THE MURDER OF LORAND Gazda had added to the panic in the area, and of course it had given Monk a few new avenues of investigation. Some people could now be excluded as suspects because they could prove that they had been elsewhere at the time of either one murder or the other. But narrowing the field was far from good enough for Monk.
Examination of the bayonet and the shears had proved nothing. The bayonet was old and blunt, and there were no clues as to who had stolen it from the museum. Half of a pair of shears could have been relegated to the rubbish heap, and anyone could have taken it from there.
In spite of all the work the extra men from the regular police had done, no one had observed either weapon being removed, or seen anyone with them. They yielded no trace of threads or other evidence as to who had used them.
There was much in the newspapers, talk of panic, even police inefficiency—or worse, corruption. And every issue of newspapers, morning and evening, carried word of civil unrest in one area or another. To the south of the river there were outbreaks of violence in Deptford, Bermondsey and Camberwell. To the north there were smaller fights in Stepney, reports of crowds getting rough on Parsons Green and later in Blackwall. Some of these were exaggerated, but questions in Parliament and the calls for police resignations were increasing.
Hester could think of nothing to say to Monk that would be of any practical help.
Emotional help was a far more elusive and delicate thing. One clumsy word, a false note of encouragement that sounded either patronizing or uninformed, and it would wipe out anything good she might have said.
Every evening Monk came home pale with exhaustion and, more recently, without any new ideas of how to narrow down the still far too large field of possibilities.
“If I knew what started it…” he said on the fourth evening after Gazda’s death. “Why does anyone hate so passionately that they’ll kill like this?” He stared at her across the dinner table. It seemed strangely quiet without Scuff’s company, much less enjoyable without his unquenchable appetite.
“Are you sure this is hatred against the Hungarians in general?” she asked. “It feels personal. That much cruelty is very intimate.”
“No, I’m not sure,” he answered. “But Dobokai is. I don’t like the man but everything he’s said so far has proven true. Certainly the Hungarians feel as if someone’s against them. Why? You’ve traveled more than I have.” He was searching her face, her eyes. “You’ve seen war close-up. Why does a whole nation suddenly become ‘the enemy’? We’re not at war with Hungary, and, as far as I know, we never have been. One of the few nations we haven’t fought, and haven’t invaded or settled, and they haven’t invaded us.” He looked puzzled, and worried, as if not to understand were his failing.
She must think of an answer that made sense. She could see his belief in himself was wavering.
“Fear,” she said with only the barest hesitation. “You don’t have to know what the threat really is, just what it could be.”
“And what are a couple of hundred Hungarians going to do in a city like London? It’s the biggest city in the world, and the heart of an empire that stretches around the globe.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense. People don’t think of the rest of the world. We just live in our own villages within London. And Shadwell is changing. There are Hungarian shops where there used to be English ones. Somebody has lost their job.”
His dark eyebrows rose. “So you stick a stake through their hearts, and dip candles in their blood?”
“Candles,” she said quickly.
“Yes. I told you…”
“Maybe…maybe it’s religious. The Hungarians are Catholic, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“William, the Catholic world is still very large, very powerful. When I was in Shadwell yesterday I heard someone mention that…and religious freedom, the right to be Protestant, if you want to be. It may be foolish, but fear of losing your religion and being governed by a foreign power, from Rome, is very real.”
“A real danger?” he said disbelievingly. “Not now…”
“No! Not a real danger. It was at the time of Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada. If the storm hadn’t sunk them, we could have gone back to Catholicism. But nearly three hundred years ago, it was. And in Europe people still fight religious wars, Catholics against Protestants.”
“And in Ireland,” he added. “But this is Shadwell Dock. Nobody’s threatening anyone’s freedom.”
“You asked me what makes people lash out so horribly, William. I think it’s fear, and fear doesn’t have to be rational. It’s fear of ideas, things that aren’t the way you’re used to. Everyone you don’t understand, because their language is different, their food, but above all their religion. The Catholic Church used to be the biggest power in Europe. They excommunicated people who defied their rules, and suddenly those people became invisible, voiceless, homeless, exiled from the community. No baptisms, no marriages, no proper burials and, most of all, no confession or absolution for sins.”
“When?” he demanded.
“All England under interdict in the reign of King John.” Then she remembered that he had no memory of his youth, probably of half the things he had learned at school. Perhaps not even of school itself! “It doesn’t matter now,” she said quickly. “But religious fear seems very deep. It’s much more recent that the Inquisition burned people at the stake for falling away from the Catholic faith—in Spain! And I don’t know where else. Fear doesn’t bring out the best in us, in or outside the law.”
