“No.” She shook her head. “You have enough to do. You need to sleep. I’ll tell him, and stay with him. Besides, if he needs to cry, we can do it together.” She smiled, and the tears slid down her cheeks. “He’ll expect it of me, and it’ll be all right.” She stood up and turned to go.

“Hester!”

She looked back. “Yes?” She thought he was going to thank her, and she did not want to be thanked. It wasn’t as if she’d given him a gift.

“I love you,” he said quietly.

She drew in a shaky breath, using all her strength not to go back and cling to him and let the tears come. “I know. If I didn’t, do you think I could do any of this?” Then, without waiting for him to answer, she went up to waken Scuff and tell him Hattie was dead.

She knocked on the door because she always did. He must have a place where no one else entered without his permission. As she had expected, there was no answer. She turned the handle and went in. The night-light was still burning. He had to have enough to see by if he woke up. He must never have that first moment of terror not knowing where he was, of imagining the bilges of Jericho Phillips’s boat, even for an instant.

“Scuff,” she said quietly.

He did not move. She could see his head on the pillow, hair ruffled, still damp from his bath.

“Scuff,” she repeated, more loudly.

He stirred, and when she spoke a third time, he opened his eyes and sat up, holding his nightshirt around himself with one hand.

She came and sat on the end of the bed, where he could see her face in the light.

“Wos wrong?” he asked, noticing the tears. “Wos ’appened?” His perception of her grief was instant, and it filled him with fear. She realized with a sharp stab how much of his world was bound up in her.

“Hattie’s dead,” she replied, so he would not be afraid that it was something to do with Monk. “She was killed—not an accident, though. William just told me. He wanted to wait until he could find out exactly how it happened, but it came out in court today.”

He blinked. “Somebody killed ’er?” He gulped, then reached forward and put his small, thin hand over hers, so lightly, she saw it rather than felt it. “Don’t cry for ’er,” he whispered. “She were always gonna finish bad. This way it won’t ’urt so much. Quick. Like yer should pull a tooth out, if yer’ve gotter, like.”

She wanted to hug him, but it would be an intrusion too far. Not everyone liked to be hugged.