Burning Bright

1

It was a treat for Anne and Maisie Kellaway to be able to sit out in Miss Pelham’s garden to make their buttons. Miss Pelham had gone the day before to visit friends in Hampstead, taking her maid with her, and was staying the week for the air-Lambeth was unseasonably hot and the hills just north of London were likely to be cooler. In her absence the Kellaway women were taking advantage of the sunshine and the empty garden. They had brought chairs out and were sitting in the square with the white lilac in the center, surrounded by pinks. Lilac was Maisie’s favorite flower; she’d longed to sniff it but had only been able to watch over it longingly from their windows as its white blossoms began to appear. Whenever she went to the privy, she wondered if she could dash across the gravel path, bury her nose in the flowers, then run back before Miss Pelham saw her. But her landlady always seemed to be lingering at the back window or in the garden itself, pacing with her cup of beef broth, and Maisie never dared. Now, though, she could sit by it for a whole morning and get her fill of its scent until next year.

Maisie leaned back in her chair and sighed as she stretched her neck, tilting her head to the left and right.

“What is’t?” her mother asked, still bent over the button-a Blandford Cartwheel-she was making. “Tired already? We’ve hardly begun. You’ve only made two.”

“It’s not that. You know I like making buttons.” Indeed, Maisie had once made fifty-four Blandford Cartwheels in one day, a record for the Piddle Valley-though a girl to the east in Whitchurch was known to make a gross of buttons a day, as Mr. Case, the button agent who came monthly to Piddletrenthide, often reminded the women who brought their finished buttons to him. Maisie was sure the girl made simpler buttons that could be done faster-Singletons and Birds’ Eyes, or Dorset Crosswheels, which weren’t as fiddly as Cartwheels. “It be just that I-I miss our lilac back home.”

Anne Kellaway was silent for a moment, examining her finished button and using her thumbnail to distribute rows of thread more evenly so that the button resembled a tiny spider’s web. Satisfied, she dropped the button in her lap with the others she had made, and picked up a new metal ring, which she began wrapping with thread right the way around the rim. Then she addressed Maisie’s comment. “Lilac smells the same here, don’t it?”

“No, it don’t. It be smaller and has fewer flowers, and it an’t so perfumed, and there be dirt all over it.”

“The bush be different, but the flowers still smell the same.”

“No, they don’t,” Maisie insisted.

Anne Kellaway did not pursue the argument; though she had-with the help of regular visits to the circus-grown more accepting of their new life in London, she understood what her daughter meant. “I wonder if Lizzie Miller’s picked any elderflowers yet,” she said instead. “I han’t seen any out here yet. Don’t know if they come out here earlier or later’n Dorsetshire. I hope Sam shows her where the early patch be up Dead Cat Lane.”

“What, near the top?”

“Yes.” Anne Kellaway paused, thinking about the spot. “Your father carved me a whistle from the wood of that tree when we was young.”

“That were sweet. But you can’t still have the whistle, Ma, can you? I never seen it.”

“I lost it not long after, in the hazel wood near Nettlecombe Tout.”

“How tragic!” her daughter cried. Recently Maisie had grown more sensitive to the goings-on between couples, loading them with a depth of emotion that Anne Kellaway herself felt she could never match.

She glanced sideways at her daughter. “It weren’t so tragic as all that.” She would never tell Maisie, but she’d lost it during a tumble with Thomas Kellaway-“priming the pump for the marriage bed,” as he’d put it. Now, so many years later, it was hard to imagine why they’d done such a thing. Though she knew she must still love her husband, she felt old and numb.

“D’you think Sam has married Lizzie by now?” Maisie asked. “She got the ring in the Michaelmas pie last year, didn’t she? It be time for her to marry.”

Anne Kellaway snorted. “That old tale. Anyway, Sam said he would send word if he did.”

“I wish we were there to see it. Lizzie’d look so pretty with flowers in her hair. What would she wear, d’you think? I’d wear white lilac, of course.”

Anne Kellaway frowned as she wound the thread rapidly around the button ring. She and Maisie had been making buttons for years in their spare time, and she had always enjoyed sitting with her daughter, chatting about this and that or simply being quiet together. These days, however, she had little to add to Maisie’s remarks about love and beauty and men and women. Such thoughts were far from her life now-if they had ever been close. She couldn’t recall being interested in things like that when she was fourteen. Even Thomas Kellaway’s courting her at nineteen had surprised her; sometimes when she’d walked with him along lanes and across fields, or lain with him in the woods where she lost her whistle, she had felt as if it were someone else in her place, going through the motions of flirting and blushing and kissing and rubbing her hands along her lover’s back, while Anne Kellaway herself stood off to one side and studied the ancient furrows and dikes that underpinned the surrounding hills. Maisie’s intent interest embarrassed her.

However, she too wished that she could see her eldest son married. They’d only had one letter from Sam, at the beginning of May, though Maisie, who could read and write better than the rest of the Kellaways, had set herself the task of writing to him weekly, and began her letters with a paragraph full of questions and speculation about all that might be going on in the Piddle Valley-who would be shearing their sheep, who was making the most buttons, who had been to Dorchester or Weymouth or Blandford, who’d had babies. However, though he could read and write a little-all the Kellaway children had gone for a bit to the village school-Sam was not a letter writer, or very talkative. His letter was short and poorly written, and did not answer Maisie’s questions. He told them only that he was well, that he’d carved the arms for a new set of pews for the church at Piddletrenthide, and that it had rained so much that the stream running through Plush had flooded some of the cottages. The Kellaways devoured these bits of news, but there had not been enough of them, and they were still hungry.

Since they got little news from home, Anne and Maisie Kellaway could only speculate over their buttons. Had the publican sold the Five Bells as he was always threatening to do? Had the head-stock holding the treble bell at the church been mended in time for the Easter Sunday peal? Had the maypole been set up in Piddletrenthide or Piddlehinton this year? And now, as they bent over their buttons: Would Lizzie Miller pick the choicest elderflowers for cordial and wear lilac in her hair at the wedding the Kellaways would miss? Anne Kellaway’s eyes blurred with tears for not knowing. She shook her head and focused on her Blandford Cartwheel. She had finished wrapping the ring with thread and was now ready to create spokes to make it look like the wheel of a cart.

“What’s that sound?” Maisie said.

Anne Kellaway heard a chop-chop-chopping next door. “Tha’ be Mrs. Blake with her hoe,” she said in a low voice.

“No, not that. There it be again-someone knocking on Miss Pelham’s door.”

