Burning Bright

1

Though she was meant to be ironing sheets and handkerchiefs-the only ironing her mother trusted her with-Maggie left the back door open and kept an eye out on Astley’s field, which was just behind the house the Butterfields had rooms in. The wooden fence separating their garden from the field would normally block much of the view; it was old and rotting, though, and Maggie had slipped through it so often as a shortcut that she’d knocked it sideways and a gap had opened up. Every time the iron cooled, she shoved it into the coals in the fire and popped outside to poke her head through the gap so that she could watch the rehearsals taking place in Astley’s yard. She also looked out for Jem, whom she was meant to meet in the field.

When she came back into the kitchen for the third time, she found her mother, barefoot and in a nightdress, standing over the ironing board and frowning at the sheet Maggie had half-finished. Maggie rushed to the fire, picked up the iron, wiped the ash from its surface, and stepped up to the sheet, nudging her mother with the hope that she would move aside.

Bet Butterfield paid no attention to her daughter. She continued to stand, flat-footed, her legs a little splayed, arms crossed over her substantial bosom that, free from stays at the moment, was slung low and wobbled under her nightdress. She reached out and tapped part of the sheet. “Look here, you scorched it!”

“It was there already,” Maggie lied.

“Be sure and fold it so it’s hidden, then,” her mother said with a yawn and a shake of her head.

Bet Butterfield often declared that her blood ran with lye, for her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had all been laundresses in Lincolnshire. It had not occurred to her to do anything different in her life, not even when Dick Butterfield-young enough then that the map of wrinkles was not yet etched into his forehead-passed through her village on his way from Yorkshire to London and charmed her into following him. She arrived in Southwark, where they first lived, completely unimpressed by novelty, and insisted first thing-even before marrying-on buying a new washtub to replace the one she still regretted leaving back home. Bet didn’t mind the low pay, or the hours-she started her regular customers’ monthly washes at four in the morning and sometimes didn’t finish till midnight-or even the state of her hands, reduced to pigs’ trotters by the time she was twenty. Laundry was what she knew. Suggesting that she do something else would be like saying she could change the shape of her face. She continued to be astonished that not only was Maggie not very good at laundry, she was also not interested in learning to do it.

“Where’ve you been, then?” Bet Butterfield said suddenly, as if she had just woken up.

“Nowhere,” Maggie said. “Here, ironing.”

“No, just now you were out back, while the iron was heating.” It was surprising, the little things Bet Butterfield noticed when so often she seemed to be paying no attention.

“Oh. I was just in the garden for a minute, lookin’ at Astley’s people.”

Bet Butterfield glanced at the pile of sheets still to do; she’d agreed to take them home to iron for an extra shilling. “Well, stop spyin’ and get ironin’-you only done two.”

“And a half.” Maggie banged her iron across the sheet on the board. She only had to weather Bet Butterfield’s scrutiny for a little longer before her mother would lose interest and shut off her probing questions.

Indeed, Bet Butterfield’s eyes suddenly dropped and her whole face went slack, like a fist unclenching. She reached out for the iron. Maggie set it down and her mother took it up and began ironing so naturally she might have been walking or brushing her hair or scratching her arm. “Bring us some beer, would you, duck,” she said.

“None here,” Maggie announced, delighted with the errand, and the timing-for Jem was just now peering through the gap in the back fence. “I’ll just pop to the Pineapple.” She picked up a tankard from the sideboard and headed for the back door.

“Don’t push on that fence! Go round!” Bet Butterfield called.

But Maggie had already squeezed through the gap.

2

“Where you been?” she greeted Jem. “I been waitin’ for you for hours!”

“We was just bending a chair arm. It be easier with two. Anyway, I’m here now.”

Since the night on Westminster Bridge, Jem and Maggie had spent much of their free time together, with Maggie introducing Jem to her favorite places along the river and teaching him how to get about on the streets. While she irritated him sometimes with her superior knowledge, he knew that Maggie was also giving him the confidence to explore and extend the boundaries of his world. And he found he wanted to be with her. Growing up in the Piddle Valley he had played with girls, but never felt about them the way he had begun to about Maggie-though he would never tell her so.

“You know we missed Miss Devine,” Maggie remarked as they crossed Astley’s field.

“I saw a bit of it. Ma were watching from our window.”

“She didn’t fall, did she?”

“No-and just as well, as there weren’t a net or cushion. How do she do it, anyway? Walk up a rope like that, and so smooth?”

Miss Laura Devine’s act included, apart from her celebrated twirls and swings, a walk up a rope left slack rather than pulled tight. She made it look as if she were strolling through a garden, pausing now and then to admire the flowers.

“D’you know, she’s never fallen,” Maggie said. “Not once. Everybody else made mistakes in their acts-I even saw John Astley fall off his horse once! But not Miss Devine.”

They reached the wall at the bottom of Miss Pelham’s garden, a sunny spot where they often met to sit and watch the goings-on around Philip Astley’s house. Maggie set down the tankard and they squatted with their backs against the warm bricks. From there they had a perfect view of the circus acts.

Occasionally, when the weather was good, Philip Astley had his performers rehearse in the yard in front of Hercules Hall. It was a way not only of emptying the amphitheatre so that it could be cleaned, and refreshing stale acts by rehearsing them in a new location, but also of giving his neighbors an impromptu thanks for putting up with the disruption the circus’s presence inevitably caused the area. The day was never announced, but the moment jugglers wandered into the field and began tossing flaming torches back and forth, or a monkey was placed on a horse’s back and sent galloping around the yard, or, as today, a rope was strung between two poles and Miss Laura Devine stepped out onto it, word went out, and the field quickly filled with onlookers.

As Maggie and Jem settled into place, tumblers began turning backflips across the yard and building a human pyramid, first kneeling, then standing on one another’s shoulders. At the same time, horses were led out into the field and several riders-not John Astley, however-began practicing a complicated maneuver in which they jumped back and forth between saddles. Jem enjoyed watching the acts in these informal surroundings more than at the amphitheatre, for the performers were not trying quite so hard, and they stopped to rework moves, breaking the illusion he had found so hard to accept during a performance. They also made mistakes he found endearing-the boy at the top of the human pyramid slipped and grabbed a handful of hair to stop himself, making the owner of the hair yelp; a rider slid right off the back of his saddle and landed on his bum; the monkey jumped from its horse and climbed to the roof of Hercules Hall, where it refused to come down.

