Burning Bright (22 page)

When they got out to the yard, Charlie turned toward the passage they had first come down. “Where you going?” Maggie demanded.

“Back to the pub, of course. I've wasted too much time out here already, Miss Cut-Throat. Why, an't you?”

“I'm going to find someone with more guts'n you!”

Before he could grab her, Maggie ran down the other alley to Hercules Buildings. The fog no longer frightened her; she was too angry to be scared. When she reached the street, she looked both ways. Figures huddled in wraps hurried past her—the fog and dark discouraged lingering. She ran after one, calling out, “Please, help me! There's a girl in trouble!”

It was an old man, who shook her off and grumbled, “Serves her right—shouldn't be out in this weather.”

Passing close enough to hear this exchange was a small woman in a yellow bonnet and shawl. When Maggie saw her little face peeking out, she shouted, “What you lookin' at, you old stick!” and Miss Pelham scuttled toward her door.

“Oh, please!” Maggie cried to another man passing in the other direction. “I need your help!”

“Get off, you little cat!” the man sneered.

Maggie stood helplessly in the street, on the verge of tears. All she wanted was someone with the moral authority to stand up to John Astley. Where was he?

He came from the direction of the river, striding out of the fog with his hands tucked behind him, his broad-brimmed hat jammed low over his heavy brow, and a brooding expression on his face. He had stood up to Philip Astley when he'd felt injustice was being done to a child; he would stand up to Astley's son.

“Mr. Blake!” Maggie cried. “Please help me!”

Mr. Blake's expression immediately cleared, focusing intently on Maggie. “What is it, my girl? What can I do?”

“It's Maisie—she's in trouble!”

“Show me,” he said without hesitation.

Maggie ran back down the alley, Mr. Blake following close behind. “I don't think she knows what she's doin',” she panted as she ran. “It's like he's cast a spell over her.”

Then they were in the stables, and in the stall, and John Astley looked up from where he was crouched next to a weeping Maisie. When Maisie saw Mr. Blake she buried her face in her hands.

“Mr. Astley, stand up, sir!”

John Astley stood swiftly, with something like fear on his face. He and Mr. Blake were the same height, but Mr. Blake was stockier, his expression stern. His direct gaze pinned John Astley, and there was an adjustment in the stall, with one man taking in and acknowledging the other. It was what Maggie had thought would happen with the combined forces of her and Charlie; they did not have the weight of experience behind them, however. Now, in Mr. Blake's presence, John Astley lowered his eyes and fixed them on a mound of straw in the corner.

“Maggie, take Maisie to my wife—she will look after her.” Mr. Blake's tone was gentle but commanding too.

Maisie rubbed her face to get rid of her tears and stood, brushing the straw from her skirt and carefully avoiding John Astley's eyes. She needn't have worried—he was staring fixedly at the ground.

Maggie wrapped Maisie's shawl tightly around her shoulders, then put her arm around the girl and led her from the stall. As they left, Mr. Blake was saying, “For shame, sir! Revolted spirit!”

Out in the fog Maisie collapsed and began to weep.

“C'mon, Miss Piddle, don't cry,” Maggie cajoled, holding her up. “Let's get you back, shall we—then you can cry all you like. Come now, pull yourself together.” She gave Maisie a little shake.

Maisie took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders.

“That's it. Now, this way. It's not far.”

As they stumbled up Hercules Buildings, the fog discharged a welcome surprise—Jem was hastening toward them. “Maisie, where you been? I just heard that—” He stopped at Maggie's frown and shake of her head, and did not go on to say that he had been suspicious when he heard that John Astley had accompanied Maisie, and came out to search for his sister. “Let's go home. Ma'll be expecting you.”

“Not yet, please, Jem,” Maisie said in a small voice, without looking at him. She was shivering, her teeth chattering. “I don't want them to know.”

“I'm takin' her to Mrs. Blake,” Maggie declared.

Jem followed them up to the Blakes' door. As they waited after knocking, there was a flicker in Miss Pelham's curtains before she saw Maggie and Jem glaring at her and let them fall back into place.

Mrs. Blake did not seem surprised to see them. When Maggie said, “Mr. Blake sent us, ma'am. Can you get Maisie warmed up?” she opened the door wide and stood aside to let them pass as if she did this every day for them. “Go downstairs to the kitchen, my dears—there's a fire's lit there,” she said. “I'll just get a blanket and then come and make you a cup of tea.”

The Kellaways did not attend the final performance of the season of Astley's Circus. Despite Mrs. Blake's ministrations, Maisie came down with a fever, and was still in her sickbed that night, with Anne Kellaway tending her. Thomas and Jem Kellaway spent the evening clearing out the workroom, which had been neglected over the months while they were working for Philip Astley. It would need to be in order now, for Thomas Kellaway had told Philip Astley that he would not be accompanying him to Dublin. Maisie was too ill to travel, and though he did not know what had caused it, he had a vague suspicion—a feeling he could not pin down or articulate—that the circus, if not Astley himself, had something to do with it. In truth, though Thomas Kellaway was of course horrified by his daughter's illness, he was relieved to have a concrete excuse not to go to Dublin.

Maggie did see the final show, and later described it to Jem, for it was quite eventful in its own way. Miss Laura Devine decided to make a private drama very public indeed. She performed the new routine with Monsieur Richer, as promised, the two of them turning in opposite Pigs on Spits, Monsieur Richer spinning rapidly in his black tailcoat, Miss Devine more slowly with her rainbow petticoats not quite the blur of color they normally were. As she came out of her spin into the swoop up that had so captivated Anne Kellaway when she first saw it on Westminster Bridge, this time Miss Devine simply let go and flew through the air. She landed in the pit, breaking her ankle but not bringing on the miscarriage she so desired. As they carried her out through the audience she kept her eyes squeezed shut.

Miss Laura Devine's fall caused such an uproar that the debut of Miss Hannah Smith on horseback was something of an anticli-max, the applause lukewarm. This may also have been due to the rare sight of John Astley making a mistake. As he and Miss Smith were passing the wineglass back and forth while riding in opposite circles around the ring—for they had made up after their fight—John Astley happened to glance down and see Mr. and Mrs. Blake sitting in the pit. They had never been to the circus, and Anne Kellaway had insisted on giving them her tickets, as thanks for finding Maisie in the fog. Mr. Blake was watching John Astley with his fierce eyes. When Miss Smith then held out the glass to him as she passed, John Astley fumbled with it, and it fell to the ground and shattered.

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.