Burning Bright

1

Anne Kellaway sometimes felt that a cord was tied at one end to her wrist and at the other to the window in the front room. She would be scrubbing potatoes, or washing clothes, or cleaning the ash from the fire, and find herself at the most inconvenient moment-hands smeared with dirt, sheets half-wrung, ash dusting the air-tugged to the window to look out. Often there was nothing unusual to see, but occasionally she was rewarded with something worthwhile: a woman wearing a hat trimmed with long peacock feathers; a man cradling a pineapple as if it were a newborn baby; a boy carrying an uprooted bay tree, its leaves trimmed into the shape of a dove. Maisie or Jem would have called to the others to come and see these unusual sights, but Anne Kellaway preferred to keep such little moments of pleasure to herself.

Today there were no potatoes or ash or laundry keeping her away from the window: It was Easter Monday and she was meant to rest. Maisie and Jem were clearing up after their midday meal, leaving Anne Kellaway to gaze down at the crowds of people moving along Hercules Buildings, many of the women dressed in new Easter gowns and bonnets. She had never seen so much color, such bright cloth, such daring cuts, and such surprising trim on the bonnets. There were the usual daffodils and primroses as you might see on hats outside the Piddletrenthide church, but there were also exotic feathers, bunches of multicolored ribbons, even fruit. She herself would never wear a lemon on a bonnet, but she rather admired the woman passing who did. She preferred something simpler and more traditional: a plait of daisies or a posy of violets, or one ribbon, like the sky blue one she’d just seen dangling down a girl’s back almost to her knees. Anne Kellaway would happily wear that, though she would not have it be quite so long. London women seemed to push the length of a ribbon or the angle of a hat just that bit further than Anne Kellaway would dare to herself.

Among the traffic walked a man with a tray of white crosses on his head, calling, “Hot-cross buns! Four a penny, cheap for Easter, hot-cross buns! Buy ’em now, last day till next year!” He stopped in front of the house, just below Anne Kellaway, having found a customer. From the other direction strolled Miss Pelham, her bonnet festooned with tiny yellow ribbons. Anne Kellaway snorted, trying to mask the laugh that had begun to bubble up.

“What is’t, Ma?” Maisie asked, looking up from wiping clean the table.

“Nothing. Just Miss Pelham in a silly hat.”

“Let me see.” Maisie came over to the window, peered down, and began to giggle. “She looks like she’s had a pile of straw dumped on her head!”

“Shh, Maisie, she’ll hear you,” Anne Kellaway replied, though not very fiercely. As they watched, a gray horse pulling a peculiar two-wheeled vehicle trotted up the road, scattering bonnet wearers and potential bun buyers to the right and left. The cart had big wheels and peculiar dimensions, for though short and narrow, it had a high roof; on the side was a long vertical sign that proclaimed in black letters, ASTLEY’S ROYAL SALOON AND NEW AMPHITHEATRE PROUDLY ANNOUNCES ITS NEW SEASON BEGINNING TONIGHT! SPECTACULAR ACTS TO EXCITE AND STIMULATE! DOORS OPEN 5.30 P.M., PROMPT START 6.30 P.M.

Anne and Maisie Kellaway gaped as the gig drew up in front of Miss Pelham’s house and a boy jumped down and said something to Miss Pelham, who frowned and pointed up at the Kellaways’ window. Anne Kellaway shrank back, but was not quick enough at pulling Maisie out of sight as well.

“Wait, Ma, she’s beckoning to us!” Maisie pulled Anne Kellaway forward again. “Look!”

Miss Pelham was still frowning-as she always did when anything to do with the Kellaways disturbed her-but she was indeed gesturing to them.

“I’ll go down,” Maisie declared, turning toward the door.

“No, you won’t.” Anne Kellaway stopped her daughter with a steely tone and a hand on her shoulder. “Jem, go and see what they want.”

Jem left the pot he had been scouring and raced down the stairs. Maisie and Anne watched from the window as he exchanged a few words with the boy, who then handed him something white. He stared at whatever it was he held, while the boy jumped back into the gig and the driver tapped his whip lightly on the horse’s neck and sped away up Hercules Buildings toward Westminster Bridge Road.

Jem returned a moment later, a puzzled look on his face.

“What is’t, Jem?” Maisie demanded. “Oh, what have you got?”

Jem looked down at some bits of paper in his hand. “Four tickets for Mr. Astley’s show tonight, with his compliments.”

Thomas Kellaway looked up from the piece of beech he had been whittling.

“We’re not going,” Anne Kellaway declared. “We can’t afford it.”

“No, no, we don’t have to pay. He’s given them to us.”

“We don’t need his charity. We could buy our own tickets if we wanted.”

“But you just said-” Maisie began.

“We’re not going.” Anne Kellaway felt like a mouse chased by a cat from one side of a room to the other.

Jem and Maisie looked at their father. Thomas Kellaway was gazing at them all but did not say anything. He loved his wife, and wanted her to love him back. He would not go against her.

“Have you finished that pot, Jem?” Anne Kellaway asked. “Once you do we can go for our walk.” She turned away toward the window, her hands shaking.

Maisie and Jem exchanged glances. Jem went back to the pot.

2

In the two weeks they’d been in Lambeth, the Kellaways had not gone much beyond the streets immediately surrounding their house. They did not need to-all the shops and stalls they needed were on Lambeth Terrace by Lambeth Green, on Westminster Bridge Road, or on the Lower Marsh. Jem had been with his father to the timber yards by the river near Westminster Bridge; Maisie had gone with her mother to St. George’s Fields to see about laying out their clothes there to dry. When Jem suggested that they go for a walk on Easter Monday across Westminster Bridge to see Westminster Abbey, all were keen. They were used to walking a great deal in the Piddle Valley and found it strange not to be so active in Lambeth.

They set out at one o’clock, when others were eating or sleeping or at the pub. “How shall we go, then?” Maisie asked Jem, knowing better than to direct the question at her parents. Anne Kellaway was clutching on to her husband’s arm as if a strong wind were about to blow her away. Thomas Kellaway was smiling as usual and gazing about him, looking like a simpleton waiting to go wherever was chosen for him.

“Let’s take a shortcut to the river and walk along it up to the bridge,” Jem said, knowing it had fallen to him to lead them, for he was the only Kellaway who had begun to become familiar with the streets.

“Not the shortcut that girl talked of, is’t?” Anne Kellaway said. “I don’t want to be going along any place called Cut-Throat Lane.”

