Slaves of Obsession

4

HESTER HAD scarcely seen Monk over the last two days. He had come home late and exhausted, too worn out even to eat, and had washed and gone to bed almost straightaway. He had risen early, eaten a solitary breakfast of tea and toast, and been gone again before eight. He had told her nothing, except that he had no hope of catching up with Breeland, who must be far out into the Atlantic by now.

She could do little to help, except not ask questions he could not answer and keep the kettle singing softly on the hob.

When he came home from Judith Alberton’s a little after nine o’clock on the second evening she knew immediately that something vital had changed. He was still white-faced with distress, and so weary he moved slowly, as if his body ached. His mouth was dry, and his first glance, after greeting her, was at the kettle. He sat down and loosed his bootlaces and was obviously waiting to talk. Impatiently his eyes followed her as she made him tea, urging her to hurry. And yet he did not begin until she brought the pot, cup and milk on a tray. Whatever he had to say was not simple, nor unmixed good or bad. She found herself hurrying for her own sake as much as his.

He began by telling her about following the trail of evidence down the river as far as Greenwich, and the inevitable conclusion that the guilty had escaped. The purpose of stealing the guns was to get them to America. Why would Breeland waste even an hour?

But she knew from his face, the urgency in his voice in spite of his words, that there was something else, something further to say.

She waited impatiently.

He was looking at her as if trying to weigh in his mind her reactions.

“What is it?” she demanded. “What else?”

“Mrs. Alberton wants us to go to America and do everything we can to bring Merrit home—regardless of the circumstances—or her own wishes.”

“Us? Who is us?” she said instantly.

His smile was tired, wry. “You and me.”

“You … and me?” She was incredulous. “Go to America?” Even as she said it she could see a glimmer of sense, tiny, a spark of light in the darkness.

“If I find her,” he explained, “if I can persuade her to come back, or must bring her by force, I shall need help from someone else. And I shall need someone to chaperon her. I can’t arrive in England alone with her.” He was watching her as if he could read not just her words but her thoughts, and the emotions which lay deeper than that, perhaps what she refused to think.

The idea was overwhelming, even with the reasoning that sounded so eminently sensible. To America! Across the Atlantic to a country already in armed conflict with itself. No word of pitched battles had reached England, but without a miracle, it would be only a matter of time before it became war.

Yet she also saw in his eyes that he had made his own decision already, not in his mind, perhaps, but deeper than that. He had thought of plans, ways to persuade her. Was it for the adventure of it, the challenge, for a sense of justice, of anger for Daniel Alberton, for the arrogance of Breeland? Or out of a misplaced guilt, because it was Daniel Alberton who had asked him to help, and he had failed? It hardly mattered that it had been Breeland and not the blackmailer who had ruined him.

Or was it pity for Judith Alberton, who, in one dreadful night, had lost everything she loved most?

It was for Judith that Hester answered.

“All right. But are you sure Merrit didn’t have anything to do with it, even unwittingly? I think she was very deeply in love with Breeland. She thought of him as some kind of warrior saint.” She frowned. “I suppose you are sure it was Breeland? It couldn’t possibly have been the blackmailer … could it? After all, the price of his silence was guns.”

“No.” He lowered his eyes, as if protecting some inner hurt. “I found Breeland’s watch in the warehouse yard. It couldn’t have been there long; there was just a little mud on it, near where the cart tracks were. It would have been seen by anyone in daylight, and picked up. And since Alberton refused to sell him the guns, he would have no legitimate reason to be in the yard.”

She felt a dizzy sort of coldness sweep through her.

“Breeland’s watch?” she repeated his words. “What does it look like?”

“Look like?” He was puzzled. “A watch! A round, gold watch that you wear on a chain.”

“How do you know it was his?” she persisted, knowing argument was futile but still compelled to try.

“Because it had his name on it, and the date.”

“What date?”

A flicker of impatience crossed his face. He was too tired and too hurt for quibbles. “What does it matter?”

“What date?” she insisted.

He was staring at her; his shoulders sagged with exhaustion and disappointment. “June 1, 1848. Why? Why are you making an issue over it, Hester?”

She had to tell him. It was not something she could conceal, allow him to go to America unknowing.

“It wasn’t Breeland who dropped it,” she said very quietly. “He gave it to Merrit for a keepsake. She showed it to me the evening we had dinner there. She said she would never let it out of her sight.”

He looked at her as if he barely comprehended what she was saying.

“I’m sorry,” she added. “But she must have been there, whether it was willingly or not.” Another thought occurred to her. “Unless he took the watch from her and dropped it himself, on purpose.…”

“Why on earth would he do that?”

But she saw in his eyes that he had thought of the answer before she said it.

“To incriminate her … so we wouldn’t go after him … a sort of warning that he had her with him … a hostage.”

He sat silently, turning it over in his mind.

She waited. There was no point in detailing the possibilities. He could think of them all as well as she could, perhaps better. She poured more tea for both of them, well steeped, and now not quite so hot.

“Mrs. Alberton knows he might hold her hostage,” he said at last. “She wants us to try anyway.”

“And if she went willingly?” she asked. It had to be faced.

“She knows Merrit is hotheaded and idealistic and acts before she thinks, but she doesn’t believe that in any circumstances whatever she would condone murder.” Now he was looking at her, searching her eyes to read in them if she agreed.

“I hope she’s right,” she answered.

“You don’t think so?” he said quickly.

“I don’t know. But what else could any woman say of her own child?”

“Do you want me to refuse?”

“No.” The answer slipped out before she had time to weigh it, surprising her more than it did him. “No,” she repeated. “If it were me, I think I would rather have the truth than live with hope of the best, and fear of the worst, all my life. If I loved someone, I would like to think I would have the faith to put it to the test. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I think, or you. It’s what Mrs. Alberton wants.”

“She wants us to go to America and bring Merrit back, willingly or unwillingly, and Breeland too, if we can.”

She was startled. “Breeland too!”

“Yes. He’s guilty of triple murder. He should stand trial and answer for it.”

“That’s all?” In spite of herself there was a lift of desperate sarcasm in her voice. “Just that?”

