Cain His Brother (11 page)

She finished her coffee the second time and sat back.

“Then permit me to discover what I can of such societies, and if anyone I know has met this Angus Stonefield.” Her eyes flickered down and then up again. “And of course there is the other possibility, which seems indelicate to mention, but we are speaking to each other without pretense-I do get so tired of pretense all the time, don't you? He may have met another woman, one who offers him laughter and affection without demanding anything from him at all, except the same in return. He may long for the freedom from the responsibility of children and the sobriety and decorum of family life. Many men find a liberty to express themselves to another woman in a way they cannot to their wives, if nothing else, simply because they do not have to face her every day across the breakfast table. If they make a fool of themselves, they may walk away and never meet again.”

He looked at her where she sat smiling at him, her slender shoulders so feminine and delicate, her thick shining hair, her lively face with its wide eyes, and always the air of composed amusement about her, as if she knew some secret happiness. He could well understand if Angus Stonefield, or any other man, found such a woman irresistible, a blazing, delicious freedom from the restrictions of the domestic round, the wife who was harassed by the duties of household and children, who did not feel it proper to laugh too easily or too loudly, who was conscious of her duty to him, and her dependence, and very probably who also knew him too well, and had expectations of what he should be, and how it was proper for him to behave.

Yes, perhaps Angus Stonefield had done precisely that. And if he had, Monk, for one, would not entirely blame him. On the other hand, he also felt a very sharp spur of envy which took him completely by surprise. Was Drusilla speaking from supposition? Or had she been that exquisite, delightful “other woman” for Stonefield, or for someone else? He would resent it profoundly if she had-which was both painful and absurd, but if he were as honest with himself as he was with others, still real.

“Of course,” he said at last, finishing his coffee also. “ I shall look into that as well.”

Every hour or two brought more cases of fever to the makeshift hospital in Limehouse. The only blessing was that it also brought more volunteers to help with what little practical nursing could be done, and willing hands to help with the endless tasks of emptying, cleaning, laundering what sheets and blankets they had, and changing the soiled straw and fetching in new. Local men came and carried away the bodies of the dead.

“Where do they take them?” Enid Ravensbrook asked as they sat together in the small room where Monk had spoken with Callandra and Hester. It was late afternoon, dark and cold. Three people had died the previous night.

Kristian had been there since the previous evening, and he had taken a short break to go home, wash and change his clothes and get a few hours of sleep before going back to his own hospital. There was little enough he could do at the best of times. There was no known medicine against typhoid, only constant nursing to ease the distress, keep the temperature down and some fluid in the body, and the will of the victim to live.

Callandra looked up with surprise. “I don't know,” she said. “I admit I hadn't thought about it. I suppose to-”she stopped. “No, that's ridiculous.

No undertaker's going to handle fever victims. Anyway, there are too many of them.”

“They've got to be buried,” Enid pointed out, sitting in the rickety chair where Monk had sat. Callandra was on the other, Hester on the floor. “If not undertakers, then who? You can't expect gravediggers to lay out bodies properly and observe the decencies. All they know is to bury coffins. Coffin makers will be the only people profiting out of this.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “At least it has got warmer. Or is it just that we have more fuel in the stove?”

“I'm frozen.” Callandra shivered and hugged her arms around herself.

“Hester, have you put more on the fires?”

“No.” Hester shook her head. “I daren't, or we'll run out. We've only got enough for two more days anyway. I meant to speak to Bert about that, and I forgot.”

“I'll ask him next time I see him.” Callandra dismissed it.

“I don't know where he's gone.” Enid was staring at her. She looked very pate except for spots of color in her cheeks. She must be exhausted. She had not been home for two days, just sleeping on the floor in this room when she had the chance. “He went out over two hours ago,” she added. “I asked him about going to the undertaker, but I don't think he heard me.”

Hester glanced at Callandra.

“There must be so many funerals,” Enid went on, speaking more to herself than to either of them. Her face was very pale and there was a gleam of sweat across her brow and upper lip. She looked up. “What graveyard are they putting them in, do you know?” She turned, first to Callandra, then to Hester.

“I don't know,” Callandra said quietly.

“I should find out.” Enid sighed and pushed her hand across her brow, brushing away her falling hair.

“It doesn't matter!” Callandra said, looking past her to Hester.

“Yes it does,” Enid insisted. “People may ask, relations may.”

“They are not burying them separately anymore.” Hester gave the answer Callandra had been avoiding.

“What?” Enid swiveled around. She looked bleached of all color but for a feverish stain on her cheeks, and her eyes were hollow, as though bruised.