While they watched, Jem answered questions about Piddletrenthide, a place that seemed to fascinate Maggie. In true city fashion, she was particularly amused by the notion that there was so little choice in the village-just one baker, one tailor, one miller, one blacksmith, one vicar. “What if you don’t like the vicar’s sermons?” she demanded. “Or the baker’s bread’s too hard? Or you don’t pay the publican in time an’ he won’t serve you any more beer?” The Butterfields had had plenty of experience with owing money and having shopkeepers banging on their doors demanding payment. There were several businesses in Lambeth-pie shops, taverns, chandlers-they could no longer go to.

“Oh, there be more’n one pub. There’s the Five Bells, where Pa goes, the Crown and the New Inn-that be in Piddlehinton, next village along. And if you want a different sermon, there be a church in Piddlehinton too.”

“Another Piddle! How many other Piddles are there?”

“A few.”

Before Jem could list them, however, a disturbance broke in on their conversation. Wandering among the various performers in the Hercules Hall yard was a boy dragging a heavy log attached to his leg, of the sort used to keep horses from straying. A cry arose near him, and when Jem and Maggie looked over they saw Mr. Blake standing over him. “Who has put this hobble on you, boy?” he was shouting at the terrified lad, for in his anger-even though it was not meant for the boy-Mr. Blake could be frightening, with his heavy brow contorted, his prominent eyes glaring like a hawk’s, his stocky body thrust forward.

The boy could not answer, and it was left to one of the jugglers to step forward and say, “Mr. Astley done it, sir. But-”

“Loose him at once!” Mr. Blake cried. “No Englishman should be subjected to such a misery. I would not treat a slave like this, no, nor even a murderer-much less an innocent child!”

The juggler, similarly intimidated by Mr. Blake’s manner, melted into the crowd that had gathered, Maggie and Jem among them; and as no one else stepped forward to help, Mr. Blake himself knelt by the boy and began to fumble with the knots in the rope that attached the log to his ankle. “There you are, my boy,” he said, throwing off the rope at last. “The man who has done this to you is not fit to be your master, and a coward if he does not answer for it!”

“Is someone calling me a coward?” boomed Philip Astley’s unmistakable circus voice. “Stand and call me that to my face, sir!” With those words he pushed through the crowd and stepped up to Mr. Blake, who rose to his feet and stood so close to the other man that their bellies almost touched.

“You are indeed a coward, sir, and a bully!” he cried, his eyes blazing. “To do such a thing to a child! No, Kate,” he growled at Mrs. Blake, who had joined the circle of spectators and was now pulling at her husband’s arm. “No, I will not stand down to intimi-dation. Answer me, sir. Why have you shackled this innocent?”

Philip Astley glanced down at the boy, who was in tears by now with the unwanted attention, and in fact was holding on to the rope as if he did not want to let it go. A small smile played across Philip Astley’s lips, and he took a step back, the flames of his anger quenched. “Ah, sir, it is the hobble you’re objecting to, is it?”

“Of course I’m objecting to it-any civilized man would! No one deserves such treatment. You must desist, and make amends, sir. Yes, apologize to the lad and to us too, for making us witness such degradation!”

Rather than reply in kind, Philip Astley chuckled-a response that made Mr. Blake bunch his fists at his side and lunge forward. “Do you think this is a jest, sir? I assure you it is not!”

Philip Astley held up his hands in a placatory gesture. “Tell me, Mr.-Blake, is it? My neighbor, I believe, though we have not met, for Fox collects the rent from you, don’t you, Fox?” John Fox, watching the encounter from the crowd, gave a laconic nod. “Well, Mr. Blake, I should like to inquire: Have you asked the boy why he’s wearing the log?”

“I don’t need to ask,” Mr. Blake replied. “It is clear as day that the child is being punished in this barbarous manner.”

“Still, perhaps we should hear from the lad. Davey!” Philip Astley turned his foghorn toward the boy, who did not cower from it as he had from Mr. Blake’s twisted brow and fiery eyes, for he was used to Astley’s boom. “Why were you wearing the log, lad?”

“’Cause you put it on me, sir,” the boy replied.

“D’you see?” Mr. Blake turned to the crowd for support.

Philip Astley held up a hand again. “And why did I put it on you, Davey?”

“So’s I could get used to it, sir. For the show.”

“Which show is that?”

“The panto, sir. Harlequin’s Vagaries.”

“And what part are you playing in this panto-which, by the way, will be the centerpiece of the new program and will feature John Astley as the Harlequin!” Philip Astley couldn’t resist an opportunity to promote his show, and directed this last remark at the crowd.

“A prisoner, sir.”

“And what are you doing now, Davey?”

“Rehearsin’, sir.”

“Rehearsing,” Philip Astley repeated, turning with a flourish back to Mr. Blake, who was still glaring at him. “You see, Davey was rehearsing a part, sir. He was pretending. You, sir, of all people will understand that. You are an engraver, are you not, sir? An artist. I have seen your work, and very fine it is too, very fine. You capture an essence, sir. Yes, you do.”

Mr. Blake looked as if he did not want to be affected by this flattery but was nonetheless.

“You create things, do you not, sir?” Philip Astley continued. “You draw real things, but your drawings, your engravings are not the thing itself, are they? They are illusions, sir. I think despite our differences”-he glanced sideways at Mr. Blake’s plain black coat as against his own red one, with its gleaming brass buttons that his nieces polished daily-“we are in the same business, sir: We are both dealers in illusions. You make ’em with your pen and ink and graver, while I”-Philip Astley waved his hands at the people around him-“I make a world out of people and props, every night at the amphitheatre. I take the audience out of their world of cares and woes, and I give ’em fantasy, so they think they are somewhere else. Now, in order to make it look real, sometimes we have to do real. If Davey here is to play a prisoner, we get him to drag a prisoner’s hobble. No one would believe in him as a prisoner if he were just dancing about, now, would they? Just as you make your drawings from real people-”

“That is not where my drawings come from,” Mr. Blake interrupted. He had been listening with great interest, and now spoke more normally, the sting of anger drawn from him. “But I understand you, sir. I do. However, I see it differently. You are making a distinction between reality and illusion. You see them as opposites, do you not?”

