“Where’s Nancy?” asks Lydia.
A flash of terror moves across Green’s face before he remembers his daughter is fine. “She’s back at Mrs. Barrett’s. I told her to stay home.”
Everyone looks confused.
“She wasn’t in the production,” Green explains, “and we’d oversold the show. We needed every free seat we could get.”
Mrs. Green takes one long look at her husband, like she doesn’t quite believe him, and sets off running in the direction of the boardinghouse, where Placide, Green, and Young rent rooms for themselves and their families. She is still wearing the bright white nun’s habit splattered in pig’s blood, and Jack overhears one of the actors say he wouldn’t want to bump into her in a dark alley, which gets a few uncomfortable laughs.
“Christ, they’re jumping,” says West as they watch a man plummet to the ground from a third-floor window.
“I don’t understand,” says Jack, his voice cracking. “Can’t they just file down the stairs?”
West says quietly, “There’s not enough time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at how fast the fire’s spreading along the roof.”
Jack is having a hard time taking it all in. The roof, the windows, the people running this way and that.
A few feet away, Placide stands with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Are you all right?” West asks him.
“What in the hell happened in there?” Placide demands, and everyone begins to talk at once.
“Someone hoisted a lit chandelier up into the flyspace,” says Perry.
“Goddamnit,” says Placide. “Who’s responsible?”
Everyone looks at Jack, who practically shouts, “I hoisted it up there, but it was on Green’s orders.” Then he stares straight at Green, who won’t meet his eye, or anybody else’s. “Tell them.”
“Tell them what?” asks Placide.
Green coughs into his hand, and Jack waits for him to recover himself.
Surely he will answer Placide’s question directly, admit what happened. But when Green continues to hack and wheeze, Jack grows anxious.
Placide looks at Green. “What’s the kid talking about?”
Green allows himself to be consumed by a coughing fit that leaves him bent at the waist.
“Christ, man,” says Placide, pounding Green’s back. “Breathe.”
GILBERT
After Sy Gilliat shuts thedoor in Gilbert’s face, he blinks twice, then turns and beats a path around the side of the house. All he needs is something—anything—he can use to catch those falling souls. He spies a long ladder, which will be unwieldy to carry but may be tall enough to reach a second-floor window. He grabs it and takes off running once more.
Back at the green, things have only gotten worse. The glass in the bull’s-eye window at the front of the theater is gone, and the flames that shoot out of the opening remind Gilbert of the tip of a hot iron, white from the forge. He runs around to the east side of the building and stops in his tracks when a girl who’s caught fire shoots out a third-floor window like a comet. She lands in the grass with a thump. A man rushes to cover her with his coat, extinguishing the flames, and Gilbert waits, frozen, for the coat to be pulled back from the girl’s face. When it is finally removed, Gilbert feels sick at the sight of the girl’s charred hair and burnt flesh, but also relieved. She’s not Louisa.
Splinters of wood begin to rain down on Gilbert, and when he looks up, he sees that someone is kicking open a second-floor window. A moment later, Dr. McCaw’s head appears through the opening. Gilbert watches as the doctor, who is a giant, straddles the windowsill, then reaches behind him to help a young woman up and over the sill. Once the woman has her legs in front of her, McCaw holds both her hands in his and lowers her as far as he can without toppling out the window himself. It is a slow ordeal, and Gilbert can see a crowd of people behind McCaw, begging to be let out.
“Here!” Gilbert shouts as he races to lean the ladder against the building, beneath the window where the woman now dangles. He scrambles to the top of the ladder, which doesn’t reach the window—not by a long shot—but does put him close enough to touch the woman’s dainty shoes. “That as far as you can go?” he yells to the doctor.
McCaw answers, his voice strained, “Not an inch further.”
Gilbert tucks the toes of his own shoes around the ladder’s rails, trying his best to anchor himself in place. He wishes he’d thought to ask someone to hold the bottom of the ladder steady, but he doesn’t see anyone close enough to ask. “Drop her,” he shouts to McCaw, still unsure how in the hell he is going to catch a woman who is coming at him feetfirst.
When McCaw lets go, the woman lands neatly in Gilbert’s waiting arms, but her weight is off balance, and before he can get his arms around her midsection, she’s already sent them both teetering backward. Gilbert feels the ladder shift beneath him and wants to grab for the rungs, but can’t, his arms full of cotton and silk. The night air rushes past him, and then he is flat on his back, staring up at the window where McCaw still sits, perched like an oversized crow.
