Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2007

Copyright © Tracy Chevalier 2007

Chapter head motifs © Neil Gower

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

Tracy Chevalier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007178360

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007324323

Version: 2019-06-07

Dedication

For my parents

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I: March 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part II: April 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part III: May 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Part IV: June 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part V: September 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part VI: October 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part VII: December 1792

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part VIII: July 1793

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By Tracy Chevalier

About the Publisher

ONE

There was something humiliating about waiting in a cart on a busy London street with all your possessions stacked around you, on show to the curious public. Jem Kellaway sat by a tower of Windsor chairs his father had made for the family years ago, and watched aghast as passers-by openly inspected the cart’s contents. He was not used to seeing so many strangers at once – the appearance of one in their Dorsetshire village would be an event discussed for days after – and to being so exposed to their attention and scrutiny. He hunkered back among the family belongings, trying to make himself less conspicuous. A wiry boy with a narrow face, deep-set blue eyes and sandy fair hair that curled below his ears, Jem was not one to draw attention to himself, and people peered more often at his family’s belongings than at him. A couple even stopped and handled items as if they were at a barrow squeezing pears to see which was ripest – the woman fingering the hem of a nightdress that poked out of a split bag, the man picking up one of Thomas Kellaway’s saws and testing its teeth for sharpness. Even when Jem shouted ‘Hey!’, he took his time setting it down again.

Apart from the chairs, much of the cart was filled with the tools of Jem’s father’s trade: wooden hoops used to bend wood for the arms and backs of the Windsor chairs he specialised in, a dismantled lathe for turning chair legs, and a selection of saws, axes, chisels and augers. Indeed, Thomas Kellaway’s tools took up so much room that the Kellaways had had to take turns walking alongside the cart for the week it took to get from Piddletrenthide to London.

The cart they had travelled in, driven by Mr Smart, a local Piddle Valley man with an unexpected sense of adventure, was halted in front of Astley’s Amphitheatre. Thomas Kellaway had had only a vague notion of where to find Philip Astley, and no idea of how big London really was, thinking he could stand in the middle of it and see the amphitheatre where Astley’s circus performed, the way he might back in Dorchester. Luckily for them, Astley’s Circus was well known in London, and they were quickly directed to the large building at the end of Westminster Bridge, with its round, peaked wooden roof and front entrance adorned with four columns. An enormous, white flag flying from the top of the roof read ASTLEY’S in red on one side and AMPHITHEATRE in black on the other.

Ignoring the curious people on the street as best he could, Jem fixed his eyes instead on the nearby river, which Mr Smart had decided to wander along, ‘to see a bit o’ London,’ and on Westminster Bridge, which arched over the water and pitched into the distant mass of square towers and spires of Westminster Abbey. None of the rivers Jem knew in Dorset – the Frome the size of a country lane, the Piddle a mere rivulet he could easily jump across – bore any resemblance to the Thames, a broad channel of rocking, choppy green-brown water pulled back and forth by the distant tide of the sea. Both river and bridge were clogged with traffic – boats on the Thames, carriages, carts and pedestrians on the bridge. Jem had never seen so many people at once, even on market day in Dorchester, and was so distracted by the sight of so much movement that he could take in little detail.

Though tempted to get down from the cart and join Mr Smart at the water’s edge, he didn’t dare leave Maisie and his mother. Maisie Kellaway was gazing about in bewilderment and flapping a handkerchief at her face. ‘Lord, it’s hot for March,’ she said. ‘It weren’t this hot back home, were it, Jem?’

‘It’ll be cooler tomorrow,’ Jem promised. Although Maisie was two years older than he, it often seemed to Jem that she was his younger sister, needing protection from the unpredictability of the world – though there was little of that in the Piddle Valley. His job would be harder here.

Anne Kellaway was watching the river as Jem had, her eyes fixed on a boy pulling hard on the oars of a rowboat. A dog sat opposite him, panting in the heat; he was the boy’s only cargo. Jem knew what his mother was thinking of as she followed the boy’s progress: his brother Tommy, who had loved dogs and always had at least one from the village following him about.

Tommy Kellaway had been a handsome boy, with a tendency to daydream that baffled his parents. It was clear early on that he would never be a chairmaker, for he had no affinity for wood and what it could do, or any interest in the tools his father tried to teach him to use. He would let an auger come to a halt mid-turn, or a lathe spin slower and slower and stop as he gazed at the fire or into the middle distance – a trait he inherited from his father, but without the accompanying ability to get back to his work.

Despite this essential uselessness – a trait Anne Kellaway would normally despise – his mother loved him more than her other children, though she could not have said why. Perhaps she felt he was more helpless and so needed her more. Certainly he was good company, and made her laugh as no one else could. But her laughter had died the morning six weeks before when she found him under the pear tree at the back of the Kellaways’ garden. He must have climbed it in order to pick the one pear left, which had managed to cling onto its branch and hung just out of reach all winter, teasing them, even though they knew the cold would have ruined its taste. A branch had snapped, and he fell and broke his neck. A sharp pain pierced her chest whenever Anne Kellaway thought of him; she felt it now, watching the boy and the dog in the boat. Her first taste of London could not erase it.

TWO

Thomas Kellaway felt very small and timid as he passed between the tall columns outside the amphitheatre. He was a small, lean man, with tightly curled hair, like the pelt of a terrier, cut close to his scalp. His presence made little impression on such a grand entrance. Stepping inside and leaving his family out in the street, he found the foyer dark and empty, though he could hear the pounding of hooves and the cracking of a whip through a doorway. Following the sounds, he entered the theatre itself, standing among rows of benches to gape at the performing ring, where several horses were trotting, their riders standing rather than sitting on the saddles. In the centre a young man stood cracking a whip as he called out directions. Though he had seen them do the same at a show in Dorchester a month earlier, Thomas Kellaway still stared. If anything it seemed even more astonishing that the riders could perform such a trick again. One time might be a lucky accident; twice indicated real skill.

Surrounding the stage, a wooden structure of boxes and a gallery had been built, with seats and places to stand. A huge three-tiered wagon-wheel chandelier hung above it all, and the round roof with open shutters high up also let in light.

Thomas Kellaway didn’t watch the riders for long, for as he stood among the benches a man approached and asked what he wanted.

‘I be wantin’ to see Mr Astley, sir, if he’ll have me,’ Thomas Kellaway replied.

The man he was speaking to was Philip Astley’s assistant manager. John Fox had a long moustache and heavy-lidded eyes, which he usually kept half-closed, only ever opening them wide at disasters – of which there had been and would be several in the course of Philip Astley’s long run as a circus impresario. Thomas Kellaway’s sudden appearance at the amphitheatre was not what John Fox would consider a disaster, and so he regarded the Dorset man without surprise and through drooping eyelids. He was used to people asking to see his boss. He also had a prodigious memory, which is always useful in an assistant, and remembered Thomas Kellaway from Dorchester the previous month. ‘Go outside,’ he said, ‘an’ I expect in the end he’ll be along to see you.’