“Not that one, Ma,” Jem lied, reasoning that it would take her a long time to work out that it was indeed Cut-Throat Lane. Jem had found it soon after Maggie told them about it. He knew his family would like the lane because it ran through empty fields; if you turned your back to the houses and didn’t look too far ahead to Lambeth Palace or to the warehouses by the river, you could more or less think you were in the countryside. One day Jem would find the direction he needed to walk that would take him into countryside proper. Perhaps Maggie would know the way.

For now, he led his family up past Carlisle House, a nearby mansion, to Royal Row and along it to Cut-Throat Lane. It was very quiet there, with no one in the lane; and it being a holiday, few were out working in the vegetable gardens that dotted the fields. Jem was thankful too that it was sunny and clear. So often in Lambeth the sky was not blue, even on a sunny day, but thick and yellow with smoke from coal fires, and from the breweries and manufactories for vinegar and cloth and soap that had sprung up along the river. Yesterday and today, however, those places were shut, and because it was warm, many had not lit fires. Jem gazed up into the proper deep blue he knew well from Dorsetshire, coupled with the vivid green of the roadside grass and shrubs, and found himself smiling at these colors that were so natural and yet shouted louder than any London ribbon or dress. He began to walk more slowly, at a saunter rather than the quick, nervous pace he’d adopted since coming to Lambeth. Maisie paused to pick a few primroses for a posy. Even Anne Kellaway stopped clutching her husband and swung her arms. Thomas Kellaway began to whistle “Over the Hills and Far Away,” a song he often hummed when he was working.

Too soon the lane made a sharp right and skirted along the edges of the gardens surrounding Lambeth Palace. When they reached the river their short idyll ended. In front of them stood a series of dilapidated warehouses, flanked by rows of workmen’s cottages. The warehouses were shut today, which added to their menacing atmosphere; normally the bustling action of the work made them more welcoming. Anne Kellaway took her husband’s arm again.

Though Jem and Thomas Kellaway had been down to the Thames to buy wood and have it cut at the timber yards, the female Kellaways had only seen it briefly when they first arrived at Astley’s Amphitheatre, and had not really taken it in. Now they had unwittingly chosen an unimpressive moment in which to get their first good look at the great London river. The tide was out, reducing the water to a thin, murky ribbon running through a wide, flat channel of gray silt that reminded Anne Kellaway of an unmade bed. Granted, even in its reduced state it was twenty times bigger than the Piddle, the river that ran alongside the Kellaways’ garden in Piddletrenthide. Despite its small size, though, the Piddle still had the qualities Anne Kellaway looked for in a river-purposeful, relentless, cheerful, and cleansing, its sound a constant reminder of the world’s movement.

The Thames was nothing like that. To Anne Kellaway it seemed not a river, but a long intestine that twisted each way out of sight. It did not have clear banks, either. The bed slid up toward the road, awash with pebbles and sludge, and it was easy enough to step straight from the road down into it. Despite the mud, children had done just that, and were running about in the riverbed, some playing, some picking out objects that had had been left exposed by the low tide: shoes, bottles, tins, bits of waterlogged wood and cloth, the head of a doll, a broken bowl.

The Kellaways stood and watched. “Look how dirty they’re getting,” Maisie said as if she envied them.

“Hideous place,” Anne Kellaway stated.

“It looks better when the tide’s in, like it were when we first arrived.” Jem felt he had to defend the river, as if it were the embodi-ment of London and his family’s decision to move there.

“Funny it has a tide,” Maisie said. “I know our Piddle runs down to the sea somewhere, but it still always runs the same way. I’d feel topsy-turvy if it changed directions!”

“Let’s go to the bridge,” Jem suggested. They began to step more quickly now, past the warehouses and the workmen’s cottages. Some of the workers and their wives and children were sitting out in front of their houses, talking, smoking, and singing. Most of them fell silent as the Kellaways passed, except for a man playing a pipe, who played faster. Jem wanted to step up their pace even more, but Maisie slowed down. “He’s playing ‘Tom Bowling,’” she said. “Listen!” She smiled at the man; he broke off playing and smiled back.

Anne Kellaway stiffened, then pulled at her daughter’s arm. “Come along, Maisie!”

Maisie shook free and stood still in the middle of the road to join in singing the last verse in a high, clear voice:

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,

When He, who all commands,

Shall give, to call life’s crew together,

The word to pipe all hands:

Thus death, who kings and tars dispatches,

In vain Tom’s life has doffed,

For though his body’s under hatches,

His soul has gone aloft,

His soul has gone aloft.

She and the pipe player finished together, and there was a small silence. Anne Kellaway stifled a sob. Tommy and Maisie used to sing the song together in beautiful harmony.

“It be all right, Ma,” Maisie said. “We has to sing it still, for we don’t want to forget Tommy, do we?” She bobbed at the man and said, “Thank’ee, sir. Ar’ernoon.”

3

On the approach to the bridge, the road curved briefly away from the river and passed the amphitheatre, with its grand pillared entrance where they had first met Philip Astley, and posters plastered on the wall in front announcing SHOW TONIGHT! It was only early afternoon and yet people were already milling about. Jem felt in his pocket and curled his hand around the tickets Philip Astley had sent them.

Anne Kellaway had a handbill thrust at her by a man running past calling, “Only a shilling and a pence to stand, two shillings tuppence a seat!” She stared at the crumpled paper, unsure what she was meant to do with it. Smoothing it against her skirt, she turned it over and over before at last starting to make out the words. When she recognized “Astley,” she understood what it was and thrust it at her husband. “Oh, take it, take it, I don’t want it!”

Thomas Kellaway fumbled and dropped the paper. It was Maisie who picked it up and brushed the dirt from it, then tucked it into the stays beneath her dress. “The show tonight,” she murmured to Jem.

He shrugged.

“Do you have those tickets on you, Jem?” Anne Kellaway demanded.

Jem jerked his hand from his pocket as if he’d been caught touching himself. “Yes, Ma.”

“I want you to take them to the theatre now and hand them back.”

“Who’s handin’ back tickets?” called a voice behind them. Jem looked around. Maggie Butterfield jumped out from the wall she’d been idling behind. “What kind of tickets? You don’t want to be handin’ back any tickets. If they’re good you can sell ’em for more’n you bought ’em for. Show ’em to me.”

“How long have you been following us?” Jem asked, pleased to see her but wondering too if she had witnessed anything he’d rather she not see.

