by Anne Perry
“Good morning, Claudine,” Hester said, trying to sound cheerful. “How are you?”
Claudine still did not take pleasantries for granted. “Good morning,” she replied, even now unsure whether to address Hester by her Christian name. “I’m very well, thank you. But I fear we can expect a good deal of bronchitis in this weather, and pneumonia as well. Got a stab wound in last night. Stupid girl hasn’t got the wits she was born with, working out of a place like Fleet Row.”
“Can we save her?” Hester asked anxiously, unintentionally including herself in the cause.
“Oh, yes.” Claudine was somewhat smug about her newly acquired medical knowledge, even if it came from observation rather than experience. “What I came about was new sheets. We can manage for a little longer, but you’ll have to ask Margaret about more funds soon. We’ll need at least a dozen, and that’ll barely do.”
“Can it wait another few weeks?” Hester regarded the column of figures in front of her. She ought to tell Claudine that she was going, but she could not bring herself to do it yet.
“Three, perhaps,” Claudine replied. “I can bring a pair from home, but I don’t have twelve.”
“Thank you.” Hester meant it. For Claudine to provide anything out of her own home for the use of street women was a seven-league step from the wounding distaste the woman had felt only three months earlier. The charity work Claudine had been used to was of the discreet, untroublesome kind where ladies of like disposition organized fêtes and garden parties to raise money for respectable causes, such as fever hospitals, mission work, and the deserving poor. Some profound disruption to her personal life had driven Claudine to this total departure. She had not confided in anybody what it had been, and Hester would never ask.
“Breakfast will be ready in half an hour,” Claudine responded. “You should eat.” And without waiting for a reply, she went out, closing the door behind her.
Hester smiled and returned to her figures.
The next person to come in was Margaret Ballinger, her face pink from the cold, but with nothing of the hunched defense against the weather that one might expect. There was a confidence about her, an unconscious grace, as of one who is inwardly happy, all external circumstances being merely peripheral.
“Breakfast’s ready,” she said cheerfully. She knew Hester was going, but she refused to think of it. “And Sutton’s here to see you. He does look a little…concerned.”
Hester was surprised. Sutton, a ratcatcher by trade, occasionally did odd jobs for Hester. She stood up immediately. “Is he all right?”
“He’s not hurt,” Margaret began.
“And Snoot?” Hester was referring to the ratcatcher’s eager little terrier.
Margaret smiled. “In excellent health,” she assured Hester. “Whatever concerns Sutton, it is not Snoot.”
Hester felt immeasurably relieved. She knew how Sutton loved the animal. He was possibly all the family he had, certainly all he spoke of.
Downstairs in the kitchen there was porridge on the large cast-iron stove. Two kettles were boiling, and the door to the toasting fire was closed while an entire loaf of bread, sliced and browned on the fork, sat crisping in two wooden racks. There was butter, marmalade, and black-currant jam on the table. The clinic was obviously quite well-off in funds at the moment.
Sutton, a lean man not much more than Hester’s height, sat on one of the few unsplintered kitchen chairs. He stood up the moment he saw her. The brown and white Jack Russell terrier at his feet wagged his tail furiously, but he was too tightly disciplined to dart forward.
Sutton’s thin face lit up with pleasure and what looked like relief. “Mornin’, Miss ’Ester. ’Ow are yer?”
“I’m very well, Mr. Sutton,” she replied. “How are you? I’m sure you could manage some breakfast, couldn’t you? I’m having some.”
“That’d be very civil of yer.” He watched her, sitting down as soon as she had.
Margaret had already eaten at home; she never ate the clinic’s rations unless she was there for too long to abstain. She collected most of the clinic’s funds through her social acquaintances, and she was far too sensitive to the difficulty of that to waste a farthing or consume herself what could be used for the sick. She would make an excellent mistress of this in Hester’s place.
Sutton devoured his porridge and then toast and marmalade, while Hester had just the toast and jam. They were both on their second cup of tea when Claudine excused herself and they were left alone. Much against her own better judgment, Claudine had given Snoot porridge and milk as well, and he was now happily asleep in front of the hearth.
