The Shifting Tide

ELEVEN

Day and night blurred into one exhausting round for Hester. There were over a dozen women in the clinic altogether, counting herself, Bessie, Claudine, Mercy, and Flo. Three had been injured by accident or violence, five were suffering fevers and congestion which might be pneumonia-or early stages of plague; it was too soon to be certain. There had already been two deaths, one apparently from heart failure, the other from internal bleeding.

Of course, to his outrage, Squeaky Robinson could not leave either. Sutton had chosen to return and work with the little terrier, Snoot, to catch the rats. Food, water, and coal were left in the yard, and the men with the dogs placed them outside the back door. When Hester went to retrieve them, she caught sight of one of the men standing near the wall, half concealed in the shadows, his dog at his feet. It gave her a feeling of safety, and reminded her at the same time that she was as much a prisoner as any of the others.

Mercy helped her carry in the pails of water, which were extremely heavy. They left two in the kitchen, and the other eight along the wall of the laundry.

“We’re going to have to use the water several times,” Hester said unhappily. “It’s not the best, but we daren’t run out. With fever like this, it’s more important to drink than to be clean, and I don’t think we can have both.”

Mercy leaned against the washtub into which the mangle drained. She looked pale and very tired, but she was smiling. “Makes you realize what a blessing it is to have water at home, doesn’t it? Ask someone for it, and there it is!”

Hester looked at her with affection. In the few days she had been there Hester had grown to like her. She still knew very little about her, other than that she was Clement Louvain’s sister. She had a gentleness with the sick, an endless patience, and in spite of the utterly different world she must be accustomed to, she never seemed to patronize people-unlike Claudine, whose temper was never far below the surface. Although Hester found she could not dislike Claudine either.

Now they worked together piling the soiled sheets into the corner, and then Mercy tipped more coal from the scuttle into the boiler to heat it up. It was an awkward job, and she was covered in smuts by the time she had finished. She leaned back, putting the scuttle down, and looked at herself in dismay.

“Why on earth do we wear white aprons?” she said disgustedly. “Whoever thought of that obviously didn’t have to do the laundry!”

Hester smiled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s good clean dirt.”

Mercy looked confused for a moment, then realized what she meant, and relaxed, smiling back. It was half past nine in the evening, and most of the jobs were done for the day, insofar as day and night were any different from each other.

“Were you really in the Crimea?” Mercy asked a little shyly.

Hester was surprised. “Yes. Most of the time it seems like another world, but right now it’s not so hard to remember.” She bit her lip a little ruefully. There had been far more deaths there; they were surrounded by it every day, and it had been brutal and terrible, largely senseless, inflicted by men upon their fellows. But there was a vast difference between war and murder, even if there had seemed times when it would be difficult to explain it. Whole hours went by when she completely forgot that Ruth Clark had been murdered, let alone that she should be trying to find out who was responsible.

Did it matter anymore-really? She realized with a jolt that she was not even certain that she wanted to know. It had to be someone here, and she cared for each of them. Was the bond of fear and survival greater than whatever had driven one of them to kill? She did not want to know the answer.

“You’ve not asked to have any message sent to your family,” she said to Mercy. She did not want to intrude. Mercy had never spoken of her home. She had not even said if she knew it was her brother who had brought Ruth Clark here, although Hester had assumed that she must have known. She seemed to be in her early twenties, pleasing to look at, and certainly she had an agreeable nature. Why was she not enjoying the social life her position offered her? Was there a love affair that had gone so badly for her that she was still too hurt to think of someone new? Was that why she was here, to escape a greater pain? Hester realized that that was what she had assumed, but there was no evidence for it.

Mercy shook her head. “My brother knows I am here,” she replied. “I left him a letter. I cannot tell him why I am remaining, but he won’t worry.”

“I’m sorry,” Hester apologized. “You must be missing many things you would have attended could you leave.”

“No point in thinking about them.” Mercy shrugged. “And I don’t suppose any of them matter anyway. One puts on one’s best clothes and one’s best manners, and ends up being so polite that all one ever talks of is the weather or what book one has just read-as long as it is not controversial, of course! Heaven protect us from having to think! Everybody is hoping to meet someone of such interest you can hardly wait to see him again, but unless you are terribly easily pleased, does it really happen? I am in greater danger of making myself believe it has, when my better self knows it hasn’t.” She smiled, rubbing absentmindedly at the smear of coal dust on her apron. “I say to myself ’Next time-next time,’ and then it’s exactly the same. At least this is real.”

