by Anne Perry
She had no answer. She had to assume that it would. So no one must leave! It would spread like fire in tinder. How many people had brought it into the country in 1348? One? A dozen? In weeks it could spread through half of London and into the countryside beyond! With modern travel, trains the length and breadth of the country, it could be in Scotland and Wales the day after.
And Margaret must not come back! Heaven knew she would miss Margaret’s help, her courage, her companionship. But no one must come in-or go out.
How would she stop that? She would have to have help. Lots of it. But who? What if she told the others who were here now, and they panicked and left? She had no power to hold them. What on earth was she to do? Was there even any point in trying to see that no one else became infected?
No. That was absurd. Everyone had already been in the room any number of times. It was hideously possible that they had caught it, and it was too late to help and save anything. At least she would prevent anyone else from seeing Ruth’s buboes and understanding what they meant. That would stop panic. There was one room with a door that locked. She must wrap the body tightly in a sheet and get Bessie to help her carry it there and lock her in.
She covered Ruth’s body again, binding the sheet to leave nothing showing, then went out into the passageway and closed the door. She saw Flo’s back as she was about to go downstairs, and called to her.
“Find Bessie and send her up here, will you? Immediately, please!”
Flo heard the edge in Hester’s voice. “Summink wrong wi’ that miserable cow again?”
“Just do it!” Hester’s tone was high and sharp, but she could not help it. “Now!”
Flo gave a shrug and went off, clearly annoyed at being spoken to that way, but she must have obeyed, because Bessie came within three or four minutes.
“Ruth Clark is dead,” Hester said as soon as Bessie was beside her. “I want you to help me put her body in the end room that has a lock on it, so Mercy and Claudine don’t panic at another death so soon. I. . I don’t want them running off, so say nothing. It matters very much!”
Bessie frowned. “Yer all right, Miss ’Ester? Yer look terrible pale.”
“Yes, thank you. Just help me get Ruth into that room before anyone else knows.”
It was difficult. Ruth was heavy, and still limp. It was all they could do not to let her slip through their hands onto the floor. However, Bessie was strong, and Hester at least had some experience with moving the dead. After nearly fifteen minutes of desperate effort they succeeded, and Bessie promised not to say anything to the others yet. At least for the time being, Hester had a reprieve, and she scrubbed out the room with hot water and vinegar, all the time knowing it was probably useless.
At five o’clock Mercy came to tell her that Sutton was back with his dog and traps.
“Oh-good!” Hester was overwhelmed with relief.
“Are they that bad?” Mercy said with surprise. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any. There was one little creature in the laundry, but I thought it was a mouse.”
“Baby rat,” Hester said quickly, with no idea whether it had been one or not. “Get a nest sometimes. I’ll go and see Sutton now. Thank you.” And she hurried away, leaving Mercy on the landing looking startled.
She found Sutton in the kitchen. Snoot was sitting obediently at his heels, his bright little face full of attention, waiting to begin his job.
“Thank you for coming so promptly,” Hester said straightaway. “May I show you the laundry, where I think they are?”
He sensed something wrong. His face puckered in concern. “Yer all right, miss? Yer look rotten poorly yerself. Yer comin’ down wi’ summink? ’ere, sit down. I can find the rats meself. It’s me job. Me an’ Snoot ’ere”-he gestured to the little dog-“we ’ave all we need.”
“I. . I know you have.” Hester pushed her hand over her brow. Her head was pounding. “I need to speak to you. I. .” She gulped and swallowed hard, feeling her stomach knot.
Sutton took a step toward her. “Wot’s the matter?” he said gently. “Wot ’appened?”
She felt the tears come to her eyes. She wanted to laugh, and to cry; it was so much worse than anything he was imagining. She wished passionately that she could tell him some quarrel, some domestic tragedy or fear, anything but what was the truth. “Downstairs,” she said. “In the laundry, please?”
“If yer want,” he conceded, puzzled now, and worried. “C’mon, Snoot.”
