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It took Hester all the next day, and half the day after to find Agatha Nisbet. She had walked along the narrow path westward, past Greenland Dock and inland to Norway Yard. She asked again in Rotherhithe Street, and it was only a few dozen yards farther to a large, unused warehouse where there was a makeshift clinic for injured dockworkers and sailors.
She went in, walking boldly; head up as if she had the right to be there. One or two people looked at her curiously, first a young woman with a mop and bucket busy scrubbing floors, then a man with blood on his clothes, who appeared to be some kind of orderly. She smiled at him, and he relaxed and did not challenge her.
She passed two or three middle-aged women. They looked tired and harassed, their clothes crumpled as if they had been in them all night as well as all day. They brought back sharp memories of her own hospital days: cleaning, rolling bandages, changing beds, and helping sick and injured people eat, above all taking orders. She remembered the weariness, and the comradeship, the grief shared and the victories.
There were straw palliasses on the floor, all of them occupied by men, pale-faced and dirty, arms, legs, or bodies bandaged. The fortunate ones seemed to be asleep. If Agatha Nisbet had given them opium and bound up their injuries, Hester for one would have no criticism of her. Those who found fault should try a week or two of lying on this floor with bruised and broken bodies, with no ease during the long, bitter hours of the night in the cold and the darkness when even to draw breath was all but unbearable.
She had reached the end of the huge room and was about to knock on one of the doors of the cubicles at the end when it burst open. She found herself looking up at a woman who was well over six foot tall and with the broad, heavy shoulders of a navvy. Her hair was frizzy and of a fading auburn color. Her features were powerful, and had probably even been handsome thirty years ago in her youth. By now time and hard living had coarsened them, and sun and wind had roughened her skin. Fierce blue eyes regarded Hester with contempt.
“What do you want here, lady?” she asked in a soft, slightly sibilant voice. It was a little high, and did not sound as if it could possibly have come from her enormous body. There was contempt in her use of the word lady.
Hester bit back the tart response she would like to have made.
“Miss Nisbet?” she asked politely.
“What of it? ’Oo are you?”
“Hester Monk. I run a clinic for street women on the other side of the river. Portpool Lane,” Hester answered loudly, and without backing away.
“Do you now?” Agatha Nisbet’s eyes looked her up and down coolly. “Wot d’yer want with me, then?”
Hester decided to plunge in. Niceties were going to get her nowhere
. “A better source of opium than I have at the moment,” she answered.
“Yer mean cheaper?” Agatha said with a curl of her lip.
“I mean more reliable,” Hester corrected her. “Cheaper would be good, but I believe that as a rule you get what you pay for.” She gave a slight shrug. “Unless you’re very new to it, and then you get less. There are plenty of dealers who would happily shortchange the sick.” She looked Agatha up and down equally frankly. “I should imagine they don’t do it to you a second time.”
Agatha smiled, showing large, strong, unusually white teeth. “Any sense an’ they don’t do it the first time neither. Word gets round.”
“So what you have is as reliable as it can be?” Hester reaffirmed.
“Yeah. But it’ll cost yer some.”
“Did Dr. Lambourn come here?” she asked quickly.
Agatha’s eyes widened. “He’s dead.”
Hester smiled as artlessly as she could manage. “And now maybe there won’t be a bill through Parliament to regulate the sale of opium because of it, at least not for a number of years.”
Agatha’s eyes narrowed.
Hester felt a sudden chill of fear, and realized that perhaps she had made a mistake, even put her own life in danger. She must not let this big woman see her unease. “Which will give me a little more latitude,” she said aloud. She was certain that her voice was husky.
Agatha stood motionless, one hand on her hip. Hester could not help noticing the size of her fist, the shining, bony knuckles.
“An’ what is it you mean by that, exactly?” Agatha asked. Her voice was so soft, had Hester not been able to see her, she might have thought she was listening to a child.
Her mouth was dry and she could not swallow. Her throat tightened. She gulped air. “That I can’t do my job if I can’t get supplies,” she answered. “The men in government don’t think of that, do they? Rich men can buy opium to give them nice dreams, but people in the streets and in the docks, people who are beaten or broken, get what they can, where they can. Do I have to explain that to you?” She allowed the final question to be tinged with a note of disgust.
Agatha’s large body relaxed and she allowed the ghost of a smile into her face. “Want a cup o’ tea?” she asked, stepping back a bit so Hester could come into the room. “I got the best. Get it from China special.”
Hester blinked. “Doesn’t all tea come from China?” She followed Agatha into the room, which was surprisingly tidy, even clean. There was a slight smell of smoke and hot metal from the wood-burning stove in the corner, very like those she had seen in hospital wards in her nursing days. There was a kettle on the center of the top, steaming gently.
Hester closed the door behind her and followed Agatha inside.
Agatha rolled her eyes. “Most, though folks reckon it’ll do well in India soon. This is the best. Delicate. Know a lot, the Chinese.”
