The Shifting Tide - Anne Perry [110]
“No one!” Monk said violently. He was between Rathbone and the door, and he looked as if he would physically prevent him from leaving, with force if necessary. “For God’s sake, Rathbone; Hester’s in there! If anyone got even an idea of it they’d mob the place and set fire to it! They’d be burned alive!”
“But we have to tell someone!” Rathbone protested. “The authorities. Doctors. We can’t treat it if no one knows!”
Monk leaned forward; his voice was shaking. “There is no treatment. Either they survive it or they don’t. All we can do is raise money to buy food, coal, and medicines for them. We have to contain it, at any cost at all. If we don’t, if even one person gets out carrying it, it will spread throughout London, throughout England, then the world. In the Middle Ages, before the Indian Empire or the opening up of America, it killed twenty-five million people in Europe alone. Imagine what it would do now! Do you see why we must tell no one?”
It was impossible, too hideous for the mind to grasp.
“No one!” Monk repeated. “They have men with pit bulls patrolling day and night, and anyone attempting to leave will be torn to pieces. Now do you see why I have to find out if the disease came in on the Maude Idris, and if Hodge died of the plague, and his head was beaten in so no one would think to look for any other cause of death? He was buried straightaway. I don’t know whether Louvain knew about him or the Clark woman or not. I have to find the source. I can’t let Gould be hanged for something he didn’t do, but not ever, even to save his life, can I tell what I know. Do you see?”
Rathbone found it almost impossible to move or speak. The room seemed to be far away from him, as if he were dreaming rather than seeing it. Monk’s face was the only steady thing in his sight, at once familiar and dreadful. Seconds ticked by in which he expected at any instant to wake up in a sweat and a tangle of bedclothes.
It did not happen. He heard hooves in the street outside, and the hiss of carriage wheels in the rain. Someone shouted. It was all real. There was no rescue, no escape.
“Do you see?” Monk repeated.
“Yes,” Rathbone replied at last. He was beginning to. There was no one to help; no one could. He frowned. “Nothing they can do? Doctors? Even now?”
“No.”
“What do you want from me?” He refused to visualize it; the reality was more than he could endure. He needed to be busy. It would excuse him from knowing anything else; he would be doing what he could. “Did you say the man’s name was Gould—the thief, I mean?”
“Yes. He’s held at Wapping. The man in charge is called Durban. He knows the truth.”
Rathbone was jolted. “The truth? You mean he knows whether Gould killed Hodge or not?”
“No! He knows how Ruth Clark died!” Monk said sharply. “He knows we have to find the rest of the crew from the Maude Idris. He and I have been looking, and we haven’t found any trace of them yet.”
“God Almighty! Aren’t they on the ship?” Rathbone exclaimed.
“No. The crew now is only skeleton, just four men, including Hodge. They were supposedly enough to guard it until it can come in for unloading,” Monk replied.
Rathbone gulped, his heart pounding in his chest. “Then they could be anywhere! Carrying . . .” He could not even say it.
“That’s why I haven’t time to search for the truth to clear Gould,” Monk answered, still looking at Rathbone steadily.
Rathbone started to ask what one man mattered when the whole continent was threatened with extinction, and in a manner more hideous than the worst nightmare imaginable. Then he knew that in its own way, it was the shred of sanity they had to cling to. It was one thing that perhaps was within their power, and in that they could hold on to reason, and hope. When he spoke his voice was rough-edged, as if his throat pained him. “I’ll do what I can. I’ll go and see him. If I can’t find out who did kill Hodge, at least I may be able to raise reasonable doubt. But isn’t there something