“She’ll spoil ’im rotten, that woman,” Sutton said as Claudine closed the door. “Wot good’ll ’e be fer rattin’ if ’e’s ’anded ’is breakfast on a plate?”
Hester did not bother to answer. It was part of the slow retreat by which Claudine was going to allow Sutton to understand that she granted him a reluctant respect. She was a lady, and he caught rats. She would not bring herself to treat him as an equal, which would have made both of them uncomfortable, but she would be more than civil to the dog. That was different, and they both understood it perfectly.
“What is it?” Hester asked, before they should be interrupted again by some business of the day.
He did not prevaricate. They had come to know each other well during the crisis of the autumn. He looked at her earnestly, his brow furrowed. “I dunno as there’s anythin’ yer can do, but I gotta try all I can. We all knows about the Great Stink an ’ow the river smells summink evil, an’ they’re doin’ summink about it, at last. An’ that’s all as it should be.” He shook his head. “But most folks ’oo live aboveground in’t got no idea wot goes on underneath.”
“No,” she agreed with only a faint gnawing of concern. “Should we?”
“If yer gonna go diggin’ around in it wi’ picks an’ shovels an’ great machines, then yeah, yer should.” There was a sudden passion in his voice, and a fear she had not heard before. He had been so strong in the autumn. This was something new, something over which he felt he had no control.
“What sort of thing is there?” she asked. “You mean graveyards and plague pits—that sort of thing?”
“There are, but wot I were thinkin’ of is rivers. There’s springs and streams all over the place. London’s mostly on clay, yer see.” His face was tense, eyes keen. “I learned ’em from me pa. ’E were a tosher. One o’ the best. Knew every river under the city from Battersea ter Greenwich, ’e did, an’ most o’ the wells too. Yer any idea ’ow many wells there is, Miss ’Ester?”
“There must be…” She tried to think and realized she had no idea. “Hundreds, I suppose.”
“I don’t mean where we get water up,” he explained. “I mean them wot’s closed over and goes away secret like.”
“Are there?” She did not know why it troubled him, still less why he should have come to her about it.
He understood and grimaced at his own foolishness. “Thing is, Miss ’Ester, there’s ’undreds o’ navvies workin’ on all this diggin’. ’As bin for years, wot with one tunnel an’ another for sewers, roads, trains, an’ the like. It’s ’ard work an’ it’s dangerous, an’ there’s always bin accidents. Part o’ life. But it’s got worse since all this new diggin’s bin goin’ on. Everyone’s after a bit o’ the profit, an’ it’s all in a terrible ’urry ’cos o’ the typhoid an’ the Big Stink an’ all, an’ Mr. Bazalgette’s new drawings. But it’s gettin’ more dangerous. People are usin’ bigger and bigger machines, an’ goin’ faster all the time ’cos o’ the ’urry, an’ they in’t takin’ the time ter learn proper where all ’em streams an’ springs is.” His face was tight with fear. “Get it wrong an’ clay slips somethin’ ’orrible. We’ve ’ad one or two cave-ins, but I reckon as there’ll be a lot more, an’ worse, if folks don’t take a bit more care, an’ a bit more time.”
She looked at his drawn, tired face and knew that there was more behind his wo
rds than he was able to tell her.
“What is it you think I could do, Mr. Sutton?” she asked. “I don’t know how to help injured workmen. I don’t have the skill. And I certainly don’t have the ear of any person with the influence to make the construction companies take more care.”
His shoulders slumped a little, looking narrower under his plain, dark jacket. She judged him to be in his fifties, but hard work—much of it dangerous and unpleasant, plus many years of poverty—might have taken more of a toll on his strength than she had allowed. He might be younger than that. She remembered how he had helped all of them at the clinic, but most especially her, tenderly and fearlessly. “What would you like me to do?” she asked.
He smiled, realizing she had given in. She hoped profoundly that he did not know why.