“Doesn’t your mother insist on your meeting as many young gentlemen as possible? Mine did,” Hester remembered with embarrassment and sadness. Her mother had died of grief, and perhaps shame, after her father’s suicide when he had been ruined in a financial scandal. Their deaths had been her reason for returning early from the Crimea.

Mercy must have caught the momentary grief in her face. “My parents are dead,” she said quietly. “From the way you speak, your mother is also?”

“Yes, and my father,” Hester acknowledged, straightening up to go over to the table. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I just wanted you to send a message if you wished. Sutton would see that it was delivered.”

“There isn’t anyone,” Mercy replied, getting the bread out of the bin and passing it to her. “My elder sister, Charity, married a doctor. That was seven years ago. They stayed in England for a year, then he decided to go abroad, and of course Charity went with him.”

“That must have been hard for you.”

Mercy shrugged very slightly. “It was at first,” she said, turning her face away so Hester could see only the angle of her cheek and the way the muscles pulled in her neck. “But she was ten years older than I, so we were not as close as we might have been.”

“And your brother is older, too,” Hester observed, remembering Clement Louvain as he had been when he brought Ruth Clark in.

“I was an afterthought,” Mercy said, lifting her chin a little, her wide mouth curved in a smile. “My mother was nearly forty when I was born. But I think she was especially fond of me, for that.” She turned back to face Hester. “I’ll make us a cup of tea. I expect Claudine would like one too, and perhaps Mr. Robinson.” She did not mention the others because they were taking an hour or two’s rest before the night duty.

In the kitchen, Claudine was preparing vegetables for a soup. Many of the sick women found eating difficult. Fever robbed them of all appetite, but some nourishment was essential, and above all they should drink. She stood at the bench, a large knife in her hand, her lips compressed as she tried to cut a raw carrot into small squares. She was muttering to herself under her breath.

Hester considered offering to help her, but she had already had a taste of Claudine’s temper when she was angry with herself for her ineptitude.

Mercy gave Hester a wry glance, more than a little because she was domestically inexperienced also, and knew that culinary skill did not come easily. She filled the kettle and set it on the hob.

Claudine went on chopping.

Squeaky Robinson came in, looking with disapproval and impatience at Claudine, then hopefully at Mercy.

Claudine glared at him. “Wonderful how you always know to come when the kettle’s on!” she said tartly.

“Saves yer having to send for me,” he replied, sitting down at the table, ready for Mercy to bring him tea when it was brewed.

“And why would we be sending for you?” Claudine demanded, her jaw clenched to swallow back the words as a piece of carrot jumped off the board under the crooked angle of the knife. She stooped awkwardly to pick it up. She had little grace, and she was hurtingly conscious of it.

Squeaky rolled his eyes.

Mercy glanced at Hester and swallowed a giggle.

“Probably ’cos yer’ve run out o’ water again,” Squeaky said wearily. “Beast o’ burden, I am.”

“You’re only getting it from the back door!” Claudine said crossly. “Some other poor devil is carrying it the length of the street, and he can only do that in the dark, for fear people’ll see him and wonder why we aren’t fetching our own. So don’t waste it! You were scrubbing the floor yesterday as if you’d half the ocean to play with.”

“Perhaps you’d better scrub the floor, missus,” Squeaky retorted. “An’ leave me ter chop them carrots. I couldn’t make no worse a job o’ it than you are. No two bits the same, you ’aven’t.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but the Dear Lord doesn’t make any two carrots the same,” Claudine said instantly, her eyes blazing, the knife clutched in her hand as if she were about to use it as a weapon.

“ ’e don’t do it wi’ pertaters neither,” Squeaky said with pleasure. “Only wi’ peas, an’ we in’t got none o’ them. Yer knows wot peas is, missus?”

“About a penny a hundred,” Claudine responded. “Roughly what you’re worth.”

