“But you’re not hurt?” Scuff persisted.

  “No, of course not. Doctors don’t get hurt. We’re here to…” He stopped. His face creased with agony and he doubled over as if he could no longer stand. “Jesus, it hurts!”

  Scuff was terrified. He was not competent to stop bleeding, especially here in the street, in the dark.

  “Show me!” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “Please!”

  Fitz grasped his thigh, the one place where there was actually no blood.

  It took all Scuff’s strength to remove Fitz’s hands.

  “It’s not bleeding,” he said desperately. He could hear the panic in his own voice. “Where is the wound? I can’t help if you don’t tell me.”

  Fitz straightened up slowly. “Don’t worry,” he said, suddenly calm. “We’ll get it stopped. Just…let me see it.”

  Scuff realized that in Fitz’s mind he was somewhere else. The blood was not his. The pain was one remembered, perhaps from when he had been left for dead on the field after that terrible battle.

  “We need to find shelter,” Scuff tried again. “Come with me. Please.”

  “Oh. Oh, yes…” Fitz shook himself and started to move forward again.

  Scuff stayed close beside him, knowing they could cross Cable Street and get into some of the smaller streets or alleys on the far side, where the blood would be less obvious. Without the glow from the gas lamps, Fitz’s clothes would merely seem dark.

  They were almost there when a voice cried out for them to stop.

  Fitz turned around before Scuff could stop him.

  Antal Dobokai was coming toward them with two men beside him. Scuff knew him by sight. Dobokai was transfixed by the sight of the blood on Fitz. He stood motionless, his eyes wide and his face filled with horror. Both of the men who were with him stopped also. Then one lurched forward as if to grab Fitz by the arm.

  Scuff blocked him. Hard. It had been a long time since he had had to fight physically to survive. Then he had been thin and underweight. His only chance to win had been speed, and to strike in an unexpected place. He caught the man in the solar plexus and sent him staggering backward to crash into the wall of the nearest house. Then he turned to face Dobokai, taking him to be the natural leader.

  What could he say? Fitz was standing on the pavement as if he had no idea there was anything wrong. Scuff did not know where Fitz had been, or with whom, or whose blood it was.

  Dobokai was advancing on him, his face set, angry.

  “He’s a doctor!” Scuff said harshly. “You stop someone else bleeding, and you get blood on yourself! What use is a doctor if he’s scared of blood? I’m taking him home to get cleaned up.”

  They stopped moving toward him, but did not step aside to allow either Fitz or Scuff to pass.

  “Whose blood is that?” Dobokai asked, his voice shaking.

  “Whose blood?” Fitz looked down at himself, then back up at Dobokai.

  “You’re covered in it. Soaked.” Dobokai moved his head jerkily. In the lamplight his blue eyes looked almost luminous. “Whose is it? Who’s dead this time?”

  “Nobody’s dead.” Fitz seemed to be coming back to the present. “Not my field of skill. Did a bit in Hungary. There was no one else this time.”

  “Hungary?” Dobokai demanded. “What’s Hungary got to do with it? When were you in Hungary?”

  “Years ago,” Fitz said, clearly puzzled. “What’s that to do with it? It’s the same everywhere.”

  “What’s the same, Fitz?” Scuff demanded, catching his arm and holding it hard.

  “Birth,” Fitz replied. “Childbirth. Sometimes it’s messy. But they’re both all right. Got the midwife at last. Bit of bleeding, but that’s mostly afterbirth. Got to get it out or it can poison the mother. God, I’m tired.” He looked at Scuff. “Can’t we go home? I’m so tired I could sleep on the pavement.”

  “As soon as Mr. Dobokai lets us past,” Scuff said, praying silently that Fitz was telling the truth. “Please…” He seemed to be saying “please” all the time tonight, but he dared not be angry. He had no idea if Fitz was being honest. Was there a new mother with her baby in her arms somewhere near here? Or another skewered corpse with broken fingers and blood-soaked candles?

  Fitz looked ready to slide to the ground.