He smiled, his eyes wide and steady. “Just that. Shall we?”

She took a deep breath. “Yes … we shall.”

The following day, Sunday, June 29, Hester packed the few things it would be necessary for them to take, almost entirely clothes and toiletries. Monk returned to Tavistock Square to give Judith Alberton their answer. It was a sort of relief to know that at least it was the one she wished.

He found her alone in the study, not concealing the fact that she had been waiting for him. She was wearing black unrelieved by any ornament and it accentuated the pallor of her skin, but her hair still had the same warmth of color, and the sun streaming through the window caught the brightness of it.

She wished him good morning with the usual formal phrases, but her eyes never left his and the question was in them, betraying her emotion.

“I spoke to my wife,” he said as soon as she had resumed her seat and he had sat opposite the desk. “She is willing to go and to do all we can to bring Merrit back here.” He saw her relax, almost smile. “But she was concerned that Merrit may be implicated in the crime,” he went on, “even by association, and that it may, after all, not be what you wish to happen. That would be beyond our control.”

“I know that, Mr. Monk,” she said levelly. “I believe in her innocence. I am prepared to take that risk. And I am perfectly aware that I am taking it for her, as well as for myself.” She bit her lip. Her hands on the desktop were slender, white-knuckled. She wore no jewelry but her wedding ring. “If she were older, perhaps I would not, but she is still a child, in spite of her opinion to the contrary. And I am prepared to live with the fact that she may hate me for it. I have thought about it all night, and I believe absolutely that in spite of the risks of coming back to England, the dangers if she remains in America with Breeland are greater, and there will be no one else to fight for her there.”

She lowered her eyes from his. “Apart from that, she must face what Breeland has done, and if she had a part in it, however small or unintended, she must face that also. One cannot build happiness upon lies … as terrible as this.”

There was nothing for him to say. He could not argue, and even to agree seemed somehow impertinent, as if he were qualified to share in her pain. That would belittle it.

“Then we shall go as soon as arrangements can be made,” he replied. “My wife is already packing cases.”

“I am very grateful, Mr. Monk.” She smiled at him faintly. “I have the money here, and the name of the steamship company. I am afraid it is in Liverpool. That is where they sail most frequently for New York … every Wednesday, to be precise. It will require haste to catch the next ship, since this is Sunday. But it can be done, and I beg you not to delay. In the hope that you would accept, I telegraphed the steamship company yesterday reserving a cabin for you.” She bit her lip. “I can have it canceled.”

“We shall go tomorrow morning,” he promised.

“Thank you. I also have money for your use while in America. I do not know how long it will take you to accomplish your task, but there should be sufficient for a month. It is all I can supply at such short notice. My husband’s affairs are naturally not disposed of yet. I have sold some jewelry of my own.”

“A month should be more than enough,” he said quickly. “I hope we shall find her long before that. And either she will be eager to come home, if she was not aware of Breeland’s acts or if he is holding her against her will, or, if she is not, then we shall have to take her as soon as possible, in case Breeland finds a way to make it more difficult for us. Whatever the circumstances, these will be adequate funds.”

“Good.” She passed a large bundle of money across the desk. There was no hesitation in her, as if it had not crossed her mind that he would be anything but honest.

“I should sign a receipt for this, Mrs. Alberton,” he prompted.

“Oh! Oh, yes, of course.” She reached for a piece of notepaper and picked up a pen. She dipped it in the inkwell and wrote, then passed the paper to him to sign.

He did so, then gave it back.

She blotted it and put it away in the top drawer of the desk without glancing at it. He could have written anything.

There was a knock on the door, and a moment later it opened.

“Yes?” she said with a frown.

“Mr. Trace is here, ma’am,” the butler said anxiously. “He is eager to speak to Mr. Monk.”

Her brow smoothed out. The mention of Trace’s name seemed not to displease her. “Ask him to come in,” she requested, then turned to Monk. “I trust you are agreeable?”

“Of course.” He was curious that Trace should still be in touch with the Alberton household, since the guns were now gone and he must be aware of it.

Trace came in a moment later, noticing Monk, but only just. His attention was entirely upon Judith. The distress in his face was too palpable to be feigned. He did not ask her how she was, or express sympathy, but it was naked to read in his face with its dark eyes and curious, sensitive asymmetry. Monk was startled by it. When Trace spoke, his words were ordinary, no more than the formalities anyone might have offered.

“Good morning, Mrs. Alberton. I am very sorry to intrude on you, especially now. But I am most concerned not to miss Mr. Monk. Mr. Casbolt told me of your intention to employ him to go after Breeland, and I intend to go also.” This time he looked at Monk for a moment, as if to ascertain that he had accepted the task. He was apparently satisfied.

Judith was startled. “Do you? It was not so much after Breeland, but to bring back my daughter that I wish Mr. Monk to go. But of course if he could bring him back also that would be most desirable.”

“I will help any way I can,” Trace said intently, his voice charged with emotion. “Breeland deserves to hang, but of course that is far less important than saving Miss Alberton from him, or from further grief.” He stood, slender and very straight, a little self-conscious of his hands, as if he were not quite sure what to do with them. He sought her company, and yet he was not comfortable in it.

It was at that moment, watching the tension in him, the earnestness in his face, hearing the edge to his voice, that Monk realized Philo Trace was in love with Judith. Possibly his offer had very little to do with the guns.

Monk was not sure if he wanted him along or not. He would rather have had complete autonomy. He was used to working alone, or with someone who was junior to him and whom he knew.

On the other hand, Trace was American and might still have friends in Washington. Certainly he would know the land, and would be familiar with transport by both train and ship. More important still, he would know the manners and customs of the people and be able to facilitate events where Monk might find it impossible.

He studied the man as he stood in the sunlit room, his face turned to Judith, waiting for her decision, not Monk’s. He looked more of a poet than a soldier, but there was a self-discipline in him under the charm, and the grace of his slender body suggested a very considerable strength.

“Thank you,” Judith accepted. “For my part I should be very grateful, but you must counsel with Mr. Monk whether you join with him or not. I have given him the freedom to do as he thinks best, and I think that is the only circumstance in which he could undertake such a task.”

