Burning Bright

1

It was rare for Maggie to be given the afternoon off. In manufactory jobs you began at six in the morning, worked till noon, when you had an hour to eat, then worked again until seven at night. If you didn’t work your hours, you were let go, as she had been from the mustard factory after she’d gone for her nap in the Blakes’ garden. So when the owner, Mr. Beaufoy, announced that the workers at his vinegar manufactory would not have to stay after dinner, Maggie did not cry “Huzzah” and clap along with the others. She was sure he was not telling them something. “He’ll take it from our wages,” she muttered to the girl next to her.

“I don’t care,” the other replied. “I’m going to put my feet up by the fire and sleep all afternoon.”

“And not eat all the next day for losin’ that sixpence,” Maggie retorted.

It turned out that they lost both the sixpence and the sleep by the fire. At noon, Mr. Beaufoy made another announcement as the workers were sitting down to dinner. “You are doubtless aware,” he said, addressing the long tables full of men and women attacking plates of sausages and cabbage, “of the continuing atrocities being committed across the Channel in France, and the poison issuing forth to pollute our shores. There are those here who can hardly call themselves Englishmen, for they have heeded this reckless revolutionary call, and are spreading seditious filth to undermine our glorious monarchy.”

No one looked up or took much notice of his oration: They were far more interested in finishing their food so that they could leave before Mr. Beaufoy changed his mind about granting them a half day’s holiday. Mr. Beaufoy paused, gritting his teeth so that his jaw flexed. He was determined to make his workers understand that, though his surname was French, he was English through and through. He dropped his complicated language. “Our King is in danger!” he boomed, causing forks to pause. “The French have imprisoned their King and offered to help those who wish to do the same here. We cannot allow such treason to spread. Finish eating quickly so that you may follow me-we are going to give up our afternoon’s wages to attend a public meeting and demonstrate our loyalty to King and country. Anyone who doesn’t come,” he added in a raised voice over protests, “anyone who doesn’t come will not only lose their work and wages, but will be placed on a list of those suspected of sedition. Do you know what sedition is, good people? It is incitement to disorder. More than that, it is the first step on the road to treason! And do you know what the punishment for sedition is? At the very least, a good long visit to Newgate, but more likely, transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. And, should you continue along that road toward treason, your visit ends with the hangman.”

He waited till the roaring died down. “It is a simple choice: follow me to Vauxhall to declare your loyalty to our King, or walk out now and face prison or worse. Who would like to leave? I am not standing in your way. Go, and let us shout traitor to your back!”

Maggie looked around. No one moved, though a few were frowning into their plates at Mr. Beaufoy’s bullying. She shook her head, baffled that something happening in France could have the effect of taking away her wages. It made no sense. What a funny world, she thought.

And yet she found herself walking with three dozen others through the frozen streets that ran along the Thames, past Westminster Bridge and Astley’s Amphitheatre-now boarded up and lifeless-past the brick towers of Lambeth Palace, and on down to Cumberland Gardens in Vauxhall, just next to a rival’s vinegar works. Maggie was surprised by the large crowd that had gathered, wondering that so many were willing to stand in the cold and listen to a lot of men talk about their love of the King and hatred of the French. “I’ll bet he smells his own farts!” Maggie whispered of each speaker to her neighbor, sending them both into giggles each time.

Luckily Mr. Beaufoy lost all interest in his workers once they were installed at Cumberland Gardens and had served their purpose in swelling the numbers of the meeting. He hurried off to join the group of men running the meeting so that he might add his own florid voice to those eager to try out their expressions of loyalty. Eventually his foreman also disappeared, and once the Beaufoy vinegar workers realized that no one was watching them, they began to disperse.

Though she hated losing her afternoon wages, Maggie was glad of the change, and delighted with her luck-for she might find Jem down this way with her father. Dick Butterfield was today taking the Kellaway men to see a man at a timber yard in Nine Elms, just along the river from Vauxhall. They were hoping to find cheaper wood there, as well as a market for their chairs-the timber merchant being also a furniture dealer. For the only time in his life, and at his wife’s insistence, Dick Butterfield was providing this introduction for free. The laundress had visited the Kellaways several times while Maisie was ill, prompted by unvoiced guilt that she had done nothing to stop the girl from going out into the fog with John Astley. On a recent visit she had glimpsed the tower of unsold chairs and Anne Kellaway’s thin soup, and afterward had ordered her husband to help the family. “You’ve got to get over that gal, chuck,” Dick Butterfield had said. He had not said no, however. In his way, Dick Butterfield too felt badly about Maisie.

Maggie suspected they would have finished their business at the timber yard by now, and would round out the visit with a drink at a pub, where Dick Butterfield would no doubt take as many pints off of Thomas Kellaway as he could. She slipped out of the crowd to the road, and ducked first into the Royal Oak, the nearest pub to the gathering. As expected, it was jammed with people come in from the meeting to warm up, but her father and the Kellaways were not there. She then headed toward Lambeth, calling in at the White Lion and the Black Dog before finding them sucking pints at a table in a corner of the King’s Arms. Her heart pounded harder when she spotted Jem, and she took the moment before they saw her to study his hair curling around his ears, the pale patch of skin visible at the back of his neck, and the strong span of his shoulders that had broadened since they first met. Maggie was so tempted to go up behind him, put her arms around his neck, and nuzzle his ear that she actually took a step forward. Jem looked up then, however, and she stopped, her nerve lost.

He started at the sight of her. “Ar’ernoon. You all right?” Though he said it casually, he was clearly pleased to see her.

“What you doin’ here, Mags?” Dick Butterfield said. “Beaufoy catch you nickin’ a bottle of vinegar and send you packing?”

Maggie folded her arms over her chest. “Hallo to you too. I suppose I’m going to have to get my own beer, will I?”

Jem gestured to his own seat and mug of beer. “Take it-I’ll get another.”

“No, Pa, I did not get the boot from Beaufoy,” Maggie snapped, dropping onto Jem’s stool. “If I wanted to steal his poxy vinegar I know how to do it without getting caught. No, we had the afternoon off to go to that loyalist meeting down the road.” She described the gathering at Cumberland Gardens.

Dick Butterfield nodded. “We saw ’em when we was passing. Stopped for a minute, but we’d worked up a thirst by then, hadn’t we, sir?” He aimed this at Jem’s father. Thomas Kellaway nodded, though his pint was barely touched. He was not much of a daytime drinker.

“’Sides, those meetings don’t mean nothing to me,” Dick Butter field continued. “All this talk about the threat from France is nonsense. Them Frenchies has their hands full with their own revolution without tryin’ to bring it over here too. Don’t you think, sir?”

“Dunno as I understand it,” Thomas Kellaway answered-his usual response to such questions. He had heard talk of the French revolution when he worked with the other carpenters at the circus, but, as when serious matters were discussed at the Five Bells in Piddletrenthide, he usually listened without supplying his own opinion. It was not that Thomas Kellaway was stupid-far from it. He simply saw both sides of an argument too readily to come down on one side or the other. He could accept that the King was a concrete manifestion of the English soul and spirit, uniting and glori-fying the country, and thus essential to its well-being. He could also agree when others said King George was a drain on the country’s coffers, an unstable, fickle, willful presence that England would be better off without. Torn by conflicting views, he preferred to keep quiet.

