His throat is so sore it hurts to swallow. His nose runs constantly and has chafed from frequent blowing. His eyes itch, and fever makes his joints ache, turns his thoughts glassy and distant. But he’s lying in his very own bed, cared for and carefree. Outside his window, the thin upper branches of a sycamore bob. A silvery squirrel is making its way upwards. Edwin’s completely contented. “You can come and live with me,” he says. “If you never marry.” He even thinks he means this.

Meanwhile in Richmond, Richard III commences with Father nowhere to be found.

—

Edwin writes:

Baltimore, April 8th, 1850

Mr. Sefton. Dear Sir: Will you be kind enough to inform me if my Father is in Richmond, and whether he is ill, for we’ve not heard a word from him since he left here. I see by the Richmond paper Friday that he was not announced to play that night. We feel anxious to know something about him. Answer this by return of mail and oblige Yours truly, Edwin Booth In Haste

Mr. Sefton answers curtly, by return post, that Father never arrived.

Edwin must rise from his sickbed, take the train to Virginia, and search. When Father is finally found at a nearby plantation, drunk and penniless, Edwin must borrow fifty dollars to get them to his next engagement. He never does learn who the mad arsonist in Rochester’s attic is.

—

Under Edwin’s watch, Father never misses a curtain. But keeping him from the saloons after the shows, when his adrenaline is high and his thirst powerful, is impossible. A typical evening commences with a gesture Edwin quickly comes to recognize, a sort of chopping movement with one hand, a sign that Edwin is to go away.

Instead, he follows his father through the darkened streets, always at a distance but always in sight, until his father chooses a door, a stool, a glass. The more his father has to drink, the angrier Edwin’s presence makes him. He shouts for Edwin to go back to their room, threatens to leave him in one city or another, have him kidnapped into the navy or arrested or sold into an apprenticeship. “My jailor,” he tells his latest crew of drunken friends, pointing an accusing, Shakespearean finger in Edwin’s direction. “My chain, my manacles. I once offered to sell him for a fiver. No takers, more’s the sorrow.

“ ‘Cassius from bondage will deliver Cassius.’ Get out!” he shouts, his famous voice perfectly tuned to the key of contempt. Huddled on a chair at the far end of the room, Edwin might pretend he isn’t listening. He might even doze off to lists of his shortcomings, almost as if he were counting sheep. Acquaintances describe Edwin at this time as fragile and pale, his cheeks sunken, his eyes too old for his age. He never smiles, they say. He never speaks. He lives like a servant.