"Yes, of course I know that!" Monk's temper was short and his head still throbbed. "But whether a woman deserves to be raped or not, she doesn't deserve to be beaten, to have her teeth knocked out or her ribs broken. She doesn't deserve to be knocked to the ground by two men at once, then punched and kicked.”
Evan flinched as if he had seen it as Monk described. "No, of course she doesn't," he agreed, looking at Monk steadily. "But violence, theft, hunger and cold are part of life in a score of areas across London, along with filth and disease. You know that as well as I do.
St. Giles, Aldgate, Seven Dials, Bermondsey, Friar's Mount, Bluegate Fields, the Devil's Acre, and a dozen others. You didn't answer my question… was it domestic?”
"No. It was men from outside the area, well-bred, well-off men, coming into Seven Dials for a little sport." He heard the anger in his voice as he said it, and saw it mirrored in Evan's face.
"What evidence have you?" Evan asked, watching him carefully. "Any chance at all of ever finding them, let alone proving it was them, and that it was a crime, not simply the indulgence of a particularly disgusting appetite?”
Monk drew breath to say that of course he had, and then let it out in a sigh. All he had was word of mouth from women no court would believe, even if they could be persuaded to testify, and that in itself was dubious.
"I'm sorry," Evan said quietly, his face tight and bleak with regret.
"It isn't worth pressing. Even if we found them, there'd be nothing we could do. It's sickening, but you know it as well as I do.”
Monk wanted to shout, to swear over and over until he ran out of words, but it would achieve nothing, and only make his own weakness the more apparent.
Evan looked at him with understanding.
"I've got a miserable case myself.”
Monk was not interested, but friendship compelled him to pretend he was. Evan deserved at least that much of him, probably more.
"Have you? What is it?”
"Murder and assault in St. Giles. Poor devil might have been better if he'd been murdered too, instead of left beaten to within an inch of his life, and now so badly shocked or terrified he can't speak… at all.”
"St. Giles?" Monk was surprised. It was another area no better than Seven Dials, and only a few thousand yards away, if that. "Why are you bothering with it?" he asked wryly. "What chance have you of solving that either?”
Evan shrugged. "I don't know… probably not much. But I have to try, because the dead man was from Ebury Street, considerable money and social standing.”
Monk raised his eyebrows. "What the devil was he doing in St.
Giles?”
"They," Evan corrected. "So far I have very little idea. The widow doesn't know… and probably doesn't want to, poor woman. I have nothing to follow, except the obvious. He went to satisfy some appetite, either for women, or other excitement, which he couldn't at home.”
"And the one still alive?" Monk asked.
"His son. It appeared they had something of a quarrel, or at least a heated disagreement, before the son left, and then the father went after him.”
"Ugly," Monk said succinctly. He stood up. "If I get any ideas, I'll tell you. But I doubt I will.”
Evan smiled resignedly, and picked up the pen again to resume what he had been writing when Monk came in.
Monk left without looking to right or left. He did not want to bump into Runcorn. He was feeling angry and frustrated enough. The last thing he desired was a past superior with a grudge, and now all the advantages. He must return to Seven Dials, and Vida Hopgood and her women. There was going to be no help from outside. Whatever was done, it rested with him alone.
Chapter Four
The evening after Corriden Wade had left, Hester went upstairs to see Rhys for the last time before settling him for the night. She found him lying half curled over on the bed, his face turned into the pillow, his eyes wide. With anyone else she would have talked to him, tried to learn if not directly, at least indirectly, what troubled him. But Rhys still had no way of communicating except by agreement or disagreement with whatever she asked him. She had to guess, to fumble with all the myriad possibilities, and try to frame them so he could answer, yes or no. It was such a crude instrument to try to find so subtle and terrible a pain. It was like trying to operate on living flesh using an axe.
Yet sometimes words were too precise. She did not even know what it was that hurt him at this moment. It could be fear of what the future held, or simply fear of sleep tonight, and the dreams and memories it would bring. It could be grief for his father, guilt because he was alive and his father was dead; or more deeply because his father had followed him out of the house, and perhaps if he had not, he would still be alive. Or it could be the mixture of anger and grief which afflicts someone when they have parted for the last time in a quarrel, and it is too late for all the things that remain unsaid.
It might be no more than the weariness of physical pain, and the fear of endless days stretching ahead when it would not ever stop. Would he spend the rest of his life here, locked in silence and this terrible isolation?
Or was memory returning with its terror and pain and helplessness re-lived?
She wanted to touch him. It was the most immediate form of communication. It did not need to say anything. There were no queries in it, no clumsiness of wrong guesses, simply a nearness.
But she remembered how he had snatched himself away from his mother.
She did not know him well enough, and he might consider it an intrusion, a familiarity to which she had no right, an advantage she took only because he was ill, and dependent upon her.
In the end she simply spoke her mind.
"Rhys…”
He did not move.
"Rhys… shall I stay for a while, or would you rather be alone?”
He turned very slowly and stared at her, his eyes wide and dark.
She tried to read them, to feel what emotion, what need was filling his mind and tearing at him till he could neither bear it, nor loose it in words. Forgetting her resolve, from her own need she reached out and touched him, laying her hand on his arm above the splints and bandaging.
He did not flinch.
She smiled slightly.
He opened his mouth. His throat tightened, but no sound came. He breathed more rapidly, swallowing. He had to gasp to stop choking, but still there was no voice, no word.
She put her hand up to his lips. "It's all right. Wait a little. Give it time to heal. Is… is there something in particular you want to say?”
Nothing. His eyes were full of dread and misery.
She waited, struggling to understand.
Slowly his eyes filled with tears and he shook his head.
She brushed his dark hair from his brow. "Are you ready to go to sleep?”
He shook his head.
"Shall I find something to read to you?”
He nodded.
She went to the bookshelf. Should she even try to censor out anything which might give him pain, remind him of his condition or re-awaken memory? Might it not end in being more conspicuous by its very absence?
She picked up a translation of the Iliad. It would be full of battles and deaths, but the language would be beautiful, and it would be alive with imagery and light, epic loves, gods and goddesses, ancient cities and wine-dark seas… a world of the mind away from the alleys of St.
Giles.
She sat in the chair beside his bed and he lay still and listened to her, his eyes never leaving her face. Eleven o'clock came and went, midnight, one o'clock, and at last he fell asleep. She marked the place and closed the book, tip-toeing out and to her own room where she lay down on the bed and fell asleep herself, still fully clothed.