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WHEN MONK LEFT, HESTER stood alone for several minutes absorbing the emotions that almost overwhelmed her. She had been careful not to show how deeply she felt his pain while he was still there.
Perhaps he thought he was concealing it. For all their intimacy on so many levels—the laughter, the pain, the tenderness, even the need—he was still a proud man, and in some areas, very private. He still did not trust anyone, even her, with the raw edges of his own doubt, the pain that hurt him more than he could bear with grace.
She had seen it in his face, even if he thought he was hiding it. She could feel the urge inside herself to protect him, but she had no idea how. If any one of them, especially Hooper, had betrayed them inadvertently, or was placed under some unbearable pressure, it would destroy something inside Monk that he did not know how to repair.
There must be something she could do! Arguments of words, all the tenderness of touch, would not heal him. They might show him how much she loved him, how deeply she felt his pain, but that was not enough. It was putting a bandage on the wound. And wounds of the heart sometimes needed scouring of the infected part, just as those of the flesh needed removal of the bullet or broken knife tip.
She decided to go tell Scuff—Will now. She need not tell Monk she was doing so; he still thought of Will as a child, to be protected from certain realities. She knew better. He was learning to be a doctor. If he was going to follow in the footsteps of the duties she had learned in the army, he would have to face the rigors of amputation and other invasive surgeries. They always hurt. Sometimes the patient died from the shock to the body, but they would otherwise die for certain from their untreated wounds.
Will would understand the need for the truth, whatever it turned out to be.
Hester put on her coat and left the house immediately. She walked down the hill to the Greenwich ferry and took the first boat across. She did not know where Will would be, but she knew where to begin looking. The place to start was always at the free clinic run by Crow, the onetime street doctor, skilled but unqualified, whom she had known for years. She had finally persuaded him to take his exams. Terrified, he had done so and passed. Not perhaps with the highest of marks, but enough to qualify, and to do the work to which he had dedicated his life, and at which he had abilities that could not be quantified on paper.
He had now agreed to teach Will, in a practical way, all he could. He understood Will’s dream to be a doctor and the limits of his schooling, which made it difficult to gain a place in a university. So far, it was working very well. When it was time to take surgery to a higher level, they would have to think again.
She reached Crow’s clinic and found him in. As usual, he was delighted to see her and flashed his luminous smile. And as usual he was dressed all in black and busy with patients. Nevertheless, he stopped long enough to tell her that Will would be back in ten or fifteen minutes.
“Can I help?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s bad?” It was half a question, half a judgment made from her expression. He had always been able to read her emotions. It was part of his nature, and a large part of his skill.
She did not evade the truth. “I want to borrow Will for…maybe a day or two. It’s…”
“The kidnapping,” Crow finished for her. “If he could help, he’d be no use to me or to anyone if I tried to stop him. If I can do anything, you’ll tell me?” That really was a question.
“Yes,” she said immediately. She did not know whether she would or not, but it would hurt him deeply if she said no.
Will came in shortly after that, and one glance at her face was enough to alarm him. He hardly resembled the eleven-year-old mudlark they had first met. He was now twenty and several inches taller than Hester. He was confident, filled out, and strong. But she could still see the vulnerable, street-smart survivor in him, the child nobody wanted, who had found Monk when he was new to the riverbank.
“What is it?” Will demanded immediately. He looked anxiously at Hester.
They were alone in one of the rooms in which Crow kept stores. They would not be interrupted. Briefly she told him what had happened, and why it mattered so much.
He stood perfectly still. He was used to dealing with sickness and injury, being cold, hungry, alone, but being in a close group, apart from Monk and Hester, was new to him. Disillusion and betrayal were things he had not had to face before. When you trust no one and believe in nothing, you are vulnerable to anything, and yet in some ways also to nothing. He was still learning what it was to belong irrevocably, not to be able to walk away because the ties are too deep, too woven into who you are, who you want and need to be, where all that is comfortable and precious resides.
“Well, it couldn’t be Hooper.” He made it a statement, but his eyes pleaded for her to assure him of that.
Should she? She had never lied to him, even in the hardest of times.
“We’ve got to prove that it isn’t.” She chose her words carefully. She had first known Will when he was a slender-necked, narrow-shouldered little boy, but fully independent, trusting no one, and with a deep suspicion of all women. His own mother had turned him out for the new man in her life, who protected her and the younger children. It had taken Scuff a long time to allow himself to care for Hester. He had loved Monk easily, because he had been able to teach Monk much about the river he had known since birth.
And yet it was Hester’s career he had chosen to follow, not Monk’s.
“And the others, too,” Hester went on. “I’ll check on Hooper. Will you look at Bathurst for me? And when we know about them, we can tell William.”
Will nodded. “Tell me all you know about Bathurst. I know people. I can find out.”
“Thank you. And…”
“What?”
“Be careful. It was a terrible thing they did to…”
His face looked pinched. The secure, loved young man disappeared and the frightened child, trying so hard to prove he needed no one, yet so desperately wanting someone, was clear in his eyes. “I will,” he said firmly. “Don’t worry.”
* * *
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