“I assume you told him it’d be a help if he didn’t go leading the slave patrol right to your door?”
“I explained everything.”
“Has he been back down here since?”
Cecily shakes her head no.
Cecily wonders if maybe they’re both underestimating Moses. He’s not a little boy anymore, and he’s seen all the same ugliness they have. Not all of it, Cecily corrects herself, but enough. He knows what happens when information gets into the wrong hands, knows that the Prices can be punishing, and knows that—at the end of the day—his family is all that matters. “I think he can keep a secret.”
“He shouldn’t have to,” Della spits back. “Especially when it’s a secret that could get him killed.”
“I’m so sorry, Mama,” says Cecily as her eyes well with tears.
Della sighs. “I know why you had to run, but you shouldn’t have come back here. It’s putting too many people at risk.”
Cecily wipes her eyes with the palms of her hands, then gets to her feet. “I can go.”
Della motions for her to sit down. “Stay where you are. The patrol’s out in force right now. They’re picking up anyone they think might have had anything to do with the fire.”
“Thetheaterfire?”
Della nods. “They think it was a bunch of Negroes who started it.”
Cecily balks. “That don’t even make sense.”
“Since when do white folks have to make sense?” Della’s tone is sharp.
Cecily knows she did the wrong thing—getting her mother and her brother and her uncle involved—but Della’s so angry, Cecily wonders if there’s something else going on, something more she’s not saying.
“I’ll go tonight,” Cecily offers. “Really, I will.”
Della inhales, then says no. “Give us another day or two. If we can get you on a stagecoach, it’ll be the best thing for you.”
Cecily agrees to sit tight.
“And if you see your brother…”
“I’ll send him straight home.”
JACK
It’s late at night, andJack sits in a corner of the tavern’s taproom, making a list for Ritchie of all the players in the company.
It helps if he thinks in terms of productions—who has starred in what, when. Just last week, the company stagedTown and Country, and Hopkins Robertson played Reuben Glenroy. Green played Hamlet the week prior, and it was Thomas Caulfield who starred in Elizabeth Poe’s benefit performance,The Wheel of Fortune, which the company put on the boards shortly before her death.
Since starting the job, back in October, Jack has assisted with almost two dozen performances, which amount to twice as many plays. Placide & Green has produced tragedies, comedies, farces, pantomimes, operas, even a few very bad ballets, and Jack has felt lucky to witness all of it.
At a table on the other side of the room sit West and three men who look vaguely familiar. West looks unhappy, as if he’d like to get up and leave, but eventually it is the men who leave, and Jack watches as West downs the remainder of his drink and follows them toward the door. He stops in front of Jack’s table.
“What are you up to?” says West, craning his neck to read Jack’s scrawl.
“Trying to make a list of everyone in the company.”
“Who’s asking for it?”
“Thomas Ritchie.”
“Ah,” says West as he pulls out a chair rather abruptly and sits down beside Jack. He picks up the piece of paper and looks at it in earnest, then says, “You forgot Burke. And the Youngs.”