Puzzled by John Fox’s sleepy-looking eyes and lackadaisical answer, Thomas Kellaway retreated back to his family in the cart. It was enough that he’d got his family to London; he had run out of the wherewithal to achieve more.

No one would have guessed – least of all himself – that Thomas Kellaway, Dorset chairmaker, from a family settled in the Piddle Valley for centuries, would end up in London. Everything about his life up until he met Philip Astley had been ordinary. He had learned chair-making from his father, and inherited the workshop on his father’s death. He married the daughter of his father’s closet friend, a woodcutter, and except for the fumbling they did in bed together, it was like being with a sister. They lived in Piddletrenthide, the village they had both grown up in, and had three sons – Sam, Tommy and Jem – and a daughter, Maisie. Thomas went to the Five Bells to drink two evenings a week, to church every Sunday, to Dorchester every month. He had never been to the seaside twelve miles away, or expressed any interest, as others in the pub sometimes did, in seeing any of the cathedrals within a few days’ reach – Wells or Salisbury or Winchester – or of going to Poole or Bristol or London. When he was in Dorchester, he did his business – took commissions for chairs, bought wood – and went home again. He preferred to get back late rather than to stay over at one of the tradesmen’s inns in Dorchester and drink his money away. That seemed to him far more dangerous than dark roads. He was a genial man, never the loudest in the pub, happiest when he was turning chair legs on his lathe, concentrating on one small groove or curve, or even forgetting that he was making a chair, and simply admiring the grain or colour or texture of the wood.

This was how he lived, and how he was expected to live, until in February 1792 Philip Astley’s Travelling Equestrian Spectacular came to spend a few days in Dorchester just two weeks after Tommy Kellaway fell from the pear tree. Part of Astley’s Circus was touring the West Country, diverting there on its way back to London from a winter spent in Dublin and Liverpool. Though it was advertised widely with posters and handbills and puffs about the show in the Western Flying Post, Thomas Kellaway had not known the show was in town when he went on one of his trips there. He had come to deliver a set of eight high-back Windsor chairs, bringing them in his cart along with his son Jem, who was learning the trade, as Thomas Kellaway had done from his father.

Jem helped unload the chairs and watched his father handle the customer with that tricky combination of deference and confidence needed for business. ‘Pa,’ he began, when the transaction was complete and Thomas Kellaway had pocketed an extra crown from the pleased customer, ‘can we go and look at the sea?’ On a hill south of Dorchester, it was possible to see the sea five miles away. Jem had been to the view a few times, and hoped one day to get to the sea itself. In the fields above the Piddle Valley, he often peered south, hoping that somehow the landscape of layered hills would have shifted to allow him a glimpse of the blue line of water that led to the rest of the world.

‘No, son, we’d best get home,’ Thomas Kellaway replied automatically, then regretted it as he saw Jem’s face shut down like curtains drawn over a window. It reminded him of a brief period in his life when he too wanted to see and do new things, to break away from established routines, until age and responsibility yanked him back into the acceptance he needed to live a quiet Piddle life. Jem no doubt would also come to this acceptance naturally. That was what growing up was. Yet he felt for him.

He said nothing more. but when they passed the meadows by the River Frome on the outskirts of town where a round wooden structure with a canvas roof had been erected, he and Jem watched the men juggling torches by the roadside to lure customers in; Thomas Kellaway then felt for the extra crown in his pocket and turned the cart off into the field. It was the first unpredictable thing he had ever done, and it seemed, briefly, to loosen something in him, like the ice on a pond cracking in early spring.

It made it easier when he and Jem returned home later that night with tales of the spectacles they’d seen, as well as an encounter they’d had with Philip Astley himself, for Thomas Kellaway to face his wife’s bitter eyes that judged him for having dared to have fun when his son’s grave was still fresh. ‘He offered me work, Anne,’ he told her. ‘In London. A new life, away from—’ He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to – they were both thinking of the mound of earth in the Piddletrenthide graveyard.

To his astonishment – for he himself had not thought to take the offer seriously – Anne Kellaway looked straight at him and nodded. ‘All right. London it be.’

THREE

The Kellaways waited at the cart for half an hour before they were visited by Philip Astley himself – circus owner, creator of spectacles, origin of outlandish gossip, magnet to the skilled and the eccentric, landlord, patron of local businesses and oversized colourful character. He sported a red coat he had worn years before during his service as a cavalry officer; it had gold buttons and trim, and was fastened only at the collar, revealing a substantial belly held in by a buttoned white waistcoat. His trousers were white, his boots had chaps that came to the knee, and, in his one concession to civilian life, he wore a black top hat, which he was constantly raising to ladies he recognised or would like to recognise. Accompanied by the ever-present John Fox, he trotted down the steps of the amphitheatre, strode up to the cart, raised his hat to Anne Kellaway, shook Thomas Kellaway’s hand, and nodded at Jem and Maisie. ‘Welcome, welcome!’ he cried, brusque and cheerful at the same time. ‘It is very good to see you again, sir! I trust you are enjoying the sights of London after your journey from Devon?’

‘Dorsetshire, sir,’ Thomas Kellaway corrected. ‘We lived near Dorchester.’

‘Ah, yes, Dorchester – a fine town. You make barrels there, do you?’

‘Chairs,’ John Fox corrected in a low voice. This was why he went everywhere with his employer – to provide the necessary nudges and adjustments when needed.

‘Chairs, yes, of course. And what can I do for you, sir, ma’am?’ He nodded at Anne Kellaway a touch uneasily, for she was sitting ramrod straight, her eyes fixed on Mr Smart, now up on Westminster Bridge, her mouth pulled tight like a drawstring bag. Every inch of her gave out the message that she did not want to be here or have anything to do with him; and that was a message Philip Astley was unused to. His fame made him much in demand, with too many people seeking his attention. For someone to display the opposite threw him, and immediately made him go out of his way to regain that attention. ‘Tell me what you need and I will give it you!’ he added, with a sweep of his arm, a gesture lost on Anne Kellaway, who kept her eyes on Mr Smart.

Anne Kellaway had begun to regret their decision to move from Dorsetshire almost the moment the cart pulled away from their cottage, the feeling deepening over the week they spent on the road picking their way through the early spring mud to get to London. By the time she sat in front of the amphitheatre, not looking at Philip Astley, she knew that being in London was not going to take her mind from her dead son as she’d hoped it might; if anything, it made her think of him even more, for being here reminded her of what she was fleeing. But she would rather blame her husband, and Philip Astley too, for her misfortune, than Tommy himself for being such a fool.

