The Draft

1863

IT WAS A lovely day in July. Not a cloud in the sky. Mary was so excited that she hugged Gretchen, as they sat in Mrs. Master’s handsome open carriage and were driven round the park.

“I have a surprise for you,” said Gretchen.

“What?”

“Before we take the ferry. Wait and you’ll see.”

You’d hardly guess that the city was at war at all. Not a soldier in sight, and the park looking so splendid and so green.

Two weeks earlier, it had been a different story. At the end of June, when General Lee and his Confederates had crossed the Potomac River and pushed into Pennsylvania, New York had been in a ferment. Every regiment in the city had been sent southward to bolster the Union army. “But if Lee defeats them, or gives them the slip,” Master had pointed out, “he could be here in days.”

By the start of July, a big battle had begun down at Gettysburg. At first no one knew who was winning. But on the fourth, last Saturday, news came up the wires that the Union had gained a great victory. And by Thursday, Mrs. Master had told her: “I think, Mary dear, that it’s safe for you to go on your holiday now.”

Free at last. The holiday had been planned the month before. Gretchen’s husband had insisted that she needed a week of rest. He’d continue to mind the store, while their three children would stay nearby with Gretchen’s parents. It had also been agreed that Mary should go with her, so that Gretchen could travel with safety and propriety, and the two friends keep each other company. A respectable hotel had been booked out on Long Island. Before they took the ferry that afternoon, Mrs. Master had kindly told them to use her carriage as they liked, and so they had begun with a whirl through Central Park.

What with Gretchen’s children and a store to run, it wasn’t possible for the two friends to see each other as they had in the old days—though they always kept in regular touch, and Mary was godmother to one of the children. They were both delighted, therefore, with this chance to spend a week away at the beach together, and already they were laughing like a pair of girls.

“Look at us fashionable ladies going round the park,” cried Mary.

She loved Central Park. It was only a few years since the great, two-and-a-half-mile rectangle had been laid out to the inspired design of Olmstead and Vaux, to provide a much needed breathing space, the “lungs” in the middle of what would clearly, one day, be the city’s completed grid. Swamps had been drained, a couple of ragged hamlets swept away, hills leveled. And already its lawns and ponds, woods and avenues provided landscapes quite as elegant as London’s Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne beside Paris. Why, the contractors had even done their work without any graft. No one had ever seen anything like it.

And the two women were certainly well dressed. Gretchen could afford it, but Mary had some nice clothes too. Servants in New York made twice as much as a factory worker, with room and board besides, and most sent money back to their families. In the fourteen years she’d been with the Masters, without any family to support, Mary had saved a tidy sum.

Of course, if ever she’d needed money, Sean would have helped her. Her brother was becoming quite a wealthy man. Eight years ago, he’d taken over Nolan’s saloon down on Beekman Street. When she’d asked him what had happened to Nolan, he’d been evasive.

“He wasn’t getting along with some of the boys,” he’d said vaguely. “He may have gone to California, I believe.”

To tell the truth, she didn’t care what had happened to Nolan. But one thing was certain: Sean was making a fortune out of the saloon. He’d married and had a family now, and was quite the respectable man.

“You don’t have to work as a servant, you know,” he told her. “I’ve a place for you any time you want.”

But she preferred to keep her independence. And by now, in any case, the Masters’ house had become her home. If little Sally Master was in any kind of trouble, it wouldn’t be long before she was knocking on Mary’s door. When young Tom Master returned from Harvard for the summer, Mary felt the same thrill of pleasure as if he’d been her own.

Did she still think of getting married? Perhaps. It wasn’t too late, if the right man came along. But somehow he never seemed to. If Hans had asked her, she supposed she would have said yes. But Hans had been happily married for many years. Time had passed, and she never thought of him nowadays. Well, hardly ever.

“Down Fifth, James,” Gretchen called to the coachman, and a minute later they passed out of the bottom corner of the park and onto the carriage thoroughfare.

“Where are we going?” said Mary. But her friend didn’t answer.

If Broadway had dominated the social scene for generations, the upstart Fifth Avenue was bidding for prominence now. And though fashionable Central Park was still waiting for the city to reach it, isolated mansions on Fifth were already getting close.

The first house of note, seven streets down from the park, was a palatial mansion nearing completion on an empty site. “That’s Madame Restell’s,” Gretchen remarked. “Doesn’t she live fine?” Having made a fortune with her husband procuring abortions for the good people of the city, Madame Restell had recently decided to build herself a house on Fifth where she could enjoy her retirement in state. And if Mary looked at that house with some horror, it was only another block before she reverently crossed herself.

Fifth at Fiftieth. St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A decade had passed since Cardinal Hughes had laid the cornerstone of the great church which the city’s huge new population of Irish Catholics so obviously deserved. And there was no doubt about its message. If Trinity’s claims on the Gothic style had seemed impressive for a while, the vast new Catholic cathedral rising on Fifth would put the Protestant Episcopalians in their place—and provide a mighty reminder that honor was due to the Irish Catholics too.

Mary was proud of St. Patrick’s. Increasingly, as time went by, the Church had been a comfort to her. The religion of her childhood, and of her people. At least you knew that it would always be there. She went to Mass every Sunday, confessing her few, small sins to a priest who gave her kindly dispensation and renewal of life. She prayed in the chapel, where the shadows comprehended all human tears, the candles promised love, and the silence, she knew, was the stillness of the eternal Church. With this spiritual nourishment her life was, almost, complete.

They swept on down Fifth, past the orphanage for poor Negro children at Forty-third, past the fortress-like splendor of the reservoir, all the way down to Union Square, where they picked up the Bowery.

“Have you guessed where we’re going?” asked Gretchen.

Theodore Keller’s photographic studio was well equipped, and divided into two sections. In the smaller section, there was a camera set in position opposite a single chair placed in front of a curtain. For like the other photographers on the Bowery, his bread-and-butter business in recent years had been taking quick portraits of young men standing proudly, or sheepishly, in their unaccustomed uniforms, before they went off to fight against the South. Quicker than the old daguerreotype to take, easy to reproduce on paper, he’d get thirty a day sometimes. It paid the rent. At first, these small “carte-de-visite”-size portraits had seemed jolly enough, like taking someone’s picture at the seaside. Gradually, however, as the terrible casualties of the Civil War had mounted, he had realized that the dull little portraits he was taking were more like tombstones, last mementoes before some poor fellow vanished from his family forever. And if he tried to make each humble one as splendid as he could, he did not tell his customers the reason.

The larger section was a more elaborate affair. Here there was a sofa, rich velvet curtains, numerous backdrops and props for grander pictures. When not working, this was the part of the studio where he relaxed, and to the discerning eye, there were hints to suggest that he privately considered himself not only a professional, but an artist and even, perhaps, something of a bohemian. In one corner, in a case, there was a violin which he liked to play. On a small round table against the wall, he would often drop any books that he happened to be reading. Today, besides a well-thumbed edition of the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, there were two slim books of poetry. One of them, the Fleurs du Mal of Baudelaire, was safely in French. But the other poems were by an American, and if it hadn’t been his own sister that was coming to visit, he’d have put those verses safely out of sight in a drawer.

As he prepared for Gretchen’s arrival, he still hadn’t decided which backdrop to use. If there was time, he liked to look at his subjects, decide the scenery and arrange them on the inspiration of the moment. He saw his sister and her family frequently, of course, but he hadn’t seen Mary in quite a while. And besides, he wanted to see the two of them together, see how they looked and what they were wearing, before he decided on the best tableau.

His sister’s idea of giving Mary a portrait of herself as a present had struck the young man as an admirable idea, and he’d offered to do it for nothing.

When the two women arrived at his studio, he welcomed them. Mary, he could see, was both pleased and a little self-conscious. The first thing he did, therefore, was to show her some of the better portraits he had done. She supposed that this was so that she might admire his work, but his real purpose was different; and it was not long before, by watching her expression and listening to her comments, he knew exactly how she would like to look herself.

For the art of the commercial photographer, he’d found, was surprisingly close to that of the painter. Your subject had to sit still, of course—depending on conditions the exposure might be more than thirty seconds. Then there was the color of the lights he used—often he found a blue light gave a better result—and also the direction of the light. By placing his lights well—that is to say, by letting his subject’s face cast shadows—he could show the true volumes of the head, the structure and stress lines of the face, the character of the sitter. Sometimes he was able to do this; but usually, a revealing picture was the last thing people wanted. They were hoping for something quite different, something fashionable, something conventional, something entirely uninteresting. And he was used to obliging them, hoping that, with luck, the session might present enough of a technical challenge to amuse him.

Mary’s hopes were simple. She just wanted to look like a lady, and a little younger than she was. And in twenty minutes he was able to make a portrait of her, sitting on an upholstered chair, before a velvet curtain and a table supporting a placid urn—a picture which, he was sure, would give her great joy, and be given to her family so that, one day long hence, someone could say: “See, that was how your Aunt Mary looked when she was young. Quite a handsome lady.”

Gretchen’s case was different—she already had the portraits she needed. In recent years, though, he had observed some subtle changes in his sister. Partly, of course, it was because she had listened to him talk about his work, and she had begun to understand the difference between the interesting and the humdrum. But there was something more than that. He’d detected it several times lately: a mischievous humor, a sense of adventure, even a trace of anarchy, perhaps, under her well-ordered exterior. Could it be that Gretchen had secret depths?

“It’s time,” she announced, “for our tableau.”

He wasn’t sure why, but Theodore knew what he wanted, now. It was a backdrop he hadn’t used for some time. Most people would have felt it was out of date. He went to the back of the studio, found what he was looking for and hoisted it up.

It was a flowery, eighteenth-century garden scene, rococo and sensuous. It might have been painted by Watteau or Boucher, for the French court. In front of it he placed a swing with a wide seat. Deftly, he tied a few ribbons to the ropes of the swing, to match the spirit of the painted scene behind. Then he produced a pair of broad-rimmed straw hats and told the two of them to put them on.

“Mary, sit on the swing,” he commanded. “Gretchen, stand behind.”

It worked rather well. Humorous, yet charming. He told Gretchen to pretend she was in the act of pushing Mary on the swing. It took a minute or two to get the tableau right, but in the end it really did seem as if the swing was on the very point of motion and, telling the girls to hold their positions, he took his picture.

“One more,” said Gretchen.

He didn’t argue, set up the camera, went under the black cloth. And just as he did so, Gretchen reached forward and knocked off Mary’s hat. Mary burst out laughing, shook her head back so that her dark hair fell loose. And with a flash of inspiration, Theodore took the picture.

As he emerged from under the cloth, he gazed at the two women, at his sister mischievously grinning, and at Mary with her loosened hair. And to himself he thought: How did I not see before how beautiful she is?

He offered them lemonade and seed cake. They chatted pleasantly about their families and the coming holiday. He made himself agreeable to Mary, while Gretchen glanced cheerfully round the studio. Suddenly her eyes alighted on the book of verse.

“What’s this, Theodore?” she asked. And her brother smiled.

“It’s a wicked book, Gretchen,” he warned her.

“Leaves of Grass,” she read. “Walt Whitman. Why have I heard of him?”

“He wrote a poem called ‘Beat! Beat! Drums!’ about the war, which got quite a bit of attention a couple of years ago. But this little book came before that, and caused something of a scandal. Interesting verse, though.”

Theodore glanced at Mary, and saw to his surprise that she was blushing. Since Whitman’s homoerotic verses had never, as far as he knew, been discussed much outside literary circles, he was rather curious as to how Mary would know about them. But he decided not to ask. Then the thought suddenly occurred to him that she might suppose that, reading such material, he harbored those tendencies himself.

“Whitman has genius, but I think Baudelaire’s even better,” he said. “Listen to this now.” He smiled at the two young women. “Imagine you’re on an island in the summer sun. Everything’s quiet, just the sound of the little waves on the shore. The poem’s called ‘Invitation au Voyage.’”

“But it’s in French,” Mary, who had recovered herself now, objected.

“Just listen to the sound of it,” he told her. And he began to read: “Mon enfant, ma soeur, Songe à la douceur, D’aller là-bas vivre ensemble…”

So Mary listened. She’d only been embarrassed for a moment when Theodore mentioned Walt Whitman. Not that she knew much about the man herself, but she did remember the name on account of a conversation she’d once overheard at the dinner table at the Masters’ house. So she knew that Mr. Whitman was considered an indecent man, and she had some idea what that might mean, and then she’d suddenly been embarrassed in case Theodore might suppose that she knew all about those sorts of people, and that had made her blush. But she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself again now, so she sat very still and listened.

Nobody had ever read a poem to her before, and certainly not one in French, but she had to admit that the poem’s soft, sensuous sounds did seem rather like the waves of the sea, and she supposed that if she spoke French she might find the poem just as wonderful as Theodore evidently did.

“Thank you, Theodore,” she said politely, when he had done.

And then Theodore suddenly said: “Let me show you some of my other work before you go.” Mary didn’t know what he meant, but while Theodore went over to a set of wide drawers and withdrew some folders, Gretchen explained.

“This means we’re honored, Mary,” she said. “Theodore takes portraits for a living, but he cares even more about his private work. He doesn’t often talk about it.”

When Theodore came back, he put the folders on the table in front of them and opened the covers. Soon Mary found herself looking at pictures which were entirely different from the portraits she’d seen. A few were pictures of individual people, one or two taken close up. Most were bigger, often in landscape format. There were scenes of the city streets and of the countryside. There were studies of alleys and courtyards where the light threw shadows across the image. There were pictures of ragamuffins and beggars. There were pictures of the busy docks, of the open harbor, of ships in the mist.

Mary wasn’t sure what to make of some of them, where the images seemed to her to be random. But a glance at Gretchen and the way she was studying them carefully told her that there must be some special observation at work, some organization of image that she herself had not yet understood. It was strange to look at Theodore, too. He was still the same young fellow with the wide-set eyes that she had always known, but the self-absorbed seriousness that had seemed so funny and endearing in his childhood had turned into something else now that he was a young man. There was a concentration and intensity in his face that reminded her of the look on Hans’s face when he had played the piano for her. And seeing the brother and sister together, sharing this art that she did not understand, she couldn’t help wishing that she could share these things with them too.

One picture in particular struck her. It was taken on the West Side, where the line of railroad tracks ran up alongside the River Hudson. Above, there were heavy clouds, whose gleaming edges seemed to echo the dull gleam of the metal tracks below. The river was not gleaming, though, but lay like a huge, dark snake beside the tracks. And upon the tracks, some close by, others already far in the distance, walked the sad, scattered figures of Negroes, leaving town.

It was a common enough sight, she had no doubt. The underground railroad, as everyone called it, had always brought escaped slaves up to New York. But now, with the Civil War raging, that trickle had turned into a flood. And when this tide of Negroes reached New York, they mostly found neither jobs nor welcome, so that, on any day, you might see them setting off up another kind of railroad, hoping maybe to catch a ride on a passing train, or at least walk along the iron road that led to the far north, in the hope of a warmer reception somewhere there.

With its strange, eerie light, the hard gleam of the tracks and the blackness of the river, the photograph captured perfectly the desolate poetry of the scene.

“You like it?” asked Theodore.

“Oh yes,” she answered. “It’s so sad. But …”

“Harsh?”

“I didn’t realize that a rail track like that”—she hardly knew how to say it—“could also be so beautiful.”

“Aha.” Theodore looked at his sister with a pleased expression. “Mary has an eye.”

They had to leave soon after that. But as the carriage took them southward toward the ferry, Mary turned to her friend and said: “I wish I understood photographs the way you do, Gretchen.”

Gretchen smiled. “Theodore taught me a little, that’s all. I can show you some things, if you want.”

