Cora LaFayette-or whatever her name actually was-had vanished from the empty street. January strode quickly toward his mother's house, sweating in the penitential coat. Twice he looked around, as if he half expected to see the black, tall, smoky form of Bronze John himself stepping through the thin scrim of gutter steam. But he saw only H?lier the water seller, with his buckets and his yoke on his twisted back, calling out hopefully, "Water! Water! Clean cold water!" to the shut and bolted houses.

Benjamin January prayed that when he slept, he would not dream.

Two

January drew the ragged sheet up over the face of the man on the floor before him and sat back on his heels. Toward the end the man had begged for something, January didn't know what, in a language he could not understand. Dr. Ker, the head of Charity Hospital, guessed he was a Russian, a sailor who'd jumped ship hoping for a chance of making a better life for himself ashore.

Poor fool.

"You stupid dago, I'm doing this for your own good!" January turned his head at the sound. Emil Barnard, a gangly young man who had styled himself "a practitioner of the healing arts" when he'd volunteered his services to Dr. Ker, backed nervously from the cot of a man who'd been brought in that afternoon. The patient's face was flushed the horrible orange of the fever, and black vomit puddled the floor beside the rude wooden bed. The sick man was cursing weakly in Italian, swearing that no priest should come near him, no murdering government spy.

"Own good, you understand?" yelled Barnard, more loudly. "You understand?"

It was quite clear, of course, that the Italian didn't understand. Probably even if he knew French when he was in his right mind, the fever's delirium had sponged such knowledge from his screaming brain. All he knew-he was shouting this over and over again now-was that he was in hell. In hell with all the murdering priests.



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