Scuff saw the emotion raw in Fitz’s face, and understood it far better than he wanted to. He liked Fitz. He admired him intensely. But no one could have the part of Hester that belonged to Monk.

  He tried to think of something different to say, something not connected with the past.

  “It seems we have learned a few things from the American Civil War,” he said, altering his tone to try to sound hopeful.

  Fitz looked up. “Have we? The news I heard, it was just as bloody, violent and senseless as anything we’ve ever done. Which is damning it completely, I know, and I’m sorry.”

  “I meant in medicine,” Scuff explained. “At least with the use of opium, which seems to be better than some things.”

  “Better for pain,” Fitz agreed. “But we’ve known that from others, like the twelfth-century Jewish physician Maimonides. We just periodically forget. But you are right. From the little I heard, they have caught the ideas of open air and sanitation.”

  They were interrupted by Crow staggering out of the bedroom. He was blinking a little, his black hair tangled and half across his face.

  Scuff got to his feet. “Kettle’s hot. Would you like some tea? Tibor is asleep, quite peacefully.”

  Crow forced a smile. “Yes, I would. And yes, I know. I peeked in at him myself.”

  “You don’t look as if you can even see where you are going,” Fitz said, sympathy softening the edge of his voice. “Have something to eat. Bread and cheese?” He indicated the table.

  Scuff put the kettle on again and brought him tea. Crow still looked weary. He moved slowly and there were dark smudges around his eyes. Scuff was suddenly painfully sorry for him. He had worked so hard to set up this clinic.

  None of them knew if Fitz had been born to money, and a degree of privilege. His language and diction suggested it. He had certainly been to a good school, because he had a proper degree in medicine. He could never have been a senior army surgeon if he had not, whatever had happened to him since.

  Scuff had no idea how Crow had grown up, only tiny glimpses of things, an isolated memory here or there, a reference to his youth that brought laughter, but the kind that was blended with hurt. Nothing that he had now had come to him easily.

  He knew poverty and the diseases of the poor. But he had hardly any of Fitz’s surgical skill. He was still very much learning as he went. It was the biggest achievement of his life that he had finally qualified as a doctor, rather than just giving help where he could to those who could not afford to pay him for it, except occasionally with a little food or unneeded clothes.

  Now his only pupil was listening to Fitz and learning the things Crow could not teach him. Scuff owed him more than friendship. When Fitz was gone, he must think of something to say—or better, to do—that would let Crow know he understood the debt he owed him. And that more than that, he knew Crow would be there long after Fitz had returned to…wherever he belonged. If he belonged anywhere.

  —

  MUCH LATER THAT DAY, Fitz took his turn at sleeping and Scuff went with Crow to visit one or two patients who were ill at home. None of them was far enough away to necessitate more than a walk, or a short ride on an omnibus. Crow and Scuff took with them a satchel of various medicines, mostly powders in small, carefully labeled twists of paper. They were light and easy to carry. They would accept whatever payment was offered. Crow very seldom asked for more. The people who could afford more had long taken themselves to a more regular physician.

  “You learning from Fitz?” Crow asked conversationally.

  “Yes,” Scuff answered instantly. “But of course most of it is things we won’t have to use. I hope not anyhow. I wouldn’t like to be an army surgeon. Not that there’s any chance, but I’m glad of it. It’s hard enough trying to help people that are sick ’cos of not eating right, or not having clean water or dry clothes and such.”

  “Rich people get sick too,” Crow pointed out.

  “Last longer,” Scuff said drily. “Poor ones die first time round…a lot.”

  “The ones that survive to grow up are pretty tough,” Crow argued. “Look at you.”

  “An’ you!” Scuff countered, then instantly wondered if he should not have. “Sorry…”

  “Don’t be,” Crow replied with one of his wide smiles, which showed just about all his teeth.

  “I reckon it was bad, ’cos you never talk about it.” This time Scuff was honest.

  “It was,” Crow agreed.

  “Maybe we all get some bad times.” They were crossing a busy road and Scuff was looking around for traffic, rather than at Crow’s face.

