“Will you stay here in Richmond?” Ritchie asks. “After the troupe goes back to Charleston?”
Jack hasn’t given it much thought, but he doesn’t see how he can possibly remain in this town. Everywhere he looks, for as long as he lives, he’ll see reminders of what he has done. “I think I probably need to start over somewhere new.”
Ritchie doesn’t argue.
“It’s strange, though. To think of going to a new city, whose streets my father has never walked.”
“Your father was a good man.”
Jack doesn’t need Ritchie to tell him so, but he likes hearing it all the same.
“Something tells me you will be, too.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
Jack flushes, then remembers that he wanted to ask Ritchie something. “What will happen to all the Negroes who were rounded up and jailed?”
“Your ‘vile incendiaries’?”
Jack swallows.
“I suppose they’ll have to be released,” says Ritchie, as if he hasn’t spent a moment thinking about them. “Can’t very well keep them locked up if we’ve got a confession from Placide and Green.”
“Will they be released soon?”
“Eventually.”
Ritchie places his hat on his head and tips it in Jack’s direction. “If we meet again, may it be under better circumstances.”
Jack prays to God there are better circumstances waiting for him.
He watches Ritchie go, then returns to the back room, where Placide is shouting orders at anyone within earshot. Placide has hired two private coaches that will carry the company to Norfolk. If they move quickly, he tells everyone, no one will know the players have left town until long after they’re gone.
It has been decided that Placide and Twaits will remain behind, for a week or two at most, to close up the company’s accounts. Green will also stay in Richmond for the foreseeable future, although it is not clear how useful he will be to the company. He wants to convince Frances to return to Charleston with him, which seems unlikely given the circumstances.
Placide sends the women and children back to the boardinghouse to pack. “The coach will pick you up from Mrs. Barrett’s,” he instructs. “Have the trunks ready.”
When Lydia makes to follow her mother out of the tavern’s back room, without so much as a backward glance at Jack, he reaches for her hand and whispers, “May I speak with you?”
She removes her hand from his and shoves it underneath her cape and out of reach. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Are you angry with me?”
Her mother tells her she will meet her outside, and Lydia promises that she’ll be only a moment. The room clears.
“Should I have told you?” Jack asks.
“That you were planning to turn us all in?”
He nods.
“I’m not your keeper.”
“No, but I thought we were—”
“We were what, Jack?”
