by Anne Perry
Kristian preempted her. “You cannot even vote for council members unless you own property worth over one thousand pounds,” he pointed out. “Or rental of over one hundred a year. That excludes the vast majority of the men, and naturally all the women.”
“So only those with a vested interest can be elected anyway!” Hester said, her voice rising in fury.
“That’s right,” Kristian agreed. “But it helps no one to waste your energy on what you cannot change. Rage is an emotional luxury for which we have no time to spare.”
“Then we must change it!” Callandra almost choked on the words, her frustration was so consuming. She swung around to stare at the empty barn of a place, tears of impotence in her eyes. “We should never have to fill something like this with people we can’t save because some damnable little shopkeepers won’t pay an extra penny on the rates for us to get the sewage out of the streets!”
Kristian looked at her with an affection so naked that Hester, standing between them, felt an intruder.
“My dear,” he said patiently. “It is very much more complicated than that. To begin with, what should we do with it? Some people argue for a water-carried system, but then it has to empty somewhere, and what of the river? It would become one vast cesspool. And there are problems with water. If it rains heavily may it not back up, and people’s houses would become awash with everyone’s waste?”
She stared at him, as much of her emotion drinking in his face, his eyes, his mouth, as thinking of the bitter problem. “But in the summer the dry middens blow all over the place,” she said. “The very air is filled with the dust of manure and worse.”
“I know,” he replied.
There was a noise on the staircase. Mary returned with an undersized little man in a shiny hat and a jacket several sizes too large for his narrow shoulders.
“This is Mr. Stabb,” she introduced him. “And he will rent us two dozen pots and pans at a penny a day.”
“Each, o’ course,” Mr. Stabb put in quickly. “I got a family to feed. But me ma died o’ the cholera back in forty-eight, an’ I wouldn’t want as not ter do me bit, like.”
Hester drew in her breath to bargain with him.
“Thank you,” Callandra said quickly, cutting her off. “We’ll have them immediately. And if you know of any other tradesman who would be prepared to assist, please send him to us.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Stabb agreed thoughtfully, his face failing to mask a few rapid calculations.
Further deliberations were prevented by the arrival of several bales of straw and canvas sheets, old sails and sacking, anything that might be used to form acceptable beds, and blankets to cover them.
Hester left to set about procuring fuel for the two potbellied black stoves, which must be kept alight as much of the time as possible, not only for warmth but in order to boil water and cook gruel, or whatever other food was obtainable for anyone who might be well enough to take nourishment. Typhoid being a disease of the intestines, that might not be many, but if any survived the worst of it, they would need strengthening after the crisis. And fluid of any sort was of the utmost importance. Frequently it was what made the difference between life and death.
Meat, milk and fruit were unobtainable, as were green vegetables. They might be fortunate with potatoes, although it was a difficult season for them. They would probably have to make do with bread, dried peas and tea, like everyone else in the area. They might find a little bacon, although one had to be very careful. Frequently meat of any sort came from animals which had died of disease, but even then it was extremely scarce. In most families it was only the working man who had such luxuries. It was necessary for everyone’s survival that he maintain as much of his strength as he could.
Patients were brought in over the next hours, and indeed all through the night, sometimes one at a time, sometimes several. There was little even Kristian could do for them, except try to keep them as clean and as comfortable as possible with such limited facilities, to wash them with cool water and vinegar to keep the fever down. Several quite quickly lapsed into delirium.
All night, Hester, Callandra and Enid Ravensbrook walked between the makeshift pallets carrying bowls of water and cloths. Kristian had returned to the hospital where he practiced. Mary and another woman went back and forth emptying the ironmonger’s buckets into the cesspool and returning. At about half past one there was some easing and Hester took the opportunity to prepare a hot gruel and use half of one of the bottles of gin to clean some dishes and utensils.