Hester led the way to the laundry, Sutton and the dog behind her. She asked him to close the door, and he obeyed. She left the one candle burning, and sat down on the single hard-backed chair because she felt her legs weak. Sutton leaned against the wooden tub, his face masklike in the flickering light.
“Yer got me scared for yer,” he said with a frown. “Wot is it? Wot can be that bad, eh?”
Telling him was a relief so intense it was almost as if it were a solution. “One of our patients is dead,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Someone suffocated her.”
His face tightened, but there was no horror in it; in fact, she saw almost an easing of the fear. He had expected something worse. “It ’appens.” He pursed his lips. “Yer wanna tell the rozzers or get rid of it quiet? I think gettin’ rid of it quiet’d be better. It in’t a good thing ter do, but ’avin’ the place buzzin’ wi’ bluebottles’d be worse. I could ’elp yer?”
“She would have died anyway.” She heard her voice wobbling. “You see, that isn’t the real problem. . I mean, someone suffocating her.”
“Gawd! Then wot is? If she were goin’ ter die anyway?” He was confused.
Hester took a deep breath. “I thought she had pneumonia. When I came to wash her and prepare her for the undertaker, I. . I discovered what was really wrong with her.”
He frowned. “Wot could be that bad? So she got syphilis, or summink like that? Jus’ keep quiet about it. Lots o’ folk do, an’ some as yer wouldn’t think. We’re all ’uman.”
“No, I wouldn’t care if it were that.” Suddenly she wondered if she should tell him. What would he do? Would he panic, let everyone know, and run out spreading it everywhere? Would a quarter of England die-again?
He saw the terror in her. “Yer better tell me, Miss ’Ester,” he said, dropping into sudden, gentle familiarity.
She knew of nothing else to do. She could not reach Monk, and certainly not Rathbone. Even Callandra was gone. “Plague,” she whispered.
For a second there was incomprehension in his face, then paralyzing horror. “Jeez! Yer don’t mean. .” He gestured to his chest, just by the armpit.
She nodded. “Buboes. The Black Death. Sutton, what am I going to do?” She closed her eyes, praying please God he would not run away and leave her.
He leaned against the wooden tub, his legs suddenly weak as well. His face had lost all its color except a sickly yellow in the candlelight, and slowly he slid down until he was sitting on the floor.
“Gawd ’elp us!” he breathed out. “Well, fer a start, we in’t tellin’ nobody, nobody at all! Then we in’t lettin’ nobody out o’ ’ere. It spreads like”-he smiled bitterly, his voice catching in his throat-“like the plague!”
The tears ran down her face, and she took several seconds to control them and to stop her breath from coming in gasps and choking her. He was going to help. He had said we, not you. She nodded. “I want to give her a decent burial, but I can’t afford to let anyone see her body. Nothing else causes dark swellings like that. Anyone would know.”
He rubbed the heel of his hand across his cheek. “We gotter stop that at any price at all,” he said hoarsely. “If folks know, there’d be some as’d mob this place, others as’d put a torch ter it, burn yer down, ’ouse an’ everyone in it! It’d be terrible.”
“It would be better than having the plague spread throughout London,” she pointed out.
“Miss ’Ester. .”
“I know! I’ve no intention of being burned alive! But how can we ke
ep everyone here? How do I stop Claudine from going home if she wants to, or Flo from leaving, or anyone who gets better. . if they do?” Her voice was wavering again. “How do I get food in, or water, or coal. . or anything?”
He said nothing for several seconds.
Hester waited. The laundry was strangely silent. It smelled of fat and potash and the steam that filled it during the day. The one candle with its yellow circle of light made the darkness seem endless.
“We gotta make certain no one leaves,” Sutton said finally. “I got friends as’ll ’elp, but it won’t be nice.” He looked at her intently. “We gotta do it fer real, Miss ’Ester. No one gotta leave, no matter wot. In’t no room fer ’sorry’ in this. If yer right, an’ that’s wot she ’ad, then better some dead ’ere fer tryin’ ter leave than ’alf o’ Europe dead ’cos we let ’em.”
“What can we do?” she asked.