Trace looked at Monk, the question in his eyes. “I fully intend to go, sir,” he said gravely. “Whether I go with you or just behind you is a matter for your choice. But you will need me, that I swear. You think we speak the same language and so you will be able to make yourself understood. That is only partly true.” A shadow of humor crossed his face, sad and self-mocking. “I have discovered that to my cost over here. We use the same words, but we don’t always mean the same things by them. You don’t know America, the state we are in at the present. You can’t understand the issues.…”

A sudden uncontrollable pain pulled at his lips. “No one does, least of all ourselves. We see our way of life dying. We don’t understand. Change frightens us, and because we are frightened we are angry, and we make bad judgments. A civil war is a terrible thing.”

Sitting here in this quiet, sunlit withdrawing room, bright and furnished with the proceeds of munitions, Monk was acutely aware that he had never seen war at all. At least, not as far as he remembered. He knew poverty, violence, a little of disease, a great deal about crime, but war as a madness that consumed nations, leaving nothing untouched, was unknown to him.

He made the decision instantly. “Thank you, Mr. Trace. With the provision that it is agreed I make my own judgments, and that I am free to take your advice or to leave it, I should welcome your company and such assistance as you are willing to give.”

Trace relaxed, a little of the weariness easing from his face. “Good,” he said succinctly. “Then we shall leave tomorrow morning. In case I do not see you at the station or on the train, we shall meet at the steamship company offices in Water Street in Liverpool. The next sailing is on the first tide Wednesday morning. I promise I shall not let you down, sir.”

Monk and Hester set out for the Euston Square station in the morning. It was a strange feeling, and for Hester it brought back memories of leaving seven years before to go to the Crimea, also not knowing what she was facing, what the land would be like, the climate, the taste and smell of the air. Then it had also been with a mission filling her mind. She had been so much younger in a dozen ways, not just her face and her body, but immeasurably so in experience and understanding of people and of how events and circumstances can change one. She had been certain of far more, convinced she understood herself.

Now she knew enough to have some grasp of the magnitude of what she did not know and of how easy it was to make mistakes, particularly when you were convinced you had it right.

She had no idea what waited for them in Washington. She did not know if they had any chance of succeeding in bringing Merrit Alberton back to England. The only things she was certain of were that they could not refuse to try and, most important of all, this time she was going with Monk, not alone. She was no longer young enough to be sure about much. She had learned by experience her own fallibility. But sitting in the train as it belched steam and lurched forward out of the vast arching canopy of the station, she knew she had a sense of companionship that was different from every other journey. She and Monk might quarrel over all sorts of things, great and trifling, and frequently did. Their tastes and views differed, but she knew as deeply as she knew anything at all that he would never willfully hurt her and that his loyalty was absolute. As the steam from the engine drifted past the window and they emerged into daylight, she found she was smiling.

“What is it?” he asked, looking across at her. They were passing gray rooftops, narrow streets with back alleys facing each other, grimy and cramped.

She did not want to sound sentimental. It would certainly not be good for him to tell him the truth. She must say something sensible and convincing. He could read her far too well to believe any hasty evasion.

“I think it is a good thing Mr. Trace is coming also. I am sure he will be here, even though we haven’t seen him. Do you think we should tell him about the watch?”

“No,” he said immediately. “I would rather wait until we hear from Merrit what her account is of that night.”

She frowned. “Do you believe Breeland could have taken it from her and dropped it deliberately? That would be a very cold and terrible thing to do.”

“It would be effective,” he answered, his face registering his contempt. “It would be an excellent warning that he will stop at nothing, if we pursue him.”

“Except that he did not know we were aware he had given it to her,” she argued. “The police would see only his name on it. Judith would not tell them, especially if she knew it had been found.”

“No, but she would know,” he answered, his lips thinning bitterly. “That is all he needs. He didn’t count on her courage to send someone privately, or on her resolve to face the truth, whatever it is.”

They were coming to the outskirts of the city now, great open stretches of field spread out in the morning light. Trees rested like billowing clouds of green over the grass. It was going to be a long day, and two nights in a strange bed before they embarked on the Atlantic crossing and landed again on an unknown shore. She wondered fleetingly how she had had the courage, or the lunacy, to do it before, and alone.

They arrived late in Liverpool and it was as they were following the porter along the platform towards the way out that they saw Philo Trace. He came striding over to them, his face lighting up with relief. He greeted them warmly, and they went together to find a hansom, directing it to a modest hotel not very far from the waterfront where they could spend the time before sailing.

Judith Alberton had telegraphed the shipping office as she had said, and their berths were reserved for them. It was a ship largely crowded with emigrants hoping to make a new life for themselves in America. Many were looking to travel west beyond the war into the open plains, or even to the great Rocky Mountains. There they could find refuge for their religious beliefs, or wide lands where they could hack from the wilderness farms and homesteads they could not aspire to in England.

The ship was scheduled to pick up more passengers from Queenstown in Ireland, half-starved men and women fleeing the poverty that followed the potato famine, willing to go anywhere, to work at anything to make a life for their families.

It was a strange sensation to be at sea again. The smell of the closed air of a cabin brought back to Hester the troopships to the Crimea more sharply than the pitch and roll of the deck, the sounds of the sea, of erratic waves, and the wind. She heard the cries of seamen one to another, the creaking of timber. The squawking of chickens and the squeal of pigs troubled her because she knew they were kept to be eaten as they drew farther and farther away from land and provisions became stale and short. The wind was against them off the coast of Ireland. It would be a long crossing.

They were in a first-class cabin with tiny bunks, a single small basin, a chamber pot to be emptied out of the porthole, a small desk and a chair. Clothes were to be hung on a hook behind the door. Monk said nothing, but watching his face, hearing the tension in his voice, she knew he found it almost unbearably oppressive. She was not surprised when he went up on the deck as often as he could, even when the weather was rough and the seas drove hard in their faces, and cold, in spite of it being early July.