The ferry left from near Battery Point, and the journey took a couple of hours. It was delightful, on a sunny day, to pass across the upper corner of the great harbor where the ships entered the East River. From there they followed the huge curve of Brooklyn’s shore until, reaching the narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island, they sailed gradually out into the vast openness of the Lower Bay.

At one point, passing a small fort that lay just off the Brooklyn shore, one of their fellow passengers remarked: “That’s Fort Lafayette. They’ve got a bunch of men from the South in there. President’s holding them without charge and without trial.” Though whether he approved or disapproved of this violation of the Southern men’s rights the gentleman didn’t say.

Nor just then did Gretchen or Mary want to know about the fate of the prisoners. For as the salty Atlantic breeze caught their faces, and the ferry began to dip and roll excitingly in the choppy waters, they got their first glimpse, to the south-east, of the broad and sandy beaches of their destination.

Coney Island.

The quarrel between Frank Master and his wife the following afternoon went exactly as he planned. It was four o’clock when he got home and he found her in the parlor.

“Tom here?” he asked cheerfully. He was told their son was out. “Well, anyway,” he said with a smile, “it’s all fixed. He won’t be drafted. Paid my three hundred dollars and got a receipt. Then I went uptown to see how the draft was going. Didn’t appear to be any trouble.”

Hetty greeted this information with silence.

In the two years since the armed conflict between the Northern and Southern states of America had begun, all the Union regiments had been volunteers. Only recently had President Lincoln been obliged to order a draft. The names of all eligible males were put into a big lottery, and a selection made by a draw.

Unless you had money, of course. If you had money, you sent a poor person to fight in your place, or paid three hundred dollars to the authorities, who’d find someone for you.

To Frank Master it seemed reasonable enough. And it sure as hell seemed a good idea to young Tom, who had no desire to go down to the killing fields.

For if the upper classes of Europe were proud of their military prowess, the rich men of the Northern states of America had no such illusions. In England, aristocrats and gentlemen, especially younger sons, crowded into the fashionable regiments, paid money for their officers’ commissions, and thought themselves fine fellows when they paraded in their uniforms. Were they not—in fact, or at least in theory—descendants of the barons and knights of medieval England? The aristocrat did not trade. He did not draw up your will, or cure you of sickness. God forbid. That was for the middle classes. The aristocrat lived on the land and led his men into battle. And in America, too, among the old landed families from Virginia southward, some echo of that tradition might still be found. But not in Boston, Connecticut or New York. To hell with that. Pay your money and let the poor fellow be killed.

The poor fellows knew it of course.

“It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight,” complained those who could not afford the fee. And the city authorities had been concerned that the draft might lead to some trouble.

Accordingly, that Saturday morning, they’d chosen to begin the selection at the Ninth District Headquarters, which was an isolated building set among some empty lots up at Third and Forty-seventh, well away from the main body of the city. Frank Master had gone up there to take a look, and found a large crowd watching the marshal draw names from a barrel. But they’d seemed quiet. And after a while, evidently relieved, the marshal had stopped, announcing that selection wouldn’t resume until Monday.

“You don’t look very pleased,” Frank remarked to Hetty.

Still his wife said nothing.

“You actually want Tom to go and fight in this damn fool war? Because he doesn’t want to, I can tell you.”

“He must make his own choice.”

“He did,” said Master firmly, in a voice that clearly implied: “So you’re on your own.”

If Frank and Hetty Master’s marriage had been under strain at the time of the Cooper Institute speech, events since had not made things any easier between them. Lincoln had become the Republican candidate, and he’d run a shrewd campaign.

“Whatever your mother believes,” Frank had explained to young Tom, “the truth is that people in the North are against slavery on principle, but they’re not that excited about it. Lincoln can include the slavery issue on his platform, but he knows he can’t win on it.” As the elections of 1860 had drawn near, “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men” was the Republican motto. Hard-working Northerners, supported by the government, should take over the western lands, build railways and develop industries, while the men of the South, morally inferior through their support for slavery, would be left behind. “He’s offering free land and government aid,” Frank had remarked drily. “A pretty good inducement for doing right.”

The election had been close, but Lincoln had squeaked in. Upstate New York had voted Republican. But not the people of Democratic New York City—they’d voted Lincoln down.

For whatever ticket Lincoln ran on, he was going to cause trouble with the South. And if the wealth of the merchants depended on the South, so did the jobs of every working man. Tammany Hall knew it. Mayor Fernando Wood knew it, and said so loudly. If Lincoln wanted to put the city’s jobs at risk, he declared, to hell with him.

The working men of New York weren’t too sure how they felt about the Republicans in general, either. Republican free farmers, with their notions of individual effort and self-help, were no friends to the working men’s unions, whose only bargaining power lay in their numbers. Working men suspected something else too. “If Lincoln has his way, there’ll be millions of free blacks—who’ll work for pence—headed north to steal our jobs. No thank you.”

Hetty Master was disgusted with this attitude. Frank thought it understandable. He was also proved right in his fears about the secession.

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina had left the Union. One after another, the states of the Deep South had followed. By February 1861, they were forming a Confederacy and had chosen a president of their own. Other Southern states were holding back from such a drastic step. But the secession states now saw an interesting opportunity. “If the Union’s breaking up,” they declared, “we can refuse to pay all the debts we owe to the rich boys in New York.” Delegations of merchants, both Democrat and Republican, went down from New York to Washington, anxious to find a compromise. Lincoln passed through the city, but satisfied no one.

It was Mayor Fernando Wood, however, who issued New York’s most striking threat. If Lincoln wanted war with the South, and the ruination of the city, then New York should consider another option.

“We should secede from the Union ourselves,” he announced.

“New York City leave the United States? Is he mad?” cried Hetty.

“Not entirely,” said Frank.

A free city; a duty-free port: the idea wasn’t new. Great European cities like Hamburg and Frankfurt had operated like independent states since the Middle Ages. The merchants of New York spent several weeks considering its feasibility, and it was actually the Confederacy in the South which had brought discussions to an end, with the move they made in March: the Southern ports would drop their customs duties.

“They’ll cut us out,” Frank announced grimly to his family, “and trade with Britain direct.”

There was nothing you could do after that. Reluctantly, New York City fell into line behind Lincoln. The next month, when Confederates fired upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War had officially begun. Either the South’s insurrection must be put down, argued Lincoln, or the Union of states built by the Founding Fathers would be lost. The Union must be preserved.

Since good manners can preserve a marriage, and he still felt affection for her, Frank Master did his best to be polite, and tried to avoid saying things that would upset his wife. For Hetty, however, the issue was more difficult. She loved Frank, but what does a woman do when her husband looks every day at a great evil and, for all his politeness, doesn’t seem to give a damn? Nor did it help that, when the war began, it proved that he had been right about the South seceding, and he could not help saying, “I told you so.” By the time the Civil War was in its first year, though their personal union endured, Frank and Hetty no longer looked at maps together or discussed the future. And in the evenings, where once they had often liked to sit on a sofa side by side, they would quietly take an armchair each, and read. Manners covered, but could not put out, the slow fire of their anger.

And sometimes, even manners failed.

Today, by throwing their son and the draft in her face, he’d deliberately annoyed her.

“You hate this war because you think only of profit,” Hetty said coldly.

“Actually,” he countered calmly, “this war has made me richer.”

He and many others. Partly it was luck. For after a few terrible months in 1861, when trade with the South had collapsed, fate had handed New York an unexpected bonus. The British grain harvest had failed—just as the Midwest had enjoyed a bumper crop. Massive quantities of wheat had flowed through the city, bound for England. The Hudson railroad and the dear old Erie Canal had proved their value a hundred times over. The city’s grain trade had been booming ever since, along with cattle, sugar and Pennsylvania oil for kerosene.

But, chiefly, Frank Master had discovered what his ancestors from the previous century could have told him: war was good for business. The army’s needs were huge. The city’s ironworks were at capacity, fitting warships and ironclads; Brooks Brothers were turning out uniforms by the thousand. And beyond that, wartime governments needed stupendous funds. Wall Street was making a fortune floating government bonds. Even the stock market was booming.

Hetty ignored his remark, and went on the attack again.

“Your slave-owning friends are going to lose.”

Was she right? Probably. Even after the wavering states like Virginia had thrown in their lot with the South, the contest was hopelessly unequal. If you looked at the resources of the two sides, the manpower, industry, even the agricultural production of the North dwarfed that of the South. The strategy of the North was simple: blockade the South and throttle her.

Yet the South was not without hope. Her troops were brave and her generals splendid. Early in the war, at Bull Run, Stonewall Jackson had withstood the Union men and sent them scurrying back to Washington. General Robert Lee was a genius. Furthermore, while the Union troops were fighting to impose their will on their neighbors, the men of the South were fighting, on their own territory, for their heritage. If the South could hold out long enough, then perhaps the North would lose heart and leave them alone. True, Lee had been turned back, with terrible losses, up at Antietam last year, and General Grant had just smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg, but it wasn’t over yet. Not by a long way.

“The North can win,” Master acknowledged, “but is it worth the price? The Battle of Shiloh was a bloodbath. Tens of thousands of men are being slaughtered. The South is being ruined. And for what?”

“So that men can live in freedom, as God ordains.”

“The slaves?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Lincoln thinks slavery is wrong—that I don’t deny—but he went to war to preserve the Union. He made that perfectly clear. He has even said, in public: ‘If I could save the Union without freeing a single slave, I’d do it.’ His words. Not mine.” He paused. “What does Lincoln want for the slaves? Who knows? From what I hear, his main idea for liberated slaves is to find a free colony in Africa or Central America, and send them there. Do you know he actually told a delegation of black men, to their faces, that he doesn’t want Negroes in the United States?”

Fairly chosen or not, the fact that every one of these statements had some basis served only, as Frank knew it would, to rile Hetty more.

“That’s not what he means at all!” she cried. “What about the Proclamation?”

Master smiled. The Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s masterstroke. The abolitionists loved it, of course—just as Lincoln intended that they should. He’d announced it late last year, repeated it this spring. Told all the world that the slaves of the South would be freed.

Or had he?

“Have you studied, my dear, what our president actually said?” Frank inquired. “He threatens to emancipate the slaves in any state remaining in rebellion. It’s a negotiating ploy. He’s telling the Confederates: ‘Quit now, because if you delay, I’ll set free all your slaves.’ Yet his Proclamation specifically exempts every slave county that has already fallen to the Union. God knows how many thousand slaves are now under Lincoln’s control. But of those, he’s not freeing a single one. Not one.” He gazed at her in triumph. “So much for the abolitionists’ hero.”

“Wait until the war is over,” she countered. “Then you’ll see.”

“Perhaps.”

“You only hate him because he has morals.”

Frank shrugged. “Morals? What morals? He’s got men held without trial in Fort Lafayette. So he evidently cares nothing for habeas corpus. He’s thrown men in jail for writing against him. Seems our lawyer president has never heard of the Zenger trial, either. I’ll tell you what your friend Lincoln is. He’s a cynical tyrant.”

“Copperhead!”

A poisonous snake. It was Lincoln’s term, for those who questioned the war effort.

“If you mean that I think this war might have been avoided,” he said in a voice that was dangerously quiet, “and that I’d like to see a peace negotiated, you are absolutely right. And I’m not alone. You think that makes me evil? Think it.” He paused before suddenly shouting: “But at least I’m not trying to send our son to a pointless death. And I guess you are.” He turned on his heel.

“That is unfair,” she cried.

“I’m going to the counting house,” he roared back. “Don’t wait up.”

And moments later, he was striding out of Gramercy Park. Only when he was halfway down Irving Place did he slow his pace and allow himself half a smile.

It had gone just as he planned.

Mary gazed out at the ocean. The breeze made a faint, rasping whisper on the tufts of seagrass behind her, and played with her hair. The low rolls of surf broke with a light hiss, as they sent their spume to lick the sand.

Miles away to the west, they could see the low rise of Staten Island’s southern shore. Ahead, between the two outer arms of the Lower Bay, lay the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Let’s go to the Point,” said Gretchen.

It was Saturday morning. Most of the weekend visitors had yet to arrive, and there were only a few people on the long expanse of beach. Since the 1820s, when a shell road had been made across the creek between Coney Island and the mainland, people had been making Sunday excursions to its long dunes and ocean beaches. But it was still a peaceful place.

In the middle of Coney Island, a hamlet of small clapboard hotels and inns catered to the respectable families who came to enjoy a week or two of ocean air and quiet. A few celebrities, like Herman Melville, Jenny Lind and Sam Houston, had come to visit, but otherwise the fashionable world had not taken it up and so the place retained its discreet charm. Once people did discover Coney Island, they usually returned. The half-dozen families staying in the inn that Gretchen and Mary occupied came there every year.

They’d eaten a hearty breakfast of eggs, pancakes and sausages out on the broad porch that ran along the front of the inn, before they set out for a walk.

The island’s western point was the only place on Coney Island where vulgarity raised its head. Some years back, a pair of sharp-eyed men had come out and decided to open a small pleasure pavilion there, so that when people came off the ferry, they could find refreshments and amusements. By midsummer, nowadays, a collection of card sharps, tricksters and other undesirables had made the place their own. The people at the hotel pretended it wasn’t there—and indeed, you could neither see nor hear it from the hamlet. But Gretchen and Mary were quite content to spend half an hour watching the men who sold candy or offered the three-card trick.

Next, they walked round the landward side of the island until they came to the shell road.

If you looked from Manhattan across the East River nowadays, you’d conclude that Brooklyn was a busy place. There were the shipyards on the waterfront, the warehouses and factories along the shore, and the residential city that had grown up on Brooklyn Heights. When the British redcoats had camped there in 1776, Brooklyn had less than two thousand inhabitants. Now there were more than a hundred thousand. Why, there was even talk of laying out a fine public space, to be called Prospect Park, up on the high ground. But once you got past the Heights, you came down to a great sweep of open countryside, extending half a dozen miles or more, and dotted with small towns and Dutch hamlets that had hardly changed since the eighteenth century.

As she looked back along the shell road, therefore, across the open breezy tracts of sand dune, marsh and farmland toward the invisible city, Mary couldn’t help remarking, with a smile: “We might be in another world.”

After that, they crossed again to the ocean side and walked eastward along the great stretches of Brighton Beach, drinking in the sea air, for upward of an hour. By the time they returned to the inn, it was past noon, and they were quite hungry.

“Don’t eat too much now,” said Gretchen, “or you’ll fall asleep.”

“I don’t care if I do,” said Mary. And she laughed, and helped herself to a second slice of apple pie, and made Gretchen take another slice too. There were cane chairs on the grass in front of the inn, so they sat in those for a while. The breeze had dropped, and they covered their faces with straw hats because of the hot sun.

And some time passed before Gretchen said to Mary, “I have another surprise for you,” and Mary asked, “What’s that?” and Gretchen said, “Come upstairs, and I’ll show you.”

Their bedroom was charming. It had two beds with pink covers, and a window that looked toward the sea. The walls were painted white, but there was a pretty picture of flowers hanging in a gold-painted frame above each bed, and a small picture of somebody’s ancestor in a blue coat and a tall black hat over the fire, and a striking French clock on the mantel, and a nice rug on the floor. It was very genteel—so Mary had guessed at once that, although Gretchen said they were sharing the cost of the room equally, Gretchen’s husband must really be paying the lion’s share.

Gretchen had opened her suitcase. Now she took out two packages wrapped in paper, and handed one of them to Mary. “I’ve got mine. This one’s yours.” She smiled. “Aren’t you going to look at it?”

As she unwrapped, Mary could see this was clothing of some kind. She took it out.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said.

Gretchen laughed. “It’s a bathing dress, Mary.”

“But what would I be doing with that?”

“You’ll be putting it on, and bathing in the sea,” said Gretchen, as she held up her own in triumph. “Look: we match.”

