The passageway she fled down took her straight into the taxidermied leopards, panthers, and lions, all posed with their mouths agape, their teeth sharp and shining.

Gasping, she went another way and there, grinning at her, was the skeleton of a man seated in a cane chair. Even in the daytime, even in the company of her classmates, she’d found these things frightening. In the dark, they were a horror. She ran on, lost in a maze of passages and doorways, cases and stairs.

By the time she found the doors to the outside, the crowd was entirely gone, the dark street empty except for one hack. Her father, swathed in his winter coat, hat, and muffler, was just climbing inside.

“Father!” she called, her voice catching. And again, louder. “Father!” till he turned.

“Who are you, child?” he asked.

“Asia. I’m Asia,” and he reached out his two hands to lift her in.

Of course, there was trouble to follow. Mother had been frantic over her absence. Going to Father’s performances had been expressly forbidden. What if she had been two minutes later, missed Father completely? What might have happened to her then?

There would be no more evenings with Pearl, although Pearl’s family moved on soon after, so those would have stopped anyway. A whipping was coming, but who would deliver it? Her father, who seemed to be in a good mood and might go easy? Or the murderous Duke of Gloucester?

The boys were all in bed and the house hushed. Since she’d missed supper, she was given a piece of buttered toast to eat while she awaited the belt. She couldn’t manage a bite.

Her father ate lightly after a performance, only gruel and pickled beets. “I acted well tonight,” he told Mother.

So it was only acting? Asia couldn’t quite believe that. For days after, she would see Richard in her father’s face. His blue eyes would go black. His kindly face would seem a mere mask over Richard’s scowling ambitions.

A day later, still suffering the effects of her spanking, Asia stood on a chair to pull the Cibber from her father’s shelf. She skimmed through until she found that first line—Take up the sword again, or take up me. She read the scene, then read it again.

When next she was required to perform a piece at school, that was the one she picked. An odd choice for a ten-year-old girl—Richard making his desperate love to Lady Anne—but when she stood at the top of the staircase, which was where all school performances took place, her classmates crowding the steps beneath while she shouted her lines above them, she heard the schoolmaster applauding. “Well done, little Booth. Well done,” he said. “Just try that last bit again with a touch more longing.”

—