Maggie grinned and whistled a bit of “Tom Bowling.” “Not half a bad voice you’ve got, Miss Piddle,” she said to Maisie, who smiled and blushed.

“Away you go, girl,” Anne Kellaway ordered. “We don’t want you hanging about.” She glanced around to see if Maggie was on her own. They’d had a visit a few days before from Maggie’s father, trying to sell Thomas Kellaway a load of ebony that he quickly spotted was oak painted black-though he was kind enough to suggest that Dick Butterfield had been hard done by someone else rather than trying to cheat the Kellaways. Anne Kellaway had disliked Dick Butterfield even more than his daughter.

Maggie ignored Jem’s mother. “Have you got tickets for tonight, then?” she asked Jem coolly. “Which kind? Not for the gallery, I shouldn’t think. Can’t see her”-she jerked her head at Anne Kellaway-“standin’ with them rascals. Here, show me.”

Jem wondered himself, and couldn’t resist pulling out the tickets to look. “‘Pit,’” he read, with Maggie peering over his shoulder.

She nodded at Thomas Kellaway. “You must be makin’ lots o’ bum catchers to buy pit seats, and you only a couple o’ weeks in London.” A rare note of admiration crept into her voice.

“Oh, we didn’t buy them,” Maisie said. “Mr. Astley gave ’em to us!”

Maggie stared. “Lord a mercy.”

“We’re not going to see that rubbish,” Anne Kellaway said.

“You can’t give ’em back,” Maggie declared. “Mr. Astley’d be insulted. He might even throw you out of his house.”

Anne Kellaway started; she had clearly not thought of such a consequence from giving back the tickets.

“Course if you really don’t want to go, you could let me go in your place,” Maggie continued.

Anne Kellaway narrowed her eyes, but before she could open her mouth to say that she would never allow such an impudent girl to take her place, a deep drumbeat began to sound from somewhere over the river.

“The parade!” Maggie exclaimed. “It’ll be starting. C’mon!” She began to run, pulling Jem along with her. Maisie followed, and fearful of being left alone, Anne Kellaway took her husband’s arm once more and hurried after them.

Maggie raced past the amphitheatre and on toward Westminster Bridge, which was already crowded with people standing along the edges. They could hear a march being played at the other end, but they couldn’t see anything yet. Maggie led them up the middle of the road and squeezed into a spot a third of the way along. The Kellaways crowded around her, trying to ignore the grumblings of those whose view they were now blocking. There was a fair bit of jostling, but eventually everyone could see, until the next lot of people stood in front of them and the crowd had to rearrange itself.

“What we waiting for?” Jem said to Maggie.

Maggie snorted. “Fancy standing in a crowd not even knowin’ what you’re there for. Dorset boy!”

Jem flushed. “Forget it, then,” he muttered.

“No, tell us,” Maisie insisted. “I want to know.”

“Mr. Astley has a parade on the first day of the season,” Maggie explained, “to give people a taste of the show. Sometimes he has fireworks, even in the daytime-though they’ll be better tonight.”

“You hear that, Ma?” Maisie said. “We can see fireworks tonight!”

“If you go.” Maggie threw Anne Kellaway a look.

“We an’t going tonight, and we an’t staying for the parade now,” Anne Kellaway asserted. “Come, Jem, Maisie, we’re leaving.” She began to push at the people in front of her. Fortunately for Jem and Maisie, no one wanted to move and give up a place, and Anne Kellaway found herself trapped in the dense crowd. She had never had so many people around her before. It was one thing to stand in the window and watch London pass beneath her, safe at her perch. Now she had every sort of person pressing into her-men, women, children, people with smelly clothes, smelly breath, matted hair, harsh voices. A large man next to her was eating a meat pie, and the flakes of pastry were dropping down his front as well as into the hair of the woman standing in front of him. Nei-ther seemed to notice or care as much as Anne Kellaway did. She was tempted to reach over and brush the flakes away.

As the music drew closer, two figures on horseback appeared. The crowd shifted and pushed, and Anne Kellaway felt panic welling up like bile. For a moment she was so desperate to get away that she actually put a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of her. He turned briefly and shrugged it off.

Thomas Kellaway took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. “There now, Anne, steady, girl,” he said, as if he were talking to one of the horses they’d left behind with Sam in Dorsetshire. She missed their horses. Anne Kellaway closed her eyes, resisting the temptation to pull her hand away from her husband. She took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, the riders had drawn close. The horse nearest them was an old white charger, who walked sedately under its burden. The rider was Philip Astley.

“It’s been a long winter, has it not, my friends?” he shouted. “You’ve had nothing to entertain you all these months since October. Have you been waiting for this day? Well, wait no more-Lent is over, Easter has come, and Astley’s show has begun! Come and see The Siege of Bangalore, a sketch at once tragical, comical, and oriental! Feast your eyes on the splendid operatic ballet La Fête de l’Amour! Wonder at the talents of the Manage Horse, who can fetch, carry, climb a ladder, and even make a cup of tea!”

As he passed the Kellaways, his eyes fell on Anne Kellaway and he actually stopped in order to raise his hat to her. “Everyone is welcome to Astley’s Royal Saloon and New Amphitheatre-especially you, madam!”

The people around Anne Kellaway turned to stare at her. The man with the pie dropped his mouth open so that she could see the meat and gravy mashed up in there. Sick from this sight and from the attention of so many, especially Philip Astley, she closed her eyes again.

Philip Astley saw her turn pale and shut her eyes. Pulling a flask from his coat, he signaled to one of the circus boys who ran alongside him to take it to her. He could not stop his horse any longer to see if she took a swig of brandy, however-the press of the procession behind pushed him on. He began his patter again: “Come and see the show-new acts of daring and imagination under the management of my son, John Astley, the finest equestrian rider in Europe! At little more than the price of a glass of wine, come for a full evening’s entertainment that you’ll remember for years to come!”

Beside him rode the son he spoke of. John Astley had as commanding a presence as his father, but in a completely different style. If Astley Senior was an oak-large and blunt, with a thick, strong center-Astley Junior was a poplar-tall and slender, with handsome, even features and clear, calculating eyes. He was educated, as his father had not been, and held himself more formally and self-consciously. Philip Astley rode his white charger like the cavalry man he once was and still thought himself to be, using the horse to get where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. John Astley rode his slim chestnut mare, with her long legs and nimble hooves, as if he and the horse were permanently attached and always on show. He jogged smoothly over Westminster Bridge, his horse capering sideways and slantways in a series of intricate steps to a minuet, played by musicians on trumpet, French horn, accordion, and drum. Anyone else in his seat would have been jolted over and over and dropped gloves, hat, and whip, but John Astley remained elegant and unruffled.

