As he did so, though, he felt a permanence form in his heart, a quiet sense that even though he had only these few seconds, he would have them forever, could come back to this place, this time, in his mind.
He was right, though not entirely for the reasons he supposed.
He would have passed right by her, thinking she was a part of the bog, for she was curled over in a tight ball and the hood of her sad-colored cloak covered her head. But she made a tiny sound, a heartbroken whimper that stopped him in his tracks, and he saw her then, crouched in the mud at the foot of a sweet gum.
“Ma’am?” he said tentatively. She hadn’t been aware of him; she uncurled suddenly, her white face staring up at him, shocked and tear-streaked. Then she gulped air and leapt to her feet, throwing herself at him.
“Wiyum! Wiyum!” It was Fanny, Jane’s sister, alone, daubed with mud, and in a state of complete hysteria. She’d catapulted into his arms; he gripped her firmly, holding her lest she fly to pieces, which she looked very like doing.
“Frances. Frances! It’s all right; I’m here. What’s happened? Where’s Jane?”
At her sister’s name, she gave a wail that made his blood go cold and buried her face in his chest. He patted her back and, this failing to help, then shook her a little.
“Frances! Pull yourself together. Sweetheart,” he added more gently, seeing her swimming, red-rimmed eyes and swollen face. She’d been weeping for a long time. “Tell me what’s happened, so I can help you.”
“You can’t,” she blubbered, and thumped her forehead hard against his chest, several times. “You can’t, you can’t, nobody can, you can’t!”
“Well, we’ll see about that.” He looked around for someplace to sit her down, but there was nothing more solid than clumps of grass and spindly trees in sight. “Come on, it’s getting dark. We need to get out of this place, at least.” He set her firmly on her feet, took her arm, and compelled her to start walking, on the theory that one can’t be hysterical and walk in a straight line at the same time.
In fact, this seemed to be the case. By the time he’d got her back to the camp followers’ area, she was sniffling but no longer wailing, and she was looking where she was going. He bought her a cup of hot soup from a woman with a steaming cauldron and made her drink it, though a remnant thought of the fingers of birth-strangled babes made him forgo one for himself.
He handed back the empty cup and, seeing that Fanny was at least superficially calm now, towed her toward the hillock with trees, in search of a seat. She stiffened, though, as they approached, and pulled back with a little mew of fear.
Losing patience, he put a hand under her chin and made her meet his eyes.
“Frances,” he said in a level tone. “Tell me what the devil is going on, and do it now. Words of one syllable, if you please.”
“Jane,” she said, and her eyes began to overflow again. She dashed at them with her cloak-covered forearm, though, and, with a visible effort, managed to tell him.
“It wass a cuwwy.”
“A what? Oh, a cully, sorry. At the brothel, you mean. Yes?”
She nodded.
“He wass looking thu the gulls and s-saw J-Jane . . .” She gulped. “He wass a fwend of Captain Hahkness. He wass at da house when he—Captain Hahkness—died. He weckognized huh.”
A ball of ice formed in William’s entrails at her words.
“The devil he did,” he said softly. “What did he do, Fanny?”
The man—a Major Jenkins, she said—had seized Jane by the arm and dragged her off, Fanny running after them. He had taken her all the way into the city, to a house with soldiers standing outside. They wouldn’t let Fanny in, so she had stood outside in the street, terrified but determined not to leave, and after a time they had given up trying to drive her away.
The house with soldiers standing outside was very likely Colonel Campbell’s headquarters, William thought, beginning to feel sick. Presumably Jenkins had hauled Jane before some senior officer, if not Campbell himself, to denounce her for Harkness’s murder.
Would they even bother giving her a trial? He doubted it. The city was under martial law; the army—or, rather, Lieutenant Colonel Campbell—did as it saw fit, and he doubted very much that Campbell would give a whore accused of murdering a soldier the benefit of any doubt.
“Where is she now?” He forced himself to go on sounding calm, though he felt anything but.
Fanny gulped and wiped her nose on her cloak again. At this point, it scarcely mattered, but by instinct he pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and handed it to her.
“Dey took her to anovver house. On de edge of da city. Dere’s a big tree dere, ousside. I tink dey’ll hang her, Wiyum.”
William was very much afraid they would. He swallowed the saliva that had collected in his mouth and patted Fanny’s shoulder.
“I’ll go and see what I can find out. Do you have friends here—someone to stay with?” He motioned at the mass of the encampment, where small fires were beginning to glow amidst the oncoming shades of night. She nodded, pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling.
“All right. Go and find them. I’ll come in the morning—at first light. Meet me where I found you, all right?”
“Awright,” she whispered, and laid a small white hand on his chest, just over his heart. “Sank you, Wiyum.”
HIS ONLY CHANCE was to talk to Campbell. Fanny had told him the house where Jenkins had taken Jane was the big gray house north of Reynolds Square; that was the likeliest place to start.