  “You’re supposed to be looking after these people,” Scuff said angrily to Dobokai. “Not attacking a doctor who treats them for nothing, and actually speaks their language. What’s wrong with you?”

  Slowly Dobokai stepped aside, motioning for the other men to do the same.

  “Thank you,” Scuff said solemnly. He took Fitz by the arm and half dragged him toward his rooms. It was less dangerous now to go to Fitz’s rooms, and lock the doors. Scuff had already determined not to leave him alone tonight anyway.

  As soon as they got there, Scuff used Fitz’s key to get in, and crept up the stairs as quietly as possible. He did not want to disturb any of the other lodgers, least of all the landlady. If Fitz was thrown out of here it might be difficult to find him another place. He could end up sleeping at the clinic, and there was no room for him there. They needed the space for patients who could not be sent home.

  Once inside, Scuff locked the door, then turned to look at Fitz, who stood in the dark, close to the center of the room.

  Scuff went over to the gas bracket on the wall and turned up the flame.

  In the sudden burst of light Fitz looked down at himself and seemed for the first time to notice the blood soaking him.

  “Oh dear,” he said wryly. “Rather a lot. Looks worse than it is. Blood can frighten people. It’s mostly afterbirth. Mess.” He shook his head.

  “But she’s all right?” Scuff asked. “Are you sure?”

  A flicker of irritation crossed Fitz’s face. “Of course I’m sure. Do you think I would have left her if I weren’t? Husband’s there with her, and one of her aunts who’s had children of her own. Got a bit difficult at one point, but a stitch or two and she’s fine. Beautiful baby.” Now he really smiled. “A girl. All perfect. Fingers, toes, everything. Even hair.” His smile was far away. “Like pale yellow silk. Never seen anything so totally innocent in my life. She looked straight at me.”

  Now Scuff believed him. He had seen a newborn baby once. He had forgotten until now how it had looked at him.

  “You should wash and go to bed,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Throw that shirt away. You’ll never get that clean. Maybe the trousers too.”

  “Only have one other pair. I’ll have to clean them…”

  “I’ll get you more,” Scuff said rashly. “Can’t keep those. You’ll scare people. They’ll think someone bled to death in your arms. Just take them off, wash and go to bed.”

  Fitz hesitated.

  “Come on!” Scuff said crisply, holding his hand out to take the blood-soaked clothes.

  This time Fitz obeyed. Perhaps he could see sense in what Scuff had said. Anything for the welfare of patients seemed to cut through the other things in his mind.

  Scuff took the trousers and shirt and Fitz’s key, and got rid of the garments in a large bin of rubbish about a hundred yards along the street. He walked back in the soft night, still warm even though some of the stars had clouded over a bit.

  He let himself into Fitz’s house again, crept up the stairs in his stocking feet, carrying his boots, and very quietly unlocked the door to Fitz’s bedroom.

  Fitz was asleep, his breathing silent and—judging from the rise and fall of his chest—quite even.

  Scuff hesitated. Should he leave him? Was it all right for him to go back to the clinic and get some sleep, in his own bed there? Crow would be relieved to see him, and there would be lots of jobs to do. If he was unlucky, Crow would make him write up all the notes that weren’t done yet. He really disliked that. It was true that he learned a lot, but there were so many long words that had to be exactly right. A mistake could hurt someone, even kill them. A medicine with a similar name could actually be quite different. A wrong dosage could be fatal. Fractions, weights, decimal points had to be exact, checked three times.

  Actually that was what frightened him: numbers.

  Suddenly Fitz moved. All the ease vanished from him and his body was rigid, then he began to shake, muttering something unintelligible, his voice sharp with panic.

  Scuff ran over to him and clasped his arm, shaking him, but gently—just enough to wake him.

  Fitz cried out as if the touch had scalded him.

  “Fitz!” Scuff said urgently. “Wake up! It’s just a dream…”

  But Fitz was somewhere Scuff could not reach him. His whole body was juddering now, and he gasped as if he could barely get his breath. His skin was covered in sweat, his face wet with it, muscles looked tight and hard.

