I got to my feet. I would take the man home. As an officer on half-pay, with no private income, I struggled to make ends meet, and this perhaps gave me more affinity with my poorer neighbors. Let Gale return home to receive his evening port on a silver tray. This man had no one to help him.

Another cry filled the air as a woman pushed through the edges of the now curious crowd and stumbled toward us. She was as old as he, with long gray hair escaping from her cap, her eyes as wide and wild as the dying man's. "Charles," she cried. "Husband."

Her basket fell from her arm, and fruit and paper parcels skittered across the wet cobbles.

The cornet started for her. I put a heavy hand on his arm, and he swung around, eyes lit with anger.

"Let it go," Gale ordered. "Mount up."

The cornet and I shared another glance of hostility before I finally released him. He turned from me, rubbing his wrist.

He caught his horse and climbed into the saddle, his movements angry. At a signal from Gale, the cavalrymen wheeled as one and trotted out of the square, leaving me alone with the dying man and his wife.

I persuaded a good-natured drover to take them home. He didn't want to, having a load to meet near Hampstead, but I promised him a crown for his trouble. We made our unknown gentleman as comfortable as possible in the bed of the wagon, and his wife crawled in beside him. She neither looked at us nor thanked us, but merely crouched beside her husband, holding his hand as if she could pour her own life into his waning body. I had a devil of a time getting a direction from her, but finally she mumbled the name of a lane, which the drover recognized as one near the Strand.

I gathered up her basket. The fruit in it was rotten, as if she'd carried it with her for days. I threw away the fruit and unwrapped the parcels. Each contained lace, a fine skein of it, each identical to the others. I put them back into the basket and tucked it beside her. She scarce seemed to notice.