Burning Bright

by Tracy Chevalier

  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.

  PART VIII

  July 1793

  1

  Maggie was sure she had heard the hurdy-gurdy player before; indeed, he was ruining the same song he’d ruined the last time he’d played at Hercules Hall, even down to the same wrong notes. Still, she hummed along to “A Hole to Put Poor Robin In” as she sat against the wall in Astley’s field. With ten Dorset Crosswheels completed in her lap, she was thinking about starting on High Tops. Before she began another, she yawned and stretched, for she’d been out all night helping Bet Butterfield with laundry. Though Maggie had finally decided to trade in mustard and vinegar for laundry and buttons, she was not sure that she would stick at it. Unlike her mother, she found it hard to sleep during the day, for she always woke feeling that she had missed something important—a fire or a riot or a visitor coming and going. She preferred to remain half-awake at least.

  The hurdy-gurdy man changed tunes to “Bonny Kate and Danny,” and Maggie couldn’t resist accompanying him:

  He took her to the river’s side

  Bonny Kate and Danny

  He took her to the river’s side

  And there he laid her legs so wide

  And on her belly he did ride

  And he whipped in little Danny.

  When forty weeks were come and gone

  Bonny Kate and Danny

  When forty weeks were come and gone

  She was delivered of a son—

  And she called him little Danny!

  When he finished, Maggie sauntered over to the man, who was sitting on the steps outside Hercules Hall.

  “You, you saucy cat!” he cried when he saw her. “Don’t you ever stop prowlin’ round here?”

  “Don’t you ever stop wrecking the same songs?” Maggie retorted. “And didn’t no one tell you you’re not to play those songs no more? You keep singin’ ‘Bonny Kate and Danny’ and the Association’ll take you away.”

  The man frowned. “What you mean?”

  “Where you been? You’re not to play bawdy songs, but the ones they’ve writ for you, about the King an’ that. Don’t you know?” Maggie stood straight and bellowed to the tune of “God Save the King”:

  To sing Great George’s praise

  Let all your voices raise

  Noble the theme.

  Britain has various charms

  Inviting to her arms

  God guards us from all harms

  Sacred His name.

  “Or this?” She began to the tune of “Rule Britannia”:

  Since first the Georges wore the crown,

  How happy were their subjects made—

  She broke off and laughed at the hurdy-gurdy man’s expression. “I know, it’s silly, an’t it? But I don’t know why you’re bothering to play anyway. Didn’t you know Mr. Astley’s not here? He’s gone to France to fight. Came back from Liverpool this winter when the French King was executed and England declared war against France, and went straight off to offer his services.”

  “What use is his horse dancing against the French?”

  “No, no—old Astley, not his son. John Astley’s still here, runnin’ the circus. And I can tell you, he don’t hire musicians off the street the way his father did, so you can just give yourself a rest.”

  The man’s face fell. “What’s old Astley doin’ over there? He’s too fat to ride or fight.”

  Maggie shrugged. “He wanted to go—said as an old cavalry man, it was his duty. ’Sides, he’s been sending back reports from the battles, and John Astley reenacts ’em here. No one understands ’em much, but they’re great fun to watch.”

  The man removed the hurdy-gurdy strap from around his neck.

  “Wait—will you play me something before you go?” Maggie begged.

  The man paused. “Well, you are a rascally little cat, but since you’ve saved me sittin’ here all day playing, I’ll do one for you. What’ll it be?”

  “‘Tom Bowling,’” Maggie requested, even though she knew that hearing the song would remind her of Maisie Kellaway singing it down by the warehouses along the river, back when she barely knew Jem.

  As the man played, Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat and hummed along, though she did not sing the words. The memory of Maisie singing fed the dull ache in her chest that had never entirely disappeared over the months since Jem had gone.

  Maggie had never missed anyone before. For a time she had indulged the feeling, conducting imaginary conversations with Jem, visiting places they’d been together—the alcoves on Westminster Bridge, Soho Square, even the brick kiln where she’d last seen him. At the manufactory she’d met a girl from Dorsetshire and had got her to talk, just to hear the accent. Whenever she could get away with it she mentioned Jem and the Kellaways to her mother or father, just to be able to say his name. None of this brought him back, though; indeed, eventually it always led her to the look of horror on his face at the kiln that night.

