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“Sorry. Did you speak to me?” Rathbone kept his voice almost steady, his tone neither afraid nor aggressive. It was not easy.
“I said-can yer dance?” came the reply.
“Oh, yes, moderately. But I like a space a little larger than this. Cramped, don’t you think?” There was a ring of bravado in his words. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
“Yer know, Fancypants, yer might be worth keepin’ alive. I like you.”
“Thank you,” Rathbone answered, not at all sure if the idea was good or bad.
At that point the jailer came back and walked over to Rathbone’s cell, but he did not open the door. Instead he spoke to him through the bars.
“Anyone as we should tell you’re ’ere?” he asked. “If yer go missin’ I expect it’ll take ’em a while ter look for yer, like.”
Rathbone had deliberately put off facing that decision. He refused to think what his father would feel when the news reached him. It was too painful to acknowledge. It paralyzed all thought.
Who would he ask? Who would help-or would even try? There could be only one answer-Monk.
“Yes,” he said, meeting the guard’s eyes. “Mr. William Monk. He is commander of the Thames River Police at Wapping. If you would be good enough to tell him what has happened, and that I am here …”
The guard shrugged heavy shoulders. “Yer’d be a lot better off wi’ a lawyer, but if that’s wot yer want, I’ll send a message,” he agreed. “See where it gets yer.” And he wrote it down carefully on a piece of paper, then disappeared, leaving Rathbone to sit down on the straw-filled mattress and wait.
Hester was troubled as she worked in the kitchen. It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and bright, but she was unaware even of the sunlight streaming in through the window and making patterns on the floor. Oliver Rathbon
e had been arrested and charged with obstructing justice. Squeaky Robinson had heard and sent her a message in the middle of the morning. Rathbone was in prison and might be there until he was tried.
It seemed inconceivable. Yesterday he was presiding in court over the end, in all but formality, of the trial of Abel Taft. Now Taft and his whole family were dead and Rathbone was in prison.
She was unaware of Scuff standing in the doorway until she turned and bumped into him. She jumped back and nearly dropped the jug she was carrying.
Usually he would have apologized. Today he stood his ground, his face clouded with worry.
“Is it true?” he asked.
She eased the jug down on the nearest bench awkwardly. She had known this was going to happen and been trying to prepare what she would tell him. Now she must come up with an answer that was honest and yet did not frighten him. He was getting tall, growing out of his clothes every few months, but he was still a child in so many ways. It would be easy to frighten him, on the one hand, by letting him see how fragile his precious world really was, and yet to patronize him with lies he could see through would be worse. It would make it difficult for him to trust her, and with Scuff trust was a delicate matter.
“Yes, it’s true Sir Oliver is in prison,” she said, walking back toward the stove to pull the kettle onto the hob. This sort of thing was best discussed at the table, over tea. It was not something to talk about when half your mind was on something else.
“What did ’e do?” Scuff asked, following her into the kitchen. There was an edge of fear in his voice.
The kettle was not going to boil for a few minutes; there was no need to reach for cups and the tea caddy yet.
“They are saying that he tried to twist the course of justice,” Hester answered.
“But ’e’s a judge! Did ’e make a mistake?” Scuff was confused. He stood in the middle of the floor, the sunlight around his feet. He was growing out of those boots again, already!
Should loyalty win out over honesty? That was a balance she must get exactly right. He was watching her intently.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But they are saying he did something on purpose.”
“What?”
There it was-the question she could either answer or deliberately evade. He would know if she lied. He had watched her face, listened to her for more than two years now. He had survived on London’s dockside by never trusting people he shouldn’t, by always getting it right. He was not like a usual child.
She drew in a deep breath. Where to begin in this terrible story? Scuff probably knew more than she did about perversion and the abuse of children along the waterfront. He had once been among Jericho Phillips’s prisoners himself. How close he had come to being in one of the terrible photographs she did not know. She had never wanted to, and it was possibly a lot easier for Scuff’s dignity if he believed she had no idea. If he did ever want to speak of it, it would likely be to Monk, someone of his own gender. As he grew up there would be parts of his life Hester must be excluded from. It was inevitable.
“What are they saying?” he asked again, more urgently, afraid she was going to close him out. Then his imagination would run to all the darkest and most painful places.
“It’s quite a long story,” she answered at last. “I’ll make the tea and tell you as much as I know. Will you pass the milk jug back to the table, please?”
