The Twisted Root

"Don’t answer me whether you took the medicines or not," she said quietly. "I know you did, and I know what for."
    Cleo regarded her thoughtfully for several moments before she spoke. "What’s going to happen to them, miss? There’s nobody to look after them. The ones with family are better off than those who haven’t, but even they can’t afford what they need, or they don’t know what it is. They get old, and their children move on, leaving them behind. The young don’t care about Trafalgar an’ Waterloo now. A few years an’ they’ll forget the Crimea, too. Those soldiers are all the thing now, because they’re young and handsome still. We get upset about a young man with no arms or no legs, or insides all to pieces. But when they get old we can’t be bothered. We say they’re going to die soon anyway. Wot’s the point in spending time and money on them?"
    There was no argument to make. Of course, it was not true everywhere, but in too many instances it was.
    "What about John Robb, sailor from the victory at Trafalgar?" Hester asked. "Consumption, by the sound of him."
    Cleo’s face tightened, and she nodded. "I don’t think he has long. His grandson does everything he can for him, but that isn’t much. He can’t give him any ease without the morphine." She did not ask, but it was in her eyes, willing Hester to agree.
    Hester knew what that would involve. She would have to give him the morphine herself. It would involve her in the theft. But to refuse would compound the old man’s suffering and his sense of being abandoned. When he understood, he would also know that his suffering was of less importance to her than keeping herself from risk. Alleviating pain was all right, as long as the cost was small—a little time, even weariness, but not personal danger.
    "Yes, of course:’ The words were out of her mouth before she had time to weigh what she was committing herself to do.
    "Thank you," Cleo said softly, a momentary gleam in her eyes, as if she had seen a light in enclosing darkness. "And I would like the soap, and the spoon, if it is not too much trouble."
    "Of course." Hester brushed them aside as already done. What she really wanted was to help with some defense, but what was there? She realized with bitterness that she was half convinced that Cleo had killed Treadwell. "Have you got a lawyer to speak for you?"
    "A lawyer? What can he say? It won’t make no difference." The tone of her voice was flat, as if she had suddenly been jerked back to the harshness of the present and her own reality, not John Robb’s. There was a closed air about her, excluding Hester from her emotions till she felt rebuffed, an intruder. Was Cleo still somehow defending Miriam Gardiner? Or was she guilty, and believed she deserved to die?
    "Did you kill Treadwell?" Hester said abruptly.
    Cleo hesitated, was about to speak, then changed her mind and said nothing. Hester had the powerful impression that she had been going to deny it, but she would never know, and asking again would be useless. The mask was complete.
    "Was he blackmailing you?" she asked instead.
    Cleo sighed. "Yeah, ’course he was. Do most things for money, that one."
    "I see." There did not seem much else to say. She had resolved without question or doubt that she would do all she could to help Cleo, it was a matter of thinking what that would be. Already, Oliver Rathbone’s name was in her mind.
    Cleo grasped her wrist, holding hard, startling her. "Don’t tell the sergeant!" she said fiercely. "It can’t change what he does, and ..."—she blinked, her face bruised with hurt— "and don’t tell old Mr. Robb why I’m not there. Tell him something else ... anything. Perhaps by the time they try me, and ... well, he may not have to know. He could be gone his-self by then."
    "I’ll tell him something else," Hester promised. "Probably that you’ve gone to look after a relative or something."
    "Thank you." Cleo’s gratitude was so naked, Hester felt guilty. She was on the edge of saying that she intended to do far more, but she had no idea what it could be, and to raise hope she could not fulfill was thoughtlessly cruel.
    "I’ll come back with the soap," she promised. "And the spoon." Then she went to the door and banged for the jailer to let her out.
    The next thing she did she expected to be the most difficult, and it was certainly the one of which she was most afraid. She felt guilty even as she walked up the steps and in through