“Yourmistake,” says Anderson with a tight smile as he sidesteps Jack and begins to move in the direction of the tavern.
Jack watches him walk away and is filled with a white-hot rage. Without realizing what he’s doing, he charges at Anderson and shoves him hard in the back. “Take that back!”
Anderson pitches forward, arms flailing, but he catches himself before he lands facedown in the mud. Then he rears around and glares at Jack, but Jack is so angry, he doesn’t care.
“If you won’t go back there and make it right, I’m going to go to Ritchie myself,” Jack says. “I’ll tell him everything. What I did. What Green did. And what Placide and you are doing now.”
Anderson is on him in a half second, maybe less. He grabs Jack by his collar and lifts him straight off his feet. When their faces are within inches of each other, Anderson hisses, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Twelve hours ago, Jack might have heeded the warning. But he’s sick of being told what to do by a pack of animals. “Or what? I won’t be invited to Charleston? Get a letter of introduction from Placide?” he screams. “There are worse fates!”
Jack’s dreamed of becoming an actor since he was a little boy, but if a career in the theater means working alongside a bunch of frauds, maybe he doesn’t want anything to do with it.
Jack doesn’t know what possesses him, but he clears his throat, which is still raw from the smoke he swallowed the night before, and lets a thick ball of spit fly from between his chapped lips. It lands on Anderson’s face with a satisfyingthwap, which is as big a surprise to Jack as it is to Anderson.
Anderson’s eyes go big in his head. “You ungrateful bastard.”
In one fluid motion, Anderson wipes his cheek with his sleeve and drags Jack off the road and into a thicket of trees. Jack knows he should apologize, and that if he does, Anderson will likely go easier on him. But something inside him has snapped, and he can’t make himself say the words it would take to quell Anderson’s temper.
When they are a half-dozen yards from the road, and completely hidden from view, Anderson slams Jack’s body against the trunk of a hickory tree. The back of his head bounces off the trunk, which is wrapped in athick and gnarly bark. He feels a shooting pain, and then a wooziness that creeps over him, the same way it does when he downs a tankard of ale too quickly.
Anderson grabs him by the throat and squeezes. “This has gone far enough.”
Jack is surprised by the sudden tightening around his neck, the immediacy with which his throat closes. He kicks at Anderson’s shins, digs his fingernails into his wrists, anything to loosen the actor’s grip, but Anderson’s arms are longer than Jack’s and his efforts come to naught.
“I have tried to talk sense into you, but you are being frighteningly obtuse.”
Jack can’t respond, can’t make so much as a sound.
“You may not like this idea. It may even fly in the face of your principles. But if you think I am going to let you take down an entire theater company all because you’ve developed a conscience, you have another think coming.”
Jack’s field of vision is narrowing, and Anderson’s voice sounds garbled, like his head has been dunked in a bucket of water. Jack closes his eyes, wonders—briefly—if this folding in of the world around him is what his father experienced in his final moments on earth.
Just when Jack assumes he is as good as dead, Anderson releases his hold on him and allows him to crumple to the ground. Jack gasps for air, but can’t spare the time it will take for his breathing to return to normal. He must crawl toward the road, get the attention of someone who can intervene, but as soon as he is on all fours, Anderson sets a foot down on the hand closest to him.
Jack studies Anderson’s boot, which is heavy enough to break all of his fingers. “Please let me go,” he begs.
“No more talk of going to Ritchie?”
Jack agrees.
“Wonderful,” says Anderson, and he helps Jack to his feet. “I don’t know about you, but what I could really use right now is a nap.”
GILBERT
Kemp back?” Gilbert asks assoon as he walks through the door of the smithy.
“No, but you got a visitor,” says Marcus.
Gilbert looks around the shop, can’t see anyone waiting on him.
“It’s your sister, Della.”
“She still here?”
“Out back. Said she didn’t want to come in.”
Gilbert practically sprints around the side of the building. “Della?” he croaks, and she steps out of the shadows, nearly scaring him half to death.
