The Sins of the Wolf (31 page)

Eilish continued on her way, and Monk gripped his stick more tightly. He disliked carrying it. The feeling of it in his hand brought back sickening memories of violence, confusion and fear, and above all overwhelming guilt. But the prickling in the back of his neck was a primal fear even greater, and against his conscience his hand closed more tightly. He turned every now and again to look behind him, but he saw only indeterminate shadows.

Then suddenly at St. Mary’s Wynd she turned sharply left and he almost lost her. He ran forward and only just prevented himself from colliding with her as she stopped in front of a dark doorway, the parcel still in her hands.

She turned and looked at him, for an instant afraid, then as her eyes, used to the darkness, went beyond him she cried out.

“No!”

Monk swung around just in time to raise his stick and fend off the blow.

“No!” Eilish said again, her voice powerful with complete authority. “Robbie, put it down! There is no need….”

Reluctantly the man lowered the cudgel and stood waiting, still gripping it ready.

“You are very determined, Mr. Monk,” Eilish said quietly. “You had better come in.”

Monk hesitated. Out here in the street he had a fighting chance if he were attacked, inside he had no idea how many men there might be. In an area like Cowgate he could be disposed of without trace or necessity for explanation. Grisly visions of Burke and Hare came back like nightmares yet again.

Eilish’s voice was full of laughter, although he could not see her face in the gloom.

“There is no need to be alarmed, Mr. Monk. It is not a den of thieves, it is simply a ragged school. I’m sorry you were struck when you followed me before. Some of my pupils are very jealous for my protection. They did not know who you were. Creeping along the Grassmarket behind me, you cut a very sinister figure.”

“A ragged school?” He was stunned.

She mistook his amazement for ignorance.

“There are a lot of people in Edinburgh who can neither read nor write, Mr. Monk. Actually this is not a ragged school in the legal sense. We don’t teach children. There are others doing that. We teach adults. Perhaps you didn’t realize what a handicap it is to a man not to be able to read his own language? To be able to read is the doorway into the rest of the world. If you can read, you can make the acquaintance of the best minds of the present, no matter where they live, and all the past as well!” Her voice rose with enthusiasm. “You can listen to the philosophy of Plato, or you can go on adventures with Sir Walter Scott, see the past unfold before you, explore India or Egypt, you can—” She stopped abruptly, then continued in a lower tone. “You can read the newspapers and know what the politicians are saying, and form some judgment for yourself whether it is true or not. You can read the signs in the streets and shop windows, and on labels and medicine bottles.”

“I understand, Mrs. Fyffe,” he said quietly, but with a sincerity that was totally new to him where she was concerned.
“And I know what ragged schools are. It is simply an explanation which had not occurred to me.”

Then she laughed aloud. “How very candid of you. You thought I had some assignation? In Cowgate? Really, Mr. Monk! With whom, may I ask? Or you thought I was a master thief, perhaps, come to divide the spoils with my accomplices? A sort of female Deacon Brodie?”

“No….” It was a long time since a woman had embarrassed him in this way, but honesty compelled him to admit he deserved it.

“You had better come in, all the same.” She turned back to the door. “Unless that is all you wanted to know? Had you better not prove me truthful?” There was mockery in her voice, and underneath the amusement it was charged with emotion.

He agreed, and followed her into the narrow corridors of the tenement. She climbed up rickety stairs, along another corridor, the man Robbie a few steps behind, his cudgel at his side. They mounted more stairs and finally came into a large room overlooking the street. It was clean, especially for such a place, and by now he was used to the general smell of such a region. There was no furniture at all except one frequently repaired wooden table, and on it was a pile of books and papers, several inkwells and a dozen or so quills, a penknife for recutting the nibs, and several sheets of blotting paper. Her students were a collection of some thirteen or fourteen men of all ages and conditions, but everyone dressed in clean clothes, although ragged enough to have earned the school its epithet. Their faces lit with enthusiasm when they saw her, then closed in sudden, dark suspicion as Monk came in behind her.

“It’s all right,” she assured them quickly. “Mr. Monk is a friend. He has come to help tonight.”

