Burning Bright

1

Maggie was sure she had heard the hurdy-gurdy player before; indeed, he was ruining the same song he’d ruined the last time he’d played at Hercules Hall, even down to the same wrong notes. Still, she hummed along to “A Hole to Put Poor Robin In” as she sat against the wall in Astley’s field. With ten Dorset Crosswheels completed in her lap, she was thinking about starting on High Tops. Before she began another, she yawned and stretched, for she’d been out all night helping Bet Butterfield with laundry. Though Maggie had finally decided to trade in mustard and vinegar for laundry and buttons, she was not sure that she would stick at it. Unlike her mother, she found it hard to sleep during the day, for she always woke feeling that she had missed something important-a fire or a riot or a visitor coming and going. She preferred to remain half-awake at least.

The hurdy-gurdy man changed tunes to “Bonny Kate and Danny,” and Maggie couldn’t resist accompanying him:

He took her to the river’s side

Bonny Kate and Danny

He took her to the river’s side

And there he laid her legs so wide

And on her belly he did ride

And he whipped in little Danny.

When forty weeks were come and gone

Bonny Kate and Danny

When forty weeks were come and gone

She was delivered of a son-

And she called him little Danny!

When he finished, Maggie sauntered over to the man, who was sitting on the steps outside Hercules Hall.

“You, you saucy cat!” he cried when he saw her. “Don’t you ever stop prowlin’ round here?”

“Don’t you ever stop wrecking the same songs?” Maggie retorted. “And didn’t no one tell you you’re not to play those songs no more? You keep singin’ ‘Bonny Kate and Danny’ and the Association’ll take you away.”

The man frowned. “What you mean?”

“Where you been? You’re not to play bawdy songs, but the ones they’ve writ for you, about the King an’ that. Don’t you know?” Maggie stood straight and bellowed to the tune of “God Save the King”:

To sing Great George’s praise

Let all your voices raise

Noble the theme.

Britain has various charms

Inviting to her arms

God guards us from all harms

Sacred His name.

“Or this?” She began to the tune of “Rule Britannia”:

Since first the Georges wore the crown,

How happy were their subjects made-

She broke off and laughed at the hurdy-gurdy man’s expression. “I know, it’s silly, an’t it? But I don’t know why you’re bothering to play anyway. Didn’t you know Mr. Astley’s not here? He’s gone to France to fight. Came back from Liverpool this winter when the French King was executed and England declared war against France, and went straight off to offer his services.”

“What use is his horse dancing against the French?”

“No, no-old Astley, not his son. John Astley’s still here, runnin’ the circus. And I can tell you, he don’t hire musicians off the street the way his father did, so you can just give yourself a rest.”

The man’s face fell. “What’s old Astley doin’ over there? He’s too fat to ride or fight.”

Maggie shrugged. “He wanted to go-said as an old cavalry man, it was his duty. ’Sides, he’s been sending back reports from the battles, and John Astley reenacts ’em here. No one understands ’em much, but they’re great fun to watch.”

The man removed the hurdy-gurdy strap from around his neck.

“Wait-will you play me something before you go?” Maggie begged.

The man paused. “Well, you are a rascally little cat, but since you’ve saved me sittin’ here all day playing, I’ll do one for you. What’ll it be?”

“‘Tom Bowling,’” Maggie requested, even though she knew that hearing the song would remind her of Maisie Kellaway singing it down by the warehouses along the river, back when she barely knew Jem.

As the man played, Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat and hummed along, though she did not sing the words. The memory of Maisie singing fed the dull ache in her chest that had never entirely disappeared over the months since Jem had gone.

Maggie had never missed anyone before. For a time she had indulged the feeling, conducting imaginary conversations with Jem, visiting places they’d been together-the alcoves on Westminster Bridge, Soho Square, even the brick kiln where she’d last seen him. At the manufactory she’d met a girl from Dorsetshire and had got her to talk, just to hear the accent. Whenever she could get away with it she mentioned Jem and the Kellaways to her mother or father, just to be able to say his name. None of this brought him back, though; indeed, eventually it always led her to the look of horror on his face at the kiln that night.

Midway through the second verse, a woman with a lovely clear voice began to sing. Maggie cocked her head to listen: It seemed to be coming from either the Blakes’ or Miss Pelham’s garden. Maggie signaled thanks to the hurdy-gurdy player and walked back toward the wall. She doubted the singer was Miss Pelham-she was not the singing type. Nor had Maggie ever heard Mrs. Blake sing. Perhaps it was Miss Pelham’s maid, though the girl was so cowed that Maggie had never heard her speak, much less sing.

By the time she wheeled the Astley barrow over to the wall, the hurdy-gurdy and the singing had stopped. Maggie climbed onto the barrow anyway and hiked herself up the wall to spy into the gardens.

Miss Pelham’s garden was empty, but in the Blakes’ garden a woman was kneeling in the vegetable rows near the house. She wore a light gown and apron, and a bonnet with a broad brim to keep the sun off. At first Maggie thought it was Mrs. Blake, but this figure was shorter and moved less nimbly. Maggie had heard that the Blakes had taken on a maidservant, but she had not seen her, for Mrs. Blake continued to do the shopping and other errands. Maggie had not visited no. 13 Hercules Buildings for months; with Jem gone she’d felt shyer about knocking on their door on her own-though Mr. Blake did always nod and ask her how she was whenever they passed in the street.

As she watched the maid work, she heard the sound of horse hooves clopping down the alley toward Hercules Hall’s stables. The maid stopped what she was doing and turned her head to listen, and Maggie got the first of two shocks. The figure was Maisie Kellaway.

“Maisie!” she shouted.

Maisie jerked her head around, and Maggie scrambled over the wall and hurried toward her. For a second it seemed Maisie would jump up and run inside. She clearly thought the better of it, though, and remained crouched in the dirt.

“Maisie, what you doing here?” Maggie cried. “I thought you were in Dorsetshire! Didn’t you-hang on a minute.” She thought hard, then shouted, “You’re the Blakes’ maid! You never went back to Piddle-dee-dee, did you? You been here all this time!”

“Tha’ be true,” Maisie murmured. Casting her eyes down to the rich soil, she pulled a weed from a row of carrots.

“But-why didn’t you tell me?” Maggie wanted to shake her. “Why are you hiding away? And why did you run off like that, without even sayin’ good-bye? I know that old stick Pelham was after you to go, but you could have said good-bye. After all we been through together. You could have found me and said that.” Sometime during this rant, her words had been redirected at the absent Jem, and her welling tears as well.

Tears were always addictive to Maisie. “Oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry!” she sobbed, lumbering to her feet and throwing her arms around her friend. That was when Maggie got her second shock, for pressing into her stomach was what hadn’t been visible when Maisie was kneeling: the solid baby she carried inside her.

The bump between them effectively stopped Maggie’s tears. Still hugging Maisie, she pulled her head back and looked down at it. For a rare moment in her life she could not think of anything to say.

“You see, when Ma and Pa decided to go back to Piddletrenthide,” Maisie began, “it were so cold that they was afraid I weren’t strong enough for such a long journey. Then Mr. and Mrs. Blake said they’d take me in. First we went off to stay with their friends the Cumberlands, to escape from those awful men who came to their door. The Cumberlands live out a ways in the countryside-Egham, it were. Even that short ride gave me a chesty cold, an’ we had to stay there a month. They was ever so nice to me. Then we come back, an’ I been here all this time.”

“Do you never go out? I han’t seen you at all!”

Maisie shook her head. “I didn’t want to-not at first, anyway. It were so cold and I felt sick. An’ then I didn’t want Miss Pelham and others nosing about, especially not once I began to show. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” She laid a hand on top of her bump. “An’ those Association men had threatened to come after Pa. I just thought it were better to be quiet here. I didn’t mean to hide from you, really. I didn’t! Once, after we come back from Egham, you came to the door and asked Mr. Blake about Jem, d’you remember? You wanted to know where he were, when he had left. I were upstairs and heard you, and I so badly wanted to run down and see you. But I just thought it would be better-safer-to stay hidden, even from you. I’m sorry.”

