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He turned away from the oval window as the hack stopped. Bulloch got out first to fold the step down. Cooper assisted Judith and the children while the driver began to unload the trunks and portmanteaus lashed to the roof. They had pulled up in front of Number 6 in a row of brick residences attached to one another and all alike. Suddenly, a decrepit figure in a filthy skirt and patched sweater lurched into sight from the far side of the hack.

Hair that resembled gray broomstraw stuck out from beneath a bandanna. The woman clutched the neck of a smelly rag bag carried over her shoulder and peered at Cooper with an intensity as peculiar as her unlined face.

"Parnmeguvnor," she said, bumping him as she hurried by. Bulloch whipped up his cane and with his other hand seized the ragpicker's hair. The move was so abrupt that Marie-Louise yelped and jumped to her mother's side. Bulloch yanked; gray hair and bandanna came off, revealing cropped yellow curls.

"The hair gave you away, Betsy. Tell Dudley not to buy such a cheap wig next time. Now off with you!"

He waved his cane in a threatening way. The young woman backed up, spitting invective — in English, Cooper supposed, though he couldn't understand a word. Bulloch stepped forward. The woman picked up her skirts, dashed to the corner, and disappeared.

"Who the devil was that?" Cooper exclaimed.

"Betsy Cockburn, a slut, er, woman who hangs out in a pub near Rumford Place. Thought I recognized her. She's one of Tom Dudley's spies, I think."

"Who's Dudley?"

"The Yankee consul in Liverpool."

"What was that gibberish she spouted at us?" Judith wanted to know.

"Scouse. The Liverpudlian equivalent of Cockney. I hope none of you understood her." Another throat clearing indicated his concern for delicate sensibilities.

"Not a syllable," Judith assured him. "But I can hardly believe that wretched creature is a spy."

"Dudley hires what he can get. Dock scum chiefly. They are not recruited for their intelligence." Brushing dust from his sleeve, he said to Cooper, "It doesn't matter that we saw through her ridiculous disguise. Its only purpose was to help her get close enough for a good look at your face. Dudley got wind of your arrival somehow. One of my informants told me so yesterday. But I didn't anticipate your becoming a marked man quite this soon —"

The sentence trailed into a disappointed sigh. Then: "Well, it's a lesson in how things operate in Liverpool. Dudley is not a foe to be taken lightly. That drab's harmless, but some of his other hire­lings are not."

Judith cast an anxious look at her husband, whose mouth had grown inexplicably dry. How chilly the summer noonday felt. "Don't you think we should go inside and see our quarters?" Judah at his side, he walked to the stoop. He was smiling, but he surveyed each end of the block in turn.

 13

Starkwether's burial took place in Washington that same afternoon, in the rain. The location was a small private cemetery in the suburb of Georgetown, beyond Rock Creek and well away from the place seekers and other political canaille.

Water dripped from Elkanah Bent's hat brim and dampened his black-frogged coat of dark blue. He usually enjoyed wearing the coat, with its attached short cloak, adopted in 1851 from a French design; he believed it minimized his fatness and lent him dash. But pleasure was absent this dark, depressing day.

A canvas pavilion protected the open grave and surrounding lawn. Some fifty mourners had gathered. Bent was too far away to identify many of them — he'd tied his horse a quarter of a mile back and walked to his spot behind a great marble cross — but the few he did recognize testified to his father's importance. Ben Wade, Ohio's powerful Republican senator, had come. Scott had sent a senior staff officer, and nigger-loving Chase his pretty daughter. The President's representative was Lamon, the long­haired, mustachioed White House crony.

Bent's mood was one of resentment rather than grief. Even in death, his father prevented closeness. He wanted to stand with the other mourners but didn't dare.

Laborers waited at the head and foot of the heavily ornamented coffin, ready to lift and lower it. The minister was speaking, but Bent couldn't hear him because of the splatter of rain on summer leaves. The cemetery was heavily wooded; dark as a grotto. Dark as he felt.

Late in the morning, so the papers said, his father had been memorialized at a church service in downtown Washington. Bent couldn't go to that either. All arrangements had undoubtedly been handled by Dills, the little old lawyer who stood nearest the grave, flanked by three bland, jowly civilians with the look of moneyed men.

Bent hunched close to the cross, half again as tall as he was. He despised Dills but didn't want to antagonize him by inadvertently showing himself. It was through Dills that Heyward Starkwether had communicated with his illegitimate son and provided him with money. It was Dills to whom Bent appealed in times of emergency. Never in person after their first interview; only in writing.

The solemn minister raised his hand. The coffin went down into the earth, and down, on canvas sling straps. Bent had been invited to meet his father twice in his adult life. At each meeting the conversation was inconsequential and awkward, with many lengthy silences. He remembered Starkwether as a handsome, reserved man, obviously intelligent. He had never seen his father smile.

Rain seemed to get into Bent's eyes as the coffin disappeared. The mourners prepared to leave. Why hadn't Starkwether cared enough about him to acknowledge him? Bastardy wasn't such a great sin in these modern times. Why, then? He hated his father, for whom he cried now, for leaving that and so many other questions unanswered.

Foremost, who was Bent's mother? Not Starkwether's long-dead wife; that much Dills had told him, going on to warn him never to ask a second time. How dare the lawyer treat him that way? How dare Starkwether hide the truth?

During Bent's only talk with Dills, the lawyer had purported to explain why a close relationship with Starkwether was impossible. Those who paid Starkwether wanted him to live in perfect rectitude and never by word or deed draw public attention to himself. Bent didn't believe the smooth story. He suspected Starkwether had a simpler and crueler reason for abandoning him. Starkwether had fathered no legitimate children. He was probably one of those selfish careerists too busy for parenthood.

Bent inhaled sharply. Dills seemed to be watching the stone cross while he conversed with the three moneyed men. Bent began a retreat, careful to keep the monument between himself and the grave. He failed to see a pedestal supporting a looming granite angel. He stumbled against the pedestal and cried out. He kept himself from falling by catching hold of the wet stone drapery.

Had anyone heard him? Dills?

No one came, and the rattle of departing carriages continued. When he got his breath, he lumbered on to the tree where he'd tied his horse. The horse side-stepped when Bent's full weight settled on him.

Soon he was safely away, cantering on a muddy road at the edge of the Georgetown College campus, where forlorn pickets stood guard around the tents of the Sixty-ninth New York militia. His loss continued to hurt, though less and less as his rage intensified. Goddamn the man for dying just now. Someone had to intervene to prevent him from being shipped to Kentucky.

Although Bent had eaten a full breakfast, his desperation drove him back to Willard's for a huge dinner in the middle of the afternoon. He stuffed a fork laden with mashed potatoes into his mouth, sopped up chicken gravy with a wad of bread, and stuffed that in, too. Eating had been his narcotic since childhood.

It did little to soothe him today. He kept picturing Starkwether resentfully. He had even refused Bent his own name, insisting the boy take the name of the family with whom he'd been placed for his upbringing.