William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

was no need to involve anyone else, and she had not yet decided what to say. Carefully she folded back the bedcovers and took off Ruth’s nightgown. It was an awkward job. Perhaps she should have asked someone to help after all. It would not have distressed Bessie; she had washed other dead women with pity and decency, but no fear.
    Ruth had had a handsome body, a little shrunken in illness now, but it was easy enough to see how she had been. She was still firm and shapely, except for an odd, dark shadow under her right armpit, a little like a bruise. Funny that she had not complained of an injury. Perhaps it embarrassed her because of where it was.
    There was another one, less pronounced, on the other side.
    Hester’s heart lurched inside her and the room seemed to waver. She could hardly breathe. With her pulse knocking so loudly she was dizzy, she moved Ruth over a little, and saw what she dreaded with fear so overwhelming it made her almost sick. It was there, another dark swelling—what any medical book would have called a
bubo
. Ruth Clark had not had pneumonia—she’d had the bubonic plague, the disease that had killed a quarter of the known world in the middle of the fourteenth century and was known as the Black Death.
    Hester plunged her hands into the water in the bowl, and then as quickly snatched them out again. Her whole body was shaking. Even her teeth were chattering! She must get control of herself! She had to make decisions, do whatever must be done. There was no one else to take over, no one to tell her what was right.
    When had the swellings appeared? Who was the last person to wash her or change her gown? It had always been Mercy. Perhaps Ruth had refused to let her see, or Mercy had not known the swellings for what they were.
    And what about all the other women with congestion of the chest? Did they have bronchitis, pneumonia—or were they in the earlier, pneumonic stage of the plague? And if they did not die of that, then would it turn into the true bubonic as well?
    She had no answer. She had to assume that it would. So no one must leave! It would spread like fire in tinder. How many people had brought it into the country in 1348? One? A dozen? In weeks it could spread through half of London and into the countryside beyond! With modern travel, trains the length and breadth of the country, it could be in Scotland and Wales the day after.
    And Margaret must not come back! Heaven knew she would miss Margaret’s help, her courage, her companionship. But no one must come in—or go out.
    How would she stop that? She would have to have help. Lots of it. But who? What if she told the others who were here now, and they panicked and left? She had no power to hold them. What on earth was she to do? Was there even any point in trying to see that no one else became infected?
    No. That was absurd. Everyone had already been in the room any number of times. It was hideously possible that they had caught it, and it was too late to help and save anything. At least she would prevent anyone else from seeing Ruth’s buboes and understanding what they meant. That would stop panic. There was one room with a door that locked. She must wrap the body tightly in a sheet and get Bessie to help her carry it there and lock her in.
    She covered Ruth’s body again, binding the sheet to leave nothing showing, then went out into the passageway and closed the door. She saw Flo’s back as she was about to go downstairs, and called to her.
    “Find Bessie and send her up here, will you? Immediately, please!”
    Flo heard the edge in Hester’s voice. “Summink wrong wi’ that miserable cow again?”
    “Just do it!” Hester’s tone was high and sharp, but she could not help it. “Now!”
    Flo gave a shrug and went off, clearly annoyed at being spoken to that way, but she must have obeyed, because Bessie came within three or four minutes.
    “Ruth Clark is dead,” Hester said as soon as Bessie was beside her. “I want you to help me put her body in the end room that has a lock on it, so Mercy and Claudine don’t panic at another death so soon. I . . . I don’t want them running off, so say nothing. It matters very much!”
    Bessie frowned. “Yer all right, Miss ’Ester? Yer look terrible pale.”
    “Yes, thank you. Just help me get Ruth into that room before anyone else knows.”
    It was difficult. Ruth was heavy, and still limp. It was all they could do not to let her slip through their hands onto the floor.