William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

speak.
    She did not wish to share her own thoughts, except the superficial ones of the mind, the difficulty of knowing where to find the women who owed money to the usurer, of persuading them that help was possible . . . if indeed it was, and the effort needed to convince them that the exercise of courage would win them anything but further pain. Above all there was the necessity of being absolutely certain that that was true.
    But Margaret had been in Coldbath Square long enough to know that for herself, so Hester also watched the streets pass by and thought of practical things.

    In the afternoon another woman was brought in beaten for debt. She was not seriously injured, but she was very frightened, and it was that which marked her apart from the usual anger and misery of those hurt. She was almost silent as Hester and Margaret tended to her shallow, painful knife cuts. She would not say who had inflicted them on her, no lies and no truth, but they were very obviously intentionally made. No imaginable accident could have caused such vicious and repeated slicing of the flesh.
    She stayed a few hours, until they were certain the bleeding was stopped and the woman had at least partially recovered from shock. Margaret wished her to stay longer, but shaking her head, she picked up her torn shawl, once a pretty thing with flowers and fringes, and went out into the square toward the Farringdon Road.
    Margaret stood in the middle of the room and looked around at the tidy cupboards, the scrubbed tabletops and the floor.
    Hester shrugged. “I suppose we should be glad there’s nobody else hurt,” she said with an attempt at a smile. “Do you want to go home? There really isn’t anything to do, and Bessie’ll be in later, if anything should happen.”
    Margaret grimaced. “And trail around behind Mama, calling on nice ladies who look at me with kindly despair and wonder why I haven’t accepted a reasonable offer of marriage?” she said wryly. “Then they’ll assume that there is something terribly wrong with me . . . too indiscreet to mention, and they will think I have lost my virtue!” She gave a little grunt of frustration. “Why is it that young women are presumed to have only two possible virtues—chastity and obedience?” she demanded with sudden fierceness. “What about courage, or honesty of opinion, not just a matter of not taking what does not belong to you?”
    “Because they make people uncomfortable,” Hester replied without hesitation, but giving Margaret a crooked, sympathetic smile.
    “Can you imagine anything lonelier than being married to someone who always says what he thinks you want to hear, regardless of whatever it is that he thinks?” Margaret asked, her brows puckered in a frown. “It would be like living in a room full of mirrors, where every other face you saw was simply a reflection of your own.”
    “I think it would be a very particular kind of hell,” Hester answered with a rush of wonder and pity that anyone could imagine they desired such a thing, and yet she knew many who thought they did. “You have a gift to put it into such vivid words,” she added with admiration. “Perhaps you should try to convey it visually sometime?”
    “That would be something really worth drawing,” Margaret responded. “I am so bored with doing the predictable, just reproducing what I see in front of me, with no greater meaning.”
    “I can barely draw a straight line,” Hester admitted.
    Margaret flashed her a sudden smile. “There are no straight lines in art—except perhaps the horizons at sea. Would you like me to go out and see if I can find us some hot pies for luncheon? There is a good peddler on the corner of Mount Pleasant and Warner Street.”
    “What an excellent idea,” Hester said enthusiastically. “One with flaky pastry—and lots of onions . . . please?”
    In the late afternoon Bessie came in carrying a basket with herbs, tea, a bottle of brandy, and a loaf of bread. She set it down on the table and looked around the room before taking off her hat and cape.
    “Nobody!” she said with disgust, hanging the cape and bonnet on the hooks near the door. “ ’Ardly a bleedin’ soul out in the streets neither, ’ceptin’ damn bluebottles! An’ bin like that all night too, they say.” She looked at Hester reproachfully, as if somehow she had failed to do anything about it.
    “I know!” Hester replied tartly. “The pressure is still on them to find whoever