Monk had nothing else left to try. He accepted, climbing into the boat with practiced balance and sitting easily in the stern.
Out on the water the air was cooler and the faint breeze on the moving tide carried the smell of salt and fish and mud banks.
“Go down towards the Blackwall Point,” Monk directed. “Do you think there’s enough cover there to conceal a seagoing ship, one big enough to cross the Atlantic?”
“Well now, that’s a good question,” the waterman said thoughtfully. “Depends where, like.”
“Why? What difference does it make?” Monk asked.
“Well, some places a ship’d stand out like a sore thumb. See it a mile off, masts’d be plain as day. Other places there’s the odd wreck, for example, an’ ’oo’d notice an extra spar or two? For a while, leastways.”
Monk sat forward eagerly. “Then go past all the places. Let’s see what the draft is and where a ship could lie up,” he urged.
The waterman obeyed, leaning his weight against the oars and digging them deep. “Not that it’ll prove anything, mind,” he warned. “ ’Less, o’ course, yer find someone ’as seen it. It’s going back, now. Must be two months or more.”
“I’ll try,” Monk insisted.
“Right.” The waterman heaved hard and they picked up speed, even against the tide.
They moved around the wide curve of the Blackwall Reach as far as the Point, Monk staring at the muddy shore with its low reeds, and here and there the occasional driftwood floating, old mooring posts sticking above the tide like rotted teeth. Mudflats shone in the low sun, patches of green weed, and now and then part of a wreck settling lower and lower into the mire.
Beyond the Blackwall Point were the remains of two or three ancient barges. It was difficult to tell what they had been originally; too little was visible now. It might have been one barge, broken by tides and currents, or it might have been two. Other odd planks and boards had drifted up and stuck at angles in the mud. It was a dismal sight, the falling and decaying of what had once been gracious and useful.
The waterman rested on his oars, his face creased in a frown.
“What is it?” Monk asked. “Isn’t this too shallow a lane for an oceangoing ship? It would have to stand far out, or risk going aground. It can’t have been here. What about farther down?”
The waterman did not answer, seemingly lost in contemplation of the shore.
Monk grew impatient. “What about farther down?” he repeated. “It’s too shallow here.”
“Yeah,” the waterman agreed. “Just tryin’ ter ’member summink. There’s summink I seen ’ere, ’round about that time. Can’t think on what.”
“A ship?” Monk said doubtfully. It was more of a denial than a question.
A yard-long board drifted past them towards the shore, submerged an inch or two below the surface of the water, one end jagged.
“What kind of a thing?” Monk said impatiently.
Another piece of flotsam bumped against the boat.
“More wrecks than that,” the waterman answered, gesturing towards the shore. “Looks different. But why would anyone go an’ move a wreck from ’ere? Ain’t worth nothin’ now. Wood’s too rotten even ter burn. Ain’t good for nothin’ ’cept gettin’ in the way.”
“Another …” Monk started, then as his eye caught the jetsam drifting away, an extraordinary thought occurred to him—daring, outrageous, almost unprovable, but which would explain everything.
“Is there anybody else who would know?” His voice was surprisingly hoarse when he spoke, urgency making it raw.
The waterman looked at him with amazement, catching the sharp edge of emotion without understanding it.
“I could ask. Ol’ Jeremiah Spatts might a’ seen summink. Not much as gets by ’im. ’E lives over t’other side, but ’e’s always up an’ down. Mind yer’ll ’ave ter be careful ’ow yer asks. ’E’s no time fer the law.”
“You ask him.” Monk fished in his pocket and pulled out two half crowns and held them in his open palm. “Get me a careful, honest answer.”
“I’ll do that,” the waterman agreed. “Don’ need yer money, jus’ wanner know what yer guessed. Tell me the story.”
Monk told him, and gave him the half crowns anyway.
That evening Monk called upon Philo Trace, and fortunately found him in his lodgings. He did not ask him why he was still in London, whether it was in the hope of purchasing guns for the Confederacy or only because he was loath to leave because of his feelings for Judith Alberton. The trial was over; he had no legal or moral duty to remain.
He recalled Trace’s having mentioned diving in the Confederate navy, and he needed to speak to him about it now, urgently.
“Diving!” Trace said in disbelief. “Where? What for?”
Explaining his reasons, and briefly what he had seen, Monk told him why.
“You can’t go alone,” Trace agreed the moment Monk was finished. “It’s dangerous. I’ll come with you. We’ll have to get suits. Have you ever dived before?”
“No, but I’ll have to learn as I do it,” Monk answered, realizing how brash it sounded even as he spoke. But he had no alternative. He could not send anyone else, and the look in Trace’s eyes betrayed that he knew that. He did not argue.
“Then I’d better explain some of the dangers and sensations you may feel, for your own safety,” he warned. “There must be divers somewhere along the river, for salvage at least, and to mend wharfs and so on.”
“There are,” Monk agreed. “The waterman told me. I’ve already made enquiries. We can hire equipment and men to assist us from Messrs. Heinke. They are submarine engineers in Great Portland Street.”
“Good.” Trace nodded. “Then I’m ready when you wish.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Certainly.”
Monk had told Hester of the idea that had come to him on the river, and of his plan to take Philo Trace and dive beneath the Thames at Blackwall Point. Of course she had asked him about it in minute detail, and he answered only with assurances of his safety, and generalities as to how that was going to be assured, and what he expected to find.
The next afternoon just before two o’clock he left, saying he would meet with Philo Trace and the men from Messrs. Heinke at the river, and would return either when he had discovered something or when the rising tide made further work impossible. She was obliged to be content with that. There was no possibility whatever of her accompanying him. She knew from the look on his face that pressing the issue would gain her nothing at all.
Monk found the entire experience of diving extraordinary—and terrifying. He met Trace at the wharf where they were to be fitted out with all they would need for the proposed venture. Until this point Monk had been concentrating on what he expected to find on the bottom of the river, and what he would learn from it, if they were successful. Now, suddenly, the reality of what he was going to do overwhelmed him.
“Are you all right?” Trace asked, his face shadowed with anxiety.
They were side by side on the vast wooden timbers of the wharf, the gray-brown water opaque, twenty feet below them, sucking and sliding gently, smelling of salt, mud and that peculiar sour odor of receding tide which left behind it the refuse of the teeming life on either side of it. It was so turgid with scraped-up silt it could have been a foot deep, or a mile. Anything more than a foot beneath the surface was already invisible. It was just before ebb tide turned to flood, the best time for diving, when the currents are least powerful and the visibility of the incoming salt water offered almost a foot of sight.
Monk found himself shivering.
“Right, sir!” a thin man with grizzled hair said cheerfully. “Let’s be ’avin’ yer.” He eyed Monk up and down with moderate approval. “Not too fat, anyway. Like ’em leaner, but you’ll do.”
Monk stared at him uncomprehendingly.