William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

filled with superstition.
    He strode back and forth, trying to picture it. He could not make himself sit down or concentrate his mind in linear reasoning. It had been a barbarous time. Who had been on the throne? One of the Plantagenet kings, long before the Renaissance. It was a hundred and fifty years before they had even learned that the world was round!
    There were still forests over England, with wild animals. Nobody would have conceived of such a thing as a train. They burned witches at the stake.
    And yet the plague had spread like a stench on the wind! How much farther would it spread now, when a man could ride from the south coast of England all the way to Scotland in a day? London was the largest city in the world, crammed cheek by jowl with close to five million people. He had heard someone say recently that there were more Scots in London than in Edinburgh! And more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome!
    London would become a wasteland of the dead and dying, disease spreading ever outward until it polluted the whole country. It needed only one ship leaving the shores with a sick man, and it would destroy Europe as well.
    He had only one choice. He had no power to investigate Hodge’s death or to question anyone. He must find Durban and tell him the whole truth. There was time to pay the price of that afterwards. All that mattered now was to trace the disease, and anyone who might carry it.
             
    He slept fitfully and woke confused and heavy-headed, wondering what was wrong. Then the hideousness of the memory returned, filling him like darkness till he hardly knew how to bear it. He lay frozen, as if time were suspended, until finally intelligence told him the only way to survive was to do something. Action would drive the horror back and leave free a fraction of his mind in which he could live, at least until exhaustion made him too weak to resist.
    He dressed quickly with as many clothes as he could, knowing that he would almost certainly spend most of the day on the river. Then he went out and bought hot tea and a sandwich from a street peddler.
    He had turned over a dozen different ways to tell Durban the truth, but there was no good way to say any of this, and it hardly mattered how he expressed it. All personal needs and cares vanished in the enormity of this new, terrible truth that swallowed everything else.
    It was a sharp, glittering day, just above freezing but feeling far colder because of the wind that scythed in off the shifting, brilliant surface of the water. Gulls wheeled overhead, flashing white against the sky, and the incoming tide slurped on the wood of piers and the wet stone of steps.
    The river was busy this morning. Everywhere Monk looked there were men lifting, wheeling, staggering under the weight of sacks and bales. Their shouts were carried by the wind and blown away. Canvas flapped loose and banged against boards. In the clear air he could see as far as the river bends in both directions, and every mast, spar, and line of rigging was sharp as an etching on the sky. Only in the distance above the city was there a thin pall of smoke.
    Durban was not at the police station. The sergeant informed Monk that he was already out on the water, probably south, but he didn’t know.
    Monk thanked him and went out immediately. There was nothing to do but find a boat and go to look for him. He could not afford to wait.
    A few minutes later he was down by the water again, scanning the river urgently for a ferry willing to take him on a search. At first he barely noticed the voice calling him, and only when his sleeve was plucked did he turn.
    “Y’all right, then?” Scuff said in an elaborately casual manner, but his eyes were screwed up and there was an edge of anxiety to his tone.
    Monk forced himself to be gentler than he felt. “Yes. The man with the ivory was very happy.”
    “Paid yer?” Scuff asked for the true measure of success.
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Then why d’yer look like ’e din’t?” Now there was real concern in his face.
    “It’s not money. Someone who might be sick. Do you know Mr. Durban of the River Police?” Monk asked.
    “ ’im wi’ the gray ’air, walks like a sailor? Course I do. Why?”
    “I need to speak to him, urgently.”
    “I’ll find ’im for yer.” Scuff put two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle, then walked over to the edge and repeated it. Within two minutes there was a boat at the