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oversized, brown topcoat trimmed in straggled beaver fur, and dirty yellow striped pants, I figured I’d pass for a boy or a raging lunatic. It didn’t matter, then. Out, I was out. My hair was tucked up under a fawn-colored top hat and pulled low over my face. In my mouth was a cigar, thin, small, and unlit. Jammed down in my oversized boot was the old Colonel’s loaded revolver my father had given me.
    Before I left, I stamped down hard on the miserable hoop that held out my skirt, crushed it to pieces and dumped it in the refuse bin. The rest of the clothes, well, I’d pilfered them. The boots were left in the alley, along with the Colonel’s clothes. Aunt Salome had pitched the poor old man’s things into a barrel of torn, dirty kitchen rags. There they’d sat, a mournful heap meant for the rubbish man and his wheezy old horse, until I had pulled them out.
    Smelling like old mutton and moldy rags, I moved along, hips forward in imitation of a man’s long stride, and a mighty aching in my feet, as I’d stuffed the oversized boots with bits of old newspaper.
    Like Nellie and my aunt said, no young girl could ever go about unescorted in a city like this with all manner of hucksters, bawdy women, soldiers, and bummers of every ilk and stripe. Bosh! I focused hard on the map in my head.
    I made my way from my aunt’s house up along Sixteenth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue. In the distance, I saw the white porticos and rolling green lawn that surrounded the President’s House. A phalanx of armed soldiers walked back and forth in front of the wrought iron fence. I vowed to have a closer look when I could, but the image of my father’s face made me move faster.
    I crossed over the avenue, barely avoiding a rush of gilded carriages and one-horse carts. I turned right on New York Avenue. I’d have to walk along this road for a good mile or so as it passed straight up to North Capitol Street, not far from my father’s camp. Packed cheek to jowl were tumbledown wooden houses with child-crowded doorways and mangy dogs darting every which way, snarling and snapping as they tore at bones.
    “Oysters! Pearly as dawn, fresh as a maiden’s kiss!” cried a vendor in a filthy apron with scratches over his hands. The white sea-flesh peeked from the shells, a sure sign the oysters were not in any way fresh; this I well knew. When a dog approached the oyster cart, the man heaved a broken shell at its head.
    I slipped in a puddle of oyster water and heaven knows what else, my cigar falling smack into the mess, my hair nearly tumbling from under my hat. Just then, a heavy booted soldier who reeked of alcohol jostled me hard.
    “Watch your way, son,” he said, and swore an oath under his breath I dare not repeat. He kicked aside a pair of pigs snuffling in the dirt. Son! He called me son. Praise be, I’d fooled him, even if he was dead drunk, just then pitching forward on his face.
    I walked faster, dodging an omnibus pulled by two heaving dray horses, and a closed carriage with high-stepping, glistening bays, finally crossing over toward the middle of New York Avenue, near to K Street, a sedate block lined with brass- railed fences and hitching posts, an occasional Negro servant emptying a pail of slops in the side yards—three, to be exact.
    The sun was out and blazing. A moist, suffocating heat pressed in on me. My clothing itched, my boots blistered my feet, and my face dripped perspiration clear down my collar. I had to pause to rest.
    Moments before, I’d passed an alleyway that ran behind the street. I walked back to it, and yes, there was shade, and some small coolness. I stepped into the alley past a refuse bin full of fruit peels, bottles, and a pile of stinking manure-covered hay. I paused there, wiping my face with my sleeve.
    I’d just removed my jacket when a tall, blonde slender young woman passed, her bright hair caught up in a chignon that sat low on her neck. She wore a creamy satin gown with a lace collar