  In his mind he was somewhere completely different. A battlefield in the Crimea, corpses of men he knew all around him. Some had been alive and well only hours before, maybe moments ago, others in agony, bleeding to death in front of him, and he couldn’t help them. Or he was in one of the hospitals, every breath drawing in the stench of disease, people suffering hideously, and again he could do far too little to help them.

  Or was it nothing like that at all? Would Scuff hear in the morning that there had been another murder? That another Hungarian had been stabbed through the chest, his fingers broken, candles snuffed out in his blood? Seventeen? Why seventeen?

  Please God, no!

  Would it be dangerous to force Fitz awake now, drag him out of the nightmare? Could it damage his mind? Or would he even imagine Scuff was a Russian soldier and attack him? Fitz was not very muscular, but he was lean, and Scuff already knew he was strong.

  Now Fitz was weeping uncontrollably. Great sobs racked his body; he could hardly draw in his breath. He was suffocating!

  “Fitz!” Scuff shouted at him.

  It did no good. He might as well have whispered.

  Dare he touch him? Fitz might be unnaturally strong, even enduring pain like this. And he was clearly in agony.

  Scuff swung his arm back and then hit Fitz as hard as he could across the front of his chest, where it would do no harm. He yelled at him again. “Fitz!”

  Fitz seemed to collapse, then the next moment he was weeping quietly, deep, gentle sobs.

  Without thinking about it, Scuff put his arms around him and held him gently until at last the sobs stopped and Fitz seemed to have fallen back into a quieter sleep.

  Scuff laid him back on the bed and covered him with the blankets. He was soaked with sweat, but it was almost as if a fever had broken.

  Scuff stayed the rest of the night, and in the morning, when Fitz woke up, neither of them spoke of what had happened. Scuff made a stiff cup of tea for each of them, and toasted a little stale bread. Then he said goodbye, quite cheerfully, without making any reference to last night. He wondered if Fitz had actually forgotten.

  The first thing he did was go back to the street where he had found Fitz. There was a café at the far end, just around the corner. They served chocolate, coffee, the sort of thing people like to have at that time in the morning. Tea and toast you could do easily enough at home.

  He stopped outside the door. He realized his heart was beating like a hammer. Perhaps he was too early? It seemed no one had discovered anything yet.

  But it was about eight o’clock. He knew that from the angle of the shadows. He pushed the door open and went inside. The place was full. People were talking cheerfully, as they used to do. The murders, two now, had pretty well silenced laughter.

  Two men were sitting opposite each other. One raised his cup of chocolate as if in a toast. The other lifted his own cup and touched sides. They said something in Hungarian.

  Scuff was staring at them.

  As if aware of his scrutiny, one of them turned to look at him.

  “Something good?” Scuff said awkwardly. He felt foolish.

  “Yes, yes,” the man replied in English. “Mrs. Dorati had her baby last night. A girl! Beautiful! Pavel was in early this morning, smiling so wide he could hardly speak. Said she is the most beautiful thing in the world. Here! Have some chocolate with us! Celebrate.”

  “Yes,” Scuff agreed. His knees were so weak with relief that he needed to sit down anyway. “Yes—I will. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  THE MURDER OF LORAND Gazda had added to the panic in the area, and of course it had given Monk a few new avenues of investigation. Some people could now be excluded as suspects because they could prove that they had been elsewhere at the time of either one murder or the other. But narrowing the field was far from good enough for Monk.

  Examination of the bayonet and the shears had proved nothing. The bayonet was old and blunt, and there were no clues as to who had stolen it from the museum. Half of a pair of shears could have been relegated to the rubbish heap, and anyone could have taken it from there.

  In spite of all the work the extra men from the regular police had done, no one had observed either weapon being removed, or seen anyone with them. They yielded no trace of threads or other evidence as to who had used them.

