The Sins Of The Wolf Part 3

Oonagh frowned. "Of course you can, if you wish to enough." She turned back to Mary. "Now, Mother, do you have everything you need? Are there any footwarmers here?" She looked down at the floor, and Hester's eyes followed hers. Footwarmers. What a blessed thought. On the journey up her feet had been so cold she had almost lost all sensation in them.

"Send for some," Quinlan said with raised eyebrows. "There ought to be."

"There are," Oonagh answered him, bending down to pull one of the large stone bottles forward. It was filled with hot water, and also with a chemical which was supposed, when shaken vigorously, to restore some of the heat naturally lost towards morning. "There you are, Mother, it's lovely and hot. Rest your feet on that. Where's the traveling rug, Baird?"

He handed it to her obediently, and she took it and made Mary comfortable, wrapping it around her, and folded the spare one on the other seat. No one was taking much notice of Hester, who was apparently not expected to begin her duties until they had actually departed. She arranged her valise where it was out of the way, then sat down on the seat opposite and waited.

Gradually all the good-byes were said and each of them moved back into the corridor until only Oonagh was left.

"Good-bye, Mother," she said quietly. "I shall look after everything while you are gone-and do it as you would have."

"What an odd thing to say, my dear." Mary smiled in amus.e.m.e.nt. "You look after most of the household now. And when I come to think of it, I believe you have done for some considerable time. And I a.s.sure you, it had never crossed my mind to worry."

Oonagh kissed her very lightly, then turned to Hester, her eyes direct and very clear. "Good-bye, Miss Latterly." And the next moment she was gone.

Mary settled a trifle more comfortably in her seat. She was naturally facing forward, and it was Hester who would travel always looking the way she had come.

A wry look crossed Mary's face, as though her last words in some way amused her.

"Are you worried?" Hester said quickly, wondering if there were some way she might ease her concern. Mary Farraline was not only her patient, she was also a person towards whom she felt a natural warmth.

Mary lifted her shoulders in the slightest of shrugs. "Oh no, not really. I can think of no sensible thing to worry about. Are you going to be warm enough, my dear? Please use the other rug." She indicated where Oonagh had put it. "It is brought for you. Really, they should have given us a footwarmer each." She made a little click of annoyance between her teeth. "I daresay that one will be quite sufficient for two of us. Please-move yourself to sit precisely opposite me, and place your feet on the other half of it. Don't argue with me. I cannot possibly be comfortable if I know you are sitting there s.h.i.+vering. I have caught trains from Edinburgh station quite often enough to be familiar with their discomforts."

"Have you traveled a great deal?" Hester inquired, moving to sit as Mary had directed, and finding the blessed relief of the footwarmer on her already chilled feet.

Outside doors were slamming and the porter was shouting out something, but his voice was lost in a belch and hiss of steam. The train clanked and lurched forward, then very slowly gathered speed and they emerged from the canopy of the station into the darkness of the countryside.

"I used to," Mary replied to the question with a reminiscent look. "All sorts of places: London, Paris, Brussels, Rome. I even went to Naples once, and Venice. Italy is so beautiful." She smiled and her face lit with memory. "Everyone should visit it once in their lives. Preferably when they are about thirty. Then they would be old enough to realize how marvelous it is, to feel something of all it has been and sense the past around them, to give depth to the present. And yet they would still be young enough for the flavor to enrich the larger portion of their lives." The train jolted hard, and then continued forward at greater speed. "I think it is a shame to have your miracles in life when you are too young, and in too much of a hurry to realize what they are. It is a terrible thing to know your blessings only in hindsight."

Hester was considering the impact of that thought so seriously she did not reply.

"But you have also traveled," Mary said, her eyes bright on Hester's face. "And far more interestingly than I-at least for the most part. Oonagh told me you were in the Crimea. If you are not pained by recalling it, I should most dearly like to hear something of your experiences. I admit, my mind is filled with questions in a manner most unbecoming. I am sure it must be ill-bred to inquire so much, but I am old enough not to care what is considered proper."

Hester had found many peoples' questions poorly framed and based on a.s.sumptions made from the peace and ignorance of England, where the vast majority knew only what newspapers told them. Although that knowledge was now increasing their ability to criticize and raise doubts, it still carried very little of the pa.s.sion or the horror of reality.