Monk opened his mouth to protest that that was not so, then changed his mind and nodded agreement.

Soberly they all sat on the floor, mostly cross-legged, and balancing books on their knees, and papers on top of the
books, with others on the floor between them, they slowly and painstakingly wrote their alphabets. Frequently they looked at Eilish for help and approval, and in total solemnity she gave it, offering a correction here, a word of praise there.

After two hours of writing, they moved to reading, their reward for labor. With many stumbles and a lot of encouragement, one by one, they lurched through a chapter of
Ivanhoe.
Their elation at the end of it, at twenty-five to four in the morning, as they thanked her, and Monk, was abundant reward for Monk’s own weariness. Then they filed out for an hour’s sleep before starting the long day’s work.

When the last of them had gone, Eilish turned to Monk wordlessly.

“The books?” he asked, although he knew the answer and did not care in the slightest if it robbed Farraline & Company of its entire profits.

“Yes of course they are from Farralines,” she said, looking directly into his eyes. “Baird gets them for me, but if you tell anyone, I shall deny it. I don’t think there is any proof. But you wouldn’t do that anyway. It has nothing to do with Mother’s death, and won’t either exonerate or condemn Miss Latterly.”

“I didn’t know Baird could get to the company accounts.” That would explain why he had been so nervous.

“He can’t,” she agreed with amusement. “I want books, not money. And I wouldn’t steal money, even if I did need it
.
Baird prints extra books, or declares the print runs short. It has nothing to do with accounting.”

That made sense.

“Your uncle Hector said someone had been falsifying the accounts.”

“Did he?” She sounded only slightly surprised. “Well, maybe they have. It must be Kenneth, but I don’t know why. Although Uncle Hector does drink an awful lot, and sometimes talks the most terrible nonsense. He remembers
things I don’t think ever happened, and confuses one time with another. I wouldn’t take a lot of notice.”

He was about to say that he had to, in order to guard the prosecution, but he was weary of lies, especially useless ones, and this was not the night for more of them. He had had to reverse all his judgments of Eilish. She was anything but shallow or lazy, and far from stupid. Of course she had to sleep half the morning; she gave up most of the night. And gave it to those who returned her no public or financial reward for it. And yet she was obviously more than pleased with what she received. In this bare lamplit room she glowed with a deep joy. Now he knew why she walked with her head high and her step proud, where the secret smile came from and the thoughts that were removed from the family conversations.

And he knew why Baird McIvor loved her above his own wife.

Actually he knew in that moment also that Hester would have liked her, even admired her.

“I’m not trying to prove that Miss Latterly killed your mother,” he said impulsively. “I’m trying to prove that she did not.”

She looked at him curiously. “For money? No. Do you love her?”

“No.” Then instantly he wished he had not denied it so quickly. “Not in the way you mean,” he added, feeling his face burn. “She is a great friend, a very deep friend. We have shared many experiences in the pursuit of justice in other cases. She …”

Eilish was smiling. Again there was a faint hint of mockery in her eyes.

“You don’t need to explain, Mr. Monk. In fact, please don’t. I don’t believe you anyway. I know what it is to love when you really don’t want to at all.” Without warning the laughter vanished totally from her face and deep pain replaced it. Perhaps pain had been closer to the surface all the time. “It changes all your plans and alters everything. One
moment you are playing on the shore, the next the tide has you, and struggle as you might, you cannot get back to the land again.”

“You are speaking of your own feelings, Mrs. Fyffe. I am a friend of Miss Latterly. I don’t feel in the least like that about her.” He said all the words clearly and vehemently, and he knew from her face that she did not believe him. He was angry, and there was a curious choking in his throat. He felt absurdly disloyal. “It is perfectly possible to be friendly with someone without a feeling anything like the one you describe,” he said again.

“Of course it is,” she agreed, moving to the door. “I will walk with you as far as the Grassmarket, to see you are safe.”

It was ludicrous. He was a powerful man, armed with a stick, and she was a slender woman, six inches shorter and built like a flower. She made him think of an iris in the sun. He laughed outright.