Jem came back with another drink and a stool, and squeezed in next to Maggie so that their knees were touching. They smiled at each other, at the rarity of sitting together in the middle of a Monday afternoon, and remembering too the first time they had been to a pub together, when Jem met Dick Butterfield. His stool-finding and pub presence had improved greatly in the nine months since.

Dick Butterfield watched this exchange of smiles with a small cynical smile of his own. His daughter was young to be locking eyes with this boy-and a country boy at that, even one who was learning a good trade.

“You sell your chairs, then?” Maggie asked.

“Maybe,” Jem said. “We left one with him. And he’s going to get us some yew cheaper than we had from the other yard, in’t he, Pa?”

Thomas Kellaway nodded. Since Philip Astley’s departure to Dublin, he had been making Windsor chairs again, but had fewer commissions now that the circus man was no longer around to send customers his way. He filled his days making chairs anyway, using leftover bits of wood scrounged from the circus. Their back room was filling with Windsor chairs that awaited buyers. Thomas Kellaway had even given two to the Blakes, a gift for helping Maisie on that foggy October afternoon.

“Oh, you’ll do much better with this man at Nine Elms, lad,” Dick Butterfield put in. “I could have told you that months ago when you went to see that friend of Astley’s about wood.”

“He were all right for a time,” Jem argued.

“Let me guess-until the circus left town? Astley’s little deals only last while he’s got his eye on ’em.”

Jem was silent.

“That’s always the way with him, boy. Philip Astley showers you with attention, gets you customers, bargains, jobs, and free tickets-until he leaves. And he’s gone five months-that’s almost half the year, boy, half your life where he pulls out and leaves you stranded. You notice how quiet Lambeth is without him? It’s like that every year. He comes and helps you out, brings in business, gets people settled and happy, and then comes October and poof!-in a day he’s gone, leaving everybody with nothing. He builds a castle for you, and then he tears it down again. Grooms, pie makers, carpenters, coachmen, or whores-it happens to ’em all. There’s a great scramble to pick up work, then people drift off-the whores and coachmen go to other parts of London; some of the country folk go back home.” Dick Butterfield brought his beer to his lips and took a long draw. “Then come March it’ll start all over again, when the great illusionist builds his castle once again. But some of us knows better than to do business with Philip Astley. We know it don’t last.”

“All right, Pa, you made your point. He do go on, don’t he?” Maggie said to Jem. “Sometimes I fall asleep with my eyes open when he’s talkin’.”

“Cheeky gal!” Dick Butterfield cried. Maggie dodged and laughed as he swatted at her.

“Where’s Charlie, then?” she asked as they settled back down.

“Dunno-said he had summat to do.” Dick Butterfield shook his head. “Someday I’d like that boy to come home and tell me he’s done a deal, and show me the money.”

“You may be waitin’ a long time, Pa.”

Before Dick Butterfield could respond, at the bar a tall man with a broad square face spoke up in a deep, carrying voice that silenced the pub. “Citizens! Listen, now!” Maggie recognized him as one of the plainer speakers at the Cumberland Gardens rally. He held up what looked like a black ledger book. “The name’s Roberts, John Roberts. I’ve just come from a meeting of the Lambeth Association-local residents who are loyal to the King and opposed to the trouble being stirred up by French agitators. You should have been there as well, rather than drinking away your afternoon.”

“Some of us was!” Maggie shouted. “We already heard you.”

“Good,” John Roberts said, and strode over to their table. “Then you’ll know what I’m doing here, and you’ll be the first to sign.”

Dick Butterfield kicked Maggie under the table and glared at her. “Don’t mind her, sir, she’s just bein’ cheeky.”

“Is she your daughter?”

Dick Butterfield winked. “For my sins-if you know what I mean.”

The man showed no sign of a sense of humor. “You’d best see that she controls her tongue, then, unless she fancies a bed in Newgate. This is nothing to laugh about.”

Dick Butterfield raised his eyebrows, turning his forehead into its field of furrows. “Perhaps you could trouble to tell me what the matter is that I’m not to laugh at, sir.”

John Roberts stared at him, puzzling over whether or not Dick Butterfield was making fun of him. “It is a declaration of loyalty to the King,” he said finally. “We’re going from pub to pub and house to house asking the residents of Lambeth to sign it.”

“We need to know what we’re signin’, don’t we?” Dick Butterfield said. “Read it to us.”

The pub was silent now. Everyone watched as John Roberts opened the ledger. “Perhaps you would like to read it aloud, for everyone’s benefit, since you’re so interested,” he said, sliding it toward Maggie’s father.

If he thought his demand would humiliate the other man, however, he had miscalculated; Dick Butterfield pulled the book to him and read reasonably fluidly, and even with feeling that he may not have actually felt, the following:

We, the Inhabitants of the Parish of Lambeth, deeply sensible of the Blessings derived to us from the present admired and envied Form of Government, consisting of King, Lords and Commons, feel it a Duty incumbent on us, at this critical Juncture, not only to declare our sincere and zealous Attachment to it, but moreover to express our perfect Abhorrence of all those bold and undisguised Attempts to shake and subvert this our invaluable Constitution, which the Experience of Ages has shewn to be the most solid Foundation of national Happiness.

Resolved unanimously,

That we do form ourselves into an Association to counteract, as far as we are able, all tumultuous and illegal Meetings of ill designing and wicked Men, and adopting the most effectual Measures in our Power for the Suppression of seditious Publications, evidently calculated to mislead the Minds of the People, and to introduce Anarchy and Confusion into this Kingdom.

When Dick Butterfield finished reading, John Roberts set a bottle of ink on the table and held out a pen. “Will you sign, sir?”

To Maggie’s astonishment, Dick Butterfield took the pen, uncorked the ink, dipped it in, and began to sign at the bottom of the list of signatures. “Pa, what you doing?” she hissed. She hated the hectoring attitude of John Roberts and her employer, Mr. Beaufoy, indeed of all of the men who’d spoken at the meeting, and had assumed her father would as well.

Dick Butterfield paused. “What d’you mean? What’s wrong with signing? I happen to agree-though them words is a bit fancy for my taste.”

“But you just said you didn’t think the Frenchies were a threat!”

“This an’t about the Frenchies-it’s about us. I support old King George-I done all right by him.” He applied pen to paper again. In the silence, the entire pub concentrated on its scratching across the page. When he finished, Dick Butterfield looked around and feigned surprise at the attention. He turned to John Roberts. “Anything else you want?”

“Write down where you live as well.”

“It’s no. 6 Bastille Row.” Dick Butterfield chuckled. “But p’raps York Place’d be better for such a document, eh?” He wrote it next to his name. “There. No need to visit, then, eh?”

Now Maggie recalled several crates of port that had appeared from nowhere a few days earlier and were hidden under her parents’ bed, and smiled: Dick Butterfield had signed so readily because he didn’t want these men paying any visits to Bastille Row.

Once he had captured Dick Butterfield’s details, John Roberts slid the open book across to Thomas Kellaway. “Now you.”

Thomas Kellaway gazed down at the page, with its carefully composed declaration-its rhetoric-laden, almost incomprehensi-ble wording decided on at an earlier, smaller meeting, its messengers with their books fanning out across Lambeth’s pubs and markets even before the Cumberland Gardens meeting was over-and its ragtag signatures, some confident, others wavering, along with several Xs with names and addresses scrawled after them in John Roberts’s hand. It was all too complicated for him. “I don’t understand-why must I sign this?”