"It brings back distressing memories?" Mary said quickly, apology vivid in her voice.

"No, not at all," Hester denied, more in courtesy than strict truth. Her memories were sharp and complex, but she had seldom found herself desiring to escape them. "I fear that they may become tedious for people because I felt so strongly about so much, I tend to repeat myself about the wrongs and omit the details which may make the tale more interesting."

"I should not be in the least interested in a well-considered and emotionless account that I might read in my daily newspaper." Mary shook her head vigorously. "Tell me what you felt. What surprised you most? What was best, and what was worst?" She waved a long hand dismissively. "I don't mean the suffering of the men, I shall take that for granted. I mean for yourself."

The train had settled with a steady rhythm that was almost soothing in its regularity.

"Rats," Hester answered without hesitation. "The sound of rats falling off the walls onto the floor; that, and waking up cold." The memory was sharp as she said it, blurring the present and the sense of the warm rug around her. "It wasn't so bad once you were up and moving around-and thinking of what you were doing-but when you woke up in the night and were too cold to go back to sleep again, no matter how tired you were, that's what stays with me most." She smiled. "Waking up warm, pulling the blankets close around me, hearing the sound of the rain outside, and knowing that there is nothing alive in the room except me, that's marvelous."

Mary laughed, a rich sound of pure enjoyment.

"What an unpredictable faculty memory is. The oddest things will bring back times and places we had long thought lost in the past." She leaned back in the seat, her face relaxed, her eyes on some distance of the imagination. "You know, I was born the year after the fall of the Bastille-"

"The fall of the Bastille?" Hester was confused.

Mary did not look at her, but kept her gaze on the sudden memory that was apparently woken so sharply. "The revolution in France, Louis the Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre ..."

"Oh! Oh, of course."

But Mary was still lost in her own thoughts. "Those were such times. The Emperor had all Europe under his heel." Her voice sank in awe so it was barely audible above the rattle of the wheels over the ties. "He was twenty miles away across the channel, and only the navy stood between his armies and England-and then of course Scotland too." The smile on her lips broadened, and in spite of the lines in her face and her silver hair, there was in her a radiance and an innocence as though the years between had fallen away and she was a young woman momentarily caught in an old woman's body. "I remember the spirit we had then. We expected invasion every day. Everyone's eyes were turned eastward. We had lookouts on the cliff tops and beacon fires ready to light the moment the first Frenchman set foot on the sh.o.r.e. Right up and down the coast every man, woman and child was watching and waiting, homemade weapons ready to hand. We would have fought till the very last of us was dead before we would have let them conquer us."

Hester said nothing. England had been secure all her lifetime. She could imagine what it might have been like to fear foreign soldiers trampling through the streets, burning the houses, laying waste the fields and farms, but it was only imagination, it could never touch the reality. Even in the very worst days in the Crimea when the allied armies were losing, she had always known England itself was peaceful, impregnable, and except in small, private bereavements, untouched.

"The newspapers used to print terrible cartoons of him." Mary's smile broadened for a moment, then vanished suddenly, and she s.h.i.+vered, looking directly at Hester. "Mothers used to terrify their naughty children by threatening that 'Bony' would get them. They used to say that he ate little children, and there were pictures of him with a great gaping mouth, and a knife and fork in his hands, and Europe on his plate."

The train slowed almost to walking speed as it climbed a steep gradient. A man's voice shouted something indistinguishable. A whistle blew.

"And then when I had my own children in Edinburgh," Mary went on, "people used to frighten the disobedient with stories of Burke and Hare. Odd, isn't it, how much more sinister that seems now? Two Irishmen who started selling corpses to a doctor so he could teach his students anatomy, then progressing to robbing graves, and finally to murder."

The train began to pick up speed again. She looked at Hester curiously.

"Why does murder to dissect the corpses chill the blood in a way murder to rob never can? After it all came out in 1829, and Burke was hanged-Hare never was, you know! For all I can say, he's still alive now!" She s.h.i.+vered. "But afterwards, I remember we had a maid who left without giving notice. We never knew where she went-off with some man, in all probability-but of course all the other servants said Burke and Hare had got her, and she was cut up in pieces somewhere!"

She wrapped her shawl tighter around her, although the carriage was no colder than it had been before, and their feet were on the footwarmer and snugly wrapped in a blanket.