‘Well, sir,’ Thomas Kellaway began, ‘you did invite me to London, and I’m very kindly accepting your offer.’

‘Did I?’ Philip Astley turned to John Fox. ‘Did I invite him, Fox?’

John Fox nodded. ‘You did, sir.’

‘Oh, don’t you remember, Mr Astley?’ Maisie cried, leaning forward. ‘Pa told us all about it. He and Jem were at your show, an’ during it someone were doing a trick atop a chair on a horse, an’ the chair broke and Pa fixed it for you right there. An’ you got to talking about wood and furniture, because you trained as a cabinet maker, didn’t you, sir?’

‘Hush, Maisie,’ Anne Kellaway interjected, turning her head for a moment from the bridge. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about all that.’

Philip Astley gazed at the slim country girl talking with such animation from her perch and chuckled. ‘Well, now, miss, I do begin to recall such an encounter. But how does that bring you here?’

‘You told Pa if he ever wanted to, he should come to London and you would help him set himself up. So that’s what we done, an’ here we be.’

‘Here you be indeed, Maisie, all of you.’ He turned to Jem, judging him to be about twelve and of the useful age to a circus for running errands and helping out. ‘And what’s your name, lad?’

‘Jem, sir.’

‘What sort of chairs are those you’re sitting next to, young Jem?’

‘Windsors, sir. Pa made ’em.’

‘A handsome chair, Jem, very handsome. Could you make me some?’

‘Of course, sir,’ Thomas Kellaway said.

Philip Astley’s eyes slid to Anne Kellaway. ‘I’ll take a dozen of ’em.’

Anne Kellaway stiffened, but still did not look at the circus man, despite his generous commission.

‘Now, Fox, what rooms have we got free at the moment?’ he demanded. Philip Astley owned a fair number of houses in Lambeth, the area around the amphitheatre and just across Westminster Bridge from London proper.

John Fox moved his lips so that his moustache twitched. ‘Only some with Miss Pelham at Hercules Buildings – but she chooses her own lodgers.’

‘Well, she’ll choose the Kellaways – they’ll do nicely. Take ’em over there now, Fox, with some boys to help unload.’ Philip Astley lifted his hat once more at Anne Kellaway, shook Thomas Kellaway’s hand again, and said, ‘If you need anything, Fox’ll see you right. Welcome to Lambeth!’

FOUR

Maggie Butterfield noticed the new arrivals right away. Little escaped her attention in the area – if someone moved in or out, Maggie was nosing among their belongings, asking questions and storing away the information to relay to her father later. It was natural for her to be attracted to Mr Smart’s cart, now stopped in front of no. 12 Hercules Buildings, and study the family unloading it.

Hercules Buildings was made up of a row of twenty-two brick houses, book-ended by two pubs, the Pineapple and the Hercules Tavern. Each had three storeys as well as a lower-ground floor, a small front garden, and a much longer garden at the back. The street itself was a busy cut-through taken by residents of Lambeth who wanted to cross Westminster Bridge but did not fancy their chances on the poor, ramshackle lanes along the river between Lambeth Palace and the bridge.

No. 12 Hercules Buildings boasted a shoulder-high iron fence, painted black, with spikes on top. The ground of the front garden was covered with raked pebbles, broken by a knee-high box hedge grown in a circle, with a bush severely pruned into a ball in the middle. The front window was framed by orange curtains pulled half to. As Maggie approached, a man, a woman, a boy her age and a girl a little older were each carrying a chair into the house while a small woman in a faded yellow gown buzzed around them.

‘This is highly irregular!’ she was shouting. ‘Highly irregular! Mr Astley knows very well that I choose my own lodgers, and always have done. He has no right to foist people on me. Do you hear me, Mr Fox? No right at all!’ She stood directly in the path of John Fox, who had come out of the house with his sleeves rolled up, followed by a few circus boys.

‘Pardon me, Miss Pelham,’ he said as he sidestepped her. ‘I’m just doing what the man told me to do. I expect he’ll be along to explain it himself.’

‘This is my house!’ Miss Pelham cried. ‘I’m the householder. He’s only the owner, and has nothing to do with what goes on inside.’

John Fox picked up a crate of saws, looking as if he wished he hadn’t said anything. Miss Pelham’s tone seemed also to bother the unattended cart horse, whose owner was also helping to carry the Kellaways’ possessions upstairs. It had been standing docilely, stunned into hoof-sore submission by the week-long journey to London, but as Miss Pelham’s voice grew higher and shriller, it began to shift and stamp.

‘You, girl,’ John Fox called to Maggie, ‘there’s a penny for you to hold the horse steady.’ He hurried through the gate and into the house, Miss Pelham at his heels, still complaining.

Maggie stepped up willingly and seized the horse’s reins, delighted to be paid for a front-row view of the proceedings. She stroked the horse’s nose. ‘There now, boy, you old country horse,’ she murmured. ‘Where you from, then? Yorkshire, is it? Lincolnshire?’ She named the two areas of England she knew anything about, and that was very little – only that her parents had come from those parts, though they’d lived in London twenty years. Maggie had never been outside of London; indeed, she rarely enough went across the river to its centre, and had never been a night away from home.

‘Dorsetshire,’ came a voice.

Maggie turned, smiling at the singing, burring vowels of the girl who had carried her chair inside and come out again, and was now standing next to the cart. She wasn’t bad-looking, with a rosy face and wide blue eyes, though she did wear a ridiculous frilly mob cap that she must have fancied would go down well in a city. Maggie smirked. One glance told her this family’s story: they were from the countryside, come to London for the usual reason – to make a better living here than they did back home. Indeed, sometimes country people did do better. Other times – ‘Where’s home, then?’ she said.

‘Piddletrenthide,’ the girl answered, drawing out the last syllable.

‘Lord a mercy – what did you say?’

‘Piddletrenthide.’

Maggie snorted. ‘Piddle-dee-dee, what a name! Never heard of it.’

‘It mean thirty houses by the River Piddle. ’Tis in the Piddle Valley, near Dorchester. It were a lovely place.’ The girl smiled at something across the road, as if she could see Dorsetshire there.

‘What’s your name, then, Miss Piddle?’

‘Maisie. Maisie Kellaway.’

The door to the house opened, and Maisie’s mother reappeared. Anne Kellaway was tall and angular, and had her scrubby brown hair pulled back in a bun that hung low on her long neck. She gave Maggie a suspicious look, the way a chandler would at someone he thought had stolen wares from his shop. Maggie knew such looks well.

‘Don’t be talking to strangers, Maisie,’ Anne Kellaway scolded. ‘Han’t I warned you about London?’