Each bathing dress was in two parts. The lower half consisted of a pair of pantaloons, tied round the calf with ribbons. Over these fell a long-sleeved dress that came down to the knees. Everything was made of wool, to keep the body warm. Gretchen was obviously proud of her choice. The pantaloons had frilly bottoms, and the dresses lacy fringes. Hers was a pale and Mary’s a darker blue, so that they matched like sisters.

As they left the inn and walked down the path to the beach, Mary was still doubtful. They were both wearing their beach dresses, as well as stockings and shoes to protect against the unseen dangers of the sea floor. They carried towels, and wore their straw hats against the sun.

Theodore Keller stepped off the ferry. He was dressed in a loose linen jacket and was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. In one hand he carried a small leather traveling case. After asking directions, he began to walk in the direction of the inn. He was looking cheerful. It was years since he’d been to Coney Island.

He’d only decided to make the journey when he woke up that morning. It was done entirely on a whim—the day was so fine, the ferry seemed to call him out of the city. And of course, there was the pleasant prospect of spending time with his sister. And Mary O’Donnell.

Why did men pursue women? Theodore supposed there must be many reasons. Lust, temptation, the desire for the sins of the flesh, of course, were strong. He possessed as much lust as any other young fellow, and was certainly no stranger to the flesh—indeed, he was rather sensual—but his constant pursuit of women was driven, above all, by curiosity. Women interested him. When Theodore met women he liked, he did not talk about himself, as some men do, but questioned them. He wanted to know about their lives, their opinions, their feelings. They found it flattering. He was interested in all sorts of women, from the fashionable ladies who came to his studio, to the poor servant girls he met in the street. He made no distinctions. He appreciated them as individuals. And once his interest began, he did not stop. He wanted to discover all their secrets, and possess them, every one.

Not that his seductions were without any calculation. His photographic studio provided wonderful opportunities. Once a fashionable lady was standing or sitting in position, his blue eyes would stare at them intently for a few moments, before he adjusted the position of a light and stared at them again. Then he might ask them to look this way or that, and give a little grunt of appreciation, as if he’d just made an interesting discovery. It was an unusual woman who did not become intrigued and ask him what he’d seen.

His technique was always the same. If the woman was not a particular beauty, he would say something like: “You have a very beautiful profile. Did you know?” If, on the other hand, it was clear to him that the lady in question was used to being considered handsome, he’d remark, “I’ve no doubt people tell you you’re beautiful,” as if it were not important, “but there’s something,” he’d pause a second as if he were trying to analyze it, “something about the way your eyes settle on objects that I find interesting. You don’t draw or watercolor, do you?” They nearly always did. “Ah,” he’d say, “that’s probably what it is, then. You have an artist’s eye. It’s rare, you know.”

By the time the session was over, they’d usually made an appointment to visit the studio again.

So what was his interest in Mary? He wasn’t sure yet. He’d been quite surprised at the studio when he’d suddenly realized how beautiful she was. As that cascade of dark hair had fallen against the pale skin of her neck, he’d observed that she had a flawless complexion. How come he’d never noticed before? He’d imagined what she might look like unclothed. All kinds of possibilities had occurred to him. He’d been intrigued.

His sister’s friend, the young woman he’d known since he was a boy, turned out to be a Celtic beauty. She always seemed so prim and proper, but looks could be deceptive. What did she really think?

Even if she gave him the chance to discover, there were difficulties. Apart from the usual risks, he wasn’t sure how Gretchen would feel about it. Mary had a brother, too—quite a dangerous fellow, he believed. Theodore had taken his chances with angry husbands before, but all the same, he’d have to be careful.

In any case, there couldn’t be any harm in his spending a pleasant day or two with his sister out on Coney Island. The business with Mary might, or might not, come to anything. He’d just wait and see what happened.

“Lots of people have taken up bathing recently,” said Gretchen.

“Doctors say salt water’s bad for the skin,” Mary objected.

“We won’t go in for long,” Gretchen promised.

There were some bathing huts on wheels by a sand dune, where people could change. They inspected one of them. It didn’t smell very nice, and they were glad they’d left their clothes in the safety of the inn. Looking along the beach, Mary could see about a dozen people, some way off, standing stiffly in the surf, probably just as uncertain about this newfangled enterprise as she was. She took a deep breath. Then, taking Gretchen’s proffered hand, she allowed herself to be led down the beach and into the sea.

The water felt sharp and cold on her ankles. She gave a tiny intake of breath.

“Come on,” said Gretchen. “It won’t bite.”

Mary took a few steps more. The water came up to her knees now. Just then, a little wave rose up, washing past her and covering the lower part of her thighs for several seconds, causing her to give out a little cry. Then she felt the bottom of her bathing dress, suddenly heavy with water, clamp down coldly above her knees, while the legs of her pantaloons clung wetly to her flesh. She gave a shiver.

“Walk with me,” said Gretchen. “It won’t feel cold in a moment.”

“Yes it will,” laughed Mary, but she did as Gretchen said, and pushed her legs through the heavy water, as it enveloped her waist. And soon she realized that Gretchen was right. The water didn’t feel cold, once you got used to it, though she was aware that the bathing dress she was wearing was probably heavy enough to sink her now, if she lost her footing.

She was glad that on her left there was support at hand, if she needed it. From the shallows out into the deep water ran a line of stout posts, spaced about ten feet apart and linked by a thick rope, like a sort of breakwater. Holding onto the rope, bathers could work their way slowly out into the sea without fear of missing their footing or being swept away. Further out, the line of posts ran parallel to the beach, enclosing the bathers in a large pen. Mary didn’t quite see the point of this until, when the water was almost up to her chest, a larger wave came in from the ocean and carried her off her feet. Struggling to keep her head above water, she was surprised to find that the ebb carried her away from the beach, and she realized the barrier was there to prevent her being taken out to sea.

“Take my hand,” said Gretchen, and pulled her back into shallower water. “I said we’d go bathing,” she remarked with a smile, “not that we’d swim.” And glancing along the shoreline, Mary could see that most of the other bathers were standing contentedly about in the shallows, where the water hardly reached their waists.

So that is what she and Gretchen did. It was quite agreeable, feeling the cool of the water on her legs, and the sun on her face, and the salty sea breeze. The only thing she didn’t like was that the wet wool of her bathing dress felt heavy, and scratched her skin a little. Then they sat at the edge of the beach with their legs in the shallows, so that the little waves broke over them, and tiny shells jostled, and the ebbing sand made a funny feeling on her legs each time the wave receded, making her giggle.

And they were sitting like that when, to their great surprise, Theodore appeared.

Mary was so astonished that she gave a little gasp, and blushed.

“What are you doing here?” said Gretchen, which sounded almost unfriendly, though Mary was sure it must have been because Theodore had taken her unawares.

“They told me at the inn that I’d find you on the beach,” said Theodore cheerfully. He took off his wide-brimmed hat. “It was such a beautiful day when I woke up that I thought I’d get out of the city and join you here.”

He glanced at Mary and smiled. Mary was suddenly rather conscious that he was fully dressed while she was sitting there with her legs showing. It made her feel a little awkward, but he seemed quite relaxed. He gazed round at the other bathers on the beach. “Maybe I’ll take a dip later,” he said.

“We’re going back to the inn now,” said Gretchen. So Theodore walked back with them.

When they got to their room, Mary undressed with care. She’d done her best to get rid of the sand outside, and Gretchen had brushed her down, but you couldn’t get rid of all the sand, and she didn’t want to make a mess on the floor. Taking off her pantaloons and stockings slowly, she was able to keep most of the sand inside them, so that she could take them downstairs and hang them on a clothes line, and dust them off when they were dry.

Mary had always been rather modest. Though she had known Gretchen most of her life, she had stood behind her bed when she changed, and slipped her bathing dress on quickly. So she was just wondering how to take it off now, in a modest manner, when she saw Gretchen pull hers down easily and walk, quite naked, across the room to the washstand, where she poured some water from the jug into the big china bowl, and started to wash herself down, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She had never seen Gretchen without any clothes on. Her friend had a nice body, not plump, but compact. Apart from a couple of little stretch marks, you wouldn’t know she’d had two children. Her yellow hair was still pinned up as she turned to Mary and smiled.

“Just as nature made me,” she remarked. “You don’t mind, do you? It’s how my husband sees me, after all.”

“He does?”

Gretchen laughed. “I know some wives always keep themselves covered—partly anyway. My mother did—she told me.” She shrugged. “My husband can see as much of me as he likes.”

“That was a surprise, Theodore coming,” Mary said.

“Nothing my brother does surprises me,” said Gretchen.

Since Gretchen had taken her bathing dress off, Mary thought she’d better do the same. What would Theodore think, she wondered, if he could see me like this? She washed the remaining sand off herself as quickly as she could, and dressed.

The inn served dinner at five o’clock. It was a family affair, with children present, under their parents’ watchful eyes.

The food was excellent: a cold salad, freshly made bread and a superb fish stew. The innkeeper prided himself on obtaining the best seafood—mussels, crabs, clams, and the many fish to be had in the Long Island Sound—all washed down with a cool white wine. To follow, he offered the first watermelons they’d seen that season, together with jellies and fruit trifle.

Theodore was in a very relaxed mood. At the start of the meal Gretchen asked him: “When’s the last ferry, Theodore? You don’t want to miss it.”

“No need to worry,” he answered pleasantly. “I’m staying here. They had one room left at the inn. It’s rather small, but it’ll do.”

“Oh,” said Gretchen. Mary was rather pleased.

So Theodore talked, and told them funny stories. Mary wished she could engage him in conversation about the things that interested him, but she wasn’t sure how, and in any case, he seemed quite content to make small talk. She laughed at his jokes, and he smiled at her, and she felt very comfortable in his presence.

“Aren’t you pleased I stayed?” he said playfully to his sister, toward the end of the meal.

“I’m surprised you’re not out with one of your lady friends,” she replied tartly. “He has a lot of lady friends,” she remarked to Mary.

“A gross exaggeration,” said Theodore, smiling at Mary. “I am an artist and I live like a monk.”

“I don’t think I believe you, Mr. Keller,” said Mary with a laugh. “But I hope you don’t imagine I’m shocked.” After all, when she remembered all the girls her brother Sean had been with, let alone what she might have seen any day of the week in Five Points, there was no need to be prim if young Theodore Keller was getting his share too.

“It’s not you that’s shocked at the idea, Mary,” he said. “It’s me.” And then they both laughed.

“So what is it you look for in your lady friends?” Mary asked him boldly.

He didn’t answer at once, but stared thoughtfully across the other tables.

“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I don’t run after women for the sake of it, as some men do. If I seek a woman’s friendship, it’s because I find her interesting.”

After the meal, the children were allowed to run about. Some of the grown-ups went to walk along the beach again, while others preferred the card tables set out on the porch. Theodore lit a cigar, and went down to the water. Gretchen and Mary played cards for a while with a pleasant man from Westchester and his wife, then went to sit on some long chairs to look at the sea, as the slow summer sunset began.

“It must be nice, being married and having children,” said Mary. “I suppose I envy you that.”

“It’s all right. Hard work,” said Gretchen.

“I’m sure. But having a husband …”

Gretchen was silent for a minute. “They take you for granted before long,” she said.

“But your husband is kind, isn’t he?”

“Oh yes.” Gretchen stared up at the sky. “I can’t complain.”

“And you love your children.”

“Of course.”

“I suppose I might have married Nolan, if I hadn’t discovered what a brute he was.”

“So you’re glad you didn’t.”

“Oh yes, of course I am.”

“Do you feel lonely?” Gretchen asked after a little while.

“Not much. Perhaps a little.”

They were silent for a minute or so after that.

“I suppose my brother will settle down one day,” Gretchen said with a sigh. Then she laughed. “When he’s about fifty.” She glanced across. “Stay away from my brother, Mary. He’s dangerous, you know.”

No doubt Gretchen was concerned for her welfare, but it seemed to Mary that her friend had no business telling her to stay away from her brother like that, and she couldn’t help a small flash of resentment and rebellion.

“I’m old enough to look after myself, thank you,” she said.

When Theodore came back, they all agreed that after all the fresh air and exercise of the day, they were ready to turn in.

The sky was still red as Mary and Gretchen undressed and got into their beds. Through the open window, Mary could hear the soft sound of the sea. She was just dozing off when she heard a rustle, and realized that Gretchen had got out of her bed. She raised her head to see what her friend was doing, and found that Gretchen was standing beside her. Her hair, undone, was hanging down to her shoulders. Then Gretchen leaned over so that her hair brushed her face, and kissed her on the forehead, before getting back into her bed. And Mary was glad to know that, even if she had been cross with Gretchen for a moment, she was still, always, her friend.

Sean O’Donnell got up at nine o’clock that morning. His wife and children were still at breakfast when he went downstairs into the saloon, and found Hudson already at work, cleaning up after the night before. He gave the black man a brief nod, went to the street door and looked out.

Sunday morning. The street was quiet, but he stayed there a little while, for he was a cautious man.

He turned. This time, he gave young Hudson a thoughtful look.

“Thinking of going out today?” he asked.

“I got to be at the church later this morning,” said the black man.

The Shiloh Presbyterian Church. It wasn’t far away.

“Tell me,” said Sean, “before you go.”

It was three years now since he’d encountered Hudson. Like most of the Negroes in the city, he’d arrived after a long and dangerous journey up the underground railway, whose terminus had been the Shiloh Church. A journalist, a friend of the Negro minister at Shiloh, had asked Sean if he could find a place for Hudson. To oblige a regular customer, Sean had agreed to see the young fellow.

Personally, Sean wasn’t too keen on helping runaway slaves. Like most Irish Catholics in the city, he disliked the privileged Protestant evangelical ministers who preached abolition, and had no wish to antagonize the South. But there were quite a few Negroes doing the menial jobs in New York saloons, and nobody paid them much heed.

“New York ain’t a very friendly place for a black man,” he’d warned Hudson.

“My grandaddy told me we came from here,” Hudson had replied. “I was figuring to stay.”

So Sean had given him a try, and Hudson had proved to be a good worker.

“Is Hudson your family name?” Sean had asked.

“My father was Hudson, sir. And I’m Hudson Junior. But I don’t have no other name.”

“Well, you need a family name,” said Sean. “And ‘Hudson Hudson’ sounds foolish, in my opinion.” He’d considered. “Why don’t you take the name of River? Then you’d be Hudson River. That sure as hell sounds like a New York name to me.”

And soon the young man was registered as Hudson River, and before long this curious name had made him something of a mascot in the saloon.

“Hudson,” said Sean O’Donnell now, “step over and help me close these shutters, will you?”

Together they closed the big green shutters that covered the two windows that gave onto the street. Then Sean went outside and began to push and pull on the shutters, which rattled quite a bit. Then he went back in, and asked Hudson if the latch for the shutters had seemed firm, and Hudson said no, not very.

“Do you reckon you could fix a bar across the shutters that’ll hold them firm?” Sean asked, for Hudson was good at those things. And Hudson said yes. “I want you to do it today,” said Sean.

“We expecting trouble?”

Sean O’Donnell could smell trouble. You didn’t survive thirty-eight years in the streets around Five Points without developing an instinct for danger. From his youth, he could tell from the way a man walked whether he was carrying a knife. Sometimes he could sense trouble before it came round a corner—though he couldn’t say how he knew.

Now that he was older, and had become a man of property, that same instinct had been transferred to his business affairs. His attitude to the financial community was characteristic.