  Crow did not answer.

  In fact it was not until they had seen two more patients, and were turning back in the general direction of Shadwell Docks, that he spoke on the subject again.

  “It’s not secret,” he remarked. “At least not from you.”

  Scuff was still thinking of the sick woman they had visited. “What’s not?”

  “My father was a right bastard. He beat my mother, often.” Crow was looking ahead of him, his face set hard at the memory. “I didn’t know how bad it was until I was about twelve. She hid it from me. Protecting me…”

  Scuff wanted to say something, but there wasn’t anything that matched the misery or the anger he felt.

  Crow kept on walking, still looking straight ahead, and his voice was thick with emotion. “Then he beat her so bad one day, she died. I think she was…ready to go. She couldn’t escape any other way.”

  Scuff felt numb. He tried to imagine it, and he couldn’t, even though he had seen women beaten, seen dead people.

  “I took a chair and broke it over his head, before I knew she was gone already, too far to save anymore,” Crow said. “I should have done it sooner. I…I wasn’t strong enough…”

  “Did you hurt him bad, I mean really bad?” Scuff asked hopefully.

  “Yes. He never stood up straight again. But I ran. I knew if he caught me he’d kill me too.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Onto the streets,” Crow replied. “Down here. Near the river. I found someone to take me in, no questions.”

  “Good.”

  Crow gave a strangled little laugh. “Taught me a lot of tricks to make money in ways that the law doesn’t allow. Not so much about honest trade, but I could read and write, so I learned for myself.”

  “Medicine?”

  “Learned that practically, like you’re doing. First with animals, then with people. Found a good man who loved horses. He helped a few people too, now and then.” Now at last he turned to look at Scuff, needing to know what he thought and, perhaps even more, what he felt.

  “Not as lucky as me, then,” Scuff said casually.

  —

  THEY SPENT THE NEXT day working with patients they had known for some time. One mother with a sickly child was profoundly relieved to see them. Crow looked at the child carefully and pronounced her doing well. The mother’s shining eyes and wide smile of relief were the only reward there could be. Every scrap of money she had went to getting good food for the child, and saving for a pair of shoes.

  The next patient was an old man. He was fading rapidly, and he knew it. “Place is changing anyway,” he said sourly. “Foreigners everywhere. Try to pretend they’re like us, just ’cos their skin’s the same color, but underneath they’re as different as any one o’ them. ’Ave you smelled the stuff they eat? Some o’ them don’t even bother to learn English.” He glared at Crow.

  A shadow passed across Crow’s face, but he did not respond.

  Scuff was not so tactful. He was very aware of how hard it was for Monk to find out anything deeper than a few surface facts that excluded much else about the Hungarian murders. There was nothing to single out anyone as guilty.

  “Lots of people about like that,” he said almost casually. “But I really hope it isn’t one of us that’s killing them…”

  The old man glared at him. “O’ course it isn’t! It’s a heathen way to kill anyone! Barbarians, they are. We don’t do things like that, boy! Stabbed with a dagger through the heart, candles an’ blood all over the place. That’s foreign. ’Ow old are you that you don’t know that?” He glared at Scuff with myopic eyes.

  “I know the victims were both Hungarian,” Scuff said innocently. “But they’re Christian just like we are. Or say we are.”

  “You saying we aren’t?” the old man challenged. “We’re Christian, all right. It’s them Catholics that aren’t. You read your history books, boy. Owe their loyalty to Rome, they do, not to England and the Queen.”

  “Some of us—yes. Christian is how you act, not where you come from.”

  Crow touched him gently.

  The old man snarled. “Well, that first one got ’isself ’round the women more than any Christian man ought. And that I know for sure. Seen ’im meself with more than one woman who ought to know better. Laughing and making fun, they were. Loose women among them ’Ungarians. Teaching our women bad ways…Who’s surprised it ended in murder, eh? I’m not! Killed that foreign whoremonger! I say, good for ’im! Wouldn’t tell you who he was if I knew.”