"Alastair was about twelve then." She bit her lip. "And Oonagh was seven, old enough to have heard the stories and understood the terror they woke. One night, it was late in the winter and there was a fearful storm, I heard the thunder and got up to see if everything was all right. I found the two of them together in Oonagh's room, sitting up in bed, huddled under the blanket with the candle lit. I knew what had happened. Alastair had had a nightmare. He had them sometimes. And he had gone into her room, ostensibly to see if she was all right, but really because he wanted the comfort of being with her himself. She was frightened too; I can still see her face in my mind, white-skinned, wide-eyed, but busy telling Alastair about Burke having been hanged and that he was quite dead." She gave a dry little laugh. "She described it in detail, she was so certain of it."

Hester could picture it. Two children sitting together, each pretending to a.s.sure the other, and whispering in hushed voices of the horrors of body s.n.a.t.c.hers, resurrectionists, secret murder in dark alleys, and the dissector's b.l.o.o.d.y table. Such memory runs deep, perhaps below the surface of consciousness, but those things shared forge a trust which excludes other, later, comers. She had no such moments with her elder brother, Charles. He had always been a little on his dignity, even from the earliest times she could recall. It had been James with whom she had had adventures and secrets. But James had been killed in the Crimea.

"I'm sorry," Mary said quietly, her voice cutting across Hester's thoughts. "I have said something that distressed you." It was not a question but an observation.

Hester was startled. She had not thought Mary was more than peripherally aware of her, certainly not enough to notice her feelings.

"Perhaps resurrectionists were not the most sensitive of subjects to raise," Mary said ruefully.

"Not at all," Hester a.s.sured her. "I was thinking of the two children together, and remembering my younger brother. My elder brother was always a little pompous, but James was fun."

"You speak of him in the past. Is he-gone?" Mary's voice was suddenly gentle, as if she knew bereavement only too well.

"Yes, in the Crimea," Hester replied.

"I'm so sorry. To say I know how you feel would be ridiculous, but I have some idea. I had a brother killed at Waterloo." She said the word carefully, rolling it off her tongue as if it held some mystic quality. To many of Hester's age that would have been incomprehensible, but she had heard too many soldiers speak of it for it not to give her a s.h.i.+ver through the flesh. It had been the greatest land battle in Europe, the end of an empire, the ruin of dreams, the beginning of the modern age. Men of all nations had fought to exhaustion till the fields were strewn with the wounded and the dead, the armies of Europe, as Lord Byron had said, "in one red burial blent."

She looked up and smiled at Mary, so she would know Hester understood at least something of its immensity.

"I was in Brussels then," Mary said with a wry turn of her lips. "My husband was in the army, a major in the Royal Scots Greys...."

Hester did not hear the rest of what she said. The clanking of the train wheels over the tracks drowned out a word here and there, and her mind was filled with a picture of the man in the portrait, with his fair sweep of hair and the face which at once had such emotion and ambiguous power and vulnerability. It was easy to imagine him, tall, straight-backed, wildly elegant in uniform, dancing the night away in some Brussels ballroom, knowing all the while that in the morning he would ride out to a battle to decide the rise or fall of nations and from which thousands would not return and more thousands would come home blind or maimed. And then she thought of the painting she had seen of the charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo, the light on the white horses plunging through the heat of battle, manes flying, scarlet riders bent forward, the dust and gun smoke clouding the rest, darkening the scene behind them.

"He must have been a very fine man," she said impulsively.

Mary looked surprised. "Hamish?" She sighed gently. "Oh yes, yes he was. It seems like another world, so very long ago, Waterloo. I hadn't thought of it in years."

"He came through the battle all right?" Hester was not afraid to ask because she knew he had died only eight years before, and Waterloo was forty-two years in the past.

"He had a few cuts and bruises, but nothing worth calling a wound," Mary replied. "Hector had a musket ball in his shoulder and a saber cut on his leg, but he healed quickly enough."

"Hector?" Why should she be surprised? Forty-two years ago Hector Farraline might have been a very different man from the drunkard he was now.

The look in Mary's eyes was far away, sad and sweet and full of memory. "Oh yes, Hector was a captain. He was a better soldier than Hamish, but being the younger brother, his father only bought a captain's commission for him. He hadn't Hamish's grace, or his charm. And when the war was over, it was Hamish who had the imagination and the ambition. It was he who started the Farraline printing company." There was no need to add that, being the elder, he would have inherited whatever money there might have been. That was something everyone knew.