“They are in common graves,” Hester explained quietly. “Don't grieve over it.” She reached over and touched Enid's arm very lightly. On the table the candle flickered, almost went out, then burned up again. “The dead won't mind.”

“What about the living?” Enid protested. “What about when all this is over and they need to grieve, need a place to remember those they lost?” “There isn't one,” Hester answered. “It happens in war. All you can say to the family of a soldier is that he died bravely, and if it was in hospital, that there was someone there to care for him. There isn't anything more.”

“Yes, there is,” Callandra said quickly. “You can tell them he died fighting for a cause, serving his country. Here all you can say is they died because the damnable council would not build sewers, and they were too poor to do it themselves. That's hardly a comfort to anyone.” She looked across at Enid and frowned. “They also died because they are half starved and cold all winter, half of them have rickets or tuberculosis, or are stunted by some other childhood disease. But you can hardly put on a tombstone, if you had one, that they died of having been born in the wrong time and place. Are you all right? You don't look well.”

“I have a headache,” Enid confessed. “I thought I was just tired, but I do feel rather worse now than I did before I sat down. I thought I was hot, but perhaps I'm cold. I'm sorry-I sound ridiculous…”

Hester stood up and crossed the short space between them, bending down in front of Enid, searching her face, her eyes. She reached up her hand and placed it on her brow. It was burning.

“Is it…?” Enid whispered, the question too dreadful to ask.

Hester nodded. “Come on. I'll take you home.”

“But…” Enid began, then realized it was pointless. She clambered to her feet, swayed, and buckled at the knees. Hester and Callandra only just caught her in time to ease her back down into the chair.

“You must go home,” Callandra said firmly. “We can manage here.”

“But I can't just leave!” Enid argued. “There's so much to do! I…”

“Yes you can.” Callandra forced a smile; there was tiredness, patience and a deep grief in it. She touched Enid very gently, but without the least indecision. “You will only distract us here, because we can't look after you as we would wish. Hester will take you.”

“But…” Enid swallowed hard and began to writhe deeply, gasping, and in obvious distress. “I'm sorry… I think I may be sick.”

Callandra looked across and met Hester's eyes.

“Fetch a pail,” she ordered. “Then go and tell Mary. You'd better find a hansom and bring it back here.”

“Of course.” There was nothing to discuss or with which to take issue. She went into the main room and returned within seconds with a pail, then went to find Mary, who was up at the far end of the room, sponging down a woman who was almost insensible with fever. The rush torches on the walls threw shifting shadows over the straw and the dim shapes of bodies under the blankets. There were no sounds but the rustling of feverish movement and the murmurs and cries of delirium, and close to the windows, the thrumming of the rain outside.

“I fink she's a little better,” Mary said hopefully when she realized Hester was beside her.

“Good.” Hester did not argue. “Lady Ravensbrook's got the fever now. I'm going to find a hansom to take her home. Lady Callandra will stay here, and Dr. Beck will be back later this evening. See what you can do about some more wood. Alf said there was some rotten timber on the dockside. It'll be wet, but if we stick it in here it may dry out a bit. It will spark badly, but in the stoves that won't matter.”

“Yes, miss. I…”

“What?”

“I'm sorry about Lady Ravensbrook.” Mary's face was pinched with concern.

Hester could see it even in this uncertain light. “That's a real shame.”

Mary shook her head. “Didn't think a strong lady like that'd catch it. You take care, miss. In't much ter you neither.” She looked up and down Hester's rather thin figure with kindly honesty. “Yer ain't got much ter fight agin it wif. You lose 'alf yer weight an' there won't be nuffink left.”

Hester did not agree with that piece of logic, but she did not argue. She pulled her shawl closer around herself and retraced her steps back between the straw beds and the entrance, and went down the stairs to the outside door and the street.

Outside was pitch-dark and gusting rain on the blustery wind. The solitary gas lamp just around the corner shed a haze of light through the rain, guiding her towards Park Place. She would probably have to round the narrow Limehouse Causeway up to the West India Dock Road before she could find a hansom. She pulled her shawl tighter around herself and bent her head against the rain. It was less than half a mile.

She passed several people. It was still early evening and men were returning from work in factories, dockyards and warehouses. One or two nodded to her as their paths crossed in the misty arc of a streetlight. She had become a familiar figure to far too many who knew or loved someone stricken with typhoid, but to most she was just another drab woman about her business.

The West India Dock Road was busier. There was plenty of general traffic, goods carts, drays, wagons laden with bales for the docks or warehouses, loads taken off barges or ready to go on in the morning, horse-drawn omnibuses, an ambulance, and all manner of coach and carriage of the more ordinary type. There were no hansoms, broughams or fashionable pairs.