“Go on and see who it is,” Anne Kellaway said. “It may be tickets for the circus.” She’d heard that the program was to change again soon, and Mr. Astley had sent them tickets every time it did. She had already begun to anticipate a knock on the door and another set of tickets thrust at her. Anne Kellaway knew that she was becoming greedy for the circus, and was perhaps relying too readily on Mr. Astley’s continuing generosity with complimentary tickets. “Seats for seats!” he’d said once, delighted with the chairs Thomas Kellaway had made him.

As she went to answer the door, Maisie was smoothing her hair, biting her lips, and pulling at her dress to make it sit properly over her stays. Although a circus boy usually brought them the tickets, Maisie nursed a fantasy that John Astley himself might deliver them. She’d had a special thrill the last time the Kellaways went to the circus, when John Astley had played the Harlequin in Harlequin’s Vagaries, and Maisie had been treated to a whole half hour of gazing at him as he sang, courted Columbine-played by newcomer Miss Hannah Smith-and danced upon his chestnut mare. Maisie had watched him with a lump in her throat-a lump that got stuck when at one point she was certain he looked at her.

When she was thinking sensibly, Maisie knew very well that John Astley was not a man she could ever expect to be with. He was handsome, cultured, wealthy, urbane-as different as could be from the sort of man she would marry in the Piddle Valley. Although she loved her father and brothers-especially Jem-they were awkward and dull next to John Astley. Besides, he provided a distraction from London, which still scared her, and from her brother Tommy’s death, which she seemed to feel more acutely four months on. It had taken that long for her to acknowledge that he was not still in Piddletrenthide and might appear at any time at Miss Pelham’s door, whistling and boasting of the adventures he’d had on the road to London.

For a brief moment, Maisie stood by the front door of no. 12 Hercules Buildings and listened to the knock, which had grown persistent and impatient, and wondered if it could be John Astley.

It was not, but rather a woman she had not seen before. She was of medium height, but seemed taller because of her bulk; for though she was not fat, she was well endowed, and her arms were like legs of lamb. Her face was round, with bright cheeks that looked as if they’d seen too much heat. Her brown hair had been shoved under a cap, from which it had escaped in several places without the woman appearing to have noticed. Her eyes were both lively and tired; indeed, she yawned in front of Maisie without even covering her gaping mouth.

“Hallo, duck,” she said. “You’re a lovely one, an’t you?”

“I-I’m sorry, but Miss Pelham an’t here,” Maisie stuttered, flustered by the compliment but disappointed that the woman wasn’t John Astley. “She’ll be back in a week.”

“I don’t want to see any Miss Pelham. I’m after my daughter-Maggie, that is-and wanted to ask you lot about her. Can I come in?”

2

“Ma, this be Mrs. Butterfield,” Maisie announced, arriving back in the garden. “Maggie’s mother.”

“Call me Bet,” the woman said. “It’s Maggie what I come about.”

“Maggie?” Anne Kellaway repeated, half rising from her seat and clutching the buttons she had made. Then she realized whom Bet meant and sank back down. “She’s not here.”

Bet Butterfield did not seem to have heard. She was staring into Anne Kellaway’s lap. “Are them buttons?”

“Yes.” Anne Kellaway had to fight the urge to cover the buttons with her hands.

“We do buttony,” Maisie explained. “We used to make ’em all the time back in Dorsetshire, and Ma took some of the materials with us when we came here. She thinks maybe we can sell ’em in London.”

Bet Butterfield held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Anne Kellaway reluctantly dropped into Bet’s rough, red hand the delicate buttons she had made so far that morning. “Those be called Blandford Cartwheels,” she couldn’t resist explaining.

“Lord, an’t they lovely,” Bet Butterfield murmured, pushing them around with a finger. “I see these on ladies’ nightgowns and am always careful with ’em when I wash ’em. Is that a blanket stitch you’ve used on the rim?”

“Yes.” Anne Kellaway held up the button she was working on. “Then I wrap the thread across the ring to make spokes for the wheel, and then backstitch round and round each spoke, so the thread fills in the space. At the end I gather it in the center with a stitch, and there be your button.”

“Lovely,” Bet Butterfield repeated, squinting at the buttons. “Wish I could make summat like this. I an’t bad at repairs and that, but I don’t know as I could manage summat this small and delicate. I’m better at washin’ what’s already made than makin’ it. Is these the only kind of buttons you make?”

“Oh, we do all sorts,” Maisie broke in. “Flat ones like these-the Dorset Wheels-we do in cartwheel, crosswheel, and honeycomb patterns. Then we do the High Tops, and the Knobs-those are for waistcoats-and the Singletons and Birds’ Eyes. What others do we do, Ma?”

“Basket Weaves, Old Dorsets, Mites and Spangles, Jams, Yannells, Outsiders,” Anne Kellaway recited.

“Where you going to sell ’em?” Bet Butterfield asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

“I can help you with that. Or my Dick can. He knows everybody, could sell eggs to a chicken, that man could. He’ll sell your buttons for you. How many you got ready?”

“Oh, four gross at least,” Maisie replied.

“And how much you get per gross?”

“It depends on what sort and how good they be.” Maisie paused. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Butterfield?” She gestured to her own chair.

“I will, duck, thanks.” Bet Butterfield lowered herself onto the hoop-back Windsor chair that, even after ten years of daily use, did not creak when her substantial mass met its elm seat. “Now, there’s a nice chair,” she said, leaning back against the spindles and running her finger along the smooth curved arm. “Plain, not fussy, and well made-though I never seen chairs painted blue before.”

“Oh, we paint all our chairs back in Dorsetshire,” Maisie declared. “That’s how folk like ’em.”

“Mags told me Mr. Kellaway’s a bodger. He make this one, Mrs.-?”

“Anne Kellaway. He did. Now, Mrs. Butterfield-”

“Bet, love. Everybody calls me Bet.”

“Like Bouncing Bet!” Maisie exclaimed, sitting down on one of Miss Pelham’s cold stone benches. “I’ve just thought of it. Oh, how funny!”

“What’s funny, duck?”

“Bouncing Bet-it be what we call soapwort. Back in Dorsetshire, at least. And you use soapwort for your washing, don’t you?”

“I do. Bouncing Bet, eh?” Bet Butterfield chuckled. “I’d not heard o’ that one. Where I’m from we called it Crow Soap. But I like that-Bouncing Bet. My Dick’ll start calling me that if I tell him.”

“What were it you’ve come for?” Anne Kellaway interjected. “You said it were something to do with your daughter.”

Bet Butterfield turned to her soberly. “Yes, yes. Well, you see, I’m lookin’ for her. She an’t been round for a while and I’m startin’ to wonder.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“Two weeks.”

