The Shifting Tide (39 page)

“So you are going to testify that you were mistaken,” Monk said in a hard, level voice, holding Louvain’s eyes. “You did not want everyone to know that you had a watchman on duty who was a drunkard. Bad for your reputation. But you realize now that you have to be more precise with the truth. Hodge drank too much, he smelt of it, and he must have overbalanced and fallen, hitting his head, because that’s how you found him. Gould will change his story about Hodge’s being drunk but unhurt when he saw him. It will be reasonable enough to think that’s what happened.”

“And if I refuse?” Louvain said very carefully. He stood stiffly, his body balanced as if for a physical fight, shoulders high, weight on the balls of his feet. “You’re not going to let the plague story out any more than I am. We are hoist on the same petard, Monk. I say Gould hangs. The next thief will think twice before stealing from a Louvain ship.”

“How clever do you think Gould is?” Monk asked, as if it were merely a matter of curiosity. “How moral?”

“Not much—in either case,” Louvain answered, shifting his weight a little. “Why?”

“He didn’t kill Hodge. What are you prepared to gamble on his willingness to hang in order to protect your interests?”

Louvain’s eyes were bright, but the last vestige of color had drained from his face, making the stubble on it look gray rather than brown. “You wouldn’t tell him,” he stated.

“I wouldn’t have to,” Monk replied. “He might be able to work it out. Not plague, perhaps, but yellow fever, typhus, cholera? Are you willing to have them dig up Hodge’s body to see if he’s right? Once it gets that far, none of us will be able to prevent it.”

There was silence in the room. Suddenly the ticking of the chronometer on the table became audible, counting away the moments of eternity.

Louvain spoke at last. “What do you want me to say?” His skin was white and sheened in sweat, but there was black rage in his eyes.

Monk told him again, slowly and carefully, then he and Durban went out into the rain-washed, blustery darkness, a small triumph like a pin dot of warmth inside him, too tiny to ease the vast fear of loss.

In the morning Rathbone was preparing to go into court when Monk came to him in the corridor. He looked ashen-faced and his clothes were ragged.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I lost track of the time. I should have been here earlier. Louvain will testify that Hodge was a drinker, and when he found him he was on the ledge at the bottom of the steps, dead drunk, his head bashed in from the fall.”

Rathbone stared at him. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. He dare not do anything else.” Monk blinked. “You look terrible.” His voice caught in his throat, fear naked in his eyes, his face, the wild, angular rigidity of his body.

Rathbone felt an overwhelming sense of brotherhood with him, a bond shared so profoundly it changed something inside him at that moment. All he could think of was getting rid of the terror in Monk’s eyes. He understood it because it was his own. “Margaret has gone to the clinic to help Hester,” he answered. “I don’t know any more, good or bad, but I’m taking money and supplies.”

The momentary relief left Monk speechless. His eyes filled with tears and he turned away.

Rathbone let him go. There was no need for words between them.

The trial lasted for three days. On the first the prosecution began with the undertaker who had buried Hodge, and his evidence seemed damning. There was little Rathbone could have done to shake him, and he knew he would only make himself unpopular with the jury were he to try. The undertaker was an honest man and it was quite clear he believed utterly what he said. He behaved with both dignity and compassion.

In the early afternoon Hodge’s widow gave evidence as to the identity of the body, not that anyone had doubted it. It was her quiet grief that the prosecution wished the jury to see.

Rathbone rose to his feet. “I have nothing to ask this witness, my lord. I would merely like to offer my condolences upon her loss.” And he sat down again to a murmur of approval from the crowd.

Next to be called was Clement Louvain. Rathbone found his heart beating faster, his hands clenched and slick with sweat. There was more than a man’s life depending upon him. If he probed too far, asked too much, he could let out a secret that could destroy Europe. And no one in the room knew it but Louvain and himself.

Louvain took the oath. He looked tired, as if he had been up all night, and his face was deep-lined with the ravages of emotion. Rathbone wondered briefly what part of it might be loss of the woman Ruth Clark.

The prosecution led Louvain through the finding of Hodge’s body and the description of the terrible wound on his head.

“And why did you not call in the police, Mr. Louvain?” he enquired mildly.

Rathbone waited.

Louvain stood silent.

The judge stared at him, his eyebrows raised.