Maggie shook the horse’s reins. ‘Now, ma’am, Maisie’s perfectly safe with me. Safer’n with some.’

Anne Kellaway fastened her eyes on Maggie and nodded. ‘You see, Maisie? Even the locals say there be bad sorts about.’

‘That’s right, London’s a wicked place, it is,’ Maggie couldn’t resist saying.

‘What? What kind of wicked?’ Anne Kellaway demanded.

Maggie shrugged, caught out for a moment. She did not know what to tell her. There was one thing, of course, that would clearly shock her, but Maggie would never tell that to Anne Kellaway. ‘D’you know the little lane across Lambeth Green, what runs from the river through the fields to the Royal Row?’

Maisie and Anne Kellaway looked blank. ‘It’s not far from here,’ Maggie continued. ‘Just over there.’ She pointed across the road, where fields stretched almost unbroken to the river. The red-brick towers of Lambeth Palace could be seen in the distance.

‘We only just arrived,’ Anne Kellaway said. ‘We han’t seen much.’

Maggie sighed, the punch taken out of her tale. ‘It’s a little lane, very useful as a short cut. It was called Lovers’ Lane for a time ’cause—’ she stopped as Anne Kellaway shook her head vehemently, her eyes darting at Maisie.

‘Well, it was called that,’ Maggie continued, ‘but do you know what it’s called now?’ She paused. ‘Cut-Throat Lane!’

Mother and daughter shuddered, which made Maggie smile grimly.

‘Tha’ be no great thing,’ a voice chimed in. ‘We’ve a Dead Cat Lane back in the Piddle Valley.’ The boy who had been carrying the chair inside was standing in the doorway.

Maggie rolled her eyes. ‘A dead cat, eh? I suppose you found it, did you?’

He nodded.

‘Well, I found the dead man!’ Maggie announced triumphantly, but even as she said it she felt her stomach tighten and contract. She wished now that she’d kept quiet, especially as the boy was watching her closely, as if he knew what she was thinking. But he couldn’t know.

She was saved from having to say more by Anne Kellaway, who clutched the gate and cried, ‘I knew we should never have come to London!’

‘There, now, Ma,’ Maisie murmured, as if soothing a child. ‘Let’s get some things inside now. What about these pots?’

Jem let Maisie calm their mother. He had heard often enough during their journey of her worries about London. She had never betrayed such nerves in Dorsetshire, and her rapid transformation from capable countrywoman to anxious traveller had surprised him. If he paid too much attention to her, he began to feel anxious himself. He preferred instead to study the girl holding the horse. She was lively looking, with tangled black hair, brown eyes fringed with long lashes, and a V-shaped smile that made her chin as pointy as a cat’s. What interested him most, however, was seeing the terror and regret that flashed across her face as she mentioned the dead man; when she swallowed, he felt sure she was tasting bile. Despite her cockiness, Jem pitied her. After all, it was certainly worse to discover a dead man than a dead cat – though the cat had been his, and he’d been fond of it. He had not, for instance, found his brother, Tommy; that grim task had been left to his mother, who had run into the workshop from the garden, a look of horror on her face. Perhaps that explained her anxiety about everything since then.

‘What you doin’ at Hercules Buildings, then?’ Maggie said.

‘Mr Astley sent us,’ Jem answered.

‘He invited us to London!’ Maisie interjected. ‘Pa fixed a chair for him, and now he’s come to make chairs in London.’

‘Don’t say that man’s name!’ Anne Kellaway almost spat the words.

Maggie stared at her. Few people had a bad word to say about Philip Astley. He was a big, booming, opinionated man, of course, but he was also generous and good-natured to everyone. If he fought you, he forgot it a moment later. Maggie had taken countless pennies off him, usually for simple tasks like holding a horse still for a moment, and had been allowed in free to see shows with a wave of his liberal hand. ‘What’s wrong with Mr Astley, then?’ she demanded, ready to defend him.

Anne Kellaway shook her head, grabbed the pots from the cart, and strode up to the house, as if the man’s name were physically propelling her inside. ‘He’s one of the best men you’ll meet in Lambeth!’ Maggie called after her. ‘If you can’t stomach him you won’t find no one else to drink with!’ But Anne Kellaway had disappeared upstairs.

‘Is this all of your things?’ Maggie nodded at the cart.

‘Most of it,’ Maisie replied. ‘We left some with Sam – he’s our older brother. He stayed behind. And – well – we’d another brother too, but he died not long ago. So I’ve only had brothers, you see, though I did always want a sister. D’you have sisters?’

‘No, just a brother.’

‘Ours be marrying soon, we think, don’t we, Jem? To Lizzie Miller – he been with her for years now.’

‘Come on, Maisie,’ Jem interrupted, reluctant to have his family’s business made public. ‘We need to get these inside.’ He picked up a wooden hoop.

‘What’s that for, then?’ Maggie asked.

‘A chair mould. You bend wood round it to make it into the shape of a chair back.’

‘You help your pa make chairs?’

‘I do,’ Jem answered with pride.

‘You’re a bottom catcher, you are!’

Jem frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘They call footmen fart catchers, don’t they? But you catch bottoms with your chairs!’ Maggie barked with laughter as Jem turned bright red. It didn’t help that Maisie joined in with her own tinkling laugh.

Indeed, his sister encouraged Maggie to linger, turning back as she and Jem reached the door with the hoops looped around their arms. ‘What’s your name?’ she called.

‘Maggie Butterfield.’

‘Oh, you be a Margaret too! In’t it funny, Jem? The first girl I meet in London and she do have my name!’

Jem wondered how one name could be attached to two such different girls. Though not yet wearing stays the way Maisie did, Maggie was fuller and curvier, padded by a layer of flesh that reminded Jem of plums, while Maisie was slim, with bony ankles and wrists. Though intrigued by this Lambeth girl, he didn’t trust her. She may even steal something, he thought. I’ll have to watch her.

Immediately he felt ashamed of the thought, though it didn’t stop him from glancing out of the open front window of their new rooms a few minutes later to make sure Maggie wasn’t rummaging in their cart.

She wasn’t. She was holding Mr Smart’s horse steady, patting its neck as a carriage passed. Then she was sniggering at Miss Pelham, who had come back outside and was discussing her new lodgers in a loud voice. Maggie seemed unable to keep still, hopping from one foot to the other, her eyes caught by passers-by: an old woman walking along who cried out, ‘Old iron and broken glass bottles! Bring ’em to me!’, a young girl going the opposite way with a basket full of primroses, a man pulling the blades of two knives across each other, calling out above the clatter, ‘Knives sharpened, get your knives sharpened! You’ll cut through anything when I’m done with you!’ He pulled his knives close to Maggie’s face and she flinched, jumping back as he laughed. She stood watching the man go, trembling so that the Dorsetshire horse bowed his head towards her and nickered.

