Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide

“That’s your crew, Louvain!” Monk said, gasping to control his nausea. “Can you smell the plague? It’s the Black Death!”

There was a scrabbling of clawed feet and a flurry of squeaks, then a rat dropped into the bilges with a plop.

Louvain screamed and flung himself upwards, the lantern falling from his hands to land with a crash, and the light went out. Louvain was still screaming.

Monk started up again, desperate for the air. He reached the ledge, panic welling up inside him, horror inconceivable at what lay below him in the dark, and the madman at his heels.

He saw the square of sky at the hatch darken for a moment as Durban began down.

“We’re coming up!” he shouted. “It’s all right!”

Durban hesitated.

Louvain reached the ledge and Monk realized it half a second too late. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and then Louvain’s arms were around him, clinging as if to squeeze the air out of him, break his ribs, and crush his lungs and his heart.

He could not escape. His only choice was to lunge forward with his head. Louvain did not let go. Monk twisted sideways and bit Louvain’s wrist as hard as he could, feeling his teeth break skin and his mouth fill with blood.

Louvain yelled and his grip loosened, but he was blind with terror. He swung at Monk, but Monk moved and caught only a glancing blow on the shoulder.

“You had their throats cut!” Monk gasped out. “Even the poor bloody cabin boy!”

“They’d have died anyway, you fool!” Louvain said between his teeth, his hands reaching for Monk’s throat. “But I couldn’t tell anyone that. If you’d had the stomach for it, you’d have done the same!”

“I’d have taken the ship out again!” Monk lunged at him, fists clenched, and Louvain sidestepped, bringing them closer so they were locked together, muscles straining.

“And lose my cargo?” Louvain replied, grunting with effort. His face was running with sweat. “I need that clipper. This was quick-better than dying of the plague. I thought you’d see that.” He punched Monk hard, but the blow caught him on the hip instead of the stomach.

Monk gagged with pain, doubling forward. “But you took your sister to Portpool Lane to spread the plague there!”

“So London’s got a few less whores,” Louvain retorted. “I knew your wife wouldn’t let it go beyond that. I couldn’t kill Charity. She was my sister!”

Monk swung his leg back and kicked Louvain on the shin as hard as he could. When Louvain’s hold weakened for a moment, Monk struck him with all the force of rage he possessed, all the horror and loss that had drenched him night and day for the last week.

Louvain staggered, twisting his own arm to strike back. He teetered on the rim for wild, hideous seconds, then plunged over the edge, limbs flailing, and landed with a crash on the broken boards of the hold floor, his head a foot away from the swirling bilges awash with blood and their cargo of dead men, flesh bloated and eaten, throats gaping in eternal silence.

Monk fell to his knees and was sick. Then he crept to the edge and stared down. Vertigo made him grasp the wood as if it were salvation, although the drop to the hold floor was no more than twelve or fourteen feet. There was no sound but the slurp of water and the scraping of rats. Louvain lay on his back. His eyes were open, and Monk knew instantly that he could see but he could not move. His back was broken.

The ship swayed. Monk clung on even harder, horror at what lay below him crawling over his skin and running off him in a cold sweat.

Louvain slid closer to the yawning bilges, the weight of his body carrying him along the slimy, angled floor.

Monk stared at him, knowing what was going to happen with the next lurch of the ship, and seeing in Louvain’s eyes that he knew it also. The moment froze like an everlasting hell.

The ship swayed again. Louvain slithered to the edge of the boards, hesitated a ghastly moment, then helpless to save himself, slipped into the nightmare of the bilges, bumping against the swollen bodies of the cabin boy and two dead rats. His own weight took him down. Monk saw his white face for a moment, then the putrid water closed over him, and he was no more distinguishable from the rest of the corpses slewing back and forth.

Monk closed his eyes and saw in his mind the same scene burned into his brain. Time seemed to have stopped. He saw it frozen, forever.

“Help me get the sails up.” It was Durban’s voice at his shoulder.

Monk avoided the policeman’s eyes and grasped the hand held out to help him. He staggered to his feet.

“Help me get the sails up,” Durban repeated. “The tide’s turning and there’s a stiff breeze from the west. Two should do it, three at most.”

“Sails?” Monk said stupidly. “What for?”

“It’s a plague ship,” Durban replied. “We can’t let it put ashore, not here, not anywhere.”

Monk was reeling with fearful, inescapable thoughts. “You mean. .”

“Can you think of anything else?” Durban said quickly. His face looked gray in the light from the hatch.

“Your men. .” Monk began.

“Ashore. Help me get the sails up, then you can go, too. There’s the lifeboat-you can take it.”

Monk was balancing with difficulty. His trouble was not the faint rolling of the ship but the sick horror in his mind. “You can’t sail it alone! Where to? There’s nowhere you can take it!”

“Out beyond Gravesend, and open the seacocks,” Durban answered, his voice little above a whisper. “The sea’ll clean her. Way down at the bottom, it’ll be a good burial. Now let’s get out of here and up into the air. The smell is making me sick.” As he spoke he turned and started climbing again. Monk followed, hand after hand until he stood on the deck, gasping the ice-cold evening air, sweet as the light that poured across from the west, etching the waves with fire.

He could not remember much about raising a sail, but, as Durban told him what to do, some familiarity from childhood on the northeastern seaboard gave skill to his fingers. One great canvas slowly unfurled, and with their combined weight and strength began to crawl up the mainmast. They lashed it close, straight into the wind, then moved to the second.

Together they went to the winch and lifted the anchor. Monk completed the last few turns as Durban went back to the wheel and slowly turned her to catch the wind in one sail, then the next. It was hard work-and, with only two of them, dangerous. As the canvas billowed out and they picked up speed Monk turned to look at Durban. It was a kind of insane and terrible triumph. They were sailing a drowned ship on a sea of gold, heading towards the shadows of the east and the dying day.

“It’s time you went,” Durban said, raising his voice above the wind and the water. “Before we put on speed. I’ll help you launch the longboat.”

Monk was stunned. “What do you mean? If I take the longboat now, how will you get ashore?”

Durban’s face was quite calm, the wind burning his cheeks to scarlet. “I won’t. I’ll go down with her. It’s a better way than waiting for the other death.”

Monk was too shattered to speak. He opened his mouth to deny it, to refuse to grant the possibility, but it was foolish even as the thought entered his mind. He should have seen it before, and he had not: the sweating, the burning cheeks, the exhaustion, the carefully bitten-back pain, and above all the way Durban had kept a distance between himself and Monk, even his own men, recently.

“Go,” Durban said again.

“No! I can’t. .” They were near the rail; the ship was gathering speed, the water churning alongside them. The words were the last Monk said before he felt a weight jolting hard against him; the rail had caught him in the back. Then the water closed over his head, cripplingly cold, smothering, drowning out everything else.