William Monk 06 - Cain His Brother

better try.” She regarded it unhappily. “It’s very thin. Haven’t we any more oatmeal?”
    “It’s better thin,” Hester answered. “They can’t take much nourishment; it’s just the liquid that’s of value.”
    Enid drew in her breath, then perhaps realized why they did not simply use water. She would have gagged to drink it herself, more especially knowing where it came from. In silence she took the dishes and spoons and began the slow, distressing task of helping one person after another to swallow a mouthful and try to keep it.
    The night wore on slowly. The smells and sounds of illness filled the huge room. Shadows passed to and fro in the flickering candlelight as the tallow burned down. About three in the morning Kristian returned. Callandra came over to Hester. There were dark smudges of weariness under her eyes and her skirts were soiled where she had been helping someone in extreme distress.
    “Go and take a few hours’ sleep,” she said quietly. “Kristian and I can manage.” She said it so naturally, andyet Hester knew what it meant to her to be able to speak their names together in such a way. “We’ll call you towards morning.”
    “A couple of hours,” Hester insisted. “Call me about five. What about Enid?”
    “I’ve persuaded her.” Callandra smiled faintly. “Now go on. You can’t stay up indefinitely. If you don’t rest you’ll be no use. You’ve told me that often enough.”
    Hester gave a rueful little shrug. There was no honesty or purpose in denial.
    “Watch the boy over there on the left.” She gestured towards a figure lying crumpled, half on one side, about twenty feet away. “He’s got a dislocated shoulder. I’ve put it back, but it slips out if he leans on it when he sits up to retch.”
    “Poor little creature.” Callandra sighed. “He looks no more than ten or twelve, but it’s hard to tell.”
    “He said he was sixteen,” Hester replied. “But I don’t suppose he can count.”
    “Did it happen recently? The shoulder, I mean?”
    “I asked him. He said he got across Caleb Stone and got beaten for his cheek.”
    Callandra winced. “There’s a woman on the far end with a knife scar on her face. She said that was Caleb Stone too. She didn’t say why. He seems to be a very violent man. She sounded still afraid of him.”
    “Well, I don’t suppose we’ll see him in here,” Hester said dryly. “Unless he gets typhoid. Nobody comes to pest-houses to collect debts, however large—or to exact revenge either.” She glanced down the dark cavern of the warehouse. “No revenge could be worse than this,” she said softly.
    “Go and rest,” Callandra ordered. “Or you won’t be fit to work when I sleep.”
    Hester obeyed gratefully. She had not dared to think how tired she was, or she could not have continued. Now at last she was free to go into the small outer room, where therewas a pile of extra straw, and let herself sink into it in the darkness, away from duty, the sounds of distress and the constant awareness of other people’s suffering. For a moment she could forget it all and let exhaustion and oblivion overtake her.
    But the straw prickled. It had been a long time since Scutari, and she had forgotten the feeling of overwhelming helplessness in the face of such enormity of pain, and she could not so easily blank it from her mind. Her ears still strained for the sounds and her body tensed, as if in spite of everything Callandra could say, she really ought to go and do what she could to help.
    That would be futile. She would become too worn out to take her turn when Callandra and Kristian needed to sleep. She must fill her mind with something else deliberately, force herself to think of some subject which would overtake even this.
    It came unbidden to her mind, in spite of all her intentions to the contrary. Perhaps it was the fact that she was lying awkwardly in a small, strange room, close to the end of her strength, both physically and emotionally, but thoughts of Monk filled her, almost as if she could feel the warmth of his body beside her, smell his skin, and for once in their lives, know that there was no quarrel, no gulf, no barrier between them. She flushed hot to remember how utterly she had given herself to him in that one consuming kiss. All her heart and mind and will had been in it, all the things she could never ever have said to him. She had not seen him since the end of the Farraline case. They had continued in the