“But what do you do here?” Maggie glanced through the back window into Mr. Blake’s study and thought she could make out his head, bent over his desk.

Maisie brightened. “Oh, all sorts of things! Really, they be wonderful to me. I help with the cooking and the washing and the gardening. And you know”-she lowered her voice-“I think it’s done them good to have me, as it frees Mrs. Blake to help Mr. Blake more. He han’t been himself since they come for him that night o’ the riot, you see. The neighbors is funny with him, an’ give him looks. Makes him nervous, an’ he don’t work so well. It takes Mrs. Blake to steady him, and with me here she can do that. An’ I help Mr. Blake too. You know the printing press in the front room? I helped him and Mrs. Blake with that. D’you know, we made books. Books! I never thought I’d touch a book in my life other than a prayer book at church, much less make one. An’ Mrs. Blake has taught me to read-I mean really to read, not just prayers and such, but real books! At night sometimes we read out from a book called Paradise Lost. It’s the story of Satan and Adam and Eve, and it’s so thrilling! Oh, I don’t always understand it, because it talks about people and places I never heard of, and uses such fancy words. But it’s lovely to listen to.”

“Pear tree’s loss,” Maggie whispered.

“An’ then sometimes he reads his poems aloud to us. Oh, I love that.” Maisie paused, remembering. Then she closed her eyes and began to chant:

Tyger tyger, burning bright

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat

What dread hand? And what dread feet?

“There’s more, but that’s all I remember.”

Maggie shivered, though it was a warm day. “I like it,” she said after a moment. “But what do it mean?”

“I heard Mr. Blake say once to a visitor that it were about France. But then to another he said it were about the creator and the created.” Maisie repeated the phrase with the same cadence Mr. Blake must have used. A stab of jealousy shot through Maggie at the thought of Maisie spending cozy evenings by the fire reading with the Blakes and listening to Mr. Blake recite poetry and talk to cultured visitors. The feeling vanished, however, when Maisie put a hand to her back to ease the strain of the baby’s weight, and Maggie was reminded that, whatever period of grace Maisie was having, it wouldn’t last. Guilt quickly replaced jealousy.

“I didn’t realize that”-Maggie hesitated-“well, that you and John Astley had actually-you know. I thought we’d got back to you in time, me and Mr. Blake. I wasn’t gone long from the stables that night. I came back as quick as I could.”

Maisie’s eyes dropped to the ground, as if to study her weeding. “It didn’t take long, in the end.”

“Does Jem know? Do your parents?”

Maisie’s face crumpled. “No!” She began to cry again, great sobs that shook the whole of her ample body. Maggie put an arm around her and led her over to the steps of the summerhouse, where she let Maisie lay her head in her lap and sob for a long time, weeping as she had wanted to do for months but didn’t dare to in front of the Blakes.

At last her sobs died down, and she sat up, wiping her eyes on her apron. Her face had gone blotchy, and was broader and fleshier than it had been months before. Her bonnet looked like an old one of Mrs. Blake’s, and Maggie wondered what had happened to her silly, frilly Dorset mop cap. “What we going to do with this baby, then?” she said, surprising herself with the “we.”

Maisie did not start to cry again-she had rid herself of the dam of tears and was now drained and weary. “Ma and Pa keep sending word for me to come back-say they’ll get Jem to come up and fetch me.” Maggie caught her breath at the thought of Jem returning. “I been putting them off,” Maisie continued, “thinking it be better to have the baby here. Mrs. Blake said I could stay and have it. Then I could-could give it away and go home and no one would know. If it be a girl I could just take her round the corner to the Asylum for Female Orphans and…and…”

“What if it’s a boy?”

“I don’t-I don’t know.” Maisie was twisting and untwisting a corner of her apron. “Find some place to-” She couldn’t finish the sentence, so began a different one. “It be hard staying here, what with him just next door.” She looked fearfully up at the windows of John Astley’s house, then turned her face and pulled her bonnet close so that no one from there could recognize her. “Sometimes I can hear him through the walls, and it just makes me feel-” Maisie shuddered.

“Does he know about this?” Maggie nodded at Maisie’s belly.

“No! I don’t want him to!”

“But he might help-give you some money, at least.” Even as she said it Maggie knew it was unlikely John Astley would do even that. “Shame old Mr. Astley an’t here-he might do something for you, seeing as it’ll be his grandchild.”

Maisie shuddered again at the word. “Oh, he wouldn’t. I know that. I heard him with Miss Devine. You know, the slack-rope dancer. She were in the same state as me-and by the same man. Mr. Astley were awful to her-threw her out of the circus. He wouldn’t help me.” She gazed at the brick wall dividing the Blakes from Miss Pelham. “Miss Devine were kind to me once. I wonder what she did.”

“I can tell you that,” Maggie said. “I heard she went back to Scotland to have her baby.”

“Did she?” Maisie brightened a little at this news. “Did she really?”

“Is that what you want to do-go back to Dorsetshire?”

“Yes. Yes, I would. Mr. and Mrs. Blake have been so good to me, and I’m so grateful, but I miss Ma and Pa, and especially Jem. I miss him dreadful.”

“So do I,” Maggie agreed before she could stop herself, so grateful to have someone else concur with her own feelings. “I miss him dreadful too.” After a pause, she added, “You should go home, then. Your family’d take you in, would they?”

“I think so. Oh, but how would I get there? I han’t any money, and besides, I can’t go alone, not when the baby be due soon. I don’t dare ask the Blakes-they be so busy these days, and besides, though they’ve a big house, they really han’t any money. Mr. Blake don’t sell much of what he makes because it be so…so…well, difficult to understand. I think even Mrs. Blake don’t understand what he means sometimes. Oh, Maggie, what do we do?”

Maggie was not really listening, but thinking. To her it was as if a story had been laid out before her with its clear beginning and middle, and she was now responsible for its safe passage to the end. “Don’t you worry, Maisie,” she said. “I know what to do.”

2

Maggie was not sure what a silver caddy spoon was worth, but she suspected it would more than cover two passengers by coach to Dorchester, with a bit left over to help Maisie.

She decided to tackle Charlie head-on. After leaving Maisie in the Blakes’ garden, she headed for the pubs he drank in, starting with the Pineapple and Hercules Tavern, then moving on to the Crown and Cushion, the Old Dover Castle, and the Artichoke, before she had the idea to return to the Canterbury Arms. Charlie Butterfield had a weakness for one of the barmaids there, who had patched him up when Maggie led him in from Cut-Throat Lane the previous December. The Canterbury Arms was also discreetly anti-Association, those who worked there keeping men from that group waiting just that much longer before serving them, and then giving them sour beer. Charlie had kept his head low with the Association ever since the confrontation at the Blakes’ house.

Maggie found him standing at the bar, chatting to the barmaid. “I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s important.”

Charlie smirked and rolled his eyes at the barmaid, but allowed his sister to lead him to a quiet corner. Since the night in Cut-Throat Lane, they had got on better, having reached a wordless understanding negotiated via Jem’s blow and sealed as Maggie led her brother, bloody and dizzy, out of the dark and toward the pub’s lights. Maggie no longer blamed him for what happened on Cut-Throat Lane, and he was no longer so cruel to her. Indeed, as painful as her confession to Jem had been that night, after it Maggie felt older and lighter, as if ridding herself of a pocket full of stones.

“I need that spoon money,” Maggie announced when they’d sat down. She had found these days that it was best to be straight with him.

Charlie raised his eyebrows at his sister, both now scarred, for Jem’s blow had left its mark. “What you want it for?”