“Two weeks! And you’re only now looking for her?” Anne Kellaway couldn’t imagine losing Maisie for one night in this city, much less two weeks.

Bet Butterfield shifted in her chair. This time it creaked. “Well, now, it an’t as bad as that. Maybe it’s been a week. Yes, that’s right, just a week.” At Anne Kellaway’s continuing look of horror, she blustered on. “And maybe not even that long. I’m often not at home, see; what with my washing, I work sometimes through the night at people’s houses and sleep during the day. There’s days go by I don’t see my Dick or Charlie or no one ’cause I’m out.”

“Has anyone else seen her?”

“No.” Bet Butterfield shifted in the chair again; again it creaked. “I’ll tell you truly, we had a bit of a row and she run off. She’s got a temper on her, has Mags-like her father. She’s a slow fuse but once she goes off-watch out!”

Anne and Maisie Kellaway were silent.

“Oh, I know she’s round,” Bet Butterfield added. “I leave food out for her and that disappears right enough. But I want her back. It an’t right for her to stay away so long. Neighbors are startin’ to ask questions, and look at me funny-like you lot are doing.”

Anne and Maisie Kellaway bowed their heads and began stitching at their Blandford Cartwheels.

Bet Butterfield leaned forward to watch their fingers at work. “Mags has been spendin’ a lot of time with your boy-Jem, is it?”

“Yes, Jem. He’s helping his father.” Anne Kellaway nodded toward the house.

“Well, then, I come to ask if he-or any of you-has seen Maggie in the last while. Just round the streets, or by the river, or here, if she’s come to visit.”

Anne Kellaway looked at her daughter. “Have you seen her, Maisie?”

Maisie was holding her button and letting the thread dangle, with the needle on the end of it. The motion of the stitching tended to twist the thread so much that now and then she had to stop and let it unwind itself. They all watched as the needle spun, then slowed, and finally stopped, swinging lightly at the end of the thread.

3

On the other side of the wall, Maggie was lounging on the steps of the Blakes’ summerhouse, looking through Songs of Innocence, when she heard her mother next door and sat up as if a whip had been cracked. It was a shock to hear Bet Butterfield’s town crier of a voice after being lulled by the Kellaway women’s Dorset accents and dull talk about the Piddle Valley.

She felt peculiar eavesdropping when the talk was about Maggie herself. Bet Butterfield sounded like someone in the market comparing the price of apples, and it took Maggie a few minutes to realize that the Kellaways and her mother were discussing her. She wrapped her arms around her knees and pulled them to her chest, resting her chin on them and lightly rocking back and forth in the entrance of the summerhouse.

Maggie was still surprised that the Blakes hadn’t thrown her out of their garden, as she was sure her own parents would do if they found a stray girl in theirs. Indeed, Maggie tried hard to hide the first days she was there. She had a miserable time of it, though. The night she first pitched over the wall, she didn’t sleep at all, shivering back among the brambles she’d tumbled into, even though it was a balmy night, and jumping at every rustle and snap as rats and foxes and cats went about their business around her. Maggie was not afraid of the animals, but their sounds made her think that people might be about, even though the Blakes’ garden was well removed from the shouts from the pubs, the comings and goings around Hercules Hall, the drunken quarrels, the ruttings up against the back wall. She hated not having four walls and a roof to protect her, and toward the end of the night she crept into the summerhouse, where she slept fitfully until dawn, waking with a yelp when she thought someone was sitting in the doorway. It was only a neighbor’s cat, however, watching her curiously.

The next day she went across Westminster Bridge and dozed in the sun in St. James’s Park, knowing the Butterfields were unlikely to go there. That night she hid in the summerhouse, this time with a blanket she’d stolen from home when no one was in, and slept much better-indeed, so well that she woke late, with the sun in her eyes and Mr. Blake sitting out on the steps of the summerhouse, a bowl of cherries beside him.

“Oh!” Maggie cried, sitting up and pushing her tangled hair from her eyes. “Sorry, Mr. Blake! I-”

One look from his bright gray eyes silenced her. “Would you like some cherries, my girl? First of the season.” He set the bowl next to her, then turned to look back out over the garden.

“Thanks.” Maggie tried not to gobble them, though she had eaten little the last two days. As she reached toward the bowl for the fourth time, she noticed that Mr. Blake had his notebook on his knee. “Was you goin’ to draw me?” she asked, trying to recover some of her spirit under awkward circumstances.

“Oh no, my girl, I never draw from life if I can help it.”

“Why not? An’t it easier than to make it up?”

Mr. Blake half turned toward her. “But I don’t make it up. It’s in my head already, and I simply draw what I see there.”

Maggie spat a stone into her hand to join the others she held, hiding her disappointment behind the gesture. She would have liked Mr. Blake to draw her. “So what d’you see in your head, then? Children like them pictures in your book?”

Mr. Blake nodded. “Children, and angels, and men and women speaking to me and to each other.”

“An’ you draw ’em in there?” She pointed at the notebook.

“Sometimes.”

“Can I see?”

“Of course.” Mr. Blake held out his notebook. Maggie threw the cherry stones into the garden and wiped her hand on her skirt before she took the notebook, knowing without having to be told that it was important to him. He confirmed this by adding, “That is my brother Robert’s notebook. He allows me to use it.”

Maggie leafed through it, paying more attention to the drawings than the words. Even if she had been able to read, she would have found it hard to make out his scrawl, full of words and lines scratched out and written over, verses turned upside down, sometimes written so quickly they seemed more like black marks than letters. “Lord, what a mess,” she murmured, trying to untangle the jumble of words and images on a page. “Look at all that crossin’ out!”

Mr. Blake laughed. “What comes out first is not always best,” he explained. “It needs reworking to shine.”

Many of the drawings were rough sketches, barely recognizable. Others, though, were more carefully executed. On one page a monstrous face carried a limp body in its mouth. On another a naked man stretched across the page, calling out anxiously. A bearded man in robes and with a mournful expression spoke to another man bowing his head. A man and woman stood side by side, naked, and other naked bodies were drawn twisted and contorted. Maggie chuckled at a sketch of a man peeing against a wall, but it was a rare laugh; mostly the pictures made her nervous.

She stopped on a page filled with small drawings, of angels with folded wings, of a man carrying a baby on his head, of faces with bulging eyes and gaping mouths. At the top was a striking likeness of a man with beaded eyes, a long nose, and a crooked smile, his curly hair mussed about his head. He looked so different from the other figures-more concrete and unique-and the drawing done with such care and delicacy that Maggie knew immediately he was someone real. “Who’s this, then?”

Mr. Blake glanced at the page. “Ah, that’s Thomas Paine. Have you heard of him, my child?”

