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Hope ought to have tended it before. Where had she been? Not in the house.

It had been Elma who used to disappear, sometimes for whole nights, claiming she’d been at the neighbor’s, when she hadn’t. But not Hope. Hope was Caty’s darling, her little sister, as near a child to her as her own children.

But Hope wasn’t a child anymore. She was a woman grown. The idea that Hope might have secrets—it was too much for Caty’s mind to compass.

The noise from the street had risen to an alarming pitch as Elma’s body was brought outside to the delight of all viewers, but the sitting room had emptied along with Elma, leaving behind trails of muck and slush and a long gouge on the wooden floor where someone had dragged the wooden settle out of their way.

Two weeks ago, Levi Weeks had sat on that settle and Caty had watched him, waiting for some sign to pass between him and Elma.

“I should have stopped it.” Caty’s voice was low. “I should have done better by her.”

Hope bristled. “How were thee to know? How were we any of us to know? He pretended to such virtue.”

Outside, the crowd was chanting, shouting for Levi’s blood.

Hope lifted her chin. “If Levi Weeks doesn’t hang, there’s no justice in heaven.”

Chapter Three

The Jurors of the People of the State of New-York . . . on their oath present, that Levi Weeks, late of the seventh ward, of the city of New-York . . . on the 22nd day of December, in the year of our Lord 1799 . . . feloniously, willfully, and of his malice aforethought, did kill and murder . . .

—From the indictment of Levi Weeks

New York City

January 7, 1800

It wasn’t hard picking Levi Weeks out among the inhabitants of the Bridewell.

Straw crunched beneath Alexander’s shoes as he stepped into the cell. His breath misted in front of him; the windows had bars but no glass. The stone walls intensified the bitter January chill, making it colder within than without. Alexander’s business sometimes called him to the New Gaol, the debtors’ prison on the other side of the Common, with its whimsical cupola—he’d had Eliza’s portrait painted by an artist in the New Gaol, and a very becoming portrait it had been too—but that prison, with its shabby genteel inhabitants, resigned but not broken, was a world away from the grim confines of the Bridewell, where pickpockets and murderers brawled over the contents of a bucket of mush and a man wandered mumbling to himself, clad only in such filth as adhered to his person.

“There’s Levi,” said Ezra Weeks in a low voice, his head turning this way and that, sizing up the room for threats.

Alexander would have known without the telling. The young man had crammed himself against the far wall, his knees drawn to his chest as though he were trying to make himself as small as possible.

His hair, when clean, would be a dark blond or a light brown. At the moment, it hung loose around his shoulders, matted with dirt and straw and what looked like porridge. Unlike some of the others, his shirt and trousers were still largely intact, but they bore dark stains, including some that looked like blood.

They had waited until twilight to come. Yesterday, Elma Sands had been interred in the Quaker burying ground. But before she made her final journey, her family had taken the unprecedented step of displaying her corpse in the street for anyone to come and see. And they had. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. All shouting for Levi Weeks’s blood.

Ezra Weeks had insisted he could ensure his brother’s safety, but he hadn’t balked at the suggestion that the transfer from prison to home be undertaken quietly, under cover of darkness.

“Levi.” Ezra spared a look over his shoulder at the other inmates, then turned back to his brother. “Levi. We’re here to take you out.”

“Ezra?” Levi squinted up at them, and Alexander could see one eye was swollen to a slit. Dried crusts of blood clung beneath his nose. “Is that really you? I dreamed—” He rubbed his hands across his eyes, or tried to, and winced. “I’ve had the strangest dreams. I dreamed I was taken to prison.”

He shivered violently, wrapping his arms tighter around himself.

“Where’s your cloak?” Ezra started to look and then checked himself. “Never mind that. General Hamilton and I have come to take you away.”

“General . . . Hamilton?” Levi blinked at Alexander, confusion mingling with awe. “I saw you—in the procession—for President Washington. Why—”

Ezra Weeks pressed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, lightening his touch when his brother winced. “General Hamilton has been kind enough to interest himself in your case.”

“My case?” Incomprehension gave way to dawning horror. “They say—they said—Elma— They showed me—they showed me—oh God.”

Levi folded in on himself, burying his face in his knees, his back shaking with tears, or cold, or both.

Like Alexander’s eldest son, Philip, in the grips of the fever two years ago, so sick that some of the doctors had pronounced him beyond saving. The hours by his bedside, praying. Putting precious chips of ice to his cracked lips. The wonder of the moment when he’d opened his eyes and known Alexander again, weak but safe.