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 order to defend, before there was justification for it.
“May I say that it is a very noble thing you are doing, giving of your time and means to fight for those children of others who suffer from the abuse and neglect of the very people who should be caring for them.” He spoke sincerely, and yet after what he had said before, it still managed to sound like pity. He moved his hand in the air as if to dismiss the subject. “So you sought the help of other mudlarks to identify the body of this poor boy who was found near Horseferry Stairs. And because of your rescue of Scuff, they were willing to help you, in a manner that they would not help the police. Is that accurate?”
“They helped,” she replied. “I did not attribute motive to them.” It sounded sharp, as if she were defending herself. It took all the self-control she could muster to keep her voice from shaking and her expression mild. “But if I had, I would think it to protect themselves, and perhaps act in some fairness to the boy who had been one of them.”
Rathbone smiled. “You think well of them, Mrs. Monk. Your trust and affection do you credit. I am sure every woman in this court would like to think she might do the same.”
In one sentence he had turned it into an issue of being feminine, something charitable but unrealistic. How clever of him, and how very unfair. He knew she was the least sentimental of people. She must attack him back, or be mowed under.
“I am an army nurse, Sir Oliver, as you mentioned earlier.” Her voice shook in spite of all her efforts, and the tone was sharper than she meant it to be. “Wounds are real; they do not stop bleeding because of well-meaning idealism or kind judgments of affection. Gangrene, typhoid, and starvation do not respond to woolly-minded good wishes. I have quite often failed, especially in reforms I would like to have brought in, but because I spoke too bluntly, not because I was sentimental. I thought you knew that of me. But perhaps it was you who were too kind in your judgments, and saw what you wished to see, what you thought womanly and becoming, and easy to deal with.”
A flare of surprise lit in his eyes, and of admiration. This time it was honest, not assumed for the jury
“I stand corrected, Mrs. Monk,” he apologized. “Of course you are right. You never lacked courage, only tact. You saw what needed to be done, but did not have the knowledge of human nature to persuade people to do it. You did not foresee the arrogance, the shortsightedness, or the selfishness of those with interests vested in things remaining as they are. You are idealistic; you see what could be and strive to bring it about. You fight with passion, courage, and honor for the oppressed, the sick, the forgotten of the world. You are disobedient to the law when it is unjust, and loyal at any cost to what is right. Is that a fairer assessment of your character?”
It was fair, even generous. It was also damning of her as an impartial witness. The court might both like and admire her, but it would always judge whatever she said against the force of her beliefs, and emotion would win. She had turned Rathbone's argument around, but he had still beaten her.
He went on to take apart all the evidence she had gathered through the witnesses learned of in her dealings with Portpool Lane. For every one of them he could show that they had benefited from her care. He worded it so it seemed that their indebtedness would cause them to say whatever she wished them to, not in deliberate deceit but in the desire to please a woman whose help they depended upon. In spite of the praise he had given her, she still appeared worthy but driven more by feelings than by reason, passionately tireless for justice towards those she saw as needy, and furious for vengeance against those who preyed upon them. She was feminine; he had harped on about her womanliness. She was vulnerable; he had subtly reminded them that she was childless. And she had poor judgment; he gave no example of that, but by then he was believed without it.