There was a noise in the doorway and she looked up to see Mary come limping in carrying two pails of water she had drawn from the well in the next street. In the candlelight she looked like a grotesque milkmaid, her shoulders bent, her hair blowing over her face from the wind and rain outside. Her plain stuff dress was wet across the top and her skirts trailed in the mud. She lived locally and had come to help because her sister was one of those afflicted. She set the pails down with an involuntary grunt of relief, then smiled at Hester.
“There y’are, miss. Bit o’ rain in ’em, but I s’pose that don’t ’urt none. Yer want them ’ot?”
“Yes, I’ll add them to this,” Hester accepted, indicating the cauldron she was stirring on top of one of the potbellied stoves.
“Were it like this in the Crimea?” Mary asked in a husky whisper, just in case some poor creature should be sleeping rather than insensible.
“Yes, a bit,” Hester replied. “Except, of course, we had gunshot wounds as well, and amputations, and gangrene. But we had lots of fever too.”
“Think I’d like to ’ave bin there,” Mary said, stretching and bending her back after the weight of the water. “Gotta be better than ’ere. Nearly married a sol’jer once.” She smiled fleetingly at the memory of romance. “Then I went and married Ernie instead. Just a brickie, ’e were, but sort o’ gentle.” She sniffed. “ ’E’d a’ never made the army. ’Is legs was bad. Rickets w’en ’e were a kid. Does that to yer, rickets does.” She stretched again and moved closer to the stove, her wet skirts slapping against her legs, her boots squelching. “Died o’ consumption, ’e did. ’E could read, could Ernie. Captain o’ the Men o’ Death, ’e called it. Consumption, I mean. Read that somewhere, ’e did.” She eyed the gruel and lifted one of the pails to pour in a gallon of water to thin it.
“Thank you,” Hester acknowledged. “He sounds special.”
“ ’E were,” Mary said stoically. “Miss ’im I do, poor bleeder. Me sister Dora wanted to get out of ’ere. Never thought it’d be in a coffin, leastways not yet. Not that there’s many as gets out ter anythink much different. There were Ginny Motson. Pretty, she were, an’ smart as yer like. Dunno wot ’appened to ’er, nor w’ere she went, but up west somewhere. Real bettered ’erself, she did. Learned ter talk proper, an’ be’ave like a lady, or least summink like.”
Hester refrained from speculating that it was probably into a brothel. The dream of freedom was too precious to destroy.
“Reckon as she got married,” Mary went on. “ ’Ope so. Liked ’er I did. D’yer want more water, miss?”
“Not yet, thank you.”
“Oh—there’s someone sick, poor devil.” Mary darted forward to pick up a pan and go to assist. Enid came out of the shadows on the far side, her face white, her thick and naturally wavy hair piled a little crooked, and a long splash of candle tallow on the bosom of her dress.
“The little boy at the end is very weak,” she said huskily. “I don’t think he’ll last the night. I almost wish he’d go quickly, to ease his suffering, and yet when he does, I’ll wish he hadn’t.” She sniffed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Isn’t it ridiculous? I first saw him only a few hours ago, and yet I care so much it twists inside me. I’ve never even heard him speak.”
“Time has nothing to do with it,” Hester replied in a whisper, adding salt and sugar liberally to the gruel. It was necessary to replenish what the body lost. Her own memories crowded her mind, s
oldiers she had seen for perhaps only an hour or two, and yet their agonized faces remained in her memory, the courage with which some of them bore their wounds and the breaking of their own bodies. One was sharp before her vision even now. She could see his blood-smeared features superimposed in the cauldron of gruel she was stirring, the smile he forced on his lips, his fair mustache and the mangled mass where his right shoulder had been. He had bled to death, and there had been nothing she could do to help him.
“I suppose not.” Enid picked up the dishes, wrinkled her nose at the lingering odor of the gin, and began to ladle out a little gruel into about six of them. “I don’t know who can eat, but we’d better try.” She regarded it unhappily. “It’s very thin. Haven’t we any more oatmeal?”
