Anne Perry - The Shifting Tide

He landed in the boat. “Take me ashore!” he ordered. “Now!”

The oarsman took one look at his face and obeyed, digging the blades into the water with all his strength.

As soon as they reached the shore, Monk thanked him and stepped out, his foot sliding on the wet stone. He grasped at the wall and went up as fast as he could. At the top he turned straight for Louvain’s office without even glancing behind him to see the boat begin its journey back.

“You can’t go in there, sir, Mr. Louvain’s busy!” the clerk shouted at him as he went past, bumping into another clerk with a pile of ledgers and only just avoiding knocking the man over. He apologized without turning around.

He reached Louvain’s office door, lifted his hand to knock, then changed his mind and simply opened it.

Louvain was at his desk, a pile of papers in front of him, a pen in his hand. He looked up at the interruption, but without alarm. Then he saw Monk and his face darkened.

“What do you want?” he said sharply. “I’m busy. Your thief got off. Isn’t that enough for you?”

Monk had to make an intense effort to control himself, even to keep his voice from shaking. He realized with amazement that part of him had respected Louvain, even liked him. It was that which made his rage so nearly uncontrollable now. This was the same man who had been dazed by the beauty of the great landscapes of the world, who had longed to sail beyond the horizon in the great clippers with their staggering beauty, a man he had almost confided in.

“Did anyone tell you that your sister died?” he asked instead. He was not even certain what made him say it.

Louvain’s face tightened. It hurt him, and he could not conceal it. “She was very ill,” he said softly.

“Not Charity. .” Monk saw Louvain’s eyes widen. In using her name he had at once told Louvain how much more he knew. He drove home the far deeper pain. “I meant Mercy. You knew Charity would die when you took her to Portpool Lane, and you didn’t care. Seven other women died as well, and we’d all have died if Hester and the others hadn’t been prepared to sacrifice their own lives to keep it in.”

Louvain was staring at him, his eyes wide, his hands on the desktop white-knuckled. “You’re speaking as if it’s over?” he said hoarsely.

“In Portpool Lane it is.”

Louvain leaned back and let his breath out slowly. “Then it is over everywhere.” His body went limp. He almost smiled. “It’s finished!”

Monk forced his next words through clenched jaws. “And what about the crew of the Maude Idris ? McKeever died of it, and so did Hodge. How about the rest of them?” He watched Louvain intently.

“If they haven’t got it now, they won’t,” he answered, and Monk saw barely a flicker of regret in his face.

“Let’s go and see,” Monk suggested, straightening his body, his hands sweating, his breath uneven.

“I’m busy,” Louvain answered. His eyes met Monk’s, and they stared at each other across the silent room. Monk thought of Mercy, of Margaret Ballinger, of Bessie and the other women whose names he did not know, but mostly of Hester and the hell it would have been for him without her.

Louvain became aware of a change in the air between them. He sat back. The moment of understanding was gone. They were enemies again. “I’m busy,” he repeated, challenging Monk to act.

Monk wanted to smile, but his face was stiff. “Come with me to see them now,” he said softly. “Or shall I tell Newbolt and Atkinson what kind of a ship they’re on? Do you think they will wait there then? Don’t you think they’ll hunt you down anywhere, everywhere, for the rest of your life?”

Louvain’s skin blanched of every trace of color, leaving him gray-white. He drew in his breath to defy Monk, but knew that his face had betrayed him.

This time Monk could laugh; it was a grating sound choked inside him. “You know what they are!” he said. “You know what they’ll do to you. Now are you coming, or do I tell them?”

Louvain stood up very slowly. “What for? You’ll get nothing, Monk. You can’t prove I knew. I’ll say I paid off the others at Gravesend and these men brought the ship up to the Pool.”

“If you like,” Monk replied. In that instant he knew exactly what he was going to do; the resolve inside him set like steel.

Louvain sensed the change, and he also knew that he could not fight it. He straightened up and came around the desk. He was moving slowly, with the tense, animal grace of a man who knows his own physical power. “What if I say you attacked me?” he asked almost curiously, as if the answer did not really matter.

“You won’t,” Monk replied. “Because by the time you show there is any truth in that you’ll be dead. I will have shot you-not to kill! In the stomach. And Newbolt and Atkinson will still be there. McKeever’s dead, by the way. Plague, I imagine.”

Louvain stood still. “What do you want, Monk?”

“I want you on the Maude Idris . Go ahead of me-now!”

Slowly, both of them moving as if wading against the tide, they went out through the office. Clerks looked up but no one spoke. Louvain opened the outer door and winced as the icy air struck him, but Monk allowed him no time to collect a coat. There might have been a weapon in the pocket.

They walked across the street and onto the quayside, Louvain shuddering with cold. It was a brilliant afternoon, the sun low in the west in the shortening day, light dancing gold on the water.

They had only a few minutes to wait for a boat, and Monk ordered the oarsman to take them out. Neither of them spoke as they sat, the waves slapping against the wood of the hull. The occasional spray was like ice.

When they reached the Maude Idris , Monk told Louvain to go up the ladder, then followed after him. Durban was alone.

Louvain looked startled. He swung around to Monk.

Monk took the gun out of his belt. “I’m taking Mr. Louvain down to see the crew,” he told Durban. “May I borrow the lantern again?”

“I’ll take him,” Durban answered. “You stay up here.”

Monk stared at him. He looked exhausted, his face flushed, his eyes sunken. “No. I’m doing this. Besides, the state you’re in, he might jump you.”

Durban started to argue, and Monk pushed past him, thrusting the lantern into Louvain’s hands. “You go first!” he ordered. “All the way down. If you stop I’ll shoot you, and believe me, I will!”

Durban leaned against the rail. “Don’t be long,” he said. “The tide turns in a quarter of an hour. I need you to go ashore then.” There was a finality in his eyes and his voice.

Louvain started down the ladder and Monk followed, one hand on the rungs, the other awkwardly holding his gun. He had to do this. He had to see Louvain’s face when he stood in the hold and looked down into the bilges. Monk needed him to smell the plague, to breathe it in, to know the stench of it so that for the rest of his life it would stalk his dreams. As an old man he would wake screaming, soaked in sweat, enclosed again in the creaking, rolling ship with the corpses of the men he had had killed.

The smell was far worse. It was like a thickness in the air as they went down, hand over hand towards the ledge.

Louvain stopped. Monk could hear his breathing-gasping, labored. He looked down at his face and saw the sweat standing out on it, his eyes like holes in his head, sockets dark.

“Keep moving!” Monk ordered. “What’s the matter? Can you smell them?” Then as he looked past Louvain at the open bilges where Durban had torn up the wood, his stomach heaved so violently he nearly lost his grip on the ladder. The boat swayed in the wash of something passing, and the water in the bilges slopped forward, carrying the bloated head and shoulders of a dead man. His eyes were eaten out, and his face rotted, but the fearful gash in his throat was still plain, and the stench so overpowering it made his senses swim.