The crowd gazed at him in silence, admiring his skill rather than loving him as they did his father. All but one: Maisie Kellaway stood with her mouth open, staring up at him. She had never seen such a handsome man and, at fourteen, was ready to take a fancy to one. John Astley did not notice her, of course; he did not seem to see anyone, keeping his eyes fixed on the amphitheatre ahead.

Anne Kellaway had recovered herself without the aid of Philip Astley’s brandy. That she had refused, to the disgust of Maggie, the meat pie man, the woman in front of him with the pastry flakes in her hair, the man whose shoulder she had touched, the boy who delivered the flask-in fact, just about everyone apart from the other Kellaways. Anne Kellaway didn’t notice: Her eyes were fixed fast on the performers in the parade behind John Astley. First came a group of tumblers who walked along normally and then simultaneously fell into a series of forward rolls that turned into cartwheels and backflips. Then came a group of dogs who, at a signal, all got up onto their hind legs and walked that way for a good ten feet, then ran about jumping over one another’s backs in a compli-cated configuration.

Surprising as these acts were, what finally captured Anne Kellaway’s attention was the slack-rope dancing. Two strong men carried poles between which a rope hung, rather like a thick clothesline. Sitting in the middle of the rope was a dark-haired, moon-faced woman wearing a red and white striped satin dress with a tight bodice and a flared skirt. She swung back and forth on the rope as if it were a swing, then wrapped one part of the rope casually around her leg.

Maggie poked Jem and Maisie. “That’s Miss Laura Devine,” she whispered. “She’s from Scotland, and is the finest slack-rope dancer in Europe.”

At a signal, the men stepped away from each other, pulling the rope taut and making Miss Devine turn a graceful somersault, which revealed several layers of red and white petticoats. The crowd roared, and she did it again, twice this time, then three times, and then she turned constant somersaults, twirling round and round the rope so that her petticoats were a flashing blur of red and white.

“That’s called Pig on a Spit,” Maggie announced.

Then the men stepped toward each other, and Miss Devine came out of the last somersault into a long swing up into the sky, smiling as she did.

Anne Kellaway stared at Miss Devine, expecting to see her crash to the ground as her son Tommy had from the pear tree, reaching for that pear that was always-and now always would be-just out of his reach. But Miss Devine did not fall; indeed, she seemed incapable of it. For the first time in the weeks since her son’s death, Anne Kellaway felt the shard of grief lodged in her heart stop biting. She craned her neck to watch her even as Miss Devine moved far down the bridge and could barely be seen, even when there were other spectacles right in front of her-a monkey on a pony, a man riding his horse backward and picking up dropped handkerchiefs without leaving his saddle, a troupe of dancers in oriental costume turning pirouettes.

“Jem, what’ve you done with those tickets?” Anne Kellaway demanded suddenly.

“Here, Ma.” Jem pulled them from his pocket.

“Keep ’em.”

Maisie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.

Maggie hissed, “Put ’em away!” Already those around them had turned to look.

“Them for the pit?” the meat pie man asked, leaning over Anne Kellaway to see.

Jem began to put the tickets back in his pocket.

“Not there!” Maggie cried. “They’ll have ’em off you in a trice if you keep ’em there.”

“Who?”

“Them rascals.” Maggie jerked her head at a pair of young boys who had miraculously squeezed through the crush to appear at his side. “They’re faster’n you, though not faster’n me. See?” She snatched the tickets from Jem, and with a grin began to tuck them down the front of her dress.

“I can keep them,” Maisie suggested. “You haven’t got the stays.”

Maggie stopped smiling.

“I’ll keep them,” Anne Kellaway announced, and held out her hand. Maggie grimaced but handed over the tickets. Anne Kellaway carefully tucked them into her stays, then wrapped her shawl tightly over her bosom. The stern, triumphant look on her face was armor enough to keep away any rogue fingers.

The musicians were passing them now, and behind them three men brought up the rear of the parade waving red, yellow, and white flags that read ASTLEY’S CIRCUS.

“What’ll we do now?” Jem asked when they had passed. “Go on to the Abbey?”

He could have been speaking to a family of mutes, oblivious to the surging crowd around them. Maisie was staring after John Astley, who by now had become just a flash of blue coat over winking horse flanks. Anne Kellaway had her eye on the amphitheatre in the distance, contemplating the unexpected evening ahead. Thomas Kellaway was peering over the bridge’s balustrade at a boat piled high with wood being rowed along the thin line of water toward the bridge.

“C’mon. They’ll follow.” Maggie took Jem’s arm and pulled him toward the apex of the bridge, sidestepping the traffic of carriages and carts that had begun to cross it again, and making their way toward the Abbey.

4

Westminster Abbey was the tallest, grandest building in that part of London. It was the sort of building the Kellaways had expected to see plenty of in the city-substantial, ornate, important. Indeed, they had been disappointed by the shabbiness of Lambeth, even if they had not yet seen the rest of London. The filth, the crowds, the noise, the indifferent, casual, neglected buildings-none of it matched the pictures they’d conjured of London back in Dorsetshire. At least the Abbey, with its pair of impressive square towers, its busy detail of narrow windows, filigreed arches, jutting buttresses, and tiny spires, satisfied their expectations. It was the second time in the weeks they had been in Lam beth that Anne Kellaway thought, There is a reason for us to be in London-the first time being only half an hour before, when she saw Miss Laura Devine performing the Pig on a Spit.

Just inside the arched entrance between the two towers, the Kellaways stopped, causing those behind them to grumble and push past. Maggie, who had continued on into the abbey, turned around and blew through her lips. “Look at those country fools,” she muttered, as the four Kellaways stood in a row, eyes up, heads tilted at the same angle. She couldn’t blame them, however. Although she had visited the Abbey many times, she too found it an astonishing sight on first entering and, indeed, throughout the building. At every turning, every chapel and tomb contained marble to be admired, carving to be fingered, elegance and opulence to be dazzled by.

For the Kellaways the sheer size was what pulled them up short. None had ever been in a place where the ceiling arched so high over their heads. They could not take their eyes off it.