Thank heaven they had not had to travel steerage, where men, women and children had no more than a few square feet each and could not take a pace without bumping into someone else. If a person were sick or distressed there was no privacy. Fellowship, good temper and compassion were necessities of survival.

The crossing took just a day under two weeks, and they landed in New York on Monday, July 15.

Hester was fascinated. New York was unlike any city she had previously seen: raw, teeming with life, a multitude of tongues spoken, laughter, shouting, and already the hand of war shadowing it, a brittleness in the air. There were recruitment posters on the walls and soldiers in a wild array of uniforms in the streets.

There seemed to be copies of every kind of military dress from Europe and the Near East, even French Zouaves looking like Turks with enormous baggy trousers, bright sashes around their waists and turbans or scarlet fezes with huge tassels hanging to the shoulder.

The star-spangled banner flew from every hotel and church they passed, and was echoed in miniature on the trappings of the omnibus horses and in rosettes on private carriages.

Business seemed poor, and the snatches of talk she overheard were of prizefights, food prices, local gossip and scandal, politics and secession. She was startled to hear suggestions that even New York itself might secede from the Union, or New Jersey.

She, Monk and Philo Trace took the first available train south to Washington. It was crowded with soldiers in both blue and gray, the same chaos of uniform prevailing here. How they were meant to know one another on the battlefield Hester could not imagine, and the thought troubled her, but she did not speak it aloud.

Memory crowded in on her as she saw the young faces of the men, tense, frightened and trying desperately to hide it, each in his own way. Some talked too much, voices loud and jerky, laughing at nothing, a paper-thin veneer of bravado. Others sat silently, eyes filled with thoughts of home, of an unknown battle ahead, and perhaps death. She was horrified to see how many of them had no canteens of water and carried weapons that were so old, or in such a state of disrepair, that they posed more danger to the men who fired them than to any enemy. They were of such variety that no quartermaster could be expected to obtain ammunition for all of them. They were all muzzle-loaders, but smoothbore, not rifled. Some were old flintlock muskets which misfired much more often and were far less accurate than the new precision weapons that Breeland had stolen.

Hester found herself sick with anticipation of the blind slaughter which would follow if the war came to a pitched battle. From the snatches of desperate, youthful boasting she heard, or the passion to preserve the Union, it could not be far away.

She overheard snatches of conversation during the times she stood up and stretched her back and legs.

A thin, young redheaded man wearing a Highland kilt was leaning up against the partition, speaking with a fresh-faced youth in gray breeches and jacket.

“We’ll drive those Rebels right out of it,” the kilted youth said ardently. “There’s no way on earth we’re gonna let America break up, I’m tellin’ ye. One nation under God, that’s us.”

“Home by harvest, I reckon,” the other youth said with a slow, shy smile. He saw Hester and straightened up. “Pardon me, ma’am.” He made room for her to pass and she thanked him, her heart lurching to think what he was going into so innocently. From his lean body, work-hardened hands and threadbare clothes, he clearly knew poverty and labor well, but he had no conception of the carnage of battle. It was something no sane person could create in the imagination.

She smiled back at him, looking into his blue eyes for a moment, then moved on.

“You all right, ma’am?” he called after her. Perhaps he had seen the shadow of what she knew, and recognized its hurt.

She forced herself to sound cheerful. “Yes, thank you. Just stiff.”

On the way back she passed an older man chewing on the stem of an unlit clay pipe.

“Got to go,” he said gravely to the bearded man opposite him. “Way I see it, there’s no choice. If you believe in America, you’ve got to believe in it for everyone, not just white men. In’t right to buy an’ sell human beings. That’s the long an’ the short of it.”

The other man shook his head doubtfully. “Got cousins in the South. They in’t bad people. If all the Negroes suddenly got free, where are they gonna go? Who’s gonna look after ’em? Anybody thought o’ that?”

“Then what are you doin’ here?” The first man took the pipe out of his mouth.

“It’s war,” the other said simply. “If they’re gonna fight us, we gotta fight them. Besides, I believe in the Union. That’s what America is, isn’t it … a Union?”

Hester continued back to her seat, oppressed by the sense of confusion and conflict in the air.

They stopped in Baltimore and more people got on board. As they pulled out she was sitting by the window, having changed places with Monk for a while. They both looked out at the passing countryside. Opposite them, Philo Trace sat growing more and more tense, the lines in his face etched more deeply and his hands clenched together, one moment moving as if to do something, then knitting around each other again.

Looking through the window, Hester saw for the first time pickets guarding the railroad tracks. Occasionally to begin with, then more and more frequently. She saw beyond them the pale spread of army camps. They increased in both size and density as the train moved south.

It had been hot in New York. As they approached Washington the heat became suffocating. Clothes stuck to the skin. The air seemed thick and damp, heavy to breathe.

As they pulled into Washington itself the wasteland around the outskirts was covered with tents, groups of men marching and drilling, white-covered wagons and all manner of guns and carts drawn up. The fever of war was only too bitterly apparent.

They drew into the depot and at last it was time to alight, unload cases and begin to look for accommodation for such time as they would be in the city.

“Breeland will be here all right,” Trace said with assurance. “The Confederate armies are only about two days’ march away to the south. We should stay at the Willard if we can, or at least go there to dine. It’s the best place to pick up the news and hear all the gossip.” He smiled with painful amusement. “I think you’ll hate the noise. Most English people do. But we haven’t time to indulge in dislikes. Senators, diplomats, traders, adventurers all meet there—and their wives. The place is usually full of women and even children too. An evening there, and I’ll know where Breeland is, I promise you.”

Hester was fascinated with the city. Even more than New York had been it was unlike any she had seen before. It was apparently designed with a grand vision, one day to cover the whole of the land from the Bladensburg River to the Potomac, but at present there were huge tracts of bare grass and scrub between outlying shanty villages before they reached the wide unpaved main thoroughfares.