“The way I see it,” he’d told his sister, “since most of the men in Five Points will rob you if they get the chance, and since I know there isn’t a single alderman in the city that can’t be bought, why would the merchants on South Street or the bankers on Wall Street be any different? They’re all criminals, I reckon.” Part of the reason why nobody knew how much money he had was that he refused to entrust it to any financial institution. He lent money, certainly, to men he knew personally and reckoned a fair risk. He invested in numerous enterprises, which he could watch over himself. And he held government bonds. “The government’s as crooked as anyone else, but they can print money.” His hoard of cash, however, was kept in locked boxes, which he hid in safe places.

This expedient, primitive though it might be, had at least saved him worry. Half a dozen years ago, when the head of the great Ohio Insurance Company, having made all kinds of shaky loans, closed the company’s doors and tried to abscond with the remaining funds, half the banks in New York, who’d lent to Ohio themselves, were unable to meet their obligations. Since all the financial institutions had lent to each other, without the least idea of what backed the loans, the panic of 1857 had soon spread halfway round the globe, and though it was brief, innumerable men on Wall Street had been wiped out before it was over. One clever fellow called Jerome, who came into the saloons quite often, had seen the crash coming just in time, and had bet heavily on the falling market. A few months later, he’d quietly informed Sean: “I made better’n a million dollars in that crash.”

As for Sean, he’d just gone to his chest of dollar bills, bought up some property that was going cheap, and continued to serve drinks to anyone who still had the money to pay.

But last night, listening to the talk at the bar, it wasn’t financial trouble he’d sensed. It was something much more visceral, belonging to Five Points rather than Wall Street. The crowd in the saloon on Saturday nights was different from the rest of the week. Hardly any journalists. Mostly local Irishmen.

And that’s what he’d sensed as he’d listened to them: danger. Irish danger.

The Irish community respected Sean. If there were people in Five Points who still remembered his knife with fear, there were many more among the countless immigrants who had come in following the Famine who had reason to be grateful to him for finding them a place to live, or a job, and generally easing their transition into this dangerous new society.

He was still close to Mayor Fernando Wood. Wood’s brother Benjamin, who’d owned a newspaper and written a book, would come into the saloon from time to time. And though Mayor Wood had fallen out with the other Tammany Hall men recently, Sean maintained good relations. One of them, known as Boss Tweed, had quietly told him: “You’re loyal to Wood. We respect that. But you’re still one of us, O’Donnell. Come to me when Wood’s gone …” At elections, Sean could deliver a thousand votes on his own authority.

In his saloon, he was king. Young Hudson had witnessed this soon after he’d started working there. In the fall of 1860, no less a person than Queen Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales, had made a goodwill visit to Canada and the United States. After watching Blondin cross over Niagara Falls on a tightrope—and politely declining the funambulist’s offer to take him across the same tightrope in a wheelbarrow—the nineteen-year-old prince had arrived in Manhattan. The city had given him a royal welcome, for the most part. But to Irish immigrants, who blamed England for the Famine, his visit could not be welcome. The 69th Irish Regiment, to a man, had refused to parade for him. And to be sure, nobody was planning to take him round Five Points.

Why some well-meaning people, conducting him round the newspaper quarter, had suddenly decided to show him a New York saloon, nobody ever discovered. No doubt they reckoned that, with its regular daily clientele of journalists, O’Donnell’s would be a pretty safe bet. But whatever the reason, at one o’clock that day, a party of gentlemen, among whom the incognito prince was instantly recognizable, entered the saloon and politely asked for drinks at the bar.

Naturally, there were a score of writers and fellows from the print trade in the place at the time. But there must have been twenty Irishmen too.

And the saloon fell silent. The newspapermen looked curious, but the Irishmen were giving the young man a terrible, cold stare. Even a pair of Irish policemen in one corner had a look on their faces that suggested they might, at any moment, fail to see or hear anything. The royal party got the message. They were glancing around anxiously, wondering what to do, when, cutting through the awful silence, came Sean’s calm voice.

“Welcome to O’Donnell’s saloon, gentlemen,” and now his eyes moved round every man in the room, “where we show Irish hospitality to travelers who have lost their way.”

That was it. A quiet hum resumed. The royal party were served and, soon afterward, gratefully made their escape.

But the talk last night had been of a very different nature. This had not been about the Famine, or Irish resentment of England. It had been about the Union and New York. If his instincts were right, it meant trouble. Big trouble. And neither his nor anyone else’s moral authority would be of any help at all.

Every politician knows how the public mood can change. Sometimes the change is gradual. Sometimes, like water held back by a barrier, it will suddenly break through and rush down like a flood, sweeping all before it.

When Fernando Wood had suggested the city should secede from the Union, his words might have been intemperate, but they caught the mood of many New York Irish at that time. Yet only a few weeks later, when the Civil War began, both the mayor and his Irish supporters had changed their tune entirely. Why was that?

Well, the South had made the running—cutting out New York shippers, refusing to pay their debts, and firing on Fort Sumter. But even so, New York’s show of loyalty had been astounding. In the first year, it had fielded more than sixty regiments of volunteers. Every immigrant community had taken part: Kleindeutschland’s Germans, the Polish legion, the Italians’ Garibaldi Guards. And none more so than the mighty Irish Brigades. God knows how many regiments of brave boys, blessed by Cardinal Hughes, had marched out proudly under their Irish banners. Their mothers and sweethearts and other family had lovingly sewn those banners—Mary O’Donnell had eagerly sewn one of them herself.

Of course, the boys were getting paid. Ninety days of fighting service, and a return home with cash in your pocket—it wasn’t such a bad deal for a brave young fellow out of work. If you hated England, you reckoned that hurting the South would damage the English cotton trade, which couldn’t be bad. And for those who dreamed of returning one day to avenge Ireland and drive the English out, this was useful military training, too.

Above all, though, it was Irish pride.

You might blame the English for the Famine, but once you arrived in the New World, there was no one to blame for anything. And even here, in the land of boundless opportunity, you might have to crowd your family into a tenement hovel; and when you went to look for work, find a sign on the door that said: “Irish Need Not Apply.” Humiliation, for the proud princes of Ireland.

No wonder they loved Cardinal Hughes for building them a magnificent cathedral, and for championing Catholic schools. No wonder they flooded into the police and the fire brigade, which gave them authority and honor. No wonder they sought and gave protection in Tammany Hall. And now they had a chance to prove their American loyalty and valour in battle. No wonder they marched out proudly, under their Irish banners.

But that was two years ago.

They’d thought the war would be over soon. It wasn’t. Nor had anyone foreseen the horror of it. Perhaps they should have done. The increasing mechanization of war, the introduction of the rifle with its terrible range and penetration, not to mention the incompetence of some of the commanders, had taken a terrible toll. It was butchery. Not only that, the butchery was being photographed. Images were there in the newspapers for all to see. Soon Bellevue hospital was full of maimed and wounded. So was the Sisters of Charity hospital on Central Park. You saw the disfigured hobbling in the streets. And those were the lucky ones.

For so many had not returned. The Garibaldi Guards were no more. The brave Irish Brigades had ceased to exist.

And for those families with husbands or sons still at the front, where was the promised soldiers’ pay? Lincoln’s government had not paid some of them in almost a year. In other cases, their own officers had stolen the pay. The recruiting tent by City Hall had long since been folded. These days, you couldn’t get a single volunteer.

So Lincoln had started the draft.

That’s what the Irish had been talking about in the saloon, on Saturday night.

It took Sean an hour to check all the inventory. By that time, Hudson was ready to leave. The day barman would be arriving shortly, so Sean went upstairs to ask his wife to let the barman in. Then he set out with Hudson.

It was only a mile or so up to Prince Street, where the Shiloh Presbyterian Church was to be found. As they walked up Broadway, past City Hall, Sean glanced across to the spot where the recruiting tent had stood. He didn’t say it to Hudson, of course, but it did strike him as ironic. Here were his fellow Irishmen in the saloon, complaining about the draft. Yet when the free black men in the city had started drilling, so they could volunteer to fight, Police Commissioner Kennedy had told them: “For your own safety, stop at once, or the working men of this city are going to stop you.” Not that Sean had been surprised. If he’d heard it once in his saloon, he’d heard it a hundred times: “Never give a nigger a gun.” Later, when no less than three black regiments had volunteered, the Governor of New York had refused to take them.

What did Hudson make of it all? Sean wondered. The men in the saloon treated him well enough. To them, Hudson was part of the furniture. He seemed to know his place, and gave no trouble. But he couldn’t have failed to hear the things they said. Did he secretly seethe with rage and humiliation, just as Irishmen had done when they were treated with contempt? Maybe. Sean wasn’t going to ask. No doubt Hudson found strength and comfort among the black congregation of the Shiloh Church.

“You know what the preachers tell them in those black churches?” an indignant longshoreman had told him once. “They don’t teach them Christian humility and obedience at all. They tell ’em that in the afterlife, God is going to punish us, the white men, for our cruelty and wickedness.” Who knows, O’Donnell thought wryly, the black preachers might turn out to be right.

The trouble was, tempers had been running higher against the city Negroes lately. There had been strikes down in the Brooklyn docks not long ago, and the companies had brought in cheap black labor to break them. Hardly the fault of the black men, who wouldn’t have been welcome in the strikers’ unions anyway. But of course they’d been blamed.

But that was nothing to the effect of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

“Free the damn niggers in the South, so they can come up here and steal our jobs?” the laboring men of New York protested. “Dammit, there’s four million of them.” The fact that Lincoln had not actually freed a single slave was overlooked. But then politics was seldom about reality. “Our boys are fighting and dying so that their own kith and kin can be destroyed? No more they ain’t.”

Lincoln’s war had been anathema for many months now, in the Saturday-night saloon.

And now, the tall, gawky president and his Republicans, with their rich abolitionist friends, were going to force them to fight for these damn niggers, whether they liked it or not.

“We, the working men, will be the cannon fodder. But not the sons of the rich abolitionists. Oh no. They’ll send a poor man to die for them, or pay a fee to stay home and play. That’s Lincoln’s deal.”

Yesterday it had come to a head. More than a thousand names had been chosen in the lottery that day. During the process, it had been quiet enough, but by the evening, people had had a chance to compare names and take stock of the process. In the saloon last night, everyone seemed to know at least three or four of them.

“My nephew Conal,” cried one man, in a fury, “that was due to be married next week … Shameful!”

“Little Michael Casey, that couldn’t shoot a rabbit at five yards? He won’t last a week,” joined in his neighbor.

Some men were cursing, others were in a sullen rage. At the end of the evening, when he came upstairs to bed, Sean delivered his verdict to his wife.

“I could save the Prince of Wales,” he said, “but I tell you, if Abraham Lincoln had come into the saloon tonight, I couldn’t have done a thing. They’d have strung him up.”

And tomorrow, Monday morning, the draft selection was to resume.

Broadway was quiet as he and Hudson walked along. The sun was bright. They crossed Canal Street. Still no sign of trouble. But Sean knew that didn’t mean a thing. Having got Hudson safely to Prince Street, he said to him as they parted: “Come straight back to the saloon after church. And when you get home, fix the bar on those shutters.”

From Prince Street, he kept walking north. After a little while, he went right for a block, then picked up the Bowery. He was watchful as he walked. Still not many people about. At East Fourteenth, he turned right, then up Irving Place, into Gramercy Park.

He hadn’t been to the Masters’ house for some time. It was quite a few years now since his relationship with Mary had ceased to be a secret, and he’d come to see her there once in a while. Everyone knew that he could well afford to look after her, but she was perfectly happy where she was. He’d have liked to see her married, but she’d told him not to interfere, and he reckoned she was old enough to know what she wanted.

He encountered Frank Master from time to time. He’d long since repaid Master’s kindly treatment of him back in ’53, with an offer to buy into some property the mayor was releasing at a sharply discounted price. And a year after that, chancing to meet him down on South Street, Master had done him another good turn.

“There’s a fellow I know who’s got room for one more investor in a small venture,” he’d told Sean. “Profits might be high, if you don’t mind a little risk.” Sean had only hesitated a moment. Trust the man, was his credo.

“I’d be interested,” he’d said.

Sean had taken quite a bit of cash out of his strongbox to make that investment. And returned three times that amount to the box, a few months later. Since then, he and Frank Master had done small favors for each other, from time to time. In fact, he’d done a discreet service for Master just the other day.

Sean went to the front door, not the tradesmen’s entrance. He always made a point of doing that. A maid came to answer it. But in reply to his question, she told him that Mary wasn’t there.

“She went to Coney Island with her friend. She’ll be gone all this week.”

He’d known about the plan, and that they’d delayed it for a while. He felt slightly annoyed that Mary hadn’t told him before she left. On the other hand, he was glad that she was out of the city just now. And he was just turning to leave when Mrs. Master appeared behind the maid and, seeing him there, motioned him to come in. He stepped from the bright sunlight into the shadowy space of the hall.

“Good morning, Mr. O’Donnell,” she said. “I’m afraid Mary’s away.”

“I knew they were going,” he said, “but I didn’t know they’d already left.”

Mrs. Master wasn’t the kind of woman he liked. A privileged evangelical, a fervent abolitionist, a damned Republican. When ninety-two society ladies had got up a committee to improve the city’s sanitation, he hadn’t been surprised to learn that she was one of them. Perhaps they did some good. He didn’t much care.

But she’d been a good friend to Mary. And that was the only thing he needed to know.

“I have the address where they’re staying,” she offered. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, I don’t believe so.” He paused a moment. “The reason I called, Mrs. Master, is that I think there’s going to be trouble.”

“Oh. What kind of trouble, Mr. O’Donnell?”

“Trouble in the streets. I hope I’m wrong, but I wanted to tell her to be careful. You and Mr. Master, too,” he added.

“Oh,” she said again. His vision had adjusted to the shadow of the hall, and now he noticed that she was looking unusually pale. Her eyes were red, too, as if she’d been crying. “If you happen to see my husband,” she said, “please be sure to tell him. In fact …” she seemed to hesitate, and he saw a little look of desperation in her eyes—“just so I know he’s safe, you might ask him to come home.”

The St. Nicholas Hotel was huge. Its white marble facade dominated the whole block between Broome and Spring Street on Broadway’s west side. Six stories high, six hundred rooms. Luxury on a huge scale. Well-heeled tourists crowded in there, and their New York friends were glad to meet them in its paneled halls, where you could take tea under frescoed ceilings and gaslight chandeliers.

So if a New York gentleman happened to visit one of the guests, no one was likely to notice. And Frank Master had been in the St. Nicholas Hotel since Saturday afternoon.

The guest he was visiting also resided in the city. Her name was Lily de Chantal. At least, that was her name nowadays. When she was born thirty-three years ago in Trenton, New Jersey, it had been Ethel Cook. But the professional name she had chosen, when she’d still had hopes of being a soloist, was so pleasing to her and all those who met her, that she never bothered to use her old name at all now, if she could help it.

Some successful lady singers had big bodies to go with their big voices, and maybe Lily’s voice wasn’t quite big enough to propel her into the first rank of singers, but her body was certainly a very pretty package indeed. Her speaking voice was quiet, but she had trained herself to speak with an actor’s precision; so that, if her accent wasn’t French, you certainly wouldn’t have guessed—except for moments of private laughter, or passion—that she came from Trenton. You really couldn’t have said where she came from.

Lily de Chantal had only had five significant lovers in her life. She had chosen each of them in the hope that they might further her career. The first, and best, choice had been an impresario, the next a conductor, and the other three were rich men of business. Of those, the first two had been significant patrons of the opera. Frank Master went to the opera, but that was all, and perhaps her choice of him indicated that she had recognized the need to look for other insurance policies now.

But while she was yours, it had to be said, she gave you her entire attention, which was well worth having. Besides that, she was always amusing, often tender, and sometimes vulnerable. All her ex-lovers were her friends. If only her voice had been a little better, she’d have had everything she wanted.