“Of course,” Philip Astley replied.

“To me they are not opposites at all-they are all one. Young Davey playing a prisoner is a prisoner. Another example: My brother Robert, standing over there”-he pointed to an empty patch of sunlight, which everyone turned to stare at-“is the same to me as someone whom I may touch.” He reached out and flicked the sleeve of Philip Astley’s red coat.

Maggie and Jem gazed at the empty spot, where dust from the yard was floating. “Him an’ his opposites,” Maggie muttered. Even a month later she still felt the sting of Mr. Blake’s questions on Westminster Bridge, and her inability to answer them. She and Jem had not discussed their conversation with the Blakes; they were still trying to understand it.

Philip Astley was also not inclined to take on such heady topics. He gave the dusty spot a perfunctory glance, though clearly Robert Blake was not there, then turned back to Mr. Blake with a quizzical look, as if trying to think how to respond to this unusual observation. In the end, he decided not to probe and perhaps be drawn further into uncharted territory, which would take more time and patience than he had to navigate through. “So you see, sir,” he said, as if there had been no digression, “Davey is not being punished with his log. I can understand your concern, sir, and how it must have looked to you. It is very humane of you. But I can assure you, sir: Davey is well looked after, aren’t you, lad? Off you go, now.” He handed the boy a penny.

Mr. Blake was not finished, however. “You create worlds each night at your amphitheatre,” he announced, “but when the audi-ence is gone and the torches have been blown out and the doors locked, what is left but the memory of them?”

Philip Astley frowned. “Very fine memories they are, sir, and nothing wrong with them-they see a man through many a cold, lonely night.”

“Undoubtedly. But that is where we differ, sir. My songs and pictures do not become memories-they are always there to be looked at. And they are not illusions, but physical manifestations of worlds that do exist.”

Philip Astley looked about himself theatrically, as if trying to catch sight of the back of his coat. “Where do they exist, sir? I have not seen these worlds.”

Mr. Blake tapped his brow.

Philip Astley snorted. “Then you have a head teeming with life, sir! Teeming! You must find it hard to sleep for the clamor.”

Mr. Blake smiled directly at Jem, who happened to be in his line of vision. “It is true that I have never needed much sleep.”

Philip Astley wrinkled his brow and stood still in thought, a pose highly unusual for him. The crowd began to shift restlessly. “What you are saying, sir, if I understand you,” he said at last, “is that you are taking ideas in your head and making them into something you can see and hold in your hand; while I am taking real things-horses and acrobats and dancers-and turning them into memories.”

Mr. Blake cocked his head to one side, his eyes fastened on his opponent. “That is one way to consider it.”

At that Philip Astley shouted with laughter, clearly pleased to have had such a thought all on his own. “Well then, sir, I would say that the world needs us both, don’t it, Fox?”

John Fox’s mustache twitched. “That may well be, sir.”

Philip Astley stepped forward and extended his hand. “We will shake hands on it, Mr. Blake, won’t we?”

Mr. Blake reached over and took the circus man’s proffered hand. “We will indeed.”

3

When Mr. Blake and Philip Astley had said their farewells, Mrs. Blake took her husband’s arm and they walked toward the alley without speaking to Jem or Maggie or even acknowledging them. Maggie watched them leave with a feeling of deflation. “Could’ve said hallo, or at least good-bye,” she muttered.

Jem felt similarly, but did not say so. He walked with Maggie to sit back against the wall where they had been before Mr. Blake arrived. There was not much to see, however-the argument between Philip Astley and Mr. Blake seemed to be a signal to the performers to take a break. The tumblers and horse riders had stopped, and there was only a troupe of dancers rehearsing a scene from the upcoming pantomime. They watched for a few minutes before Maggie stretched, like a cat rearranging itself mid-nap. “Let’s do summat else.”

“What, then?”

“Let’s go and see the Blakes.”

Jem frowned.

“Why not?” Maggie persisted.

“You said yourself that he didn’t say hallo to us.”

“Maybe he didn’t see us.”

“What would he want with us, though? We wouldn’t be any interest to him.”

“He liked us well enough when we were up on the bridge. Anyway, don’t you want to see inside? I bet he has strange things in there. Did you know he’s got the whole house? The whole house! That’s eight rooms for him and his wife. They han’t any children, nor even a maid. I heard they had one, but she got scared off by him. He do stare with them big eyes, don’t he?”

“I would like to see the printing press,” Jem admitted. “I think I heard it the other day. A great creaking noise it made, like roof timbers when a thatcher’s climbing on them.”

“What’s a thatcher?”

“Don’t you-” Jem caught himself. Though he was constantly amazed by the things Maggie didn’t know, he was careful not to say anything. Once, when he teased her for thinking that cowslips referred to animals falling, she wouldn’t speak to him for a week. Besides, there was no thatch in London; how could she be expected to know what it was? “Dorset houses have thatched roofs,” he explained. “Dried straw bound together all tight and laid over timbers.”

Maggie looked blank.

“It’s like if you took a bundle of straw and made it even and straight, then laid it on the roof instead of wood or slate,” Jem elaborated.

“A straw roof?”

“Yes.”

“How can that keep the rain out?”

“It do well, if the straw be tight and even. Have you not been out of London?” He waved his hand vaguely south. “It’s not so far to proper countryside. There be thatched roofs just out of London-I remember when we first came. We could go out one day and see ’em.”

Maggie jumped up. “I don’t know the way out there.”

“But you could find the way.” Jem followed her along the wall. “You could ask.”

“And I don’t like bein’ alone out on them little lanes, with no one round.” Maggie shuddered.