“This is Pennsylvania Avenue,” Trace said, sitting in the trap beside Hester, watching her face. Monk rode with his back towards them, his expression a curious mixture of thought and suspense, as if he were trying to plan for their mission here but his attention was constantly being taken by what he saw around him. And indeed it was highly distracting. On one side, the buildings were truly magnificent, great marble structures that would have graced any capital in the world. On the other were huddled lodging houses, cheap markets and workshops, and now and then bare spaces, unoccupied altogether. Geese and hogs wandered around with total disregard for the traffic, and every so often one of the hogs would get down and roll in the deep ruts left by carriage wheels after rain had turned the street into mire. There was no rain or mud now, and their movement caused clouds of thick dust that choked the lungs and settled on everything.

Far ahead of them, the Capitol looked at first glance like some splendid ruin from Greece or Rome surrounded by the wreckage of the past. Closer, it was clear that the opposite was true. It was still in the process of being built. The dome had yet to be constructed, and pillars, blocks and statues stood amid the rubble, the timber and the workers’ huts and the incomplete flights of steps.

Hester wanted to say something appropriate, but all words escaped her. There seemed to be flies everywhere. It had not occurred to her in England, or even on the ship, that America would feel like somewhere tropical, the clammy air like a hot, wet flannel wrapping.

They reached the Willard, and after a great deal of persuasion from Trace were shown to two rooms. Hester was exhausted and overwhelmingly relieved to be, for a few moments at least, in private away from the noise, the dust and the unfamiliar voices. The heat was inescapable even here, but at least she was out of the glare of the sun.

Then she looked across at Monk and saw the doubt in his face. He stood very still in the center of the small room, his jacket crumpled, his hair sticking to his forehead.

She was suddenly aware of the ridiculousness of their situation. It was a moment either to laugh or to cry. She smiled at him.

He hesitated, searching her eyes, then slowly he smiled back, and then sat down on the other side of the bed. At last he began to laugh, and reached over and took her in his arms, falling back with her, kissing her over and over again. They were tired and dirty, totally confused and far from home, and they must not allow it to matter. If they even once looked at it seriously, they would be crippled from trying.

They met Philo Trace again at breakfast the following morning. It was an enormous meal. It put even the English country house breakfast to shame. Here as well as the usual ham, eggs, sausages and potatoes, were fried oysters, steak and onions and blancmange. This was apparently the first of five meals to be served through the day, all of equal enormity. Hester accepted two eggs lightly poached, some excellent strawberries, toast with preserves which she found far too sweet, and coffee which was the best she had ever tasted.

Philo Trace looked tired; his face was marked with lines of fatigue and distress. There were shadows around his dark eyes and his nostrils were pinched. But he was immaculately shaved and dressed, and obviously he intended to make no parade of the emotions which must torment him as he saw too closely his country lurch from the oratory of war to the reality of it.

The hotel dining room was full, mainly of men, several army officers among them, but there were a considerable number of women, more than there would have been in a similar establishment in England. Hester noticed with surprise that several of the men had long, flowing hair, which they wore loose, resting over their collars. Very few were clean-shaven.

Trace leaned forward a little, speaking softly.

“I’ve already made a few enquiries. The army left two days ago, on the sixteenth, going south towards Manassas.” His voice cracked a little; he could not keep the pain from it. “General Beauregard is camped near there with the Confederate forces, and MacDowell has gone to meet him.” A shadow covered his eyes. “I expect they have Breeland’s guns with them. Or I suppose I should say Mr. Alberton’s guns.” His food sat on his plate ignored. He did not say whether he had held any hope of stopping the arms from reaching the Union forces. Hester thought him blind to reality if he had, but sometimes one cannot bear to look, and blindness is a necessity, for a while.

All around them the dining room hummed with the babble of talk, now and then rising in excitement or anger. The air was clouded with tobacco smoke and, even at half-past eight in the morning, clammily hot.

“We can’t stop that.” Monk spoke with calm practicality. “We are here to find Merrit Alberton and take her home.” There was surprising compassion in his voice. “But if you wish to leave us and join your own people, no one will ask you to remain here. It may even be dangerous for you.”

Trace shrugged very slightly. “There are still plenty of Southerners about. Probably every man you see here with long hair comes from the South, the ‘slave states’ as they refer to them.” There was bitterness in him now. “It’s a fashion the North doesn’t follow.”

Hester liked him, but she had wondered many times during the journey how he could espouse something she considered an abomination, by any standards an offense against natural justice. She did not wish to know his answer, in case she despised him for it, so she had not asked. She heard the suppressed anger in him now as he gave it regardless.

“Most of them have never even seen a plantation, let alone thought about how it worked. I haven’t seen many myself.” He gave a harsh little laugh, jerky, as if he had caught his breath. “Most of us in the South are small farmers, working our own land. You can go for dozens of miles and that’s all you’ll see. But it’s the cotton and the tobacco that we live on. That’s what we sell to the North and it’s what they work in their factories and ship abroad.”

He stopped suddenly, lowering his head and pushing his hand across his brow, forcing his hair back so hard it must have hurt. “I don’t really know what this war is all about, why we have to be at each other’s throats. Why can’t they just leave us alone? Of course there are bad slave owners, men who beat their field slaves, and their house slaves, and nothing happens to them even if they kill them. But there’s poverty in the North as well, and nobody fights about that! Some of the industrial cities are full of starving, shivering men and women—and children—with nobody to take them in or feed them. No one gives a damn! At least a plantation owner cares for his slaves, for economic reasons if not common decency.”

Neither Monk nor Hester interrupted him. They glanced at each other, but it was understood Trace was speaking as much to himself as to them. He was a man overwhelmed by circumstances he could neither understand nor control. He was no longer even sure what he believed in, only that he was losing what he loved and it was rapidly growing too late to have any effect on the horror that was increasing in pace from hour to hour.

Hester was passionately sorry for him. In the two weeks she had known him, on the ship and the train to Washington, she had observed him in moments of solitude when there seemed a loneliness which wrapped around him like a blanket, and at other times when he had had a quick empathy with other passengers, also facing the unknown and trying to find the courage to do it with grace, and not frighten or burden their families even further by adding to their fears.