“If anyone’d said ter me a year ago as a lady oo’d bin ter the Crimea would take ol’ Squeaky Robinson’s place an’ turn it inter an ’ospital fer tarts off the street,” he answered, “an’ then get other ladies ter cook and clean in it, I’d ’a throwed a bucket o’ water at ’em till they sober’d up. But if anyone can do somethin’ ter get them builders ter be’ave a bit safer, it’s you.” He finished his tea and stood up. “If you can come wi’ me, I can show you the machine’s wot I’m talkin’ about.”
She was startled.
“It’ll be quite safe,” he assured her. “We’ll go ter one o’ ’em that’s open, but yer can think wot it’d be like underneath. Some tunnels is dug down, then covered over. Cut and cover, they call ’em. But some is deep down, like a rat’ole, under the ground all the way.” He shivered very slightly. “It’s ’em that scares me. The engineers might be clever wi’ all kinds o’ machines an’ ideas, but they don’t know ’alf o’ wot’s down there, secret for ’undreds o’ years, twistin’ an’ seepin’.” She felt a chill at the thought, a coldness in the pit of her stomach. The daylight was coming in brighter now through the windows into the scullery. There was a sound of footsteps across the cobbled yard where deliveries were made.
She stood up. “How close will they let me come?”
“Borrer a shawl from one o’ yer patients an’ keep yer eyes down, an’ yer can come right up close wi’ me.”
“I’ll go and speak to Miss Ballinger.”
But it was Claudine she met just outside the kitchen door. She began to explain that she was going to be away for a few hours. The books would have to wait. She was happy enough to stretch out the task as long as she could.
“I heard,” Claudine said gravely, her face puckered into lines of concern. She was unaware of it, but her anger was so fierce that her sense of social class had temporarily ceased to register. “It’s monstrous. If people are being injured by hasty work, we must do what we can to fight it.” Unconsciously she had included herself in the battle. “We can manage perfectly well here. There’s nothing to do but the laundry and the cleaning, and if we can’t manage that, then we need to learn. Just be careful!” This last warning was given with a frown of admonition, as if Claudine were somehow responsible for Hester’s safety.
Hester smiled. “I will,” she promised, aware for the first time that Claudine had become fonder of her than perhaps she herself knew. “Sutton will look after me.”
Claudine grunted. She was not going to admit to trusting Sutton; that would be a step too far.
In spite of there being little wind, it was fiercely cold outside. The narrow streets seemed to hold the ice of the night. Footsteps sounded loud on the stones, and the brittle crack of puddles was sharp in the close air. This was the time of year when people who slept huddled in doorways could be found frozen to death at first light.
She walked beside Sutton, Snoot trotting at their heels, until they came to Farringdon Road and the first omnibus stop. The horses were rough-coated for winter and steamed gently as they stood while passengers climbed off and on. Hester and Sutton went up the winding steps to the upper level, since they were going to the end of the line. Snoot sat on Sutton’s knee, and she envied him the warmth of the little dog’s body.
They talked most of the way because she asked him about the rivers under London. He was enthusiastic to tell her, his face lighting up as he described the hidden streams such as the Walbrook, Tyburn, Counter’s Creek, Stamford Brook, Effra, and most of all the Fleet, whose waters once ran red from the tanneries. He talked of springs such as St. Chad’s, St. Agnes’, St. Bride’s, St. Pancras’ Wells, and Holywell. All had been reputed as sacred at one time or another, and some became spas, like Hampstead Wells and Sadler’s Wells. He knew the underground courses and bridges, some of which were believed to date back to Roman times.
“Walbrook’s as far up as yer could get a boat when the Romans was ’ere,” he said with triumph.
He animatedly recounted earlier travels, including the danger of highwaymen, until they reached their stop.
They alighted into a busy street, workmen crowding around a peddler selling sandwiches and hot pies. They were obliged to slip out over the gutter onto the cobbles to pass them, and were nearly run down by a cartload of vegetables pulled by a horse whose breath was steam in the air.
At the corner half a dozen men huddled around a brazier, talking and laughing, tin mugs of tea in their hands.
“Not sure as I like so much change,” Sutton said dubiously. “Still, can’t be ’elped.”