Maggie dredged up memories of evenings half-asleep with her family at the Artichoke. “I think so. My pa talks about him at the pub. He wrote summat what got him into trouble, didn’t he?”

“The Rights of Man.”

“Hang on-he supports the Frenchies, don’t he? Like-” Maggie cut herself off, remembering Mr. Blake’s bonnet rouge. She had not seen him wear it recently. “So you know Tom Paine?”

Mr. Blake tilted his head and squinted at the grapevine snaking along the wall. “I have met him.”

“Then you do draw real people. This an’t just from your head, is it?”

Mr. Blake turned around to look at Maggie fully. “You’re right, my girl. What is your name?”

“Maggie,” she replied, proud that someone like him wanted to know.

“You’re right, Maggie, I did draw him as he sat across from me. That was indeed one instance of drawing from life. Mr. Paine seemed to demand it. I suppose he’s that sort of fellow. But I don’t make a practice of it.”

“So-” Maggie hesitated, not sure she should push such a man as Mr. Blake. But he looked at her inquiringly, eyebrows raised, his face open to her, and she felt that here, in this garden, she could ask things she wouldn’t elsewhere. It was the beginning of her education. “In the Abbey,” she said, “you was drawin’ summat you saw for real. That statue-except without the clothes.”

Mr. Blake gazed at her, small movements in his face accompanying his thoughts from puzzlement to surprise to delight. “Yes, my girl, I did draw the statue. But I was not drawing what was there, was I?”

“No, that’s certain.” Maggie chuckled at the memory of his sketch of the naked statue.

Lesson over, Mr. Blake picked up his notebook and stood, shaking his legs as if to loosen them.

The rasping scrape of a window being opened made Maggie look up. Jem was hauling up the back window next door. He saw her and Mr. Blake and froze, staring. Maggie raised a finger to her lips.

Mr. Blake did not look up at the sound the way most people would, but started toward the door. He seemed to Maggie to be interested in the world around him only when he chose to; and now he had lost interest in his garden, and in her. “Thanks for the cherries, Mr. Blake!” Maggie called. He lifted a hand in reply but did not turn around.

When he was inside, Maggie beckoned to Jem to join her. He frowned, then disappeared from the window. A few minutes later his head appeared above the wall-he had climbed up Miss Pelham’s bench and was standing on its back. “What you doing there?” he whispered.

“Come over-the Blakes won’t mind!”

“I can’t-Pa needs me. What you doing there?” he repeated.

“I left home. Don’t tell anyone I’m here-promise?”

“Ma and Pa and Maisie will see you from the window.”

“You can tell Maisie, but no one else. Promise?”

“All right,” Jem said after a moment.

“I’ll see you later, down by Lambeth Palace.”

“Right.” Jem started to scramble down.

“Jem?”

He stopped. “What is it?”

“Bring us summat to eat, eh?”

And so Maggie stayed in the Blakes’ garden. The Blakes said nothing about her being there-not even when she continued to stay. At first she spent most of the day out and about in Lambeth, avoiding the places her parents and brother might be, meeting up with Jem and Maisie when she could. After a while, when it became clear that the Blakes didn’t mind her remaining, she began to hang about their garden more, sometimes helping Mrs. Blake with her vegetables, once with the laundry, and even doing a bit of mending, which she would never have offered to do for her mother. Today Mrs. Blake had brought Songs of Innocence to her and sat with her for a bit, helping to sound out words, then suggested Maggie look through it on her own while she got on with her hoe. Maggie offered to help, but Mrs. Blake smiled and shook her head. “You learn to read that, my dear,” she said, “and Mr. Blake’ll be more pleased with you than with my lettuces. He says children understand his work better than adults.”

Now when she heard Bet Butterfield ask Anne and Maisie Kellaway if they’d seen her daughter, Maggie held her breath as she waited for Maisie’s reply. She had little faith in the girl’s ability to lie-she was no better than Jem at it. So when Maisie said after a pause, “I’ll just ask Jem,” Maggie let out her breath and smiled. “Thanks, Miss Piddle,” she whispered. “London must be teachin’ you summat, anyway.”

4

When Maisie arrived upstairs, Jem and Thomas Kellaway were bending a long ash pole to make the hoop for the back of a Windsor chair. Jem didn’t yet have the strength or skill to do the bending himself, but he could secure the iron pegs that held the ash his father bent around the hoop frame. Thomas Kellaway grunted and strained against the pole he had earlier steamed to make more supple; if he bent it too far it would split and be ruined.

Maisie knew better than to speak to them at this crucial stage. Instead she busied herself in the front room, rustling about in Anne Kellaway’s box of buttony materials filled with rings of vari-ous sizes, chips of sheep horn for the Singletons, a ball of flax for shaping round buttons, bits of linen for covering them, both sharp and blunt needles, and several different colors and thicknesses of thread.

“One last peg, lad,” Thomas Kellaway muttered. “That’s it-well done.” They carried the frame, with the pole wrapped around and pegged to it, over to the wall and leaned it there, where it would dry into shape.

Maisie then let a tin of horn bits drop; when it hit the floor the lid popped open and exploded, scattering a shower of rounds of horn all over the floor. “Oh!” she exclaimed, and went down on her knees to gather them up.

“Help her, Jem, we be done here,” Thomas Kellaway said.

“Maggie’s mother’s come asking if we’ve seen her,” Maisie whispered as Jem crouched beside her. “What do we say?”

Jem rubbed a polished gray disk of sheep horn between his finger and thumb. “It’s taken her long enough to come looking, han’t it?”

“Tha’ be what Ma said. I don’t know, Jem. Maggie seems happy where she is, but she should be with her family, shouldn’t she?”

Jem said nothing, but stood up and went to the back window to look out. Maisie joined him. From there they had a clear view into the Blakes’ summerhouse, where Maggie was sitting, just the other side of the wall from Anne Kellaway and Bet Butterfield.

“She’s been listening to us!” Maisie cried. “She heard it all!”

“Maybe she’ll go back now she knows her mother wants her.”

“Dunno-she’s awfully stubborn.” Maisie and Jem had tried to talk Maggie into returning home, but she was adamant that she would live at the Blakes’ all summer.

“She should go back,” Jem decided. “She can’t stay there forever. It’s not fair on the Blakes, is’t, having her there. We should tell Mrs. Butterfield.”

“I suppose.” Maisie clapped her hands. “Look, Jem, Ma’s showing Mrs. Butterfield how to make buttons!”