She led the way down the dim stairs back to the way out, talking to him over her shoulder as he followed.

“How many times have you been struck on the way, Mr. Monk?”

“Twice, but …”

“Was it painful?”

“Yes, but …”

“I’ll see you home, Mr. Monk.” There was only the faintest shadow of a smile on her lips.

He took a deep breath. “Thank you, Mrs. Fyffe.”

In Newgate, Hester swung from moods of hard-fought-for hope, down to engulfing despair, and up the long incline back to hope again. The boredom and the sense of helplessness were the worst afflictions. Physical labor, however pointless, would have dulled the edges of pain, and she would have slept. As it was she lay awake in almost total darkness, shivering with cold, her imagination torturing her with infinite possibilities—and always returning to the same
one, the short walk from the cell to the shed where the rope awaited her. She was not afraid of death itself, it was that she realized with icy pain that the belief she thought she had as to what lay after was simply not strong enough to stand in the face of reality. She was frightened as she had never been before. Even in the battlefield death would have been sudden, without warning or time to think. And after all she had not been alone. She had faced it with others, almost all of them suffering far more than she. Her mind had been filled with what she could do for them; it had left no room for thoughts of herself. Now she realized what a blessing that had been.

The wardresses continued to treat her with a coldness and unique scorn, but she became accustomed to it and the small irritant gave her something to fight against, as one digs nails into the palm of the hand when fighting a greater agony.

One particularly cold day the cell door opened and, after the briefest word from the wardress, her sister-in-law, Imogen, came in. Hester was surprised to see her; she had accepted Charles’s word as final and had not expected him to relent. The darker the outlook became, the less likely was he to do so.

Imogen was fashionably dressed, as if going to pay afternoon calls on Society, her skirts broad-sweeping and flounced, her bodice tight and her sleeves elaborately decorated. Her bonnet was trimmed with flowers.

“I’m sorry,” she said instantly, seeing Hester’s face and glancing only momentarily at the bare cell. “I had to tell Charles I was going to call on the Misses Begbie. Please don’t tell him I was here, if you don’t mind. I—I would rather not face a quarrel just now.” She looked both embarrassed and apologetic. “He—” She stopped.

“He commanded you not to come,” Hester finished for her. “Don’t worry, of course I shall not tell him.” She wanted to thank Imogen for coming—she really was grateful—and
yet the words stuck in her mouth. It all sounded artificial, when it should have been most real.

Imogen fished in her reticule and brought out sweet-smelling soap and a little bag of dried lavender so fragrant Hester could smell it even from two yards distance, and the femininity of it brought the tears uncontrollably to her eyes.

Imogen looked up quickly and her polite expression vanished and emotion flooded her face. Impulsively she dropped the soap and lavender and moved forward, taking Hester in her arms and holding her with a strength Hester would not have thought her to possess.

“We’ll win!” she said fiercely. “You didn’t kill that woman and we’ll prove it. Mr. Monk may not be very nice, but he is wildly clever, and quite ruthless. Remember how he solved the Grey case when everyone thought it was impossible. And he is on your side, my dear. Don’t ever give up hope.”

Hester had managed to keep her composure with every other visitor she had had, even Callandra, difficult as that had been, but now she found it too much. The long denial would not last anymore. Clinging on, she wept in Imogen’s arms until she was exhausted and a kind of peace of despair came over her. Imogen’s words had been intended to comfort, but perversely they had focused her mind on the truth she had been struggling against all the time since she had first been moved here from the Coldbath Fields. All that Monk, or anyone else, could do might not be enough. Sometimes innocent people were hanged. Even if Monk or Rathbone were to prove the truth afterwards, it would be no comfort to her, and certainly no help.

But now instead of the struggle against it, against the fear and the injustice, there was something inside her close to acceptance. Perhaps it was only tiredness, but it was better than the desperate struggle. There was a sort of release in it.

Now she did not want to listen to talk of hope, because she had passed beyond it, but yet it would be cruel to tell
Imogen so, and the new calm was too fragile to be trusted. Perhaps there was still something in her which clung to unreality? She did not want to put it into words.