John Roberts leaned over and rapped his knuckles on the table next to the ledger. “You’re signing in support of the King! You’re saying you want him to be your King, and you’ll fight those who want to get rid of him.” He peered at the chairmaker’s puzzled face. “What, are you a fool, sir? Do you not call the King your King?”

Thomas Kellaway was not a fool, but words worried him. He had always lived by a policy of signing as few documents as possi-ble, and those only for business. He did not even sign the letters Maisie wrote to Sam, and discouraged her from writing anything about him. This way, he thought, there was little trace of him in the world, apart from his chairs, and he would not be misunderstood. This document before him, he felt with a clarity that surprised him, was open to misunderstanding. “I am not sure the King be in danger,” he said. “There be no French here, do there?”

John Roberts narrowed his eyes. “You would be surprised at what an ill-informed Englishman is capable of.”

“And what d’you mean by publications?” Thomas Kellaway continued without appearing to have heard John Roberts. “I don’t know anything about publications.”

John Roberts looked around. The goodwill that Dick Butterfield’s signature had garnered with the rest of the pub was rapidly diminishing with every ponderous word Thomas Kellaway uttered. “I haven’t time for this,” he hissed. “There are plenty of others here waiting to sign. Where do you live, sir?” He flipped to another page and waited with pen poised to note down the address. “Someone will visit you later to explain.”

“No. 12 Hercules Buildings,” Thomas Kellaway replied.

John Roberts stiffened. “You live at Hercules Buildings?”

Thomas Kellaway nodded. Jem felt a knot tighten in his stomach.

“Do you know a William Blake, who is a printer in that street?”

Jem, Maggie, and Dick Butterfield caught on at the same time, partly thanks to Thomas Kellaway’s mention of publications. Maggie kicked Thomas Kellaway’s stool and frowned at him, while Dick Butterfield feigned a coughing fit.

Unfortunately, Thomas Kellaway could be a bit of a terrier when it came to making a point. “Yes, I know Mr. Blake. He’s our neighbor.” And, because he did not care for the unfriendly look on John Roberts’s face, he decided to make his feelings clear. “He be a good man-he helped out my daughter a month or two back.”

“Did he, now?” John Roberts smiled and slammed shut the book. “Well, we were planning to pay a visit to Mr. Blake this evening, and can call on you as well. Good day to you.” He scooped up the quill and ink bottle and went on to the next table. As he made his way around the pub collecting signatures-Jem noticed that no one other than his father refused to sign-John Roberts glanced over now and then at Thomas Kellaway with the same sneer. It made Jem’s stomach turn over. “Let’s go, Pa,” he said in a low voice.

“Let me just finish my beer.” Thomas Kellaway was not going to be rushed by anyone, not when he had half a pint left to finish, even if the beer was watery. He sat squarely on his stool, hands resting on the table on each side of his mug, his eyes on its contents, his mind on Mr. Blake. He was wondering if he had got him into trouble. Though he did not know him well the way his children seemed to, he was sure Mr. Blake was a good man.

“What should we do?” Jem said in a low voice to Maggie. He too was thinking about Mr. Blake.

“Leave it be,” Dick Butterfield butted in. “Blake’ll probably sign it,” he added, glancing sideways at Thomas Kellaway. “Like most people.”

“We’ll warn him,” Maggie declared, ignoring her father. “That’s what we’ll do.”

2

“Mr. Blake is working, my dears,” Mrs. Blake said. “He can’t be disturbed.”

“Oh, but it’s important, ma’am!” Maggie cried, in her impatience darting to one side as if to get around her. But Mrs. Blake comfortably blocked the doorway, and did not move.

“He is in the middle of making one of his plates, and he likes to do that all in one sitting,” Mrs. Blake explained. “So we mustn’t stop him.”

“I’m afraid it be important, ma’am,” Jem said.

“Then you may tell me, and I’ll pass it on to Mr. Blake.”

Jem looked around, for once wishing there were a deadening fog about that would hide them from curious passersby. Since their earlier encounter with John Roberts, he’d felt as if there were eyes on them everywhere, watching them as they walked up the road. He expected any moment that Miss Pelham’s yellow curtains would twitch. As it was, a man driving past on a cart loaded with bricks glanced at the little group in the doorway, his gaze seeming to linger.

“Can we come in, ma’am? We’ll tell you inside.”

Mrs. Blake studied his serious face, then stood aside and let them pass, shutting the door behind them without looking around, as others might. She put her finger to her lips and led them down the passage, past the front room with the printing press, past the closed door of Mr. Blake’s workroom and down the stairs to the basement kitchen. Jem and Maggie were already familiar with the room, for they had sat there with Maisie to warm her up after her encounter with John Astley. It was dark and smelled of cabbage and coal, with only a bit of light coming in from the front window, but the fire was lit and it was warm.

Mrs. Blake gestured for them to sit at the table; Jem noted that the chairs were his father’s Windsors. “Now, what is it, my dears?” she asked, leaning against the sideboard.

“We heard something in the pub,” Maggie said. “You’re to have a visit tonight.” She described the meeting at Cumberland Gardens and their encounter with John Roberts, leaving out that her father had signed the declaration.

A deep line appeared between Mrs. Blake’s eyebrows. “Was this meeting run by the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers?” She rattled off the name as if she were very familiar with it.

“They was mentioned,” Maggie answered, “though they just called the local branch the Lambeth Association.”

Mrs. Blake sighed. “We’d best go up and tell Mr. Blake, then. You were right to come.” She wiped her hands on her apron as if she had just been washing something, though her hands were dry.

Mr. Blake’s workroom was very tidy, with books and papers in various stacks on one table, and Mr. Blake at another table by the room’s back window. He was hunched over a metal plate the size of his hand, and did not look up immediately when they came in, but continued dabbing a brush in a line from right to left across the surface of the plate. While Maggie went to the fire to warm herself, Jem stepped up and watched him at work. It took him a minute to make out that Mr. Blake was writing words by painting them with the brush onto the plate. “You’re writing backwards, an’t you, sir?” Jem blurted out, though he knew he shouldn’t interrupt.

Mr. Blake did not answer until he had reached the end of the line. Then he looked up. “That I am, my lad, that I am.”

“Why?”

“I’m writing with a solution that will remain on the plate when the rest gets eaten away by acid. Then when I print them the words will be going forwards, not backwards.”

“Opposite to what they are now.”

“Yes, my boy.”

“Mr. Blake, I’m sorry to trouble you,” his wife interrupted, “but Jem and Maggie have told me something you ought to hear.” Mrs. Blake was wringing her hands now, whether from what Jem and Maggie had told her or because she felt she was disturbing her husband, Jem was not sure.

“It’s all right, Kate. While I’ve stopped, could you get me some more turps? There’s some next door. And a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, Mr. Blake.” Mrs. Blake stepped out of the room.

“How did you learn to write backwards like that?” Jem asked. “With a mirror?”

Mr. Blake glanced down at the plate. “Practice, my boy, practice. It’s easy once you’ve done it enough. Everything engravers do gets printed opposite. The engraver has to be able to see it both ways.”

“From the middle of the river.”

“That’s it. Now, what did you want to tell me?”

Jem repeated what Maggie had said down in the kitchen. “We thought we should warn you that they be coming to see you tonight,” he finished. “Mr. Roberts weren’t nice about it,” Jem added, when Mr. Blake did not seem to react to the news. “We thought they might give you trouble.”

“Thank you for that, my children,” Mr. Blake replied. “I am not surprised by any of this. I knew it would come.”

