The Shifting Tide (45 page)

“I’ll take him,” Durban answered. “You stay up here.”

Monk stared at him. He looked exhausted, his face flushed, his eyes sunken. “No. I’m doing this. Besides, the state you’re in, he might jump you.”

Durban started to argue, and Monk pushed past him, thrusting the lantern into Louvain’s hands. “You go first!” he ordered. “All the way down. If you stop I’ll shoot you, and believe me, I will!”

Durban leaned against the rail. “Don’t be long,” he said. “The tide turns in a quarter of an hour. I need you to go ashore then.” There was a finality in his eyes and his voice.

Louvain started down the ladder and Monk followed, one hand on the rungs, the other awkwardly holding his gun. He had to do this. He had to see Louvain’s face when he stood in the hold and looked down into the bilges. Monk needed him to smell the plague, to breathe it in, to know the stench of it so that for the rest of his life it would stalk his dreams. As an old man he would wake screaming, soaked in sweat, enclosed again in the creaking, rolling ship with the corpses of the men he had had killed.

The smell was far worse. It was like a thickness in the air as they went down, hand over hand towards the ledge.

Louvain stopped. Monk could hear his breathing—gasping, labored. He looked down at his face and saw the sweat standing out on it, his eyes like holes in his head, sockets dark.

“Keep moving!” Monk ordered. “What’s the matter? Can you smell them?” Then as he looked past Louvain at the open bilges where Durban had torn up the wood, his stomach heaved so violently he nearly lost his grip on the ladder. The boat swayed in the wash of something passing, and the water in the bilges slopped forward, carrying the bloated head and shoulders of a dead man. His eyes were eaten out, and his face rotted, but the fearful gash in his throat was still plain, and the stench so overpowering it made his senses swim.

“That’s your crew, Louvain!” Monk said, gasping to control his nausea. “Can you smell the plague? It’s the Black Death!”

There was a scrabbling of clawed feet and a flurry of squeaks, then a rat dropped into the bilges with a plop.

Louvain screamed and flung himself upwards, the lantern falling from his hands to land with a crash, and the light went out. Louvain was still screaming.

Monk started up again, desperate for the air. He reached the ledge, panic welling up inside him, horror inconceivable at what lay below him in the dark, and the madman at his heels.

He saw the square of sky at the hatch darken for a moment as Durban began down.

“We’re coming up!” he shouted. “It’s all right!”

Durban hesitated.

Louvain reached the ledge and Monk realized it half a second too late. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and then Louvain’s arms were around him, clinging as if to squeeze the air out of him, break his ribs, and crush his lungs and his heart.

He could not escape. His only choice was to lunge forward with his head. Louvain did not let go. Monk twisted sideways and bit Louvain’s wrist as hard as he could, feeling his teeth break skin and his mouth fill with blood.

Louvain yelled and his grip loosened, but he was blind with terror. He swung at Monk, but Monk moved and caught only a glancing blow on the shoulder.

“You had their throats cut!” Monk gasped out. “Even the poor bloody cabin boy!”

“They’d have died anyway, you fool!” Louvain said between his teeth, his hands reaching for Monk’s throat. “But I couldn’t tell anyone that. If you’d had the stomach for it, you’d have done the same!”

“I’d have taken the ship out again!” Monk lunged at him, fists clenched, and Louvain sidestepped, bringing them closer so they were locked together, muscles straining.

“And lose my cargo?” Louvain replied, grunting with effort. His face was running with sweat. “I need that clipper. This was quick—better than dying of the plague. I thought you’d see that.” He punched Monk hard, but the blow caught him on the hip instead of the stomach.

Monk gagged with pain, doubling forward. “But you took your sister to Portpool Lane to spread the plague there!”

“So London’s got a few less whores,” Louvain retorted. “I knew your wife wouldn’t let it go beyond that. I couldn’t kill Charity. She was my sister!”

Monk swung his leg back and kicked Louvain on the shin as hard as he could. When Louvain’s hold weakened for a moment, Monk struck him with all the force of rage he possessed, all the horror and loss that had drenched him night and day for the last week.