He looked downward. “I did ask you. I just wasn’t prepared for that answer. But then, I wasn’t prepared for blades through the heart and candles dipped in blood either.”
“It might be nothing to do with religion of any sort,” Hester said, trying to bring the discussion back to reason, likelihood, away from terror.
Monk smiled, as if he read her thoughts. “Don’t tell me it’s something ordinary,” he said gently. “The very best you could say is that it’s some kind of a madman, whatever his reason.”
“I know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have raised it. It was just the candles. It probably isn’t anything to do with religion at all.”
“It might be a secret society,” he said reluctantly, doubt in his voice.
“You’ll find out, if it matters.” She stood up slowly. “For now, I’m going up to bed, and I’m more happy than I can say that I will be there with you, and my whole world will be no larger than that one bedroom.” She meant it: the world beyond, even just that bit of it across the river at Shadwell, was too big and too dark to think of. She held out her hand, and he stood up and took it, gently, but still almost too tight for her to knock away—if she had wished to.
THE NEXT MORNING WAS one of those late-summer days when the sun shone so clearly there were no dark places anywhere, no alleys where the light did not reach, or where the wind had a cold edge.
Despite her talk with Monk the night before, it was not the Hungarians or even the new murder that was on Hester’s mind; it was Fitz and the memory of seeing him that last time in the Crimea, dead, as she was sure, and having to leave him there. The little space they had on wagons had to be used for the living, those they might still save.
She had deliberately forced it from her mind so often, the memory had dimmed. She was trying to forget, and she had nearly succeeded. There was so much else in her life now: work in the clinic, work helping in cases, Scuff, other friendships, such as with Oliver Rathbone and, above all, Monk.
Now Fitz returned to her mind, with the guilt of leaving him, and the knowledge that he had not been dead. All the suffering, physical and emotional, that he had endured since then was, at least in part, her fault. The guilt was overwhelming. He might despise her for it, but she could not lie to him anymore, even if just by remaining silent. It was still deception, and it was for her own convenience.
FIRST SHE WENT ACROSS the river to the north bank, back to her own clinic in Portpool Lane, where Claudine, who was there most of the time, told her that all was well. Squeaky Robinson even forgot to pretend he was angry on seeing Hester. He was busy teaching Worm to read. Worm was an urchin from the riverbank, whom Scuff had rescued. He had no idea how old he was. Counting beyond ten was a skill that still lay ahead of Worm. But a good guess might place him at about seven or eight, though he claimed to be older.
Hester stayed only long enough to ascertain that all was indeed well. Then she traveled by omnibus the short distance to the docks. She had formulated in her mind a dozen times what she would say to Fitz, and it never sounded right. She sat in the omnibus with her shoulders tight, her hands clenched in her lap.
She reached Crow’s rooms in Shadwell just before lunchtime, bringing some fresh ham sandwiches with her that she had bought from a peddler along the High Street. The running patterers—men who told the latest news in constant singsong free verse—were still going on about hideous murders, intertwined with gossip and current political comment.
Scuff was delighted to see Hester and immediately put on the kettle. He gave her the latest report on Tibor Havas, which was excellent. He would be able to go home very soon, possibly even today. Tibor was also quite well enough to eat three of the ham sandwiches, and join them around the table. He smiled at everyone, and had learned enough English to say “thank you,” which he did quite a number of times, and to try other, longer sentences.
Fitz was not there, and now that Hester had made up her mind to tell him the truth, she could not leave it another day. He might not come again, and if he did not, she would have to go to his lodgings and find him. When something must be done, better to do it as soon as possible. Get it over with. Face the consequences.
Early in the afternoon Scuff called a hansom and rode home with Tibor, promising to see him settled, provided with fresh medicine, and with full instructions for his landlady, who was very willing to look after him. One of them would call by regularly to make sure his progress continued.
Hester was still at Crow’s clinic later when Fitz arrived, and she had barely had time to greet him, trying to be natural and yet having to force herself to meet his eyes, when two men came in. They were supporting a third between them. His face was gray with pain and shock, his body twisted at an angle, as if he was desperately struggling to be free. There was a huge bandage around his shoulder, chest and left arm.
They looked immediately at Fitz, perhaps supposing Hester to be a house servant of some sort.
“Is Dr. Crow in? Please! This is…” It seemed the man could think of no words powerful enough to describe his need.