He was not responding at all the way Maggie had expected him to. She’d thought he would jump up and do something-pack a bag and leave the house, or hide all of the books and pamphlets and things he’d printed, or barricade the front windows and door. Instead he simply smiled at them, then dipped his brush into a dish of something resembling glue, and began to write more backwards words across the metal plate. Maggie wanted to kick his chair and shout, “Listen to us! You may be in danger!” But she didn’t dare.

Mrs. Blake came back in with a bottle of turps and a glass of water, which she set down by her husband. “They told you about the Association coming tonight, did they?” She at least seemed anxious about what Jem and Maggie had told them.

“They did, my dear.”

“Mr. Blake, why do they want to visit you specially?” Jem asked.

Mr. Blake made a little face and, setting down his brush, twisted around in his chair to face them fully. “Tell me, Jem, what do you think I write about?”

Jem hesitated.

“Children,” Maggie offered.

Mr. Blake nodded. “Yes, my girl-children, and the helpless, and the poor. Children lost and cold and hungry. The government does not like to be told it is not looking after its people. They think I am suggesting revolution, as there has been in France.”

“Are you?” Jem asked.

Mr. Blake waggled his head in a movement that could have meant yes or no.

“Pa says that the Frenchies have gone bad, with all that killing of innocent people,” Maggie said.

“That is not surprising. Doesn’t blood flow before judgment? Only look to the Bible for instances of it. Look at the Book of Revelation for blood flowing in the streets. This Association that intends to come tonight, though, wants to stop anyone who questions those in power. But power unchecked leads to moral tyranny.”

Jem and Maggie were silent, trying to follow his words.

“So you see, my children, that is why I must continue making my songs and not run from those who would have me silenced. And so that is what I am doing.” He turned his chair back around so that he faced the desk, and picked up his brush once more.

“What is that you’re working on?” Jem asked.

“Is it another song they won’t like?” Maggie added.

Mr. Blake looked back and forth between their eager faces and smiled. Setting down his brush once more, he leaned back and began to recite:

In the Age of Gold

Free from winters cold

Youth and maiden bright

To the holy light

Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair

Filled with softest care

Met in garden bright

When the holy light

Had just removed the curtains of the night.

There in rising day

On the grass they play

Parents were afar

Strangers came not near

And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet

They agree to meet,

When the silent sleep

Waves o’er heavens deep

And the weary tired wanderers weep.

Maggie felt her face sweep with heat from a deep blush. She could not look at Jem. If she had, she would have seen that he was not looking at her either.

“Perhaps it’s time to go, my dears,” Mrs. Blake interrupted before her husband could continue. “Mr. Blake’s very busy just now, aren’t you, Mr. Blake?” He jerked his head and sat back; clearly it was rare for her to break in on him when he was reciting.

Maggie and Jem stepped backward toward the door. “Thank you, Mr. Blake,” they said together, though it was not at all clear what they were thanking him for.

Mr. Blake seemed to recover himself. “It is we who should be thanking you,” he said. “We are grateful for the warning about this evening.”

As they left his study, they heard Mrs. Blake murmur, “Really, Mr. Blake, you shouldn’t tease them like that, reciting that one rather than what you were working on. They’re not ready yet. You saw how they blushed.” They did not hear his reply.

3

While the Kellaway men were at the timber yard with Dick Butterfield, the Kellaway women had remained at Hercules Buildings. With the arrival of winter, Anne Kellaway no longer worked in the garden, but stayed indoors, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and trying to find ways to keep out the cold. As the Kellaways had not experienced proper cold weather in London until now, they’d hadn’t realized how poorly heated the Lambeth house was, nor appreci-ated how snug a Dorsetshire cottage could be, with its thick cob walls, small windows, and large hearth. The Hercules Buildings’ brick walls were half the thickness; the fireplaces in each room were tiny and took expensive coal rather than wood they could cut and haul for free in Dorsetshire. Anne Kellaway now hated the large Lambeth windows she had spent so much time looking out of earlier in the year; she stuffed bits of cloth and straw in the cracks to keep out drafts, and double-lined the curtains.

The fog often kept kept her inside as well. Now that coal fires were burning all day in most houses in London, fog was inevitable. Of course the Piddle Valley had had occasional fogs, but not such thick, dirty ones that settled in for days like an unwanted guest. On foggy days there was so little light that Anne Kellaway drew the curtains against it and lit the lamps, in part for Maisie, who sometimes grew agitated when she looked out at the murk.

Maisie was almost always indoors. Even on clear sunny days, she did not go out. In the two months since losing her way in the fog-for that is what she and Maggie and Jem allowed her parents to think had happened-she had been out of no. 12 Hercules Buildings only twice, to church. At first she had been too ill: The cold and damp had settled on her chest, and she was in bed for two weeks before she was strong enough even to go downstairs to the privy. When she did get up at last, she was no longer fresh as she had been, but rather like a whitewashed wall that has begun to yellow-still bright, but without the glow of the new. She was quieter as well, and did not make the cheerful remarks the Kellaways had not even realized they relied on.

Anne Kellaway had gone out earlier to pick a cabbage and pull up some late carrots from Philip Astley’s now-deserted garden, and had got a bone from the butcher for a soup. She’d boiled the bone, chopped and added the vegetables, and cleared up after herself. Now she wiped her hands on her apron and took a seat opposite Maisie. Anne Kellaway knew something was different about her daughter, even apart from her recent illness, but she had put off for weeks asking Maisie, until she seemed strong enough and less skittish. Now she was determined to discover what it was.

Maisie paused as her mother sat, her needle hovering above a button she was working on for Bet Butterfield, who had hired her to make Dorset High Tops. There was little in it for Bet, but it was the least she could do for the girl.

“It be a lovely day,” Anne Kellaway began.

“Yes, it do,” Maisie agreed, gamely glancing out of the window at the bright street below. A cart passed carrying a huge pig, which sniffed daintily at the Lambeth air. Maisie smiled despite herself.

“Not like that fog. If I’d known it be so foggy in London I’d never have come here to live.”

“Why did you then, Ma?” One of the changes Anne Kellaway had noticed in Maisie was that her questions now occasionally contained a sharp sliver of judgment.

Rather than chiding her daughter, Anne Kellaway tried to answer honestly. “Once Tommy died I thought the Piddle Valley were ruined for us, and perhaps we’d be happier here.”

Maisie made a stitch in her button. “And are you?”

Anne Kellaway dodged the question by responding to a different one. “I’m just glad you be less poorly now.” She began to twist a knot in her apron. “In the fog that day-were you frightened?”

Maisie stopped stitching. “I were terrified.”

“You never told us what happened. Jem said you was lost and Mr. Blake found you.”

Maisie looked at her mother steadily. “I were at the amphitheatre and decided to come home to help you. But I couldn’t find Jem to see me home, and when I looked out at the fog it seemed to be a little clearer, and I thought I could get home by myself. So I walked along Westminster Bridge Road, and I were fine, as there were people along there and the street lamps were lit. It were just that when I got to the turning for Hercules Buildings I didn’t turn sharp enough and went down Bastille Row instead, so that Hercules Tavern were on my right rather than my left.” Maisie deliberately mentioned Hercules Tavern, as if by naming it she could dismiss it too, and Anne Kellaway would never suspect that she had been inside the pub. Her voice only wavered a tiny bit when she said the name.