Squeaky shot to his feet, his face flushed. “Now look, yer vinegar-faced ol’ cow! I’ve had as much o’ your tongue as I’m gonna take! Yer bleedin’ useless! Yer can’t turn the mangle wi’out tearin’ the sheets, like we got ’em ter spare.” He jabbed his finger towards her. “Yer can’t make soap, yer can’t make porridge wi’out more lumps than the coal got in it! Yer can’t light the bleedin’ furnace if it goes out, an’ yer can’t cut a carrot wi’out ’urlin’ bits all over the floor! That poor cow wot died was right-no wonder yer poor bleedin’ ’usband don’t miss yer bein’ ’ere! ’E’s probably got a bit o’ peace for the first time in ’is poor bleedin’ life!”

Claudine went white. She drew in her breath, but found she had no words to defend herself. Suddenly she looked old and plain, and very vulnerable.

Hester was grasped by a pity so fierce she had no idea how to express it or what to say or do. She stood frozen in the grip of it. The fear and the sense of imprisonment was wearing on everyone’s emotions. No one gave it words, but they were all intensely aware that the disease was here with them like a brooding entity, able to strike any of them, or all. Every ache, every weariness, every moment of heat or chill, every twinge of headache could be the beginning. She was not the only one to wonder about every tenderness in the breast or the arm, to look at herself with fear and imagine she could see shadows or the faintest swelling sign.

It was Mercy who interrupted her thoughts. “Mr. Robinson, we appreciate that you are afraid, we all are, but deliberately seeking to hurt each other is only going to make it worse.”

Squeaky blushed, but under his embarrassment he was angry as well. He did not like being criticized, particularly in front of Claudine. He knew he was in the wrong, and it hurt him that Mercy, whom he admired, was the one to point it out. “She’s the one wi’ the tongue pickled in acid!” he said accusingly.

“And you think so well of it you have to do the same?” Mercy raised her eyebrows.

Hester smiled, because the only alternative was to cry, and if she started she might not know how to stop. As it was, she was tired, confused, and would have given anything, except what it would actually cost, to have been able to go home.

The back door opened, startling them all and making them swing around, setting hearts pounding in sharp, urgent fear.

But it was the little terrier, Snoot, with his face half brown, half white, who came scampering in, wagging his tail, Sutton close behind him. Hester breathed out in relief, realizing she should have known it would be he. The men with the dogs would not have permitted anyone else to pass.

Sutton glanced around the room, but if he sensed the tension, he did not show it. He was carrying beef bones, two bottles of brandy, and a pound of tea. “Miss Margaret must a brung ’em,” he said, setting them down on the table. He ran his hand gently over the little dog. “That’s it fer the night,” he said gently. “Now go ter bed.”

The anger in the room subsided, and everyone returned to their duties.

It was in the middle of the night when the incident occurred. Hester had had a few hours’ sleep and was going around to the more seriously ill of the women when she heard a noise on the landing a short distance away. She knew Bessie was doing the rounds as well, so at first she took no notice. Then she heard a long wail, rising into a note of sheer terror, and she put down the cup of water in her hand. She excused herself to the languid, feverish woman she was with, and went out into the passage.

Bessie was struggling with a woman called Martha who had come in with severe bronchitis which had seemed to be getting a little better. Bessie was broad and strong, but Martha was young and handsomely built as well, and she seemed to have a remarkable strength. Bessie’s arms were clasped around her in a bear hug; Martha was leaning away from her, her arms free, her fists beating against Bessie’s chest. As Hester took a step towards her, Martha’s right fist caught Bessie in the face and Bessie let go of her with a yell of pain, blood spurting from her nose.

Martha half fell against the wall, banging herself and twisting awkwardly.

Hester started towards her, but Martha scrambled upright again and charged off along the passage towards the stairs.

“Don’t bother wi’ me!” Bessie shouted, grasping her apron to her bleeding nose. “Stop ’er! She’s makin’ a run fer it! She’s got them black swellin’s.”

Hester barely hesitated. Bessie would have to wait; Martha must be stopped, at any cost. She was already at the top of the stairs and lurching down them, still screaming.

Flo came out of one of the other bedrooms and saw Bessie, her face and bosom scarlet. She screamed as well and ran floundering forward towards her.