Indeed, while Maisie was upstairs, Bet Butterfield had leaned over to watch enviously as Anne Kellaway’s deft fingers wound thin thread around a tiny ring. Seeing such delicacy tempted her to rebel, just to show everyone Bet Butterfield’s worn hands could do more than wring water from sheets. “Let me try one o’ them fiddly things,” she declared. “It’ll keep me out of mischief.”

Anne Kellaway started her on a straightforward Blandford Cartwheel, trying not to laugh at the laundress’s fumbling fingers. Bet Butterfield had managed only to sew around the ring, however, when her buttony lesson was cut short by an unexpected sound: a sudden explosion booming through the houses on Bastille Row, across Astley’s field and through the back wall. Bet Butterfield felt her chest thud, as if someone had thumped her with a cushion. She dropped the button, which immediately unraveled, and stood up. “Dick!” she cried.

The boom made Anne Kellaway’s teeth chatter the way they did when she had a high fever. She too stood up, but she had the presence of mind to hang on to the buttons in her lap.

The rest of the Kellaways froze where they were in the workshop when they heard the explosion, which rattled the panes of the sash windows. “Good Lord, what was that?” Maisie cried. She and Jem peered out of the window, but could see nothing unusual apart from the reaction of others. Mrs. Blake, for instance, paused with her hoe among her lettuces and turned her head toward the sound.

Maggie jumped up immediately, though she then sat right down again-her mother might spot the top of her head if she stood, and Maggie didn’t want to be discovered. “What can it be? Oh, what can it be?” she muttered, craning her neck in the direction of the blast. She heard Bet Butterfield go farther down the garden, saying, “Where’d it come from, then? Damn that laburnum-it’s blockin’ the view! Look, if we go down to the end of the garden we might see it. There! What did I tell you? I never seen such smoke since a house caught fire over in Southwark where we used to live-burnt so clean there weren’t a trace of it afterwards. Lord, I hope Dick an’t mixed up in it. I’d better get back home.”

Philip Astley knew immediately what the sound was. Not normally a slugabed, he’d had vinegary wine the night before and suffered later from a rotten gut. He was lying in bed in a fitful doze, his legs tangled up in sheets, his belly resembling a shrouded barrel, when the explosion woke him right into a standing posi-tion. He registered the direction of the blast and bellowed, “Fox! Saddle my horse!”

Moments later a circus boy-there were always boys hanging about Hercules Hall waiting to run errands-was sent to rouse John Astley, who ought to have been up by now rehearsing the new program that would soon open, but had been distracted by other things and was still at home, and, indeed, naked.

Philip Astley came rushing out of his house, pulling on his coat, his trousers not fully buttoned, John Fox at his heels. At the same time another boy led out his white charger and held him while Philip Astley mounted. There was no need to ride his horse; for where he was going it would be quicker to slip around the back of Hercules Hall and across the field to an alley between some of the Bastille Row houses. That indeed was what John Fox and the circus boys would do. But Philip Astley was a circus man, and always aware of the impact he made in public. It wouldn’t do for a circus owner and ex-cavalry man to appear on foot at the scene of a disaster-even one only a few hundred yards away. He was expected to be a leader, and it was better to lead from atop a horse than on the ground, puffed and red-faced from running with a belly such as his.

As part of the Astley showmanship, another circus boy brought out John Astley’s chestnut mare and led her down the alley to stand in front of her owner’s house. Astley Senior soon joined them outside no. 14 Hercules Buildings, and when his son did not immediately appear, he shouted at the open windows, “Get up, you bloody fool, you idiot son of mine! Do you not realize what that sound was? Tell me you care a tinker’s damn about your own circus that you’re meant to be managing! Show me just this once that it means more to you than your drinking and rutting!”

John Astley appeared in the doorway of his house, his hair ruffled but looking otherwise unhurried. Philip Astley’s words appeared to have no effect on him. He deliberately took his time shutting the door, inflaming his father further. “Damme, John, if this is how you feel about the business, I’ll cut you out of it! I will!”

At that moment there was another, smaller explosion, then a series of pops and crackles, some loud, some soft, and whooshings and high-pitched shrieks. Those noises had the effect that none of Philip Astley’s words did: John Astley ran to his horse and leapt into the saddle even as the horse jumped ahead in answer to his call. He took off up Hercules Buildings at a gallop, leaving his heavier father to trot more sedately behind.

None of them looked back or they would have seen the head of Miss Laura Devine, Europe’s finest slack-rope dancer, poke out of the first-floor window of John Astley’s house and watch them clatter up the road and turn right onto Westminster Bridge Road. Only an old woman with a basket of strawberries saw Miss Devine’s moon face hovering above the street. She held up a berry. “Nice sweet juicy strawb for you, my dear? You’ve already given in to temptation once. Go on, have a bite.”

Miss Devine smiled and shook her head; then, with a glance up and down the street, she withdrew from sight.

At no. 6 Bastille Row, Dick and Charlie Butterfield were sitting in the kitchen, a pan of bacon between them, fishing out slices with their knives and dipping hunks of bread in the pan fat. They both jumped at the first enormous bang, coming from just the other side of the Asylum for Female Orphans, which faced the houses on Bastille Row. Moments later there was a tinkle of glass all up and down the street, as each window in the row of houses fell to the ground. Only no. 6 was spared, as it had no glass in its windows at present: Charlie had broken them one drunken evening when he’d thrown his shoes at the cat.

Now, without a word, both set down their knives, pushed back their chairs, and went out into the street, Charlie wiping at his greasy chin with his sleeve. They stood side by side in front of their door.

“Where’d it come from?” Dick Butterfield asked.

“There.” Charlie pointed southeast toward St. George’s Fields.

“No, it was that way, I’m sure.” Dick Butterfield gestured east.

“Why’d you ask then if you’re so sure?”

“Watch yourself, lad. A little respect for your pa and his hearing.”

“Well, I’m sure it was that way.” Charlie waved emphatically toward St. George’s Fields.

“There’s nothing could blow up that way.”

“What’s your way, then?”

“Astley’s fireworks laboratory.”

They were saved from arguing further by the sight of a cloud of smoke rising from the direction Dick Butterfield had chosen, about two hundred yards away. “Astley’s,” he confirmed. “He’ll be in a right state. This’ll be a sight to see.” He hurried toward the smoke, Charlie following more slowly. Dick Butterfield looked back at his son. “Come on, lad!”

“Couldn’t we finish the bacon first?”

