the end when it burst open. She found herself looking up at a woman who was well over six foot tall and with the broad, heavy shoulders of a navvy. Her hair was frizzy and of a fading auburn color. Her features were powerful, and had probably even been handsome thirty years ago in her youth. By now time and hard living had coarsened them, and sun and wind had roughened her skin. Fierce blue eyes regarded Hester with contempt.
“What do you want here, lady?” she asked in a soft, slightly sibilant voice. It was a little high, and did not sound as if it could possibly have come from her enormous body. There was contempt in her use of the word lady.
Hester bit back the tart response she would like to have made.
“Miss Nisbet?” she asked politely.
“What of it? ’Oo are you?”
“Hester Monk. I run a clinic for street women on the other side of the river. Portpool Lane,” Hester answered loudly, and without backing away.
“Do you now?” Agatha Nisbet’s eyes looked her up and down coolly. “Wot d’yer want with me, then?”
Hester decided to plunge in. Niceties were going to get her nowhere. “A better source of opium than I have at the moment,” she answered.
“Yer mean cheaper?” Agatha said with a curl of her lip.
“I mean more reliable,” Hester corrected her. “Cheaper would be good, but I believe that as a rule you get what you pay for.” She gave a slight shrug. “Unless you’re very new to it, and then you get less. There are plenty of dealers who would happily shortchange the sick.” She looked Agatha up and down equally frankly. “I should imagine they don’t do it to you a second time.”
Agatha smiled, showing large, strong, unusually white teeth. “Any sense an’ they don’t do it the first time neither. Word gets round.”
“So what you have is as reliable as it can be?” Hester reaffirmed.
“Yeah. But it’ll cost yer some.”
“Did Dr. Lambourn come here?” she asked quickly.
Agatha’s eyes widened. “He’s dead.”
Hester smiled as artlessly as she could manage. “And now maybe there won’t be a bill through Parliament to regulate the sale of opium because of it, at least not for a number of years.”
Agatha’s eyes narrowed.
Hester felt a sudden chill of fear, and realized that perhaps she had made a mistake, even put her own life in danger. She must not let this big woman see her unease. “Which will give me a little more latitude,” she said aloud. She was certain that her voice was husky.
Agatha stood motionless, one hand on her hip. Hester could not help noticing the size of her fist, the shining, bony knuckles.
“An’ what is it you mean by that, exactly?” Agatha asked. Her voice was so soft, had Hester not been able to see her, she might have thought she was listening to a child.
Her mouth was dry and she could not swallow. Her throat tightened. She gulped air. “That I can’t do my job if I can’t get supplies,” she answered. “The men in government don’t think of that, do they? Rich men can buy opium to give them nice dreams, but people in the streets and in the docks, people who are beaten or broken, get what they can, where they can. Do I have to explain that to you?” She allowed the final question to be tinged with a note of disgust.
Agatha’s large body relaxed and she allowed the ghost of a smile into her face. “Want a cup o’ tea?” she asked, stepping back a bit so Hester could come into the room. “I got the best. Get it from China special.”
Hester blinked. “Doesn’t all tea come from China?” She followed Agatha into the room, which was surprisingly tidy, even clean. There was a slight smell of smoke and hot metal from the wood-burning stove in the corner, very like those she had seen in hospital wards in her nursing days. There was a kettle on the center of the top, steaming gently.
Hester closed the door behind her and followed Agatha inside.
Agatha rolled her eyes. “Most, though folks reckon it’ll do well in India soon. This is the best. Delicate. Know a lot, the Chinese.”
In spite of herself, Hester was interested. She sat in the seat that Agatha offered her, and a few moments later accepted the cup of steaming, fragrant pale yellow tea, without milk. It had a sharp, clean fragrance she was unused to. She glanced around the walls and saw on one shelf at least thirty books in various stages of disrepair. Clearly they had been very well read indeed. On the opposite wall were glass jars with all manner of dried leaves, herbs, roots, and powders in them.
She forced her attention back to the huge woman now sitting opposite her, watching and waiting.
Hester sipped the tea again. It was quite different from any she was familiar with, but she thought she could learn to like it. “Thank you,” she said aloud.
Agatha shrugged and raised her own cup.
“How did you find out about this tea?” Hester asked, sipping it again.
“Plenty o’ Chinese in London,” Agatha replied. “They know a lot about medicine, poor devils. Showed me some.” She looked up quickly at Hester, sharp-eyed. It was a warning that her secrets were precious. She had won them hard and was not going to share them without a price.
Hester had a degree of respect for that. Her own skills had been learned on the battlefield. “I wish we’d had enough opium in the Crimea,” she said quietly. “Would have helped a bit, especially when we had to amputate.”
Agatha looked at her carefully, eyes narrowed. “Do that a lot, did yer?”
“Enough,” Hester replied; memory brought it back to her, as if she were crouching in the mud and desolation of the battlefield, trying to block the cries out of her mind and concentrate only on the silent, ashen face in front of her, the eyes sunken in shock and pain.
Agatha nodded slowly. “Don’t do to go over it,” she said. “Drive yerself mad. Do yer get ’em now, people with the worst pain, torn-open guts, smashed bones an’ the like?”
“Not often.” Hester took the chance she had been hoping for. “Sometimes. Stones that won’t pass, or torn open after a bad birth. Terrible beatings. That’s why I need good opium.”
Agatha hesitated as if making a difficult decision.
Hester waited. Seconds ticked by.
Agatha took a deep breath. “I can get yer the best opium,” she said, her eyes fixed on Hester’s. “Good price. But I can do better than that. Eatin’ it’s better than nothin’, not as good as smokin’ it. But there’s better still. Scottish man made this needle where you can stick it straight into the vein, right wherever the pain’s worst. Fifteen years ago, or more. I can get you one of them needles.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Hester said with a sudden lurch of excitement. “Can you teach me how to use it? And how much to give?”
Agatha nodded. “Have to be careful, mind. You can kill someone easy, if you get it wrong. And worse than that, if you give it to them more than a few times, they get so they want it every day, can’t do without it.”
Hester frowned, her heart beating faster. “How do you stop that from happening?” Her voice was a little hoarse.
“You make it less, then you stop them getting it at all. They learn. Least, most do. Some don’t, an’ they go on taking it, one way or another for the rest o’ their lives. More an’ more. Makes them as sells it rich.” The look of fury on her face made Hester wince.
“Is there another way to deal with pain?” Hester asked softly, knowing the answer.
“No.” Agatha let the one word fall into the silence.
“Is that what Dr. Lambourn was asking about?” Hester asked. “Needles?”
“Not at first,” Agatha replied. “ ’E were mostly on about deaths of children ’cos women gave ’em medicines they don’t know what’s in. He didn’t get nothin’ out of it one way or the other.”
“You talked with him?” Hester pressed.
“Course I did. I told you, even if the government’d taken his report, it wouldn’t ’ave made no difference to me nor you. An’ they didn’t anyway, so what do you care?” Her eyes were sharp, clever, watching Hester’s face.
“But he asked about addiction to smoking opium?” Hester pressed again.
