If the Prices are here searching for Maria, then that means word of the fire has reached the house, but Maria hasn’t.
This doesn’t make sense to Cecily. She knows that dozens—if not hundreds—of people will die inside the theater tonight, but she cannot envision Maria being one of them. The girl is tough as nails and has always looked out for herself. If she didn’t manage to make it out of the theater, then who did?
Elliott begins screaming Cecily’s name, and she freezes and waits for him to make his way over to her. But he doesn’t come. He just keeps circling the burning building, calling for her again and again, same as he was calling for Maria a moment ago. Cecily feels sick, but then it occurs to her that Elliott Price thinks she is dead, too.
Her mind works quickly, trying to tell herself a story she can understand. Plenty of people have died escaping the fire, but others never made it out at all. The theater is a fireball, as bright as the burning sun, and anyone still inside will be ash by morning.
Cecily walks to the edge of the green and tucks herself up against the side of an outbuilding. She takes several deep breaths, trying to work out what the world will look like if Elliott and his father return home with the news that they’ve been unable to find MariaorCecily. Will the Prices really believe Cecily is dead? If they do, that means there will be no slave catcher, no advertisements in the paper, no reward money for her return. She can go anywhere, she tells herself, if no one is chasing her.
Cecily can still see Elliott, but she can no longer hear his voice over the roar of the flames. What might it be like to go the rest of her days with no sight or sound of him? To know she can put him behind her like a bad dream? It is almost too much to contemplate.
She tries to recall who, if anyone, has seen her since she escaped the theater. The boy, Jack. But she never told him her name. Shedidintroduce herself to Augustine Saunders in the theater, and she is sure the woman was behind her on the stairs as they exited the galley. But will this Augustine woman really argue if she learns Cecily is among the dead? What could she possibly have to gain?
Cecily considers her family. If she goes through with this, she will leave Richmond and never return, never see her mother or her father or her brother or her sisters again. It’s hard to even think about all she willlose. The stories her mother tells late at night when they are all under their quilts, staring up at the ceiling. The wood shavings she finds in her father’s hair when he is carving one of his animals—a fox or a beaver or, once, a bluebird—out of river birch. The way her brother, Moses, throws rocks at the river, believing that one day he will make it clear across the mighty James. And the soft napes of her sweet sisters’ necks, which beg for kisses and also big, wet raspberries that make them squeal with delight. For this to work, there can be no real goodbyes and certainly no happy reunion on this side of the great divide.
Cecily pulls her shawl tight and stares up at the copper sky. The problem with getting an idea as big as leaving is that there is no folding it up and putting it away. If Cecily returns to the Price place now, she’ll live the rest of her days knowing she missed her one chance at a different life.
Flakes of ash float through the air. The larger pieces glow orange around their edges, and Cecily traps one in her hands. She waits for the hot sizzle of her own flesh, but when she opens her cupped palms, the spark has already been extinguished. Is Cecily holding a tiny piece of the theater’s roof? One of the backdrops? A young girl’s coat? Maybe she is holding the girl herself.
Cecily brings her hand to her mouth. She lodges the ash on the soft meat in the middle of her tongue and allows it to melt there like snow. By the time it has disappeared, so has she.
FRIDAYDECEMBER 27, 1811
SALLY
If Sally lost consciousness afterher jump from the theater’s third-floor window, she did so only for the briefest of moments. She comes to, on her back, and slowly raises her arms to the night sky. She can’t see stars, but she can see her fingers, which she flexes once and then twice. They work just as they are supposed to, and she uses them to feel her face.
Her skin is taut and cool to the touch. She moves her hands to her collarbone, then her shoulders, and is tempted to keep going, inspecting each and every part of her body with the same thoroughness and appreciation, except that when she looks up at the burning building, she sees a woman throw her legs over the windowsill from which Sally so recently hung.
Sally tries to shout for her to wait, but the sound comes out garbled. She springs to her feet, eager to be out of the woman’s way should her body take the same precipitous path to earth. She is no sooner standing than the woman hits the ground beside her with a terrifying smack.
She isn’t the same young woman Sally tried to coax from the window, but Sally is about to go to her when she spies Margaret sitting just a few feet away. Margaret’s eyes are unfocused and her mouth is open, and something about the way she pats the tatters of her skirt down around her ankles gives Sally an uneasy feeling. She hurries toward her and, when she arrives at her side, falls down on the ground beside her.
“Oh, Margaret. We did it,” she says as she throws her arms around her friend. In the dark hell of that narrow upstairs hallway, she’d had a hard time imagining both of them making it out of the theater alive. Yet here they are. It is almost too much to take in.
“Can you walk?” she asks, but Margaret, usually so accommodating, doesn’t utter a word. Her breath comes in short rapid bursts, which crystallize in the frigid night air. Sally rubs her friend’s back and tries to calm her. “You’re all right. Everything’s all right now.”
Margaret’s body shudders, and her mouth yawns open, but no soundissues forth. Sally watches as a long string of drool falls from Margaret’s lips and onto the bodice of her dress. It is as if she is trying to scream.
“Margaret?” says Sally, her own throat so sore it hurts to speak. “Please. Just breathe. All right?” She tries to model a good deep breath, but when she expels the air in her own chest, she begins to cough. Even her insides feel scorched.
Margaret’s breathing eventually becomes more measured, but her hand never stops working the hem of her skirt. Sally knows they can’t afford to sit like this all night, so finally she stays Margaret’s hand and says quietly, “Let me see.”
As soon as she lifts Margaret’s skirt, she understands the severity of the situation. Her friend’s shin bone has snapped in half. There is blood—lots of it—but the worst part is seeing the bright white bone, which has pierced the skin and glints in the firelight.
Margaret takes one look at her leg and vomits into her lap; the smell is enough to make Sally want to do the same. She jumps to her feet and tries to make a plan. Margaret needs a doctor immediately, but first they need to get out of the cold—somewhere where Sally can assess the extent of her injuries and figure out how to get her real help.
Two men—one young and one old—stand nearby, watching the building burn, and Sally flags them over. “Can you help me get her somewhere warm?”
They seem willing to be put to good use, until they kneel down beside Margaret and get a whiff of what is hiding in the folds of her dress. Sally can only see the expression of the young man facing her, but he looks as if he is about to gag. “How far did you say?” he asks.
She is annoyed, but knows she needs to bite her tongue. She also knows that, at this rate, they’ll never agree to haul her all the way home. “Somewhere close by?”
“Breathe through your mouth,” the older man suggests, and it is all Sally can do not to search for a loose rock to throw at his head.
“Careful with her legs. The left one’s broken,” says Sally, but even with the warning, Margaret cries out in pain when the men lift her up and into the air.
“Should we take her to the Baptist meetinghouse?” asks the young man, but the older man shakes his head. “Let’s try Mary Cowley’s. It’s closer.”
