The Shifting Tide - Anne Perry [94]
Durban was waiting, his brows puckered. He lifted a hand in a gesture to stop Orme, who was halfway up the steps.
It was senseless to prevaricate. If Monk was not doing this the right way, it was too late to do it better now. “Plague,” he whispered, even though the wind was carrying his words to Durban, not to Orme. “I mean bubonic plague—the Black Death.”
Durban started to speak and then changed his mind. He stood perfectly motionless, even though the wind was now cutting them both like ice on the skin. The air was still bright around them. The gulls circled above, the strings of barges moved slowly past on the tide going up to the Pool.
“Plague?” His voice was hoarse.
Monk nodded. “The rat catcher Sutton told me last night, late. He came to my house, and he’ll tell Margaret Ballinger, who works at the clinic too, but no one else. If he did there’d be panic. People might even try to burn them out.”
Durban ran his hand over his face. Suddenly he was so pale his skin looked almost gray. “We can’t let them out!”
“I know,” Monk said softly. “Sutton already has friends patrolling all the ways in or out with pit bulls. They’ll take anyone down who tries to leave.”
Durban rubbed the heel of his hand over his face again. “Oh, God!” he whispered. “Who . . .”
“No one,” Monk replied. “We’ve got to deal with it ourselves. Margaret Ballinger will do all she can outside—getting food, water, coal, and medicine to them, leaving it somewhere they can pick it up after dark. At least at this time of year the nights are long, and Portpool Lane’s well lit. Hester and the women already there will nurse the sick . . . as long as . . .” He could not bring himself to say the rest, even though the words beat in his head: as long as they live.
Durban did not say anything, but his eyes were filled with a terrible, drowning pity.
Monk swallowed down the terror inside himself, fear not of the disease but of losing everything he loved. “We have to find where it came from,” he went on, his voice almost steady now. “We don’t have the plague in England. The Maude Idris, which the ivory came in on, has just returned from Africa. It is Louvain’s ship. Louvain took Ruth Clark to the clinic.”
“Yes . . . I see,” Durban answered. “She probably came off the ship. Maybe Hodge knew that, in which case his death could have more to do with plague than with theft. Either way, we have to know. God in heaven! Once plague gets hold it could sweep the country! The question is who on the Maude Idris knows? And what about Louvain?”
“I don’t know that,” Monk admitted. “I . . . I promised Gould I’d do what I could to see he didn’t hang, if he was innocent of Hodge’s death.”
“Hang?” Durban said with dawning disbelief. “Great God, man! If what you say is true, the whole world could die, in a far worse way than hanging—which is brutal, but it’s quick. What’s one man, compared with that?”
“We aren’t going to let that happen,” Monk replied between his teeth, his voice uneven because his body was beginning to shake. “Hester will stay locked in the clinic with them. No one will ever come out, except after it’s all over, if there’s anyone left alive. The world will go on exactly as if nothing had ever happened. And justice will still matter.”
The wash of a string of barges slapped against the stones. “You and I will be the only ones concerned with Gould’s life or death or know anything about it,” Monk went on. “Do we hang an innocent man? If we do that because we’re frightened sick, then why not two, or ten, or a hundred? How many innocent men are worth trying to save?” He could hear the sharp anger in his words, and he knew it was relief because this was something bearable to think about, something they could address. “We have to know the truth anyway.”
Durban nodded very slowly, his face bleak, then he walked to the top of the steps and spoke to Orme. Monk could not hear what he said, but he saw Orme acknowledge it, frowning in concern, then go back down towards the other men in the boat. Durban came back.
“Who did Louvain say the