“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, soldiers 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 pesthouses 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.
Chapter 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