"He must have been a great loss," Hester said aloud.

The light died out of Mary's face and her expression became formal, as if receiving condolences in a long-practiced fas.h.i.+on. "Yes, naturally," she replied. "Thank you for saying so." She sat more uprightly in her seat. "But we have talked about the far distant past too much already. I should like to hear something of your experiences. Did you ever meet Miss Nightingale? One reads so much about her these days. I swear, she seems more revered in some quarters than the Queen herself. Is she really so very remarkable?"

For nearly half an hour Hester recalled her experiences as vividly as she could. She told Mary of pain and waste, the stupidity and the constant fear, the biting cold of winter and the hunger and exhaustion of siege. Mary listened attentively, interrupting only to ask for greater detail, often merely nodding a.s.sent. Hester described the heat and sparkle of summer, the white boats on the bay, the glamour of officers and their wives, the gold braid in the sun, the boredom, the companions.h.i.+p, the laughter and the times when she dared not weep or she might never stop. And then at Mary's request, with sharp memory, with laughter and anecdote she recounted much of the individual people she had admired or despised, loved or loathed, and all the time Mary sat with total attention, her clear eyes on Hester's face, while the train rattled and jolted, slowed for inclines, and then gathered speed again. They were completely islanded in a world of lamplight and rhythmic clanking and swaying through the darkness, the countryside beyond the windows invisible. They were warmly wrapped in rugs, their feet almost touching on the stone footwarmer.

Once the train stopped altogether and they both alighted into the chill night air, not so much to stretch their legs, although that was welcome, but to avail themselves of the conveniences at the station.

Back in the train again, whistle blowing, steam billowing as the engine gathered impetus, they rewrapped themselves in the rugs, and Mary requested that Hester continue her account.

Hester obliged.

She had not intended to, but she found herself now speaking with vehemence about the ideals which had burned so deeply in her when she first returned, her pa.s.sion to begin reforming the outdated hospital wards in England with their closed practices.

Mary smiled wistfully. "If you tell me you succeeded, I shall begin to disbelieve you."

"And so you should. I am afraid I was dismissed for arrogance and acting without orders." She had not meant to reveal that. It was hardly conducive to confidence in a patient, but Mary was already far more than that, and the words were out before she considered it.

Mary laughed, a rich sound filled with delight.

"Bravo. If we all acted only upon orders, we should still not have invented the wheel. What have you done about it?"

"Done?"

Mary put her head a little to one side, her face full of quizzical doubt.

"Don't tell me you have simply accepted dismissal like a good girl and gone obediently on your way! Surely you are fighting the cause in some fas.h.i.+on or other?"

"Well-no...." She saw Mary's face slowly fill with dismay. "No-because there have been other battles," she went on hastily. "For-for justice of other sorts."

Mary's eyes widened with new interest "Oh?"

"Er-I-" Why should she be so reluctant to talk of helping Monk? There was nothing dishonorable in a.s.sisting the police. "I became acquainted with a police inspector who was investigating the murder of an army officer, and it seemed as if there was going to be a terrible miscarriage of justice...."

"And you were able to prevent it?" Mary leaped to the conclusion. "But afterwards, did you not return to the question of nursing reform?"

"Well ..." Hester found herself coloring very faintly, Monk's face with dark gray eyes and broad, high cheeks so vivid in her mind he could have been in the seat opposite her.

"Well, there were other cases...soon afterwards." She stumbled a little over the words. "And again there was the question of injustice. I was in a position to help...."

A slow smile curled Mary's lips. "I see. At least I think I do. And no doubt after that one, another? What is he like, this policeman of yours?"

"Oh he is not mine!" Hester disclaimed instantly and with more vehemence than she had intended.

"Is he not?" Mary looked unconvinced, but there was laughter in her voice. "Are you not fond of him, my dear? Tell me, how old is he, and what does he look like?"

Hester wondered for a moment if she should tell the truth, that Monk did not know how old he was. A carriage accident had robbed him of all his memory, and his self-knowledge was returning only in fragments as the months pa.s.sed into a year, and more. It was too long a story, and not truly hers to tell. "I am not quite sure," she prevaricated. "Around forty, I should think."

