“I can guess,” Starbuck said.

She sniffed, then told how, in May, the rebel forces had fallen back on the town and she had met Matthew Potter. “He spoke so nice, sir, so nice,” she said, and marriage to Potter had seemed like a dream come true as well as an escape from her vile employer and so, within days of meeting him, Martha had stood in the parlor of a Baptist minister’s house and married her soldier.

Then she discovered her new husband was a drunkard. “He didn’t drink those first few days, sir, but that was because they locked all the liquor up. Then he found some and he didn’t never look back. Not that he’s bad drunk, sir, not like some men. I mean he don’t hit anyone when he’s drunk, he just don’t ever get sober. Colonel Hardcastle threw him out of the regiment for drunkenness, and I can’t blame him, but Matthew’s a good man really.”

“But where is he, ma’am?” Starbuck asked.

“That’s it, sir. I don’t know.” She began sobbing again, but managed to tell how, after Potter had been dismissed from the 3rd Mississippian Infantry Battalion, he had used Martha’s small savings to take them back home to Georgia, where his father had refused to receive either Potter or his new wife. “We stayed in Atlanta awhile, sir, then his pa told us to get ourselves up here and see Colonel Holborrow. He sent us the money to come here, sir, which was real Christian of him, I thought. Then Matthew and me got here three days since and I ain’t seen him once in all those days.”

“So he’s drunk in Richmond?” Starbuck suggested flatly.

“I guess, sir, yes.”

“But where have you been staying?” Starbuck asked.

“At a Mrs. Miller’s house, sir, in Charity Street, only Mrs. Miller says her rooms ain’t charity, if you follow me, and if we don’t pay her the rent by this morning she’ll throw me out, sir, and so I came here. But I don’t want to be no trouble.” She looked as if she would cry again, but instead she frowned at Starbuck. “You ain’t Colonel Holborrow, are you, sir?”

“No, I’m not, ma’am,” Starbuck paused, then offered Martha what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He liked her, partly because she seemed so very fragile and timid, and partly, he guiltily confessed to himself, because there was an appealing prettiness under her mask of misery. There was also, he suspected, a streak of stubborn toughness that she would probably need to survive marriage to Matthew Potter. “I’m a friend of yours, ma’am,” he told her. “You have to believe that. I’ve been pretending to be your husband and doing his work so that he wouldn’t get into trouble. Can you understand that? But now we have to go and find him.”

“Hallelujah,” Lucifer murmured.

“You’ve been doing his work, sir?” Martha asked, incredulous that anyone would perform such a kindness for her wastrel husband.