Louvain staggered, twisting his own arm to strike back. He teetered on the rim for wild, hideous seconds, then plunged over the edge, limbs flailing, and landed with a crash on the broken boards of the hold floor, his head a foot away from the swirling bilges awash with blood and their cargo of dead men, flesh bloated and eaten, throats gaping in eternal silence.

Monk fell to his knees and was sick. Then he crept to the edge and stared down. Vertigo made him grasp the wood as if it were salvation, although the drop to the hold floor was no more than twelve or fourteen feet. There was no sound but the slurp of water and the scraping of rats. Louvain lay on his back. His eyes were open, and Monk knew instantly that he could see but he could not move. His back was broken.

The ship swayed. Monk clung on even harder, horror at what lay below him crawling over his skin and running off him in a cold sweat.

Louvain slid closer to the yawning bilges, the weight of his body carrying him along the slimy, angled floor.

Monk stared at him, knowing what was going to happen with the next lurch of the ship, and seeing in Louvain’s eyes that he knew it also. The moment froze like an everlasting hell.

The ship swayed again. Louvain slithered to the edge of the boards, hesitated a ghastly moment, then helpless to save himself, slipped into the nightmare of the bilges, bumping against the swollen bodies of the cabin boy and two dead rats. His own weight took him down. Monk saw his white face for a moment, then the putrid water closed over him, and he was no more distinguishable from the rest of the corpses slewing back and forth.

Monk closed his eyes and saw in his mind the same scene burned into his brain. Time seemed to have stopped. He saw it frozen, forever.

“Help me get the sails up.” It was Durban’s voice at his shoulder.

Monk avoided the policeman’s eyes and grasped the hand held out to help him. He staggered to his feet.

“Help me get the sails up,” Durban repeated. “The tide’s turning and there’s a stiff breeze from the west. Two should do it, three at most.”

“Sails?” Monk said stupidly. “What for?”

“It’s a plague ship,” Durban replied. “We can’t let it put ashore, not here, not anywhere.”

Monk was reeling with fearful, inescapable thoughts. “You mean . . .”

“Can you think of anything else?” Durban said quickly. His face looked gray in the light from the hatch.

“Your men . . .” Monk began.

“Ashore. Help me get the sails up, then you can go, too. There’s the lifeboat—you can take it.”

Monk was balancing with difficulty. His trouble was not the faint rolling of the ship but the sick horror in his mind. “You can’t sail it alone! Where to? There’s nowhere you can take it!”

“Out beyond Gravesend, and open the seacocks,” Durban answered, his voice little above a whisper. “The sea’ll clean her. Way down at the bottom, it’ll be a good burial. Now let’s get out of here and up into the air. The smell is making me sick.” As he spoke he turned and started climbing again. Monk followed, hand after hand until he stood on the deck, gasping the ice-cold evening air, sweet as the light that poured across from the west, etching the waves with fire.

He could not remember much about raising a sail, but, as Durban told him what to do, some familiarity from childhood on the northeastern seaboard gave skill to his fingers. One great canvas slowly unfurled, and with their combined weight and strength began to crawl up the mainmast. They lashed it close, straight into the wind, then moved to the second.

Together they went to the winch and lifted the anchor. Monk completed the last few turns as Durban went back to the wheel and slowly turned her to catch the wind in one sail, then the next. It was hard work—and, with only two of them, dangerous. As the canvas billowed out and they picked up speed Monk turned to look at Durban. It was a kind of insane and terrible triumph. They were sailing a drowned ship on a sea of gold, heading towards the shadows of the east and the dying day.

“It’s time you went,” Durban said, raising his voice above the wind and the water. “Before we put on speed. I’ll help you launch the longboat.”

Monk was stunned. “What do you mean? If I take the longboat now, how will you get ashore?”

Durban’s face was quite calm, the wind burning his cheeks to scarlet. “I won’t. I’ll go down with her. It’s a better way than waiting for the other death.”

Monk was too shattered to speak. He opened his mouth to deny it, to refuse to grant the possibility, but it was foolish even as the thought entered his mind. He should have seen it before, and he had not: the sweating, the burning cheeks, the exhaustion, the carefully bitten-back pain, and above all the way Durban had kept a distance between himself and Monk, even his own men, recently.