Fitz’s decision was instant: it required no thought at all. He stood up and went forward, taking a great deal of the injured man’s weight as he eased him toward the other room and the bed that only a few hours ago had been occupied by Tibor Havas. There were no sheets on it now, but the mattress was clean. He laid the man down on his right side, being careful not to allow the bandaged arm to touch anything but a pillow.
Both the companions stared at him in consternation. The elder spoke.
“When will the doctor be back? He’s in a terrible state…can’t swallow a thing! Not at all.” He was a big man with gray in his hair, but he looked as lost as a child.
“Fitz is a doctor,” Hester told him gently. “You were right to bring your friend here. He had a wound a few days ago, and you thought it was healing? Right?”
“Yes. You know about it?”
“No. I live on the other side of the river. But I was a nurse in the Crimea. I’ve seen this before.”
“Is he going to die?” the younger man asked, his voice trembling a little. He looked no more than thirty.
“If it is tetanus, which is what it looks like, then I’ve seen it cured,” she answered. “But it is not easy.”
The men who had brought the patient in should not have to witness it. Their distress was unnecessary, and would only get in the way. There was no time to attend to them as well, or to explain.
She turned to Fitz. “I don’t know what supplies you have after the last case. Shall I write out a list and ask these men if they will get what they can?” she suggested.
Fitz hesitated only a moment. His smile was slow and there was great sweetness in it. “I’ll need you to stay and help, if that’s what it is. Like…like the past.” He turned to the men. “Wait a while. You did the right thing bringing him here. But I need to be sure. Hester, come with me. He’s in a bad way.”
The men looked at each other, then back at Fitz. They had no strength for trying to take the man any farther. They were frightened and desperate. It was the elder of the two who spoke.
“Is it catching? Can we go back to our families, or…or do we…?”
“No, it’s not catching from one person to another,” Fitz said with assurance. “Unless you’ve got any cuts on you, and you handled whatever wounded him?”
They looked at each other, heads shaking. “No. That happened on an old cart that broke and ran down the hill. Should we destroy the cart?”
“Is it rusty?”
“Yes…”
“Then either be very careful of it or, if it’s badly damaged, yes, burn it. Just don’t let it cut you.”
Hester checked with Fitz, largely as a courtesy, then wrote a list of medicines that the two men could obtain quite easily. She gave it to one of them, hoping that he had, or could find, the necessary money.
Then she went into the other room to help Fitz. He was already standing over the man, talking to him quietly. He had taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Now he glanced at her, across the pain-racked body of the man lying so awkwardly.
She walked over to the table and helped him take off the bandages to expose the wound. She caught her breath as she saw it. It was a long time since she had seen such a mangled mass of flesh. She had grown used to dealing with women of the street who had been beaten or even stabbed, or who were riddled with disease, or weakened by hunger. But this violent destruction of a healthy man took her back to the horrors of war, as if she had been physically hurled through the years. She was a young woman again, far from here, spending every day in a desperate fellowship of skill, pity, exhaustion and dedication, even to the point of death.
Something had torn away the man’s skin and most of the right scapula, and a portion of the trapezius muscle and the infraspinatus and supraspinatus muscles. She could not imagine the pain, or the shock to the body.
The division of the strangulated ligaments and the excision of the flaps of flesh had already been done by whatever doctor had first attended the man, probably immediately after the event. The loose, broken pieces of bone had been removed as well, and the wound dressed with a split roller, like the ones they had used on Tibor’s wound.
She glanced up at Fitz and saw the anxiety in his eyes. It took her back to the days they had worked together, easily, knowing what to do, dealing with one patient after another, hundreds of men shattered and in agony, more than they could possibly deal with. They were a small, vivid part of a nightmare that consumed everything and everybody they knew. They kept going, borrowing strength from each other.
She looked down again. The injury must have happened a few days ago, because the wound had begun to heal around its edges when this new attack had seized it. She had seen it before—tetanus. It would spread outward from the wound until it affected the whole body. In a few hours he would be in a state of severe muscle spasm from the neck and back all the way down his spine, locked in an uncontrollable agony. He would be thrown back on his shoulders, his jaw totally locked. Swallowing would be impossible. It would not be long after that before he began to sink, and death would become inevitable.
“We haven’t long,” Fitz said to her very quietly.
She knew what he meant: no indecision, no weighing one treatment against another. A slow decision, however good, would be too late. They must be right.
She looked at Fitz’s hands: they were perfectly steady. The tremor of the other day had vanished.