“I’d be with you,” he said, surprised by his protectiveness toward her. He had not felt that way about anyone but Maisie-though this was not exactly that brotherly feeling. “’Tis nothing to be afraid of,” he added.

“I an’t afraid, but I don’t fancy it. It’d be boring out there.” Maggie looked around and brightened. Stopping where the wall backed onto the Blakes’ garden, she pulled her mop cap from her wavy dark hair and threw it over the wall.

“Why’d you do that?” Jem yelled.

“We need an excuse to go and see ’em. Now we have one. C’mon!” She ran along the back wall and through the alley to Hercules Buildings. By the time Jem caught up with her, she was knocking on the Blakes’ front door.

“Wait!” he shouted, but it was too late.

“Hallo, Mrs. Blake,” Maggie said when Mrs. Blake opened the door. “Sorry to trouble you, but Jem’s thrown my cap over the wall into your garden. Is it all right if I fetch it?”

Mrs. Blake smiled at her. “Of course, my dear, as long as you don’t mind a few brambles. It’s gone wild back there. Come in.” She opened the door wider and let Maggie slip inside. She gazed at Jem, who was hesitating on the step. “Are you coming in too, my dear? She’ll need help finding her cap.”

Jem wanted to explain that he had not thrown Maggie’s cap, but he couldn’t get the words out. Instead he simply nodded, and stepped inside, Mrs. Blake shutting the door behind them with a brisk slam.

He found himself in a passage that led back through an archway to a set of stairs. Jem had the odd feeling that he had been in this passage before, though it had been darker. A doorway to his left was open and threw light into the corridor. That shouldn’t be open, he thought, though he didn’t know why. Then he heard the rustle of Mrs. Blake’s skirts behind him, and the sound reminded him of another place, and he understood: This house was the mirror image of Miss Pelham’s; this was the passage, and that the set of stairs that he used every day. Hers were darker because she kept the door closed that led into her front room.

Maggie had already disappeared. Although he knew how to get to the garden-like Miss Pelham’s, you passed through an archway, then jogged around the staircase and down a few steps-Jem felt he shouldn’t be leading the way through someone else’s house. He stepped into the doorway of the front room so that Mrs. Blake could pass, glancing inside as he did.

This was certainly different from Miss Pelham’s, and from any room he’d seen in Dorsetshire too. On first coming to London the Kellaways had had to get used to different sorts of rooms: They were squarely built, with more right angles than an irregular Dorset cottage room, walls the thickness of a brick rather than as wide as your forearm, larger windows, higher ceilings, and small grates with marble mantelpieces rather than hearths with open fires. The smell of coal fires was new too-in Dorsetshire they had an abundant and free wood supply-and with it the constant smoke that fogged up the city and made his mother’s eyes go red.

But the Blakes’ front room was different from either a snug, crooked Piddle Valley kitchen or Miss Pelham’s front parlor with its caged canary, its vases of dried flowers, its uncomfortable sofa stuffed with horsehair, and its low armchairs set too far apart. Indeed, here there was no place to sit at all. The room was dominated by the large printing press with the long star-shaped handle that Jem had seen from the street. It stood a little taller than Jem, and looked like a solid table with a small cabinet sitting on it. Above the smooth, waist-high plank hung a large wood roller, with another underneath. Turning the handle must move the rollers, Jem worked out. The press was made of varnished beech, apart from the rollers, which were of a harder wood, and was well worn, especially on the handles.

The rest of the room was organized around the press. There were tables full of metal plates, jugs, and odd tools unfamiliar to Jem, as well as shelves holding bottles, paper, boxes, and long thin drawers like those he had seen in a print shop in Dorchester. Lines of thin rope were strung across the room, though nothing hung from them at the moment. The whole room was laid out carefully, and was very clean. Mr. Blake was not there, however.

Jem stepped out of the front room and followed Mrs. Blake. The back room door was shut, and he sensed a muscular presence behind it, like a horse in a stable stall.

Maggie was down near the bottom of the garden, picking through a mass of brambles, nettles, thistles, and grasses. Her cap had got caught on a loop of bramble well off the ground and was signaling to her like a flag of surrender. She jerked it free and hurried back toward the house, stumbling over a bramble and scratching her leg. As she reached out to steady herself, she brushed against a nettle and stung her hand. “Damn these plants,” she muttered, and slashed at the nettle with her cap, stinging her hand even more. “Damn damn damn.” Sucking her hand, she stomped out of the wildness and into the patch of garden near the house, where there were orderly rows of seedlings planted-lettuce, peas, leeks, carrots, potatoes-and Jem inspecting them.

He looked up. “What’s wrong with your hand?”

“Damned nettle stung me.”

“Don’t suck it-that don’t help. Did you find some dock leaf?” Jem didn’t wait for her answer, but pushed past and picked through the undergrowth to a bank of nettles growing near the summerhouse, where two chairs had been set just inside its open doors. “Look, it’s this plant with the broad leaf-it grows next to nettles. You squeeze it to get some juice, then put it on the sting.” He applied it to Maggie’s hand. “Do that feel better?”

“Yes,” Maggie said, both surprised that the dock leaf worked and pleased that Jem had taken her hand. “How’d you know about that?”

“Lots of nettles in Dorsetshire.”

As if to punish him for his knowledge, Maggie turned to the summerhouse. “Remember this?” she said in a low voice. “Remember what we saw them doin’?”

“What’ll we do now?” Jem interrupted, clearly discomfited by any talk of that day they saw the Blakes in their garden. He glanced at Mrs. Blake, who was standing in the grass by the back door, hands in her apron pockets, waiting for them.

Maggie gazed at him, and he went red. She paused a moment, enjoying the power she held over him even if she wasn’t entirely sure what that power was, or why she had it with him and no one else. It made her stomach flutter.

Mrs. Blake shifted her weight from one hip to the other, and Maggie looked around for something that might keep them from having to leave. There was nothing unusual about the garden, however. Apart from the summerhouse, there was a privy by the door and an ash pit for the coal ash from the grates. The grapevine Miss Pelham was competing with grew rampant along the wall. Next to it was a small fig tree with broad leaves like hands.