Frank Master wasn’t really her lover yet. Though he didn’t quite know it, he was still on trial. She found him intelligent, kindly, somewhat ignorant of opera, but maybe improvable.

It wasn’t surprising that Frank Master should have met Lily de Chantal at the opera. Ever since the city’s opera had been set up as a going concern the century before—by Mozart’s librettist, no less—it had been a big thing in New York. Operas had been performed in numerous theaters, and not only for the rich elite. When Jenny Lind had sung for a huge open-air crowd, she had been the toast of the city. The main venue for opera these days, however, was the Academy of Music, on Irving Place, only a stone’s throw from Frank Master’s house in Gramercy Park. It was a handsome theater, seating more than four and a half thousand, with boxes for the regular patrons. Frank Master was a regular patron.

As far as Frank could see, it was time he had an affair. During most of his marriage, though he’d noticed other women, of course, he’d only really wanted Hetty. But the years of tension between them had taken their toll. And the sense that in her heart she did not really respect him had caused Frank, in self-defense, to say to himself: “I’ll show her, even if she doesn’t know it.”

Lily de Chantal had been singing in the chorus on the night he met her. On the pretext of talking about the opera house, he’d persuaded her to meet him for lunch at Delmonico’s the following week, after which she had invited him to a small recital she was giving. He had gone, and watched her with a new interest. He had liked seeing her standing up there alone in front of an admiring audience. It had impressed, and challenged, him. She had graduated that day from a pretty woman to an object of desire. All the same, he’d been quite surprised, at the end of the evening, when she’d discreetly intimated that, if he’d care to take her out to dine after a matinee the following week, she’d be glad of his company.

She had a pleasant little house near Broadway on East Twelfth, convenient for the opera house. And there, after their dinner, his advances had not been discouraged, but not been fully satisfied either.

“You must go home now, or you will be missed,” she had said. “And besides, I have to think of my good name.”

“Where can we meet?” he’d asked.

“They say the St. Nicholas Hotel is pleasant,” she’d answered.

They had met there ten days ago. The meeting had been very satisfactory. He had gone there two afternoons running, and stayed each time until early evening.

He’d quickly realized several things. Perhaps it was just because he had lived so many years of his life with Hetty, and that all the women he met socially were like her, but the fact that Lily de Chantal had to work for her living seemed novel and exciting to him. She had a mind of her own. She knew far more than he did about the arts. She could open new doors of intellect for him, make him a more interesting and important fellow. His wife also had a vigorous intelligence. And what she did for the sanitation committee and her other charities was real enough, and important. But Lily de Chantal lived in a different world and had chosen a different path. Bohemian yet respectable, intoxicating yet safe: it seemed like the perfect adventure.

Yet if, on the one hand, she was independent, on the other, she was vulnerable. She needed someone to promote her, or at least protect her. The idea of having a mistress who was a public figure in her own professional right, but also needed him, gave him a subtle new sense of power which was as flattering as it was thrilling.

They had arranged to meet again that weekend. This time, Frank was determined to stay the night. And his row with Hetty, he thought with some pride, had been very well managed indeed. Hetty might think he had stayed at his counting house, or angrily gone to a hotel. But she hadn’t the least reason to think he was seeing another woman. Nor would she be able to find him, since the room had been booked by a third party, on whose discretion Master knew he could rely.

For the official occupant of the room was a certain Mr. Sean O’Donnell.

And now it was Sunday afternoon. Should he go home? He gazed at the lovely figure reclining before him.

No. He’d remain here, and go home on Monday evening. Let Hetty suppose that, out of anger, he’d left for two nights instead of one. It was, so to speak, the economic choice.

After breakfast on Sunday, Theodore said he wanted to read a newspaper. So Mary and Gretchen set off alone. This time, instead of walking to the Point, they went eastward along the open strand of Brighton Beach. Before long, they had the place entirely to themselves. They went on a couple of miles. There was still a light breeze, but it seemed a little hotter than the day before.

“I ought to be in church,” Mary said. “I always go to Mass on Sunday.”

“Never mind,” said Gretchen with a smile. “You’ll have to be pagan for a day.”

Mary was carrying a light canvas bag slung over her shoulder, and when Gretchen asked her what was in it, she confessed. “It’s a sketching pad.”

“When did you take up drawing? You never used to.”

“It’s the first time,” said Mary. She’d been wondering what items she should take on holiday when Mrs. Master had suggested a sketchbook. It had seemed a rather ladylike sort of thing to do, but then she’d thought, why not? And seeing the sketching pad in a store the next day, she’d bought it, along with two A.W. Faber artist’s lead pencils.

“I wouldn’t have brought it if Theodore had been with us this morning,” she admitted. “His being an artist.”

“Well then,” said Gretchen, “I’m glad he stayed behind.”

After a time they came to a place where two landscapes met. On one side, seagrass and beach and shallow water went out in a bright sheen to find the ocean horizon; on the other, over some low dunes, there was green pasture and mossy ground, and a small wood offered shade.

“Why don’t you sketch here?” said Gretchen.

“Not if you watch me,” said Mary. “I’d be embarrassed.”

“I’ll stare at the seagulls,” said Gretchen, sitting down on a hummock, and gazing at the ocean as though Mary wasn’t there at all.

But Mary wasn’t ready yet. So instead of sketching the seascape, she wandered over the little dune, and made her way along the broad green path toward the wood. Glancing back, she was surprised that she couldn’t even see the sea, though its invisible presence was there. And she’d only gone a short way further when, to her surprise, she caught sight of something else.

It was a deer. A doe.

She stopped and stood still. The doe hadn’t heard her. Neither she nor the deer would have expected the other to be there.

Long ago, when only the local Indians lived by these shores, there were plenty of deer. But once the Dutch and English had come to settle there, the deer had little chance. Farmers do not care for deer, so they shoot them. Nowadays, along the whole hundred-mile length of Long Island, there were only a few sanctuaries from which the deer had not been driven out. Nor could the deer get away. They could not swim across Long Island Sound. But some, evidently, had come across the creek, or used the shell road, to find safety in the open wastes of Coney Island.

The deer was not far away, and seemed to be alone. A few yards in front of Mary there was a small fallen tree. Carefully, she moved forward and sat on it. Then, drawing up her legs, she rested the pad on them, slowly opened a page, took out a lead pencil and began to draw.

The doe seemed to be in no hurry to move. A couple of times she raised her head, ears alert. Once she stared straight at Mary, but evidently did not see her.

Mary had made little drawings now and then: a standard house, or cat, or horse. But she’d never tried to draw anything from life before, and she hardly knew how to begin. The first lines she put on paper seemed to bear no relation to the doe. She tried concentrating on just the head, and drawing smaller. Not knowing any rules, she just tried to reproduce on the paper the exact line as it came into her eye. At first these lines seemed clumsy and formless, but she tried a few times more, and by and by they did seem to make shapes that were recognizable. Then, to her great surprise, something else seemed to happen.

Not only the form of the deer’s head, but the lines on the page seemed to develop a kind of magic of their own. She’d never thought of such a thing, certainly never experienced it before. After half an hour, she had two or three little sketches, very imperfect, but which seemed to capture something of the deer’s head.

She was enjoying herself, but Gretchen had been waiting patiently for a while, so she got up. The doe started and stared, then sprang away and ran into the trees.

Retracing her steps, she found Gretchen sitting in the same place where she’d left her. But to her surprise, Theodore was also there. He’d taken off his jacket, and his shirt was open at the collar, so that she could see little curly hairs at the top of his chest. It gave her quite a start. He looked up with a smile.

“Show me.”

“Why?”

It was such a silly thing to say. She’d wanted to say “No,” but that would have been rude, and somehow “Why” had come out. Theodore laughed.

“What do you mean, ‘Why’? I want to see.”

“I’m embarrassed. I’ve never done a sketch before.” But he wouldn’t be denied, and took the sketch pad from her.

Opening the pad, he stared at the drawings. He stared at them quite intently.

“You really looked, didn’t you?” he said.

“I suppose so.”

“Look, Gretchen.” He showed the drawings to his sister. “Look at what she did.” Gretchen nodded. Mary could see they were both impressed. “They’re good, Mary,” he said. “You try to draw, not what you think you should see, but what you really see.”

“I don’t know,” said Mary, pleased, but not sure what to do with this flattery.

“You have an artist’s eye,” he said. “It’s rare, you know.”

“Oh.” Mary almost blushed.

Gretchen stood up.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s walk back.”

They ate a little in the middle of the day, and while they did so, Theodore spoke again of Mary’s drawing of the doe. “She should sketch here every day,” he said to his sister.

In the afternoon, Mary and Gretchen changed into their matching swimming dresses again. This time, Theodore joined them. His swimming suit covered most of his body, but Mary could see his manly form. He was in a playful mood. He splashed both the girls in the water, and they laughed. Then Mary fell down when a wave hit her, and he helped her up, and Mary felt his strong arm holding hers for a moment. It seemed to Mary that Gretchen was looking a bit put out, so when they came out of the sea, Mary sat down beside her and told Theodore: “Now you leave us girls alone.” So Theodore went for a walk along the beach, and Mary put her arm round Gretchen’s shoulder, and talked to her for a while until Gretchen was in a better mood.

“Do you remember how you got me my job with the Masters?” she said. “I never knew you could lie like that, Gretchen. I was quite shocked.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Saying my father, God rest his soul, was going to get married to a widow with a house of her own?”

“I only said ‘If he got married.’ I never said it was going to happen.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I am,” said Gretchen, and smiled.

When Theodore returned, they all went back to the inn. Gretchen asked Theodore if he was going back to the city now, but he said no, he thought he might stay another day.

After they’d changed and dressed, they went downstairs, and for a while Gretchen and Mary played cards with some of the other guests. Theodore was sitting in an armchair deep in a book. The weather was still sultry, and the fall of the cards seemed slow. Two days of sea air and exercise had made Mary feel wonderfully relaxed. “I could just laze around and do nothing all week,” she said to Gretchen. And her friend smiled and said, “Good. Because this week, nothing is all you’re supposed to do.”

The evening meal passed much as before; there was quiet talk and laughter, and by the end of it, the food and wine and sea air left Mary with such a delicious sense of ease that she whispered to Gretchen: “I think I had too much to drink.”

“We’d better walk along the beach then,” said Gretchen. “Clear your head.”

So when people finally got up from the tables, Mary and Gretchen, with Theodore between them, walked by the sea together, and they all three linked arms, and Theodore began to hum a little march. It felt very nice, Mary thought, having her arm linked in Theodore’s, and she couldn’t help thinking how wonderful it would be if they were all one family, and she were married to Theodore and Gretchen was her sister-in-law. She knew it was impossible, of course, but she’d had a bit too much to drink and sometimes, she thought, you can’t help thinking of things.

The sun was still some way above the sea when they came back to the inn. A few people, tired like themselves, were starting to turn in; others were sitting on the porch, waiting to watch the sunset. But Mary was still a little light-headed, so she said she’d better turn in. Theodore said goodnight, and Gretchen came up to the room with her.

The soft evening light was coming through the window as they changed into their nightdresses. Mary tumbled into bed and lay staring up at the ceiling, which seemed to be moving, ever so slightly. Gretchen came over and sat on her bed.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“Only a little,” said Mary.

After a little pause, Gretchen said, “I wish Theodore would go.”

“Don’t say that,” said Mary.

“I love my brother, but I really came here to have a holiday with you.”

“We’re having a good time,” Mary answered sleepily.

Gretchen didn’t say anything for a little while, but she gently stroked Mary’s hair.

“Have you ever been with a man, Mary?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m a respectable girl,” Mary murmured. She didn’t want to talk to Gretchen about that, so she closed her eyes and pretended she was falling asleep. Gretchen continued stroking her hair, and Mary heard her give a little sigh.

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” she said quietly. Mary knew that her friend was trying to warn her, but she went on pretending to fall asleep. And as she did so, she thought to herself that she was twenty-nine years old now and she’d never been with a man, and if it were to be anyone, excepting Hans of course, then better Theodore than any other. At least he’d know how to treat her right. He wouldn’t be like Nolan. If it were to happen, she’d have to be careful, because of the risk, and she was a respectable girl.

But why was she respectable? She knew why she was respectable in Gramercy Park, because she wanted to be like the Masters. And she knew why she’d wanted to be respectable when she was a girl, so as not to be like the people in Five Points. But she was neither one thing nor the other, really, if she came to think of it. Somehow, out here, with nothing but the ocean and the soft sound of the surf breaking on the beach, she hardly knew what she might be any more. And Gretchen was still gently stroking her hair when she fell asleep.

Sean awoke early on Monday morning, and went straight down to the bar. Opening the outer door, he took a quick look out into the street. All quiet. He closed the door, bolted it again and started to check the bar. He’d only been working a few minutes when his wife appeared. She gave him a mug of tea.

“You were restless last night,” she remarked.

“Sorry.”

“Still worried?”

“I was remembering ’57.”

If the history of Five Points was a long disgrace, six years ago the place had surpassed itself. It had been just this time of the year as well. Two of its Catholic gangs, the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies, had started a big fight with their traditional rivals, the Protestant Bowery Boys. Who knew what had set them off in such a rage, or why? Who cared? But this time the battle had got completely out of hand and raged over so many streets that Sean had thought it might even reach his bar. Mayor Wood’s police could do nothing. Finally, the militia had to be called in, and by then, some of the streets had been reduced to ruins. God knows how many died—the gangs buried their own dead. Sean knew where many of the bodies were hidden, in the dark recesses of Five Points.

“You think it could happen again?”

“Why not? The gangs are all there.” He sighed. “I s’pose I was just as stupid, years ago.”

“No.” His wife smiled. “You’d kill someone, but not in anger.”

Sean drank his tea. “You know who came in the bar yesterday?” he said. “Chuck White.” There were plenty of the White family around. They’d had a bit of money sixty years ago, but two or three generations of large families, and they were mostly back where they’d started. Chuck White drove a cab. But he was also a volunteer fireman. “He ain’t too pleased about the draft. Says they’re supposed to exempt the firemen, but they didn’t.” He shook his head. “Bad idea, annoying the firemen.” He took another gulp of tea. “They like fires. That’s why they’re firemen.”

“They’ll refuse to put them out?”

“No. They’ll start ’em.”

At six thirty Hudson appeared and silently began to clean up. Sean gave him a nod, but said nothing.

At a little after seven, there was a knock at the street door. Sean went to it, and looked out cautiously. It was a tobacconist from nearby. Sean opened the door.

“There’s a bunch of men over on the West Side. Big crowd and growing. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Where are they headed?”

“Nowhere yet. But they’re going to head uptown, to Central Park. And then across to the Draft Office, I reckon. It’s only three hours and some till the damn lottery starts again.”

Sean thanked him, then turned to Hudson.

“We’ll close the shutters and bar them now,” he announced.

“You think they’ll come down here afterward?” his wife said.

“They might.” Sean inspected the shutters, checked the door again, and turned to Hudson. “You’re going down to the cellar. You’ll stay there till I tell you it’s safe to come up.”

“What’s the draft got to do with Hudson?” his wife asked, after the black man had gone down, rather unwillingly, to the cellar.

But Sean O’Donnell didn’t answer.

At nine o’clock, Frank Master knew he really ought to be going. He gazed across at Lily de Chantal. She was sitting up in bed, in a lacy gown, and she looked delicious. But before he left, there was a question or two that he needed to ask.

“Should you like to go up to Saratoga, one day?” he inquired.

He loved Saratoga, and journeys to the fashionable resort could be accomplished in considerable style. For those who could afford it, there was a sumptuous steamer, like a little floating hotel, that plied its way up the Hudson all the way past Albany. Then carriages took you to the great summer houses and hotels of the spa. That journey upriver still felt as much of an adventure to him now as it had when he was a boy.

