in her voice, and underneath the amusement it was charged with emotion.

  He agreed, and followed her into the narrow corridors of the tenement. She climbed up rickety stairs, along another corridor, the man Robbie a few steps behind, his cudgel at his side. They mounted more stairs and finally came into a large room overlooking the street. It was clean, especially for such a place, and by now he was used to the general smell of such a region. There was no furniture at all except one frequently repaired wooden table, and on it was a pile of books and papers, several inkwells and a dozen or so quills, a penknife for recutting the nibs, and several sheets of blotting paper. Her students were a collection of some thirteen or fourteen men of all ages and conditions, but everyone dressed in clean clothes, although ragged enough to have earned the school its epithet. Their faces lit with enthusiasm when they saw her, then closed in sudden, dark suspicion as Monk came in behind her.

  “It’s all right,” she assured them quickly. “Mr. Monk is a friend. He has come to help tonight.”

  Monk opened his mouth to protest that that was not so, then changed his mind and nodded agreement.

  Soberly they all sat on the floor, mostly cross-legged, and balancing books on their knees, and papers on top of the books, with others on the floor between them, they slowly and painstakingly wrote their alphabets. Frequently they looked at Eilish for help and approval, and in total solemnity she gave it, offering a correction here, a word of praise there.

  After two hours of writing, they moved to reading, their reward for labor. With many stumbles and a lot of encouragement, one by one, they lurched through a chapter of Ivanhoe. Their elation at the end of it, at twenty-five to four in the morning, as they thanked her, and Monk, was abundant reward for Monk’s own weariness. Then they filed out for an hour’s sleep before starting the long day’s work.

  When the last of them had gone, Eilish turned to Monk wordlessly.

  “The books?” he asked, although he knew the answer and did not care in the slightest if it robbed Farraline & Company of its entire profits.

  “Yes of course they are from Farralines,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “Baird gets them for me, but if you tell anyone, I shall deny it. I don’t think there is any proof. But you wouldn’t do that anyway. It has nothing to do with Mother’s death, and won’t either exonerate or condemn Miss Latterly.”

  “I didn’t know Baird could get to the company accounts.” That would explain why he had been so nervous.

  “He can’t,” she agreed with amusement. “I want books, not money. And I wouldn’t steal money, even if I did need it. Baird prints extra books, or declares the print runs short. It has nothing to do with accounting.”

  That made sense.

  “Your uncle Hector said someone had been falsifying the accounts.”

  “Did he?” She sounded only slightly surprised. “Well, maybe they have. It must be Kenneth, but I don’t know why. Although Uncle Hector does drink an awful lot, and sometimes talks the most terrible nonsense. He remembers things I don’t think ever happened, and confuses one time with another. I wouldn’t take a lot of notice.”

  He was about to say that he had to, in order to guard the prosecution, but he was weary of lies, especially useless ones, and this was not the night for more of them. He had had to reverse all his judgments of Eilish. She was anything but shallow or lazy, and far from stupid. Of course she had to sleep half the morning; she gave up most of the night. And gave it to those who returned her no public or financial reward for it. And yet she was obviously more than pleased with what she received. In this bare lamplit room she glowed with a deep joy. Now he knew why she walked with her head high and her step proud, where the secret smile came from and the thoughts that were removed from the family conversations.

  And he knew why Baird McIvor loved her above his own wife.

  Actually he knew in that moment also that Hester would have liked her, even admired her.

  “I’m not trying to prove that Miss Latterly killed your mother,” he said impulsively. “I’m trying to prove that she did not.”

  She looked at him curiously. “For money? No. Do you love her?”

  “No.” Then instantly he wished he had not denied it so quickly. “Not in the way you mean,” he added, feeling his face burn. “She is a great friend, a very deep friend. We have shared many experiences in the pursuit of justice in other cases. She …”

  Eilish was smiling. Again there was a faint hint of mockery in her eyes.

