On that street, Matthew thought. That street not far from here, and forever in Julian’s nightmares.

“But the worst,” Julian whispered. “The worst.” His voice seemed to shatter like fragile glass. “I stood over the boy. He was a beggar child in rags. All broken, all done. But then … behind me … a woman screamed. My boy! she screamed. My boy! I turned … and there she was … a beggar woman, also in rags, her hair wild and dirty … screaming for her son. A woman my father would have called the dregs of the earth … my boy, she screamed … in anguish, I could feel her anguish … but her boy was dead … his skull was crushed … I said I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean for this to—” He blinked, dazed by the impact of memories. It took him a moment to go on. “She saw I was drunk, that I could barely stand. She fell upon him, cradled him … his head, all bloody. And she cried, as if the heart had been torn from her breast. That sound … her crying … I can’t stop it. I hear it … always. And then she rose up … that beggar woman, suddenly as fierce as a queen who had lost the prince of her life … and she said into my face, Murderer. The tears were running down her cheeks … she was what my father would call a wretch but … in that moment … she had more dignity than I had ever seen in my life. Murderer, she said. Not loudly, but her voice carried.”

Julian halted. He made a gasping sound, as if he were hearing that word flung into his face for the first time.

“Then … then,” Julian continued, with an effort, “they came for me, summoned by her cry. They came from every nook and cranny on that street. They hobbled on their crutches and on their stumps. They crawled toward me like seething snakes, and they were everywhere. All the beggars and wretches of the world, it seemed, squeezing out from their holes and hideouts. Summoned by her cry. Yes. Murderer, she said. Yes. And they came at me with the filth of the street, flinging it in my face … my eyes … my hair. Someone threw a bottle. The first one hit me in the side. The second grazed my head. I ran, with that woman behind me trying to scream life into her dead son again. I ran … but the beggar army was on me … everywhere I turned, they were there. Pelting me with filth, and they took up the cry … murderer, murderer. It rang up and down the street like a firebell. There was no mercy for a drunken young fool in fine clothes who had let a fine horse run wild on the street … oh no … they were going to kill me, that much I knew. They were going to have their revenge … their justice … right then and there, and I was much too far from home.”