“After a bit I knew I weren’t on Hercules Buildings, so I turned back, but the fog were so thick and it were getting dark and I didn’t know where I were. And then Mr. Blake found me and brought me home.” Maisie told her story a little mechanically, except for Mr. Blake’s name, which she said reverentially, as if referring to an angel.

“Where did he find you?”

“I don’t know, Ma-I were lost. You’ll have to ask him.” Maisie said this with confidence, sure that Anne Kellaway would never ask Mr. Blake-she was too daunted by him. He and Mrs. Blake had visited Maisie once she was improving, and Anne Kellaway had been disturbed by his bright, piercing eyes and the familiarity he’d had with both Maisie and Jem. Then too, he had said something very odd to her when she thanked him for finding Maisie. “‘Heaven’s last best gift,’” he had replied. “‘Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve.’”

At Anne Kellaway’s blank stare, Catherine Blake had leaned forward to say, “That’s Paradise Lost, that is. Mr. Blake is very fond of quoting from it, aren’t you, Mr. Blake? Anyway, we’re glad your daughter is on the mend.”

Even stranger, Jem had murmured under his breath, “Pear tree’s loss,” and Anne Kellaway had felt the familiar shard in her heart that signaled Tommy Kellaway’s death-a feeling she had managed to suppress for months, until the departure of the circus. It was back, though, as strong as ever, catching her out when she wasn’t looking, making her draw in her breath sharply with grief for her son.

Now Anne Kellaway looked at her daughter and knew that she was lying about the fog. Maisie returned her gaze. How had she come to grow up so quickly, Anne Kellaway wondered. After a moment she stood. “I must check that the bread an’t stale,” she said. “If it be I’ll pop out for more.”

4

Thomas Kellaway said nothing to the Kellaway women about what had gone on between him and John Roberts when he and Jem returned, with Maggie in tow. Rather than go home, Maggie spent the rest of the afternoon with the Kellaways, learning how to make High Tops with Maisie by the fire while Jem and his father worked on a chair seat in the workshop and Anne Kellaway sewed and swept and kept the fire bright. Though Maggie was not especially good at button-making, she preferred to be busy with this family rather than idle in the pub with her own.

They worked, and waited, even those who didn’t know they were waiting for anything, and time pressed down like a stone. Once it began to get dark and Anne Kellaway had lit the lamps, Jem kept coming in from the workshop and going to the front window until his mother asked him what he was looking for. Then he stayed in the back, but listened keenly, stealing glances at Maggie through the open door, wishing they had a plan.

It began as a low hum that at first wasn’t noticeable because of more immediate sounds: horses clopping past, children shouting, street criers selling candles and pies and fish, the watchman calling the hour. Soon, though, the sound of a company of feet crunching along the road and voices murmuring to one another became more distinct. When he heard it Jem left the workshop and went to the window again. “Pa,” he called after a moment.

Thomas Kellaway paused, then laid down the adze he had been using to carve a saddleback shape into the chair seat, and joined his son at the window. Maggie jumped up, scattering the High Tops she had accumulated in her lap.

“What is’t, Tom?” Anne Kellaway said sharply.

Thomas Kellaway cleared his throat. “I’ve some business downstairs. I won’t be long.”

Frowning, Anne Kellaway joined them at the window. When she glimpsed the crowd gathering in the street in front of the Blakes’ door-and growing bigger all the time-she turned pale.

“What do you see, Ma?” Maisie called from her chair. A few months ago she would have been the first out of her seat and to the window.

Before anyone could respond, they heard a rap at Miss Pelham’s front door, and the crowd in the street broadened its attention to include no. 12 Hercules Buildings. “Tom!” Anne Kellaway cried. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t you be worrying, Anne. It’ll be all right in a minute.”

They heard the door open downstairs and Miss Pelham’s querulous voice ring out, though they could not make out what she said.

“I’d best go down,” Thomas Kellaway said.

“Not on your own!” Anne Kellaway followed him from the room, turning at the top of the stairs to call back, “Jem, Maisie, stay here!”

Jem ignored her; he and Maggie clattered down after them. After sitting alone in the room for a moment, Maisie got up and followed.

As they reached the front door, Miss Pelham was signing a book similar to John Roberts’s ledger. “Of course I’m happy to sign if it’s going to do any good,” she was saying to an older man with a crooked back who held out the book for her. “I can’t bear the thought of those revolutionaries coming here!” She shuddered. “However, I don’t at all appreciate a mob in front of my house-it paints me in a poor light among my neighbors. I would like you to take your…your associates elsewhere!” Miss Pelham’s frizzy curls quivered with indignation.

“Oh, the rabble an’t for you, ma’am,” the man replied reassuringly. “It’s for next door.”

“But my neighbors don’t know that!”

“Actually, we do want to see”-he referred to his book-“a Thomas Kellaway, who was a little reluctant earlier to sign. I believe he lives here.” He looked past Miss Pelham’s head into her hallway. “That will be you, will it, sir?”

Miss Pelham whipped her head around to glare at the Kellaways gathered behind her.

“You were reluctant earlier?” Anne Kellaway hissed at her husband. “When were that?”

Thomas Kellaway stepped away from his wife. “Pardon, Miss Pelham, if you do just let me pass I’ll go an’ straighten this out.”

Miss Pelham continued to glare at him as if he had brought great shame on her household. Then she caught sight of Maggie. “Get that girl out of my house!” she cried. Thomas Kellaway was forced to squeeze past his landlady so that he could stand on the doorstep next to the man with the humpback.

“Now, sir,” the man said, with more politeness than John Roberts had shown earlier. “You are Thomas Kellaway, is that right? I believe you were read earlier the declaration of loyalty we are asking each resident of Lambeth to sign. Are you prepared now to sign it?” He held out the book.

Before Thomas Kellaway could respond, a cry went up from the crowd, who had turned their attention back to no. 13 Hercules Buildings. The man with the hump stepped away from Miss Pelham’s door so that he might see what was, after all, the main attraction. Thomas Kellaway and Miss Pelham followed him onto the path.

5

William Blake had opened his door. He did not say a word-not a hallo, or a curse, or a “What do you want?” He simply stood filling his doorway in his long black coat. He was hatless, his brown hair ruffled, his mouth set, his eyes wide and alert.

“Mr. Blake!” John Roberts stepped up to the door, his jaw flexing as if he were chewing on a tough piece of meat. “You are requested by the Lambeth Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers to sign this declaration of loyalty to the British monarchy. Will you sign it, sir?”

There was a long silence, during which Jem, Maggie, Anne Kellaway, and Maisie pushed out of the house so that they might see and hear what was happening. Anne Kellaway joined her husband, while the others crept to the end of the path.

Maggie and Jem were stunned by how big the crowd had grown, filling the street completely. There were torches and lanterns dotted about, and the street lamps had been lit, but still most of the faces were in shadow and looked unfamiliar and frightening, even though they were probably neighbors Jem and Maggie knew, and there out of curiosity rather than meaning to cause trouble. Nonetheless, there was a tension among the people that threatened to erupt into violence.

“Oh, Jem, what we going to do?” Maggie whispered.

“I dunno.”

“Is Mr. Blake in trouble?” Maisie asked.

“Yes.”

“Then we must help him.” She said it so firmly that Jem felt ashamed.

