“How do you know the hay bales are what caught?” asks Ritchie.
“Thomas Caulfield saw the whole thing,” says Anderson.
Jack is always a little awestruck when the actors improvise their lines. One actor inadvertently goes off script, and the others have to adapt, until they’ve eventually guided him back to the lines he knows by heart. If you’ve got the script memorized—and Jack always does—it’s a terrifying couple of minutes, watching the actors move further and further away from the words on the page and wondering if the audience will notice the mistake. But what Jack has learned is that, if the actors deliver their improvised lines with confidence, nobody ever notices.
“Mr. Caulfield will corroborate this?” Ritchie asks Anderson.
“Certainly.”
Ritchie sits very still in his chair, like he’s trying to take in everything he’s just heard. Finally, he says, “I’ll need to interview Mr. Caulfield before I can run with a story this inflammatory.”
Anderson nods in agreement.
Ritchie refolds the letter, slides it between the pages of his notebook, and pulls out his pocket watch to check the time. “Tomorrow’s paper goes to press in two hours.”
SALLY
Sally stands at the bottomof the capitol steps, clutching Mrs. Cowley’s list in her hand.
The capitol looks as if it belongs in ancient Rome. All columns and pediment, with a portico large enough to accommodate a country dance. A replica of Maison Carrée in Nîmes, her father told her, when he brought her to Richmond for the dedication. She was eight.
Sally makes her way up the steps, and a man on his way out holds the door for her. She is usually only at the capitol on Sundays, when Archie and Margaret drag her to church services in the Hall of Delegates. It is a peculiar place to worship, but the Presbyterians are without a church, and the Episcopalians are too lazy to walk all the way to Henrico Parish Church in their good shoes. For several years, two ministers—a Presbyterian and an Episcopalian—have traded off giving the Sunday sermon, every other week, from the Assembly floor. The joke is that no one in Richmond knows when to pull out theBook of Common Prayer, but Sally is not so religious that she minds the mix-ups that inevitably occur. In fact, she is strangely charmed by them.
On Sunday mornings, the rotunda echoes with the click of men’s sword canes on the marble floor and the gossip of women who have waited to share the week’s most tantalizing secrets with one another. When everyone talks at once, their voices fill the cavernous space, and it is hard to believe that anyone can hear the voice of God.
This afternoon, the rotunda is largely empty. When Sally comes face-to-face with Jean-Antoine Houdon’s sculpture of George Washington, she stops for a moment to consider the man her father loved so dearly. She has always liked the sculpture. His double chin, the wrinkled uniform, the fact that Houdon intentionally left a button off the general’s jacket. Washington is depicted, not as the god that many would make him, but as a man who, like everyone else, had faults.
On the far side of the rotunda, some men lean over a table, which hasbeen pulled in front of the doors to the Hall of Delegates. Two chairs sit empty and in a third sits a middle-aged woman, who wears a nun’s habit streaked in blood. She looks familiar, but it takes several seconds for Sally to realize that she is the actress who brought the crowd to their feet.
“Excuse me,” says Sally to the men at the table. Her words echo. “I was just wondering if anyone knows where I might find—”
“Shhhh,” the men say in unison. One of them whispers, “They’re in session.”
“What? Now?” she asks. She can’t imagine what business the Assembly has that can’t wait a few days, then she remembers the stock buckle that was pulled out of the ruins. “Is it about the governor?”
“No,” says a man in a crooked hat, before asking—too quickly—“What do you know about the governor?”
“Just that he’s dead.”
“We haven’t confirmed that yet,” says a third man, who looks familiar.
“Do I know you?” Sally asks.
He looks at her for the first time. “William Marshall. How can I help you?”
“Are you Tom’s uncle?”
“Tom Marshall? Yes, you know him?”
“I’m Sally Campbell.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she thinks better of her decision to use her married name. If there is ever a time to trade on the name Henry, it is now. “Sally Henry Campbell.”
Marshall blinks wildly. “Oh, my dear, you’re Pat’s daughter? Delightful.”
“I was with Tom last night. At the theater,” she says, afraid to ask the obvious question. “Did he make it out?”
William Marshall nods his head vigorously. “Yes, yes. He’s no worse for wear. Thank God.”
“And his cousin, too?”
