NEVER. God forbid! Are we so tame, so servile, so degenerate, that we cannot maintain the rights of a free soil, and a free people? Where is the spirit of our fathers? Are we slaves, that knowing our rights, we dare not maintain them? —DAVID WILMOT, BARNBURNER, 1847 I DIDN’T THINK when I saw Madam Marsh. Her lips fragile as peach blossoms. Her flawless frame in its black silk dress with the beaded wrap over her shoulders. Her pale champagne-spray corona of hair. Her expression, which tends to read like a polite invitation to stick my neck under an ax. Considering the company I was keeping, I didn’t think when I spied Silkie Marsh at all. I moved. My arm was around Bird’s shoulders before a single second had etched its mark, and I swept her cloak out of Ninepin’s arm. “Mr. Wilde,” he protested, “I were—” “Ware hawk,” I mouthed back at him. Ninepin turned to the doorway at my warning, and a stifled gasp sounded—him knowing Silkie Marsh by sight, as I’ve made sure he does.
