Burning Bright

by Tracy Chevalier

  “Come over—the Blakes won’t mind!”

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

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

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

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

  “All right,” Jem said after a moment.

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

  “Right.” Jem started to scramble down.

  “Jem?”

  He stopped. “What is it?”

  “Bring us summat to eat, eh?”

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

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

  4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “What’s your way, then?”

  “Astley’s fireworks laboratory.”

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

  “Couldn’t we finish the bacon first?”

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

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

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

  5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “How bad is he?”

  John Fox shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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