The Shifting Tide - Anne Perry [121]
She had said little, and yet beneath the surface it was an explanation of everything. Hester heard the emptiness behind the words, a whole bruised and aching lifetime of it. But there was no answer to give, nothing to make it different or better. The only decent response was silence.
She drifted back into sleep again, and Claudine woke her a little before four. Martha was slipping into deeper unconsciousness. Claudine stared at Hester, the question in her eyes, the answer already known. Martha was dying.
“Is it the plague or the dogs?” Claudine asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Hester said honestly. “But if it is the dogs, perhaps that isn’t a bad thing. I—”
“I know,” Claudine interrupted. “Best thing not to linger.”
Martha was struggling for breath. Every few moments she stopped altogether, then gasped again. Hester and Claudine looked at each other, then at Martha. Finally it was the last time, and she lay still.
Claudine shivered. “Poor soul,” she said softly. “I hope there’s some kind of peace for her now. Do . . . I mean, should we . . .” She blinked rapidly. “Say something?”
“Yes, we should,” Hester answered without any doubt at all. “Will you say it with me?”
Claudine was startled.
“I don’t know what!”
“How about the Lord’s Prayer?”
Claudine nodded. Together they pronounced the familiar words slowly, a little huskily. Then Claudine folded the dead woman’s hands, and Hester went to fetch Sutton and ask for his help.
He was in the laundry, rewarding Snoot for having found a rat’s nest. He looked up as Hester came in. His face was grave, expectant. He saw her expression. “She go?” he asked. “Poor soul. ’Oo knows?”
“Just Claudine and I,” she replied.
“Good. We better get ’er out before light.” He straightened up. “Go ter bed, Snoot. Good boy. You stay there like yer told.” He turned back to Hester. “I’ll get the fellers ter take ’er. Sorry but we’ll ’ave ter wind ’er in a sheet. I know yer can’t afford ter lose no more, but there in’t no better way. ’Ceptin’ a blanket, mebbe, if yer got a dark one? Less easy seen.”
“I’ll find you a dark gray blanket,” she promised. “But what will they do with her? She can’t just be . . . I mean, she has to be buried too.” She thought of the silent, miserable business of taking Ruth Clark’s body out and leaving it on the cobbles in the rain for the men to take to an unknown grave. She had not asked where then; it was more than she wanted to know.
No doctor had seen Ruth, nor could they see Martha, not even an undertaker: he would see the throat and think she had been murdered. There was an irony in that she had not, not morally anyway. Ruth had, but there were hours at a time when Hester forgot that, and she had barely turned her mind to the question of who had done it, or why. Now it was poor, stupid, terrified Martha who mattered. That hysteria lay close under the surface in all of them. She licked her lips. They were so dry they hurt. “In hallowed ground?” she asked tentatively. “Is that impossible? I just can’t bear to think of her being pushed away somewhere in a drain or something.”
“Don’ worry,” Sutton said gently. “I got friends as can do all sorts o’ things. There’s graves in corners o’ proper places as got more bodies in ’em than they ’ave names on the stones. The dead don’ care if they share a bit. She won’t be left unblessed or unprayed for. Nor Ruth Clark neither.”
She felt the tears prickle in her eyes, and the sheer weight of exhaustion, loneliness, pity, and fear overwhelmed her. His kindness sharpened it almost beyond bearing. She wanted to thank him, but her throat was choked.
He nodded, his face hollow in the candlelight. “Go find the blanket,” he told her.
Claudine helped her roll the body and very quickly stitch the makeshift shroud around her, catching it in places so it