"Yes yes. I'll take a piece of it to show him. Can I see the boy's clothes?”

"They're by his bed, over in the next ward. I'll take you." He turned and led the way along the wide, bare corridor, and into a ward lined with beds, grey blanketed, each showing the outline of a figure lying or propped up. At the farther end a pot-bellied stove gave off quite a good heat, and even as they walked up, a nurse staggered past them with a bucketful of fresh coals to keep it stoked.

Evan was reminded sharply of Hester Latterly, the young woman he had met so soon after his first encounter with Monk. She had gone out to the Crimea and nursed with Florence Nightingale. He could not even imagine the courage it must have taken to do that, to face that raging disease, the carnage of the battlefield, the constant pain and death, and to find within oneself the resources to keep on fighting to overcome, to offer help and to give some kind of comfort to those you were powerless even to ease, let alone to save.

No wonder such an anger still burned inside her at what she perceived to be incompetence in medical administration! How she and Monk had quarrelled! He smiled even as he thought of it. Monk loathed her sharp tongue at the same time as he admired her. And she despised the hardness she thought she saw in him, the arrogance and disregard for others. And yet when he had faced the worst crisis in his life it had been she who had stood beside him, she who had refused to let him give in, had fought for him when it looked as if he could not win, and worst of all, did not deserve to.

How she rebelled against rolling bandages, sweeping floors and carrying coals when she was capable of so much more, and had done it in the field surgeons' tents when all the doctors were already doing all they could. She had wanted to reform so much, and the eagerness had got in her way.