And there was no doubt in his mind, after that weekend, that he wanted to share the journey with her. They’d have to be circumspect, of course. He couldn’t very well carry out a public affair with her, even up in Saratoga, with New York society there. But these things could be managed discreetly. He knew other men who did so.

The question was, did Lily de Chantal wish to go?

“You love the Hudson River, don’t you?” she said. “When’s the first time you went up it?”

“When I was a boy. My father took us all, to escape the yellow fever when it was in the city. Then, a bit later, he took me all the way across to Niagara Falls, for the opening of the Erie Canal.”

“I can imagine you as a little boy. What was your father like? Was he a good man?”

“He was.” Frank smiled. “He tried to show me the majesty of Niagara Falls. He wanted to share it with me. Wanted to open my heart.”

“Did he succeed?”

“Not then—I only saw the volume of falling water—but I remembered.”

“You feel it now?”

“Yes, I believe I do.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I will come with you to Saratoga, Mr. Master. But wait a little while. Then, if your heart tells you to, ask me again.”

“As you wish.”

“It’s what I wish.”

Suddenly Frank laughed. “I just remembered. I was angry with him that day. At Niagara.”

“Why?”

“Oh, to do with a little Indian girl. It’s not important. The Falls were the main thing.”

“I may stay here a few hours before I go home,” she said. “I feel rather lazy. Do you mind?”

“Keep the room as long as you like.”

“Thank you.”

It was in the hotel lobby that he heard about the marches.

“First the West Side, then the East,” a fellow guest told him. “They’re going uptown to protest against the draft. Quite a few of the factories along the East River have closed in sympathy.”

“What sort of crowd?”

“Union men. Irish, of course, but a lot of the German workers too. They mean to surround the Draft Office, I believe.”

“Violent?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Hmm.” Master considered whether to go home. The union men wouldn’t be interested in Gramercy Park, though, and the Draft Office was more than twenty blocks further north. He decided to go to his counting house first.

The air felt thick and heavy when he stepped into the street. It was going to be one of those hot and humid July days. He started to walk down Broadway—it was only a mile to City Hall. Things seemed quiet enough. He continued down to Trinity Church and turned across Wall Street to the East River. A few minutes more and he was at his counting house. His clerk was there, working quietly as usual.

After ten minutes, a young merchant looked in.

“Looks like things are getting rough up the East Side,” he reported. “They’ve been pulling down the telegraph lines. Broke into one store and took a load of broad axes. I wouldn’t care to be running the draft lottery today.”

Telling his clerk he’d be back later, but to lock up if there was any sign of danger, Master started to walk along the South Street waterfront. At Fulton Street, he found a cab and told the driver to head up the Bowery and across into Gramercy Park. Everything there seemed to be quiet. “Go up Third Avenue,” he said to the driver. He had no desire to encounter his wife just yet.

At Fortieth Street, the driver refused to go any further.

The crowd was huge and blocking the avenue. Some had placards saying NO DRAFT. Others were beating copper pans like gongs. There seemed to be a few dozen policemen guarding the marshal’s office where the draw for the draft was supposed to start again, but it was obvious that they wouldn’t be able to do much if the crowd turned ugly. He saw a respectable-looking man like himself standing nearby and approached him.

“Why so few police?” he remarked.

“Mayor Opdyke. Typical Republican. Hasn’t a clue. Hope you’re not a Republican,” the man added, apologetically.

“I’m not.” Master smiled.

“Oh my God,” said the man. “Look there.”

The crowd saw too, and sent up a roar of approval, as, dressed in their full firefighting gear, the entire Black Joke Engine Company No. 33 came marching out of a side street and made straight toward the building.

“Do you know why they’re here?” the man asked Master, who shook his head. “Their chief was drafted on Saturday.”

“Unfortunate.”

“I’ll say.”

“What’ll they do?”

“Think about it,” said his companion, cheerfully. “The draft records are still inside that building. To destroy the records, therefore …” “They will burn it down.” “They are logical men.”

The Black Joke firemen didn’t waste time. Within moments, volleys of bricks and paving stones smashed through the windows. The police were swept aside. Then the firemen marched into the building, found the drum used for the lottery draw, poured turpentine over everything, set fire to the building and marched out. They were very professional. The crowd roared approval.

And from somewhere, a shot was fired.

“Better be going,” said the man, and hurried away.

Frank Master did not hurry away. He found a covered stoop a couple of blocks distant, and watched from there. The crowd was thoroughly roused now, tearing up paving stones and hurling them at the burning building. After a while, a body of troops appeared, moving up the avenue. But when he saw them come close, Master almost winced.

It was the Invalid Corps, the wounded soldiers, still recovering from the hospital, poor devils. All the able-bodied men had been sent to Gettysburg two weeks earlier. The invalids came up bravely.

But the crowd cared nothing for the invalids’ bravery, or their wounds. With a roar they rushed at them, throwing paving stones or anything else they could find. Hopelessly outnumbered, the invalids fell back.

Now the crowd had tasted blood. While the flames still rose from the Draft Office, they began to move across town, smashing house windows as they went. Frank followed them. He saw some women with crowbars, tearing up the streetcar lines. At Lexington Avenue, he heard a roar. They’d discovered the police chief. They beat his face to a pulp. People were pouring in from the tenements to join the crowd. A huge party headed for Fifth Avenue, and started moving south. Then, as he was wondering what to do next, he heard another cry.

“Guns, boys! Guns!” And then, a moment later: “The Armory!”

A large group separated from the rest and started across town. There was an armory on Second Avenue at Twenty-second. Only a block and a half from Gramercy Park.

Master turned, and started to run.

Young Tom had never seen his mother in such a state. An hour ago, he’d nearly gone down to his father’s counting house, but then decided he’d better stay home. To hell with his father if he was skulking down there, he thought. His duty was to make sure his mother was safe.

Hetty Master had hardly slept for two nights. The first evening she had told Tom quietly that his father had to be away that night on business. The second, she’d admitted that they had quarreled. “No doubt he will return tomorrow,” she had added calmly. Looking at his mother’s pale, drawn face, Tom had to admire her dignity.

But this morning had been too much, even for her strong mind. First, they’d heard the commotion as the marchers streamed up the avenues, though they hadn’t come through Gramercy Park. Tom had gone out to see what was going on and met a neighbor who’d just come up from South Street.

“They’re going uptown to protest against the draft,” he’d said, “but everything’s quiet down by South Street. No trouble downtown at all, not even in Five Points.” This news had reassured the household, and Tom had decided not to bother with his father.

Since the news of the riot at the Draft Office reached them, however, his mother had become agitated. She stood at the big window, staring out at the square and murmuring: “Where can he be?”

“I’ll go down and find him,” Tom now offered, but she begged him not to. “It’s bad enough having your father out there,” she said. And feeling that he should probably stay to protect her, he didn’t press it.

So he went up to the top of the house. From the attic window, he could see the flames rising from the Draft Office, twenty-five blocks to the north. He watched them for some time before coming down.

Reaching the hall, he did not see any sign of his mother. He called her name. No answer. The parlormaid came out.

“Mrs. Master’s gone,” she told him. It seemed his mother had seen a cab draw up at the house next door, run out and taken it. “She said you were to stay and mind the house,” the parlormaid reported.

Tom sighed. It was obvious where she’d gone. So he might as well stay put, as she asked.

When Frank Master arrived at Gramercy Park, it was about noon. Young Tom didn’t give him a very friendly reception. Having explained that his mother had left the house only minutes before, he asked his father where he’d been, and when Frank said, “Away,” Tom gave him furious looks. It seemed to Frank that there was little point in following Hetty down to the South Street counting house, which was obviously where she’d gone, because he’d probably just miss her as she came back. The best thing was to wait for her at home. Meanwhile, if his son was going to give him these angry looks, he’d rather get him out of the house.

“Tom, there’s a big mob on its way down to the armory on Second. You’d better watch out for them. Don’t get near, but see what they’re up to, and let me know.” He looked around. “I’m going to close all the shutters.”

The South Street waterfront was quiet. Hetty wasn’t sure how long she’d been waiting at the counting house, but at least she knew now from the old clerk that Frank hadn’t disappeared. That was something. And the clerk had been clear that Frank had said he’d be back. She resolved to wait for him, therefore. There was only a hard wooden bench to sit on. Like most busy merchants, Frank didn’t encourage visitors to stay too long. She didn’t care. So long as she saw him. But an hour passed, and there was no sign of him.

From time to time, people came in and were quickly dealt with by the old clerk. Apart from that, there was only the sound of his steel-nibbed pen, scratching on ledgers. She considered going back, but she couldn’t bring herself to the thought that she might miss him on the way. It was almost two o’clock when a young clerk from one of the other counting houses stuck his head round the door.

“It’s getting rough out there. We’re shutting up shop,” he told the clerk.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Well, ma’am, I’m afraid there’s been trouble on the West Side now. They’ve been chasing niggers up there. I don’t know if they’ve hanged any yet, but I reckon they’re looking to.”

“Why in the world would they harm black men because of the draft?” she cried.

“Because if Lincoln has his way, the city’ll be full of niggers taking the Irishmen’s jobs. Least, that’s what they think,” he replied. “That, and the fact they don’t like ’em,” he added by way of further explanation.

Hetty was so horrified she could barely speak. “What else?” she asked the young clerk.

“They’ve been coming down Fifth Avenue, destroying houses. They were at the mayor’s too. But he ain’t there now. He’s called his people to the St. Nicholas Hotel. They’re meeting there to figure out what to do. That’s all I know.”

“I am Mrs. Master,” Hetty told him. “You know my husband, I’m sure?”

“Yes, ma’am. Fine gentleman.” “You haven’t seen him, have you?”

“No, ma’am. But quite a few merchants and Wall Street men were going over to the St. Nicholas to find out what the mayor intends to do. I should think he might be there.”

“If my husband should come by,” she told the old clerk, “tell him that’s where I’ve gone.”

Sean O’Donnell didn’t leave the saloon until two o’clock. Though he opened for his usual customers, he kept the shutters closed and barred. Several of the regular men asked where Hudson was.

“I sent him out to Coney Island with some things for my sister,” he lied calmly. “He’ll be gone a day or two.” Meanwhile, his wife took food down to the cellar to feed the black man.

“He’s not very happy down there,” she told him.

“He’ll be happy he’s alive when this is over,” he answered. And soon afterward he visited Hudson and said to him once again: “You stay here, and don’t make a sound.”

At two o’clock, however, he decided to walk over to the St. Nicholas Hotel himself, to find out what was going on.

There were lines of policemen in front of the hotel when Hetty arrived, but they let her through. The hotel lobby was crowded. The mayor was in a private room, she was told, with a number of gentlemen. The manager himself happened to be at the desk at that moment, and he obligingly went in to the mayor to ask if Frank Master was there with him.

“Your husband isn’t with the mayor,” he told her, “but I’ll have a boy ask round the lobby for you. He could be here somewhere.” Five minutes later, the boy returned and shook his head. “You’re welcome to wait, ma’am,” the manager said, and told the boy to find her a seat.

Despite the bustle of people, the boy found her a sofa in a sitting room. It was by a large window from which she could see people entering the hotel. Gratefully, she sat down.

She’d been there about five minutes when another lady entered the room. She was elegantly dressed, but she looked somewhat agitated. She glanced briefly past Hetty through the window, and seemed to be hesitating about whether to remain, or go back to the lobby. She evidently had not recognized Hetty. But Hetty recognized her. She rose with a smile.

“Miss de Chantal?” Hetty held out her hand. “We met once at the opera. I am Mrs. Master.”

Lily de Chantal seemed to go somewhat pale.

“Oh, Mrs. Master.”

“I am looking for my husband.”

“Your husband?” The singer’s voice was a little high.

“You haven’t seen him?”

Lily de Chantal gazed at her uncertainly. “There are a lot of people in the lobby,” she said, after a slight pause.

“I know.”

As though remembering her part after almost missing a cue, Lily de Chantal seemed to recover herself.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Master, if I seem a little distracted. I came in here for refuge. They have just told me that I should not go outside.”

Hetty looked out of the window, then back at Lily de Chantal.

“I hardly know what’s going on,” Hetty said.

And it was perhaps as well that, just then, Sean O’Donnell came into the room.

Talking to people in the lobby, it hadn’t taken Sean more than a few minutes to discover all he needed to know. The mayor’s tactic of sending small detachments of policemen to individual trouble spots had been a disaster. In every case they’d been overwhelmed. It was also clear that the attacks on black people were mounting swiftly, and that he’d been right to hide Hudson. He was only having a quick look round the public rooms, in case there was anyone of interest in them, before hurrying home.

But knowing what he did about Frank Master and Lily de Chantal, the last thing in the world he’d expected was to see Lily and Hetty together. Whatever could it mean?

“Mrs. Master.” He bowed politely. “What brings you here on such a day?” He made a quick bow to Lily as well.

“I went to my husband’s counting house, Mr. O’Donnell, but he was not there. They told me he might have come here to find out what the mayor is doing about these riots.”

Sean glanced at Lily, saw the look of relief on her face, and nodded gravely.

“That’s exactly why I’m here myself,” he said. “Wherever your husband is, Mrs. Master, the wisest thing would be for you to go home. But on no account should you try to walk. Nor you, Miss de Chantal. I’ll speak to the manager and have him find you a cab, Mrs. Master. But it may take some time—most of them are off the streets.” And then, he could not resist it: “Miss de Chantal, I’m sure, will be glad to keep you company until a cab is found.”

The old clerk at Master’s counting house had had enough. He had his own family to think of, and if Mr. Master hadn’t come back by now, he reckoned he wasn’t coming this day, anyhow. The only question was, what to do about the message from Master’s wife. Pin a note on the door? That, it seemed to the clerk, would look wrong, and beneath the dignity of the business. No, he’d write him a note and place it on his desk. Master had the key to the door. If he did come back, he’d be letting himself in, for sure.

By two thirty, Frank Master was starting to become agitated. Round the corner, at the Second Avenue armory, a huge crowd had surrounded the building. But there was quite a large body of defenders inside, and they were armed. From time to time, stones were hurled into the building, but so far the crowd hadn’t tried to storm it. Meanwhile, there were mobs appearing in one street after another. All around.

And where the devil was Hetty? Was she trapped down at South Street? Was she trying to walk back on foot maybe? Had she been waylaid? Was she hurt? If there was only some way that he could guess which route she might take, he could go after her. He hardly wanted to admit it to himself, but a terrible feeling of guilt was overwhelming him. If only he hadn’t gone away with Lily. If only he’d stayed to look after her. What agony of mind must Hetty be in, let alone physical danger? His wife’s distraught face rose up in his imagination like a nightmare. He began to have visions of her being chased by rioters, knocked down, worse.

It was his fault. His alone.

“Pa.” It was Tom. “We need to get the carriage out. We’ve got to look for Mother.”

“Yes, I think so too. See to it, will you, Tom? Then I’ll go downtown, and you guard the house.”

“No, Pa. You better stay while I go. If she gets back here and you’re gone, I don’t know if I can stop her going out again.”

“That’s nonsense, Tom, I have to go.”

“Pa, she ain’t going to stay put until she sees you. I’m telling you, it’s you she wants.”

It was after half past three when the hotel manager came to see Hetty. She had made several applications to the front desk since Sean O’Donnell had left, but to no avail.

“You’re the first in line,” they had promised her, “but we can’t get any cabs to go uptown.” Lily de Chantal had twice had to restrain her from walking. “I can’t have your blood on my hands,” Lily had cried, the second time. Though why Miss de Chantal should be so concerned about her welfare, Hetty couldn’t imagine.