Aboard ship, there had been one gaunt-faced Irishwoman with four children who struggled to comfort them and behave as if she knew exactly what she would do when they landed in a strange country without friends or a place to live. And alone, staring over the endless expanse of water, her face had shown her terror naked. It was Trace who had gone and stood silently with his arm around her thin shoulders, not offering platitudes, simply sharing the moment and its understanding.

Now Hester could think of nothing to say to him as he faced the ruin of his country and tried to put it into words for two English people who had come on a single, and possibly futile, mission but who could return to peace and safety afterwards, even if they had to explain failure to Judith Alberton.

“We can’t know what we’re doing,” Trace said slowly, now looking up at Monk. “There has to be a better way! Legislation might take years, but the legacy of war will never go away.”

“You can’t change it,” Monk replied simply, but his face showed the complexity of his feelings, and Trace saw it and smiled very slightly.

“I know. I would be better employed addressing what we came for,” he acknowledged. “I’ll say it before you do. We must find Breeland’s family. They’ll still be here, and Merrit Alberton will be with them.” He did not add “if she is still alive,” but the thought was in the quick pulling down of his lips, and it was easy to read because it was in Hester’s mind as well, and she knew it was in Monk’s.

“Where do we begin?” Monk asked. He glanced around the huge dining room, where all the tables were full. Crowds of people had been coming and going all the time they had been there. “We must be discreet. If they hear that English people are asking for them, they may leave, or at worst, get rid of Merrit.”

Trace’s expression tightened. “I know,” he said quietly. “That’s why I propose to do the asking myself. It’s what I came for. At least it’s part of it. You’ll also need help leaving here with her. We may be able to go north, but maybe not. I can guide you south through Richmond and Charleston. It will depend upon what happens in the next few days.”

Monk hated being dependent on someone else, and Hester read it in his face. But there was no alternative, and to refuse would be childish, and risk even less chance of success.

Perhaps Trace was aware of that too. Again the ghost of a smile lit his expression. “Learn what you can about the army,” he suggested. “Movements, equipment, numbers, morale. The more we know, the better we can judge which way to go when we have Merrit … and Breeland, if possible. There will be plenty of war correspondents from British newspapers. No one will think it odd.” He shrugged minutely and a shred of humor filled his eyes. “In this war you are neutral, at least in theory.”

“In fact,” Monk added, “I may wish to see Breeland hang from the nearest tree, but I don’t tar the entire Union with the same brush.”

“Or the slave owners of the South?” Trace’s eyes were wide.

“Or them either.” Monk smiled back and rose to his feet, the last of his breakfast unfinished. “Come on,” he said to Hester. “We are going to research a brilliant and perceptive article for the Illustrated London News.”

They spent the rest of the day moving from one place in the city to another, listening to people, observing those in the streets and in the foyer of the hotel, seeing their anxiety, sensing the frenzy in the air. A few were openly afraid, as if they expected the Confederate armies to invade Washington itself, but the vast majority seemed certain of victory and had hardly any perception of what the cost would be, even if they won every battle.

Monk listened to complaints about the overwhelming presence of the army everywhere, the upheaval to the city, and especially the offensive odor of the drains, which could not cope with the sudden influx of people. And overriding everything there were the political arguments about how the issue of slavery had changed into the issue of preserving the Union itself.

Hester saw the men and women in the street, especially the women, who had sent their sons and husbands and brothers to the battlefront imagining glory, and with only the faintest notion of what their injuries could be, what horror they would be part of which would change who they were forever. The amputated limbs, the scarred faces and bodies would be only the outward wounds. The inner ones they would not have the words to share, and would be too confused and ashamed to try. She had seen it before in the Crimea. It was one of the universals of war that it bound friend and foe together, and set them apart from all those who had not experienced it, however deep the loyalties that tied them.

Twice she spoke to women in the hotel and tried to tell them how much linen they would need for bandages, which simple things for keeping injured men clean, like lye and vinegar and rough wine. But they did not understand the scale of it, the sheer number of men who would be wounded, or how quickly someone can bleed to death from a shattered limb.

Once she tried to say something about disease, the way typhoid, cholera and dysentery can spread through the closely packed men in an army camp like fire through a dry forest. But she met only incomprehension, and in one case deep offense. They were good people, honest, compassionate and utterly blind. It had been the same in England. The agonizing frustration was not new to her, or the rage of helplessness. She did not know why it should hurt more the second time, thousands of miles from home among a people who were in many ways so different from her own and whose pain she would not stay to see. Perhaps it was because the first time she had been ignorant herself, not seeing ahead, not even imagining what was to come. This time she knew; the reality had already bruised her once, and she was still tender from it, still raw in places she could not reach to heal.

By evening Trace had already managed to find Breeland’s parents and contrived that he and Hester and Monk should dine in the same place. It was forced, but by ten o’clock they were in a small group talking and by five minutes past they were introduced.

“How do you do,” Hester replied, first to Hedley Breeland, an imposing man with stiff white hair and a gaze so direct it was almost discomfiting, then to his wife, a woman of warmer demeanor, but who stood close to him and regarded him with obvious pride.

“Happy to meet you, ma’am,” Hedley Breeland said courteously. “You’ve come at an unfortunate time. They say the weather is always oppressive in Washington in midsummer, and right now we have problems which I daresay you’ve heard of even over in England.”

She was not sure if some of that was intended as a criticism of their choice of time; there was nothing in his face to mitigate the brusqueness of it.

Mrs. Breeland stepped in. “We just wish we could make you more welcome, but all our attentions are taken up with the fighting. Lord knows, we’ve done everything we could to avoid it, but there’s no accommodating slavery. It’s just plain wrong.” She smiled at Hester apologetically.

“It’s not just about slavery,” her husband corrected. “It’s about the Union. You can’t expect foreigners to understand that, but we must be truthful.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed Mrs. Breeland’s face and vanished immediately. Hester could not help wondering what her true feelings were, what emotions filled her life, of which perhaps her husband had no idea.

“Our son has just become engaged to marry an English girl,” Mrs. Breeland went on. “And very charming she is. All the courage in the world to just pack up and come out here with him, all alone, because her father was against it.”

Hester felt a surge of relief that Merrit was here and apparently had come willingly. The girl could not possibly know the truth.