Hester did not argue. They had only a few yards further to go before she saw the vast crater of the new tunnel. It would carry not only the sewer but beside it the gas pipes for the houses that had such luxuries. Skeletons of woodwork for cranes and derricks poked above it like fingers at the sky. There was a faint noise from far within of grinding and crushing, scraping, slithering, and the occasional shouts and the rattle of wheels.
Hester stood on the freezing earth and felt the freshening wind from the tide on the river, with its smell of salt and sewage. She turned to her left and saw the roofs of houses in the near distance, and closer, the broken walls where they had been flattened to make way for the new works. To the right it was the same, streets cut in half as if they had been chopped by a giant axe. She looked at Sutton and saw the pity in his face, as well as the fury he was trying to suppress. To build the new they had broken so much of the old.
“Keep close and don’t meet no one’s eyes,” he said quietly. “We’ll just walk through like we got business. There’s ’em as knows me.” And he led the way, making a path through the rubble and keeping wide of the groups of men. Every now and again he put out his hand to steady her, and she was grateful for it because the rubble was crumbling and icy. Snoot trotted along at their heels.
There was a thick fence around the actual pit in which the men worked, possibly to keep out the idle and to prevent the careless from falling in.
“Got ter go round the end there.” Sutton pointed and then led her through a shifting, slithering wasteland of debris. The line of pipes was easy enough to trace with the eye by the wreckage that lay in its path. Twice they were stopped and questioned as to who they were and if they had any business there, but Sutton answered for them both.
She kept silent and followed him patiently. At last—her feet sore and her boots and skirt splattered—she reached the point below which the men were actually working by flares at the face of the tunnel. The earth was excavated deeper than she had expected. She was close to the edge of the drop, and a feeling of vertigo overcame her for a moment as she stared down almost a hundred feet to the brickworks at the bottom of the abyss. She could quite clearly see the floor of what would be the new sewer, and the arching brick sides already laid and cemented. There was scaffolding over it holding the walls apart all the way up. Here and there other pipes crossed it. Fifty yards away, well on the other side, a steam engine hissed and thumped, driving the chains that held heavy buckets and scoops to draw up and empty the rubble and broken brick.
She turned and met Sutton’s eyes. He pointed down to where she could see men below, foreshortened to funny
little movements of hands and shoulders. They walked, pushing barrows. Others swung pikes or heaved on shovels of soil and rock.
“Look.” Sutton directed her eyes towards the walls on the far side. The earth itself was held firm by planks of heavy wood, supported by crossbeams every few yards. Then she followed Sutton’s gaze and saw the water seeping through—just a dribble here and there, or a bulge in the wood where the boards had been strained and were coming away.
On the bank opposite, stokers were keeping the great steam engine going. She could hear the wheeze and thump of its pistons and smell the steam, the oil.
She was aware of Sutton watching her. She tried to imagine what it would be like to work down in that cleft in the earth, seeing nothing but a slit of sky above you and knowing you couldn’t get out.
“Where’s the way up?” she asked almost involuntarily.
“ ’Alf a mile away,” he answered quietly. “All right ter walk ter, if yer in no ’urry. Nasty if yer need ter move quickish—like if ’em sides spring a leak.”
“A leak? You mean a stream…or something? You don’t mean just rain?” The picture of that bulging wall giving way filled her mind—a jet of water gushing out, not just dribbling as it was now. Would it fill the bottom? Enough to drown them? Of course it would! Who could swim in a crevasse like that, with freezing water coming down on top of you?
“That’s a sewer,” he said quietly, standing close to her. “The sewers o’ London takes everythin’, all the waste from all the ’ouses an’ middens in the ’ole city, an’ from the sinks an’ gutters an’ overflows everywhere. If yer a tosher or a ganger, yer know the tides an’ all the rivers an’ springs, an’ keep an eye ter the rain, ’cos if yer don’t, yer’ll not last long. An’ o’ course there’s the rats. Never go underground alone. Slip and fall, an’ the rats’ll ’ave yer. Strip a man ter the bone if yer unlucky an’ fetch up where they can reach yer. ’Undreds o’ thousands o’ ’em down there, there are.”