In front of the cell door stood three guards. One held a piece of parchment; another raised a lantern above it. The third ran his stick back and forth across the iron grate. “You lot listen up,” he said. “If I call your name, step forward.” He squinted at the paper. “Ann Darter!”

A rustle, a murmuring, and then the girl whose baby died crept to the front. It was the first time Evangeline had heard her name. “It’ll be a miracle if that one makes it,” Olive muttered.

“Maura Frindle!”

A woman Evangeline didn’t know crept out of the shadows.

“Olive Rivers.”

“I’m ’ere, hold your horses,” she said, her hands on the grate.

The guard with the stick ran it across the grate again, rat-tat-tat-tat, forcing Olive to let go. “Last one. Evangeline Stokes.”

Evangeline smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. She ran a hand under her belly and stepped up.

The guard with the lantern held it up to get a better look. “This one’s a jammy bit o’ jam.”

“She don’t like fellas,” Olive said. “Too bad fer ye.”

“She liked some kind of fella,” the lantern holder said, to general laughter.

“And look where it got her,” Olive said.

With one guard in front and two behind, the prisoners trooped across the courtyard, up another set of stairs, and down the wide corridor with its hissing oil lamps to the matron’s quarters. The matron, sitting behind her oak desk, appeared in no better mood than she’d been on the night Evangeline arrived. When she saw Evangeline she frowned. “You’re too thin,” she said accusingly, as if Evangeline had capriciously decided to lose weight. “Would be a pity to lose the child.”

“Prolly be better off,” a guard said.

“She probably would be.” The matron sighed. Peering at the ledger, she ran a line through Evangeline’s name.

When the prisoners were discharged, the guards led the shuffling procession down the stairs, moving slowly so they wouldn’t tumble like dominoes. As she stood outside the tall black gates, Evangeline felt like a bear emerging from a cave, blinking into the early morning light.

The sky overhead was the warm white of fresh muslin, the leaves of the elms lining the street lily-pad green. A spray of birds rose, confetti-like, from a tree. It was an ordinary day in the city: a flower monger setting up his stall, horses and buggies clattering down Bailey Street, men in black waistcoats and top hats striding along the sidewalk, a boy calling in a high, thin voice, “Pork pies! Hot cross buns!”

Two ladies were strolling arm in arm, one in walnut brocaded satin, the other in a watery blue silk, both tightly corseted, with puffed upper sleeves that tapered fashionably to the wrist. Their parasols were ornamental, their bonnets tied with velvet bows. The one in blue caught sight of the manacled female prisoners and stopped in her tracks. Lifting a gloved hand to her mouth, she whispered in the other lady’s ear. The two of them turned abruptly in the opposite direction.