William Monk 16 - Execution Dock

and be suspected as founded in emotion rather than fact. How well he knew her. He had forgotten nothing of her from the days when they had been much closer, when he had been in love with her, not with Margaret.
    She felt very alone in the stand with everyone in the court staring at her, and with Rathbone's knowledge of her so delicate and intimate. She was horribly vulnerable.
    “Mrs. Monk,” Rathbone resumed. “You played a large part in helping identify this tragic boy, through your knowledge of the abuse of women and children in the trade of sexual relations.” He said it with distaste, reflecting what all the people in the gallery—and more particularly in the jury box—must feel. “It was you who learned that he was once a mudlark.” He turned slightly in a peculiarly graceful gesture. “In case there is anyone in the jury who does not understand the term, would you be good enough to explain it to us?”
    She had no choice but to do as he asked. He was guiding her as a skilled rider does a horse, and she felt equally controlled. To rebel in the public gaze of the court would make her appear ridiculous. How well he knew her!
    “A mudlark is a person who spends their time on the banks of the river, between low and high tide lines,” she said obediently. “They salvage anything that may be of value, and then sell it. Most of them are children, but not all. The things they find are largely brass screws and fittings, pieces of china, lumps of coal, that sort of thing.”
    He looked interested, as if he were not already familiar with every detail of the facts.
    “How do you come to know this? It does not seem to lie within the area of your usual assistance. Who did you ask for the information that led to your discovering that the boy, Fig, had once been a mudlark?”
    “In a case a short while ago a young mudlark was injured. I looked after him for a couple of weeks.” She wondered why he was asking about Scuff. Did he mean to challenge the identification of the body?
    “Really? How old was he? What was his name?” he inquired.
    Why was he asking? He knew Scuff. He had been in the sewers with them, as desperate to ensure Scuffs safety as any of them.
    “He is known as Scuff, and he thinks he is about eleven,” she replied, her voice catching with emotion in spite of her efforts to remain detached.
    Rathbone raised his eyebrows. “He thinks?”
    “Yes. He doesn't know.”
    “Did he identify Fig?”
    So it was the identification! “No. He introduced me to older boys, and vouched for me, so they would tell me the truth.”
    “This boy Scuff trusts you?”
    “I hope so.”
    “You took him into your home when he was injured, and cared for him, nursed him back to health?”
    “Yes.”
    “And an affection grew between you?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have children of your own, Mrs. Monk?”
    She felt as if he had slapped her without warning. It was not that she had desperately wanted children; she was happy with Monk and her work. It was the implication that somehow she was lacking, which hurt, that she had taken Scuff in not because she liked him, but to fill an emptiness in herself. By a sort of oblique reference backward, it made it seem as if all she had done in the clinic, and even in the Crimea, had been to compensate for her own lack of family, of purpose, in the more usual sense.
    It was not true. She had a husband she loved far more than most women did theirs; she was married of choice, not convenience or ambition or need. She had work to do that stretched her intellect, and used her imagination and courage. Most women got up in the morning to the same endless domestic round, filling their days with words rather than actions, or accomplishing small tasks that had to be begun again in exactly the same fashion the next day, and the day after. Hester had only once in her life been bored, and that was for the brief time spent in the social round before going to the Crimea.
    But if she said any of that, she would sound as if she were defensive. He had attacked her so delicately, so obliquely, that people would think she was protesting too much. She would immediately make him seem right.
    They were all waiting now for her to reply. She could see the beginning of pity in their faces. Even Tremayne looked uncomfortable.
    “No, I don't have children,” she answered the question. It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that neither did he, but that would be unbecoming; again, an attack in