Page 66 of The Shifting Tide (William Monk 14)

Durban’s face eased, his eyes softer for a moment. “Right.” He straightened up, stamping his feet to keep some kind of circulation going, and led the way.

The doss-house keeper began to refuse them. She was a thin, angular woman with a tired face, and gray hair that was straggling out of an irregular knot. Then she saw the money Monk offered and she changed her mind.

“Gotta share!” she warned. “But there’s clean straw on the floor, an’ yer out o’ the wind.” She took the few pence and put it away in a pocket well in the inside of her voluminous skirts, then she led them to a small room at the back of the house. It was as primitive as she had said, and already occupied by two other men, but it was tolerably warm.

Monk found himself a place to lie down in the straw, bunching some of it together to form a pillow, and tried to sleep. He was tired enough, and his muscles ached from walking the endless alleys in the damp with the wind off the water cutting the flesh. But he was too cold, and thoughts of his own bed and Hester beside him-not only the warmth of her body but the deeper warmth of her thoughts, her dreams, her whole being-made this sour room with its restless and hopeless men a unique kind of hell.

He drifted into a kind of sleep, but it did not last long. He was too cold and the floor was too hard for him to relax. He could not bear to imagine where she was now, how much worse it was for her than for him, how much greater the danger. He lay in the dark listening to the rustle of straw, the heavy breathing of the men, and forced his mind to think.

He pieced together everything he knew and tried to make sense of it. Where would a sailor go ashore? They had already tried taverns, brothels, and doss-houses along this stretch of the river. They had found a score of men more or less like the ones from the Maude Idris, but never the right ones. Was it a hopeless task, one only a desperate man, or a fool, would even try?

What were the alternatives? To alert the police forces everywhere, and hunt down the men as if they were murderers on the loose? Would that catch them? Or drive them so far underground they would never be found? And how many people would they infect in the meantime?

His thoughts drifted, and then suddenly he was awake again. He heard the scrape of rats’ feet and felt his flesh cringe. Someone in the next room was coughing over and over, a raw, hacking sound. They were looking for someone ill! That was how plague started, wasn’t it, in the chest, with something like pneumonia? He was too cold to move, but he should go and see if that was one of the crew, or worse than that, someone already infected by them.

He lay shivering, muscles locked, body curled up, until a long spasm of coughing next door made him force himself to roll over and stand up slowly. He picked his way to the door through the forms of sleeping men and went out into the narrow passage. It was faintly lit by one candle on a shelf, so anyone needing to relieve himself would not get lost or fall over and waken everyone else.

He reached the door of the next room and turned the handle very slowly and pushed. It swung wide with a faint creak. It took him a moment to accustom his eyes to the deeper gloom, then he moved very quietly, stepping over and around the sleeping bodies until he came to the one turning restlessly, hunching his shoulders over, his breath labored.

Monk bent over and touched him. The next instant the man lashed out, sending Monk flying backwards, landing hard and awkwardly on a sleeping man behind him, who let out a yell of fury. It turned into a melee of thrashing arms and legs, and cries of “Thief!”

Monk tried to extricate himself, but he was one against half a dozen. He was generally getting the worst of it, failing to explain his motives, when a candle appeared in the doorway and he saw Durban’s face with an expression of exasperation and amusement. The next moment the candle was set on a chair and Durban plowed into the battle with gusto. He worked his way closer to where Monk was struggling to avoid being knocked senseless without actually doing the same to anyone else.

Finally, Monk leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath while the original man with the cough sat doubled over on the floor breathing with difficulty. Three other men glared at Durban, who was grinning hugely.

“I only wanted to know”-Monk gasped-“if any of you are off the Maude Idris.”

“Wot d’yer come creeping in ’ere for like a bleedin’ thief, then?” one of the men demanded.

“I wasn’t going to waken anyone!” Monk said, thinking reasonably.

He was greeted by hoots and jeers.

“Well, have yer?” he shouted.

“Never ’eard of it,” another replied.

“Course yer ’ave, yer fool!” the man next to him retorted. “One o’ Clem Louvain’s ships. Come back from Africa. In’t put ashore yet.”

“Paid three men off at Gravesend,” Durban told him.

“In’t seen none of ’em.” The man shook his head.

“Stope, Carter, and Briggs,” Monk supplied.

“Stope? Know Cap’n Stope, but I in’t seed ’im in more’n a year. Now can I go back ter sleep again, an’ yer get to ’ell out of ’ere?”

Monk glanced at the rest of the men, but there was nothing in the faces of any of them to indicate guilt, recognition, or anything beyond weariness and wretchedness. “Yes,” he said. “Of course.” He followed Durban out, picking up the candle as he went. By some miracle it was still burning.

He put it back on the shelf in the passage as he passed it. He was beginning to be aware of several bruises, and the fact that he was no longer cold. D

urban was laughing to himself. He glanced at Monk as they reached the door of the room they had come from, and in the wavering light from the flame his eyes were bright. His expression was as eloquent as a score of words.

In the morning Monk woke stiff and his body ached in every muscle. No doubt if he looked he would have blackening bruises all over. He glanced across at Durban and saw him still smiling. He shrugged, and winced. The whole episode was absurd, and they had learned nothing, but he still felt a warmth inside him that he had not had before.

Breakfast was porridge and bread. Only hunger could have driven him to eat it. But with daylight they saw their companions in the room more clearly. One was a heavyset young man with a sullen face; the other was elderly, his skin pockmarked. He was a great talker and eager to tell anyone about his adventures. He had been around Cape Horn and dined out more than a few times on his memories of the storms off that notorious coast, the wild weather, waves like moving mountains, winds that tore the breath from a man’s lungs, coasts like nightmares drawn from the landscapes of the moon. He had rounded Tierra del Fuego in the teeth of a gale, and that was where a loose halyard had shattered his arm. The ship’s surgeon had cauterized the stump, sawing the bone with no more anesthetic than half a bottle of rum and a leather gag to bite on.

Monk watched the man’s face, and then Durban’s as he listened. He saw many emotions: respect for courage; awe at the splendor and violence of the sea; admiration for the audacity of men who built boats of wood and set out to sail. It seemed an impossible hubris; although Durban would probably not be familiar with the word, he certainly understood the concept of mortals daring and defying the gods to snatch glory from the hands of heaven. Monk saw also a tenderness and willing patience that he guessed some deep meaning lay behind.

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