“It’s better thin,” Hester answered. “They can’t take much nourishment; it’s just the liquid that’s of value.”
Enid drew in her breath, then perhaps realized why they did not simply use water. She would have gagged to drink it herself, more especially knowing where it came from. In silence she took the dishes and spoons and began the slow, distressing task of helping one person after another to swallow a mouthful and try to keep it.
The night wore on slowly. The smells and sounds of illness filled the huge room. Shadows passed to and fro in the flickering candlelight as the tallow burned down. About three in the morning Kristian returned. Callandra came over to Hester. There were dark smudges of weariness under her eyes and her skirts were soiled where she had been helping someone in extreme distress.
“Go and take a few hours’ sleep,” she said quietly. “Kristian and I can manage.” She said it so naturally, and yet Hester knew what it meant to her to be able to speak their names together in such a way. “We’ll call you towards morning.”
“A couple of hours,” Hester insisted. “Call me about five. What about Enid?”
“I’ve persuaded her.” Callandra smiled faintly. “Now go on. You can’t stay up indefinitely. If you don’t rest you’ll be no use. You’ve told me that often enough.”
Hester gave a rueful little shrug. There was no honesty or purpose in denial.
“Watch the boy over there on the left.” She gestured towards a figure lying crumpled, half on one side, about twenty feet away. “He’s got a dislocated shoulder. I’ve put it back, but it slips out if he leans on it when he sits up to retch.”
“Poor little creature.” Callandra sighed. “He looks no more than ten or twelve, but it’s hard to tell.”
“He said he was sixteen,” Hester replied. “But I don’t suppose he can count.”
“Did it happen recently? The shoulder, I mean?”
“I asked him. He said he got across Caleb Stone and got beaten for his cheek.”
Callandra winced. “There’s a woman on the far end with a knife scar on her face. She said that was Caleb Stone too. She didn’t say why. He seems to be a very violent man. She sounded still afraid of him.”
“Well, I don’t suppose we’ll see him in here,” Hester said dryly. “Unless he gets typhoid. Nobody comes to pest-houses to collect debts, however large—or to exact revenge either.” She glanced down the dark cavern of the warehouse. “No revenge could be worse than this,” she said softly.
“Go and rest,” Callandra ordered. “Or you won’t be fit to work when I sleep.”
Hester obeyed gratefully. She had not dared to think how tired she was, or she could not have continued. Now at last she was free to go into the small outer room, where there was a pile of extra straw, and let herself sink into it in the darkness, away from duty, the sounds of distress and the constant awareness of other people’s suffering. For a moment she could forget it all and let exhaustion and oblivion overtake her.
But the straw prickled. It had been a long time since Scutari, and she had forgotten the feeling of overwhelming helplessness in the face of such enormity of pain, and she could not so easily blank it from her mind. Her ears still strained for the sounds and her body tensed, as if in spite of everything Callandra could say, she really ought to go and do what she could to help.
That would be futile. She would become too worn out to take her turn when Callandra and Kristian needed to sleep. She must fill her mind with something else deliberately, force herself to think of some subject which would overtake even this.
It came unbidden to her mind, in spite of all her intentions to the contrary. Perhaps it was the fact that she was lying awkwardly in a small, strange room, close to the end of her strength, both physically and emotionally, but thoughts of Monk filled her, almost as if she could feel the warmth of his body beside her, smell his skin, and for once in their lives, know that there was no quarrel, no gulf, no barrier between them. She flushed hot to remember how utterly she had given herself to him in that one consuming kiss. All her heart and mind and will had been in it, all the things she could never ever have said to him. She had not seen him since the end of the Farraline case. They had continued in the heat of that desperate conclusion, so involved in it that there had been no time to feel more than a glancing moment of awkwardness.
Now if they met again it would be different. There would be memories neither of them could ever discard or forget. Whatever he might say, whatever his manner now, she knew that for that moment when they had faced death in the closed room, he had left behind all pretense, all his precious and careful self-protection, and had admitted in touch of aching and desperate tenderness that he too knew what it was to love.