“I got friends wi’ dogs, not nice little ratters like Snoot ’ere, but pit bulls as’d tear yer throat out. I’ll ask ’em ter patrol ’round the place, front an’ back. They’ll make sure fer certain as no one leaves. An’ I’ll get fellers as’ll bring food an’ water an’ coal, o’ course. An’ we’ll spread the word as the clinic is full, so yer can’t take nobody else in, no matter wot’s ’appened to ’em.”
“We can’t pay them,” she pointed out. “And we can’t tell them why!”
“They’ll do it ’cos I ask ’em,” he answered. “Yer doin’ enough for folks ’round ’ere. An’ I’ll tell ’em it’s cholera. That’ll do.”
She nodded. “Would. . would we really set the dogs on anyone? I mean. . I don’t think I. .”
“Yer won’t ’ave ter,” he answered her. “I’ll do it.”
“Would you?” she whispered, her throat tight.
“We gotter,” he answered. “One death, quick. In’t that better than lettin’ it get out?”
She tried to say yes, but her mouth was so dry the word was a croak.
There was a sound outside the door and a moment later it opened. Mercy Louvain stood in the entrance, a candlestick in her hand.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said a little awkwardly. “But do you need Claudine to stay tonight?”
Hester glanced at Sutton, then back at Mercy. “Yes,” she said hoarsely. She swallowed. “Sorry, I’m so tired my voice is going. Yes, please. Don’t let her go home.”
“She won’t mind, I don’t think,” Mercy answered. “Are you all right? Do we have a lot of rats?”
“Not bad,” Sutton replied, climbing to his feet. “But we’ll get rid of ’em, don’t worry. I just need ter go an’ get a few more things done, see a couple o’ friends, like, then I’ll be back. Yer jus’ get yerselves a cup o’ tea, or summink. Don’t do nothin’ till I come back.” That was said firmly, like an order.
“No, of course not,” Hester agreed. “We’ll just. . get everybody supper. Thank you.”
Sutton left, and Hester did as she had said she would, measuring out the food carefully; now it was even more precious than before. She was conscious that Claudine and Mercy were both watching her with surprise and a shadow of anxiety. She could not afford to say anything to them. She was deceiving them by silence, but she had no choice. She felt guilty, angry, and above all suffocatingly afraid.
It seemed like hours until Sutton came back. Hester was in the front room. She had given up even pretending that she was not waiting for him. Everyone else had gone to look after the seriously ill, or in Bessie’s case, to take a few hours’ sleep before relieving Claudine in the small hours of the morning.
“I got ’em,” Sutton said simply. “They’re outside, dogs an’ all. I got a sack o’ potatoes an’ some bones. I’ll get cabbages an’ onions an’ the like from Toddy same as usual.”
“Thank you.” Suddenly she realized what her own imprisonment was going to mean. Perhaps she would never leave this place. Worse than anything else at all, she would never see Monk again. There would be no chance for good-byes, or to tell him how he had given passion, laughter, and joy to her life. In his companionship she had become who she was designed to be. All the best in her, the happiest was made real.
“Can you take a letter to my husband. . so he knows why I don’t come home? And why he can’t come here. .”
“I’ll tell ’im,” Sutton answered.
“And you’d better tell Margaret, Miss Ballinger, too. She can’t come back. Anyway, we will need her help raising money even more than before. Make her see that, won’t you!”
He nodded. His face was sad and bleak. “Yer gonna tell ’em ’ere?”
She hesitated.
“Yer gotta,” he said simply. “They can’t leave. If they try, they’ll set the dogs on ’em too. That in’t a death as yer’d wish on anyone.”
“No. . I know.”
“No you don’t, Miss ’Ester, not unless yer seen anyone taken down by dogs.”
“I’ll tell them!” She stood up slowly and walked over to the door as if she were pushing herself against a tide. She reached it and called out into the passage beyond. “Claudine! Mercy! Flo! Someone please waken Bessie as well, and Squeaky. I need you all in here. I’m sorry, but you have to come.”