“Does your fig bear any fruit?” Maggie asked.

“Not yet-it’s too young. We’re hoping next year it will,” Mrs. Blake answered. She turned to go inside, and the children reluctantly followed.

They passed by the closed door of the back room, and again Jem wished he could go in. The open door of the front room was more inviting, however, and he paused so that he could peek in once more at the printing press. He was just summoning up the courage to ask Mrs. Blake about it when Maggie said, “Mrs. Blake, could we see that song book of Mr. Blake’s you told us about up on the bridge? We’d like to see it, wouldn’t we, Jem?”

Jem started to shake his head but it came out as a nod.

Mrs. Blake stopped in the hallway. “Oh, would you, my dear? Well, now, let me just ask Mr. Blake if that will be all right. Wait here-I’ll just be a moment.” She went back to the closed door and tapped on it, waiting until she heard a murmur before she opened the door and slipped inside.

4

When the door opened again, Mr. Blake himself appeared. “Hallo, my children,” he said. “Kate tells me you want to see my songs.”

“Yes, sir,” Maggie and Jem answered in unison.

“Well, that is good-children understand them better than everyone else. ‘And I wrote my happy songs / Every child may joy to hear.’ Come along.” Leading them into the front room with the printing press, he went over to a shelf, opened a box, and brought out a book not much bigger than his hand, stitched into a mushroomcolored wrapper. “Here you are,” he said, laying it on the table by the front window.

Jem and Maggie stood side by side at the table, but neither reached for the book-not even Maggie, for all her boldness. Nei-ther had much experience with handling books. Anne Kellaway had been given a prayer book by her parents when she married, but she was the only family member to use it at church. Maggie’s parents had never owned a book, apart from those that Dick Butterfield had bought and sold, and Bet Butterfield couldn’t read-though she liked having her husband read old newspapers to her when he brought them back from the pub.

“Aren’t you going to look at it?” Mr. Blake said. “Go on, my boy-open it. Anywhere will do.”

Jem reached out and fumbled with the book, opening it to a place near the beginning. On the left-hand page was a picture of a large burgundy and mauve flower, and inside its curling petals sat a woman wearing a yellow dress with a baby on her lap. A girl stood next to them in a blue dress with what looked to Maggie like butterfly wings sprouting from her shoulders. There were words set out in brown under the flower, with green stems and vines twined around them. The right-hand page was made up almost entirely of words, with a tree of leaves growing up the right margin, vines snaking up the left, and birds flying here and there. Maggie admired the pictures, though she couldn’t read any of the words. She wondered if Jem could. “What do it say?” she asked.

“Can’t you read them, child?”

Maggie shook her head. “I only went to school a year, and forgot it all.”

Mr. Blake chuckled. “I didn’t go to school at all! My father taught me to read. Didn’t your father teach you?”

“He’s too busy for that.”

“Did you hear that, Kate? Did you?”

“I did, Mr. Blake.” Mrs. Blake was standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb.

“I taught Kate to read, you see. Her father was too busy as well. All right, my boy, what about you? Can you read the song?”

Jem cleared his throat. “I’ll try. I only had a little schooling.” He placed a finger on the page and began slowly to read:

I have no name

I am but two days old.-

What shall I call thee?

I happy am

Joy is my name-

Sweet joy befall thee!

He read in such stops and starts that Mr. Blake took pity on him and joined in, strengthening and quickening his voice so that Jem was trailing him, echoing his words almost like a game:

Pretty joy!

Sweet joy but two days old,

Sweet joy I call thee;

Thou dost smile,

I sing the while

Sweet joy befall thee.

From the picture Maggie worked out that the song was about a baby, and Mr. Blake sounded like a doting father cooing, repeating phrases and sounding daft. She wondered that he would know this was how fathers sounded when he had no children of his own. On the other hand, he clearly knew little about babies or he’d not have one smiling when only two days old; Maggie had helped with enough babies to know the smile didn’t come for several weeks, until the mother was desperate for it. She didn’t tell him this, however.

“Here’s one you’ll remember.” Mr. Blake turned over a few pages, then began to recite, “When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,” the song he’d sung to them on the bridge. This time he didn’t sing it, but chanted quickly. Jem tried to follow along with the words on the page, chiming in here and there with a word he was able to read or could remember. Maggie frowned, annoyed that he and Mr. Blake shared the song in a way she couldn’t. She looked at the picture that accompanied it. A group of people were sitting around a table with glasses of wine, the women in blue and yellow dresses, a man colored in mauve with his back turned, raising a cup of wine. She did remember one part of the song, so that when Mr. Blake and Jem got to the line, she joined in to shout “Ha, ha, he!” as if she were in a pub singing along with others.

“Did you make this book, sir?” Jem asked when they’d finished.

“From start to finish, my boy. Wrote it, etched it, printed it, colored it, stitched and bound it, then offered it for sale. With Kate’s help, of course. I couldn’t have done it without Kate.” He gazed at his wife and she gazed back. To Jem it felt as if they were holding the ends of a rope and pulling it tight between them.

“Did you use this press?” he persisted.

Mr. Blake put a hand on one of the handles. “I did. Not in this room, mind. We were living in Poland Street then. Across the river.” He gripped the handle and pulled it so that it moved a little. Part of the wood frame groaned and cracked. “The hardest part of moving to Lambeth was getting the press here. We had to take it apart, and get several men to move it.”

“How do it work?”

Mr. Blake beamed with the look of a man who has found a fellow fanatic. “Ah, it’s a beautiful sight, my boy. Very satisfying. You take the plate you’ve prepared-have you ever seen an etched plate? No? Here’s one.” He led Jem to one of the shelves and picked up a flat rectangle of metal. “Run your finger over it.” Jem felt raised lines and swirls on the smooth, cold copper. “So. First we ink the plate with a dauber”-he held up a stubby piece of wood with a rounded end-“then wipe it, so that the ink is only on the parts we want printed. Then we put the plate on the bed of the press-here.” Mr. Blake set the plate down on the table part of the press, near the rollers. “Then we take the piece of paper we’ve prepared and lay it over the plate, and then blankets over them. Then we pull the handles towards us”-Mr. Blake pulled the handle a little and the rollers turned-“and the plate and paper get caught up and pass between the rollers. That imprints the ink onto the paper. Once it’s gone through the rollers, we take it out-very carefully, mind-and hang it to dry on those lines above our heads. When they’re dry we color them.”