  “You don’t need to explain, Mr. Monk. In fact, please don’t. I don’t believe you anyway. I know what it is to love when you really don’t want to at all.” Without warning the laughter vanished totally from her face and deep pain replaced it. Perhaps pain had been closer to the surface all the time. “It changes all your plans and alters everything. One moment you are playing on the shore, the next the tide has you, and struggle as you might, you cannot get back to the land again.”

  “You are speaking of your own feelings, Mrs. Fyffe. I am a friend of Miss Latterly. I don’t feel in the least like that about her.” He said all the words clearly and vehemently, and he knew from her face that she did not believe him. He was angry, and there was a curious choking in his throat. He felt absurdly disloyal. “It is perfectly possible to be friendly with someone without a feeling anything like the one you describe,” he said again.

  “Of course it is,” she agreed, moving to the door. “I will walk with you as far as the Grassmarket, to see you are safe.”

  It was ludicrous. He was a powerful man, armed with a stick, and she was a slender woman, six inches shorter and built like a flower. She made him think of an iris in the sun. He laughed outright.

  She led the way down the dim stairs back to the way out, talking to him over her shoulder as he followed.

  “How many times have you been struck on the way, Mr. Monk?”

  “Twice, but …”

  “Was it painful?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “I’ll see you home, Mr. Monk.” There was only the faintest shadow of a smile on her lips.

  He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Mrs. Fyffe.”

  In Newgate, Hester swung from moods of hard-fought-for hope, down to engulfing despair, and up the long incline back to hope again. The boredom and the sense of helplessness were the worst afflictions. Physical labor, however pointless, would have dulled the edges of pain, and she would have slept. As it was she lay awake in almost total darkness, shivering with cold, her imagination torturing her with infinite possibilities—and always returning to the same one, the short walk from the cell to the shed where the rope awaited her. She was not afraid of death itself, it was that she realized with icy pain that the belief she thought she had as to what lay after was simply not strong enough to stand in the face of reality. She was frightened as she had never been before. Even in the battlefield death would have been sudden, without warning or time to think. And after all she had not been alone. She had faced it with others, almost all of them suffering far more than she. Her mind had been filled with what she could do for them; it had left no room for thoughts of herself. Now she realized what a blessing that had been.

  The wardresses continued to treat her with a coldness and unique scorn, but she became accustomed to it and the small irritant gave her something to fight against, as one digs nails into the palm of the hand when fighting a greater agony.

  One particularly cold day the cell door opened and, after the briefest word from the wardress, her sister-in-law, Imogen, came in. Hester was surprised to see her; she had accepted Charles’s word as final and had not expected him to relent. The darker the outlook became, the less likely was he to
do so.

  Imogen was fashionably dressed, as if going to pay afternoon calls on Society, her skirts broad-sweeping and flounced, her bodice tight and her sleeves elaborately decorated. Her bonnet was trimmed with flowers.

  “I’m sorry,” she said instantly, seeing Hester’s face and glancing only momentarily at the bare cell. “I had to tell Charles I was going to call on the Misses Begbie. Please don’t tell him I was here, if you don’t mind. I—I would rather not face a quarrel just now.” She looked both embarrassed and apologetic. “He—” She stopped.

  “He commanded you not to come,” Hester finished for her. “Don’t worry, of course I shall not tell him.” She wanted to thank Imogen for coming—she really was grateful—and yet the words stuck in her mouth. It all sounded artificial, when it should have been most real.

  Imogen fished in her reticule and brought out sweet-smelling soap and a little bag of dried lavender so fragrant Hester could smell it even from two yards distance, and the femininity of it brought the tears uncontrollably to her eyes.

  Imogen looked up quickly and her polite expression vanished and emotion flooded her face. Impulsively she dropped the soap and lavender and moved forward, taking Hester in her arms and holding her with a strength Hester would not have thought her to possess.