  There was much in the newspapers, talk of panic, even police inefficiency—or worse, corruption. And every issue of newspapers, morning and evening, carried word of civil unrest in one area or another. To the south of the river there were outbreaks of violence in Deptford, Bermondsey and Camberwell. To the north there were smaller fights in Stepney, reports of crowds getting rough on Parsons Green and later in Blackwall. Some of these were exaggerated, but questions in Parliament and the calls for police resignations were increasing.

  Hester could think of nothing to say to Monk that would be of any practical help.

  Emotional help was a far more elusive and delicate thing. One clumsy word, a false note of encouragement that sounded either patronizing or uninformed, and it would wipe out anything good she might have said.

  Every evening Monk came home pale with exhaustion and, more recently, without any new ideas of how to narrow down the still far too large field of possibilities.

  “If I knew what started it…” he said on the fourth evening after Gazda’s death. “Why does anyone hate so passionately that they’ll kill like this?” He stared at her across the dinner table. It seemed strangely quiet without Scuff’s company, much less enjoyable without his unquenchable appetite.

  “Are you sure this is hatred against the Hungarians in general?” she asked. “It feels personal. That much cruelty is very intimate.”

  “No, I’m not sure,” he answered. “But Dobokai is. I don’t like the man but everything he’s said so far has proven true. Certainly the Hungarians feel as if someone’s against them. Why? You’ve traveled more than I have.” He was searching her face, her eyes. “You’ve seen war close-up. Why does a whole nation suddenly become ‘the enemy’? We’re not at war with Hungary, and, as far as I know, we never have been. One of the few nations we haven’t fought, and haven’t invaded or settled, and they haven’t invaded us.” He looked puzzled, and worried, as if not to understand were his failing.

  She must think of an answer that made sense. She could see his belief in himself was wavering.

  “Fear,” she said with only the barest hesitation. “You don’t have to know what the threat really is, just what it could be.”

  “And what are a couple of hundred Hungarians going to do in a city like London? It’s the biggest city in the world, and the heart of an empire that stretches around the globe.”

  “It doesn’t have to make sense. People don’t think of the rest of the world. We just live in our own villages within London. And Shadwell is changing. There are Hungarian shops where there used to be English ones. Somebody has lost their job.”

  His dark eyebrows rose. “So you stick a stake through their hearts, and dip candles in their blood?”

  “Candles,” she said quickly.

  “Yes. I told you…”

  “Maybe…maybe it’s religious. The Hungarians are Catholic, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “William, the Catholic world is still very large, very powerful. When I was in Shadwell yesterday I heard someone mention that…and religious freedom, the right to be Protestant, if you want to be. It may be foolish, but fear of losing your religion and being governed by a foreign power, from Rome, is very real.”

  “A real danger?” he said disbelievingly. “Not now…”

  “No! Not a real danger. It was at the time of Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada. If the storm hadn’t sunk them, we could have gone back to Catholicism. But nearly three hundred years ago, it was. And in Europe people still fight religious wars, Catholics against Protestants.”

  “And in Ireland,” he added. “But this is Shadwell Dock. Nobody’s threatening anyone’s freedom.”

  “You asked me what makes people lash out so horribly, William. I think it’s fear, and fear doesn’t have to be rational. It’s fear of ideas, things that aren’t the way you’re used to. Everyone you don’t understand, because their language is different, their food, but above all their religion. The Catholic Church used to be the biggest power in Europe. They excommunicated people who defied their rules, and suddenly those people became invisible, voiceless, homeless, exiled from the community. No baptisms, no marriages, no proper burials and, most of all, no confession or absolution for sins.”

  “When?” he demanded.

  “All England under interdict in the reign of King John.” Then she remembered that he had no memory of his youth, probably of half the things he had learned at school. Perhaps not even of school itself! “It doesn’t matter now,” she said quickly. “But religious fear seems very deep. It’s much more recent that the Inquisition burned people at the stake for falling away from the Catholic faith—in Spain! And I don’t know where else. Fear doesn’t bring out the best in us, in or outside the law.”

  He looked downward. “I did ask you. I just wasn’t prepared for that answer. But then, I wasn’t prepared for blades through the heart and candles dipped in blood either.”