While Jem listened intently, touching the different parts of the press as he had been longing to, and asking Mr. Blake questions, Maggie grew bored and turned away to flip through the book once more. She had not looked much at books-since she couldn’t read, she had little use for them. Maggie had hated school. She’d gone when she was eight to a charity school for girls in Southwark, just over from Lambeth, where the Butterfields had lived before. To her it had been a miserable place, where the girls were crowded into a room together to trade fleas and lice and coughs, and where beatings occurred daily and indiscriminately. After roaming the streets, she had found it hard to sit still in a room all day, and could not take in what the schoolmistress was saying about letters and figures. It was all so much duller than being out and about in Southwark that Maggie either wriggled or fell asleep, and then was beaten with a thin stick that cut through skin. The only cheering sight in the school was the day Dick Butterfield came to school with his daughter after finding yet another set of welts on her back that he had not made himself, and walloped the schoolmistress. Maggie never went back after that, and until Jem and Mr. Blake recited the song together, she had never regretted not being able to read.

Mr. Blake’s book of songs surprised her, for it didn’t look like any book she had ever seen. Most books contained words with the odd picture thrown in. Here, though, words and pictures were entwined; at times it was hard to tell where the one ended and the other began. Maggie turned page after page. Most of the pictures were of children either playing or with grown-ups, and all of them seemed to be in the countryside-which according to Mr. Blake was not the big, empty, open space that she’d always imagined, but contained, with hedgerows as boundaries and trees to shelter under.

There were several pictures of children with their mothers-the women reading to them, or giving them a hand up from the ground, or watching them as they slept-their childhoods nothing like Maggie’s. Bet Butterfield of course could never have read to her, and was more likely to shout at Maggie to pick herself up than reach out a hand to her. And Maggie doubted she would ever wake to find her mother sitting by her bed. She looked up, blinking rapidly to rid her eyes of tears. Mrs. Blake was still leaning in the doorway, her hands in her apron. “You must have sold a lot o’ these to stay in this house, ma’am,” Maggie said, to hide her tears.

Maggie’s statement appeared to bring Mrs. Blake out of a reverie. She pushed herself off of the doorjamb and ran her hands down her skirt to straighten it. “Not so many, my dear. Not so many. There’s not many folk understand Mr. Blake, you see. Not even these songs.” She hesitated. “Now I think it’s time for him to work. He’s had a fair few interruptions today, haven’t you, Mr. Blake?” She said this tentatively, almost fearfully, as if frightened of her husband’s response.

“Of course, Kate,” he answered, turning away from the printing press. “You’re right, as ever. I’m always getting distracted by one thing or another, and Kate’s always having to pull me back.” He nodded to them and stepped out of the room.

“Damn,” Maggie said suddenly. “I forgot Mam’s beer!” She left Songs of Innocence on the table and hurried to the door. “Sorry, Mrs. Blake, we’ve to go. Thanks for showing us your things!”

5

After fetching the tankard where she’d left it by the wall in Astley’s field, Maggie ran to the Pineapple at the end of Hercules Buildings, Jem at her side. As they were about to go in, he looked around, and to his surprise spied his sister, pressed against the hedge across the road and stepping from one foot to the other. “Maisie!” he cried.

Maisie started. “Oh! Ar’ernoon, Jem, Maggie.”

“What you doin’ here, Miss Piddle?” Maggie demanded as they crossed over to her. “Weren’t you goin’ to say hallo?”

“I’m-” Maisie broke off as the door to the Pineapple opened and Charlie Butterfield stepped out. Her bright face fell.

“Damn,” Maggie muttered as Charlie caught sight of them and wandered over. He scowled when he recognized Jem. “What you hangin’ about for, country boy?”

Maggie stepped between them. “We’re just gettin’ Mam some beer. Jem, would you go in and get it for me? Tell ’em it’s for the Butterfields and Pa’ll pay for it at the end of the week.” Maggie preferred to keep Jem and Charlie separate if she could; they’d hated each other from the start.

Jem hesitated-he didn’t much like going into London pubs on his own-but he knew why Maggie was asking him. Grabbing the tankard, he ran across to the Pineapple and disappeared inside.

When he was gone Charlie turned his attention to Maisie, taking in her guileless face, her silly frilled cap, her slim form and small breasts pushed up by her stays. “Who’s this, then?” he said. “An’t you goin’ to introduce us?”

Maisie smiled a Piddle Valley smile. “I’m Maisie-Margaret, like Maggie. I’m Jem’s sister. Are you Maggie’s brother? You two look just alike, except that one be dark and t’other fair.”

Charlie smiled at her in a way that Maggie didn’t trust. She could see him guzzling Maisie’s innocence. “What you doin’ in the street, Maisie?” he said. “You waitin’ for me?”

Maisie giggled. “How could I do that when I ne’er saw you before? No, I be waiting-for someone else.”

Her words seemed to make the pub door open, and John Astley stepped out, accompanied by a girl who made costumes for the circus. They were laughing, and his hand was giving her a little push in the small of her back. Without looking at the trio, they turned and walked down a path that skirted the Pineapple and led back to the Astley stables. Maggie knew there was an empty stall at the end where he often brought his women.

“Oh!” Maisie gulped, and stepped into the street to follow them.

Maggie took hold of her elbow. “No, Miss Piddle.”

“Why not?” Maisie seemed to ask this innocently as she tried to pull her elbow free. Maggie glanced at Charlie, who raised his eyebrows.

“C’mon, now, Maisie. They’ll be busy and won’t want you hangin’ about.”

“He must be showing her his horse, don’t you think?” Maisie said.

