Anne Perry - The Shifting Tide

Mercy blinked. “Ruth?” It was almost as if she did not know who Hester meant.

“Ruth Clark, the first one to die,” Hester reminded her. “She was suffocated. Someone put a pillow over her face and stifled her, but she would have died of plague anyway-almost certainly. Hardly anyone ever recovers.”

“Leaving. .” Mercy said hoarsely. “Not listen to me. Spread it. .”

“No, she didn’t,” Hester assured her gently, her eyes brimming with tears. “She never went outside the clinic, except to be buried.” She put her hand on Mercy’s and felt the fingers respond very slightly. “That’s why you killed her, isn’t it?” Her throat was tight and aching. “To stop her from leaving. You knew she had plague, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” It was hardly more than a breath.

“How? Was she your brother’s mistress?”

Mercy made a funny little sound in her throat, a gasping as if she had something caught in it, and it was a couple of seconds before Hester realized it was laughter.

“Wasn’t she?” she asked. “Who was Ruth Clark?”

“Charity. .” Mercy answered. “My sister. Stanley died at sea, but Charity thought she could escape. I wouldn’t let her. . not with plague. I. .” But she had no more strength. Her eyelids fluttered and her breath eased out slowly and did not come again.

Hester reached for her pulse, but she knew it would not be there. She sat motionless, overwhelmed with the reality of the loss. She had not known Mercy long, but they had shared sorrow, pity, and laughter; shared grubby manual duties, fear and hope, and feelings that mattered. Now she knew that Mercy had come here deliberately, knowing what it might cost her, to stop her sister from carrying plague away into the city, the country. She had paid the price to the last drop.

Slowly, Hester moved from the chair and bent to her knees. She had prayed often for the dead-it was a natural thing to do-but before now it had been for the comfort of those remaining. This time it was for Mercy, and it was directed to no listener except that divine power who judges and forgives the souls of men.

“Forgive her,” she said in her mind. “Please-she didn’t know anything better to do-please! Please?”

She did not know how long she knelt, saying the words over and over until she felt the hand on her shoulder and flinched as if she had been struck.

“If she’s gone, Miss ’Ester, we gotter get ’er away from ’ere an’ buried proper.” It was Sutton.

“Yes, I know.” She climbed to her feet. “She has to be buried in a graveyard.” She stated it as a fact. She had already decided to tell no one what Mercy had said. As far as they were concerned Ruth Clark was a prostitute who had died of pneumonia and no more.

“She will, Miss ’Ester.” Sutton bit his lip. “I told the men yesterday. They got a place. But we gotter ’urry. There’s a grave new dug not far from ’ere, mile an’ a ’alf, mebbe. It’s rainin’ like stair rods, which’ll keep folk off the streets. Flo’s bringin’ one o’ them dark blankets an’ we’ll wrap ’er up. But we in’t got time ter grieve. . I’m sorry.”

Hester felt her eyes hot and stinging with unshed tears, but she obeyed. When Flo came with the blanket she took it from her and insisted on wrapping Mercy in it herself. Then the three of them, Sutton at the feet and the two women at the head, carried Mercy down to the back door. Squeaky, Claudine, and Margaret were waiting, heads bowed, faces pale. No one spoke. Margaret looked at Hester, the question in her eyes.

Hester shook her head. She turned to Sutton. “I’m going with them.” It was a statement.

“Yer can’t do that. .” he started, then he saw the blind grief in her face. “Yer can’t go out now,” he said gently. “Yer’ve kept in all this time-”

“I won’t go near anyone,” she cut across him. “I’ll walk behind, by myself.”

He shook his head, but it was in defeat rather than denial, and his eyes were swimming in tears.

Flo sniffed fiercely. “Don’ yer forget yer goin’ fer all of us! An’ for all of them as we buried as ’as got no one.”

“Say something for us as well,” Claudine agreed.

Hester nodded. “Of course I will.” And before anyone could say anything more and break what little composure she had left, she opened the door and Sutton helped them carry the body outside into the yard and lay it down. “Look after ’er,” he said to the men when they came for it.

Hester waited until they were almost to the street, then she pulled her shawl over her head and followed over the cobbles in the drenching rain, Sutton’s coat around her shoulders. She waited under the arch of the gate as they passed under the street lamp and across the footpath and placed the body gently into the rat cart. One man picked up the shafts and started to pull, his dog beside him; the other went behind, his dog at his heels.

Hester went after them, about twenty feet behind. They knew she was there, and possibly they walked a little more slowly to allow her to keep up. They moved through the sodden night unspeaking, but every now and then glancing backwards to make sure she was still there.

She thought of the other women who had been buried this way, unmarked and unmourned. Whoever had loved them would never know where they were, nor that at the very least someone had dealt with them in some reverence.

The rain was turning to sleet, drifting across the arcs of light shed by the street lamps and disappearing into the darkness again. She pulled Sutton’s coat more tightly around her.

Without warning they came to a stop and she stood, still twenty feet away, while the two men took the body out of the cart and led the way very slowly, guided by the bull’s-eye lanterns, through the graveyard gates. She waited until they were almost out of sight before she went after them along the paths between the stones.

A thin figure loomed up ahead, standing by the earth of a new grave, dug ready for the morning. The mound of fresher earth, excavated deeper, was barely visible in the darkness.

“Quick!” was the only word spoken, but she heard the slither of soil and then the thud as shovel blades hit harder ground. There was a minute’s silence. Dimly she saw the figures straighten and bend again as they lowered Mercy down. Then all three piled the earth back in. It was bitterly cold, and she heard the faint splash of water in the bottom of the grave. At least the downpour would wash the mud from their hands afterwards.

It seemed an age until Mercy was completely covered, but at last it was done.

One of the men walked over and stopped about ten feet from Hester. “Yer wanner say summink?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.” Hester took a step sideways, closer to the grave, but away from him. “Rest in peace,” she said clearly, the rain icy in her face, washing away the tears. “If we loved you as much as we did, and could understand, you have no need to fear God-He has to love you more, and understand even better. Don’t be afraid. Good-bye, Mercy.”

“Amen,” the others said in unison, then led the way ahead of her through the gravestones back to the rat cart and the cold, bitter journey home.

The next day passed with no one else developing symptoms. They waited in dread and hope, listening for every cough, feeling for tenderness, watching for an awkward movement. They worked together to scrub, launder, cook, change bandages for the injured still trapped with them, and tend to those recovering from what now seemed to have been only pneumonia or bronchitis.

No one spoke much. They were all deeply subdued by Mercy’s death. Even Snoot seemed to have lost his heart for ratting, although he had possibly got them all anyway.