‘Jem, open that window wider,’ his mother said behind him. ‘I don’t like the smell of the last people.’

Jem pushed up the sash window, and Maggie looked up and saw him. They stared at each other, as if daring the other to look away first. At last Jem forced himself to step back from the window.

Once the Kellaways’ possessions were safely upstairs, they all went back out to the street to say goodbye to Mr Smart, who would not stay the night with them, being anxious to make a start back to Dorsetshire. He’d already seen enough of London to provide weeks of anecdotes at the pub, and had no desire to be there still come nightfall, when he was sure the devil would descend on the inhabitants – though he didn’t say so to the Kellaways. Each found it hard to let go of their last link to the Piddle Valley, and delayed Mr Smart with questions and suggestions. Jem held on to the side of the cart while his father discussed which travelling inn to aim for; Anne Kellaway sent Maisie up to dig out a few apples for the horse.

At last Mr Smart set off, calling ‘Good luck an’ God bless’ee!’ as he pulled away from no. 12 Hercules Buildings, muttering under his breath, ‘An’ God help’ee too.’ Maisie waved a handkerchief at him even though he didn’t look around. As the cart turned right at the end of the road, slipping in among other traffic, Jem felt his stomach twist. He kicked at some dung the horse had left behind, and though he could feel Maggie’s eyes on him, he didn’t look up.

A few moments later, he sensed a subtle shift in the sounds of the street. Although it continued to be noisy with horses, carriages and carts, as well as the frequent cries of sellers of fish and brooms and matches, of shoe blackeners and pot menders, there seemed to be a quiet pause and a turning of attention that wound its way along Hercules Buildings. It reached even to Miss Pelham, who fell silent, and Maggie, who stopped staring at Jem. He looked up then, following her gaze to the man now passing. He was of medium height, and stocky, with a round, wide face, a heavy brow, prominent grey eyes, and the pale complexion of a man who spends much of his time indoors. Dressed simply in a white shirt, black breeches and stockings, and a slightly old-fashioned black coat, he was most noticeable for the red cap he wore, of a sort Jem and never seen, with a peak flopped over, a turned-up rim, and a red, white and blue rosette fixed to one side. It was made of wool, which in the unusual March heat caused sweat to roll down the man’s brow. He held his head slightly self-consciously, as if the hat were new, or precious, and he must be careful of it; and as if he knew that all eyes would be on it – as indeed, Jem realised, they were.

The man turned in at the gate next to theirs, stepped up the path, and hurried inside, closing the door behind him without looking around. When he had disappeared the street seemed to shake itself like a dog caught napping, and activity was renewed all the more vigorously.

‘Do you see – that is why I must speak with Mr Astley immediately,’ Miss Pelham declared to John Fox. ‘It’s bad enough living next door to a revolutionary, but then to be forced to take in strangers from Dorsetshire – it’s too much, really!’

Maggie spoke up. ‘Dorsetshire an’t exactly Paris, ma’am. I bet them Dorseters don’t even know what a bonnet rouge is – do you, Jem, Maisie?’

They shook their heads. Though Jem was grateful to Maggie for speaking up for them, he wished she wouldn’t rub his nose in his ignorance.

‘You, you little scamp!’ Miss Pelham cried, noticing Maggie for the first time. ‘I don’t want to see you round here. You’re as bad as your father. You leave my lodgers alone!’

Maggie’s father had once sold Miss Pelham lace he claimed was Flemish, but it unravelled within days and turned out to have been made by an old woman just down the road in Kennington. Though she hadn’t had him arrested – she was too embarrassed that her neighbours would find out she’d been duped by Dick Butterfield – Miss Pelham spoke ill of him whenever she could.

Maggie laughed; she was used to people berating her father. ‘I’ll tell Pa you said hello,’ she simpered, then turned to Jem and Maisie. ‘Bye for now!’

‘Z’long,’ Jem replied, watching her run along the street and disappear into an alley between two houses. Now she was gone he wanted her back again.

‘Please, sir,’ Maisie said to John Fox, who was just setting out with the circus boys to return to the amphitheatre. ‘What’s a bonnet rouge?’

John Fox paused. ‘That’ll be a red cap like what you just saw your neighbour wearing, miss. They wears it what supports the revolution over in France.’

‘Oh! We did hear of that, didn’t we, Jem? Tha’ be where they let all those people out of the Bastille, weren’t it?’

‘That’s the one, miss. It don’t have much to do with us here, but some folks like to show what they think of it.’

‘Who be our neighbour, then? Is he French?’

‘No, miss. That’ll be William Blake, born and bred in London.’

‘You leave him be, you children,’ Miss Pelham cut in. ‘You don’t want to get in with him.’

‘Why not?’ Maisie asked.

‘He prints pamphlets with all sorts of radical nonsense in them, that’s why. He’s a stirrer, that man is. Now, I don’t want to see any bonnets rouges in my house. D’you hear me?’

FIVE

Maggie came to see the Kellaways a week later, waiting until she judged they were well settled into their rooms. She had passed along Hercules Buildings a number of times, and always looked up at their front window, which they had quickly learned to keep shut so that the dust from the road wouldn’t get inside. Twice she had seen Anne Kellaway standing at the window, hands pressed to her chest, looking down at the street. When she caught sight of Maggie, she stepped back, frowning.

This time no one was looking out. Maggie was about to throw a pebble at the window to get their attention when the front door opened and Maisie came out carrying a brush and dustpan. She opened the front gate and with a twist of her wrist emptied the pan full of wood shavings onto the road, looking around as she did. On spotting Maggie, she froze, then giggled. ‘Ar’ernoon, Maggie! Is’t all right just to throw it in the road like that? I do see others throw worse.’

Maggie snorted. ‘You can chuck what you like in the gutter. But what you doing throwin’ out wood shavings? Anyone else’d burn them in the fire.’

‘Oh, we’ve plenty for that – too much, really. I throw away most of what I sweep up. Some of this be green too an’ don’t burn so well.’

‘Don’t you sell the extra?’

Maisie looked puzzled. ‘Don’t reckon we do.’

‘You should be sellin’ that, you should. Plenty could do with shavings to light their fires with. Make yourself a penny or two. Tell you what – I could sell it for you, and give you sixpence out of every shilling.’

Maisie looked even more confused, as if Maggie were talking too fast. ‘Don’t you know how to sell things?’ Maggie said. ‘You know, like that.’ She indicated a potato seller bellowing, ‘Lovely tatties, don’t yer want some tatties!’ vying with a man who was crying out, ‘You that are able, will you buy a ladle!’