“I’m all right!” Bessie yelled at her. “Stop that stupid cow from runnin’ off! Get ’er! Go ’elp Miss ’Ester, fer Gawd’s sake.”

Flo stopped with a jolt as Hester started down the stairs. Martha was already halfway down and Squeaky Robinson was on the way up, holding on to the railings at both sides.

“Stop her!” Hester shouted. “Martha! Stop! You can’t leave!”

But Martha was beyond listening to anyone or anything. She charged Squeaky and carried him right off his feet, knocking him backwards down the stairs, his legs in the air. She tried to avoid him and tripped, pitching headlong after him, landing heavily, almost smothering him. He screeched furiously, then started howling with pain.

Hester clung to the banister and went down as fast as she could without risking breaking her legs.

Martha was still clambering to her feet when Hester reached the bottom. Squeaky was clutching his right leg and cursing vigorously.

“You can’t leave, Martha!” Hester said loudly and very clearly. “You know that! You’ll spread the plague all over London! Come back upstairs and let us look after you. Come on!”

Squeaky was still swearing.

“Shut up!” she said to him furiously. “Get up and hold on to Martha!”

Squeaky tried to do as he was told, grabbing a handful of Martha’s nightgown skirts to haul himself up. She lashed out at him and sent him sprawling backwards to land with a thud against the wall. Whether she thought he was molesting her, or she simply was not going to let anyone prevent her escape, was irrelevant.

Squeaky lay where he fell.

Martha blundered away, gathering speed, and Hester ran after her. Martha knew her way and was heading for the kitchen and the back door. Hester called out, desperation making her voice high and shrill. She was not even sure if she was trying to stop Martha or to warn Sutton and call for help. Would she have the nerve to order the dogs set on her? Even with the plague, could she cause the death of someone in such a terrible way?

Martha was in the kitchen. Claudine was sitting half asleep in the chair. She woke up with a start as Martha almost banged into her. She lunged forward, realizing instantly what Martha was trying to do. Her weight carried Martha forward, and they fell together against the kitchen table. Claudine went down first, Martha on top of her.

There was a high-pitched, ear-splitting series of barks. Snoot shot out of the door from the laundry as it opened and Sutton appeared.

“Wot the ’ell is. .” he started.

Martha was the first to her feet. “Let me go!” she shrieked. “I gotta get out of ’ere! Let me. .” And again she plunged towards the back door.

Hester tried to shout, but she could not draw her breath.

“Don’t!” Sutton yelled. “Don’t do it!”

But Martha was beyond reach; in her own mind she must escape or die. The plague was here in this house, and beyond in the night was freedom and life. She ran barefoot out into the yard.

Hester propped herself up onto her hands and knees.

Sutton gritted his teeth and closed his eyes for a second, then he opened them again. “Get ’er!” he shouted.

Martha was floundering across the cobbles of the yard. Out of the shadows from two different directions shot two pit bull terriers. They leapt just as she shrieked, and their weight carried her down hard and heavily. As instinct and training taught them, they went for her throat.

Hester screamed. “No! No! Oh, God no!” She lurched to her feet.

Claudine was standing as well, one hand across her mouth, the other clenched over her stomach where she had fallen against the table corner.

Sutton stumbled to the door and out into the darkness. The men were calling their dogs off. Martha lay motionless, her white nightgown stained with widening blotches of crimson.

Sutton reached her and bent down. He touched her gently, feeling for a pulse. The two dog owners stood by, hands on their animals, reassuring them they had not done wrong, but their voices trembled and Hester knew they were talking as much to themselves as to their animals.

Sutton looked up at them from where he knelt.

“Thanks, Joe, Arnie. That can’t be easy ter do, but yer did right. Please ’eaven yer won’t ’ave ter do it no more, but if yer do, then yer must.” He turned to Hester, who was now outside in the light rain almost beside him. “She in’t dead, but she’s bleedin’ summink ’orrible. Still, I s’pose yer seen that before, yer bein’ in the army an’ all. We’d best get ’er inside an’ see if yer can stitch ’er up, poor little cow. I dunno wot for. This’d be an easier way to go, Gawd ’elp us.”

Claudine was outside now as well. She was gasping for breath, trying to control the hysteria rising in her.

