“Corrupt?” Pitt could not help asking. He had not meant to, but the words were out before he guarded them.
Saul shook his head. “You’re really not from around here, are you!”
Pitt said nothing.
“There’s all sorts of things going on,” Saul continued gravely. “You just keep your head down, mind your own business and look after your own. If gentlemen come down here from up west, you don’t see them, don’t know them. Understand?”
“You mean after women?” Pitt was surprised. There were plenty of better-class prostitutes from the Haymarket to the park and anywhere else. No one had need to come this way where it was dark, dirty and quite possibly dangerous as well.
“And other things.” Saul bit his lip, his eyes anxious. “Mostly things you shouldn’t ask. Like I said, better you don’t know.”
Pitt’s mind raced. Was Saul talking about private vice or the plans of insurrection that Narraway feared?
“If it’s going to affect me, it’s my business,” Pitt argued.
“It won’t, if you look the other way.” Saul’s face was grave; the urgency of his advice was too vivid to deny.
“Dynamiters affect everyone,” Pitt said quietly, afraid the moment he had said it that he had gone too far.
Saul was startled. “Dynamiters! I’m talking about gentlemen from up west who drive around Spitalfields at night in big, black coaches and leave the devil’s business behind them.” His voice trembled. “You tend to your work, run your errands and look after your own, and you’ll be all right. If the police ask you about anything, you don’t know. You didn’t hear. Better still, you weren’t there!”
Pitt did not argue any further, and that evening as he sat over the table with the last of the food, his attention was taken up by a friend of Isaac’s coming to the door bruised and bleeding, his clothes torn.
“Samuel, whatever happened to you?” Leah said in dismay, starting up from her chair as Isaac led him in. “You look like you were run over by a carriage.” She looked at him with concern puckering her face, judging what she should do to help him.
“Had a bit of trouble with a bunch of local men,” Samuel answered, dabbing a bloodstained handkerchief to his lip and wincing as he tried to smile.
“Here! Don’t do that,” Leah ordered. “Let me look at it. Isaac, fetch me some water and ointment.”
“Did they rob you?” Isaac asked without moving to obey.
Samuel shrugged. “I’m alive. It could be worse.”
“How much?” Isaac demanded.
“Never mind how much,” Leah said sharply. “We’ll deal with that afterwards. Fetch me some water and the ointment. The man’s in pain! And he’s bleeding all over his shirt. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of good cloth?”
Pitt knew where the pump was, and the ewer. He went out of the back door and came back five minutes later with the ewer full of water. How clean it was he had no idea.
He found Leah and Isaac together, heads bent, talking quietly Samuel was sitting back in a chair, his eyes closed. The conversation stopped the moment Pitt came in.
“Ah, good, good,” Isaac said quickly, taking the ewer. “Thank you very much.” He set it down and poured about a pint into a clean pan and put it on the stove. Leah already had the ointment.
“It’s too much,” Leah demanded, her voice low and fierce, her fingers clenched on the jar. “If you give all that this time, then what about next time? And there will be a next time, never mistake it!”
“We’ll deal with next time when it happens,” Isaac said firmly. “God will provide.”
Leah let out a snort of impatience. “He’s already provided you with brains! Use them.” She moved fractionally to place her back to Pitt. “It’s getting worse, and you can see that as well as anyone,” she urged. “With Catholics and Protestants at each other’s throats, and dynamiters all over the place, each one crazier than the last, and now talk about blowing up the sugar factory …”
Samuel sat patiently and silently between them. Pitt leaned against the dresser.
“No one’s going to blow up the sugar factory!” Isaac said tensely, with a warning glance at her.
“Oh? You know that, do you?” she challenged him, her eyebrows arched, eyes wide.
“Why would they do such a thing?” He kept his tone calm.
“They need a reason?” she demanded with amazement. She lifted her shoulders dramatically. “They’re anarchists. They hate everybody.”
“That’s got nothing to do with us,” he pointed out. “We look after our own.”
“They blow up the sugar factory, it’ll have to do with everyone!” she retorted.
“Enough, Leah!” he said, finality in his tone. Now it was an order. “Look after Samuel. I’ll find him some money to tide him over. Everyone else’ll help. Just do your part.”
She stared at him solemnly for several seconds, on the edge of further argument, then something in his face deterred her, and without saying anything further she obeyed.
The water reached the boil, and Pitt carried it over so she could minister to Samuel.
An hour later, in the privacy of the room Isaac used to work on his books, Pitt offered him a contribution of a few shillings towards the fund for Samuel. He was unreasonably delighted when it was accepted. It was a mark of