‘See? Everybody’s got summat to sell.’

Maisie shook her head, the frills on her mob cap fluttering around her face. ‘We didn’t do that, back home.’

‘Ah, well. You got yourself sorted out up there?’

‘Mostly. It do take some getting used to. But Mr Astley took Pa and Jem to a timber yard down by the river, so they’re able to start work on the chairs he wants.’

‘Can I come up and see?’

‘Course you can!’

Maisie led her up, Maggie keeping quiet in case Miss Pelham was hovering about. At the top of the stairs, Maisie opened one of two doors and called out, ‘We’ve a visitor!’

As they entered the back room that served as his workshop, Thomas Kellaway was turning a chair leg in a lathe, with Jem at his side, watching him work. He wore a white shirt and mustard-coloured breeches, and over that a leather apron covered with scratches. Rather than frowning, as many do when they are concentrating, Thomas Kellaway was smiling a small, almost silly smile. When at last he did look up, his smile broadened, though to Maggie it seemed he was not sure what he was smiling at. His light blue eyes looked her way, but his gaze seemed to fall just beyond her, as if something in the hallway behind caught his attention. The lines around his eyes gave him a wistful air, even as he smiled.

Jem, however, did look directly at Maggie, with an expression half pleased, half suspicious.

Thomas Kellaway rolled the chair leg between his hands. ‘What’d you say, Maisie?’

‘D’you remember Maggie, Pa? She held Mr Smart’s horse while we was unloading our things here. She lives – oh, where do you live, Maggie?’

Maggie shuffled her feet in the wood shavings that covered the floor, embarrassed by the attention. ‘Across the field,’ she mumbled, gesturing with her hand out of the back window, ‘at Bastille Row.’

‘Bastille Row? There be an odd name.’

‘It’s really York Place,’ Maggie explained, ‘but we call it Bastille Row. Mr Astley built the houses last year with money he made off a spectacle he put on of the storming of the Bastille.’

She looked around, astonished at the mess the Kellaways had managed to make in the room after only a few days. It was as if a timber yard, with its chunks and planks and splinters and shavings of wood, had been dumped indoors. Scattered among the wood were saws, chisels, adzes, augers and other tools Maggie didn’t recognise. In the corner she could see tin pots and troughs, filled with liquid. There was a smell in the air of resin and varnish. Here and there she could find order: a row of elm planks leaning against the wall, a dozen finished chair legs stacked like firewood on a shelf, wood hoop frames hanging in descending size from hooks.

‘Didn’t take you long to make yourself at home! Does Miss Pelham know what you’re doin’ up here?’ she asked.

‘Pa’s workshop were out in the garden back home,’ Jem said, as if to explain the disorder.

Maggie chuckled. ‘Looks like he thinks he’s still outside!’

‘We keep the other rooms tidy enough,’ replied Anne Kellaway, appearing in the doorway behind them. ‘Maisie, come and help me, please.’ She was clearly suspicious of Maggie, and wanted to keep an eye on her daughter.

‘Look, here be the seat for the chair Pa’s making specially for Mr Astley,’ Maisie said, trying to put off leaving her new friend. ‘Extra wide to fit him. See?’ She showed Maggie an oversized, saddle-shaped seat propped against other planks. ‘It has to dry out a bit more; then he can add the legs and back.’

Maggie admired the seat, then turned to look out of the open window, with its view over Miss Pelham’s and her neighbours’ back gardens. The gardens of Hercules Buildings houses were narrow – only eighteen feet across – but they made up for this deficiency with their length. Miss Pelham’s garden was a hundred feet long. She made the most of the space by dividing it into three squares, with a central ornament gracing each: a white lilac in the square closest to the house, a stone birdbath in the central square, and a laburnum tree in the back square. Miniature hedges, gravelled paths and raised beds planted with roses created regular patterns that had little to do with nature but were more concerned with order.

Miss Pelham had made it plain that she did not want the Kellaways hanging about in her garden other than to use the privy. Every morning, if it wasn’t raining, she liked to take a teacup full of broth – its dull, meaty smell visiting the Kellaways upstairs – and sit with it on one of two stone benches that faced each other sideways, halfway along the garden. When she got up to go inside again she would dump the remains over a grapevine growing up the wall next to the bench. She believed the broth would make the vine grow faster and more robust than that of her neighbour, Mr Blake. ‘He never prunes his vine, and that is a mistake, for all vines need a good pruning or the fruit will be small and sour,’ Miss Pelham had confided to Jem’s mother in a momentary attempt to reconcile herself to her new lodgers. She soon discovered, however, that Anne Kellaway was not one for confidences.

Apart from Miss Pelham’s broth times and the twice-weekly visit from a man to rake and prune, the garden was usually deserted, and Jem went into it whenever he could, even though he could see little use for one like this. It was a harsh, geometrical place, with uncomfortable benches and no lawn to lie on. There was no space in which to grow vegetables and no fruit trees apart from the grapevine. Of all the things Jem expected from the outdoors – fertile soil, large vibrant patches of growth, a solidity that changed daily and yet suggested permanence – only the varied ranges of green he craved were available in Miss Pelham’s garden. That was why he went there – to feast his eyes on the colour he loved best. He stayed as long as he could, until Miss Pelham appeared at her window and waved him out.

Now he joined Maggie at the window to look out over it.

‘Funny to see this from above,’ she said. ‘I only ever seen it from there.’ She indicated the brick wall at the far end of the garden.

‘What, you climb over?’

‘Not over – I an’t been in it. I just have a peek over the wall every now and then, to see what she’s up to. Not that there’s ever much to see. Not like in some gardens.’

‘What’s that house in the field past the wall?’ Jem indicated a large, two-storey brick house capped with three truncated towers, set alone in the middle of the field behind the gardens of the Hercules Buildings houses. A long stable ran perpendicular to the house, with a dusty yard in front.

Maggie looked surprised. ‘That’s Hercules Hall. Didn’t you know? Mr Astley lives there, him an’ his wife an’ some nieces to look after ’em. His wife’s an invalid now, though she used to ride with him. Don’t see much of her. Mr Astley keeps some of the circus horses there too – the best ones, like his white horse and John Astley’s chestnut. That’s his son. You saw him riding in Dorsetshire, didn’t you?’

‘I reckon so. It were a chestnut mare the man rode.’

‘He lives just two doors down from you, the other side o’ the Blakes. See? There’s his garden – the one with the lawn and nothin’ else.’

Hurdy-gurdy music was now drifting over from Hercules Hall, and Jem spotted a man leaning against the stables, cranking and playing a popular song. Maggie began to sing along softly:

One night as I came from the play

I met a fair maid by the way

She had rosy cheeks and a dimpled chin

And a hole to put poor Robin in!