“Maisie.” Maggie explained what had happened.

Charlie slammed down his mug. “That bastard. I should’ve ripped his teeth out that night.”

“Well, it’s too late now.” Maggie marveled at how quickly Charlie could get angry at just about anything. Even his attempts to flirt were laced with violence-usually boasts of which girl’s sweetheart he would fight and how hard he could punch.

Charlie sat back and slugged his beer. “Anyway, I don’t have the money now.”

“Get it.”

When he laughed, she repeated herself. “Get it, Charlie. I don’t care how, but I want it tomorrow, or the next day. Please,” she added, though the word held little currency with him.

“Why so quick? She’s been here all these months-she can wait a little longer.”

“She wants to have her baby back home. Wants it to be a Piddle baby, God help her.”

“All right. Give me a day or two and I’ll get you what you need for the coach fare.”

“And a little extra for Maisie.”

“And the extra.” Though Charlie was no longer interested in Maisie-seeing John Astley’s mouth on her breast had cured him of that-the ghost of his attraction seemed to encourage him to be generous for once.

“Thanks, Charlie.”

He shrugged.

“One more thing-don’t tell Ma and Pa. They won’t understand, and they’ll just try an’ stop me, say it’s a waste of money and none of my business. You can tell ’em once I’ve gone-where I’ve gone and why.”

He nodded. “And when you’re coming back.”

3

Next Maggie booked two places on the London-to-Weymouth coach leaving in two and a half days, and hoped Charlie would have the money in time. Then she called on the Blakes to tell them, for she did not want Maisie to sneak away, after all they had done for her. Mrs. Blake seemed to know her business was serious, for she led her up to the front sitting room on the first floor, where Maggie had never been. While Mrs. Blake went to fetch her husband and some tea, Maggie peered at the walls, which were crowded with paintings and engravings, mostly by Mr. Blake. She had previously seen only glimpses of drawings in his notebook, or the odd page of a book.

The pictures were mostly of people, some naked, many wearing robes that clung to them in a way that made them look naked anyway. They were walking or lying on the ground, or looking at one another, and few seemed happy or content, as the figures Maggie had seen in Songs of Innocence were; instead they were worried, terrified, angry. Maggie felt anxiety rising in her own throat, but she could not stop looking at them, for they reminded her of echoes of feelings and remnants of dreams, as if her mind were a hidey-hole that Mr. Blake had crawled into and rummaged through before pulling the contents halfway out.

When the Blakes came in they had Maisie with them, though Mrs. Blake herself carried the tray that held a teapot and cup, which she set on a side table next to the armchair Mr. Blake gestured Maggie to. Maggie wasn’t sure if she ought to pour the tea herself, and so left it, till Mrs. Blake took pity on her and poured out a cup for her.

“An’t you having any, ma’am?” Maggie asked.

“Oh, no, Mr. Blake and me don’t drink it-it’s just for our guests.”

Maggie stared at the brown liquid, too self-conscious to bring it to her lips.

Mr. Blake saved the awkward moment by leaning forward in the armchair opposite and fixing his big bright eyes on her-eyes that Maggie recognized now as being in many of the faces in the pictures on the wall; she felt as if there were a dozen pairs of William Blake’s eyes all watching her. “Well, now, Maggie,” he said, “Kate tells me you have something you want to say to us.”

“Yes, sir.” Maggie glanced at Maisie, who was standing against the door, her eyes already welling with tears when they hadn’t even begun discussing her. Then Maggie laid out the plan to the Blakes. They listened courteously, Mr. Blake’s gaze steady on her, Mrs. Blake looking into the unlit fire, not needed now in summer.

When Maggie finished-and it didn’t take long to tell them she would accompany Maisie on the coach to Dorsetshire, and that they would leave in two days-Mr. Blake nodded. “Well, Maisie, Kate and I knew you would leave us eventually, didn’t we, Kate? You’ll be needing the coach fare, won’t you?”

Mrs. Blake shifted, and her hand stirred in the folds of her apron, but she said nothing.

“No, sir,” Maggie announced with pride. “That’s taken care of. I got the money myself.” She had never been able to say that before about something as significant as two pounds for two coach fares. Maggie had rarely had more than sixpence of her own; even her mustard and vinegar money had gone straight to her parents, bar a penny or two. The luxury of being able to refuse Mr. Blake’s money was a feeling she would long savor.

“Well, now, my girl, if you’ll wait a moment, I’m going to get something from downstairs. I won’t be a minute, Kate.” Mr. Blake jumped up and was out of the door almost before Maisie could get out of the way, leaving the two girls with Mrs. Blake. “Drink your tea, Maggie,” she said gently, and now, without Mr. Blake’s persistent eyes on her, Maggie found that she could.

“Oh, Maggie, can you really pay the fares?” Maisie knelt at her side.

“Course. I said I would, didn’t I?” Maggie didn’t add that she was still waiting for Charlie to give her the money.

Mrs. Blake was going around the walls, straightening the prints and paintings. “You will be careful, girls, won’t you? If you start to feel ill or have pains, Maisie, you’ll get the coachman to stop.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you been in many coaches, Mrs. Blake?” Maggie asked.

Mrs. Blake chuckled. “We’ve never been out of London, my dear.”

“Oh!” It had not occurred to Maggie that she might be doing something the more experienced Blakes had not.

“We’ve walked out in the countryside, of course,” Mrs. Blake continued, brushing the back of Mr. Blake’s armchair. “Sometimes a long way. But always within a half day’s walk of London. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be so far away from what you know. Mr. Blake knows, of course, for he journeys far and wide in his mind. Indeed, he’s always someplace else. Sometimes I see very little of him.” She let her fingers rest on the ridge of the armchair’s back.

“’Tis hard,” Maisie murmured, “being in one place, and thinking about t’other so.” Tears began to roll down her face. “I’ll be so glad to see the Piddle Valley again, no matter what they think of me when they see me.” She quickly dried her eyes with a corner of her apron when she heard Mr. Blake’s step on the stairs.

He came in with two small, flat, identical packages wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “This is for you, and that for Jem when you see him,” he said. “For helping me when I most needed it.” As he handed the packages to Maggie, she heard the sharp catching of Mrs. Blake’s breath in her throat.

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Blake!” Maggie whispered in confusion as she held one in each hand. She didn’t receive many gifts, and certainly not from someone like Mr. Blake; she wasn’t sure if she was meant to open them now or not.

“Take good care of those, my dear,” Mrs. Blake said in a tight voice. “They’re precious.”

That decided Maggie-she wouldn’t open them just yet. Stacking them together, she slipped them into her apron pocket. “Thank you,” she repeated, wanting to cry but not knowing why.

4

Another surprise awaited Maggie out in the street. Now that the Kellaways no longer lived at no. 12 Hercules Buildings, she never bothered to give the house more than a glance as she passed. This time, though, she heard Miss Pelham’s raised voice and looked to see who was on the receiving end. It was a girl Maisie’s age, rough in a torn satin skirt that strained against the protruding bump only a little smaller than Maisie’s.

“Go away!” Miss Pelham was shouting. “Get out of my garden! That family was nothing but trouble when they lived here, and look-even now they drag down my good name. Who told you to come here, anyway?”

Maggie couldn’t hear the girl’s reply, but Miss Pelham soon supplied the information. “I’m going to have a word with Mr. Astley. How dare he send a tart like you round to me! His father wouldn’t dare do such a thing. Now, away! Go away, girl!”

“But where do I go now?” the girl wailed. “No one’ll have me like this!” As she turned from Miss Pelham’s door Maggie got a better look at her and, though she’d only seen her once before, recognized the straw hair and pale face and unmistakable pathos of Rosie Wightman, Maisie and Jem’s friend from Dorsetshire.

“Rosie!” Maggie hissed as the girl reached the gate. Rosie looked at her blankly, unable to distinguish Maggie’s face from the long parade of characters she’d been involved with over the months since she’d briefly met her.