“Mrs. Master,” the manager said, “there is a lady with a carriage who is going uptown, and who would be prepared to take you.” He looked a little awkward. “I must tell you, it’s the only hope of transport I can offer.”

“I see. A lady?”

“Her name is Madame Restell.”

The wickedest woman in New York sat comfortably back in the plush seat of her carriage and gazed at Hetty. She was large-bosomed and her face was strong. Her eyes, it seemed to Hetty, were those of a bird of prey.

So this was Madame Restell, the abortionist. Hetty was aware of her by sight, but she had never thought, or wished, to be so close. If Madame Restell guessed all this, which she undoubtedly did, it was quite clear she didn’t give a damn.

“Well, I found out what I wanted,” she remarked. “That mayor’s a fool.” She gave a decisive sniff. “Almost as big a fool as Lincoln.”

“I’m sorry you think the president a fool,” Hetty remarked stiffly. She might have accepted a ride, but she wasn’t going to let herself be browbeaten by Madame Restell.

“He’s caused too much trouble.”

“You are not a Republican, I take it,” Hetty said.

“I might be. They say that people should be free to do as they like. That’s what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell.”

“I suppose it depends on what you mean by being free.”

“I help women to be free. Free not to have a child if they don’t want it.”

“You arrange abortions.”

“Not the way you suppose. Not often. Mostly I give ’em a powder that’ll stop it.”

It was evident that Madame Restell not only liked to do as she pleased, but to talk about it as well.

“Perhaps in France they do things differently, madame,” Hetty said, politely but firmly.

This, however, was met with a loud laugh.

“You think I’m French because I call myself Madame Restell?”

“I supposed so.”

“English, dear, and proud of it. I was born in Gloucester. Dear old Gloucester. Poor as church mice, we were. Now I got a mansion on Fifth. And I still think Lincoln’s a fool.”

“I see.” Hetty let a silence fall. They passed Grace Church.

“Do you know Lincoln’s wife?” the abortionist suddenly asked.

“I haven’t the honor.”

“Well, I never saw a woman shop the way she does, I’ll say that for her. I watched her at it once. She’s like a madwoman when she gets to New York—which is quite often, as you know. No wonder the Congress complain about her.”

“Mrs. Lincoln had to refurnish the White House,” Hetty said defensively.

“I’ll say.”

“Well,” said Hetty, with dignity, “I believe people should be free, too. I believe every person has a God-given freedom no matter what their race or color. And I think Mr. Lincoln’s right.”

“Oh, he may be right, dear. I expect he is. I’ve got nothing against the darkies. They’re no better or worse than you or me, that’s for sure. But there’s an awful lot of people getting killed for it.”

They had come to Union Square now, and were about to turn right onto Fourteenth when the coachman slowed up, and tapped on the window with his whip. Along the street, at the foot of Irving Place, a mob of a hundred or more was blocking the entrance.

“Go round,” Madame Restell ordered.

They went cautiously round Union Square and tried up Fourth Avenue. There seemed to be threatening groups on every street. As they came level with the top of Gramercy Park, the crowds grew thicker, and you could see across to the huge mob laying siege to the armory. At that precise moment, a hail of paving stones hit the building, and someone hurled a barrel of burning pitch through one of the windows. There was a huge roar from the crowd.

“This is no good,” said Madame Restell decisively. “Go over to Fifth,” she called to the coachman.

“I must get out,” cried Hetty. “This is my home.”

“Don’t be silly, dear,” said Madame Restell. “You won’t be able to get to it.”

Hetty wanted to jump out, but she couldn’t deny the truth of what Madame Restell said.

They turned up Fifth. You could see that some of the houses had been looted, but the rioters had evidently turned their attention elsewhere for the moment.

“You’d better come to my house,” said Madame Restell. “I’ve got a serving boy who can worm his way through any crowd. Regular little Five Points rat. He’ll run down to your place and tell ’em where you are.”

It might be good sense, but Hetty didn’t like it. The avenue ahead was clear, and the coachman whipped up the horses. They flew past Madison Square. The heat of the day and the dust from the horses’ hoofs made the brownstone facades of the houses unclear. She felt queasy, as if she were being pulled against her will up some strange, hot river of dust. They were in the Thirties already. On her right she saw an empty lot containing a nursery garden. A brick church suddenly towered, like an affront, on her left.

And then she saw the great, fortress-like mass of the reservoir. The place where Frank had proposed. Solid, in all this heat and dust. Unshakable as a pyramid in the desert. The foundation of her marriage. She was letting herself be carried past it. I must be mad, she thought.

They’d passed Forty-second Street.

“Stop!” She pulled open the window and shouted to the coachman. “Stop at once!”

The carriage slowed.

“What are you doing?” cried Madame Restell. “Go on,” she fairly bellowed at the coachman. But too late. Hetty had already opened the carriage door and, before the coach had even halted, tumbled out into the dusty street. “You stupid bitch!” Madame Restell called down to her as Hetty, on her knees, picked herself up from the dust at Forty-third. “Get back in.”

But Hetty didn’t care.

“Thanks for the ride,” she called, and turned to walk down Fifth. She might have a bruise or two, but she felt better. At least she was doing something.

As the carriage pulled away up Fifth, she did pause for a moment, though, to straighten her clothes. The heat and humidity were oppressive. She glanced around. On the corner opposite was a large building. And when she saw it, she even smiled.

If the reservoir represented the massive solidity of the city’s engineering, the orphanage for black children opposite her was a welcome reminder, even on this day of chaos, that the city did have a moral compass too. For it was the wealthy people of the city, people like herself, who had paid for the orphanage, and it wasn’t just for show. Two hundred and thirty-seven black children, from infants up, were housed, clothed, fed—and, yes, educated—in that building on Fifth Avenue. Two hundred and thirty-seven children given the chance of a decent life.

If Madame Restell, or her husband, or anyone else wanted to know what Lincoln was fighting for, she thought, let them come to the orphanage on Fifth, and see the children there.

She did not see the mob until it was upon her. They came from the side streets and swept down the avenue. Men and women alike, they were carrying bricks, clubs, knives, anything they had picked up along the way. As they continued to stream into the avenue, there seemed to be hundreds of them.

They did not pause to smash windows. They did not even look at her. A single object was their sole intent. They were making for the orphanage.

As they drew close, a loud voice cried out: “Kill the nigger children!” At which the whole crowd let out a mighty roar.

And Hetty, forgetting even her dear husband for a moment, watched in horror. She couldn’t just leave. She had to do something.

Frank Master stood beside his son in front of the big picture of Niagara Falls in the dining room. Then he turned and went to the window, and stared out.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

The truth was, he was beside himself. He had cursed himself until he was worn out, and the impotent frustration was almost more than he could bear. He just wanted to take action, fight somebody, anything.

Tom had been gone so long he’d thought something must have happened to him, too. But when he finally got back, he’d explained.

“The counting house was locked when I got there. The place was deserted. I criss-crossed every street I could think of on the way back, Pa. That’s why I took so long. But there isn’t a sign of her. Nothing.”

He’d only been back a few minutes when a great roar from the direction of the armory had caused Frank to go out into the street. The crowd had finally begun their assault. The building was catching fire. He could see figures appearing in the upper windows and on the roof of the building. It looked as if they’d be burned. Not that there was a damn thing he could do about it. The heat from the building combined with the suffocating heat of the day was awful. He hurried back to the house.

The assault on the armory had one effect: it seemed to be drawing all the mobs in the area to the scene. Gramercy Park was temporarily deserted. Cautiously, he opened one of the dining-room window shutters. Ten more minutes passed. The flames rising from the armory were sending flashes into the sky.

But now, suddenly, a boy came running up the steps to the front door, and was hammering on the door. The parlormaid appeared to ask what to do. He told her not to open.

“It may be a trap.” Some fellow with a brick or a firebrand might be lurking out there to hurl his missile in as soon as the door was open. He pulled the shutter closed and went into the hall.

“What if it’s a message from Mother?” said Tom.

“I thought of that.” Signaling Tom to stand behind him, he went to the door, picking up a walking stick with a head like a cudgel on the way, slipped the bolts, and opened the door an inch. “Well?”

“You Mr. Master?”

“What if I am?”

“Your wife’s up on Fifth by the orphanage in a heap of trouble.”

“Who are you?”

“Billie, mister. I work for Madame Restell. She brought me. She’s in her carriage over on Lexington. Says she ain’t coming any closer. You’d better come quick, mister.”

What the devil the infamous Madame Restell would want with Hetty he couldn’t imagine. But Frank didn’t hesitate.

“Guard the house, Tom,” he called, and with the stick in one hand, and the boy’s arm in a vice-like grip in the other, he let the boy lead him quickly to Lexington Avenue. “If you’re lying,” he told the boy quietly, “I will beat you to a pulp.”

Hetty hadn’t much experience of crowds. She did not know that, caught at the right moment, in the right mood, a crowd can be made to do anything, or will of its own accord.

The crowd wanted to kill the children, because they were colored black. It wanted to destroy the building, because it was a temple of the rich Protestant abolitionists. The rich white Protestants who were sending honest Catholic boys to die so that four million freed slaves could come north and steal their jobs. For the crowd was mostly Irish Catholic. Not all, but mostly.

And the crowd meant to loot the building because the black children in there had food, and beds, and blankets, and sheets that they themselves, often as not, did not possess in their crowded tenements.

They had started stoning the building, and now men were running forward to break down the door.

Hetty tried to push her way through the crowd.

“Stop this,” she cried. “They are children. How can you?”

The crowd wasn’t listening. She struggled forward, but the press of people was too great. She found herself wedged beside a huge red-headed Irishman, bellowing with rage like all the rest. She didn’t care. She beat with her fists upon his back. “Let me through.”

And at last he turned, and looked down at her.

“Tell them to stop,” she cried. “Will you let them kill innocent children? Are you a Christian?” His blue eyes continued to stare at her, like those of a giant looking down at its supper. Well, let him do what he liked. “Will you tell your priest you murdered children?” she challenged. “Have you no humanity? Let me through and I will tell them to stop.”

Then the big Irishman reached down and picked her up in his powerful arms, and she wondered if he was going to kill her there and then.

But to her astonishment, he started pushing his way through to the front of the crowd. And moments later, she found herself in open space.

In front of her was the orphanage. Behind her, as the giant put her down and she turned, was the crowd.

It was a terrifying sight. Its rage came at her like a roaring hot breath. It was staring, screaming, hurling missiles and breathing fire at the orphanage beside her. Now that she was here, how could she speak to this terrible monster? How would she even be heard?

Then, suddenly, some of its many eyes started to look in her direction. Arms were pointing past her. Something behind her was catching a part of the crowd’s attention. She turned to look.

A little way down the street, a side door of the orphanage had opened. A woman’s head was looking out. Hetty recognized her. The matron of the orphanage. The woman looked up the street with horror. But it seemed that she had decided there was no alternative, for now a small black child appeared beside her, then another, and another. The children of the orphanage were filing out. Not only that: to her astonishment, Hetty saw that they were obediently forming up into a line.

Dear God, they might have been going to church. A moment later, the superintendent came out as well. He was shepherding the children into a little column. And there was nobody there but the matron and the superintendent to help them. They just kept coming, as the matron urged them to hurry, and the superintendent made sure they lined up in good order.

They were going to take all two hundred and thirty-seven children out, into that furnace, because there was nothing else they could do. And they were keeping calm. For the children’s sake, they were keeping very calm. And the children kept coming out obediently, and the superintendent kept them facing away from the crowd so that they should not see.

And the crowd did not like it. The crowd did not like it at all.

For now, as by some awful magic, the part of the crowd that could not see down the street seemed to understand from the eyes that could that the children were there. And the crowd began to tremble with rage at the thought that its prey was daring to escape. And the crowd nearest to her started inching forward, a foot at a time, like a snake testing the way with its tongue. And somebody shouted out again, “Kill the nigger children!” while others took up the cry.

And the children heard, and flinched.

Then Hetty realized that there was no one except herself and the big Irishman between the crowd and the children.

Strangely, she understood, the crowd did not really see her. She was in its field of vision, but its focus was on the children. They were nearly all out now. She glanced back. The matron was telling the children to start walking. Quickly, but not too fast. The crowd saw too. A woman’s voice called out: “The niggers is gettin’ away.” At any instant, she could feel it, people would start to break ranks and spill past her.

“Stop!” she cried out. “Would you harm little children?” She raised her arms and held them wide, as if that could stop them. “They are little children.”

The crowd saw her now and fixed its stare upon her. It saw her for what she was, a rich Republican Protestant, their enemy. The huge Irishman beside her was silent, and it suddenly crossed her mind that perhaps he had brought her there so that the crowd would kill her.

Yet just for a moment, the crowd seemed to hesitate. Then the woman’s voice rang out again.

“They’re nigger children, lady. It don’t matter killing them.”

There was a roar of approval. The crowd was edging forward.

“You cannot! You cannot!” Hetty cried desperately.

And then, to her surprise, the Irish giant beside her let out a mighty cry.

“What are you thinking of? Have you no humanity? Has none of you any humanity?”

Hetty did not understand crowds. The crowd, despite the fact they hated her, had hesitated to attack her for one reason only: she was a lady. But the giant beside her was a man. One of their own. And now a traitor, siding with their enemy to rebuke them. With a scream of rage, two women rushed at him. The men were close behind. If they might not have the children, then they’d have him. He was fair game.

His size did him no good at all. A giant is nothing to a crowd. It had him down in no time.

Hetty had never seen a mob attack a man. She did not know its violence and its power. They started with his face, punching, and kicking with their heavy boots. She saw blood, heard splintering bone, then could see nothing at all, as they threw her across the street, and his body disappeared under a rabble of men, stamping with all their strength and weight, again and again and again.

When they broke off, the Irish giant had almost disappeared.

The crowd had entered the orphanage now. There was plenty there for everyone. Food, blankets, beds: the home was stripped bare. But the children, thanks be to God, had been left to walk quickly away.

So Hetty slowly got up, and looked down at the pulped mess that had once been a mighty body with a face, and dragged herself into Fifth Avenue. And there, scarcely knowing what was happening to her, she suddenly felt a pair of strong arms around her and saw her husband’s face. Then she clung to him, as he helped her stagger down to the reservoir and eastward along Fortieth until, at the next avenue, he lifted her into the big carriage that had brought him.

“Thank God you came,” she murmured, “I was looking for you all day.”

“I was looking for you, too.”

“Never leave me again, Frank. Please never leave me.”

“Never again,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “Never, as long as I live.”

When Sean O’Donnell looked around his saloon in the early evening, he knew he was right to make Hudson stay in the cellar. All over the West Side, the crowds had been attacking the black people, burning their houses, beating them up. There were rumors of lynchings. Over at St. Nicholas Hotel, the mayor had been joined by the military. Troops were being summoned. President Lincoln had been telegraphed. With the Confederates in retreat after Gettysburg, he must spare them some regiments before New York went up in flames. A body of gentlemen had armed themselves with muskets and gone to defend Gramercy Park. Sean was glad of that. Meanwhile, he’d seen fires coming from Five Points.

“It can’t be long now,” he warned his family. “We’ll be next.”

It was a quarter of an hour later that a vigorous figure with the face of an adventurer and long, drooping mustaches strode into the saloon. Sean smiled.

“Mr. Jerome. What’ll you have?”

Sean liked Leonard Jerome. The daring financier might not have been born at Five Points, but he had the instincts and the courage of the street fighter. He mostly ran with the rich sporting crowd like August Belmont and William K. Vanderbilt. But Jerome liked newspapers and newspapermen too. The rumor was that he was invested in newspapers. And he’d come into the saloon once in a while.

Once Sean had asked him where his family came from.