“Opium?” she asked, although only out of courtesy. She knew he would need the poor man feeling as little as possible. The last resort for tetanus was cauterizing the wound with white-hot iron.
Fitz nodded.
She prepared the opium and gave two doses to the patient.
“Narcotic, camphorated oleaginous lint,” Fitz told her. “Enough for his whole body. Mild. We’ll calm him.”
“Over the wound as well?” she asked, already moving to prepare them.
“Yes.” Fitz was concentrating on the man and his distress, the tensions that very nearly possessed him now. The patient’s whole body was in agony, muscle spasms seizing him in spite of all Fitz could do. The man tried to stop himself from crying out, but it was more than he could manage.
They spent all afternoon applying every treatment they knew, and gradually the patient seemed to ease enough to give them hope.
Fitz sat down for a short break, a move in position to prevent his own muscles from aching. Exhaustion led to errors. They both knew that.
Crow and Scuff returned, tired and wishing to help, but there was nothing they could do except put away the new supplies the patient’s two friends had delivered. Crow had never had to deal with tetanus, so he didn’t have the necessary medicines in store.
“If he survives, there’ll be plenty to do later,” Hester told him. “Rest while you can.”
“I thought it was fatal,” Crow said as they stood in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. He looked tired, his skin pale and bruised around his eyes.
“It is,” she answered. “Unless you can stop it with cauterizing. That has been known to work.”
He glanced at the oven, with its large cooking hobs. The cauterizing irons were balanced close to them, ready to heat, if there was nothing else left to do. He could not imagine it.
Hester could. In fact, just the sight of them brought back the smell of burning flesh, choking her, making her stomach churn. Physically she was in London, the Shadwell Docks, the cold water of the Thames flowing out to the sea. In her memory there was gunfire in the distance and hundreds of wounded men, so many they would not be able to help. Fresh wagonloads arrived filthy, in agony and already weak from loss of blood.
And then there were diseases that were going to kill most of them. Cholera, dysentery, fevers…overwhelming exhaustion and pain that bled away all strength. Fellowship was the only light, the only thing they could cling to. It was universal, or almost. But Fitz had been the gentlest, the one who could always raise a smile when it seemed the most difficult, who would make absurd jokes, laughter too close to tears. His anger was always at the idiocy of the authorities in England who had sent out an army without medical supplies, wagons to carry the wounded off the field, tents to shelter the badly injured while they were operated on, only pensioners as stretcher-bearers. There were far too few of them and they were old men. Hester did not know of even one who had survived the first battle, let alone the war.
It was agonizing, infuriating and shameful; so much so that no one in England wanted to know. Florence Nightingale had exhausted herself into illness trying to bring about reform.
It was painful, and yet like the opening of a wound that needed the air, to recall these things with someone who knew and had felt them as she had. If Fitz’s mind took him back to those times, whether he willed it or not, she could not turn away.
How many times had he been her one link with sanity, and home? Did she have to tell him that she had searched the bodies on the battlefield to find him—and had believed him dead and beyond help? Wouldn’t he be happier not knowing? And yet what would the lie do between them?
She had wept many times, when she was alone and no one was watching, or needing her. But thousands of men had died of wounds, or disease. Thousands more were crippled. There was too much to do to indulge in mourning; too many women who had lost husbands, brothers and sons. One wept alone, in the night. And in the morning there was always something to do.
Now, years later, she was accustomed to happiness, to the warmth, the laughter, the safety of love.
She must speak to Fitz and tell him the truth, but more urgent than that now, there was a man in the next room whose tetanus might be getting worse, and they needed to be ready to act.
Fitz examined the patient again. No more pus had secreted from the wound and the edges of it were not swollen, even though the wound itself seemed puffy and raw.
Hester looked at Fitz.
Crow was standing by, a slight hope in his eyes.
Fitz gritted his teeth, taking the forceps in his hand.
In a flash of foreknowledge, Hester knew what he was going to do, and dreaded it as if it had already happened. She wanted to look away, but habit and the knowledge that the others, particularly Scuff, were aware of her, prevented it.
Fitz touched the blade of the scalpel to the very edge of the wound.
The patient let out a cry of agony so intense they were all jerked into rigidity, as if they too had been hurt beyond bearing.
The patient gasped and groaned, unable to control himself, but he could not swallow at all. His efforts were dreadful to watch. His head was thrown back so far the bones of his spine seemed to be endangered. His jaws were locked tight as if his teeth must break.
“We must get some fluid into him,” Fitz said to Crow. “You have a bottle with a tube in it. We can force that into his mouth.”