Finally Maggie lost patience. “There’s more to the Abbey than the ceiling,” she advised Jem. “And there’s better ceilings than this too. Wait till you see the Lady Chapel!”

Feeling responsible for their first proper taste of what London could offer, she led them through archways and in and out of small side chapels, casually throwing out the names of people buried there that she remembered from her father’s guided tour of the place: Lord Hunsdon, the Countess of Sussex, Lord Bourchier, Edward I, Henry III. The string of names meant little to Jem; nor, once he grew accustomed to the size and lavishness of the place, did he really care for all of the stone. He and his father worked in wood, and he found stone cold and unforgiving. Still, he couldn’t help marveling at the elaborate tombs, with the carved effigies in tan and beige marble of their inhabitants lying on top, at the brass reliefs of men on other slabs, at the black-and-white pillars ornamenting the headstones.

By the time they reached Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at the other end of the Abbey, and Maggie triumphantly announced, “Elizabeth I,” Jem had stopped listening to her altogether and openly gaped. He had never imagined a place could be so ornate.

“Oh, Jem, look at that ceiling,” Maisie breathed, gazing up at the fan vaulting, carved of stone so delicate it looked like lace spun by spiders, touched in several places with gold leaf.

Jem was not studying the ceiling, however, but the rows of carved seats for members of the royal court along both sides of the chapel. Over each seat was an eight-foot-high ornamental tower of patinated oak filigree. The towers were of such a complicated interlocking pattern that it would not have been a surprise to hear carvers had gone mad working on them. Here at last was wood worked in a way the Kellaways would never see the likes of in Dorsetshire, or Wiltshire, or Hampshire, or anywhere in England other than in Westminster Abbey. Jem and Thomas Kellaway gazed in awe at the carving, like men who make sundials seeing a mechanical clock for the first time.

Jem lost track of Maggie until she rushed up to him. “Come here!” she hissed, and dragged him away from the Lady Chapel to the center of the Abbey and the Chapel of Edward the Confessor. “Look!” she whispered, nodding in the direction of one of the tombs surrounding Edward’s massive shrine.

Mr. Blake was standing alongside it, staring at the bronze effigy of a woman that lay along the top of it. He was sketching in a small sand-colored notebook, never looking down at the paper and pencil, but keeping his eyes fastened on the statue’s impassive face.

Maggie put a finger to her lips, then took a quiet step toward Mr. Blake, Jem following reluctantly. Slowly and steadily they rounded on him from behind. He was so concentrated on drawing that he noticed nothing. As the children got closer, they discovered that he was singing under his breath, very soft and high, more like the whining of a mosquito than of a man. Now and then his lips moved to form a word, but it was hard to catch what he might be saying.

Maggie giggled. Jem shook his head at her. They were close enough now that they were able to peek around Mr. Blake at his sketch. When they saw what he was drawing, Jem flinched, and Maggie openly gasped. Though the statue on the tomb was dressed in ceremonial robes, Mr. Blake had drawn her naked.

He did not turn around, but continued to draw and to sing, though he must have known now that they were just behind him.

Jem grabbed Maggie’s elbow and pulled her away. When they had left the chapel and were out of earshot, Maggie burst out laughing. “Fancy undressing a statue!”

Jem’s irritation outweighed his impulse to laugh too. He was suddenly weary of Maggie-of her harsh, barking laughter, her sharp comments, her studied worldliness. He longed for someone quiet and simple, who wouldn’t pass judgment on him and on Mr. Blake.

“Shouldn’t you be with your family?” he said abruptly.

Maggie shrugged. “They’ll just be at the pub. I can find ’em later.”

“I’m going back to mine.” Immediately he regretted his tone, as he saw hurt flash through her eyes before she hid it with hard indifference.

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged and turned away.

“Wait, Maggie,” Jem called as she slipped out a side entrance he had not noticed before. As when he first met her, the moment she was gone, he wished she was back again. He felt eyes on him then, and looked across the aisle and through the door to Edward’s Chapel. Mr. Blake was gazing at him, pen poised above his notebook.

5

Anne Kellaway insisted that they arrive early, so they found seats right at half past five, and had to wait an hour for the amphitheatre to fill and the show to begin. With tickets for the pit, they could at least sit on benches, though some in the pit chose to stand crowded close to the ring where the horses would gallop, the dancers dance, the soldiers fight. There was plenty to look at while they waited. Jem and his father studied the wooden structure of the boxes and the gallery, decorated with moldings and painted with trompe l’œil foliage. The three-tiered wagon-wheel chandelier Thomas Kellaway had seen on his first day was now lit with hundreds of candles, along with torches around the boxes and gallery; a round roof with open shutters high up also let in light until night fell. At one side of the ring a small stage had been built, with a backdrop painted with mountains, camels, elephants, and tigers-the oriental touch Philip Astley had referred to in describing The Siege of Bangalore pantomime.

The Kellaways also studied the audience. Around them in the pit were other artisans and tradesmen-chandlers, tailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, printers, butchers. The boxes held the middling sorts-merchants, bankers, lawyers-mostly from Westminster across the river. In the galleries stood the rougher crowd: the soldiers and sailors, the men who worked at the docks and in the warehouses along the Thames, as well as coalmen, coachmen, stablehands, brickmakers and bricklayers, nightsoil men, gardeners, street sellers, rag-and-bone men, and the like. There were also a fair number of servants, apprentices, and children.

Thomas Kellaway disappeared while they were waiting, then returned and, with a sheepish smile, held out four oranges. Jem had never had one: They were rare enough in London, and nonexistent in Piddletrenthide. He puzzled over the skin, then bit into it like an apple before realizing the peel was inedible. Maisie laughed at him as he spat out the peel. “Silly,” she murmured. “Look.” She nodded at those sitting nearby who deftly peeled their oranges and dropped the bits on the floor. As they trampled and shuffled over the remains throughout the evening, the peel released its sharp acid scent in waves, cutting through the various smells of horse dung, sweat, and smoke from the torches.

When the music struck up and Philip Astley stepped out onto the stage to address the audience, he stood for a moment, scanning the pit. Finding Anne Kellaway, he smiled, satisfied that with his charm he had turned an enemy into a friend. “Welcome, welcome to the Royal Saloon and New Amphitheatre for the 1792 season of Astley’s Circus! Are you ready to be dazzled and distracted?”

The audience roared.

“Astonished and amazed?”

More roaring.