“Rosie, are you looking for Maisie Kellaway?” Maggie persisted.

Rosie’s face cleared. “Oh, yes!” she cried. “She told me to come to the circus, an’ I did just now, but there be no Kellaways there no more. An’ I don’t know what to do.”

Miss Pelham had caught sight of Maggie. “You!” she crowed. “Of course I’m not surprised to find you hanging about with tawdry trash like her. She’s a fine example of what you’ll become!”

“Shhh!” Maggie hissed. Passersby were beginning to take note of them, and Maggie didn’t want to draw attention to yet another pregnant girl.

No one, however, could shush Miss Pelham. “Are you telling me to be quiet, you little guttersnipe?” she cried, her voice rising almost to a song. “I’ll have you taken away and beaten till you’re sorry you’re alive! I’ll have you-”

“I was only saying shush, ma’am,” Maggie interrupted loudly, and thinking fast, “because you won’t want to draw more attention to yourself than you already have. I just heard someone telling another that you’d a visitor-your niece.” She nodded at Rosie Wightman. A man in the road carrying a basket of shrimps on his head broke his stride at Maggie’s words and leered at Miss Pelham and Rosie. “She looks just like you, ma’am!” he said, to Maggie’s delight and Miss Pelham’s horror. The latter gazed fearfully about to see if anyone else had heard, then jumped inside and slammed the door.

Turning away in satisfaction, Maggie contemplated her latest surprise and sighed. “Lord a mercy, Rosie Wightman, what we goin’ to do with you?”

Rosie stood complacent. It was enough for her to have got herself this far, even if ten months later than Jem and Maisie had expected her. As with the men she went with, once a course of action was set in motion, she was content to surrender. “Have you anything to eat?” she yawned. “I be so hungry.”

“Oh Lord,” Maggie sighed again, before taking Rosie by the arm and leading her to no. 13 Hercules Buildings.

5

It was rare for the Butterfields to sit down of an evening and eat together at home. To Maggie it was a miracle that this happened the night before she was to leave on the Weymouth coach. It was what she might have planned if she had thought she could manage it. As it was, she had expected simply to go to bed early and sneak out before dawn to pick up the girls. She had prepared several lies, if she needed them, for why she couldn’t accompany her mother to a night wash (a vinegar girl had asked her to fill in the next day) or her father to the pub (she had a bellyache). In the end she didn’t need either: Bet Butterfield did not have a wash to go to, and Dick Butterfield announced that he was staying in and expected a steak and kidney pie for supper.

Pie brought Charlie sniffing, and pulled them to the table to sit around the plate Bet Butterfield set down in the center. For a few minutes there was no sound as they tucked in. “Ah,” Dick Butterfield sighed after several bites. “Perfection, chuck. You could be cooking for the King.”

“I’d settle for washin’ his sheets,” Bet Butterfield replied. “Think what a lot o’ money them palace laundresses must earn, eh, Dick?”

“What’s the matter, Mags-you’re not eatin’ the pie your mam’s taken such trouble over. Is that gratitude?”

“Sorry, Mam, I’ve a bit of a bellyache.” Maggie used up one of her lies anyway. She was finding it hard to swallow, her stomach jittery with nerves about the next day. Her mother’s talk of money made her feel even worse: She kept shooting glances at Charlie, who still hadn’t given her the spoon money. She was hoping to pull him aside later. Now he was enjoying ignoring her as he reached for another helping of pie.

“Well, now, that’s a shame,” Dick Butterfield said. “Maybe you’ll feel better later.”

“Maybe.” Maggie looked at Charlie again. He was sucking at a piece of beef fat, the grease glistening on his lips. She wanted to slap him.

Charlie smiled at her. “What’s the matter, Mags? Not making you sick, am I? You’re not feeling poor, are you?”

“Shut up,” Maggie muttered, wondering now at Charlie’s mood, which was not the sort in which he was likely to keep promises.

“What’s this, what’s this?” Dick Butterfield said. “Stop it, you two. Let’s eat in peace.”

When they’d finished, Dick Butterfield sat back and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I’m going up to Smithfield’s tomorrow,” he announced. “Goin’ to see someone about some lambs comin’ in from-where was they comin’ in from, Charlie?”

“Dor-set-shire,” Charlie answered, drawing out each syllable.

Maggie’s throat closed so that she couldn’t speak.

“You want to come, Mags?” Dick Butterfield’s eyes rested on her. “It’s easier to let Dorsetshire come to you rather’n you go to Dorsetshire, wouldn’t you say?”

“Charlie, you bastard!” Maggie managed to get out, realizing now that he had never intended to give her the spoon money.

“Now, Mags,” Dick Butterfield interjected, “don’t blame him. He’s just lookin’ out for you. You don’t think he’s goin’ to let you go off on a country adventure without tellin’ me.”

“I-Please, Pa. I’m just tryin’ to help her.”

“The best help you can give is to your mam with her laundry, not runnin’ round Dorsetshire looking for that boy, under the ruse of helping his sister.”

“I’m not doing that! I just want to take her home, where she wants to be, out of this-this cesspit!”

Dick Butterfield chuckled. “You think this is a cesspit, gal, wait till you get to the countryside. Things happen out there just as bad as here-worse, sometimes, as there an’t so many people watchin’ out for you. You forget that your mam and me is from the countryside-we knows what we’re talkin’ about, don’t we, Bet?”

Maggie’s mother had remained quiet throughout this exchange, concentrating on clearing the table. She looked up briefly from the last bit of pie she was moving to the sideboard. “That’s right, duck,” she agreed, her voice flat. Maggie studied her mother’s face, and found in her frown a spark of hope, even as her father was saying, “You’ll be staying here with us, Mags. You’re a London girl, you know. You belong here.”

Maggie lay awake most of the night, thinking of ways she might still get the money she needed for the journey. This included selling one of Mr. Blake’s gifts, if they were valuable, though she hated the idea.

Then hope arrived. After a short doze, Maggie awoke to find Bet Butterfield sitting by her bed. “Shh. We don’t want to wake no one. Get yourself dressed and ready for your journey. Quiet, now.” Her mother gestured toward the other bed, where Charlie was sleeping on his stomach, his mouth open.

Maggie quickly changed and gathered the few things she would need, making sure above all that Mr. Blake’s packages were safe in her pocket.

When she joined her mother in the kitchen, Bet Butterfield handed her a sack filled with bread and the remnants of the pie, and a handkerchief knotted around a bulge of coins. “This should get you to Dorsetshire,” she whispered. “It’s bits and bobs I’ve set aside these past months-all my button money, and other things too. Since you’ve helped me with ’em, some of it’s yours. That’s how I see it.” She said this as if already rehearsing her side of the argument she would have the next day with her husband when he discovered Maggie and the money were gone.

“Thanks, Mam.” Maggie hugged her mother. “Why you doin’ this for me?”

“I owe that girl somethin’ for lettin’ her get in the state she’s in. You get her home safe, now. And come back, will you.”

Maggie hugged Bet Butterfield again, breathing in her smell of pie and laundry, then crept out while her luck still held.

6

Maggie remembered every moment of the journey to Dorsetshire, and long afterward liked to travel through it again in her mind. Bet Butterfield’s money extended only to two passages inside the coach, and it took a great deal of persuasion for the coachman to agree to let Maggie sit up beside him for the reduced third fare. He was convinced at last by the state of Maisie and Rosie, with Maggie claiming she was a midwife and if she didn’t go along the coachman might have to deliver the babies himself.

