Starbuck took the hint and backed out into the alley. “I’m looking for a friend,” he explained hurriedly.

“Not me, soldier, not them,” the slave gestured at his companions, “not her, not no one in here.” He paused and gave Martha a long speculative look. “She can come in, though.”

“Not today,” Starbuck said.

“He shouldn’t talk uppity like that,” Martha protested when the door was slammed on them. “And why’s he got a gun? That ain’t allowed!”

“Ma’am,” Starbuck sighed, “I told you there weren’t any rules here. He’d love me to pick a fight and a minute later you’d have a dozen black folk beating me to pulp.”

“It ain’t right.”

“The underside of Dixie, ma’am. Sweet liberty.” He gently edged Martha into the entry of an alley to keep her out of the way of a furious woman who pursued a man onto the street and hurled insults after him. The row became general as neighbors joined in. “Social gravity,” Starbuck said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we all go downhill, ma’am, till we hit the bottom.”

“Some of us didn’t start very high up.”

“But keep going up, ma’am, keep going up.” Christ, Starbuck thought, but if it were not for the rebel army then he would probably be down in these same slums. He had fled New England for a woman, and for her he had become a thief, and only the outbreak of war had offered him a chance of escape. What would he have done without the war, he wondered. Become a clerk and sought the solace of cheap drink and women, probably. And what would he do when the war was over, he wondered.

“Are you married?” Martha suddenly asked him.

“No, ma’am.” Starbuck pushed open a door to find a cockpit made of straw bales arranged in a circle. Three rats fled the pit’s floor, which was stained with blood and feathers, as Starbuck flooded the hovel with daylight. A soldier lay asleep on the bales stacked for the spectators, but he was not the missing lieutenant.

“Matthew’s real good looking,” Martha said after she had inspected the sleeper, who was missing one eye and most of his teeth.

“Is that why you married him?” Starbuck asked, going back into the street.

“Marry in haste, my grandma always said, and repent at leisure,” Martha said sadly.

“I’ve heard the advice,” Starbuck said, and crossed the road to push open another shaky door. And there they discovered Matthew Potter.

Or rather Martha recognized the man sleeping on the wooden verandah that creaked under their weight as they stepped onto its thin boards. Rats scuttled from under the planks and ran along the canal’s edge. “Matthew!” Martha called and knelt beside her husband, who was dressed in nothing but gray pants.

Potter did not wake up. He groaned and stirred in his sleep, but did not open his eyes.

“I wondered when some soul would come for him.” A black woman appeared at the verandah door.