  Midway through the second verse, a woman with a lovely clear voice began to sing. Maggie cocked her head to listen: It seemed to be coming from either the Blakes’ or Miss Pelham’s garden. Maggie signaled thanks to the hurdy-gurdy player and walked back toward the wall. She doubted the singer was Miss Pelham—she was not the singing type. Nor had Maggie ever heard Mrs. Blake sing. Perhaps it was Miss Pelham’s maid, though the girl was so cowed that Maggie had never heard her speak, much less sing.

  By the time she wheeled the Astley barrow over to the wall, the hurdy-gurdy and the singing had stopped. Maggie climbed onto the barrow anyway and hiked herself up the wall to spy into the gardens.

  Miss Pelham’s garden was empty, but in the Blakes’ garden a woman was kneeling in the vegetable rows near the house. She wore a light gown and apron, and a bonnet with a broad brim to keep the sun off. At first Maggie thought it was Mrs. Blake, but this figure was shorter and moved less nimbly. Maggie had heard that the Blakes had taken on a maidservant, but she had not seen her, for Mrs. Blake continued to do the shopping and other errands. Maggie had not visited no. 13 Hercules Buildings for months; with Jem gone she’d felt shyer about knocking on their door on her own—though Mr. Blake did always nod and ask her how she was whenever they passed in the street.

  As she watched the maid work, she heard the sound of horse hooves clopping down the alley toward Hercules Hall’s stables. The maid stopped what she was doing and turned her head to listen, and Maggie got the first of two shocks. The figure was Maisie Kellaway.

  “Maisie!” she shouted.

  Maisie jerked her head around, and Maggie scrambled over the wall and hurried toward her. For a second it seemed Maisie would jump up and run inside. She clearly thought the better of it, though, and remained crouched in the dirt.

  “Maisie, what you doing here?” Maggie cried. “I thought you were in Dorsetshire! Didn’t you—hang on a minute.” She thought hard, then shouted, “You’re the Blakes’ maid! You never went back to Piddle-dee-dee, did you? You been here all this time!”

  “Tha’ be true,” Maisie murmured. Casting her eyes down to the rich soil, she pulled a weed from a row of carrots.

  “But—why didn’t you tell me?” Maggie wanted to shake her. “Why are you hiding away? And why did you run off like that, without even sayin’ good-bye? I know that old stick Pelham was after you to go, but you could have said good-bye. After all we been through together. You could have found me and said that.” Sometime during this rant, her words had been redirected at the absent Jem, and her welling tears as well.

  Tears were always addictive to Maisie. “Oh, Maggie, I’m so sorry!�
� she sobbed, lumbering to her feet and throwing her arms around her friend. That was when Maggie got her second shock, for pressing into her stomach was what hadn’t been visible when Maisie was kneeling: the solid baby she carried inside her.

  The bump between them effectively stopped Maggie’s tears. Still hugging Maisie, she pulled her head back and looked down at it. For a rare moment in her life she could not think of anything to say.

  “You see, when Ma and Pa decided to go back to Piddletrenthide,” Maisie began, “it were so cold that they was afraid I weren’t strong enough for such a long journey. Then Mr. and Mrs. Blake said they’d take me in. First we went off to stay with their friends the Cumberlands, to escape from those awful men who came to their door. The Cumberlands live out a ways in the countryside—Egham, it were. Even that short ride gave me a chesty cold, an’ we had to stay there a month. They was ever so nice to me. Then we come back, an’ I been here all this time.”

  “Do you never go out? I han’t seen you at all!”

  Maisie shook her head. “I didn’t want to—not at first, anyway. It were so cold and I felt sick. An’ then I didn’t want Miss Pelham and others nosing about, especially not once I began to show. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” She laid a hand on top of her bump. “An’ those Association men had threatened to come after Pa. I just thought it were better to be quiet here. I didn’t mean to hide from you, really. I didn’t! Once, after we come back from Egham, you came to the door and asked Mr. Blake about Jem, d’you remember? You wanted to know where he were, when he had left. I were upstairs and heard you, and I so badly wanted to run down and see you. But I just thought it would be better—safer—to stay hidden, even from you. I’m sorry.”

  “But what do you do here?” Maggie glanced through the back window into Mr. Blake’s study and thought she could make out his head, bent over his desk.