Maisie and Rosie caused a sensation everywhere they went together-at the inns where the horses were changed, at the dinner tables, in the streets where they took a turn to stretch their legs, in the coach itself, crowded with the other passengers. One pregnant girl was common enough, but with two together the double dose of fertility directed attention their way, offending some, delighting others. Maisie and Rosie were so happy to have each other’s company that they barely noticed the tuts and smiles, but snuggled together in the coach, and whispered and giggled in the street. It was just as well, then, that Maggie sat on top of the coach. Besides, from there she had a much better view of the vivid, unfamiliar landscape of southern England.

The first stage was not so surprising, as the coach passed through a string of villages that shadowed the Thames and looked back to London for their vitality-Vauxhall, Wandsworth, Putney, Barnes, Sheen. Only after Richmond and the first change of horses did Mag gie feel they had truly left London behind. The land opened out into long, rolling hills in a physical rhythm unknown to someone accustomed to the chopped-up streets of a big city. At first Maggie could only look ahead over the layered hills to the horizon, which was farther away than she’d ever witnessed. After coming to terms with that spacious novelty, she was then able to focus on the landscape closer to hand, to take in the fields segmented by hedgerows, the sheep and cows sprinkled about, and the thatched houses, whose shaggy curves made her laugh. By the time they stopped for dinner in Basingstoke, she was even asking the coachman for the names of roadside flowers she had never taken any interest in before.

It would all have been overwhelming for a London girl if she weren’t perched on the rattling box, detached from what she saw, passing by but not engaging with the countryside. Maggie felt safe where she was, squeezed between coachman and groom, and loved every minute on the road-even when it began to rain midafternoon and the coachman’s hat dripped directly onto her head.

They stayed the night at an inn in Stockbridge. Maggie got little sleep, for it was noisy, with coaches arriving till midnight and the inn serving far later. Sharing a bed with two pregnant girls meant that one or the other was always getting up to use the chamber pot. Then too, Maggie had never slept anywhere other than at home and, briefly, in the Blakes’ summerhouse. She wasn’t used to such a public place for sleeping, with three other beds in the room, and women coming and going all night long.

Lying still after a day on the move gave Maggie time at last to think about what she was doing, and to fret. For one thing, she had little money left. The inn meals had been half a crown each, with another shilling to the waiter, and extra costs kept appearing-sixpence expected by the chambermaid who showed them to their room and gave them a sheet and blankets, tuppence for the boy who told them he must clean their boots, a penny for the porter who insisted on carrying their bags upstairs when they could easily have done so themselves, for they had few things. With her meager fund of pennies and shillings rapidly eroding, Maggie would have nothing left by the time she reached the Piddle Valley.

She thought too about her family: how angry her father would be to discover she had escaped, how much grief her mother would have to suffer from him for helping Maggie. Above all, she wondered where Charlie was right now, and whether he would find her one day and punish her for the revenge she took on him. For that morning, when she and the girls had reached the White Hart in the Borough High Street where the Weymouth coach started, Maggie had spied a soldier, taken him aside, and told him there was a young man at no. 6 Bastille Row full of enough piss to take on the French. The soldier had promised to visit the house first thing-the army was always looking for likely young lads to send to war-and had given her a shilling. It was nothing like the amount of the spoon money she never got off her brother, but it was every bit as satisfying-and even more satisfying to think of Charlie shipped off to France.

In the morning, though still damp from the previous day’s rain, Maggie was keen to start-keener, indeed, than Maisie and Rosie, who were tired, flea-bitten, and sore from the previous day’s bumping about in the coach. Maisie in particular was silent over the hurried bread and ale breakfast, and stayed in the coach at the changes of the horses. She ate little of her dinner at Blandford-which was just as well, for Maggie had only enough money for two dinners, split between the girls while she ate her mother’s pie.

“You all right?” she said as Maisie pushed her plate to Rosie, who happily ate her way through the untouched potatoes and cabbage.

“Baby’s heavy,” Maisie replied. She swallowed. “Oh, Maggie, I can’t believe I’ll be home in a few hours. Home! It do feel like I han’t seen Piddletrenthide in years, though it be only a year and a bit.”

Maggie’s gut twisted. Until now she’d been enjoying the trip so much that she’d managed to push from her mind what it was leading to. Now she wondered what it would be like actually to see Jem again, for he knew her deepest secret and had shown what he thought of it. She was not sure he would want to see her. “Maisie,” she began, “p’raps-well, it’s not far now, is it?”

“No, not far. They’ll leave us at Piddletown-tha’ be six miles from here. We can walk from there-another five miles or so.”

“P’raps, then, you two could go on without me. I’ll stay here and catch the coach on its way back.” Maggie hadn’t told Maisie of her money troubles, but looking around Blandford-a busy town, the largest they’d been through since Basingstoke-she thought she could find work briefly somewhere and earn her fare back. It couldn’t be that hard to be a chambermaid in a coaching inn, she decided.

Maisie, however, clutched at Maggie. “Oh, no, you can’t leave us! We need you! What would we do without you?” Even the passive Rosie looked over in alarm. Maisie lowered her voice. “Please don’t abandon us, Maggie. I…I do think the baby’s coming soon.” Even as she said it she winced, her body tense and rigid, as if trying to contain a deep pain.

Maggie’s eyes widened. “Maisie!” she hissed. “How long has this been goin’ on?”

Maisie gazed at her fearfully. “Since this morning,” she said. “But it an’t bad yet. Please can we go on? I don’t want to have it here!” She looked around her at the noisy, busy, dirty inn. “I want to get home.”

“Well, at least you an’t at the yelling stage,” Maggie decided. “You could be hours yet. Let’s see how we get on.”

Maisie squeezed her hand gratefully.

Maggie did not enjoy that last leg of the coach journey, worrying about Maisie down below but reluctant to ask the coachman to stop so she could check on her. She could only assume that Rosie would rap on the ceiling if something were wrong. And the surrounding landscape-despite the greenness of the fields, the pleasing movement of hills and valleys, the bright blue sky, and the sun lighting up the fields and hedgerows-looked threatening to her now that she knew she’d soon be out in the middle of it. She began to notice how few houses there were. What are we going to do? she thought. What if Maisie has the baby out in a field somewhere?

7

Piddletown was a large village, with several streets lined with thatched houses, a handful of pubs, and a market square, where the coach let them down. Maggie said good-bye to the coachman, who wished her well, then laughed and cracked his whip at the horses. When the coach was gone, taking with it the clopping and jangling and rattling they had lived with for the last day and a half, the three girls stood silent in the street. Unlike London, where most passersby wouldn’t even notice the girls, here it felt to Maggie as if every person was staring at the new arrivals.

“Rosie Wightman, look a’ wha’ you been doin’,” remarked a young woman leaning against a house with a basket of buns. Rosie, who’d had many reasons to cry in the two years since she’d left the Piddle Valley but never had, burst into tears.

“You leave her be, you bandy little bitch!” Maggie shouted. To her amazement, the woman guffawed. Maggie turned to Maisie for a translation.

“She can’t understand you,” Maisie explained. “They’re not used to London ways. Don’t.” She pulled at Maggie’s sleeve to keep her back from the laughter that had spread to others. “It don’t matter. Piddletowners has always been funny with us. Come on.” She led them up the street, and in a few minutes they were out of the village and on a track heading northwest.

“You sure you want to leave town?” Maggie asked. “If you need to stop and have your baby, now’s the time to say.”

Maisie shook her head. “Don’t want to have it in Piddletown. An’ I be all right. Pain’s gone.” Indeed, she stepped eagerly along the track, taking Rosie’s hand and swinging it as they entered the familiar landscape of hills that would take them down into the Piddle Valley. They began to point out landmarks to each other, and to speculate once again about various residents of their village, as they had done constantly over the past few days.

