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In the Face of Death

CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO

CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO, of Berkeley, California, is an award-winning fantasist perhaps best
known for The Saint-Germain Chronicles and other vampire tales, one of which, "Advocates," was
co-winner of the prestigious World Horror Award for Best Novelette. "In the Face of Death,"
tan-gentially linked to the Saint-Germain series, describes a plausible "period-piece" affair
between a fascinating vampire and William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), a West Coast
banker who became one of the Civil War's most important Union generals, second only in
importance to U. S. Grant. Sherman's military genius was surpassed by his hatred of war; his
alleged penchant for bloodiness was a reputation reportedly engineered by his enemies in the
South and North. According to Ms. Yarbro, Sherman's family was indeed absent from the scene
during the period in which her story takes place.

I know of no courage greater… than the courage to love in the face of death.

—WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN TO QUEEN VICTORIA

FROM THE JOURNAL of Madelaine de Montalia

San Francisco, 18 May,

At last! And only four days later than anticipated when we left the mountains. Had I been willing
to travel on the river from Sacramento, we would have arrived on the date anticipated… My
native earth should be in one of the warehouses, waiting for me, which is just as well, as 1 have
got down to less than a single chest of it.

My escorts brought me to a very proper boarding-house on Sacramento Street, and have gone on
themselves to find suitable lodgings. A Mrs. Imogene Mullinton, a very respectable widow from
Vermont, owns this place and takes only reputable single women. She has given me a suite of
three rooms at the top of the house, her best, and for it I am to pay $75 a month, or any fraction
of a month, a very high price for such accommodations, but I have discovered that everything in
San Francisco is expensive. The suite will do until I can arrange to rent a house for three or four
months…

Tomorrow I will have to pay off my escorts, which will require a trip to the bank to establish my
credit here, and to begin making my acquaintance with the city. Doubtless the excellent Mrs.
Mullinton can direct me to Lucas and Turner; the documents from their Saint Louis offices should
be sufficient bona fides to satisfy them.

At the corner of Jackson and Montgomery, the new Lucas and Turner building was one of the most
impressive in the burgeoning city; located near the shore of the bay and the many long wharves that
bristled far out into the water, the bank was well situated to sense the thriving financial pulse of San
Francisco.

Madelaine, wearing the one good morning dress she had left from her long travels, stepped out of the
hackney cab and made her way through the jostling crowds on the wooden sidewalk to the bank itself.
As she stepped inside, she felt both relief and regret at once again being back in the world of commerce,
progress, and good society. Holding her valise firmly, she avoided the tellers' cages and instead