Maggie frowned. “C’mon,” she said finally, and, taking Jem’s hand, she opened Miss Pelham’s gate and slipped into the crowd. Maisie took his other hand, and the three snaked through the onlookers, pushing their way closer to Mr. Blake’s front gate. There they discovered a gap in those gathered. The men, women, and children on the street were simply watching, while on the other side of the Blakes’ fence a smaller group had bunched together in the front garden, all of them men, most recognizable from the Cumberland Gardens meeting. To Maggie’s astonishment, Charlie Butterfield was among them, though standing on the edge of the group, as if he were a hanger-on not yet completely accepted by the others. “That bastard! What’s he doing there?” Maggie muttered. “We have to distract ’em,” she whispered to Jem. She looked around. “I’ve an idea. This way!” She plunged into the crowd, pulling Jem after her.

“Maisie, go back to Ma and Pa,” Jem called. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

Maisie did not answer him; she may not even have heard him. She was watching Mr. Blake, who stood silent in his doorway, not answering any of the questions John Roberts was putting to him: “You are a printer, Mr. Blake. What sort of things do you print? Do you write about the French revolution, Mr. Blake? You have worn the bonnet rouge, have you not, Mr. Blake? Have you read Thomas Paine, Mr. Blake? Do you own copies of his works? Have you met him? In your writing, do you question the sovereignty of our King, Mr. Blake? Are you or aren’t you going to sign this declaration, Mr. Blake?”

Throughout this interrogation, Mr. Blake maintained an impassive expression, his eyes set on the horizon. Though he appeared to be listening, he did not seem to feel that he must answer, or indeed even that the questions were directed at him.

His silence riled John Roberts more than anything he said would have. “Are you going to answer, or are you going to hide your guilt behind silence?” he roared. “Or will we have to smoke it out of you?” With those words he threw the torch he’d been holding into Mr. Blake’s front garden. The dramatic gesture turned into a slightly less dramatic smolder as bits of dry grass and leaves caught alight and then died away into thin streams of smoke.

Thomas Kellaway’s eyes followed the smoke from next door as it unfurled above them into the evening sky. It decided him. He had seen what could happen to a family when its livelihood burnt to the ground. Whatever the different sides of the argument, no man had the right to set light to another’s property. That much he was clear about. He turned to the humpback man, who was still holding out the ledger. “I won’t sign anything,” he announced.

6

Maisie, still standing in the street just across the gap from the Association men, also looked above her into the sky, now darkened into an inky blue. It was the time of night when the first stars appeared. She found one burning bright directly above her. Then she began to recite:

I wander through each chartered street

Near where the chartered Thames does flow

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

Though she had spent much of the past two months in bed or sitting by the fire, her voice was strong, and carried through the crowd in the street, who stepped back from her so that she was now standing alone. Her voice carried to the group gathered at Mr. Blake’s door, among them Charlie Butterfield, who started when he saw who was speaking. It carried to her parents in the garden next door, and to Miss Pelham, quivering with nerves on her doorstep. It carried to Mr. Blake, who set his eyes on Maisie’s face like a benediction and gave a tiny nod, which encouraged her to take a deep breath and begin the second verse:

In every cry of every man

In every infant’s cry of fear

In every voice, in every ban

The mind-forged manacles I hear.

Now her voice carried to Jem and Maggie, who had detached themselves from the crowd and were squatting behind the hedge on the other side of the road from no. 13 Hercules Buildings. Maggie popped up to look. “Damn! What’s she doing?”

Jem joined her and peered at his sister. “God help her,” he muttered.

“What’s this? Quiet, girl! Someone stop her!” John Roberts shouted.

“Leave her be!” a man countered.

“Quick,” Maggie whispered. “We’d better do it now. Careful who you hit, and be ready to run.” She reached to the ground and fumbled about until she found a chunk of frozen horse dung-street sweepers often dumped their findings over the hedge there. She aimed carefully, then flung it hard so that it flew over the heads of the crowd, over Maisie, and landed in the group of men surrounding Mr. Blake.

“Ow!” one of them cried. A chuckle rose from the crowd watching.

Jem threw another clod, hitting one of the men in the back.

“Hey! Who’s doing that?”

Though they couldn’t see the men’s faces, they knew they’d had some effect, for there was a rippling out of the group as they turned away from Mr. Blake and peered into the dark. They threw more dung, and gnarled carrots, but these fell short, into the gap between the men and the street, while a bit of dung thrown too hard hit the Blakes’ window, though it didn’t break. “Careful!” Jem hissed.

Now Mr. Blake began to speak, taking over from Maisie in a sonorous voice that froze the men at his door:

How the chimney sweeper’s cry

Every blackening church appals

And the hapless soldier’s sigh

Runs in blood down palace walls.

But most through midnight streets I hear

How the youthful harlot’s curse

Blasts the new-born infant’s tear

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

Maggie struck lucky, heaving a half-rotted cabbage that hit John Roberts in the head just as Mr. Blake finished the last line. Guffaws and shouts of “Huzzah!” arose from the crowd at the sight. John Roberts staggered from the blow, shouting, “Get them!”

A group detached itself from the Assocation men and began pushing through the crowd toward the hedge. Others, however, mistook where the missiles were coming from and attacked the crowd itself. Charlie Butterfield, for instance, grabbed one of the balls of frozen dung and threw it at a bald, heavyset man in the street, who roared joyously in response and crashed through the Blakes’ front fence, kicking it over as if it were made of straw. Choosing John Roberts as the most vocal and therefore likeliest foe, he promptly head-butted him. This was the signal to all those who had gathered in the hope of a free-for-all to begin throwing whatever they could find-their fists, if nothing else. Soon the Blakes’ windows were smashed, as well as those of their neighbors, John Astley and Miss Pelham, and men were shouting and tussling in the street.

In the midst of the mêlée Maisie stood, swaying from fear and dizziness. She sank to her knees just as Charlie Butterfield reached her. He put an arm around her and half-lifted, half-dragged her to the Blakes’ door, where Mr. Blake still stood watching the riot, which had at least moved out of his garden. Maisie smiled weakly. “Thank’ee, Charlie,” she murmured. Charlie nodded, embarrassed, then crept away, cursing himself for his weakness.

When Maggie saw the group of men approaching the hedge, she grabbed Jem’s arm. “Run!” she hissed. “Follow me!” She bolted across the black field behind them, stumbling over frozen clods and furrows, across old vegetable patches, thrashing through dead nettles and brambles, stubbing her toes on bricks, tripping over netting meant to keep out birds and rabbits. She could hear Jem panting behind her and, farther back, the shouts of the rioters. Maggie was laughing and crying at the same time. “We got ’em, didn’t we?” she whispered to Jem. “We got ’em.”

“Yes, but they mustn’t get us!” Jem had caught up with her and grabbed her hand to pull her forward.

They reached Carlisle House, the mansion at the edge of the field surrounded by an iron fence, and skirted it, coming out to the lane that passed in front of it and led to Royal Row, with its houses and the Canterbury Arms casting faint lights.

“Mustn’t go there-people will see us,” Maggie panted. She looked both ways, then scrambled over the hedge, cursing at the scratches and pricks from the hawthorn and bramble. She and Jem pitched across the road and dived over the opposite hedge. They could hear the huffs and shouts of the men following them, closer now, which spurred them on to run faster again through the new field, which was larger, and darker, with no Carlisle House to light the way-indeed, nothing but field all the way down to the warehouses by the river.

They slowed down now, trying not to crash about but instead to pick their way silently so that the men could not hear them. Above them, stars were pricking more and more holes in the blueblack sky. Jem breathed in the icy air and felt it draw like a knife across the back of his throat. If he weren’t so terrified of the mob behind them, he would have appreciated more the beauty of the sky at this time of the evening.