At first the hills were long and gently rolling, with a wide sky above them like an overturned blue bowl and a view for miles of green and brown ridges divided by woods and hedgerows. The track led straight alongside a tall hedgerow, with misty banks of shoulder-high cow parsley flanking the way. It was hot and still, and with the sun beating down, insects invisibly whirring and ticking, and the cow parsley floating her along, Maggie began to feel as if she were in a dream. There were no sheep or cows in the nearby fields, and no people about. She spun all the way around and could see neither a house nor a barn nor a plow nor a trough nor even a fence. Other than the rutted track, there was nothing to indicate that people even existed, much less lived, here. She had a sudden vision of herself in this land as a bird might see her from high above, a lone speck of white among the green and brown and yellow. The emptiness frightened her: She could feel fear gripping her stomach and working its way up her chest to her throat, where it held tight and threatened to throttle her. She stopped, gulped, and tried to call to the girls, who were getting farther and farther away from her down the track.

Maggie shut her eyes and took a deep breath, in her mind hearing her father say, “Pull yourself together, Mags. This won’t do at all.” When she opened her eyes she saw a figure coming down the hill in front of them. The relief that flooded her was tempered by new concern, for as Maggie knew too well, a lone man could be the danger that made the emptiness so threatening. She hurried to catch up with the girls, who had also spotted the man. Neither seemed worried-in fact, they quickened their pace. “Tha’ be Mr. Case!” Maisie cried. “He’ll be comin’ from the Piddles. Ar’ernoon!” She waved at him.

They met him at the lowest part of the valley, just next to a stream that ran along the seam of two fields. Mr. Case was about Thomas Kellaway’s age, tall, wiry, with a pack on his back and the long, steady gait of someone who spends much of his time walking. He raised his eyebrows when he recognized Maisie and Rosie. “You going home, you two?” he inquired. “I heard none about it in the Piddles. They be expecting you?”

“No, they don’t know-anything,” Maisie answered.

“You back to stay? We missed your hand. I’ve had customers ask specially for your buttons, you know.”

Maisie blushed. “You be teasing me, Mr. Case.”

“I must get on, but I’ll see you next month, aye?”

She nodded, and he turned and strode off up the track they had just descended.

“Who was that?” Maggie asked, gazing after him.

Maisie looked back at him fondly, grateful that he’d not said anything or shown any surprise about the baby she carried. “The button agent making his rounds-he comes to collect buttons every month. He’s off to Piddletown now. I’d forgot he comes this day every month. An’t it strange how quick we forget things like that?”

The girls took a long time to climb the hill, panting and puffing, and stopping often, with Maggie carrying all of their bundles by now. As they rested she saw the telltale wince and tightening of Maisie’s jaw, but decided to say nothing. They were able to go more quickly down the next hill before climbing slowly again. In this stop-start manner they made their way along the Piddle Valley, Maggie discovering that the stream they crisscrossed was actually the River Piddle, reduced to a trickle in the midsummer heat. This piece of information restored something of her old sense of humor. “River. River! You could fit a hundred o’ them Piddlers in the Thames!” she crowed as she hopped onto a rock to cross it in two bounds.

“How d’you think I felt, seeing the Thames the first time?” Maisie retorted. “I thought there were an awful flood!”

Eventually they crested a hill to find that the track they were on intersected a proper road, which led down into a huddle of houses around a square-towered church, one side of it painted in gold light by the descending sun.

“At last!” Maggie said brightly, to cover her nerves.

“Not quite,” Maisie corrected. “Tha’ be Piddlehinton-next but one to Piddletrenthide. It be a long village, mind, but we’ll be there soon enough.” She gripped the stile they’d stopped by and leaned over it, groaning softly.

“It’s all right, Maisie,” Maggie said, patting her shoulder. “We’ll get you help soon.”

When the contraction had passed, Maisie straightened and stepped firmly onto the road. Rosie followed less certainly. “Oh, Maisie, what they going to say about us-about…” She glanced down at her own bump.

“There be nothing we can do about that now, can we? Just hold your head up. Here now-take my arm.” Maisie linked hers through her friend’s as they descended into Piddlehinton.

8

While on the track, they had met no one other than the button agent, and seen a man with his sheep on a distant hill, and another with a horse and plow. The road proper carried more traffic, however-workers coming in from the fields, horsemen passing through on their way to Dorchester, a farmer driving his cows toward a barn, children running home from an afternoon playing by the river. The girls slipped in among the others, hoping not to draw attention, but that was impossible, of course. Even before they reached the first house in the village, children began to appear and follow them. Each time they had to stop to wait for Maisie, the children stopped too, at a distance. “I bet they an’t had so much excitement all week,” Maggie remarked. “All month, even.”

As they approached the New Inn-the first pub in the village-a woman called out from her doorway, “Tha’ be Maisie Kellaway, don’ it? Didn’t know you was coming back now. An’ like tha’.”

Maisie flinched, but was forced to stop short with a contraction.

“You too, Rosie Wightman,” the woman added. “You been busy in London, have you?”

“Could you help us, ma’am?” Maggie interrupted, trying to keep her temper in check. “Maisie’s havin’ her baby.”

The woman studied Maisie. Behind her, two small boys appeared, peeking out at the newcomers. “Where be her husband? An’ yourn?”

There was a silence during which Maisie opened her mouth and then shut it; the ease she’d developed in lying in London appeared to have deserted her.

Maggie had less trouble. “France,” she declared. “They gone to fight the Frenchies. I been charged to bring the wives home.” To counter the woman’s skeptical look, she added, “I’m the sister of Maisie’s husband. Charlie-Charlie Butterfield’s his name.” As she spoke she kept her eyes fastened on Maisie’s, willing her to follow suit. Maisie opened her mouth, paused, then said, “Tha’s right. I be Maisie Butterfield now. An’ Rosie be…”

“Rosie Blake,” Maggie finished for her. “Married to Billy Blake same day as my brother, just before they gone off to France.”

The woman regarded them, her eyes lingering on Rosie’s dirty satin skirt. At last, though, she said to one of the boys peeking around her, “Eddie, run up to the Five Bells-don’t bother at the Crown, they’ve no cart there today. Ask if they can send a cart back to pick up a girl in labor needs to go up the Kellaways’ in Piddletrenthide.”

“We’ll go along and meet the cart,” Maisie muttered as the boy ran off. “Don’ want to stay round with her lookin’ at us.” She linked arms with Rosie and started down the road, Maggie shouldering the bundles once more, the gang of children still following. Glancing behind her, she saw the woman cross the road to another who had just come out of her cottage; the first spoke to the second as they watched the trio.

As they walked, Maisie said in a low voice to Maggie, “Thank’ee.”

Maggie smiled. “Didn’t you say once you’d always wanted a sister?”

“An’ Rosie married to Mr. Blake! Can you imagine?”

“What would Mrs. Blake say?” Maggie chuckled.

They passed from Piddlehinton into Piddletrenthide, though Maggie would not have guessed without Maisie telling her, as there was no break or change in the long string of houses along the road. She felt herself being sucked deeper and deeper into the Dorset village, and though it was better than being in the empty field, its unfamiliarity-the mud everywhere, the cottages with their peculiar straw roofs, the flat eyes of the villagers watching her-made her uncomfortable. A few called out greetings, but many said nothing, simply staring at the girls even though they recognized them. Maggie began to wonder if perhaps Maisie should have remained in Lambeth to have the baby after all.

Maisie’s waters broke in front of the Crown, and the girls had to stop, for her contractions were becoming more frequent and more painful. They led her to the bench next to the pub’s door. “Oh, where is that cart?” Maisie gasped. Then the publican’s wife came out with a cry and a hug for both Maisie and Rosie. It seemed only to take that one well-wisher to turn the mood from judgment to joy. Others emerged from the pub and from neighboring houses, and the Piddle girls were surrounded by surprised neighbors and old friends. Maisie rolled out her new lie for the first time, calling herself Maisie Butterfield so casually and fluently that Maggie wanted to congratulate her. She’s going to be fine, she thought, and took a step back from the crowd.

