William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

“Look after ’er,” he said to the men when they came for it.
    Hester waited until they were almost to the street, then she pulled her shawl over her head and followed over the cobbles in the drenching rain, Sutton’s coat around her shoulders. She waited under the arch of the gate as they passed under the street lamp and across the footpath and placed the body gently into the rat cart. One man picked up the shafts and started to pull, his dog beside him; the other went behind, his dog at his heels.
    Hester went after them, about twenty feet behind. They knew she was there, and possibly they walked a little more slowly to allow her to keep up. They moved through the sodden night unspeaking, but every now and then glancing backwards to make sure she was still there.
    She thought of the other women who had been buried this way, unmarked and unmourned. Whoever had loved them would never know where they were, nor that at the very least someone had dealt with them in some reverence.
    The rain was turning to sleet, drifting across the arcs of light shed by the street lamps and disappearing into the darkness again. She pulled Sutton’s coat more tightly around her.
    Without warning they came to a stop and she stood, still twenty feet away, while the two men took the body out of the cart and led the way very slowly, guided by the bull’s-eye lanterns, through the graveyard gates. She waited until they were almost out of sight before she went after them along the paths between the stones.
    A thin figure loomed up ahead, standing by the earth of a new grave, dug ready for the morning. The mound of fresher earth, excavated deeper, was barely visible in the darkness.
    “Quick!” was the only word spoken, but she heard the slither of soil and then the thud as shovel blades hit harder ground. There was a minute’s silence. Dimly she saw the figures straighten and bend again as they lowered Mercy down. Then all three piled the earth back in. It was bitterly cold, and she heard the faint splash of water in the bottom of the grave. At least the downpour would wash the mud from their hands afterwards.
    It seemed an age until Mercy was completely covered, but at last it was done.
    One of the men walked over and stopped about ten feet from Hester. “Yer wanner say summink?” he asked quietly.
    “Yes.” Hester took a step sideways, closer to the grave, but away from him. “Rest in peace,” she said clearly, the rain icy in her face, washing away the tears. “If we loved you as much as we did, and could understand, you have no need to fear God—He has to love you more, and understand even better. Don’t be afraid. Good-bye, Mercy.”
    “Amen,” the others said in unison, then led the way ahead of her through the gravestones back to the rat cart and the cold, bitter journey home.
             
    The next day passed with no one else developing symptoms. They waited in dread and hope, listening for every cough, feeling for tenderness, watching for an awkward movement. They worked together to scrub, launder, cook, change bandages for the injured still trapped with them, and tend to those recovering from what now seemed to have been only pneumonia or bronchitis.
    No one spoke much. They were all deeply subdued by Mercy’s death. Even Snoot seemed to have lost his heart for ratting, although he had possibly got them all anyway.
    Once or twice Claudine seemed about to say something, deliberately filling her expression with hope, then as if it were too fragile to expose to reality, she changed her mind and kept silent, redoubling her efforts at scrubbing or mixing or whatever else she was doing.
    Flo chopped vegetables as if she were slitting the throat of an enemy, biting back tears all the time; and Bessie banged pots, pans, folded linen, and grunted. But whether it was out of satisfaction, the ache in her shoulders and back, or too much hope bottled up inside her, she did not allow anyone to know. In the evening they all sat together around the kitchen table and ate the last of the soup. From now on there would be nothing except gruel, but no one complained. In everyone’s mind there was just the one prayer, that the plague be gone.
    In the morning one of the men with the dogs knocked on the back door. When Claudine allowed him time, then went to answer it, she found a box of food, three pails of fresh water, and two envelopes tucked where they were kept dry. She carried them inside in triumph.
    One note was for