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robe beneath the stiffening legs and around the shoulders.
    Soon the birds would peck at the dead thing in the tree. They’d tear the robe, the garments, and finally the flesh. The seasons would batter and destroy the body. But all of that was proper. Kola was resting exactly where tribal custom said he should—close to the sky so the ascension of his spirit would be easier, and in the open air so his physical remains would fall back to earth. His body would be reborn in the new buffalo grass that would feed the herds. When his own tribe or another killed and ate the buffalo, his substance would complete the great cycle of the universe and return to his people while his spirit rejoiced in heaven.
    Jeremiah wept over his friend’s remains. Then he got himself under control, climbed down and searched and listened for indications of pursuit. There were none.
    He galloped north, pushing the already exhausted calico much harder than he should. By morning he intended to be far away. Relatively safe and able to stop, sort his thoughts and decide where he should go for sanctuary. East? West? Kansas City? San Francisco? He had two hundred dollars’ worth of shinplasters in the saddlebag. Money wasn’t a worry.
    A memory shook him all at once. For the first time in hours, he recalled Kola’s dream.
    He tried to laugh the prophecy away but he couldn’t. The first part had already become a reality.
    Riding fast on the lathering calico beneath the vast, moon-whitened Kansas sky, he couldn’t quell a rising fear of the prophecy, or shake a conviction that somehow, in ways he couldn’t begin to foresee, the rest of it would come true, including the very last part.
    But who among the Kents would want to strike him down? His father who preached the Christian gospel? The idea was ludicrous.
    Gideon, then? His oldest brother who had moved his family to the North after the war? According to the Irishman Boyle, three years ago Gideon had still been struggling to make a place for himself in New York City. Was he still there?
    Or could it be Matt, the middle brother, who had served on a Confederate blockade runner and then, after Appomattox, traveled to Europe to study painting?
    Fiercely he shook his head. Such thoughts were not only morbid, they were foolish. He would never see any of them again. Unless the vision also meant to say the future was decided, no matter what he did.
    He couldn’t get the prophecy out of his mind.
    There will be no end to the killing.
    For a while the guns will bring great luster to your name.
    Finally the power will fade and you will be killed—
    The words sang on the wind whistling past his ears and muttered up from the calico’s rhythmic hoofbeats.
    Killed by one of your own.
    One of your own.

Book One
MATTHEW’S MISTRESS

Chapter I
“A Dog’s Profession”
i
    L A VILLE LUMIERE never glowed more brightly than in that last spring of the Second Empire.
    It was almost twenty years since Louis-Napoléon, nephew of the original Bonaparte, had elevated himself from President to Emperor in the December coup, and begun to re-create the grandeur of half a century earlier. For nearly two decades now, he had succeeded. For nearly two decades Paris had been the most glamorous capital in the civilized world.
    There were treasures on view in the remodeled and expanded Louvre. There were delightful public concerts in the garden of the Tuileries palace. There were thousands of lanterns and gas jets to bedazzle the eye on the night of the Emperor’s birthday, and the greatest courtesans of Europe stopping at the Meurice and the other fine hotels. There was a wink at financial chicanery, and a forgiving shrug for sexual excess or deviation—and there was plenty of each to be found.
    There was an opulent court that moved annually from Paris to Saint-Cloud to Fontainbleau to Compiègne to Biarritz and back to Paris. There was a splendid new look to the central city, which had literally been ripped apart under the