Gale made a sharp gesture to the cavalryman next to him. The man obediently dismounted and strode toward the gray-haired rioter.

The older man watched him come with more astonishment than fear. "Is it justice that I pay for his sins?"

"I advise you to go home, sir," Gale repeated.

"No, I tell you, you must have him out! He must face you and confess what he's done."

His desperation reached me as white mists moved to swallow the scene. The blue and red of the cavalry uniforms, the black of the man's suit, the bays and browns of the horses began to dull against the smudge of white.

"What has he done?" I asked.

The man swung around. Strands of hair matted to his face, and thin lines of dried blood caked his skin as though he'd scratched himself in his fury. "You would listen to me? You would help me?"

"Get out of it, Captain," Gale said, his mouth a grim line.

I regretted speaking, unsure I wanted to engage myself in what might be a political affair, but the man's anger and despair seemed more than simply mob fury over the price of food. Gale would no doubt arrest him and drag him off to wait in a cold cell for the magistrate's pleasure. Perhaps one person should hear him speak.

"What has the man in Number 22 done to you?" I repeated.

The old man took a step toward me, eyes burning. "He has sinned. He has stolen from me the most precious thing I own. He has killed me!"

I watched madness well up in his eyes. With a fierce cry, he turned and launched himself at the door of number 22.

Chapter Two

I'd heard such a cry of despair once before, in Portugal during the Peninsular campaign, when a corporal had watched his best friend-some said his lover-be gunned down by a French soldier. He'd hurled himself, with that same cry, at the Frenchman, and had fallen onto his friend's body with the Frenchman's bayonet piercing him. I'd shot the Frenchman who'd killed them both.