Mary nodded. "And his appearance, his manner?"

Hester tried to be honest and impartial, which was more difficult than she had expected. Monk always aroused emotions in her, both admiration, for his cutting intelligence, his courage and his dedication to truth; and impatience, even contempt, for his occasional bitterness towards those he suspected of crime, not towards his own colleagues if they were less quick, less agile of mind than himself, or less willing to take risks.

"He is a good height," she began tentatively. "In fact, quite tall. He stands very straight, which makes him look ..."

"Elegant?" Mary suggested.

"No-I mean, yes, it does, but that is not what I was going to say." It was absurd to be stumbling over words this way. "I think the word I was looking for was lithe. lithe. He is not handsome. His features are good, but there is a directness in him, which...I was going to say that it approaches arrogance, but that is not true at all. It is arrogance, quite simply." She took a deep breath and continued before Mary could interrupt. "His manner is abrasive. He dresses beautifully and spends far too much money on his clothes because he is vain. He tells what he sees to be the truth without the slightest regard as to whether it is suitable or not. He has neither patience nor respect for authority, and little time for those who are less able than himself, but he cannot abide an injustice once he has seen it, and will acknowledge a truth at whatever cost to himself." He is not handsome. His features are good, but there is a directness in him, which...I was going to say that it approaches arrogance, but that is not true at all. It is arrogance, quite simply." She took a deep breath and continued before Mary could interrupt. "His manner is abrasive. He dresses beautifully and spends far too much money on his clothes because he is vain. He tells what he sees to be the truth without the slightest regard as to whether it is suitable or not. He has neither patience nor respect for authority, and little time for those who are less able than himself, but he cannot abide an injustice once he has seen it, and will acknowledge a truth at whatever cost to himself."

"A singular man, by your account," Mary said with interest. "And it seems you know him very well. Is he aware of it?"

"Monk?" Hester asked with surprise. "I have no idea. Yes, I suppose so. We have seldom minced words with one another."

"How interesting." There was not the slightest sarcasm in Mary's voice, only the most acute fascination. "And is he in love with you, this Monk?"

Hester's face burned. "Certainly not!" She denied it hotly, and her throat tightened as she said the words. For one idiotic moment she thought she was going to cry. It would be mortifying, and thoroughly stupid. She must clear up the misapprehension which Mary quite obviously bore. "We have been friends in certain issues, because we believed in the same causes and were both prepared to fight against what was wrong," she said firmly. "Where matters of love are concerned, he has no interest in women like me. He prefers"-she swallowed, memory sharp and peculiarly painful-"women like my sister-in-law, Imogen. She is very pretty indeed, very gentle, and knows how to be charming without clumsy flattery, but how to make one feel the desire to protect her. Not that she is ineffectual, you understand."

"I see," Mary agreed, nodding her head. "We have all known women like that at some time in our lives. They smile at a man, and instantly he feels better and handsomer, and definitely braver than before."

"Exactly!"

"So your Monk is a fool where women are concerned." It was a statement, not a question.

Hester chose not to answer that. "And I prefer someone like Oliver Rathbone," she went on, not really sure how much truth there was in her words. "He is a most distinguished barrister...."

"Well-bred, no doubt," Mary said flatly. "And respectable?"

"Not especially, that I know," Hester replied defensively. "However, his father is one of the nicest people I have ever met. I feel comfortable merely to recall his face."

Mary's eyes widened. "Indeed. I misunderstood. So Mr. Rathbone is not without interest. Tell me more."

"He is also extremely clever, in a different kind of way. He is very sure of himself, and he has a dry sense of humor. He is never boring, and I admit I do not often know what he is really thinking, but I am quite certain it is not always what he says."

"And is he in love with you? Or do you not know that either?"

Hester smiled smugly, that sudden impulsive kiss coming back as sharply as if it had been a week ago instead of a year. "I think that is too strong a term, but he has given me occasion to think he finds me not unattractive," she replied.

"Oh excellent!" Mary said with evident pleasure. "And these two gentlemen dislike each other, I trust?"

"Certainly," Hester agreed with a satisfaction which surprised her. "But I don't think it has anything to do with me-or at least, very little," she added.

"This is really most intriguing," Mary said happily. "I am sorry our acquaintance will be so short I shall not see the end of this."