Louvain cleared his throat. “Part of my cargo had been stolen. I wanted it recovered before my competitors were aware of it. It ruins business. I employed a man to do that. It was he who caught Gould.”

“That would be Mr. William Monk?”

“Yes.”

The prosecution’s tone was audibly sarcastic. “And now that you have your cargo back, you are ready to cooperate with the law and the people of London, not to mention Her Majesty, and help us to obtain justice. Do I understand you correctly, Mr. Louvain?”

Louvain’s face was twisted with fury, but there was nothing he could do. Watching him, Rathbone had a sense of the power in him, the strength of his will, and was glad he had not incurred such hatred.

Louvain leaned forward over the railing of the witness-box. “No, you don’t,” he snarled. “You have no idea of life at sea. You dress in smart suits and eat food brought you by a servant, and you’ve never fought anything except with words. One day on the river and you’d heave up your guts with fear. I got the thief and I got back my cargo, and I did it without anyone getting hurt or spending the public money on police time. What else do you want?”

“For you to follow the law like anyone else, Mr. Louvain,” the prosecution replied. “But perhaps you will tell me exactly what you found when you went to your ship, the
Maude Idris
, and discovered the body of Mr. Hodge.”

Louvain did as he was bidden, and the prosecution thanked him and invited Rathbone to question the witness if he wished.

“Thank you,” Rathbone said courteously. He turned to Louvain. “You have described the scene very vividly, sir, the dim light of the hold, the necessity of carrying a lantern, the height of the steps. We feel as if we have been there with you.”

The judge leaned forward. “Sir Oliver, if you have a question, please ask it. The hour is growing late.”

“Yes, my lord.” Rathbone refused to be rushed, his tone was easy, almost casual. “Mr. Louvain, is it as awkward to climb the steps into the hold as you seem to suggest?”

“Not if you’re used to it,” Louvain answered.

“And sober, I presume?” Rathbone added.

Louvain’s shoulders clenched under his jacket, and his hands on the railing looked as if he could break the wood. “A drunken man could miss his footing,” he conceded.

“And fall a considerable distance. I believe you said eight or ten feet?”

“Yes.”

“And sustain serious injuries?”

“Yes.”

“And was Hodge sober?”

Louvain’s eyes narrowed. “Not from the smell of him, no.”

“Then what makes you believe he was murdered, rather than simply having missed his footing, slipped and fell?” Rathbone walked a step farther forward into the middle of the floor. “Let me assist you, Mr. Louvain. Could it be that since your cargo had been stolen, you automatically assumed that the watchman was a victim of the same crime? You looked at the scene and concluded that the thief had come aboard your ship, attacked your watchman and stolen your goods, rather than that your watchman had died an accidental death. His absence from his post had allowed a thief to come aboard your ship and steal your goods? Is that possible, Mr. Louvain?”

“Yes,” Louvain said bitterly. “That is possible.” His voice was barely audible. “In fact, I believe that is what happened.”

“Thank you, sir.” Rathbone returned to his seat.

The rest of the trial was a formality; the other witnesses, including Monk, gave their evidence the following day, substantiating all that Louvain had said. The jury returned a verdict on the third day—Gould was guilty of theft, as he had pleaded, but there was more than reasonable doubt that any murder had been committed at all. Of that charge he was not guilty.

Rathbone walked out into the mid-morning rain with a sense of one very small victory, one man’s life saved, at least for the time being.

THIRTEEN

In Portpool Lane time was measured not in nights and days but in loads of laundry, whether it was light enough to blow out the candles, or dark enough to ask the men in the yard to fetch water from the well at the end of the street. Everything still had to be done by signs from the back door. No one must come close enough to risk catching the contagion.

Four women had died now, including Ruth Clark and Martha. Hester went to each of the survivors as often as she could. For those with pneumonia or bronchitis it was a matter of keeping the fever down and making sure they drank as much as possible: water, tea, soup—anything to make up for the fluid loss.