“His teeth won’t unlock.” Crow argued.
“Take two of them out,” Fitz told him. “We have to get some liquid into him.”
Scuff was standing by helplessly. His eyes were wide and dark, his face gray.
“Fetch the pliers,” Crow told him.
Scuff stood motionless, as though his feet were fixed to the floorboards.
“Will,” Fitz said gently. “Get the water.”
Scuff blinked, then moved, slowly at first then rapidly. He came back with the drinking bottle filled with water. He held it for Fitz to take.
The patient saw it, a glass bottle filled with clean water. His body arched off the table, his eyes wild. He began to convulse, his body thrashing against the constraints, his mouth foaming with saliva and cries torn out of him as if in a paroxysm of terror.
Crow was appalled.
Hester turned to Scuff. “Take the water back, Will.” She used his name deliberately. “And put the irons on the hob. Please.”
He took the water, disappearing as he was told. She hoped he would be quicker to respond when it came to using the irons. They had not long before the man choked to death.
Crow looked from Hester to Fitz.
“No choice,” Fitz told him with a turning-down of his lips. “I’ve seen it work. Just keep hold of him. Now the water’s gone he’ll be better.”
“The water seemed to terrify him…” Crow began.
“It does,” Fitz agreed. “God knows why.” He looked at Hester. “You’d better go and see how Will is doing with the irons. White-hot…”
“I know.” She hated the thought, but she too knew that it was now the only hope. Would she have had the nerve to do it alone? Probably not.
She found Will in the kitchen with the irons poked right into the heart of the fire.
He looked at her, his face pale, eyes full of questions.
“Tetanus,” she told him. “You can get it in wounds, even small ones, especially off iron. If you ever get a wound to deal with, from a piece of iron, make sure it bleeds before you try to stitch it. Enough to clean out all the blood that touched the metal.”
He stared at her while she took the oven glove and pulled out one of the irons to look at the tip. It glowed red. She pushed it back in again, then opened up the stove to add more coal. She took the bellows and blew hard till the flame came off the coals blue-white and flickering. Then she closed the door and waited.
Will said nothing, but he hardly took his eyes from her face.
Eventually the iron was white-hot and she took it out, very carefully.
“Go ahead of me and warn them,” she told him.
Will nodded, and did as she said.
She went into the room, keeping the iron in the shelter of her body so the patient would not see it, although he was in such a spasm of agony that it was doubtful he would know if she had carried it in front of her.
Fitz took it from her and touched the white end of it to the wound. The scream that tore out of the patient was so terrible it must have been heard in half the neighborhood.
Fitz did it again, and again. Then with the second iron when the first was covered in dried blood and had lost its greatest heat. It took only moments, but to those watching it seemed an age. To the patient it could only have seemed like hell itself. Hester could not imagine what Fitz was feeling, but not once did he hesitate.
Then it was completed.
Will took the irons away and plunged them into a bucket of cold water in the kitchen.
The patient was covered with sweat. It poured off his face, his body, what they could see of his arms and legs. Even his hair was soaked with it.
“Hester.” Fitz’s voice was half strangled in his throat. “Fetch the nitrated milk of sweet almonds, add sixty drops of laudanum. And a few drops of Hoffman’s Anodyne Liquor. In a glass…”
She did so as quickly as she could, and returned with the glass a few minutes later. The patient was sitting up quite normally, his jaws at last relaxed. He took the glass from her and drank all the liquid, carefully at first, then with relish.
Fitz requested the camphorated narcotic liniments as before, and they wrapped the man’s body in very warm flannel. At first he sweated profusely, but after quite a short while he sank into a deep sleep, and seemed utterly relaxed.
Fitz also was exhausted and, not surprisingly soaked in sweat. Crow was fascinated, but kept moving his shoulder, as if he too had had all his muscles locked in tension and even their relaxation still left him aching.
Will had disappeared into the kitchen, and Hester assumed he was cleaning up, or even making notes. But he reappeared ten minutes later with a tray of tea and several hunks of bread and cheese, and some slices of cold beef.
“Worth your weight in opium,” Fitz said cheerfully. “I’m never going back to war again, but if I did, I’d take you with me.”
Will glanced at Hester, then smiled widely and thanked Fitz.
CROW AND FITZ TOOK turns during the night checking on the patient, and found him sleeping. Will went home across the river with Hester.