Maggie was in the lead again, but was going more and more slowly. When she stopped suddenly, Jem bumped into her. “What is’t? Where are we?”

Maggie swallowed, the click in her throat loud in the night air. “Near Cut-Throat Lane. I’m lookin’ for something.”

“What?”

She hesitated, then said in a low voice, “There’s an old kiln somewhere round here, what they use to make bricks. We could hide in it. I’ve-it’s a good hiding place. Here.” They bumped against a squat structure built with rough brick into a kind of waist-high rectangular box, crumbling at one end.

“C’mon-we can both squeeze in.” Maggie ducked down and crawled into the dark hole made by the bricks.

Jem squatted, but didn’t follow her. “What if they find us here? We’ll be cornered like a fox in a hole. If we stay out here at least we can run.”

“They’ll catch us if we run-they’re bigger and there are more of them.”

In the end the sound of the men crashing across the field decided Jem. He scuttled into the small, dark space left to him and pressed up next to Maggie. The hole smelled of clay and smoke, and of the faint vinegar of Maggie’s skin.

They huddled together in the cold, trying to calm their breathing. After a minute they grew quieter, their breathing naturally synchronized into an even rhythm.

“I hope Maisie be all right,” Jem said softly.

“Mr. Blake won’t let anything happen to her.”

“What do you think they’ll do to us if they catch us?”

“They won’t.”

They listened. In fact, the men sounded farther off, as if they had veered away and were heading toward Lambeth Palace.

Maggie giggled. “The cabbage.”

“Yes.” Jem smiled. “That were a good aim.”

“Thanks, Dorset boy.” Maggie pulled her shawl closer about her, pressing against Jem as she did so. He could feel her shivering.

“Here, get close so I can warm you.” He put his arm around her; as he pulled her to him she reached up and grasped his other shoulder so that they were encircling each other, and buried her face in his neck. Jem yelped. “Your nose be frozen!”

Maggie pulled her face back and laughed. As she looked up at him Jem caught the gleam of her teeth. Then their lips came together, and with that warm, soft touch all of the cold terror of the evening receded.

7

The kiss did not last as long as either wanted or expected, for suddenly a flaming torch was thrust toward them and a face loomed in from the darkness. Maggie screamed, but managed to cut it short so that it didn’t carry more than a few yards.

“Thought I’d find you two here, gettin’ cozy.” Charlie Butterfield squatted on his heels and contemplated them.

“Charlie, you scared the shit from me!” Maggie cried, at the same time pulling away from Jem.

Charlie noted every move they made-their closeness, their pulling apart, their shame. “Got yourself a hidey-hole, have you?”

“What you doin’ here, Charlie?”

“Lookin’ for you, little sister. As is everyone.”

“What were you doin’ with those men at Mr. Blake’s, anyway? You’re not interested in any o’ that. And why were you botherin’ Mr. Blake? He’s done nothing to you.” Maggie had recovered herself quickly and was working hard to gain the upper hand over her brother.

Charlie ignored her questions, and gave up no ground, returning to the subject he knew made her the most uncomfortable. “Come back here, have you, Miss Cut-Throat? Funny place to bring your sweetheart-back to the scene of the crime. But then, this did used to be called Lovers’ Lane, didn’t it? Before you went and changed it!”

Maggie flinched. “Shut your bone box!” she cried.

“What-d’you mean you haven’t told him, Miss Cut-Throat?” Charlie seemed to take great relish in repeating the nickname.

“Stop it, Charlie!” she shouted, heedless of the men hunting for them.

Jem felt her body shaking in the small space they shared. He said to Charlie, “Why don’t you-”

“Perhaps you should ask your girl what happened out here,” Charlie interrupted. “Go on, ask her.”

“Shut up, Charlie! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Maggie was screaming by the last repetition. “I could kill you!”

Charlie smiled, the torchlight twisting his face. “I expect you could, dear sister. You already showed me your technique.”

“Shut up,” Jem said.

Charlie laughed. “Oh, now you’re startin’. I tell you what-I’ll leave it to them others to decide what to do with you.” He stood up and called out, “Whoo-wee-over here!”

Before he could think about what he was doing, Jem jumped up, grabbed a loose brick, and clapped it against the side of Charlie’s head. Charlie stared at him. Then the torch in his hand began to dip, and Jem grabbed it just before Charlie himself staggered. As he fell, his head knocked against the side of the kiln, ensuring that when he landed on the ground he did not get up.

Jem stood still, clutching the torch. He licked his lips, cleared his throat, and stamped his feet, hoping Charlie would move. All that moved, however, was a trickle of blood down his forehead. Jem dropped the brick, squatted next to him, and held the torch in his face, fear clutching at his stomach. After a moment he saw in the flickering torch light that Charlie’s chest was rising and falling slightly.

Jem turned around to Maggie. She was crouched in the shallow hole, arms wrapped around her knees, rocked with violent shudders. This time Jem did not get in next to her, but stood holding the torch and looking down at her. “What crime?” he said.

Maggie squeezed her knees tighter, trying to control the spasms that shook her. She kept her eyes fastened on the brick at her brother’s side. “D’you remember when we’d lost Maisie in London and were lookin’ for her, and you asked if I’d seen the man get killed on Cut-Throat Lane?”

Jem nodded.

“Well, you were right. I did. But it wasn’t just that.” Maggie took a deep breath. “It was a year and some ago. I was comin’ back from the river down by Lambeth Palace, where I’d been diggin’ in the mud at low tide. Found me a funny little silver spoon. I was so excited I didn’t wait for the others I was with to finish. I just set off to find Pa so he could tell me what the spoon was worth. He knows that sort of thing. He was drinking at the Artichoke-you know, the pub on the Lower Marsh what I took you to when we met, where you met Pa and”-she jerked her head at Charlie lying prone-“him. It was foggy that day, but not so bad that you couldn’t see where you was goin’. I took the shortcut up Lovers’ Lane, ’cause it was quicker. I didn’t think anything of it-I’d gone along there lots o’ times. This time, though, I went round the bend, and round that bend there was a-a man. He was walking the same direction as me, but slowly, so slowly that I caught up with him. He wasn’t old or nothing-just a man. I didn’t think to hang back-I just wanted to get to the Artichoke and show Pa the spoon. So I passed by him, hardly looked at him. And he said, ‘What you runnin’ from?’ And I turned and he-he grabbed me, and put a knife to my throat.” Maggie swallowed, as if still feeling the cold metal pressed against the soft skin at the base of her neck.

“First he asked me what I had, and I gave him a penny-all the money I had on me. I didn’t want to give him the spoon, though, as I’d spent so long digging for it in the mud. So I kept it hidden. But he felt in my pockets and found it anyway. And I should have given it to him to begin with-I shouldn’t have hidden it, it was stupid of me, ’cause the hiding made him angry, and that made him-” Maggie paused and swallowed again. “So he dragged me-here.” She patted the crumbled walls of the kiln.

Charlie’s eyelids fluttered, and he moved a hand up to his head and groaned. Jem shifted the torch from one hand to the other, and picked up the brick. He was glad, in fact, for the excuse not to look at Maggie; relieved too that Charlie was not hurt worse. He did not think he would need to hit him again, but clutching the brick made him feel better.