Charlie snorted. “Showin’ her summat, that’s sure.”

“Best leave it,” Maggie advised. “You don’t want to be spyin’ on him-he wouldn’t like that.”

Maisie turned her large blue eyes on Maggie. “I hadn’t thought of that. D’you think he’d be angry with me?”

“Yes, he would. You go home, now.” Maggie gave Maisie a little push. After a moment Maisie started up Hercules Buildings. “Nice to meet you,” she called to Charlie over her shoulder.

Charlie chuckled. “Good Lord a day, where’d you find her?”

“Leave her be, Charlie.”

He was still watching Maisie, but flicked his eyes at his sister. “What makes you think I’m goin’ to do summat to her, Miss Cut-Throat?”

Maggie froze. He had never called her that before. She tried not to show her panic, keeping her eyes fixed on his face, taking in the bristles on his chin and the beginnings of a skimpy blond moustache. He was her brother, though, and knew her well, catching the flash in her eyes and the sudden stillness of her breathing.

“Oh, don’t worry.” He smiled his dubious smile. “Your secret’s safe with me. Fact is, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Jem appeared at the pub door and started over, walking carefully so that he wouldn’t jog the full tankard. He frowned when he saw Maggie’s tense, miserable face. “What’s the matter?” He turned on Charlie. “What’d you do to her?”

“You goin’ home now?” Charlie said, ignoring Jem.

Maggie frowned. “What d’you care?”

“Mam and Pa have a little surprise for you, is all.” In one movement he grabbed the tankard from Jem and pulled a long drink from it, emptying a third before he thrust it back and ran off, laughter floating behind him.

6

When Maggie returned, Bet Butterfield was by the fire, dumping fistfuls of chopped potatoes into a pot of water. Charlie was already at the table, his long legs spread in front of him. “Chop up the onions, would you, duck,” Bet Butterfield said, taking the tankard from Maggie without comment on its late arrival or the missing beer. “You cry less’n me.”

“Charlie don’t cry at all,” Maggie retorted. Charlie did not take the hint, but continued to lounge at the table. Maggie glared at him as she began to peel the onions. Bet Butterfield cut some of the fat off the meat and dropped it into a frying pan to heat. Then she stood over her daughter, watching her work.

“Not rings,” she said. “Slivers.”

Maggie paused, the knife biting into half an onion. “Stop it, Mam. You said onions make you cry, so go ’way.”

“How can I go ’way when you an’t chopping ’em right?”

“What difference does it make how I chop ’em? Rings or slivers, they taste the same. Onions is onions.”

“Here, I’ll do it.” Bet Butterfield grabbed at the knife. Maggie held on to it.

Charlie looked up from his contemplation of nothing and watched mother and daughter grapple with the knife. “Careful, Mam,” he drawled. “Maggie’s handy with a knife, an’t you, Maggie?”

Maggie let go. “Shut it, Charlie!”

Bet Butterfield glanced from one to the other of her children. “What you talkin’ about?”

“Nothing, Mam,” they answered in unison.

Bet Butterfield waited, but neither said anything more, though Charlie smirked at the fire. Their mother began chopping the onions just as she had done the ironing-automatically, methodi-cally, repeating an act so familiar that she didn’t have to waste any thought on it.

“Mam, the fat’s smokin’,” Maggie announced.

“Put the meat in, then,” Bet Butterfield ordered. “Don’t let it burn. Your pa don’t like it burnt.”

“I’m not going to burn it.”

Maggie burnt it. She did not like cooking any more than ironing. Bet Butterfield finished chopping the onions, scooped them up and dropped them into the pan before grabbing the spoon from her daughter. “Maggie!” she cried when she turned the meat and saw the black marks.

Charlie chuckled.

“What’d she do this time?” Dick Butterfield spoke from the doorway. Bet Butterfield flipped the meat back over and stirred the onions vigorously. “Nothing, nothing-she’s just gettin’ back to the ironing, an’t you, duck?”

“Mind you don’t scorch it,” Dick Butterfield commented. “What? What?” he added as Charlie began to laugh and Maggie kicked at her brother’s legs. “Listen, girl, you need to treat your family with a little more respect. Now, help your mother.” He hooked a stool with his foot and pulled it under him as he sat down, a movement he had perfected from years of pub stool sitting.

Maggie scowled, but pulled the iron from the fire and went back to the pile of sheets. She could feel her father’s eyes on her as she ran the iron back and forth, and for once she concentrated on smoothing the cloth systematically rather than haphazardly.

It was rare for all four Butterfields to be in the same room together. By the nature of their different work, Dick and Bet were often out at odd times, and Charlie and Maggie had grown up dipping in and out of the house as they liked, eating from pie shops or taverns or street sellers. The kitchen felt small with them all there, especially with Charlie’s legs taking up so much space.

“So, Mags,” Dick Butterfield said suddenly, “Charlie tells us you was out with the Kellaway boy when you was meant to be gettin’ beer for your mam.”

Maggie glowered at Charlie, who smiled.

“You spend all your time runnin’ round with Dorset boys,” her father continued, “while your mam an’ me is out workin’ to put food in your mouth. It’s time you started to earn your keep.”

“I don’t see Charlie working,” Maggie muttered into her ironing.

“What’s that?” Charlie growled.

“Charlie don’t work,” Maggie repeated more loudly. “He’s years older’n me and you’re not sendin’ him out to work.”

Dick Butterfield had been batting a piece of coal back and forth on the table, and Bet Butterfield was holding the pan over the pot and pushing the meat and onions in to join the potatoes. Both paused what they were doing and stared at Maggie. “What you mean, gal? Course he works-he works with me!” Dick Butterfield protested, genuinely puzzled.

“I meant that you never had him apprenticed, to a trade.”

Charlie had been looking smug, but now he stopped smiling.

“He is apprenticed, to me,” Dick Butterfield said quickly, with a glance at his son. “And he’s learned plenty about buying and selling, han’t you, boy?”