Hester felt Monk stiffen beside her, and tightened her hand on his arm warningly.

“She knew a fine man when she saw him,” Hedley Breeland said with a lift of his chin. “She couldn’t do better for herself in any country on God’s green earth, and she had the sense to know it! Fine girl.”

“Is your son here?” Hester asked disingenuously “I should be delighted to meet this girl. I do admire courage so much. We can lose all we value in life without it.”

Breeland stared at her as if he had become aware of her existence for the first time but was now uncertain whether it pleased him or not.

She realized she had said something he considered vaguely unseemly. Perhaps Breeland did not think women should express opinions on such a subject. She had to force herself to think of Judith Alberton and bite her tongue not to tell him what she felt about the quiet courage of women the world over who bore pain, oppression and unhappiness without complaint. She could not contain herself entirely.

“Not all courage is obvious, Mr. Breeland,” she said in a small, tight voice. “Very often it consists of hiding a wound rather than showing it.”

“I can’t say I understand you, ma’am,” he said dismissively. “I’m afraid my son is at the battlefront, where all good soldiers belong at a time like this.”

“How brave,” Monk said in an unreadable voice, but Hester knew it was his coldest irony, and that he was thinking of the grotesque bodies shot to death in the Tooley Street warehouse yard.

There was music, laughter and the clink of glasses around them. Women with bare shoulders drifted by, magnolia blossoms caught up in their gowns and wafting a sweet perfume. It seemed to be the fashion to wear real flowers.

“Surely his fiancée is here with you?” Hester said quickly, she hoped before Breeland would wonder about Monk’s remark.

“Of course,” Breeland replied, turning to her. “But she is very keen to do her duty also. You should be proud of her, ma’am. She has a clear vision of right and wrong and a hunger to fight for freedom for all men. I admire that greatly. All men are brothers and should treat each other so.” He made it a statement, and looked to Monk as if he expected to be challenged on it.

A wave of panic passed through Hester, burning her cheeks as she thought of all the answers Monk might make to that—most of them with razor-cruel sarcasm.

But instead Monk smiled, perhaps a trifle wolfishly. “Of course they should,” he said softly. “And I can see that you are doing everything within your power to make sure that they do.”

“That’s right, sir!” Breeland agreed. “Ah! There’s Merrit! Miss Alberton, my son’s fiancée.” He turned, and they could see Merrit coming towards them. She was dressed in wide skirts pinched into a tiny waist, and a softly draped bodice decorated with gardenias. She looked flushed with excitement and quite lovely.

“Brothers?” Hester said very softly to Monk. “Hypocrites!”

“Cain and Abel,” he replied under his breath.

Hester swallowed her snort of abrupt laughter and turned it into a cough just as Merrit saw them and stopped. For an instant her face registered only shock. There was a brief moment while she struggled to remember from where she recognized them. Then it came, and she walked forward, her smile uncertain but her head high.

Hester had thought she knew how she would feel when she saw Merrit again; now it all vanished and she struggled to read in the girl’s face whether it was brazen defiance which lit her expression or if she had no idea what had happened in the warehouse yard. Certainly there was no fear in her at all, and no apology.

Breeland introduced them, and there was a brief instant when they were all uncertain whether to acknowledge past acquaintance or not.

Merrit drew in her breath and then did not speak.

Hester glanced at Monk.

“Good evening, Miss Alberton,” he said with a slight smile, just enough to be courteous. “Mr. Breeland speaks very highly of you.” It was ambiguous, committing him to nothing.

She blushed. It obviously pleased her. She looked very young. For all the womanly curves of her body and the romantic gown, Hester could see the child in her. It did not take much imagination to put her back in the schoolroom with her hair down her back, a pinafore on and ink on her fingers.

In a wild moment Hester longed for any escape from the truth, any answer but the dead bodies in the warehouse yard and Lyman Breeland on his way to Manassas with the Union army—and Daniel Alberton’s guns.

They were talking and she had not heard.

Monk answered for her.

Somehow she stumbled through the rest of the conversation until they excused themselves and moved on to speak to someone else.

Later that night Trace came to Monk and Hester’s room, his face grave, his dark eyes hollow and deep lines from nose to mouth accentuating his weariness.

“Have you made your decision?” he asked, looking at each of them in turn.

Hester knew what he meant. She turned to Monk, who was standing near the window which opened over the rooftops. It was close to midnight and still stiflingly hot. The sounds of the city drifted up in the air along with the smell of flowers, dust and tobacco smoke, and the overtaxed drains that everyone complained about.

Monk answered softly, aware of other open windows.

“We don’t think she knows of her father’s death,” he answered. “We plan to tell her, and what we do after that depends upon her reaction.”

“She may not believe you,” Trace warned, glancing at Hester and back to Monk again. “She certainly won’t believe it was Breeland.”

Hester thought of the watch. She remembered Merrit’s pride in it and how her fingers had caressed its shining surface.

“I think we can persuade her,” she said grimly. “But I don’t know what she will do when she realizes.”

“At all costs, we must keep them apart.” Monk was watching Trace. “If he can, Breeland may hold her as hostage. He won’t go back to England without a fight.” His voice made it half a question. Hester knew he was trying to judge what stomach Trace had for a confrontation and the violence that might go with it.

He could not have been disappointed in the reaction. Trace smiled, and for the first time Hester did not see in him the gentle man who had such pity for the Irishwoman on the ship, or who behaved with such charm at Judith Alberton’s dinner table, nor the person who grieved for the conflict that engulfed his people. She saw instead the naval officer who went to England to buy guns for war and who had beaten Lyman Breeland to the purchase.

“I’d dearly love to take him back to face a court and answer for Daniel Alberton’s death.” He spoke in little above a whisper, but his words were sharp and clear as steel. “Daniel was a good man, an honorable man, and Breeland could have taken the guns without killing him. That was a barbarity that war doesn’t excuse. He killed out of hate, because Alberton refused to go back on his word to me. I say we go after him, unless it costs us Merrit to do that.”

“We’ll tell her tomorrow,” Monk promised.

“How?” Trace asked.

