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suffered as we were carried toward Lord Hyde’s headquarters. Lizzie too was silent, and threw worried glances at my mama, who reached for her hand and pressed it. Our road passed to the north of Barrack Street, which is now called Chambers, and then across the island to Kips Bay. After what seemed an interminable journey through a landscape of empty fields and leafless trees, and steep hills with fast-running streams between, in the late afternoon we approached a mansion built of red brick that was partly hidden by a high stone wall into which were set a pair of iron gates. Once the property of a wealthy merchant of republican sympathies it was now the headquarters of Lord John Hyde.
    The attempt to forget the wrong that man did my mother has kept me in the grog shops of the seaport this past fifty years. When he entered the room to which we had been taken, some sort of pantry, I believe, his manner was more sober than I had thus far seen it in my two passing glimpses of the man. He stood looking my mama up and down and I knew her insult still rankledin him. He then turned to the captain with a lifted eyebrow. He seated himself at the table in the middle of the room. It was very cold in there. The floor was of stone, the walls of whitewashed plaster, and there was a single window which looked out onto the courtyard at the back of the house. Several panes of glass were missing.
    —You have a choice, madam, said Lord Hyde.
    He pulled on a close-fitting glove of soft white leather.
    —I intend to search you, and you will first undress yourself, or you will be undressed by others.
    He was speaking to my
mother
! I turned to Lizzie and saw the color rise in her cheeks.
    —You sons-of-bitches, said my mama—or spat, rather.
    —Choose.
    Lizzie and I had by this time been brought behind Lord Hyde’s chair, so my mama stood alone. She did not hesitate. I watched her drop her shawl to the floor and then begin to remove her outer garments. There were men’s faces pressed to the window and through the broken pane I saw them grinning. She stood against the wall in only her linen. Her undergarments werenot clean, nothing could be kept clean in Canvas Town. For a moment there was silence. Then Lord Hyde spoke again.
    —Undress, madam.
    A profound shame swept over me. That this should be happening to my
mama
, and in front of all these strangers, these
Englishmen
—! Then with dawning wonder I realized that in her pride my mama
refused
shame! Again I glanced at my sister and she too had seen it. Our mama seemed to say, as she removed her soiled undergarments, that they mattered nothing, these rags, what mattered lay deeper, and of that Lord Hyde could not strip her. I stared at the floor but no sooner had I done so than the portly lord turned in his chair.
    —Lift your head, boy, he whispered.
    I did nothing.
    —Lift your head
.
    There was that in his tone which commanded obedience. I had not the strength to defy him. I lifted my head. My mama stood naked against the whitewashed wall. Never had I seen her so, not even in the close confines of our crowded shack. But yet she was a woman, and more handsome than any of the few I have seen in similar circumstance since that day, naked, Imean. She showed no shame at all. She was what she was, human, a woman, subjected to power but not lessened by it, no weaker than before. In the silence that followed I was aware of Lord Hyde’s breath coming quick and shallow as the sniggering at the window grew louder.
    And then my mama lifted her hands to her hair. Slow and deliberate as before, she unfastened the pins that held the thick auburn tresses in their untidy bun and let them fall about her shoulders and her lovely breasts. It was an insult. She let down her hair for Lord Hyde and so made plain the man’s lechery, indeed the lechery of all those who looked at her. The captain had meanwhile dropped to his knees at my mother’s feet and was searching through her discarded clothing. Almost