Dick Butterfield stopped short. “Bacon! Bacon at a time like this! Christ amighty, I’m ashamed to call you a Butterfield! How often have I told you, lad, about the importance of speed? We’ll get nothing from this if we dawdle and grease our lips with bacon and let others get there before us! What is it about that idea that escapes you, lad? Tell me.” Dick Butterfield gazed at his son, taking in his seemingly permanent sneer, his fidgety hands, his badly wiped chin slick with grease, and worst of all, his eyes like a fire laid but unlit, not even by an explosion he ought to be curious about. Not for the first time, Dick Butterfield found himself thinking, Maggie should be here-she’d learn from this, and wishing she were a boy. He wondered where she was now. The explosion surely would flush her out and bring her running. Then he would wallop her good for running away-though he might hug her too. He turned his back on Charlie and stumped off toward the smoke. After a moment Charlie followed, still thinking of the bacon congealing in the pan at home.

The blast indeed flushed Maggie out in the end. When she heard the ruckus from Hercules Hall-circus boys running back and forth, Philip Astley shouting, John Fox giving directions-and then the crackles and shrieks began from the site of the explosion, she could stand it no longer: She was not going to miss out on the neighborhood drama, no matter if her parents saw her. She ran to the back of the Blakes’ garden and hoisted herself up and over the wall, dropping to a run across Astley’s field, joined there by other curious residents heading toward the smoke and the noise.

Jem watched her make her escape and knew he couldn’t remain at home. “Come on, Maisie!” he shouted, pulling his sister after him down the stairs. Out in the street they heard a clattering, and first John Astley and then Philip Astley passed by on horseback. “Oh!” Maisie cried, and began to run after them. Her frilly mop cap flew off, and Jem had to stop and snatch it up before hurrying to catch up with her.

5

Every year on the fourth of June, Philip Astley provided a fireworks display for the King’s birthday, setting them off from barges in the Thames at half-past ten at night, when the circus had finished. No one had asked him to take on this responsibility; he had simply begun it twenty years before, and it had become a tradition. Astley sometimes used fireworks on other occasions-at the beginning and end of the season to promote his circus, and during performances when someone important was attending. He set up a fireworks laboratory in a house on Asylum Place, down a short lane from the Asylum for Female Orphans.

The Asylum was a large, formidable building, not unpleasant to look at, on a site where Hercules Buildings, Bastille Row, and Westminster Bridge Road all met. It provided a home for two hundred girls, who were taught to read a little, and to clean, cook, wash, and sew-everything that would prepare them for lives as servants once they left the Asylum at age fifteen. They might have been stunned by losing their families, but the Asylum was a respite of sorts between that sorrow and the long drudgery that their lives were to become.

The Asylum yard was surrounded by a six-foot-high black iron fence. It was up against these bars in a corner of the yard that many of the girls and their minders were crowded, their faces all turned like sunflowers toward the fireworks house, which was now spitting and crackling and burning bright. For the girls it was as if this unusual entertainment had been laid on especially for them, with a fine spot from which to view it.

Inhabitants from surrounding houses were watching the fire too, but they were not so exhilarated by the spectacle. Indeed, those whose properties were very close to the laboratory feared their own houses would catch fire. Men were shouting; women were weeping. More people arrived all the time from neighboring streets to see what was happening. No one did anything, however: They were waiting for the right person to take charge.

He arrived on horseback with his son. By this time rockets were exploding, most of them heading sideways and smashing into the walls of the laboratory house, but one escaping up through the flames-which by now had eaten open a section of the roof-and shooting into the sky. Fireworks are impressive even in daylight, and especially when you have never seen them, as many of the orphans had not, for they were locked in at night well before any of Astley’s fireworks displays on the river. A sigh arose from them as the rocket shed green sparks.

For the Astleys, however, the sparks were green tears. They dismounted from their horses at the same moment as John Fox, his half-lidded eyes opened wide on this occasion, arrived at their side. “Fox!” Philip Astley bellowed. “Have the men all got out?”

“Yes, sir,” he reported, “and no injuries but for John Honor, who hurt himself escaping out of a window.”

“How bad is he?”

John Fox shrugged.

“Have a boy fetch Honor’s wife, and a doctor.”

Philip Astley looked around and took in the situation quickly. As a military man as well as a circus owner, he was used to crises and to directing large numbers of people, many of them temperamental or under strain. A crowd of gaping men and hysterical women proved no challenge to him. He stepped naturally into his position of authority. “Friends!” he shouted over the pops of firecrackers and the hiss of fiery serpents. “We have need of your services, and quickly! Women and children, run home and fetch every bucket you can find. Quick as you can, now!” He clapped his hands, and the women and children scattered like dust blown from a mantelpiece.

“Now, men! Form a chain from the fire to the nearest well. Where is the nearest well?” He looked around and descended on a surprised man idling across the street from the blazing house. “Sir, where is the nearest well? As you can see, we need quantities of water, sir-quantities!”

The man thought for a moment. “There’s one down by Shield’s Nursery,” he said, not quite matching Astley’s sense of urgency with one of his own. He thought again. “But the closest is in there.” He pointed through the fence along which the orphan girls ranged in a mass of dark brown serge.

“Open the gates, ladies, and have no fear-you are doing us a great service!” Philip Astley cried, ever the showman.

As the gates swung back, a line of men-and soon women and children, and even a few of the braver orphans-strung out across the yard to the well near the Asylum building, and began passing buckets of water along toward the fire. Philip and John Astley themselves stood at the front of the line and threw the water onto the flames, then handed the empty buckets to children who raced with them back to the beginning of the line.

It was organized so quickly and effectively, once Philip Astley had taken charge, that it was impossible for anyone standing nearby not to want to join in. Soon there were enough people for two lines and twice the buckets. Along those lines could be found Dick and Charlie Butterfield, Jem and Maisie Kellaway, Bet and Maggie Butterfield, and even Thomas and Anne Kellaway who, like Jem, had found it impossible to remain at home with so much noise going on, and had come over to see the blaze. All of them passed buckets till their arms ached, none of them knowing that there were other family members there doing the same.

The Astleys threw hundreds of buckets of water onto the flames. For a time it seemed to be helping, as the fire on one side of the ground floor was extinguished. But other flames kept finding stores of fireworks and, igniting them, sent them blasting and rocketing all over and starting fires again. Then too, the fire had spread quickly upstairs, and burning parts of the ceiling and roof kept raining downward and reigniting the bottom. Nothing could stop the destruction of the house. Eventually the Astleys admitted defeat and concentrated the contents of the buckets on either side of the house to keep the fire from spreading to other properties.

At last Philip Astley sent word to those at the well to stop drawing water. The last bucket moved along each line, and when people turned to their neighbor for the next one, as they had been doing for the last hour, they found none was being swung at them. They looked around, blinked, then began to move toward the house to see the effect of all of their work. It was dispiriting to find the building in ruins, a wrecked gap among the other houses, like a rotted tooth splintered and pulled from its neighbors. Although the fire was now out, smoke still billowed from the charred remains, darkening the air so that it seemed like dusk rather than midmorning.

