For Kristian, the past he believed and that had given him identity had been wrenched out of his hands, shown to be a fabrication created out of the will to survive, easy to understand but not to admire, and bitterly hard to own.
If Monk were at last to know himself as most people do automatically-the religious ties, the allegiances, the family loves and hates-might he, too, discover a stranger inside his skin, and one he could not like?
He turned away from the river and walked along the footpath toward the nearest place where he could cross the street through the traffic and catch the omnibus home.
Perhaps he would write to Beth again, but not yet. He needed to know more. Kristian’s experience weighed on him and would not let him rest. But he was also afraid, because the possibilities were too many, and too disturbing, and what he had created was too dear to risk.
CHAPTER ONE
There was a noise outside the women’s clinic in Coldbath Square. Hester was on night duty. She turned from the stove as the street door opened, the wood still in her hand. Three women stood in the entrance, half supporting each other. Their cheap clothes were torn and splattered with blood, their faces streaked with it, skin yellow in the light from the gas lamp on the wall. One of them, her fair hair coming loose from an untidy knot, held her left hand as if she feared the wrist were broken.
The middle woman was taller, her dark hair loose, and she was gasping, finding it difficult to get her breath. There was blood on the torn front of her satin dress and smeared across her high cheekbones.
The third woman was older, well into her thirties, and there were bruises purpling on her arms, her neck, and her jaw.
“Hey, missus!” she said, urging the others inside, into the warmth of the long room with its scrubbed board floor and whitewashed walls. “Mrs. Monk, yer gotter give us an ’and again. Kitty ’ere’s in a right mess. An’ me, an’ all. An’ I think as Lizzie’s broke ’er wrist.”