“You murderer!” She choked out the words, staring transfixed with horror at Sutton.

“No he isn’t!” Hester protested, her own voice thick with held-in anguish.

“He set the dogs on her!” Claudine said coldly. “You saw it! God! Look at her! They’ve torn her throat out.”

“No, they haven’t.” Hester bent down to her knees to look at the mangled, scarlet mess, praying that what she said was true. Or maybe that it wasn’t.

Claudine began to gasp for breath, the air scraping and wheezing in her chest.

Sutton put his arm around her and with the other struck her hard on the back.

She turned on him in fury. “Going to kill me now, are you?” she shrieked, raising both her fists as if to strike him in the face.

“I might do, missus,” he said grimly. “I really might do-but not yet. I’ll ’ave enough ter bury without you, an’ yer getting’ ter be more use every day, spite o’ yerself. Now get an’ ’elp Miss ’Ester wi’ this poor little cow. ’old the water or the needle or summink. Don’t stand there wi’ yer bleedin’ mouth open. In’t no flies ter catch this time o’ night.”

Claudine realized she was breathing clearly again. She was beside herself with rage. “You. .” she started.

But Sutton was not listening to her. “Shut yer face an’ be useful, yer great lump!” he told her abruptly. “Afore she bleeds ter death ’ere in the yard an’ yer ’ave ter spend yer mornin’ wi’ a broom an’ vinegar tryin’ ter clean it up.”

Partly out of sheer surprise, Claudine obeyed. Together all three of them managed to carry Martha back inside and lay her on the kitchen table. In the light she looked even worse.

“Can yer stitch ’er?” Sutton whispered.

Hester looked at the blood-soiled clothes and the mangled flesh. Martha was still bleeding freely, but it was not with the brilliant scarlet of arterial blood, and it was still pumping, which meant that she was alive.

“I can try,” she answered. “But I need to be very quick. Claudine, you’ll have to help. Bessie’s got what looks like a broken nose, and Mercy’ll have to deal with that. Anyway, we’ve no time. Get my needle and silk out of the top drawer of the cupboard over by the sink.” As she spoke she was tearing out the other sleeve of Martha’s nightgown and rolling it up into a pad, holding it onto the worst of the wounds. “Sutton, fetch the bottle of brandy and pour some of it into a dish, then get more towels. Be quick.”

They were ashen-faced, their hands trembling, but they did exactly as she told them. Mercy came while they were busy, and said in a low voice that Bessie’s nose was broken, but she had managed to stop the bleeding. Bessie would be all right, and so would Squeaky. He was bruised, but nothing was broken. Flo was doing what she could for the rest of the sick women, and what would Hester like her to do now?

“Put a pot of tea outside for the men in the yard,” Hester answered. “And thank them. Tell them we are grateful.” She did not look away from her work. “Put your finger there,” she instructed Claudine, indicating a raw vein from which blood was running. “Hold it. I’ll stitch it as fast as I can. I’ve got to do this one first.”

Without hesitation Claudine stretched out her finger and pressed.

Hester was oblivious of time. It could have been a quarter of an hour, or three quarters, when she finally realized she had done all she could. With Claudine’s help she bound the last bandage on Martha’s neck and shoulder and the top of her arm. She looked only once at the purplish patch near the armpit. She did not know if it was a bruise or the beginning of a bubo. She did not want to know. They washed her the best they could, put a clean gown on her, then called for Squeaky to help them carry her to one of the downstairs rooms. They laid her on the bed and covered her over.

Claudine looked at Hester questioningly, but she did not ask if Martha would live or not. “I’ll go and clean up the kitchen,” she said ruefully. “It looks like a butcher’s shop.”

“Thank you,” Hester answered with profound sincerity. She did not add any praise. Claudine knew she had earned approval, and that was all that mattered to her. She went out, even smiling very slightly at Squeaky as she passed him on her way to the door.

Hester took the bloodstained clothes down to the laundry, where she found Sutton looking exhausted. His lean face was shadowed as if with bruising, his eyes hollow, the stubble on his chin patched with white.

“Was the Crimea like that?” he said with a twisted smile. “Gawd ’elp the army if it were.”