It was ten minutes before she managed to stop a hansom looking for a fare.

“The corner of Park Street and Gill Street, please,” she requested. “It's less 'n five minutes away,” the cabby protested, seeing her wet shawl, worn boots and dull dress. “Lost the use o' yer legs, 'ave yer? Look, luv, Put worth your money. You can walk it, an' sure as 'ell's a waitin', yer i'nt goin' ter get any wetter than y'are!”

“I know, thank you.” She forced herself to smile at him. “I've got a friend there who needs to go up west, all the way to Mayfair. That's what I need you for.”

“Mayfair?” he said with disbelief. “What'd anybody from 'ere be doin' in Mayfair?”

She debated whether to tell him to mind his own business, and decided swiftly against it. She needed him too much. Enid was too ill to wait until she found another cabby who was less skeptical or inquisitive.

“She lives there. She's been helping us organize the hospital for the fever!” She said it in her own most cultured accent.

“'Ad enough o' Limehouse, 'as she?” he said dryly, but there was no unkindness in his voice, and she could not see his face since he had his back to the light.

“For a while,” she replied. “Change of clothes and some more money.” It was a lie, but one to serve a better purpose. If she told him the truth, he might well whip up his horse and she'd never see him again.

“Get in!” he said agreeably.

She climbed in without hesitation, ignoring her wet skirts slapping around her ankles, and immediately the cab lurched forward.

As he had said, it was less than five minutes before they were outside the fever hospital, and she went inside to fetch Enid, who was by now so dizzy and faint she was unable to walk unaided. Hester and Callandra were obliged to come, one on either side of her to support her, and Hester thanked God in a silent prayer that the street lamp was around the corner and the cabby could see only the lurching figures of three women and not how ghostly the center one looked with her ashen face and half-closed eyes, and the sweat streaming off her, making her skin wetter even than the fine rain of the night could explain.

He peered at them in the gloom, and snorted. He had seen gentry drunk before, but the sight of a drunken woman always disturbed him. Somehow it was worse for a woman than a man, and the quality had not the same excuses.

Still, if she gave money for the sick, he would reserve judgment… this once.

“'Yal in,” he said, holding the horse steady as it smelled fear and threw its head up and took a step sideways. “'Old 'ard!” he ordered, pulling the rein tighter. “Come on!” He turned back to his passengers again. “I'll take yer 'ome.”

The journey was a nightmare. By the time they reached Ravensbrook House, Enid was hot and cold by turns, and seemed unable to keep her body from shaking violently. Her mind wandered as if she were half waking and half in dream.

As soon as they drew up, Hester threw open the door and almost fell to the pavement, calling out commands to the cabby to wait exactly where he was.

She rushed up the steps and rang the bell violently, then again and then a third time. She heard it jingling in the hall.

A footman came to the door, his expression fixed in furious disapproval.

When he saw a white-faced, bedraggled young woman with wild eyes and no hat, his offense knew no bounds. He was a good six feet tall, as a footman should be, and with excellent legs and a suitably supercilious mouth.

“Lady Ravensbrook is extremely ill in that hansom!” Hester said curtly.

“Will you please assist me to carry her inside, and then send for her maid and anyone else necessary to make her comfortable.”

“And who are you, may I ask?” He was shaken, but not to be stampeded by anyone.

“Hester Latterly,” she snapped back. “I am a nurse. Lady Ravensbrook is very ill. Will you please hurry, instead of standing there like a doorpost!”

He knew where she had been, and why. He wavered on the edge of argument.

“Are you hard of hearing?” she demanded more loudly. “Go and fetch your mistress before she falls insensible faint and may injure herself.” “Yes, ma'am.” He galvanized into action, striding past her down the steps and across the pavement gleaming wet in the lamplight to the hansom where the cabby was fingering the reins nervously, staring down at the doorway as if it were an open grave.

The footman flung the door open and with the expression of a man about to spur his horse into battle, poked his head and shoulders inside to lift Enid, who was now fallen sideways and almost unconscious. As soon as he had grasped her, which even for a man of his strength was not easy, he pulled her out and straightened up, bearing her in his arms back across the footpath towards the door.

Hester took a step down, fishing in her reticule for money to pay the cabby, but he stood up in his urgency to get his horse going, flicking the long whip over its ears, and was already away from the curb and increasing pace before she could go any farther.

She was surprised only for a moment. He knew where he had picked up his fare, and seeing the address to which he brought her, and the liveried footman, he had guessed the truth. He did not want her close enough to touch, or to take anything, even money, from her hand.

Hester sighed and followed the footman, closing the door behind her. He was standing in the center of the hall helplessly, Enid in his arms as lifeless as a rag doll.