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‘At the annexe to the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich,’ she replied. Her voice was calm and steady, but she looked pale. Rathbone hated it that she had to endure this again and he was afraid for her. She could so easily be hurt.
‘In what capacity?’ Juster’s voice was gentle, but it carried to every corner of the gallery behind him as well as to the jury in their carved seats, and the judge before them all.
‘As a nurse, mostly on night duty,’ she answered.
‘Had you been there long?’ Again he asked innocently, as if he had little idea what her answer would be.
‘About three weeks.’
‘So the job was new to you?’ Now he looked surprised.
‘The hospital was new to me,’ she answered. ‘I have been a nurse on and off since the Crimean War.’
He affected surprise. ‘The Crimean War! Were you in Sebastopol then, with Florence Nightingale?’ He pitched his voice so that no man or woman in the court could have failed to hear him, or the name of perhaps the most famous nurse in the world, a heroine to any soldier.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged.
‘And you are still nursing?’
She lifted her chin a little. ‘I did so for some time after returning to England, then I married. I went back to nursing temporarily because a friend from those days was taken ill. She asked me to fill in for her, until she was better. She did not know how long that would be. It was a hospital treating mostly men from the navy, with injuries not unlike those I was used to treating before. I did not feel I could refuse her.’
‘So you took her place, mostly at nights?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you working for Mr Hamilton Rand?’
‘No. I was on general nursing duties, and I answered to Dr Magnus Rand.’
The interest in the gallery was beginning to wane. Rathbone was aware of people fidgeting, occasionally changing position. Juster should move on.
As if he had heard Rathbone’s thoughts, Juster changed the subject. ‘Were you on night duty when you discovered the ward for children, Mrs Monk?’
The attention was total again. No one stirred.
‘Yes. I saw a child, a girl who appeared to be about six years old, alone in the corridor in the middle of the night.’ Hester’s voice wavered a little with her own emotion. ‘She was white-faced and terrified. She told me her brother was dying.’
Now, one could have heard a pin drop.
Colbert moved as if to interrupt, and at least a dozen people glared at him.
Hester continued without being prompted. ‘I went with her. She led me down a passage I had not seen before and into a ward where there were six beds, all occupied by children looking to be between three years old and ten or eleven.’
‘And was one of them her brother?’
Again Colbert took a deep breath, and then changed his mind.
‘Two of them said they were,’ Hester answered. ‘The older, Charlie, was very ill indeed. The younger, Mike, was frightened but not seriously ill. He was about three or four. I remained all night and together we managed to keep Charlie alive. By morning he was returned to consciousness, and seemed to be recovering.’
‘What was the matter with him?’ Juster asked innocently, glancing at Colbert, and then back again at Hester.
Rathbone relaxed a fraction, stopping his fingernails from digging into his palms. Colbert was waiting for the slip, the assumption, the statement of a skill Hester did not have.
‘I didn’t know,’ Hester replied. ‘He seemed to be suffering from lack of fluids . . .’
This time Colbert could not resist. He rose to his feet.
‘My lord, Mr Juster has perhaps forgotten that he has not given us any background of Mrs Monk’s medical training for such a diagnosis. Nor has he asked her why on earth she did not call the doctor!’