  “We’ll win!” she said fiercely. “You didn’t kill that woman and we’ll prove it. Mr. Monk may not be very nice, but he is wildly clever, and quite ruthless. Remember how he solved the Grey case when everyone thought it was impossible. And he is on your side, my dear. Don’t ever give up hope.”

  Hester had managed to keep her composure with every other visitor she had had, even Callandra, difficult as that had been, but now she found it too much. The long denial would not last anymore. Clinging on, she wept in Imogen’s arms until she was exhausted and a kind of peace of despair came over her. Imogen’s words had been intended to comfort, but perversely they had focused her mind on the truth she had been struggling against all the time since she had first been moved here from the Coldbath Fields. All that Monk, or anyone else, could do might not be enough. Sometimes innocent people were hanged. Even if Monk or Rathbone were to prove the truth afterwards, it would be no comfort to her, and certainly no help.

  But now instead of the struggle against it, against the fear and the injustice, there was something inside her close to acceptance. Perhaps it was only tiredness, but it was better than the desperate struggle. There was a sort of release in it.

  Now she did not want to listen to talk of hope, because she had passed beyond it, but yet it would be cruel to tell Imogen so, and the new calm was too fragile to be trusted. Perhaps there was still something in her which clung to unreality? She did not want to put it into words.

  Imogen stepped back and looked at her. She must have seen or sensed some change, because she said nothing more about it but bent and picked up the dropped soap and the lavender.

  “I didn’t ask if you could have them,” she said matter-of-factly. “Maybe you should hide them?”

  Hester sniffed and took out her handkerchief to blow her nose.

  Imogen waited.

  “Thank you,” Hester said at last, reaching out to take them and push them down the front of her dress. The soap was a trifle uncomfortable, but even that had its own kind of satisfaction.

  Imogen sat down on the cot, her skirts in a huge swirl around her, exactly as if she were visiting a lady of Society; although since Mr. Latterly Senior’s disgrace, she did not do that anymore. The Misses Begbie were now the height of her aspirations.

  “Do you ever see anyone else?” she asked with interest. “I mean other than that fearful woman who let me in. She is a woman, I suppose?”

  Hester smiled in spite of herself. “Oh yes. If you saw the way she looks at Oliver Rathbone, you’d know she was.”

  “You don’t mean it?” Imogen was incredulous, laughter touching her in spite of the place and the occasion. “She makes me think of Mrs. MacDuff, my cousin’s governess. We used to rag her terribly. I blush when I think how cruel we were. Children can be devastatingly candid. Sometimes the truth is better not told. It may be in one’s own heart one knows it, but one can behave so much better if one is not forced to keep looking at it.”

  Hester smiled wryly. “I think I am in exactly that situation, but I have very little else to take my attention.”

  “Have you heard from Mr. Monk?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Imogen looked surprised, and suddenly Hester felt as if Monk had let her down. Why had he not written? Surely he must know how much it would have meant to have received even a word of encouragement? Why was he so thoughtless? And that was a stupid question, because she knew the answer. There was little tenderness in his nature, and what there was was directed towards women like Imogen, gentle, sweet-natured, dependent women who complemented his own strengths, not women like Hester, whom he regarded at the best of times as a friend, like another man, and at the worst as opinionated, abrasive, dogmatic, and an offense to her own sex.

  Loyalty and justice would demand that he search for the truth, but to expect or look for comfort as well was bound to end in hurt and in an inevitable sense of having been let down.

  And that was precisely what she did feel.

  Imogen was watching her closely. She read her as only another woman could.

  “Are you in love with him?” she asked.

  Hester was horrified. “No! Certainly not! I would not go so far as to say he is everything I despise in a man, but he is certainly a great deal. Of course he is clever, I would not take that from him for a moment, but he is on occasion both arrogant and cruel and I would not trust him to be gentle, or not to take advantage of weakness, for a minute.”

  Imogen smiled.