The following day, Hester went back to Crow’s clinic with the further supplies she knew he would need. But mainly she had steeled herself to speak to Fitz today. If she continued much longer without telling him the truth, it would be even more difficult, becoming a lie by omission.
The patient was doing well. He was very weak, but free from the terrible spasms of tetanus, and able to eat and drink. Scuff and Crow were out attending patients they could visit in their own homes, and Fitz was at last taking his turn sleeping.
She checked on the patient herself, then started to put away the medicines she had brought, and was still sorting out others, making notes of what was running short, when she heard movement in the room where the beds were. She went to see if Fitz was up and would like a cup of tea.
Knocking, she received no answer, but she could hear movement. She knocked again, then went in. Fitz was half out of the bed, his arms waving and gesticulating angrily. His face was contorted, his mouth open in a silent scream of such terror it froze her just to see it.
She blinked, horrified at her intrusion on such anguish. It should have been utterly private. Should she leave? Had he even seen her?
Then she realized that he was asleep. Whatever he saw in his nightmares, it had nothing to do with the immediate reality of where he was. Was he back on the battlefield, where they had left him with the other corpses for whom there was no time for burial? In his mind, was he suffocating under the dead and the dying?
Or was he in one of those tents where the floor was piled with the broken limbs of men who had been whole only hours before? You could barely take a step without slipping in the gore of clotted blood.
But should she wake him? Doing so was instinctive, but was it best for him? What could the shock do to him? Would he be humiliated that she had intruded into this private hell of his, and seen him at his weakest and most terrified?
He had stopped moving. His arms were still. Suddenly he drew in a deep, shuddering breath and his whole body was racked with sobs. He wept as if his heart would break.
She held on to him and did not try to stop him. There was no point in speaking; this was primal, too deep for any words to reach.
When at last he was silent, she still held him, until he stiffened a little and tried to move away. Then she let him go.
He turned his head, not looking at her. He was exhausted, and perhaps embarrassed now. What could she say to ease the moment? Silence was no longer enough.
“Do you dream a lot?” she asked.
It was long seconds before he replied.
“Yes. I’m afraid to go to sleep,” he said quietly, his voice husky as if his throat ached.
“The battlefield?”
“Mostly. Sometimes it’s just noise and darkness. Don’t know where I am, except that I can smell blood. It’s all over me. I can feel it. At times I’m drowning in it.”
She had had those dreams too: an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, as if there were people in pain everywhere and she was doing nothing to help. But not lately; not since she could awaken and find Monk beside her. But that was hardly helpful to Fitz.
She put her hand on his shoulder and tightened her grip a little so he would feel the pressure.
“I can smell death everywhere,” he went on quietly. “It’s as if there’s something I’m not doing, and it’s my fault, but I don’t know what it is. I wondered once or twice if I was dead and that was hell: the helplessness, and the pain you couldn’t reach. Why had nobody found me?”
“Fitz…”
It was as if he had not heard her.
“Fitz…” she repeated.
Was he so hurt because he thought she had not looked for him?
“Fitz! I…” It was so difficult to say. However she worded it, it still sounded like she was making excuses. “I looked for you. I…I found you. You were covered in blood and you were cold. I touched your skin, your face. I felt no pulse. I felt as if part of me had died too, but there was nothing I could do. The stretcher-bearers with me were calling out for me to save someone who was still alive, and bleeding. I wanted to take you back…I should have.” Her throat was tight and the words were difficult to find. “But there was room for only one more on the cart. We took the man who was bleeding. I’m…I’m so sorry…”
For seconds he said nothing.
She heard movement in the doorway and turned. Will—Scuff—was standing there, his face white, his eyes wide with horror—and blame.
What could she say? Excuses now would make things worse.
“You found him?” Will said shakily. “And you left him there?”
Fitz turned toward him. He too seemed to be looking for words for a moment, then he smiled, and his voice was hoarse, but soft, as if he had found some inner warmth.
“Always save the living, Will. You can mourn the dead afterward. Your own grief doesn’t matter…not then. She thought I was dead. Hell, even I thought I was dead! She picked up my job to do in my place, and saw to those she might be able to save. The day may come when you’ll do that too. Save those you can…that’s the rule.
“It must have been long after you’d gone when I came to,” Fitz went on. “I could hear movement. At first I didn’t understand it, then I realized what it was—scavengers!” He let out a little grunt. “The small animals who are forever cleaning up behind us. Black crows, rats, God knows how many things with sharp, slithering feet.”
Neither Hester nor Will interrupted him. He must finish what he needed to say.