Charlie rolled onto his side, then sat up, wincing and groaning. “Jesus Christ, my head!” He looked around. “You bastard!” he moaned when he saw Jem with the brick.

“You deserved it, Charlie. At least Jem’s willin’ to defend me.” Maggie looked up at Jem. “Charlie found me, see, with the man. He was comin’ along the lane and he saw us in here. And he come over, and he didn’t do a thing! He just stood there grinning!”

“I didn’t know it was you!” Charlie cried, then held his head, for shouting made it pound. “I didn’t know it was you,” he repeated more softly. “Not at first. All I could see was a muddy dress an’ dark hair. Lots o’ girls has dark hair. I didn’t see it was you until you went and-”

“So you’d just let any girl in trouble get what was comin’ to her, would you? Like you did with Maisie in the stables-you just walked away from her, you coward!”

“I an’t a coward!” Charlie bellowed, heedless now of his raging headache. “I helped her just now!”

The mention of his sister made Jem think of her reciting Mr. Blake’s song in the crowd. “I’d best get back to Maisie,” he announced, “and be sure she’s all right.” He thrust the torch at Maggie, who gazed at him in confusion.

“Don’t you want to hear the rest of the story?” she asked.

“I know it now-what the crime were.”

“No, you don’t! It wasn’t that! He didn’t get to do that to me, see! I stopped him! He had a knife, and when he was on top of me, fumblin’ with himself, he dropped the knife and I grabbed it and I…and…I…”

“She stuck him in the throat,” Charlie finished for her. “Right in the throat like a pig. Then she slashed him. You should have seen the blood.” He spoke in an admiring tone.

Jem stared at Maggie. “You-you killed him?”

Maggie set her jaw. “I was defendin’ myself, like you just did with Charlie here. I didn’t wait around to see if it killed him-I ran. Had to throw away my clothes and steal some more, they were that bloody.”

“I saw,” Charlie murmured. “I watched him die. Took a long time, ’cause he had to bleed to death.”

Maggie studied her brother, and something clicked in her mind. “You got the spoon off him, didn’t you?”

Charlie nodded. “Thought it was his. Didn’t know it was yours.”

“Have you still got it?”

“Sold it. Was a caddy spoon, for tea. Got a good price for it.”

“That money’s mine.”

The blow to his head seemed to have knocked the fight out of Charlie, for he didn’t protest. “Don’t have it now, but I’ll owe you.”

Jem couldn’t believe they were discussing caddy spoons and money after such a story. Maggie had stopped shaking and grown calmer. Instead it was Jem who was now trembling. “I’d best get back,” he repeated. “Maisie will need me.”

“Wait, Jem,” Maggie said. “Don’t you-” She gazed at him, her eyes pleading. She was biting her lips, and Jem shuddered to think that a few minutes before he had kissed them-kissed someone who had killed a man.

“I have to go,” he said, dropping the brick, and stumbled into the dark.

“Wait, Jem! We’ll come with you!” Maggie called. “Don’t you even want the torch?”

But Jem had found Cut-Throat Lane, and he ran along it, allowing his feet to feel their way home while his mind went blank.

8

The crowd was gone by the time he reached Hercules Buildings, though there was evidence all around of the recent brawl-bricks, dung, sticks, and other objects lying about, and windows all along Hercules Buildings broken. Residents had banded together and were walking up and down to deter thieves from taking advantage of the easy access afforded by the gaping windows. A carriage waited in front of Mr. Blake’s house.

Miss Pelham’s house was lit almost as bright as a pub, as if she were trying to chase every shadow of doubt from her rooms. When Jem went inside he heard his father’s voice in her front room, and then her interrupting quaver.

“I am sorry about your daughter’s health, but I cannot with any good faith allow revolutionary sympathizers to remain in this house even a day longer. Frankly, Mr. Kellaway, if it were not a cold winter’s night, you’d already be out on the street.”

“But where will we go?” came Thomas Kellaway’s plaintive voice.

“You should have thought of that when you refused to sign the declaration, and in front of everyone. What will the neighbors think?”

“But Mr. Blake-”

“Mr. Blake has nothing to do with it. He will have his own price to pay. You did not sign, and so you will not remain here. I would like you gone by noon tomorrow. I shall be calling round to the Association in the morning, and I’m sure they will be very keen to help me if you are still here when I get back. Indeed, if they had not been so rudely attacked tonight, I expect they would be here now, rather than out chasing down ruffians. Where is your son, may I ask?”

Before Thomas Kellaway could mumble a response, Jem opened the door and walked in. Miss Pelham jerked her head around like an angry hen and glared at him. “I be here,” he muttered. “Why d’you want to know?” There no longer seemed any reason to be polite to her.

Miss Pelham sensed his change, and turned both fearful and defensive. “Get out, boy-no one said you could come in!” She herself scurried to the door, as if obeying her own order. She was scared of him, Jem could see, and it made him feel briefly powerful. But there was no benefit to be gained from it other than the pleasure of seeing her cower-she was still throwing them out.

He turned to his father. Thomas Kellaway was standing with his head bowed. “Pa, Ma wants you upstairs,” Jem said, giving him the lie he needed to escape from the room.

Thomas Kellaway looked at his son, his blue eyes tired but focused for once on what was in front of him rather than in the distance. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “I made a mess of things.”

Jem shuffled his feet. “No, Pa, not at all,” he insisted, aware of Miss Pelham listening greedily. “It’s just we need you upstairs.” He turned and pushed past Miss Pelham, knowing his father would follow. As they clumped up the stairs, Anne Kellaway popped her head out from the doorway at the top, where she had been listening. Their landlady, taking courage from their receding backs, came out into the hallway and called up, “Tomorrow by noon you’re to be out! By noon, d’you hear? And that means your daughter as well. She’s only got herself to blame, getting herself into trouble like that. I should have thrown you out two months ago when she-”

“Shut up!” Jem spun about and roared. Sensing in Miss Pelham the eagerness of months of pent-up curtain-twitching about to spill over, he had to use harsh words to stop her. “You shut your bone box, you poxy bitch!”

His words froze Miss Pelham, her mouth agape, her eyes wide. Then, as if a string were attached to her waist and had been given a great tug, she flew backward into her front room, slamming the door behind her.

Anne and Thomas Kellaway stared at their son. Anne Kellaway stepped aside and, ushering her men in, closed the door firmly to the outside world.

Inside, she cast her eyes around the room. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”

Thomas Kellaway cleared his throat. “Home. We’ll go home.” As the words left his mouth it felt to him to be the most important decision he had ever made.

“We can’t do that!” Anne Kellaway argued. “Maisie an’t strong enough to travel in this weather.”

They all looked at Maisie, who was sitting wrapped up by the fire, as she had been for much of the last two months. Her eyes were bright from the evening’s events, but not feverish. She glanced at them, then gazed back into the fire. Anne Kellaway stared at her daughter, searching for answers to the questions Miss Pelham’s words had raised. “Maisie-”

“Leave her be, Ma,” Jem interrupted. “Just leave her be. She’s all right, an’t you, Maisie?”

Maisie smiled at her brother. “Yes. Oh, Jem, Mr. Blake were ever so grateful. He said to thank you and Maggie-you’ll know why. And he thanked me too.” She flushed, and looked down at her hands resting in her lap. At that moment Anne Kellaway felt, as she often had in London, that her children lived in a different world from their parents.

“I’ve an idea,” Jem said suddenly. He clattered back downstairs and reached the carriage next door just as the Blakes were stepping into it.