The big eyes, so oddly luminous under the deep shade of the dark purple hat, looked up at Starbuck. He guessed Adam’s mother had to be at least forty years old, yet, to Starbuck’s astonishment, she appeared hardly a day over twenty. Her skin was as smooth, white and clear as a child’s, her mouth was wide and full, her eyes strangely sad, and her gloved touch, in Starbuck’s nervous hand, as light as a songbird’s bones. “Mister Starbuck,” she said in a very soft and breathy voice. “You are welcome.”

“Thank you, ma’am. This is an honor.”

“To meet me? I think not. I am a most insignificant person. Am I not insignificant, Anna?”

“Of course not, Mama. You are the most significant person here.”

“I can’t hear you, Anna, speak up.”

“I said you are significant, Mother.”

“Don’t shout!” Miriam Faulconer flinched from her daughter’s scarcely audible voice, then looked up at Starbuck again. “I am afflicted with ill health, Mister Starbuck.”

“I am sorry to hear that, ma’am.”

“Not so close, Anna.” Mrs. Faulconer gestured the fan away from her cheek, then pushed the veil fully back from the brim of her hat. She looked, Starbuck thought guiltily, very beautiful and very vulnerable. No wonder that a young Washington Faulconer had fallen in love with this village girl, daughter of Rosskill’s postmaster, and married her despite his parents’ opposition. She was a rare thing, fragile and lovely, and rarer still when Starbuck tried to imagine her as Miriam Bird, sister to the prickly Thaddeus. “Do you like it in Virginia, Mister Starbuck?” Miriam Faulconer asked in her sibilant, quiet voice.

“Yes, ma’am, very much. Your husband has been very kind to me.”

“I’d forgotten how Washington can be kind,” Miriam Faulconer said softly, so softly that Starbuck was forced to lean down to hear her small voice. The still air under the tent’s awning smelt of newly cut grass, eau de cologne and camphor, the last, Starbuck supposed, rising from the stiff folds of Miriam Faulconer’s purple dress, which must have been drenched in the liquid as a repellent for moths. Starbuck, uncomfortably close to Mrs. Faulconer, marveled that anyone’s skin could be so white and smooth. Like a corpse, he thought. “Adam tells me you are a very good friend to him.” The corpse spoke softly.

“I am most proud of that opinion, ma’am.”

“Is friendship more important than filial duty?” There was a cat’s claw of nastiness in the question.

“I am not competent to judge,” Starbuck said in defensive politeness.

“Closer, Anna, closer. You wish me to die of the heat?” Miriam Faulconer licked her pale lips, her big eyes still on Starbuck. “Have you ever considered a mother’s distress, Mister Starbuck?”