Protestant Dublin had wide streets, beautiful brick homes and shops, and a semblance at least of law and order. Catholic Dublin was menaced by roving gangs of beggars and thieves. The pinkindin- dies, as they were called, roamed about the mews after nightfall, slashing and robbing their victims, raping women in the streets, breaking into shops and homes almost at will. Homelessness, hunger, and brutality of the worst sort were part of daily life. Liffey fever was rampant. People died of it every day, their corpses dumped into the gutter with the sewage and garbage if they had no kin to arrange a burial for them. Surviving was the sole employment of thousands, and it made them as vicious as wild dogs.

"Doyle and the others've gone to the pub for a dram. I didn't feel like going with 'em. I-I thought never to see you again, O'Malley."

"Holy Mary, Willie, don't start blubberin' like a babe. You should've known a bloody Sassenach couldn't hold me.

Willie gave a watery grin. "Aye, I should've known it. How'd you get away, O'Malley?"

Caitlyn stood up, her hand going to her pocket where the Sassenach's money was tucked well down into the farthest corner. She'd meant to tell no one of her windfall. If word got out, the coins would be taken off her before she could say bloody England and her throat likely slit for their trouble. But Willie was her friend. When her mother had died in childbed, after having been turned off from her position as maidservant at Dublin Castle because she was increasing (through no fault of her own; she'd been forced by a drunken lord), young Willie, orphaned like Caitlyn, had been the first to stand her friend. Although he was younger than she, he'd been on the streets all his life and was wise in their ways. It was he who'd shown her the ropes. For a long time Caitlyn had been haunted by memories of her beloved mother, shamed and with nowhere to go but the streets, racked with coughing spells that had left her so pale and thin that the sunlight had almost shone through her except for the increasingly swollen mound of her belly.