It was ten minutes before they were all there, Bessie still dazed with sleep. It was Mercy who first realized something terrible had happened. She sat down hard on one of the chairs, her face white. She looked as if she had not eaten or slept properly in days. “What is it?” she said quietly.
There was no point in stretching out the fear which already sat thick and heavy in the room.
“Ruth Clark is dead,” Hester said, looking at the incomprehension in their faces. They saw nothing beyond a small loss in the midst of others. Most of them had not liked her. Hester drew in a shivering breath. “She did not die of pneumonia. She died of plague. . ” She watched their faces. One of them knew that was a lie. Had that person any idea at all of the deeper, infinitely more terrible truth than murder? She saw nothing except the slow struggle to understand, to grasp the enormity and the true horror of it.
“Plague?” Claudine said in bewilderment. “What sort of plague? What do you mean?”
“What the ’ell are you talking about?” Squeaky demanded.
“Bubonic plague,” Hester replied. “In some cases it starts as pneumonic congestion in the chest. Some people recover, not many. Some die with it in that stage. In others it goes on to the bubonic-swellings in the armpits and the groin that go black. We call it the Black Death.”
Flo stood motionless, her mouth open.
Squeaky turned white as a sheet.
Claudine fainted.
Mercy caught her and pushed her head between her knees, holding her until she struggled back to consciousness, gasping and choking.
Bessie sat blinking, her breath rasping in her throat.
“No one can leave, in case we carry it out of here to the rest of London,” Hester went on. “No one at all, at any time or for any reason. Sutton has already arranged for friends of his, with pit bull terriers, to patrol outside. If anyone leaves, they will set the dogs on them. Please believe that they will really do that. Whatever happens, we cannot allow the disease to spread. In the fourteenth century it killed nearly half of Europe-man, woman, and child. It changed the world. Our few lives are nothing; we must stop that from happening again.”
“ ’Ow are we gonna live?” Squeaky asked furiously, as if it were some kind of reason to deny it all.
“Other people will bring us food, water, and coal,” Hester replied. “They will leave them outside, and we will go and fetch them. We will never meet. We have told them it’s cholera, and they must never ever think differently.”
Mercy rubbed her hands up over her face, sweeping her hair back. “If anyone outside gets to know. .”
“They’ll burn the place down!” Flo finished for her. “Mrs. Monk’s right. We gotta keep it a secret from everyone. It’s the only chance we got-God ’elp us!”
“
Oh, Gawd!” Bessie said, rocking back and forth in her chair. “Oh, Gawd!”
“I never thought of praying,” Claudine said with wry bitterness. “But I suppose that’s all we have!”
Hester looked across at Sutton. He was the only other person, apart from herself, and one more, who knew that they also had a murderer in the house.
NINE
Monk was sitting at home, building up the fire to try to create in the house the warmth that was gone from it because Hester was devoting so much time to the clinic. Her absence robbed him of a great deal of the pleasure he would have felt had he been able to share his triumph with her. He had been extraordinarily successful. He had pulled off a master stroke, retrieving the ivory and getting it to Louvain right under the noses of the thieves-and of Culpepper, for whom it was taken, and even of the River Police! Louvain had paid him handsomely, and his reputation was now high. Other jobs would come from it. But there was no one to tell.
He was not finished. He still needed to find out who had killed Hodge. It might have been Gould’s partner, but that was likely only if he had gone on board after Gould, found Hodge stirring, and killed him. That would have been a result of panic, and completely unnecessary-unless the man was someone paid by Louvain, and thus had betrayed him? Louvain would exact a bitter vengeance for that, and it would explain why Hodge had been killed and not merely knocked senseless.
And then there was the other possibility, that Hodge had been killed by a member of the crew in some personal quarrel that had nothing to do with the theft.
If he found out who Gould’s partner had been, it might be possible to prove whether he had ever come on board the Maude Idris. Gould should be able to remember his own actions, which would at least help. Tusks were difficult things to handle. He would surely know where his partner had been. One could not pass anyone on the gangway to the hold without knowing. The difficulty would be in making sure he was honest. On the other hand, he must have walked close to Hodge’s body every time he carried ivory up or went back down for more.
