Page 75 of The Shifting Tide (William Monk 14)

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 co

ntroversial, 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.

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