The man played a wrong note and stopped. Maggie chuckled. ‘He’ll never get a job – Mr Astley’s got higher standards’n that.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘People’s always coming to perform for him over there, hopin’ he might take ’em on. He hardly ever does, though he’ll give ’em sixpence for tryin’.’

The hurdy-gurdy man began the song again, and Maggie hummed along, her eyes scanning the neighbouring gardens. ‘Much better view here than at the back,’ she declared.

Afterwards Jem couldn’t remember if it was the sound or the movement that first caught his attention. The sound was a soft ‘Ohh’ that still managed to carry up to the Kellaways’ window. The movement was the flash of a naked shoulder somewhere in the Blakes’ garden.

Closest to the Blakes’ house was a carefully laid out, well-dug kitchen garden partially planted, a garden fork now stuck upright in the rich soil at the end of one row. Anne Kellaway had been following its progress over the last week, watching with envy the solid, bonneted woman next door double-digging the rows and sowing seeds, as Anne Kellaway would be doing herself if she were in Dorsetshire or had any space to plant a garden here. It had never occurred to her when they decided to move to London that she might not have even a small patch of earth. However, she knew better than to ask Miss Pelham, whose garden was clearly decorative rather than functional; but she felt awkward and idle without her own garden to dig in springtime.

The back of the Blakes’ garden was untended, and filled with brambles and nettles. Midway along the garden, between the orderly and the chaotic, sat a small wooden summerhouse, set up for sitting in when the weather was mild. Its French doors were open, and it was in there that Jem saw the naked shoulder and, following that, naked backs, legs, bottoms. Horrified, he fought the temptation to step back from the window, fearing it would signal to Maggie that there was something he didn’t want her to see. Instead he pulled his eyes away and tried to direct her attention elsewhere. ‘Where’s your house, then?’

‘Bastille Row? It’s across the field – there, you can’t quite see it from here, what with Miss Pelham’s. What is that tree anyway?’

‘Laburnum. You’ll be able to tell easier in May when it flowers.’

Jem’s attempt to distract her failed, however, with the second ‘Oh’ confirming that the sound came from the same place as the movement. This time Maggie heard it and immediately located the source. Jem tried but couldn’t stop his eyes from being drawn back to the summerhouse. Maggie began to titter. ‘Lord a mercy, what a view!’

Then Jem did step back, his face on fire. ‘I’ve to help Pa,’ he muttered, turning away from the window and going over to his father, who was still working on the chair leg and hadn’t heard them.

Maggie laughed at his discomfort. She stood at the window for a few moments more, then turned away. ‘Show’s over.’ She wandered over to watch Jem’s father at the lathe, a heavy wooden frame with a half-carved leg clamped to it at chest height. A leather cord was looped around the leg, the ends attached to a treadle at his feet and a pole bent over his head. When Thomas Kellaway pumped the treadle, the cord spun the leg around and he shaved off parts of the wood.

‘Can you do that?’ Maggie asked Jem, trying now to smooth over his embarrassment, tempted though she was to tease him more.

‘Not so well as Pa,’ he replied, his face still red. ‘I practise making ’em, an’ if they be good enough he’ll use ’em.’

‘You be doing well, son,’ Thomas Kellaway murmured without looking up.

‘What do your pa make?’ Jem asked. The men back in Piddletrenthide were makers, by and large – of bread, of beer, of barley, of shoes or candles or flour.

Maggie snorted. ‘Money, if he can. This an’ that. I should find him now. That smell’s making my head ache, anyway. What’s it from?’

‘Varnish and paint for the chairs. You get used to it.’

‘I don’t plan to. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out. Bye for now, then.’

‘Z’long.’

‘Come again!’ Maisie called out from the other room as Maggie clattered down the stairs.

Anne Kellaway tutted. ‘What will Miss Pelham think of that noise? Jem, go and see she be quiet on the way out.’

SIX

As Miss Pelham came up to her front gate, having spent a happy day visiting friends in Chelsea, she caught sight of some of the wood shavings Maisie had scattered in front of the house and frowned. At first Maisie had been dumping the shavings into Miss Pelham’s carefully pruned, O-shaped hedge in the front garden. Miss Pelham had had to set her straight on that offence. And of course it was better the shavings were in the street than on the stairs. But it would be best of all if there were no shavings at all, because no Kellaways were there to produce them. Miss Pelham had often regretted over the past week that she’d been so hard on the family who’d rented the rooms from her before the Kellaways. They’d been noisy of a night and the baby had cried constantly towards the end, but at least they didn’t track shavings everywhere. She knew too that there was a great deal of wood upstairs, as she’d watched it being carried through her hallway. There were smells as well, and thumping sometimes that Miss Pelham did not appreciate at all.

And now: who was this dark-haired rascal running out of the house with shavings shedding from the soles of her shoes? She had just the sort of sly look that made Miss Pelham clutch her bag more tightly to her chest. Then she recognised Maggie. ‘Here, girl!’ she cried. ‘What are you doing, coming out of my house? What have you been stealing?’

Before Maggie could reply, two people appeared: Jem popped out behind her, and the door to no. 13 Hercules Buildings opened and Mr Blake stepped out. Miss Pelham shrank back. Mr Blake had never been anything but civil to her – indeed, he nodded at her now – yet he made her nervous. His glassy grey eyes always made her think of a bird staring at her, waiting to peck.

‘Far as I know, this is Mr Astley’s house, not yours,’ Maggie said cheekily.

Miss Pelham turned to Jem. ‘Jem, what is this girl doing here? She’s not a friend of yours, I trust?’

‘She – she’s made a delivery.’ Even in the Piddle Valley, Jem had not been a good liar.

‘What did she deliver? Four-day-old fish? Laundry that’s not seen a lick of lye?’

‘Nails,’ Maggie cut in. ‘I’ll be bringing ’em by reg’lar, won’t I, Jem? You’ll be seein’ lots more o’ me.’ She stepped sideways off Miss Pelham’s front path and into her front garden, where she followed the tiny hedge around in its pointless circle, running a hand along the top of it.

‘Get out of my garden, girl!’ Miss Pelham cried. ‘Jem, get her out of there!’

Maggie laughed, and began to run around the hedge, faster and faster, then leaped over it into the middle, where she danced around the pruned bush, sparring at it with her fists while Miss Pelham cried, ‘Oh! Oh!’ as if each blow were striking her.

Jem watched Maggie box the leafy ball, tiny leaves showering to the ground, and found himself smiling. He too had been tempted to kick at the absurd hedge, so different from the hedgerows he was used to. Hedges in Dorsetshire were made for a reason, to keep animals in fields or off paths, and grown of prickly hawthorn and holly, elder and hazel and whitebeam, woven through with brambles and ivy and traveller’s joy.