  Scuff took Crow’s warning, and made no reply, even though there was one ready on his tongue. They did not speak of it again, but it stayed in Scuff’s mind.

  They took all day catching up with those they had not been able to see because of the events at the clinic, which of course included new cases, as well as accidents and emergencies.

  Scuff watched and listened, learning all he could about the practical aspects of medicine, and learning also from Crow’s manner. Quite often all he gave was advice and, perhaps more important still, comfort.

  “Many things can’t be healed,” he said as they sat together at lunch, by chance at a Hungarian café. They watched the people and, although they did not understand the conversation around them, they heard the sharp edge to the voices, and knew that the Hungarians were afraid. The place was busier than usual.

  “Standing with their own,” Crow remarked. “Don’t blame them. Fear is what is wrong with lots of people.”

  Scuff knew what he meant. He wasn’t only talking about the people gathered here to get familiar food and feel comfortable speaking their own language, not even trying English. He meant also some of the patients they had seen. Constant anxiety produced all kinds of other pains: headaches, stomach upsets and of course short tempers, sleeplessness and stupid accidents that would not normally happen.

  Scuff stirred his soup, which was very good. He liked the Hungarian food. The unfamiliar flavors were sharp and pleasing. They were spices he did not know, warm and aromatic.

  “I wish we could do something. I don’t understand what people here are saying, but I do when it’s patients.”

  “You can’t,” Crow said bleakly. “Patients speak to us in confidence. And anyway, it’s almost always about their health…or their private griefs.”

  “And gossip,” Scuff added. “And families. If we really thought about it, we ought to find something.” He shook his head and stared at Crow. “I know people are saying it’s someone”—he gestured with an extended arm—“out there! But it isn’t, is it? It’s someone who lives here, probably English or Hungarian. Everybody’s suspicious of anyone they don’t know well. Even sometimes people they do. They are frightened and looking for a way out, someone to blame, so they can stop wondering all the time.”

  “I know. We do some of the worst things we ever do when we are afraid,” Crow said unhappily. “But we have made a promise not to repeat what we hear in people’s homes. That’s why they let us in, and trust us.”

  “I know.”

  They sat silently for a while before Scuff spoke again.

  “Isn’t it also our job to find out who did this, if we can? And before they do it to anyone else?”

  Crow’s hand stopped halfway to his mouth with a forkful of food. He stared at Scuff, his eyes wide.

  “You think he’s going to stop?” Scuff asked him. “Why? If he hates the Hungarians, there’s still plenty of them left.”

  Crow put the food down and sat unmoving for several moments. “Yes, I suppose we have to protect them…if we can. But what if we do say something, and we’re wrong, because we know only half the story?”

  Scuff shrugged. “I expect whatever we come up with will be less than half, maybe only one bit in dozens, but it could matter. Sometimes it’s one little thing that ties all the rest together. Like if someone’s ill. Say they get a fever, their eyes hurt, they get a terrible headache and a sick stomach…”

  “Could be lots of things,” Crow answered. “That’s what I mean.”

  “And then they get a rash of a lot o’ little spots…” Scuff finished with a smile.

  “All right…measles. Yes, I see what you mean.” He pushed back a lock of hair from his face. “We’ll watch. We get around enough.”

  Scuff finished his soup and the last of the bread before he spoke again.

  “I thought of something else…”

  “Yes?” Crow asked suspiciously.

  “It’s all right for you to call me ‘Scuff,’ but I think I’d like to have a proper name, like you, or Fitz. Like I’d be a doctor one day…” He felt embarrassed saying it, but he was beginning to feel it quite deeply. Who would ever send for a doctor called Scuff? And since Tibor Havas, and watching both Crow and Fitz, especially Fitz, he was determined to be a real doctor, a good one, who could alleviate pain and fear, and most times make people better.

  “I didn’t know you had one,” Crow admitted, a sudden sympathy in his face. “I apologize.”