For the three whose illness was recognizably plague there was less to be done, and a more desperate desire to try anything at all to lessen the pain, which was acute. It was not only the knowledge of almost certain death, but the poison that raged through their bodies before it erupted in the blackened, putrefying flesh of the buboes, that made a person so ill that he or she longed for oblivion. The moments of awareness between one delirium and another were so agonizing that they cried out, and there was nothing Hester or any of the others could do but administer cool cloths, a sip of water, and not leave them alone.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anyone,” Flo said softly, pulling uncomfortably on the sleeve of her blouse—like all of them, conscious every moment of her arms and groin. She set down another bowl of water on the table outside one of the rooms so Hester could wring out cloths for the woman inside. “Not even that Ruth Clark, the lyin’ bampot.” Her face was pale with tiredness, the freckles on it standing out like dirty marks, her eyes dark ringed. “I may be a tart, Miss ’Ester, an’ a few other things, I daresay, but I in’t never bin a thief. I got a name like anybody else, an’ she got no right to take it from me by tellin’ lies. Why’d she do that? I in’t never done nothin’ to ’er?”

“She was an angry woman,” Hester replied, putting the cloths over her arm, then picking up the bowl. “A man she trusted, maybe even loved, threw her aside like so much rubbish when she most needed him. She just lashed out at everyone.”

Flo shrugged. “If she trusted a man wot paid for ’er, the more fool ’er!” She looked at Hester defiantly, and Hester stared straight back at her. Flo sighed and lowered her gaze. “Well . . . I s’pose we’re all stupid sometimes, poor cow,” she said reluctantly. Then she smiled. “I’m alive, an’ she ain’t, so I reckon I don’t ’old no grudges. I won, eh?”

Hester felt the cold grasp her as if the outside door had been opened onto the night. “Is that what you call winning, Flo?”

“Well . . .” Flo started, then she froze. “Geez! I din’t do nothin’ to ’er, Miss ’Ester!”

The cold deepened inside Hester, gripping like ice. “Why would I think you did, Flo?” she asked very quietly.

“ ’Cos she called me a thief, an’ I i’nt!” Flo said indignantly. “That’s a nice thing ter say! If yer’d believed ’er yer could a put me out on the street, fer Gawd’s sake! I could die out there!” A wry, miserable smile flickered across her face. “Come ter think on it, I could die in ’ere too. But in ’ere I’m wi’ friends, an’ that counts.”

“I never thought you were a thief, Flo,” Hester said, surprised how completely she meant it.

Flo’s face lit with amazement and joy. “Din’t yer? Really?”

Hester felt tears prickle in her eyes. It must be tiredness. She could not remember when she had last slept more than an hour at a time. “No, I didn’t.”

Flo shook her head, still smiling. “Then I’m glad I never fetched the poor sod in the chops, an’ b’lieve me, I thought of it! D’yer want some more towels, then?”

“Yes, yes please,” Hester accepted. “Bring them next time you come.”

Another woman died, and Hester and Mercy tied her in one of the dark blankets as a winding sheet. When they were finished Hester looked across and saw how white-faced Mercy was, and when Mercy turned her head, hearing footsteps on the stairs, the candlelight accentuated the hollowness around her eyes.

“We’ll get Squeaky to help us carry her down,” Hester said. “Don’t you do it.”

Mercy started to argue, then gave up. “Perhaps you’re right,” she conceded. “It would be terrible to drop her—poor soul.” Her face was filled with pity and there was also a note of anger. Hester wondered why, but she was too tired to pursue it.

Claudine stood in the doorway. She looked at Hester for a moment, then at the bundle on the bed. It was a woman she had despised, but even a glance at her face showed that death had cleansed judgment from her and left only a common humanity.

“I’ll tell the men,” she said. She turned from Hester to Mercy. “You don’t look as if you could lift your own feet, let alone anyone else’s. I’d better fetch that useless man away from his books!” And without asking Hester’s agreement she withdrew. They heard her feet going down the passageway, still sharp-heeled on the wood, but slower than before. She too was on the edge of exhaustion. It would soon be time for Bessie and Flo to take over for the rest of the night.

“We can manage,” Hester said to Mercy. “Go to bed now. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”

For once Mercy didn’t demur.

Claudine returned with Squeaky a step behind her, grizzling all the way.

“In’t my job ter be a bleedin’ undertaker!” he complained. “Wot if I get the plague, eh? Wot then? Carryin’ bodies! Mr. Bleedin’ Rathbone din’t say as I ’ad ter be carryin’ bodies—that weren’t part o’ the agreement. Wot if I get it, eh? Yer don’t answer me that, did yer?”