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At the far side of the river she paid the ferryman. Then they went up the steps and turned east, down the river from Wapping, and caught an omnibus on the High Street. Crow now rented space in a new building much larger than the old clinic he used to run. There was someone at the door and a room where patients could wait, almost like a regular doctor’s office. Except that many of these patients couldn’t pay. Old and young, some were abnormally ill, some acutely. There was even a dog with what looked like a jagged cut, neatly stitched up and now almost healed.
At first Hester was dismayed to find so many people here. She had judged the time badly. Then she realised that it probably would not matter what time she came, it might still be like this.
She gave her name to the woman at the front and asked that Crow might be told she was here, it was urgent, and she would not take up much of his time.
Ten minutes later Hester and Scuff were shown into his rooms.
Crow was well named. He was of indeterminate age, perhaps close to forty. He was tall, lanky and with jet-black hair, which had not recently been cut, and a huge smile showing very white teeth. He was clearly delighted to see her.
She knew better than to waste precious time with chatter. After the briefest of greetings she told him exactly what she wished for.
‘I have three small children in the Greenwich hospital, aged four, six and seven. I need to find their parents and learn exactly why they’re there. The family name is Roberts, and they live on a High Street, possibly in Limehouse, close to some river steps and behind a butcher’s shop.’
‘I know a couple of possibilities,’ Crow said after a minute or two. ‘But it’s a rough area. You shouldn’t go alone. Does Monk know about this?’
‘Not yet. And there’s another reason.’ This time she hesitated. That was foolish. Crow had no time for dithering; she of all people should know that. She went straight on. ‘Scuff would like to study medicine. I would be very grateful for any help or advice you could give us.’
Beside her Scuff was blushing scarlet and shifting from foot to foot, wishing he were anywhere else.
Crow regarded him with interest, waiting.
‘Well, you’re going to have to want it a lot more than that,’ Crow said after a few more seconds of silence. ‘Help me with the patients we’ve got waiting now, and when they’re clear we’ll go and find Mr and Mrs Roberts. Are you on?’
Scuff looked up at him, eyes wide. ‘Yes . . . sir!’
It was a very long hour and a half for Hester. She helped as well, of course, but all the time part of her mind was worrying about how Scuff was getting on with Crow, and real patients, real medicine.
He had watched her many times, and helped when Monk was ill, and when Hooper had been badly injured. But holding things, passing them when asked, was very different from actually doing anything yourself. Was this not too hasty a way to introduce him to the practice of dealing with people who were frightened and very likely in pain?
Or perhaps Crow was seeing immediately, the hardest way possible, if Scuff had the obedience and the courage even to undertake such a course.
She had to force herself to turn her mind totally to the people she was working with. That was another lesson – from the time you were treating a patient, your own difficulties did not exist.
It was almost sundown, the colour was brilliant across the western sky, when they finally left Crow’s clinic and started to walk together to the first butcher’s shop on the High Street that Crow thought likely to be near the home of the Roberts family, whose three children were in Greenwich Hospital.
Hester was longing to ask Crow how Scuff had fared, what he thought, if he would really help or not, but she could not do so in front of Scuff. What could she say to comfort him if the answer was ‘no’? How could she protect him from the bitterness of the disappointment, and the humiliation?
She couldn’t. If she protected him from this one, then how would he be armed or prepared for the next, or the one after that? Without pain how would he learn compassion? If it were easy, what value was it?
Scuff was a little behind them crossing the road.
‘He’ll do,’ Crow said quietly, satisfaction in his voice. Then he flashed his wide smile at her. ‘Get him to come Saturdays. If he isn’t keen enough to come, then you know it’s not for him.’
Ridiculously she felt a momentary sting in her throat, as if she were going to cry, and she had trouble getting the words out.
‘Thank you.’
He shrugged, brushing it off lightly. ‘I asked one or two people about the Roberts family. They should be around about the next corner.’
They found two butcher’s shops. The first denied all knowledge of a Roberts family, but the second grudgingly gave them directions to a small, shabby house wedged between the back of the butcher’s yard and a pawn shop facing on to an alley.
Crow knocked on the door. He was lifting his hand to knock again when it was opened by a large man, his untidy shirt tucked into his trousers, his face pale and bloated.
‘Mr Roberts?’ Crow enquired.
‘’Oo’s askin’?’ the man said anxiously.
‘They call me Crow. I’m a doctor—’