  “I don’t have one.” Now Scuff felt awkward. He looked down at his hands. “But when Hester took me to church, they asked me what my name was, and she said William. I…I never asked her if I could keep it. But if I get to be someone…Monk’s called William, but I could be Will.” He looked up at Crow, uncertain of what he would see in his face.

  It was the utmost seriousness.

  “Right, Will. That is who you’ll be from now on. I’ll try to remember. And I’ll tell Fitz.”

  “Thank you. But it’s all right to call me Scuff when we haven’t got a patient in.”

  “Good. Because I’ll forget.” Crow gave one of his wide smiles. “Will. I like it.”

  Scuff felt the heat burn up his face, but it was with pleasure. It gave him something very big to live up to.

  —

  IT WAS WELL AFTER midnight and one of those nights when, even though it was past the height of summer and the days were shortening again, it was warmer than usual and the clear sky was hazy with a spread of stars. The lamps were lit along the main streets, but away from them, on a narrow side street lined with houses, there was no artificial light to wash out the dazzle of the Milky Way sweeping across the arch of the heavens.

  Scuff walked slowly, because the peace of being alone was like a soft blanket around him after the constant necessity of talk all day. He had gone quite a long way on the last call and was still at least a mile from Crow’s clinic when he heard footsteps behind him. He turned, in case it was someone who needed him.

  At first he could not see anyone at all, then he made out a dim figure, moving slowly. He seemed to stagger a bit. Someone who had drunk a great deal too much?

  He would just have to sleep it off. Scuff turned away and continued toward the clinic. He was near Cable Street again where there were regular lamps every thirty or forty feet. He could not hear the footsteps anymore. Maybe the man had fallen? He really should go back and see. He might be hurt, or ill! It was irresponsible to ignore him.

  A little nervously, he swung around to look, but with his back against the wall of a house so he was not outlined against the light.

  Within a minute or two the man wandered toward him, and past him, as if he had not even seen that there was anyone there. His face was vacant, eyes fixed on something only he could see. Whatever it was must have been terrible, because his mouth was open in a silent scream. His chest and hands were covered with blood and it drenched his thighs as if it had streamed over him. It was Fitz. There was no mistaking his features, or even the torn remnants of his jacket and the once-white shirt with its faint pin-wide stripes.

  For a long instant Scuff was paralyzed.

  Then he drew in his breath. “Oh God!”

  He had to go after him, whatever had happened. He had never thought of Fitz as a killer. Why would he? He had seen Fitz operate to save a man’s life! A young Hungarian man. He had seen the pity in his face and heard over and over the gentleness in his voice as he talked Tibor through the horror and the pain of having his arm removed, cutting through the still-living flesh to take away the gangrenous dead.

  Scuff pushed himself away from the wall and moved swiftly after Fitz. He caught up with him in a dozen strides and took his right arm. Fitz was right-handed; Scuff remembered that from watching him work.

  Fitz stiffened and swung around, eyes blazing, focused at last.

  “Fitz!” Scuff yelled. “It’s me! It’s Scuff! Are you all right?”

  “All right?” Fitz said, as if the question made no sense.

  “Yes. Are you all right?” Scuff repeated. “You’re covered in blood. Are you hurt?”

  Fitz looked at himself as if he was quite unaware of it. He raised his eyebrows. “Not surprising, I suppose,” he said. His voice was strained, as if he was exhausted.

  Scuff’s mind raced. Where did Fitz think he was? Was he here in London at all? Or was he somewhere in the Crimea, on the edge of a battlefield, trying to judge whom he could help, and who was past anything but a prayer for his soul?

  What should Scuff say to him? Was he dangerous to anyone? Did he have a weapon of any sort, even a scalpel? He wasn’t carrying a case. His hands were empty.

  “Fitz,” Scuff said firmly. “Who’s hurt? Whose blood is all over you?”

  Fitz stared at him, then looked down again at his own blood-soaked chest and legs. He seemed completely lost.

  “No idea. You don’t ask men’s names, Scuff. You just deal with the bleeding. If you can save their lives, they’ll tell you who they are. It doesn’t matter. Stop the bleeding. Always! Just stop the blood…”