“I was wet. There was blood all over the place. My arm hurt like hell. There were bones broken, but my legs were all right. I could get to my feet and stand. Most of the blood on me wasn’t mine.”
He was silent for a little while. Hester knew he was back in those minutes, feeling it again: the guilt for being alive when he was surrounded, as far as the eye could see, by violent death. She had seen it in others, the search for reason, the proof.
He went on in a monotone, describing how he found clothes that were better than his, an almost clean shirt, another to tear up and bandage himself. One of the dead had a canteen of water and whisky.
He had found a barn to shelter in, although it contained little of worth to eat. As the days went by he moved farther away, found help. Then he became feverish, and stayed at a farm where they looked after him. He had no idea for how long.
He moved westward. Much of it was a blur in his mind. He was often cold and hungry, but he found assistance. By the time he got as far as Hungary, he was healed, and finding odd jobs here and there, mainly caring for farm animals.
“Not so different from men,” he said wryly. “At least some of them aren’t. I never learned much about chickens.”
He was silent again, this time for so long that she thought he was not going to say any more. But then he started with more fragments about the Hungarians, and how they took him in, looked after him. Gradually he learned to speak more and more of their language. The nightmares receded, but they never stopped.
He moved westward always. Some places he stayed for a few months, others for years. After leaving Hungary he had gone through Austria, then France. Finally he had reached England, but he was now a stranger here, just as he had been everywhere else.
“I landed in Hull, on the east coast. At first it seemed very odd, but I got used to it. I have no family here, and I thought those people I knew would have presumed me dead. I considered contacting them, but I thought I would rather be a dead hero than a live wreck, uncertain of too much, haunted by nightmares, afraid of the darkness inside myself. I thought of looking for you. I did, and I learned about your life now. I hadn’t intended to get to know you—far more than that, for you to know me. Memory can be kinder, and a lot easier to live with.”
Injury and disease were always the same, so he was useful everywhere. The dreams grew less, until recently. Now, among people who spoke his own, familiar language, they were back.
He was hunched over as he said it, the words almost muffled as he put his hands up to his face. “Sometimes when I wake up, I have no idea where I am. But I can always smell death.”
“Do you remember afterward where you’ve been, and how you got there?”
Again the moments passed and the silence became tense. Hester was afraid of the answer. She knew now what it was.
“You don’t.” She said it for him.
“No.”
“Fitz, you have to turn back and face whatever it is that hurts you so badly—what you keep looking away from. When you see it, it will lose its power to rob you of your inner self.”
Finally his eyes met hers. “Perhaps I don’t look at it for a very good reason. I know men who’ve lost limbs and yet years afterward they still think they can feel them. They still get up out of bed to stand on a leg that isn’t there. Sometimes we just aren’t strong enough to face it. We lie down to sleep, and we can forget.”
“You don’t forget, Fitz. You’re there in your nightmares. I don’t know where, but either the battlefield or the hospital. Or maybe on one of those terrible roads with horses, exhausted themselves, pulling wagonloads of wounded, every jolt a new pain.” She could remember them herself. When she rode in a carriage after a long evening out, every rough stone in the street reminded her.
But there was a happiness inside her, new responsibilities that filled her mind. Maybe once a year she was back again, but it passed with the daylight. She was not alone, in the deepest possible sense.
“Fitz…you must face what you can only half remember. It won’t be worse than the dreams. You lost patients. Everyone did. And you were out in the field. You tried your hardest. Let the dream play out, and see what it is. If you don’t, it will get bigger and bigger.”
“Face it?” he said, looking straight at her now. “Look at it all and see where I failed, as if it still matters?”
“I suppose so,” she agreed.
“And you?” he said with the shadow of a smile in his eyes. “Have you done that too?” His look was very direct, even probing. Suddenly their roles had become reversed. This was the old Fitz that she remembered. The strength was there, momentarily, the relentless honesty that dealt with life, pain, loss that seemed overwhelming.
“I don’t dream anymore,” she answered. It was very nearly true. The nightmares had not been banished just by love, or even the happiness of having a purpose. It was that Monk had his own nightmares, and so he understood, if not the details, at least the fact that some things from the past never entirely leave.
“Don’t you?” Now his voice was very gentle. “Not even about your father, and then your mother? Not about James; though that wasn’t your fault. God knows how many people lost brothers or sons in that bloody war. But Charles? Your brother who stayed at home, the one who wasn’t the hero, where his brother and his sister were. The one who had to deal with the bereavement of the family’s favorite son being killed, then the swindle and financial loss, the shame, your father’s suicide and your mother’s death from grief, all without you being there to help? Don’t you ever dream about that?”