It was a sore point with Charlie. They’d not had the fee needed to have him apprenticed at thirteen, for Dick Butterfield had been in prison then. He’d done two years for trying to pass off pewter as silver, and by the time he’d come out and recovered his busi-ness, Charlie was a fifteen-year-old boor who slept till noon and spoke in grunts. The few tradesmen who might have been prepared to take on an older boy spent just a minute in his company and made their excuses. Dick Butterfield was only able to call in one favor, and Charlie lasted all of two days at a blacksmith’s before he burnt a horse while playing with a hot poker. The horse dispatched him for the blacksmith by kicking him unconscious; he bore the scar through one eyebrow from that blow.

“It an’t Charlie we’re talkin’ about here, anyway,” Dick Butterfield declared. “It’s you. Now, your mam says it’s no good you doin’ the laundry with her, as you haven’t got the knack of it, have you? So I’ve asked about, and got you a place with a friend of mine in Southwark, makes rope. You start tomorrow morning at six. Best get a good night’s sleep tonight.”

“Rope!” Maggie cried. “Please, Pa, not that!” She was thinking of a woman she’d seen in a pub once whose hands were rubbed raw from the scratchy hemp she had to handle all day.

“Surprise,” Charlie mouthed at her.

“Bastard!” Maggie mouthed back.

“No arguments, gal,” Dick Butterfield said. “It’s time you grew up.”

“Mags, run next door and ask ’em for some turnips,” Bet Butterfield ordered, trying to defuse the growing anger in the room. “Tell ’em I’ll get some more down the market tomorrow.”

Maggie banged the iron into the coals and turned to go. If she’d simply gone out, got the turnips, and come back, the moment might have passed. But as she went toward the door, Charlie stretched out a foot to trip her, and Maggie sprawled forward, banging her shins on the table and knocking Dick Butterfield’s arm so that the piece of coal he’d been playing with flew from his hands and dropped into the stew. “Damn, Mags, what you doing?” he shouted.

Even then the situation could have been repaired if only her mother had scolded Charlie for tripping her up. Instead Bet Butterfield cried, “What’s the matter with you, you clumsy clod! You tryin’ to ruin my stew? Can’t you do anything right?”

Maggie staggered up from the floor to come face-to-face with Charlie’s sneer. The sight made something in her snap, and she spat in her brother’s face. He jumped up with a roar, his chair flung backward. As Maggie hopped across the room to the door, she shouted over her shoulder, “Fuck you, the lot of you! You can take your turnips and shove ’em straight up your arse!”

Charlie chased her out of the house and down the street, bellowing “Bitch!” all the way, and would have caught her but for a coach rumbling along Bastille Row that she darted in front of and that he was forced to stop for. This gave her the crucial seconds she needed to get him off of her heels, race across Mead Row, and dive down an alley that ran along the backs of gardens and came out eventually across from the Dog and Duck. Maggie knew every hidey-hole and alley in the area much better than her brother. When she looked back, Charlie was no longer following her. He was the sort of boy who never bothered to chase someone unless he was sure he could catch them, for he hated being seen to lose.

Maggie hid behind the Dog and Duck for a while, listening to the noise inside the pub and watching out for her brother. When she felt sure that he was no longer looking for her, she crept out and began to make her way through the streets in a wide semicircle around Bastille Row. It was quiet now; people were at home eating, or in the pub. Street sellers had packed up their wares and gone; the whores were just beginning to emerge.

Eventually Maggie ended up at the river by Lambeth Palace. She sat on the bank for a long time, watching the boats going up and down in the early evening sunlight. She could hear, up along the river, the distinct sounds of Astley’s Circus-music and laughter and occasional cheers. Her heart was still pounding and she was still grinding her teeth. “Damned rope,” she muttered. “Piss on that.”

Though she was hungry, and she would need somewhere to sleep, she didn’t dare go home to face her parents and Charlie, and rope. Maggie shivered, though it was a balmy evening yet. She was used to spending time away from the house, but she’d never slept anywhere else. Perhaps Jem will let me sleep at his house, she thought. She couldn’t think of another plan, and so she leapt up and ran along Church Street past Lambeth Green to Hercules Buildings. It was only when she was standing in the road across from Miss Pelham’s house that Maggie faltered. No one was standing in the windows of the Kellaways’ rooms, though they were propped open. She could call out or throw a pebble up to get someone’s attention, but she didn’t. She just stood and looked, hoping that Jem or Maisie would make it easy by spotting her and beckoning for her to come up.

After a few minutes of standing and feeling foolish, she stepped into the road again. It was getting dark now. Maggie walked down the alley between two Hercules Buildings houses that led to Astley’s field. Across it was her parents’ garden, where she could see a faint light through the gap in the fence. They would have eaten the stew by now. She wondered if her mother had saved any for her. Her father might have slipped to the pub to bring back more beer and perhaps an old paper or two that he would be reading out to Bet and Charlie, if Charlie hadn’t already gone to the pub himself. Perhaps the neighbors had popped around and they were catching up on the local gossip or talking about how difficult daughters could be. One of their neighbors played the fiddle-perhaps he’d brought it with him and Dick Butterfield had drunk enough beer to sing “Morgan Rattler,” his favorite bawdy song. Maggie strained her ears, but couldn’t hear any music. She wanted to go back, but only if she could slip in and sit with her family and not have a fuss made, and not have to say sorry, and take the beating she knew waited for her, and go the next morning and make rope for the rest of her life. That was not going to happen, and so she had to stand and watch from afar.

Her gaze fell then on the wall at the end of the Blakes’ garden just to her left. She contemplated it, gauging how high it was, and what was behind it, and whether or not climbing over it was what she wanted to do.

Not far from the wall was a wheelbarrow one of Astley’s nieces had been using in the kitchen garden. Maggie looked around. For once the yard was deserted, though there were figures moving about inside Hercules Hall-servants preparing a late supper for their master. She hesitated, then ran in a crouch over to the barrow and pushed it to the end of the wall, wincing at the squeak the wheel made. Then, when she was sure no one was watching, she climbed onto the barrow, pulled herself to the top of the wall, and jumped down into the darkness.