“We’ve thought of that.” Monk relaxed a little and came farther into the room, away from the window. “The battle is going to come soon, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. The women are preparing some sort of ambulances for the wounded. Hester has more experience of field surgery than anyone else here is likely to. She will offer to help.” He saw Trace’s look of skepticism. He smiled tightly. “I couldn’t stop her even if I didn’t think it a good idea. Believe me, neither could you!”

Trace looked uncertain.

“But it is a good idea,” Monk continued. “She can easily scrape a reacquaintance with Merrit, who will want to help as well. They are two Englishwomen caught up in the same circumstances, far from home, and with the same beliefs on slavery and nursing the wounded.”

Trace was still dubious. “Are you sure?” he said to Hester.

“Positive,” she answered succinctly. “Have you ever seen a battle?”

“No.” He looked suddenly vulnerable, as if she had unwittingly obliged him to face the reality of the coming war at last.

“I’ll start in the morning,” she said simply.

Trace stood up. “God be with you. Good night, ma’am.”

It was as uncomplicated as Monk had said for Hester to join the efforts of the many women trying to assemble some help for the one assistant army surgeon to each regiment and to convey supplies nearer the battlefield, which was going to be almost thirty miles away. A little questioning, frequently interrupted by her own overwhelming sense of urgency to help what she knew was coming far better than these optimistic, good-hearted and innocent women, and at last she found herself in a yard with Merrit Alberton. They were handing up rolls of linen into a cart which would serve to carry the wounded back to the nearest place where they could set up a field hospital. It was dirty and exhaustingly hot. The air seemed too thick to breathe, clogging the lungs as if it were warm water.

It was a moment before Merrit recognized her. At first she was just another pair of arms, another woman with hair tied back, sleeves rolled up and skirts scuffed and stained with dirt from the unpaved streets.

“Mrs. Monk! You’re staying to help us!” Her expression softened. “I’m so glad.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a dusty hand. “I hear you have experience that will be invaluable to us. We are grateful.” She took a bundle of supplies—bandages, splints, a few small bottles of spirits—from Hester.

“We’ll need far more than this,” Hester said, avoiding the truth for a moment, although perhaps she spoke about a reality that mattered more. They were hopelessly unprepared. They had never seen war, only dreamed it, thought of great issues, causes to be fought for without the faintest idea of what the cost would be. “We’ll need far more vinegar and wine, lint, brandy, more linen to make pads to stop bleeding.”

“Wine?” Merrit asked dubiously.

“As a restorative.”

“We have enough for that.”

“For a hundred men. You may have a thousand badly wounded … or more.”

Merrit drew in her breath to argue, then perhaps she remembered something of the conversation at the dinner table in London. Her face pinched with recognition that Hester knew the enormity of what they were facing. There was no point in saying this was different from the Crimea. Certain things were always the same.

Hester could not put off her mission any longer. For a few moments they were alone as the other women moved away to begin a different task.

“There was another reason I wanted to speak to you,” she said, hating what she was about to do, the pain she would cause and the judgments she must make.

There was no shadow of premonition in Merrit’s face, which was beaded with perspiration, a smear of dust on her cheek.

Time was short. War overshadowed murder and would soon sweep it away, but for every person bereaved, their own loss was unique.

“Your father was killed the night you left home,” Hester said quietly. There was no way to make it kinder or blunt the edge of it, nor could she afford to. She, Monk and Trace would decide their actions upon what Hester judged to be Merrit’s complicity in the crime.

Merrit stood still, as if she had not understood the words, her face blank.

“I’m sorry,” Hester said slowly. “He was murdered in the yard of his warehouse in Tooley Street.”

“Murdered?” Merrit struggled for sense in what seemed incomprehensible. “What do you mean?”

Hester stared at her, watching every shadow of emotion in her face, every trace of pain, confusion and grief. It was grossly intrusive, but if they were to keep their promises to Judith Alberton, she had no choice.

“He was tied up and shot,” she said clearly. “So were the two guards. Then the whole shipment of guns and ammunition was taken—stolen.”

Merrit looked stupefied, as if a friend had struck her so hard she was breathless, gasping to fill her lungs. Her knees wobbled and she sank back and sat awkwardly on the wheel of the cart behind her, still staring at Hester, wide-eyed with horror.

Hester could not afford to show pity, not yet.

“Who … who did it?” Merrit said hoarsely. “Philo Trace? Because Papa sold the guns to Lyman after all!” She let out a long groan of misery and rage, her hands clenched tight.

Only with difficulty did Hester restrain herself from bending to her. She would have sworn to anyone, to Monk or to Judith, that Merrit believed what she was saying. But she must test it further. This chance would never come again.

“Lyman Breeland’s watch was found in the yard,” she went on. “The one he gave you and you swore you would never let out of your sight.”

Merrit’s hand unclenched and flew to her breast pocket, but it was instinctive, not thought, because the moment after, she remembered. “I changed my dress,” she said in a whisper. “I put it down.…”

“The watch was found in the mud in the yard,” Hester said again. “And there was no money paid for the guns. They were stolen.”

“No! That’s impossible!” Merrit stood up quickly, staggering a little. “Philo Trace must have done it … and I don’t know what happened to the money. But Lyman bought the guns! I was there! He would never … never steal! And … and to think he would … murder … is monstrous … it couldn’t be true, and it isn’t!” Her belief was not a matter of will; it was absolute, shining in her face. There was anger in her, and grief, but nothing that looked like guilt.

Hester could not disbelieve her. There was no judgment to make, no weighing of evidence one way or another. Breeland must have taken the watch himself and left it in the yard, either by mistake or intentionally. But why?

There was a clatter of hooves and a moment later voices raised.

“Hurry! Get those wagons! The battle will be tomorrow for certain, at Manassas! We must get there by dawn!”

Hester responded without hesitating even an instant for thought. There was only one thing to do now. Breeland, Merrit, the questions of hostage or murderer must all wait. There were men who the next day would be wounded, and the tide of war drowned everything else. Horror filled her, familiar as an old nightmare, and she answered as she always had. “We’re coming.”