The cart arrived at last, driven by Mr. Smart, the very man who had first brought the Kellaways to London, and who was now taking part in another, more local adventure he could talk about at the pub later. Several women lifted the groaning Maisie into the bed of straw spread in the back, and Rosie and the publican’s wife climbed in after her. Maisie turned to ask Maggie for something from her bundle and discovered her friend was not in the cart with them. “Maggie!” she cried as they began to pull away. “Mr. Smart, wait for Maggie!” She had to stop, however, when the strongest contraction yet turned her cry into a scream.

The only sign that Maggie had been there at all was the girls’ bundles she’d been carrying, stacked on the pub bench.

9

Jem sensed something was different long before the cart appeared. As he worked outside the front door of the Kellaways’ cottage, painting a chair that his brother Sam had just finished leveling, he could hear a distant buzzing in the air of the kind that occurs when people have gathered and are discussing a subject, punctuated by occasional yelps from excited children. He did not think too much of it, for he had heard the same earlier that afternoon when the button agent passed through, and though he was long gone, his visit might account for the renewed disturbance. Perhaps two women were arguing over the quality the agent had assigned their buttons, whether superior, standard, or seconds. Each Piddle woman was proud of her handiwork, and hated to be judged not up to the usual standard. A catty remark by another could start an argument that might run publically for weeks.

Jem smiled at the thought, but it was with resignation rather than appreciation. Aspects of village life appeared very different to him since his return from London, now that he had something to compare it to. He couldn’t imagine his Lambeth neighbors arguing over the quality of their buttons, for example. Though he never told anyone, there were times when Piddletrenthide, like its river, seemed limited after Lambeth and the Thames. Some days he opened the front door to look out, and his heart sank at the sight of everything being the same as it had been the day before. There were no pineapples carried past, no sky blue ribbons dangling down girls’ backs. This was the sort of thing he might have complained about to Maisie if she were there. He missed her; and he envied her the months she was spending at the Blakes’.

It had not been easy for the Kellaways to settle back in to Piddletrenthide, even though they had been gone less than a year. They arrived in the middle of a snowstorm, so that no one was out on the road to greet them, and walked into their old cottage to find Sam Kellaway and his wife, Lizzie, in bed together, though it was gone noon. It had been an uncomfortable start, and some of the family had not quite recovered.

Thomas Kellaway soon enough took up his old spot in the workshop, relinquished grudgingly by Sam, who had enjoyed his brief taste of being his own master. His father was slower making his chairs than Sam liked, and Sam was quicker to point this out than before. Though neither said anything, Thomas Kellaway sometimes wondered if he was really still master of his workshop.

Anne Kellaway found it hard to fit in as well, for she had come back to a daughter-in-law in her place. In the past, Anne Kellaway and Lizzie Miller had got on, for Lizzie had been a quiet girl who always deferred to her future mother-in-law. With marriage and her own home, however, Lizzie had grown into a woman with opinions, which she was reluctant to hand back when the Kellaways reappeared at the cottage she had begun to make her own. She had changed some things, bringing in some Miller furniture, hanging new curtains, moving a table from one side of the room to the other. Within an hour of their arrival, Anne Kellaway had moved the table back, sending Lizzie into a sulk that had lasted these seven months. As a result the two women avoided being alone together-not easy when their work kept them in the same room so much; indeed, Anne Kellaway ought to have been helping Lizzie wash the curtains, but chose instead to work out in the garden beyond the chair workshop. She did not sense what Jem did-did not catch the current of excitement that passed invisibly through the village when something new was happening. Instead she was weeding among the leeks and trying not to think about the stump of the pear tree at the bottom of the garden. It had been a year and a half since Tommy died, and she still thought of him several times a day. That was what being a parent meant, she had come to realize: Your children remained with you, alive or dead, nearby or faraway. She fretted too about Maisie, stuck in Lambeth. They must find a way to get her back.

Then she heard Maisie’s screams.

Anne Kellaway reached the front of the house at the same moment as the cart. “God in heaven,” she murmured as she caught sight of her daughter’s bulk, and sought out her husband’s eyes.

Thomas Kellaway took in his daughter’s condition without blinking. A determined expression crossed his face-one that had developed during the months the Kellaways spent in Lambeth. He gazed at his wife. Then, in full view of his neighbors who had come out to see what the fuss was about, Thomas Kellaway strode over and, calling to Jem and Sam to help, lifted his daughter down from the cart.

Despite Thomas Kellaway’s gesture, Anne Kellaway knew that the neighbors would watch to see what she would do, and take their response from her. Looking around, she saw her daughter-in-law, Lizzie, studying Maisie with barely concealed disgust. Anne Kellaway closed her eyes, and an image of Miss Laura Devine swinging freely on her rope arose in her mind. She nodded to herself, opened her eyes, and joined her husband, putting her arm around Maisie while Thomas Kellaway propped up her other side. “All right, Maisie,” she murmured. “You be home now.”

As they led her into the cottage, Maisie called over her shoulder, “Jem, you must find Maggie-I don’t know where she’s gone!”

Jem started, his eyes wide. “Maggie be here?”

“Oh yes, we couldn’t have come without her. She’s been so good to Rosie and me-arranged everything and looked after us. But then she disappeared!”

“Where were she last?”

“By the Crown. We got on the cart and I turned round and she weren’t there. Oh, please find her, Jem! She han’t any money and she’s scared out here.” Maisie was pulled inside before she could see how fast her brother turned and ran.

10

Piddletrenthide was a long, narrow village, with far more than the thirty houses it had been originally named for stretched out along the Piddle for more than a mile. The Crown was on the edge, just before the village became Piddlehinton. Jem was out of breath by the time he reached the pub. Once he got his breath back he asked around, but no one had seen Maggie. He knew, however, that a stranger could not get far in the valley without people noting it.

At the New Inn Jem spoke to some children hanging about, who said Maggie had passed them half an hour earlier. Farther on an old man confirmed he’d seen her by the church. Jem ran on in the gathering dusk.

At the church he spied a flash of white behind the wall separating the churchyard from the road, and his heart beat faster. When he peeked over the wall, however, he saw, sitting up against it in the last patch of sunlight, a Piddle girl Jem recognized as a distant cousin of his sister-in-law. She held something in her lap that she quickly covered with her apron on Jem’s approach.

“Evenin’,” Jem said, squatting next to her. “Tell me, you seen a girl walking this way? A stranger, older’n you. From London.”

The girl stared at him with wide dark eyes that flashed with concealed knowledge. “You be a Miller girl, don’t you?” Jem persisted. “The Plush Millers.”

After a moment the girl nodded.

“Your cousin Lizzie lives with us, you know. She’s married to my brother Sam.”

The girl contemplated this. “She told me to find Jem,” she said at last.

“Who-Lizzie? I just been with her at home.”

“The London lady.”

“You seen her? What did she say? Where is she?”

“She said-” The girl looked down at her lap, clearly torn between concealment and revelation. “She said-to give you this.” From underneath her apron she removed a slim mushroom-colored book, which had been wrapped in brown paper that was now undone. The girl looked at him fearfully. “I didn’t mean to unwrap it, but the string did come off, an’ the paper slipped, an’ I saw the pictures, an’ I couldn’t help it, I just wanted to look at it. I never seen such a thing.”

Even as he reached for it Jem thought he knew what it was. When he opened it to the title page, however, he discovered that it was different from the book he’d seen. Instead of children clustered at their mother’s knee, the colored drawing was of a young man and woman bent over the bodies of a man and woman laid out on a bier, reminding him of the stone statues lying on the tombs at Westminster Abbey. Above the picture were letters adorned with floating figures and curlicues of vine. He began to flip about in the book, seeing but not taking in page after page of words and pictures intertwined and tinted with blue and yellow and red and green. There were people both clothed and naked, and trees, flowers, grapes, dark skies, and animals-sheep and cows, frogs, a duck, a lion. As Jem turned the pages, the girl crept up to look over his shoulder.

