The tears ran down her face, and she took several seconds to control them and to stop her breath from coming in gasps and choking her. He was going to help. He had said
He rubbed the heel of his hand across his cheek. “We gotter stop that at any price at all,” he said hoarsely. “If folks know, there’d be some as’d mob this place, others as’d put a torch ter it, burn yer down, ’ouse an’ everyone in it! It’d be terrible.”
“It would be better than having the plague spread throughout London,” she pointed out.
“Miss ’Ester. .”
“I know! I’ve no intention of being burned alive! But how can we keep everyone here? How do I stop Claudine from going home if she wants to, or Flo from leaving, or anyone who gets better. . if they do?” Her voice was wavering again. “How do I get food in, or water, or coal. . or anything?”
He said nothing for several seconds.
Hester waited. The laundry was strangely silent. It smelled of fat and potash and the steam that filled it during the day. The one candle with its yellow circle of light made the darkness seem endless.
“We gotta make certain no one leaves,” Sutton said finally. “I got friends as’ll ’elp, but it won’t be nice.” He looked at her intently. “We gotta do it fer real, Miss ’Ester. No one gotta leave, no matter wot. In’t no room fer ’sorry’ in this. If yer right, an’ that’s wot she ’ad, then better some dead ’ere fer tryin’ ter leave than ’alf o’ Europe dead ’cos we let ’em.”
“What can we do?” she asked.
“I got friends wi’ dogs, not nice little ratters like Snoot ’ere, but pit bulls as’d tear yer throat out. I’ll ask ’em ter patrol ’round the place, front an’ back. They’ll make sure fer certain as no one leaves. An’ I’ll get fellers as’ll bring food an’ water an’ coal, o’ course. An’ we’ll spread the word as the clinic is full, so yer can’t take nobody else in, no matter wot’s ’appened to ’em.”
“We can’t pay them,” she pointed out. “And we can’t tell them why!”
“They’ll do it ’cos I ask ’em,” he answered. “Yer doin’ enough for folks ’round ’ere. An’ I’ll tell ’em it’s cholera. That’ll do.”
She nodded. “Would. . would we really set the dogs on anyone? I mean. . I don’t think I. .”
“Yer won’t ’ave ter,” he answered her. “I’ll do it.”
“Would you?” she whispered, her throat tight.
“We gotter,” he answered. “One death, quick. In’t that better than lettin’ it get out?”
She tried to say yes, but her mouth was so dry the word was a croak.
There was a sound outside the door and a moment later it opened. Mercy Louvain stood in the entrance, a candlestick in her hand.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said a little awkwardly. “But do you need Claudine to stay tonight?”
Hester glanced at Sutton, then back at Mercy. “Yes,” she said hoarsely. She swallowed. “Sorry, I’m so tired my voice is going. Yes, please. Don’t let her go home.”
“She won’t mind, I don’t think,” Mercy answered. “Are you all right? Do we have a lot of rats?”
“Not bad,” Sutton replied, climbing to his feet. “But we’ll get rid of ’em, don’t worry. I just need ter go an’ get a few more things done, see a couple o’ friends, like, then I’ll be back. Yer jus’ get yerselves a cup o’ tea, or summink. Don’t do nothin’ till I come back.” That was said firmly, like an order.
“No, of course not,” Hester agreed. “We’ll just. . get everybody supper. Thank you.”
Sutton left, and Hester did as she had said she would, measuring out the food carefully; now it was even more precious than before. She was conscious that Claudine and Mercy were both watching her with surprise and a shadow of anxiety. She could not afford to say anything to them. She was deceiving them by silence, but she had no choice. She felt guilty, angry, and above all suffocatingly afraid.
It seemed like hours until Sutton came back. Hester was in the front room. She had given up even pretending that she was not waiting for him. Everyone else had gone to look after the seriously ill, or in Bessie’s case, to take a few hours’ sleep before relieving Claudine in the small hours of the morning.
“I got ’em,” Sutton said simply. “They’re outside, dogs an’ all. I got a sack o’ potatoes an’ some bones. I’ll get cabbages an’ onions an’ the like from Toddy same as usual.”
“Thank you.” Suddenly she realized what her own imprisonment was going to mean. Perhaps she would never leave this place. Worse than anything else at all, she would never see Monk again. There would be no chance for good-byes, or to tell him how he had given passion, laughter, and joy to her life. In his companionship she had become who she was designed to be. All the best in her, the happiest was made real.
“Can you take a letter to my husband. . so he knows why I don’t come home? And why he can’t come here. .”
“I’ll tell ’im,” Sutton answered.
“And you’d better tell Margaret, Miss Ballinger, too. She can’t come back. Anyway, we will need her help raising money even more than before. Make her see that, won’t you!”
He nodded. His face was sad and bleak. “Yer gonna tell ’em ’ere?”
She hesitated.
“Yer gotta,” he said simply. “They can’t leave. If they try, they’ll set the dogs on ’em too. That in’t a death as yer’d wish on anyone.”
“No. . I know.”
“No you don’t, Miss ’Ester, not unless yer seen anyone taken down by dogs.”
“I’ll tell them!” She stood up slowly and walked over to the door as if she were pushing herself against a tide. She reached it and called out into the passage beyond. “Claudine! Mercy! Flo! Someone please waken Bessie as well, and Squeaky. I need you all in here. I’m sorry, but you have to come.”
It was ten minutes before they were all there, Bessie still dazed with sleep. It was Mercy who first realized something terrible had happened. She sat down hard on one of the chairs, her face white. She looked as if she had not eaten or slept properly in days. “What is it?” she said quietly.
There was no point in stretching out the fear which already sat thick and heavy in the room.
“Ruth Clark is dead,” Hester said, looking at the incomprehension in their faces. They saw nothing beyond a small loss in the midst of others. Most of them had not liked her. Hester drew in a shivering breath. “She did not die of pneumonia. She died of plague. . ” She watched their faces. One of them knew that was a lie. Had that person any idea at all of the deeper, infinitely more terrible truth than murder? She saw nothing except the slow struggle to understand, to grasp the enormity and the true horror of it.
“Plague?” Claudine said in bewilderment. “What sort of plague? What do you mean?”
“What the ’ell are you talking about?” Squeaky demanded.
“Bubonic plague,” Hester replied. “In some cases it starts as pneumonic congestion in the chest. Some people recover, not many. Some die with it in that stage. In others it goes on to the bubonic-swellings in the armpits and the groin that go black. We call it the Black Death.”
Flo stood motionless, her mouth open.
Squeaky turned white as a sheet.
Claudine fainted.
Mercy caught her and pushed her head between her knees, holding her until she struggled back to consciousness, gasping and choking.
Bessie sat blinking, her breath rasping in her throat.
“No one can leave, in case we carry it out of here to the rest of London,” Hester went on. “No one at all, at any time or for any reason. Sutton has already arranged for friends of his, with pit bull terriers, to patrol outside. If anyone leaves, they will set the dogs on them. Please believe that they will really do that. Whatever happens, we cannot allow the disease to spread. In the fourteenth century it killed nearly half of Europe-man, woman, and child. It changed the world. Our few lives are nothing; we must stop that from happening again.”
“ ’Ow are we gonna live?” Squeaky asked furiously, as if it were some kind of reason to deny it all.
“Other people will bring us food, water, and coal,” Hester replied. “They will leave them outside, and we will go and fetch them. We will never meet. We have told them it’s cholera, and they must never ever think differently.”
Mercy rubbed her hands up over her face, sweeping her hair back. “If anyone outside gets to know. .”