6

There was an awkward pause after the energized organization of the firefighting. Then Philip Astley once again stepped up to the responsibility of raising spirits. “Friends, you have come to the aid of Astley’s Circus, and I am forever in your debt,” he began, standing as straight as he could, though the physical exertion of the last hour had taken its toll on him. “This has been a grievous, calami-tous accident. Stored here were the fireworks meant for the celebration of the birthday of His Majesty the King in two days’ time. But we can thank God that only one man has been injured, and because of your heroic efforts, no other properties have caught fire. Nor will Astley’s Circus be affected; indeed, the show will take place this evening at the usual time of half-past six, with tickets still available at the box office. If you haven’t seen it, you will have missed an event far more spectacular than this fire. I am tremendously grateful to you, my neighbors, who have worked tirelessly to keep this unfortunate incident from becoming a tragedy. I am…”

He went on in the same vein. Some listened to him; some didn’t. Some needed to hear the words; others wanted only to sit down, to have a drink or a meal or a gossip or a sleep. People began to mill about, looking for family and friends.

Dick Butterfield stood close behind Philip Astley so that he might overhear what the situation called for. For instance, when he heard Philip Astley tell a man who lived in the street that he would rebuild the house immediately, Dick Butterfield began thinking of a load of bricks he knew of down in Kennington that were just waiting to be used. In a few hours he would go down to the pub where the brickmaker took his dinner and speak with him. There were a few timber merchants along the river he would call on in the meantime. He smiled to himself-though the smile disappeared quick enough when he saw Charlie Butterfield kicking burning embers about in the street with some other lads. Dick Butterfield grabbed his son and pulled him out of the makeshift game. “Use your head, you idiot! How does that look to a man who’s just lost his property for you to be making sport of it!”

Charlie scowled and slunk to a less crowded spot, away from his father and the boys he had been with. Though he had never admitted it to anyone, he hated helping his father. The line of business that Dick Butterfield pursued required a certain charm that even Charlie knew he didn’t have and would never develop.

Once they’d finished with the buckets, Maisie dragged Jem to the crowd gathered around Philip Astley so that she could watch John Astley, who stood close by, his face black with ash. Some in the crowd who liked to speculate before the smoke had even dispersed were already muttering to one another that, as John Astley was the general manager of the circus, he ought to be making the rousing speeches rather than his father. Old Astley couldn’t stay away and let his son run the show, they whispered. Until he truly let go, his son would continue to drink and rut his way through the circus women, as he just had with Miss Laura Devine, Europe’s finest slack-rope dancer. That sighting at the window by the strawberry seller had already jumped beyond one set of old eyes. Gossip spread quickly in Lambeth. It was a kind of currency, with coins newly minted every hour. The strawberry seller held that particular coin with Miss Devine’s head stamped on it, and even as she passed buckets, the old woman was spending the coin on her neighbors.

Maisie had not heard this gossip, however, and could still look passionately on John Astley as he gazed into the distance, while his father spilled over with gratitude. The charitable might say that behind his charcoal-colored mask he was stunned by what had happened to the King’s fireworks and the Astley laboratory; others would say that he simply looked bored.

When Philip Astley finished, and people were coming up to give their condolences or put forward theories as to how the fire might have started, Maisie took a gulp of air and pushed through the crowd toward John Astley.

“Maisie, what’re you doing?” Jem called.

“Leave her,” a voice said. “If she will make a fool of herself, there’s nought you can do about it.”

Jem turned to find Maggie standing beside him. “Mornin’,” he said, forgetting for an instant about his foolish sister. He was still surprised at how glad he always was to see Maggie, though he tried to hide both pleasure and surprise. “We saw you leave the garden. You all right?”

Maggie rubbed her arms. “I’ll be feeling them buckets in my sleep tonight. Exciting, though, wan’t it?”

“I feel bad for Mr. Astley.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right. By Monday night he’ll have added to his show a spectacle based on the explosion, with a backdrop of this”-Maggie gestured around her-“and fireworks going off to make it feel real. And John Astley will ride up and dance on his horse.”

Jem had his eye on his sister standing near John Astley, her back set very straight, as it did when she was nervous. Maisie was blocking his view of John Astley’s face, so he had no idea what the horseman’s response to his sister was. He could only guess by the glow on Maisie’s face as she turned and skipped back to him and Maggie.

“He’s such a brave man!” she declared. “And so gentlemanly with me. D’you know, he’s burnt his arm from getting too near the flames when he were throwing water, but he didn’t even stop to look at it and has only just discovered it? I”-Maisie flushed scarlet with the thought of her daring-“I offered to bandage it for him, but he told me not to worry, that I should find my family as they’d be concerned for me. Weren’t that nice of him?”

Jem could now see John Astley’s face. He was studying Maisie’s slim form, his blue eyes glowing almost supernaturally from his sooty face in a way that made Jem uneasy. Jem glanced at Maggie, who shrugged and took Maisie’s arm. “That’s very well, Miss Piddle, but we should be gettin’ you home. Look, there are your parents. You don’t want ’em to see you settin’ your eyes at Mr. Astley, do you?” She pulled Maisie toward Thomas and Anne Kellaway, who had emerged from the smoke, which was now as thick as a winter fog. Anne Kellaway’s hair was flying in every direction, and her eyes were streaming so that she had to hold a handkerchief to them.

“Jem, Maisie, you been here as well?” Thomas Kellaway asked.

“Yes, Pa,” Jem answered. “We was helping with the buckets.”

Thomas Kellaway nodded. “Tha’ be the neighborly thing to do. Reminds me of when the Wightmans’ barn burnt down last year and we did the same. Remember?”

Jem did remember that fire on the edge of Piddletrenthide, but it was different from this one. He recalled how little effect their buckets had on the flames, which grew as high as the nearby oak trees once they reached the hay; after that there was little anyone could do to stop them. He remembered the screams of the horses trapped behind the flames and the smell of their burning flesh, and of Mr. Wightman screaming in response and having to be held back to keep him from running like a fool into the fire after his ani-mals. He remembered Mrs. Wightman weeping during all the crackles and cries. And Rosie Wightman, a girl he and Maisie had played with sometimes in the River Piddle, catching eels and picking watercress: She watched the fire with wide, shocked eyes, and ran away from the Piddle Valley soon after when it was discovered she’d been playing with candles out in the barn. She had not been heard of since, and Jem sometimes thought of her, wondering what became of a girl like Rosie. Mr. Wightman lost his barn, his hay and his horses, and he and his wife ended up in the workhouse at Dorchester.