“Surprised and scintillated? Then let the show begin!”

Jem was happy enough before the show, but once it began he found himself fidgeting. Unlike his mother, he was not finding the circus acts a welcome distraction. Unlike his sister, he was not smitten with any of the performers. Unlike his father, he was not content because those around him were happy. Jem knew he was meant to find the novelty acts astonishing. The jugglers throwing torches without burning themselves, the learned pig who could add and subtract, the horse who could boil a kettle and make a cup of tea, Miss Laura Devine with her twirling petticoats, two tightrope walkers sitting at a table and eating a meal on a rope thirty feet above the ground, a horseman drinking a glass of wine as he stood on two horses galloping around the ring-all of these spectacles defied some rule of life. People should tumble from standing on ropes strung up high or on galloping horses’ backs; pigs shouldn’t know how to add; horses can’t make cups of tea; Miss Devine should become sick from so much spinning.

Jem knew this. Yet instead of watching these feats in awe, with the wide eyes and open mouth and cries of surprise of the people around him-his parents and sister included-he was bored precisely because the acts weren’t like life. They were so far removed from his experience of the world that they had little impact on him. Perhaps if the horseman stood on the back of one horse and simply rode, or the jugglers threw balls instead of burning torches, then he too might have stared and called out.

Nor did the dramas interest him, with their oriental dancers, reenactments of battles, haunted houses, and warbling lovers-apart from the scenery changes, where screens of mountains and animals or rippling oceans or battle scenes full of soldiers and horses were suddenly whisked away to reveal starry night skies or castle ruins or London itself. Jem couldn’t understand why people would want to see a replica of the London skyline when they could go outside, stand on Westminster Bridge, and see the real thing.

Jem only brightened when, an hour into the show, he noticed Maggie’s face up in the gallery, poking out between two soldiers. If she saw him, her face showed no sign of it-she was enrapt by the spectacle in the ring, laughing at a clown who rode a horse backward while a monkey on another horse chased him. He liked watching her when she didn’t know it, so happy and absorbed, the hard, shrewd veneer she cultivated dropped for once, the pulse of anxiety that drove her replaced by innocence, even if only temporarily.

“I’m just going out to the jakes,” Jem whispered to Maisie. She nodded, her eyes fixed on the monkey, who had jumped from its horse to the horse carrying the clown. As Jem began to push through the dense crowd, his sister was laughing and clapping her hands.

Outside he found the entrance to the gallery around the corner, separating the rougher crowd from the more genteel audience in the pit. Two men stood in front of the staircase leading up. “Sixpence to see the rest of the show,” one of them said to Jem.

“But I just been in the pit,” Jem explained. “I’m going up to see a friend.”

“You in the pit?” the man repeated. “Show me your ticket, then.”

“My ma has it.” Anne Kellaway had tucked the ticket stubs back into her stays, to be kept and admired.

“That’ll be sixpence to see the rest of the show, then.”

“But I don’t have any money.”

“Go away with you, then.” The man turned away.

“But-”

“Get out or we’ll kick you all the way to Newgate,” the other man said, and both laughed.

Jem went back to the main entrance, but he wasn’t allowed in there either without a ticket stub. He stood still for a moment, listening to the laughter inside. Then he turned and went out to stand on the front steps between the enormous pillars framing the entrance. Lining the street in front of the amphitheatre, near where he and his family had waited in Mr. Smart’s cart the day they arrived in London, were two dozen carriages, waiting to take members of the audience home after the show, or down to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens a mile south to continue their evening’s entertainment. The coach drivers slept in their seats or gathered together to smoke and talk and flirt with the women who had wandered over to them.

Otherwise it was quiet, except for the occasional roar of the audience. Though the street outside the amphitheatre was well lit with torches and lamps, the roads led away into darkness. Westminster Bridge itself was a shadowy hump over which two rows of lamplights marched. Beyond them London hung like a heavy black coat.

Jem found himself drawn back to the bridge and the river. He walked up it, following the lamps from pool to pool of light. At the apex of the bridge he stopped and leaned over the balustrade. It was too high to see directly below, and so dark that he could make out little anyway. Even so, he sensed that the Thames was a different river from what the Kellaways had seen earlier. It was full now; Jem could hear it slopping and slurping and sucking at the stone piers that held up the bridge. It reminded him of a herd of cows in the dark, breathing heavily and squelching their hooves in the mud. He took a deep breath-like cows, the river smelled of a combination of fresh grass and excrement, of what came in and what went out of this city.

Another scent enveloped him suddenly-like the orange peel from his fingers, but far stronger and sweeter. Too sweet-Jem’s throat tightened at the same time as a hand gripped his arm and another reached into his pocket. “Hallo, darling, looking for your destiny down there? Well, you’ve found her.”

Jem tried to pull away from the woman but her hands were strong. She wasn’t much taller than him, though her face was old under its paint. Her hair was bright yellow, even in the dim light, her dress dirty blue and cut low. She pushed her chest into his shoulder. “Only a shilling for you, darling.”

Jem stared down into her exposed, creased bosom; a surge of desire and disgust coursed through him.

“Leave off him!” called a voice out of the dark. Maggie darted to them and in a quick movement peeled off the hand clamped on his arm. “He don’t want you! ’Sides, you’re too old and rank, you poxy cow-and you charged him too much!”

“Little bitch!” the whore shouted and struck out at Maggie, who easily dodged the blow and threw her off balance. As she staggered, Jem recognized the smell of gin mingled with the rancid orange. She reeled about, and he reached a hand out to try to help her regain her balance. Maggie stopped him. “Don’t-she’ll just latch on to you again! Rob you blind too. Probably already has. D’you have anything on you?”

Jem shook his head.

“Just as well-you’d never get it off her now. She’d have hidden it by her snatch.” Maggie looked around. “There’ll be more of ’em when the show lets out. That’s their best time for business-when everybody’s happy from the show.”

Jem watched the woman totter into the dark along the bridge. In the next pool of light she grabbed on to another man, who threw her off without a glance. Jem shuddered and turned back to the river. “Tha’ be what I hate about London.”

Maggie leaned against the balustrade. “But you’ve got whores down in Piddle-dee-dee, don’t you?”

“In Dorchester, yes. But they an’t like that.”

They stood still, looking out over the water. “Why’d you leave the show?” Maggie asked.

Jem hesitated. “I were poorly and come out for air. It were stuffy in there.”