“Go,” Durban said again.

“No! I can’t . . .” They were near the rail; the ship was gathering speed, the water churning alongside them. The words were the last Monk said before he felt a weight jolting hard against him; the rail had caught him in the back. Then the water closed over his head, cripplingly cold, smothering, drowning out everything else.

He fought to hold his breath, to beat his way up to the surface, for seconds the will to live driving out everything else. He broke into the air, gasping, and saw the huge bulk of the
Maude Idris
already fifty feet away and moving faster. He shouted after it, no idea what he was saying, just bellowing in fury and grief. For an instant he saw Durban’s figure in the stern, his arm lifted in salute, then he moved away and Monk was left to thrash around and think how he was going to make his way to shore without being drowned, run down by another ship, or simply frozen to death.

He had swum only a few strokes, hampered by his sodden clothes, and was already overwhelmed, when he heard a shout, and then another. With a mighty effort he twisted around in the water and saw a boat with at least four men at the oars bearing down on him rapidly. He recognized Orme leaning over the side of the bow, arms out.

The boat reached him, and even though they shipped the oars, the speed of it made it a desperate, arm-wrenching struggle to grasp Monk. It took three men to haul him on board. Then, the moment he landed, they threw their weight behind the oars again, hurling them forwards after the
Maude Idris
, which was going ever faster as the wind filled her sails.

But she was a heavy ship, and the lighter boat was closing the gap. Monk sat in the stern, shuddering with cold. The wind was making his wet clothes feel like ice on his skin, but he was only peripherally aware of it; all his thoughts were on Durban. Would it help to rescue him? It was the action of instinct, of the heart, the driving compulsion of a friend, but was it really the best thing to do? Did honor and dignity not require that he be allowed to die his own way? Is that not what Monk, or any of these men around him, would choose for themselves?

Did they know? Had Durban told them? No—he couldn’t have, or they might have prevented him, guessing what he might do. They would not believe the enormity of plague, the certain death, the hideousness of it. Dare he tell them now?

They were still closing on the
Maude Idris
. The lowering sun made her spread sails gleam like the wings of a great bird as she cut through the water. They were clear of the Pool of London and the other ships were behind them. She was heading down Limehouse Reach past the Isle of Dogs, but it was a long way to the sea, with many places where she would have to come about and go on the other tack. Could Durban manage alone, guts apart from his weakened condition; could any man? Perhaps Orme guessed! Was that what these men around him, breaking their backs at the oars, really wanted—to make sure that the
Maude Idris
did not crash into a pier or another ship, or run aground?

He hoped not; he prayed it was out of concern for Durban.

Durban was struggling with another sail. Slowly, agonizing with the strain, it went up the mast, a foot at a time. Monk did not even realize that he was leaning forward on his seat, his muscles aching with the effort as if he were hauling the great sail himself, putting his own strength against the heavy canvas, the sun in his eyes, the light blinding him off the river. Slowly the ship pulled ahead of them again, widening the distance.

Not a man in the longboat spoke. The oarsmen moved with steady rhythm, faces intent, breath forced from their lungs. Beside Monk, Orme never took his eyes off the ship ahead. Her sails were bellying full now, the white wake creaming behind her as she sped down Limehouse Reach with the Isle of Dogs to the left. Monk looked at Orme and saw the horror and grief in his face, seawater mixed with tears.

Durban was forced to come about clumsily on the bend. For a moment he lost control, and they closed in on him again. Monk ached as he watched. They were within twenty yards of her. They could see him working frantically to control the great booms and stop her from luffing and going over.

Orme was standing up, half crouching forward, his face a mask of passion and despair. Monk did not even realize that he too was shouting.

But Durban took no notice. He succeeded in coming about and righting the ship. All the sails filled again, and the
Maude Idris
pulled away from them past Greenwich. The sun was low, a pool of fire on the horizon behind them. Only the gathering purple of the evening lay ahead, and the darkness over the Bugsby Marshes, to the south.

Durban was on the deck again, black against the shining gold of the sails. He raised both arms in a signal, a gesture of victory and farewell, then he disappeared down the forward hatch.