  “My dear, I did not ask if you trusted or admired him, or even if you liked him. I asked if you were in love with him, which is quite a different matter.”

  “Well I am not. And I do like him … sometimes. And …” She took a deep breath. “And there are matters in which I would trust him absolutely. Matters of honor where justice is concerned, or courage. He would fight against any odds, and without counting the cost, to defend what he believed to be right.”

  Imogen looked at her with a strange mixture of amusement and pain.

  “I think, my dear, you are painting him with your own virtues, but that is no harm. We all tend to do that….”

  “I am not!”

  “If you say so.” Imogen dismissed the matter with disbelief. “What about Mr. Rathbone? I must say I rather like him. He is such a gentleman and yet I formed the opinion he is extremely clever.”

  “Of course he is.” She had never doubted it, and as she spoke, memories of a startling moment of intimacy returned with a sweetness she was not sure now if she imagined or not. She would never in the world have kissed a man in such a way without meaning it intensely. But she did not know men in that way, and perhaps they were very different. All she had observed told her that they were. She was disinclined to attach any importance to it at all. She realized with a hollow ache how little she knew, and that now she would almost certainly die without ever having loved or been loved in return. Self-pity welled up inside her like a tide, and ashamed of it as she was, it still filled her.

  “Hester,” Imogen said gravely, “you are giving in. It is not like you to be pathetic, and when all this is over you are going to hate yourself for not having matched up to the moment.”

  “Brave words are all very well when you are talking to somebody else,” Hester replied with a twisted smile. “It is a different matter when you are facing the reality of death. Then there isn’t any afterwards.”

  Imogen looked very pale and there was distress plain in her eyes, but she did not flinch. “You mean your death would be somehow different from other people’s? Different from the soldiers you nursed?”

  “No … no, of course not. That would be arrogant and ridiculous.” Being reminded of the soldiers broug
ht back their agonized faces and broken bodies to her mind. She would die quickly, without being mutilated or wasted with fevers or dysentery. She should be ashamed of her cowardice. Many of them had been younger than she was now; they had tasted even less of life.

  Imogen forced a smile, and their eyes met for a long, steady moment. There was no need for Hester to speak her thanks. She was still painfully afraid, still uncertain what lay after the hangman’s shed and the sudden darkness, but she would face it with the same dignity she had seen in others, and be fit to belong to the vast company who had already taken that path, and done it with head high and eyes unblinking.

  Imogen knew when to leave, and she did not mar what was achieved by staying and talking of trivialities. She hugged Hester quickly, then with a swirl of her skirts, went to the door and demanded to be let out. The wardress came, regarded Imogen with contempt in her scrubbed face with its screwed-back hair, and then as Imogen stared back at her without flinching or averting her eyes, the contempt died away and was replaced by something that held envy and a flicker of respect. She held the door open and Imogen sailed through it without a word.

  The last visitor in Newgate was Oliver Rathbone. He found Hester much calmer than on the previous occasion. She faced him with none of the barely suppressed emotion of earlier times, and far from being comforted, he found himself alarmed.

  “Hester! What has happened?” he demanded. The moment the cell door was closed and they were alone, he went straight to her and took her hands in his. “Has someone said or done something to distress you?”

  “Why? Because I am not so afraid anymore?” she said with a ghost of a smile.

  It was on his tongue to say that she had given up. The very lack of anguish in her face meant that she was no longer struggling between hope and despair. There was no possibility of knowledge that she would be exonerated. At this late date that could not be. She must have accepted defeat. Not for an instant did it occur to him that she had in fact killed Mary Farraline, either intentionally or by accident. He was furious with her for surrendering. How could she, after all the battles they had fought together for other people, and won? She had known physical danger the equal of most soldiers in the field, long hours, hardship, privation, and come through it all with high heart and passionate spirit intact. She had faced her parents’ ruin and death and survived it. How dare she crumble now?