Burning Bright (24 page)

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.”

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.

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.