Her expression told him that Maggie didn’t believe him, but she said nothing, only picked up a stone at her feet and let it drop over the side of the bridge. They both listened for the plop, but a carriage passed at that moment and its clatter obliterated the sound.

“Why’d you leave?” Jem asked when the carriage was gone.

Maggie made a face. “There’s just the Tailor of Brentford left, and then the finale. I seen the Tailor too many times already. Fi-nale’s better from outside, anyway, what with the fireworks on the river.”

From the amphitheatre they heard a roar of laughter. “That’ll be them laughin’ at the Tailor now,” she said.

When the laughter died down it was quiet. No carriages passed. Jem stood awkwardly with Maggie by the balustrade. Though she had clearly been hurt earlier in the Abbey, she did not show it now. He was tempted to say something, but didn’t want to ruin the fragile truce that seemed to have been established between them.

“I can show you some magic,” Maggie said suddenly.

“What?”

“Go in there.” She pointed to one of the stone alcoves that stood above the piers all along the bridge. The recess was semicircular and about seven feet high, designed so that passersby might shelter there out of the rain. A lamp was attached to the top of the alcove, and shone down around the recess, making it dark inside. To please Maggie, Jem stepped inside the dark space and turned to face her.

“No, stand with your back to me, with your face right up to the stone,” Maggie ordered.

Jem obeyed, feeling foolish and vulnerable with his back to the world and his nose close to the cold stone. It was damp in the recess, and smelled of urine and sex.

He wondered whether Maggie was tricking him. Perhaps she had gone to get one of the whores and thrust her on him in the alcove where he wouldn’t be able to get away. He was about to turn around and accuse her when he heard her seductive voice in his ear: “Guess where I’m talkin’ from.”

Jem whirled around. Maggie wasn’t there. He stepped out of the alcove and searched around it, wondering if he had imagined the voice. Then she stepped out of the darkness of the alcove opposite his, on the other side of the road. “Go back in!” she called.

Jem stepped into the alcove again and turned to the wall, thoroughly confused. How could she have whispered in his ear and then run across the road so fast? He waited for her to do it again, thinking he would catch her at it this time. A carriage passed by. When it was quiet he again heard in his ear, “Hallo, Jem. Say summat nice to me.”

Jem turned around again, but she wasn’t there. He hesitated, then turned back to the wall.

“C’mon, Jem, an’t you going to say nothing?” Her voice whispered around the stone.

“Can you hear me?” Jem asked.

“Yes! In’t it amazing? I can hear you and you can hear me!”

Jem turned around and looked across at the other alcove. Maggie shifted slightly and he caught a flash of the white shawl over her shoulders.

“How’d you do that?” he said, but there was no answer. “Maggie?” When she still didn’t answer, Jem turned to face the wall. “Can you hear me?”

“I can now. You have to face the wall, you know. It don’t work otherwise.”

Two carriages passed and drowned out the rest of what she said.

“But how can it be?” Jem asked.

“Dunno. It just works. One of the whores told me about it. The best is if you sing.”

“Sing?”

“Go on, then-sing us a song.”

Jem thought, and after a moment he began:

The violet and the primrose too

Beneath a sheltering thorny bough

In bright and lively colors blow

And cast sweet fragrance round.

Where beds of thyme in clusters lay

The heathrose opens its eyes in May

And cowslips too, their sweets display

Upon the heathy ground.

His voice was still high, though it would break before too long. Maggie, her face turned toward her own curved wall, was glad to be alone and in the dark so that she could listen to Jem’s singing without feeling obliged to smirk. Instead she could smile, listening to his simple song and clear voice.

When he was done they were both silent. Another carriage passed. Maggie could have made a clever remark-teased him about singing about flowers, or accused him of missing the Piddle Valley. With others around, it would be expected of her. But they were alone, cupped in their standing stones, sheltered from the world on the bridge yet connected by the sounds bouncing back and forth, twisting into a cord that bound them together.

So she did not make a smart comment, but sang back her response:

What though I be a country clown,

For all the fuss you make,

One need not be born in town

To know what two and two make.

Then don’t ye be so proud, d’ye see,

It weren’t a thing that’s suiting;

Can one than its opposite better be,

When both are on a footing?

She heard Jem chuckle. “I ne’er said the country were better’n the city,” he said. “Dunno as they be opposites exactly, either.”

“Course they are.”

“Dunno,” Jem repeated. “There be lanes in Lambeth where you find the same flowers as in the Piddle Valley-cowslip and celandine and buttercups. But then I’ve ne’er understood opposites anyway.”

“Simple.” Maggie’s voice floated around him. “It’s the thing exactly different from t’other. So the opposite of a room pitch black is a room lit bright.”

“But you still have the room. That stays the same in both.”

“Don’t think of the room, then. Just think of black and white. Now, if you’re not wet, you’re what?”

“Dry,” Jem said after a moment.

“That’s it. If you’re not a boy, you’re a-”

“Girl. I-”

“If you’re not good you’re-”

“Bad. I know, but-”

“And you won’t go to Heaven but to-”

“Hell. Stop! I know all that. I just think-” A coach rumbled past, drowning out his words. “It’s hard to talk about it like this,” Jem said when it was quieter.

“What, on opposite sides of the road?” Maggie’s laughter rang around Jem’s stone chamber. “Come over to me, then.”

Jem darted across the road as Maggie came out of her alcove. “There,” she said. “Now we’re a boy and a girl on the same side of the road.”

Jem frowned. “But that’s not opposite us,” he said, waving at where he’d just come from. “That’s just t’other side. It don’t mean it’s different. This side of the road, that side of the road-they both be part of the road.”

“Well now, my boy, they are what make the road the road,” said one of two dark figures walking toward them from the Westminster side of the river. As they came into the pool of light, Jem recognized Mr. Blake’s broad forehead and wide eyes that penetrated even in the darkness.

“Hallo, Mr. Blake, Mrs. Blake,” Maggie said.

“Hallo, my dear,” Mrs. Blake replied. Catherine Blake was a little shorter than her husband, with a similar stocky build. She had small, deep-set eyes, a broad nose, and wide, ruddy cheeks. The old bonnet she wore had a misshapen rim, as if someone had sat on it while it was wet with rain. She was smiling patiently; she looked tired, as if she were indulging her husband with a walk out at night rather than going because she wanted to herself. Jem had seen that look on other faces-usually women’s, sometimes without the smile, waiting while their men drank at the pub, or talked to other men in the road about the price of seed.

