“You were a student of Professor Girardin’s. Surely you can write a decent one?”
Jack eyes the materials suspiciously.
“I’m not so good with a pen at present,” Placide admits, and when he holds his hand up, Jack can detect a significant tremor.
Jack fingers the letter paper. “To whom am I writing?”
“Thomas Ritchie.”
“The newspaper editor?” Jack asks.
“You know him?”
Jack doesn’t, but his father did.
“You look concerned.”
“It’s just—”
“Just what?” Placide pushes.
What can Jack say? That he’s sure Ritchie will see through this charade? That he’s embarrassed for Ritchie to discover that Zeke Gibson’s son is a liar? Or at least the sort of boy who associates with liars? “Nothing.”
“Well, then, get to it,” says Placide, gesturing at the blank page.
Jack prepares the letter paper, then dips his pen in the ink pot and writes the appropriate salutation. When he’s finished, he waits for further instructions.
“Write this down,” says Placide. “Last night, about seven hundred persons were in the theater, at my benefit…”
He does as he is told.
“Then say something about how we know the audience suffered.”
Jack thinks of the scene inThe Tempest, when Miranda recalls the shipwreck she witnessed.O, I have suffered with those that I saw suffer!There is another line, he can’t remember exactly how it goes, then the clincher:O, the cry did knock against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished!Jack knows it won’t do any good to quote Shakespeare to the editor of theEnquirer, not at a time like this, but he tries to capture some of the Bard’s frothy abundance.
“That’s very nice,” says Placide, reading over Jack’s shoulder. “Now be sure he knows that we, too, have been laid bare.”
“You want me to say something about Nancy?”
“No, no. We can’t be certain about Nancy. I was thinking music, scenery, wardrobe—that sort of thing,” says Placide. “Describe how everything fell prey to the flames.”
Jack tries to follow Placide’s instructions, but it feels a little strange referencing props and costumes at a time like this. He waits for Placide to get around to explaining the cause of the fire, and when Jack has filled three-quarters of a page with frivolous grievances, he works up the courage to ask him when they are going to get to the point.
Placide taps the page. “Now is when we make our suspicions known.”
“About the slave revolt?” says Jack warily.
“Correct,” Placide says.
Jack thinks of Girardin’s house servant, Ivy, who used to save Jack extra pigeon pie when he first went to stay with the professor. He was a stick, having subsisted for six months on his uncle’s slop, and Ivy considered it her responsibility to fatten him up. How were people like Ivy ever to have a chance if they were blamed for every act of negligence and spate of bad luck that occurred in their proximity?
“Write this down,” says Placide. “This has been the work of some worse-than-vile incendiary…”
Jack hesitates long enough that a drop of ink falls from the nib of his pen onto the waiting page.
“I’ll repeat it,” says Placide, and he does, but Jack isn’t listening. He’s thinking about the plays he loves and how, for a play to work, the hero has to want something—usually very badly. Maybe he wants love or to returnhome or to make something of himself. The want has got to obscure all reason, to be so primal that the hero is willing to sign a deal with the devil, or at the very least, sacrifice his own principles to get it. Is this what Jack is doing now? Going along with Placide’s plan in the hopes that it secures him protection and maybe even a livelihood when this is through?
Placide waves a hand in front of Jack’s face.
