William Monk 05 - The Sins of the Wolf

Imogen said gravely, “you are giving in. It is not like you to be pathetic, and when all this is over you are going to hate yourself for not having matched up to the moment.”
    “Brave words are all very well when you are talking to somebody else,” Hester replied with a twisted smile. “It is a different matter when you are facing the reality of death. Then there isn’t any afterwards.”
    Imogen looked very pale and there was distress plain in her eyes, but she did not flinch. “You mean your death would be somehow different from other people’s? Different from the soldiers you nursed?”
    “No … no, of course not. That would be arrogant and ridiculous.” Being reminded of the soldiers brought back their agonized faces and broken bodies to her mind. She would die quickly, without being mutilated or wasted withfevers or dysentery. She should be ashamed of her cowardice. Many of them had been younger than she was now; they had tasted even less of life.
    Imogen forced a smile, and their eyes met for a long, steady moment. There was no need for Hester to speak her thanks. She was still painfully afraid, still uncertain what lay after the hangman’s shed and the sudden darkness, but she would face it with the same dignity she had seen in others, and be fit to belong to the vast company who had already taken that path, and done it with head high and eyes unblinking.
    Imogen knew when to leave, and she did not mar what was achieved by staying and talking of trivialities. She hugged Hester quickly, then with a swirl of her skirts, went to the door and demanded to be let out. The wardress came, regarded Imogen with contempt in her scrubbed face with its screwed-back hair, and then as Imogen stared back at her without flinching or averting her eyes, the contempt died away and was replaced by something that held envy and a flicker of respect. She held the door open and Imogen sailed through it without a word.
    The last visitor in Newgate was Oliver Rathbone. He found Hester much calmer than on the previous occasion. She faced him with none of the barely suppressed emotion of earlier times, and far from being comforted, he found himself alarmed.
    “Hester! What has happened?” he demanded. The moment the cell door was closed and they were alone, he went straight to her and took her hands in his. “Has someone said or done something to distress you?”
    “Why? Because I am not so afraid anymore?” she said with a ghost of a smile.
    It was on his tongue to say that she had given up. The very lack of anguish in her face meant that she was no longer struggling between hope and despair. There was no possibility of knowledge that she would be exonerated.At this late date that could not be. She must have accepted defeat. Not for an instant did it occur to him that she had in fact killed Mary Farraline, either intentionally or by accident. He was furious with her for surrendering. How could she, after all the battles they had fought together for other people, and won? She had known physical danger the equal of most soldiers in the field, long hours, hardship, privation, and come through it all with high heart and passionate spirit intact. She had faced her parents’ ruin and death and survived it. How dare she crumble now?
    And yet he was bitterly aware that she could lose. The courage required was that which goes on fighting when there is no cause to hope, a blind courage without reason, even in the face of reason. How could he expect that of anyone?
    Except that to see her vilified and snuffed out, her spirit silenced, never to be able to speak with her again, was a prospect which filled him with a void which was intolerably painful. His own professional failure did not even cross his mind. It was only long afterwards that the realization occurred to him with amazement.
    “I have had a great deal of time to think about it,” she went on quietly, cutting across his thoughts. “All the fear in the world is not going to change anything, only rob me of what little I have.” She laughed a little jerkily. “And perhaps I am just too tired for anything which requires so much energy of mind.”
    All sorts of words of encouragement hovered on his lips: that there was plenty of time yet in which they could still learn something damning to one of the Farraline family, at least enough to raise doubts in any juror’s eyes; that Monk was brilliant and ruthless, and would never give up; that Callandra had hired the