“You see,” Mr. Blake continued without even saying hello, for he was concentrated on making his point. “This side-the light side-and that side-the dark side-”

“There, that’s an opposite,” Maggie interrupted. “That’s what Jem and me were talkin’ about, weren’t we, Jem?”

Mr. Blake’s face lit up. “Ah, contraries. What were you saying about them, my girl?”

“Well, Jem don’t understand ’em, and I was tryin’ to explain-”

“I do understand them!” Jem interrupted. “Of course bad’s the opposite of good, and girl the opposite of boy. But-” He stopped. It felt strange talking to an adult about such thoughts. He would never have such a conversation with his parents, or on the street in Piddletrenthide, or in the pub. There the talk was about whether there would be frost that night or who was next traveling to Dorchester or which field of barley was ready for harvest. Something had happened to him since coming to London.

“What is it, my boy?” Mr. Blake was waiting for him to continue. That too was new to Jem-an adult seemed to be interested in what he thought.

“Well, it be this,” he began slowly, picking his way through his thoughts like climbing a rocky path. “What’s funny about opposites be that wet and dry both has water, boy and girl be about people, Heaven and Hell be the places you go when you die. They all has something in common. So they an’t completely different from each other the way people think. Having the one don’t mean t’other be gone.” Jem felt his head ache with the effort of explaining this.

Mr. Blake, however, nodded easily, as if he understood and, indeed, thought about such things all the time. “You’re right, my boy. Let me give you an example. What is the opposite of innocence?”

“Easy,” Maggie cut in. “Knowing things.”

“Just so, my girl. Experience.” Maggie beamed. “Tell me, then: Would you say you are innocent or experienced?”

Maggie stopped smiling so suddenly it was as if she had been physically struck by Mr. Blake’s question. A wild, furtive look crossed her face that Jem recalled from the first time he met her, when she was talking about Cut-Throat Lane. She frowned at a passerby and did not answer.

“You see, that is a difficult question to answer, is it not, my girl? Here is another instead: If innocence is that bank of the river”-Mr. Blake pointed toward Westminster Abbey-“and experience that bank”-he pointed to Astley’s Amphitheatre-“what is in the middle of the river?”

Maggie opened her mouth, but could think of no quick response.

“Think on it, my children, and give me your answer another day.”

“Will you answer us summat else, Mr. Blake?” Maggie asked, recovering quickly. “Why’d you draw that statue naked? You know, in the Abbey.”

“Maggie!” Jem hissed, embarrassed she’d acknowledged their earlier spying. Mrs. Blake looked from Maggie to Jem to her husband with a puzzled expression.

Mr. Blake didn’t seem bothered, however, but took seriously her question. “Ah, you see, my girl, I wasn’t drawing the statue. I can’t bear to copy from nature, though I did so for several years in the Abbey when I was an apprentice. That exercise taught me many things, and one of them was that once you know the surface of a thing, you need no longer dwell there, but can look deeper. That is why I don’t draw from life-it is far too limiting, and deadens the imagination. No, earlier today I was drawing what I was told to draw.”

“Who told you?”

“My brother Robert.”

“He was there?” Maggie didn’t remember seeing anyone with Mr. Blake.

“Oh, yes indeed, he was. Now, Kate, if you’re ready, shall we go on?”

“Ready if you are, Mr. Blake.”

“Oh, but-” Maggie cast about for something to keep the Blakes with them.

“Did you know about the echo in the alcoves, sir?” Jem interjected. He too wanted Mr. Blake to remain. There was something odd about him-distant yet close in his attention, an adult and yet childlike.

“What echo is that, my boy?”

“If you stand in the opposite alcoves, facing the wall, you can hear each other,” Maggie explained.

“Can you, now?” Mr. Blake turned to his wife. “Did you know that, Kate?”

“That I didn’t, Mr. Blake.”

“D’you want to try it?” Maggie persisted.

“Shall we, Kate?”

“If you like, Mr. Blake.”

Maggie stifled a giggle as she led Mrs. Blake into the alcove and had her stand facing the wall, while Jem led Mr. Blake to the alcove opposite. Mr. Blake spoke softly to the wall, and after a moment he and Mrs. Blake laughed. That much Jem and Maggie heard, but not the conversation-mostly one-sided, with Mrs. Blake occasionally agreeing with her husband. Their isolation left the children standing in the road on either side of the bridge, feeling a little foolish. Finally Jem wandered over to Maggie. “What do you think they be talking about?”

“Dunno. It won’t be about the price of fish, that’s sure. Wish they’d let us back in.”

Did Mrs. Blake hear her? At that moment she stepped out and said, “Children, come and stand inside with me. Mr. Blake is going to sing.”

Jem and Maggie glanced at each other, then squeezed into the alcove with Mrs. Blake. At close range she smelled of fried fish and coal dust.

They faced the wall once again, Jem and Maggie giggling a little at being so squashed together, but not trying to move apart either.

“We’re ready, Mr. Blake,” Mrs. Blake said softly.

“Very good,” they heard his disembodied voice say. After a pause he began to sing in a high, thin voice very different from his speaking voice:

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy

And the dimpling stream runs laughing by,

When the air does laugh with our merry wit,

And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.

When the meadows laugh with lively green

And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene.

When Mary and Susan and Emily

With their sweet round mouths sing Ha, Ha, He.

When the painted birds laugh in the shade

Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread

Come live and be merry and join with me,

To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He.

When he finished they were silent.

“Ha, ha, he,” Maggie repeated then, breaking the spell. “Don’t know that song.”

“It’s his own,” Mrs. Blake explained. Jem could hear the pride in her voice.

“He makes his own songs?” he asked. He had never met anyone who wrote the songs people sang. He’d never thought about where songs came from; they were just about, to be pulled from the air and learned.

“Poems, and songs, and all sorts,” Mrs. Blake replied.

“Did you like that, my boy?” came Mr. Blake’s disembodied voice.

Jem jumped; he’d forgotten that Mr. Blake could hear them. “Oh, yes.”

“It’s in a book I made.”

“What’s it called?” Jem asked.

Mr. Blake paused. “Songs of Innocence.”

“Oh!” Maggie cried. Then she began to laugh, and Mr. Blake joined in from his alcove, then Mrs. Blake, and lastly, Jem. They laughed until the stone walls rang with it and the first fireworks of the circus finale rocketed up and exploded, burning bright in the night sky.