Mr. Astley’s fire destroyed only fireworks, whereas the Wightman fire had been an inferno that destroyed a family. The King would still be a year older whether his London subjects saw fireworks on his birthday or not. Indeed, Jem sometimes wondered how Philip Astley could spend so much time and energy on something that contributed little to the world. If Thomas Kellaway and his fellow chairmakers did not make chairs and benches and stools, people could not sit down properly, and would have to perch on the ground. If Philip Astley did not run his circus, would it make any difference? Jem could not say such a thing to his mother, however. He would never have guessed that she would come to love the circus so much. Even now she was staring through glistening eyes at the Astleys.

In a pause in conversation, Philip Astley felt her gaze on him and turned. He couldn’t help smiling at the concern etched on her face-this from the woman who would not even look at him a few months ago. “Ah, madam, there is no need to cry,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and offering it to her, though it was so filthy with soot that it would not have been much use. “We Astleys have been through worse in our time.”

Anne Kellaway did not accept his handkerchief, but wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “No, no, it’s the smoke affects my eyes. London smoke do that.” She took a step back from him, for his presence had that effect of crowding people out of their own space.

“Fear not, Mrs. Kellaway,” Philip Astley said, as if she had not spoken. “This is merely a temporary setback. And I thank God that only my carpenter was hurt. He’s sure to be back on his feet very soon.”

Thomas Kellaway had been standing beside his wife, his eyes on the smoking wreck of the house. Now he spoke up. “If you need any help in the meantime, sir, with the wood and that, I and my boy would be happy to give a hand, wouldn’t we, Jem?”

His innocent offer to a neighbor in need, made in his soft voice without any underlying calculation, had more impact than he could ever have imagined. Philip Astley looked at Thomas Kellaway as if someone had just turned up the lamps very bright. The pause before he answered was not from rudeness, but because he was thinking in this new light. He glanced at John Fox, who as ever stood at his elbow, his eyes once more half-lidded now that the fire was out. “Well, now,” he began. “That is a very kind offer, sir, a very kind offer indeed. I may well take you up on that. We shall see. For the moment, sir, madam”-he bowed to Anne Kellaway-“I must take my leave of you, as there is so much to be getting on with. But I will see you again very soon, I expect. Very soon, indeed, sir.” He turned away with John Fox to rejoin his son and begin giving orders to those who awaited them.

Jem had listened to his father and Philip Astley in stunned silence. He couldn’t imagine himself and his father working for someone else rather than for themselves. Maisie’s face lit up, however, for she was already picturing herself finding reasons to visit her father and brother at the amphitheatre and staying to see John Astley. Anne Kellaway too wondered if this meant she might be able to escape to the circus even more often.

During this discussion, Dick Butterfield had spotted Maggie standing with the Kellaways and began stealing toward her. He had been gathering himself to pounce-if he didn’t get a firm grip on the girl, she was likely to run off-when Thomas Kellaway’s offer to Philip Astley pulled him up short. Dick Butterfield thought of himself as the master of the honeyed phrase and timely suggestion, pitched to draw the right response and drop the coin into his pocket. He was good at it, he thought, but Thomas Kellaway had just outmaneuvered him. “Damn him,” he muttered, then lunged for Maggie.

Caught unawares, she yelled and tried to pull away from her father. “You got her, then?” Bet Butterfield called, pushing through the crowd to her husband’s side. “Where in hell have you been, you little minx?” she roared at her struggling daughter, and slapped her. “Don’t ever run away from us again!”

“Oh, she won’t,” Dick Butterfield declared, renewing his grip on Maggie. “She’ll be too busy working, won’t you, Mags? Rope not to your liking, eh? Not to worry-I found another place for you, see. Mate o’ mine runs the mustard manufactory down by the river. You’ll be working there come Monday. Keep you out of mischief. It’s time you started bringin’ in a wage-you’re old enough now. Till then, Charlie’ll keep an eye on you. Charlie!” he shouted, casting his eye about.

Charlie sauntered over from the wall he’d been squatting against. He tried to glare at Jem and smile at Maisie at the same time, but it came out as a confused smirk. Jem glared back at him; Maisie studied her toes.

“Where you been, boy?” Dick Butterfield cried. “Get hold of your sister and don’t let her out of your sight till you take her to the mustard works Monday morning.”

Charlie grinned and grabbed Maggie’s other arm with both hands. “Sure, Pa.” When no one was looking, he twisted her skin so that it burnt.

With her parents there, Maggie couldn’t kick him. “Damn you, Charlie!” she cried. “Mam!”

“Don’t talk to me, girl,” Bet Butterfield huffed. “I want nothing to do with you. You been one hell of a worry to us.”

“But-” Maggie stopped when Charlie made the sign of slitting his throat with his finger. She closed her eyes and thought of the attention she’d had from the Blakes, and of the peace she’d known briefly in their garden, where she could put from her mind thoughts of Charlie and what had gone on in the past. She’d known it was too good to last, that eventually she would have to leave the garden and return to her parents. She just wished she’d had the chance to decide for herself when that would happen.

Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes, and though she rubbed them away quickly with finger and thumb, the Kellaway children spotted them. Maisie gazed at Maggie sympathetically, while Jem dug his fingernails into his palms. He had never felt so much like hitting someone as he did Charlie Butterfield.

Bet Butterfield glanced about, suddenly aware of her family’s public display of disunity. “Hallo again,” she said, spying Anne Kellaway and trying to get back to safe neighborly chitchat. “I’ll be coming round to finish that Blandfield Wagon Wheel one o’ these days.”

“Cartwheel,” Anne Kellaway corrected. “Blandford Cartwheel.”

“That’s right. We’ll be seeing you. Shall we, Dick?” She took her husband’s arm.

“Dog and Duck, I think, gal.”

“That’ll do me.”

The Butterfields went one way, the Kellaways the other. Jem caught Maggie’s eye as Charlie pulled her along, and they held each other’s gaze until she was yanked out of sight by her brother.

None of them noticed Mr. Blake sitting on the steps of one of the houses across from the fire; Mrs. Blake stood behind him, leaning against the house. He had his little notebook resting on his knee and was scribbling rapidly.

7

At five on Sunday morning, John Honor, head carpenter for Astley’s Circus, died of injuries sustained from the fireworks laboratory explosion. After paying his condolences to the widow, Philip Astley caught the Kellaways as they were leaving for the early church service at St. Mary’s, and offered Thomas Kellaway a position as carpenter for his circus.

“He will,” Anne Kellaway answered for the family.