Page 87 of The Shifting Tide (William Monk 14)

“Is that why you’re hanging him?” Monk was incredulous, and yet the more he thought of it, the more he believed it. “Because he stole from you?”

Louvain’s mouth twisted. “You think you’re a worldly man, Monk, and that no one dares to defy you, but you’re naIve. You’re hobbled by your own morals. You’re too weak to survive on the river.”

A few days ago that insult would have bothered Monk. Today it was too trivial even to answer. What was vanity in the face of the loss that gaped in front of him?

“Gould is not going to hang,” Monk answered instead. “Because we are going to see he is acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt.”

Louvain bared his teeth in something like a smile. “Reasonable doubt as to what? You’re not going to tell anyone he died of plague.” Even as he said the word his voice caught, and Monk realized for the first time the horror that turned Louvain sick at

even speaking the word. It was anger, greed, and pride which drove him, but it was fear which beaded the sweat on his skin and drained the blood from it. “You’ll have panic like forest fire,” he went on. “Your own wife will be one of the first to be killed. The mob would torch the clinic, and you know that.” A glitter of triumph, thin as melting ice, lit his eyes.

Monk was drenched with the sense of the power in Louvain, the intelligence and the violence held in check only by judgment of his own need. Now Monk knew exactly why he had been so willing to sign the paper testifying to Hodge’s death. He had intended even then to hold Hester and the clinic to ransom. That was why he had chosen Monk! It made the most perfect sense.

“Of course I won’t tell,” Monk agreed, his voice shaking, and almost oblivious now of Durban behind him. “And neither will you, because if you do you’ll be mobbed as well. I’ll see to it. The river wouldn’t thank you for bringing plague into London. You’ll not only lose your ship, and the cargo still in it, but you’ll be lucky if they don’t burn your warehouse, your offices, and your home. They’d string you up for the pleasure of it.” He smiled back. “I’ll make damn sure of it-if I have to.”

He saw the sweat of fear on Louvain’s lip and brow, and the hatred in his eyes.

“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.

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