“Mr. Colston? Not a scratch on him, you’ll be relieved to hear.”
What Sally feels at this news isn’t relief, but resentment. How should those two men—like Archie—have fared so well when the women around them came out so poorly? None of it makes any sense. “That’s… good news,” she manages to finally say.
“I’ll tell him you asked after him.”
She waits for him to remark on her own survival, but she can tell sheis losing his attention. “I have a list. Of people being treated at the Cowley residence. I was told I should bring it to John Gamble.”
“Oh, yes. He’s not here now, but I can take it.”
Sally hands him the piece of paper, and watches as Marshall scans the names. “Rodney,” he says to one of the other men. “Alexander Scott was there.”
“Dead?” Rodney asks when he looks up from his paperwork.
“Injured.” Marshall hands the list to Rodney, who studies it carefully, then sets it down on top of a pile of other lists—some written on letter paper, but others scratched onto playbills and broadsides and the back of old receipts.
“Do you know him?” Sally asks.
Marshall nods. “He’s a delegate. From Fauquier County.”
“Yes, I know that. But I mean, has anyone come looking for him?”
“Not since I’ve been here,” says the man in the crooked hat. “But people have been coming and going all day. Everyone’s trying to track somebody down.”
“Do you know anything about his family?” says Sally.
“Whose family?” asks Rodney.
It is all Sally can do to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Alexander Scott’s. Does he have a wife? Someone I could write?”
Rodney squints at the ceiling. “That I don’t know.”
“You know who might?” Marshall says, looking pleased with himself. “Tom.”
“Right,” says Sally, who feels suddenly exhausted. She forces herself to ask, “Do you know if Tom’s staying at his parents’ house?”
“Yes, there was talk of a hunting party, but that’s all been canceled now. I should think he’ll stay in town for a little while, now that his father needs the help.”
“The chief justice needs help?” Sally could swear Tom told her his father had stayed home last night. Or maybe he’d said his parents had gone to a dinner party. Either way, she didn’t think Chief Justice Marshall had been anywhere near the theater. At least, she prayed he hadn’t. “He wasn’t there, was he?”
“Oh, no, he’s fine. It’s not official yet, but he’s agreed to head up the monument committee.”
Sally exhales, then allows herself to ask, “Monument for what?”
“The fire victims, of course.”
The woman in the chair begins to weep.
Sally doesn’t doubt that a monument will eventually be called for, but it seems premature to begin fundraising for it now. She thinks of the girl in the bed beside Maria Price. Burns on more than half of her body. “Shouldn’t we get everyone buried first? I mean, before we memorialize them?”
Marshall nods. “There’s a committee for that, too.”
“The burial? I heard.”
“We’re going to bury everyone together. There’s just no way around it.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, if the weather holds.”