“My father’s name was Isaac Jerome, so Belmont says I must be Jewish.” Jerome had laughed. “Of course, you have to remember that Belmont’s name was Schoenberg, before he changed it. But the truth’s less interesting. The Jeromes were French Protestants. Huguenots. Came over in the 1700s. Farmers and provincial lawyers mostly, ever since.” He’d grinned. “My wife’s family swears they’ve got Iroquois blood, though.”

“You believe it?”

“A man should always believe his wife, sir.”

In answer to Sean’s question now, he answered: “Whiskey, Mr. O’Donnell. A large one. I’ve a busy night ahead.”

“You expecting trouble?”

“I thought they’d burn my house—they haven’t yet, but they’re coming down here. On the way already. You’d better hide your nigger.”

“I already did. Think they’ll go for the saloon?”

“Probably not. It’s the abolitionist newspapers they’re after: the Times, and others.” He downed his whiskey and gave Sean a puckish grin. “So wish me luck, Mr. O’Donnell. I’m off to defend the freedom of the press.”

“How will you do that?” Sean asked, as Jerome began to stride out of the saloon.

Jerome turned. “I got me a Gatling gun,” he answered. Then he was gone.

A Gatling gun. God knows how he’d got it. The newly patented gun was hardly even used by the army yet. With its swiftly rotating barrels, however, it could deliver a devastating, continuous fire that would mow down any crowd. You didn’t want to mess with Jerome, thought Sean. He knows how to fight dirty.

Once again, now, he checked all the shutters, but he didn’t close the saloon. If the rioters wanted a drink and couldn’t get served, that would really annoy them.

He was glad his sister Mary was safely out at Coney Island.

Monday had started well for Mary. She’d come down to breakfast to find Gretchen already at table, in conversation with another mother. As Mary sat down with them, Gretchen was just remarking that the woman’s son seemed rather like her own boy, and in no time this led to a discussion of motherhood in general. The lady asked Mary if she had children, to which she replied: “Not until I’m married.”

“Quite right,” the lady said with a laugh.

Theodore appeared after that.

They bathed in the morning. This time, holding the rope, Mary worked her way out until the water was right up over her chest, and then she swam out almost to the barrier ropes at the end. And while she was swimming there, Theodore came past and dived down under the rope and went on swimming with strong strokes out into the sea. He was out there quite some time. She and Gretchen were sitting together on the beach when he came back and emerged dripping from the water.

“Most invigorating,” he said with a laugh, and started drying himself with a towel.

At lunch, Theodore asked her if she was going to sketch that day, and she said she thought she might. So after the meal, she went to get her sketch pad. When she came down again, Gretchen and Theodore were talking together, and Gretchen said, “You go on, Mary, and I’ll catch you up.”

She’d only walked a short way along the sand, however, when reaching into her bag, she realized that she’d left her pencils up in the room, so she had to go back. Arriving at the inn, she didn’t see Gretchen and Theodore, so she supposed Gretchen might have gone up to their room. But the room was empty, so she collected her pencils and went out again.

She was just setting off along the path when she saw them. They were a little way off, standing together at the end of the inn’s white picket fence, under the shade of a small tree. They didn’t see her, because they were too deep in their conversation, nor could she hear what they were saying, but you could see at once that they were having a quarrel. Gretchen’s normally placid face was screwed up in fury. Mary had never seen her looking like that before. Theodore was looking irritated and impatient.

The only thing to do was hurry away and pretend she had not seen.

The sight of her friends quarreling had made an unwelcome interruption into the idyllic day, like a dark cloud suddenly appearing in a blue sky. Mary walked swiftly along the beach, therefore, to put a distance between herself and the two Kellers. She did not want anything to spoil that afternoon. And by the time she’d gone a mile or so, and encountered nothing except the unbroken line of the ocean and the warm sand, she felt restored. She realized that she was approaching the place where she had sketched the day before, and crossing over a little dune, she started to look out in case the deer might be there again. She didn’t see it though.

However, she did notice a little wooden shelter some way off, which had obviously been abandoned, for its roof was off, and the small posts that had supported it were pointing jaggedly into the sky. Taken with a couple of trees nearby, it made a strange, rather haunting composition, not too difficult to draw, and so she sat down and began to sketch. After a while, when she had caught some of it to her satisfaction, she put the sketch pad down and got up to stretch her legs. She went over to the dune and looked back along the beach to see if Gretchen was coming, but it was quite deserted.

Returning to her sketch, she drew a little more, and then took off her straw hat and leaned back for a moment to enjoy the sun. Her face and arms were bare, and the warmth of the sun upon them gave her a delightful sensation. It was very quiet. She could hear the faint, gentle sound of the spreading surf on the sand. It felt so peaceful, as if out here she were in a separate world, a timeless place which had almost nothing to do with the city life she’d left behind. Perhaps, she thought dreamily, if she stayed there long enough, she’d turn into a different person. She remained like that for several minutes, as the hot sun beat down. This, she supposed, must be how lizards feel as they drink in the sun’s rays on a rock.

When she heard the faint rustle in the seagrass to her right, she raised her head a little, and was just opening her mouth to say, “Hello, Gretchen,” when another head appeared.

“Ah,” said Theodore, “I thought I’d find you here.”

“Where’s Gretchen?” said Mary.

“Back at the inn. She wanted to rest.”

“Oh.”

“Mind if I sit down?”

She didn’t answer, but he sat down beside her anyway. He picked up the sketchbook and looked at her drawing.

“It’s not finished,” she said.

“Looks promising,” he remarked, glancing toward the little ruined shelter. He put the sketchbook down on the other side of him, so she couldn’t reach it, and then lay down full-length. She felt a little awkward sitting up, and wondered if she should put her hat back on. “You should lie down,” he said. “The sun’s good for you. At least, a little sun. When I’m in the sun like this,” he said contentedly, “I pretend I’m a lizard.”

She laughed. “I was just thinking of lizards when you came.”

“There you are then,” he said. “Great minds think alike. Or perhaps lizards do.”

She lay back. She was all alone, lying beside a man, but nobody could see.

So when he turned and gently kissed her, she didn’t resist. She let him do it. And when he said, “You are so beautiful, Mary,” she felt as if she was.

And soon he began to kiss her in a way she had never been kissed before, exploring her lips and her tongue, and she knew that this must be the beginning of what she should not do. But she let him all the same and soon she was responding, and she felt her heart beating faster and faster. “What if someone should see?” she gasped.

“There’s no one within miles,” he said. Then his kisses grew more passionate, and his hands began to rove, and she became so excited that although she knew she mustn’t, she didn’t want him to stop. And why not? she thought. For if not now, perhaps it would be never.

She could feel him, hard against her. He was beginning to loosen her dress. His breath was coming in little gasps.

Then Gretchen’s voice. Gretchen’s voice from the beach. Gretchen’s voice coming nearer.

“Mary?”

Theodore cursed, and pulled away from her. For a second she lay there, feeling abandoned. Then, with a sudden surge of panic, she scrambled behind Theodore, seized her sketch pad, found her hat and crammed it on her head. So that a moment or two later, as Gretchen came over the sand dune, she saw Mary, perhaps a little untidy, but quietly sketching, and her brother, sitting a few yards away, staring at her as she came toward them, with the stony gaze of a serpent that is ready to strike.

“Hello, Gretchen,” said Mary calmly. “Why don’t you take Theodore for a walk while I finish my sketch?”

It was late in the afternoon before they got back to the inn. Nobody had talked much. But as they entered one of the guests in the hall told them there’d been trouble on Manhattan that morning. News had come with the afternoon ferry.

“What happened?” asked Theodore.

“The Draft Office up at Forty-seventh was attacked. Set on fire, I believe.”

After supper, the landlord said that there had been some more trouble in the afternoon. He’d heard it from the hotel along the street. There had been several fires.

“The telegraph isn’t working,” he reported, “so we haven’t any details. It’s probably nothing much.”

The day had been hot and humid. Out here, with the sea breeze wafting in from the Atlantic, the humidity had been of no consequence, but over in the streets of New York, it must have been unpleasant. And even out on the porch after supper, it began to feel rather oppressive.

After a short while, Gretchen went inside for a few minutes.

“I’m going for a walk to look at the sea,” Theodore announced, taking out a cigar.

“I’ll come too,” said Mary.

It was quiet on the beach.

“I’m sorry Gretchen came,” said Mary.

Theodore nodded. “Yes.”

“Are you staying a few more days?”

“I’d like to,” he said. “Though I have work at the studio.”

“Oh,” said Mary.

They stared out over the water. Banks of clouds were gathering now, promising rain, and relief.

“We’ll see what tomorrow brings,” said Theodore.

That night, Gretchen and Mary went to bed as usual. Gretchen didn’t say anything about Theodore. Just after dark Mary thought she was going to cry. She was glad that, moments before, the rain had begun to fall outside the window, masking all sounds.

It was the middle of the night when she awoke, and realized that Gretchen wasn’t there. She waited a while. Not a sound. Then she got out of bed and went to the window. The rain had stopped, and the stars were visible again. Looking out, she saw nothing at first. Then she made out a pale shape, moving about on the little patch of grass. It was Gretchen, in her nightdress, pacing up and down in front of a bank of reeds.

Mary did not want to call to her in case it woke the household. She stole quietly out of the room, down the stairs and outside.

“What are you doing?” Mary whispered. “You’ll get soaked.”

“I can’t sleep,” Gretchen said. “I’m worried.”

“Why?”

“The children. Those fires in the city.”

“They said it wasn’t serious.”

“They don’t know. You can’t even see the city from here.”

Mary felt her heart sink, but she only paused a moment or two.

“Do you want to go back, just to make sure?”

“That’s what I was wondering.”

“We’ll take the ferry in the morning,” said Mary. “We can always come out again if everything’s all right.”

“Yes.”

“Come back to bed now, or you’ll catch a chill.”

The first ferry was not due until mid-morning, but they were all three at the Point waiting for it—Theodore had insisted on accompanying them. The ferry was late. They waited an hour. Then another. Then someone arrived and said the ferry wasn’t coming, so they went back to the inn, to see if anyone there had any news.

“The ferry’s been attacked, set on fire they think,” the owner of the inn told them. “We just had a man here who rode over with the papers from Brooklyn. There’s all kinds of trouble in the city. Fires everywhere. They’ve sent to President Lincoln for troops.”

“Can we send a wire to the city?” Theodore asked.

“’Fraid not. All the telegraph lines are down. Destroyed. You’re safer here.”

“I have to get to the city,” said Gretchen. “My children are there.”

“I can get a cart to take you to Brooklyn,” said the owner of the inn, “though it may not do you any good.”

He did a little better than that. Within half an hour they were in a swift two-wheeled pony trap. By mid-afternoon, they were crossing Brooklyn Heights, from where they saw the city, spread out before them.

There were fires everywhere. Smoke was rising from a dozen areas. Only the Financial District appeared to be unscathed, for a gunboat was lying in the East River exactly opposite the end of Wall Street. The rest of the city might enter the fires of Hell, but the men of Wall Street would make sure that the money houses were safe. When they got down to the ferry, the news was even worse.

“Half the black neighborhoods are burned down,” the man in charge of the ferry told them. “God knows how many niggers are getting killed. There are barricades all over the East Side. They’re after the rich folks too. None of the merchants dare walk in the street—even Brooks Brothers has been sacked.”

“I want to go across,” said Gretchen.

“If anyone’s going, I’d better,” said Theodore. “You two should stay here.”

“I’m going to my children,” Gretchen answered firmly.

“And I’m going with you,” echoed Mary.

“Well, nobody’s going to take you,” the ferryman told them. “They’ve half destroyed the ferry ships already, and they’re cutting off the railroads too. The rioters are armed. It’s war over there.”

They went up and down the waterfront. Nobody would take them. As evening approached, Mary said: “We’d better find a place to stay the night.”

But Gretchen didn’t seem to hear her.

They saw a great flare of fire arise from the direction of the Bowery, where Gretchen’s children were. Gretchen gasped, and Theodore looked grave. Mary thought it best to say nothing.

The sun was coming grimly down over the harbor when an old man walked up to them.

“I got a boat. Wife’s over there.” He indicated the area by South Street. “Soon as it’s dark, I’ll be going over. I can take you if you want.”

It was strange, being rowed across the East River in the dark. Ahead, the houses of the city were mostly shuttered, therefore dark. Many of the gas lamps in the street were also out—though leaking dangerous gas, no doubt. All over the city, the glow of fires could be seen, and the faint crackling sounds and the smell of their smoke drifted over the water.

But the South Street waterfront was quiet now, and they were able to tie up the boat and clamber out. Theodore gave the old man several dollars for his kindness. Though Gretchen protested, Theodore and Mary persuaded her to let him go to her house near the Bowery, while Mary took her to Sean’s saloon, which was not far off. “If there’s one place that will be safe down there, it’ll be Sean’s,” Mary pointed out.

Sean was just locking up when they reached him, and he ushered them quickly inside, not best pleased to see them.

“I thought you were safe on Coney Island,” he said. But he understood. “A mother goes to her children,” he said to Gretchen with a shrug. “What can you do?”

Half an hour later, Theodore arrived. The children were at their grandparents’ house. “I can get you there safely,” he told his sister.

As they left, he turned to Mary.

“We’ll be speaking again, Mary, when this is all over,” he said softly.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Not that he wouldn’t go through with it. If she went round to his studio, she was sure he would. But things had been different, out on Coney Island, and she was back in the city now. Back in her usual world. Well, she’d see.

The immediate question was, where should she go now?

“You’d better stay here,” Sean told her. When she said she wanted to go to Gramercy Park, he reiterated: “I don’t know what’s going on up there, but you’re definitely safer with your own family here.”

But the Masters were her family now really, though she didn’t say it, and she told him she wanted to go uptown all the same. So with no good grace, Sean escorted her. The approach to Gramercy Park had to be cautious, and as they came to Irving Place it was obvious that there had been trouble there. Broken glass and debris littered the whole area. Sean had heard that Twenty-first Street, on the north side of the square, was barricaded. When they reached the quiet square from its western side, they found their way barred by a patrol, not of rioters, but of residents of Gramercy Park, well armed with pistols and muskets. These men didn’t know Sean, but one of them did recognize Mary. And after insisting that she part from her brother at the patrol point, he personally took her to the door of the Masters’ house and roused them. Sean waited until he knew she was safely in.

Mrs. Master herself came from her room at once. In the kitchen she made her drink some hot chocolate.

“Now you must go straight to bed, Mary,” she insisted, “and you can tell me all about your adventures in the morning.”

But Mary didn’t tell her adventures in the morning. Whether it was the heat, the shock of what she’d just seen, or some other cause, during that night she began to feel feverish. The next morning, she was shivering and burning up. Mrs. Master herself nursed her, making her drink liquids and placing cool compresses on her head. “Don’t talk now, Mary,” she said, when Mary tried to thank her. “We’re just glad you’re safely home.”

So Mary was not aware of the burnings and killings that continued all over the city that day. She did not know that Brooklyn, too, had erupted into violence on the waterfront where she’d been, or that there had been killings down most of the East River. Only after her fever had broken, and she awoke feeling hungry on Thursday morning, did she learn that the troops had arrived at last, that they were scattering the rioters with fusillades, and that Gramercy Park itself was now being protected with howitzers.

The terrible Draft Riots of 1863 were ending.

It was noon when the parlormaid came into her room with a bowl of soup, and sat beside her bed and began to talk. Did she know what had taken place in her absence, the girl wanted to know, how Mr. Master had gone missing, and then Mrs. Master too, and how she’d tried to save the orphanage and nearly been killed, and been rescued by Mr. Master and Madame Restell the abortionist. This astonishing news, at least, made Mary sit up in bed.

“So did anything happen to you?” asked the parlormaid.

“Me?” said Mary. “Oh, no. Nothing much, I suppose.”