She thought of it with an effort. It seemed like another world now. She had been younger, had so much less that was precious to her to live for. One did not allow oneself to think about the violence and the pain in a rational way, or it became too much to bear. Then instead of helping, one was another needing to be helped.

“Pretty much,” she replied, dropping the clothes on the floor. The real answer was too long, and she was too tired, and perhaps Sutton did not really want to hear it anyway.

“Iggerant an’ mad, in’t we?” he said with startling gentleness. “Makes you wonder why we bother wi’ ourselves, don’t it? ’Ceptin’ we in’t got nob’dy else, an’ yer gotter care ’bout summink.” He shook his head and turned to walk away. “Snoot!” he called when he was outside in the passage. “Where are yer, yer useless little article?”

There was an enthusiastic scampering of feet. Hester smiled as the little dog shot out of the shadows and caught up with his master.

After putting the clothes into cold water she went back to Martha’s room. There was not much she could do for Martha except sit with her, make sure the bandages did not work loose, give her water if she woke, bathe her brow with a cool cloth, and try to keep the fever down.

Five minutes later Claudine came to the door with a hot cup of tea and passed it to her. “It’s ready to drink,” she said simply.

It was. It was just cool enough not to scald. It was also so powerfully laced with brandy that Hester felt she should be careful not to breathe near the candle flame.

“Oh!” she said as the inner fire of it hit her stomach. “Thank you.”

“Thought you needed it,” Claudine replied, turning to go, then she stopped. “Want me to watch her for a bit? I’ll call you if anything happens, I swear.”

Hester’s head was pounding and she was so tired her eyes felt gritty. If she closed them for longer than a second she might drift off to sleep. The thought of letting go and allowing herself to be carried away into unconsciousness, without fighting, was the best thing she could imagine, better than laughter, good food, warmth, even love-just to stop struggling for a while. “I can’t.” She heard the words and wondered how she could make herself say them.

“I’ll get another chair to sit here,” Claudine replied. “Then if she needs you I can wake you just by speaking. I wouldn’t have to leave her.”

Hester accepted. She was asleep even before Claudine sat down.

She sat up with a gasp an hour later when Claudine woke her to say that Martha was very restless and seemed to be in a lot of pain. One of the wounds was bleeding again.

They did what they could to help her, working with surprising ease together, but it was little enough. Hester was grateful not to be alone, and she told Claudine so as they sat down again to watch and wait.

Claudine was embarrassed. She was not used to being thanked; to be praised twice in one night was overwhelming, and she did not know how to answer. She looked away, her face pink.

Hester wondered what the other woman’s marriage was like that she apparently lived in such bitter loneliness, uncomplimented, without laughter or sharing. Was it filled with quarrels, or silence, two people within one house, one name, one legal entity, who never touched each other at heart? How could she reach out to Claudine without making it worse, or ask anything without prying and perhaps exposing a wound which could be endured only because no one else saw it? She remembered Ruth Clark’s cruel words and the mockery and contempt in them, as if she really had known something about Claudine, not just guessed at it. Perhaps she had, and perhaps it was bitter and wounding enough that Claudine had seen the chance to kill her and protect herself. But Hester refused even to allow that into her mind. One day she might have to, but not now.

“Would you like Sutton to have another message sent to your home?” Hester asked aloud. “You could let them know you are all right, but that with so many ill we can’t do without you. That would be more or less the truth, or at any rate it’s not a lie.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Claudine replied, her eyes fixed steadily on Martha. “I said that in the first message.” She was silent for a moment or two. “My husband will be annoyed because it is a break in his routine, and he was not consulted,” she went on. “There may be social events he would like me to have attended, but otherwise it will not matter.” Her voice caught for a moment. “I don’t wish to appear to be explaining myself. For the first time in my life I am doing something that matters, and I don’t intend to stop.”

She had said little, and yet beneath the surface it was an explanation of everything. Hester heard the emptiness behind the words, a whole bruised and aching lifetime of it. But there was no answer to give, nothing to make it different or better. The only decent response was silence.

She drifted back into sleep again, and Claudine woke her a little before four. Martha was slipping into deeper unconsciousness. Claudine stared at Hester, the question in her eyes, the answer already known. Martha was dying.