She stopped his hand. “Wha’s that?”

“A tiger, I think. Yes, that’s what it says.” He turned the page and came upon the title “London” under a picture of a child leading an old man through the streets, with the words he knew well and sometimes recited under his breath:

I wander through each chartered street

Near where the chartered Thames does flow

Jem shut the book. “Where’d she go-the London girl?”

The girl swallowed. “Can I see more o’ that?”

“Once I’ve found Maggie. Where were she going?”

“Piddletown, she said.”

Jem stood. “Well, you come to see your cousin one day and you can look at this. All right?”

The girl nodded.

“Get you home now. It be comin’ on evening.” He didn’t wait to see if she did what he said, but hurried up the hill out of Piddlehinton.

11

Maggie was sitting on the stile overlooking the first valley the track passed through. Seeing her perched there was so incongruous that Jem almost laughed. Instead he swallowed the laughter and quietly said her name so as not to startle her. Maggie whipped her head around. “Jem,” she said, her mouth tight, “who’d have thought we’d meet in a place like this, eh?”

Jem stepped up to the stile and leaned against it. “It be funny,” he agreed, looking down into the valley, much of it purple with shadows now that the sun was setting.

Maggie looked back at the valley again. “I got to this point and couldn’t go no further. I been sittin’ here all this time trying to get up the nerve to go down there, but I can’t. Look, there’s not a soul anywhere about but us. An’t natural.” She shivered.

“You get used to it. I never give it any thought-except when we moved to London and I missed it. I could never get away from people in London.”

“People’s all there is, though, an’t they? What else is there?”

Jem chuckled. “Everything else. Fields and trees and sky. I could be in them all day and be happy.”

“But none of that would mean anything if there weren’t people about to be with.”

“I suppose.” They continued to look at the valley rather than at each other. “Why didn’t you come to the house?” Jem said finally. “You come all this way and then turn round at the last mile.”

Maggie answered his question with her own. “The girls get there all right?”

“Yes.”

“Maisie didn’t have her baby in the middle of the road?”

“No, she got inside.”

Maggie nodded. “Good.”

“How did you find Rosie?”

“She found us, or the old stick, anyway.” She told Jem about discovering Rosie at Miss Pelham’s.

Jem grunted. “I don’t miss her.” His emphasis made it clear that there were things he did miss. Maggie felt her chest tighten.

“Thank’ee for bringing ’em back,” he added.

Maggie shrugged. “I wanted to see this famous Piddle-dee-dee. And they needed someone to take ’em, in their state.”

“I…I didn’t know about Maisie.”

“I know. You could’ve knocked me over when I saw her, I was that surprised.” She paused. “I have to tell you something, Jem. Maisie’s Maisie Butterfield now.”

Jem stared at her in such horror that Maggie giggled. “I know Charlie’s bad,” she said, “but he’s come in handy.” She explained about the lie she’d invented, adding, “Rosie’s married to Mr. Blake.”

Jem chuckled, and Maggie joined him with the bark of laughter he’d missed over the months they’d been apart.

“How be Mr. Blake?” he asked when they’d stopped laughing. “And Mrs. Blake?”

“The Association still bullies him. Nobody can say a thing about the King or France, or anything unusual, without ’em pouncing. And you know how Mr. Blake says unusual things. He’s had a bad time of it. Maisie can tell you-she’s been around him the most.”

“Did he give me this?” Jem pulled the book from his pocket.

“He did. Well, in a way.” At a look from Jem, she added, “No, I didn’t steal it! How could you think that? I’d never take anything from Mr. Blake! No, it’s just-he gave me two of ’em, both wrapped in brown paper, and the same size. And-well, I mixed ’em up in my pocket. I don’t know which is yours and which mine.”

“They an’t the same?”

“No.” Maggie jumped down from the stile-now she was on one side, with Jem on the other-picked up her bundle, and dug out the other book. “See?” She opened it to the title page, where the two children were reading a book at a woman’s knee. “Songs of Innocence,” she said. “I remember it from before. I didn’t know what the other said, so I chose this one. What’s that one called, then?”

“Songs of Experience.” Jem opened his to the title page and showed her.

“Hah! Opposites, then.” They smiled at each other. “But which is yours, d’you think, and which mine? I mean, which do you think Mr. Blake meant us to have? He was very particular about one being specially for you and one for me.”

Jem shook his head. “You could ask him.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. He’d be disappointed I got ’em mixed up. We’ll have to decide for ourselves.”

They contemplated the books in silence. Then Maggie spoke again. “Jem, why’d you leave without saying good-bye, back in Lambeth?”

Jem shrugged. “We had to leave quick ’cause of Miss Pelham.”

Maggie studied his profile. “You could’ve found me to say good-bye. Was it ’cause you couldn’t-can’t-forgive me for-for doin’ what I did, what I told you about, at Cut-Throat Lane? ’Cause when that happened to me-well, for a time I thought the world would never be right again. Once you do summat like that, you can’t go back to the way it was before you did it. You lose it, and it’s hard to get it back. But then you and Maisie and Mr. Blake came along, and I felt better, finally, once I told you-except I’m scared of the dark, and of being alone.”

“It’s all right,” Jem answered at last. “I were surprised, is all. It made me think of you different. But it’s all right.”

They looked down at their books in the coming dark. Then Maggie leaned over the page of Jem’s book. “Is that a tiger?”

Jem nodded, and peered at the words. “‘Tyger tyger-’”

“‘Burning bright,’” Maggie joined in, to his surprise,

In the forests of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

“Maisie taught me that,” she added. “I can’t read it-yet.”

“Maisie taught you?” Jem pondered this, wondering how much his sister had changed from her stay in London. “What’s ‘symmetry’?”

“Dunno-you’ll have to ask her.”

Jem closed the book and cleared his throat. “Where you going now, in the dark, all alone?”

Maggie tapped the book against her palm. “I was going to catch up to the button man in Piddletown, and offer to make buttons for him to raise my fare back to London.”

Jem wrinkled his brow. “How much do it cost?”

“A pound all in on the stage if I ride up top, less if I get a wagon.”

“Maggie, you’d have to make a thousand buttons at least to pay your fare!”

“Would I? Lord a mercy!” Maggie joined Jem’s laughter. It released something, and soon they were laughing so hard they had to clutch their stomachs.

When their laughter at last died down, Jem said, “So what were you going to do, stuck on this stile-stay here all night?”

Maggie ran her fingers over the cover of the book. “I knew you’d come.”

“Oh.”

“So if I’m on this side o’ the fence, and you’re on t’other, what’s in the middle?”

Jem put his hand on the stile. “We are.” After a moment Maggie pressed hers over his, and their hands remained sandwiched that way for a time, each warming the other.

The valley before them was darkening now, the river and trees at the bottom no longer visible.

“I can’t stay here, though, Jem,” Maggie said softly. “I can’t.” She shed some tears, but soon wiped them.

“I’ll walk you to Piddletown if you like,” Jem said after a while.

“How can you? Look how dark it is!”

“Moon’ll be up soon-we can see by that.”

“Will it? How do you know that?”

Jem smiled. “Tha’ be the sort o’ thing we know out here. We don’t have lamplighters going up and down the streets.” He handed her his book while he climbed over the stile. When Maggie held out Songs of Experience for him to take back, Jem shook his head. “You keep it with t’other. Look how they fit together in your hand. They be just the same size.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t! No, you keep ’em. Otherwise you’ll never see ’em.”

“I could come up to London to see them.”

“No, that’s not fair. No, you keep ’em and I’ll come to Piddledee-dee to visit.”

Jem laughed and took her hand. “Then you would have to learn to cross this field alone.”

“Not if you came to meet the coach.”

They argued about it all the way to Piddletown.