Not that she deluded herself the barriers would not return. Of course they would. Rescue, and a taking up of life again, had brought back all the differences, the shadows which kept them apart. She was not the kind of woman who excited him. She was too quarrelsome, too independent, too direct. She did not even know how to flirt or to charm, to make him feel gallant and protective, let alone romantic.
And he was too often ill-tempered. He was certainly ruthless, highly critical, and his past was full of darkness and fears and ties which even he did not know, perhaps of violence he only half thought in nightmare, of cruelties he imagined but for which he had no proof—except what others told him, not in words but in the way they reacted to him, the flicker of old pain, humiliations from his keener, faster mind and his sharper tongue.
She knew all the arguments, just like the prickling straw ends poking into her arms now, scratching her cheek and spearing through the thin stuff of her dress. And yet just like the sweet oblivion closing around her, the memory of his touch obliterated it all until she was so tired she could sleep.
3
MONK WAS CONFUSED by the Stonefield case. It was not that he seriously doubted what had happened to Angus Stonefield. He very much feared that Genevieve was correct and he had indeed received some kind of summons from Caleb and had gone immediately to meet him. In all probability that was why he had taken the five pounds, twelve shillings and sixpence that Arbuthnot had spoken of, and for which he had left the receipt. Monk’s difficulty was now to prove his death so that the authorities would grant Genevieve the legal status of widow and allow her to inherit his estate. Then she might sell the business before it was ruined by speculation and neglect, and no doubt the advantage his rivals would take of his absence.
It would be good to talk to Callandra. It was part of their bargain that he share with her any case which was difficult or of particular interest.
He was not sure if this one would catch her emotions or not, but he knew from experience that even the act of explaining it to her would clarify it in his own mind. It had happened that way more often than not. She asked pertinent questions and allowed him to escape with no generalizations or inexactitudes. Her understanding of people, especially women, was often far more acute than his. She had a perception of relationships which made him realize, with some pain and a new sense of loneliness, how little he knew of the emotions of interdependence and the closeness of daily friendship and family ties. There were so many gaps in his life, and he did not know if those things had never
existed for him or if it was simply that his memory of them was gone. And if he had lived such a narrow and solitary life, was that of his own choosing? Or had some circumstance forced it upon him? What had happened to him—and more urgently by far, what had he done—in all those lost years?
Of course, he had learned fragments, flashes of recollection prompted by some present sight or sound, the glimpse of a face. Some things he had deduced. But there were still vast, empty reaches, only a glimmer of light here and there, and he did not always like what it showed. He had been cruel of tongue, harsh of judgment, but clever … always clever.
But if he had not truly loved anyone, or been loved, why not? What ghosts walked in that darkness? What injuries might there be, and would he ever know? Might they return to horrify him with guilt … or offer him a chance to repay? Might he after all discover acts of generosity and warmth, companionship he would want to recall, sweetness that was precious even in hindsight?
But no matter how hard he searched, nothing returned. There was no shred of memory there, not a face, a smell, or sound that was familiar. The only friends he knew were those of the present. The rest was a void.
Perhaps that was why when he reached Callandra’s house he was absurdly disappointed to be told by the maid that she was not in.
“When will she return?” he demanded.
“I couldn’t say, sir,” the maid replied gravely. “Maybe tonight, but more likely not. Maybe tomorrow, but I couldn’t say so for sure.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Monk snapped. “You must know! For heaven’s sake, be honest with me. I’m not some social climbing lady friend she doesn’t want either to see or to offend.”
The maid drew in her breath and let it out in a sigh of politeness. She knew Monk from many previous visits.
“There’s an outbreak of the typhoid in Limehouse, sir. She’s gone there to help with Dr. Beck, and I expect a good few others. I really couldn’t say when she’ll be back. No one can.”