“Is it the plague or the dogs?” Claudine asked in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Hester said honestly. “But if it is the dogs, perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. I-”

“I know,” Claudine interrupted. “Best thing not to linger.”

Martha was struggling for breath. Every few moments she stopped altogether, then gasped again. Hester and Claudine looked at each other, then at Martha. Finally it was the last time, and she lay still.

Claudine shivered. “Poor soul,” she said softly. “I hope there’s some kind of peace for her now. Do. . I mean, should we. .” She blinked rapidly. “Say something?”

“Yes, we should,” Hester answered without any doubt at all. “Will you say it with me?”

Claudine was startled.

“I don’t know what!”

“How about the Lord’s Prayer?”

Claudine nodded. Together they pronounced the familiar words slowly, a little huskily. Then Claudine folded the dead woman’s hands, and Hester went to fetch Sutton and ask for his help.

He was in the laundry, rewarding Snoot for having found a rat’s nest. He looked up as Hester came in. His face was grave, expectant. He saw her expression. “She go?” he asked. “Poor soul. ’Oo knows?”

“Just Claudine and I,” she replied.

“Good. We better get ’er out before light.” He straightened up. “Go ter bed, Snoot. Good boy. You stay there like yer told.” He turned back to Hester. “I’ll get the fellers ter take ’er. Sorry but we’ll ’ave ter wind ’er in a sheet. I know yer can’t afford ter lose no more, but there in’t no better way. ’Ceptin’ a blanket, mebbe, if yer got a dark one? Less easy seen.”

“I’ll find you a dark gray blanket,” she promised. “But what will they do with her? She can’t just be. . I mean, she has to be buried too.” She thought of the silent, miserable business of taking Ruth Clark’s body out and leaving it on the cobbles in the rain for the men to take to an unknown grave. She had not asked where then; it was more than she wanted to know.

No doctor had seen Ruth, nor could they see Martha, not even an undertaker: he would see the throat and think she had been murdered. There was an irony in that she had not, not morally anyway. Ruth had, but there were hours at a time when Hester forgot that, and she had barely turned her mind to the question of who had done it, or why. Now it was poor, stupid, terrified Martha who mattered. That hysteria lay close under the surface in all of them. She licked her lips. They were so dry they hurt. “In hallowed ground?” she asked tentatively. “Is that impossible? I just can’t bear to think of her being pushed away somewhere in a drain or something.”

“Don’ worry,” Sutton said gently. “I got friends as can do all sorts o’ things. There’s graves in corners o’ proper places as got more bodies in ’em than they ’ave names on the stones. The dead don’ care if they share a bit. She won’t be left unblessed or unprayed for. Nor Ruth Clark neither.”

She felt the tears prickle in her eyes, and the sheer weight of exhaustion, loneliness, pity, and fear overwhelmed her. His kindness sharpened it almost beyond bearing. She wanted to thank him, but her throat was choked.

He nodded, his face hollow in the candlelight. “Go find the blanket,” he told her.

Claudine helped her roll the body and very quickly stitch the makeshift shroud around her, catching it in places so it would not fall undone if she were carried hastily, and perhaps with little skill. They did not speak, but every few moments their eyes met, and a kind of understanding made them move in unison, each reaching to help the other.

Squeaky came upstairs again. The three of them took her with stumbling steps, awkwardly, their backs aching, along the passage and to the back door, then outside into the yard. Hester raised her arm in signal to the men. In the faint light of street lamps twenty yards away they looked huge and untidy, coats flapping in the rising wind, bareheaded, hair plastered down. The rain made their skins shiny, almost masklike in the unnatural shadows. They acknowledged Hester and Claudine, but waited until they had gone back inside before they approached.

Sutton went out alone and spoke to the men.

The larger of the two nodded and beckoned his companion. Carefully they picked up the corpse, and without speaking they turned and walked slowly in the rain. They stood very upright with the weight balanced between them as if they were used to such a thing.

Hester and Claudine stood side by side at the doorway, so close their bodies touched, watching as the men passed under the street lamp. For a moment the rain was lit above them in bright streams. Then it glimmered pale on their backs as they retreated into the darkness. The van at the end of the street was little more than a greater denseness in the shadows.

No one spoke. It was quite unnecessary, and there was nothing to say. In a few hours another day would begin.