She stared at him in disbelief. In a few words, a matter of two minutes, he had stripped her naked of all wrappings and defenses that had kept her secrets hidden from others, but most of all from herself.
He gave a sad little smile. “I know you, Hester. We’ve too much shared past, terrible things endured together. Did you not think you would be the first person I would look for when I got back home?”
She could not find anything to say.
“I went to find Charles. He told me everything that you found when you returned, all the loss and grief. He also told me he hadn’t seen you for years. He might have been able to find you, if he’d tried. But what for? There was nothing to say anymore. Old wounds can still be raw. They’d still bleed if you ripped the bandages off.”
It was true. All of it. She found her eyes filling with tears and an ache in her throat so tight she could barely swallow.
She felt his hand on her arm, gentle, but too strong for her to shake off.
“Fight your demons too, Hester. ‘Physician, heal thyself!’ And of course I’ll try. You know I never break my promises—not to you anyway.”
She did not answer him. Could she do it? It was so easy to tell him to face the worst within himself.
She put out her hand and clasped his. She felt him shaking still, still fighting to keep control. She moved a step closer and very softly put her arms around him.
“I will,” she promised.
He relaxed at last, leaning even closer, his head resting against hers, and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.
HESTER LEFT AFTER CROW had returned. Their patient who had suffered so appallingly with tetanus was continuing to thrive, and gave no cause for further anxiety. Another day or two and he would be able to return to his home.
Hester walked the short distance to the riverbank and the nearest stairs, where she would be able to catch a ferry home. It was late afternoon and the sun was already low over the city skyline to the west. She walked across the stone of the dock, toward the steps that led down to the water.
There was a boat coming toward her, but it was still far away.
It was an ebb tide, but still far too high to expose the mud-banks. It would be a hard pull for the ferryman across the tide, and the river was busy.
It was not the thought of Charles or her own half-smothered guilt that troubled her, although it was awoken again, and far from easy. Before she turned to that, she must help Fitz. If she set aside that task, even for an hour, she might be too late.
Perhaps she was too late already?
She didn’t worry most about the nightmares, or the pain that was like a raw nerve in his mind; she feared that the times he could not remember, here in Shadwell, might hold the worst yet: a reality he could never escape. Scuff—Will—had told her about finding Fitz wandering in the streets at night, covered in blood, and that Dobokai and his allies had accused him of murder.
This must have been out of fear and prejudice. Fitz was different. Even though he spoke Hungarian, in their minds he was only half one of them. Will had found that Fitz’s story was true. He had assisted in a difficult birth.
But the darkest fear in Fitz’s own mind lay in the times he had not had Scuff to find him, to check on where he had been. Fitz himself did not know. He had no way to defend himself. In his memory he had been back in the Crimean battlefields, the wretched, filthy and disease-ridden hospitals, or out on the freezing hillsides alone with dying men he could not help.
Or a fugitive, alone and still wounded himself, somewhere in Europe between the Crimea, on the Black Sea, and the English Channel, which bounded Britain’s southernmost shore.
If they accused him again, he could not prove his innocence because he did not know it. He had told her openly that there were times he could not remember. She must prove his innocence for him. She must find out where he had been during the murders, if she could possibly do it.
But would there be witnesses who would stand up and swear to his innocence, and be believed, even if their own people blamed him for these terrible murders, and ostracized those defending him, calling them traitors?
Better to prove who really was to blame. It was the only thing everyone would have to believe.
But was Fitz innocent? Even asking herself the question made her feel riddled with guilt. Was it possible that in some nightmare delirium he had done these things?
Why these men? Why the candles?
But then, why would anyone do that? Fitz had spent time, perhaps years, in Hungary. The proof of that lay in his familiarity with the language, so unlike not only English but all the other European languages an educated man might know. It seemed to bear no resemblance to German, French, Spanish, Italian, not even to the Latin every well-educated Englishman learned at school.
What had happened when he was there? Or, more importantly, what did he believe had happened?
She had to prove his innocence to the police, to the public, but most of all to Fitz himself.
No, that was not quite true: most of all to herself.
But she had to do it. For all the days and nights they had spent in the same desperate struggle to save lives, to ease the dying, to keep up hope and heart a thousand miles from home, in a hell that had tested them to the last degree. And because she had found him on the battlefield and accepted his death too easily. If she had insisted on recovering his body, maybe all this would have been different.