A tap on the window upstairs brought Jem back from Dorsetshire. His mother was glaring down at him and making shooing motions at Maggie. ‘Er, Maggie – weren’t you going to show me something?’ Jem said. ‘Your – your father, eh? My pa wanted me to – to agree on the price.’

‘That’s it. C’mon, then.’ Maggie ignored Miss Pelham, who was still shouting and swatting ineffectively at her, and pushed through the ring of hedge without bothering to jump it this time, leaving behind a gap of broken branches.

‘Oh!’ cried Miss Pelham for the tenth time.

As Jem moved to follow Maggie into the street he glanced at Mr Blake, who had remained still and quiet, his arms crossed over his chest, while Maggie had her fun with the hedge. He did not seem bothered by the noise and drama. Indeed, they had all forgotten he was there, or Miss Pelham would not have cried ‘Oh!’ ten times and Maggie would not have beaten the bush. He was looking at them with his clear gaze. It was not a look like that of Jem’s father, who tended to focus on the middle distance. Rather Mr Blake was looking at them, and at the passers-by in the street, and at Lambeth Palace rising up in the distance, and at the clouds behind it. He was taking in everything, without judgement.

‘A’rernoon, sir,’ Jem said.

‘Hallo, my boy,’ Mr Blake replied.

‘Hallo, Mr Blake!’ Maggie called from the street, not to be outdone by Jem. ‘How’s your missus, then?’

Her cry revived Miss Pelham, who had sunk into herself in Mr Blake’s presence. ‘Get out of my sight, girl!’ she cried. ‘I’ll have you whipped! Jem, don’t you let her back in here. And see her to the end of the street – I don’t trust her for a second. She’ll steal the gate if we don’t watch her!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Jem raised his eyebrows apologetically at Mr Blake, but his neighbour had already opened his gate and stepped into the street. When Jem joined Maggie, they watched as Mr Blake walked down Hercules Buildings towards the river.

‘Look at his cocky step,’ Maggie said. ‘And did you see the colour in his cheeks? And his hair all mussed? We know what he’s been up to!’

Jem would not have described Mr Blake’s pace as cocky. Rather he was flat-footed, though not plodding. He walked steadily and deliberately, as if he had a destination in mind rather than merely setting out for a stroll.

‘Let’s follow him,’ Maggie suggested.

‘No. Let him be.’ Jem was surprised at his own decisiveness. He would have liked to follow Mr Blake to his destination – not the way Maggie would do it, though, as a game and a tease, but respectfully, from a distance.

Miss Pelham and Anne Kellaway were still glaring at the children from their positions. ‘Let’s be going,’ Jem said, and began to walk along Hercules Buildings in the opposite direction from Mr Blake.

Maggie trotted after him. ‘You’re really comin’ with me?’

‘Miss Pelham told me to see you to the end of the street.’

‘And you’re goin’ to do what that old stick in a dress wants?’

Jem shrugged. ‘She’s the householder. We’ve to keep her happy.’

‘Well, I’m goin’ to find Pa. You want to come with me?’

Jem thought of his anxious mother, of his hopeful sister, of his absorbed father, and of Miss Pelham waiting by the stairs to pounce on him. Then he thought of the streets he did not yet know in Lambeth, and in London, and of having a guide to take him. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, letting Maggie catch up and match his stride so that they were walking side by side.

SEVEN

Dick Butterfield could have been in one of several pubs. While most people favoured one local, he liked to move around, and joined several drinking clubs or societies, where the like-minded met at a particular pub to discuss topics of mutual interest. These nights were not much different from other nights except that the beer was cheaper and the songs even bawdier. Dick Butterfield was constantly joining new clubs and dropping old ones as his interests changed. At the moment he belonged to a cutter club (one of his many occupations had been as a boatman on the Thames, though he had long ago lost the boat) a chair club, where each member took turns haranguing the others about political topics from the head chair at a table; a lottery club, where they pooled together on small bets that rarely won enough to cover the drinks, and where Dick Butterfield was always encouraging members to increase the stakes; and, by far his favourite, a punch club, where each week they tried out different rum concoctions.

Dick Butterfield’s club and pub life was so complicated that his family rarely knew where he was of an evening. He normally drank within a half-mile radius from his home, but there were still dozens of pubs to choose from. Maggie and Jem had already called in at the Horse and Groom, the Crown and Cushion, the Canterbury Arms and the Red Lion, before they found him ensconced in the corner of the loudest pub of the lot, the Artichoke on the Lower Marsh.

After following Maggie into the first two, Jem waited for her outside the rest. He had only been inside one pub since they arrived in Lambeth: a few days after they moved in, Mr Astley called to see how they were getting on, and had taken Thomas Kellaway and Jem to the Pineapple. It had been a sedate place, Jem realised now that he could compare it with other Lambeth pubs, but at the time he’d been overwhelmed by the liveliness of the drinkers – many of them circus people – and Philip Astley’s roaring conversation.

Lambeth Marsh was a market street busy with shops and stalls, and carts and people going between Lambeth and Blackfriars Bridge towards the city. The doors to the Artichoke were open, and the sound poured across the road, making Jem hesitate as Maggie pushed past the men leaning in the doorway, and wonder why he was following her.

He knew why, though: Maggie was the first person in Lambeth to take any interest in him, and he could do with a friend. Most boys Jem’s age were already apprenticed or working; he had seen younger children about, but had not yet managed to talk to any of them. It was hard to understand them, for one thing: he found London accents, as well as the many regional ones that converged on the city, sometimes incomprehensible.

Lambeth children were different in other ways too – more aware and more suspicious. They reminded him of cats who creep in to sit by the fire, knowing they are barely tolerated, happy to be inside but with ears swivelling and eyes in slits, ready to detect the foot that will kick them back out. The children were often rude to adults, as Maggie had been to Miss Pelham, and got away with it when he wouldn’t have in his old village. They mocked and threw stones at people they didn’t like, stole food from barrows and baskets, sang rude songs; they shouted, teased, taunted. Only occasionally did he see Lambeth children doing things he could imagine joining in with: rowing a boat on the river; singing while streaming out of the charity school on Lambeth Green; chasing a dog that had made off with someone’s cap.

So when Maggie beckoned to him from the door of the Artichoke, he followed her inside, braving the wall of noise and the thick smoke from the lamps. He wanted to be a part of this new Lambeth life, rather than watching it from a window or a front gate or over a garden wall.

Although it was only late afternoon, the pub was heaving with people. The din was tremendous, though after a time his ears began to pick up the pattern of a song, unfamiliar but clearly a tune. Maggie plunged through the wall of bodies to the corner where her father sat.

Dick Butterfield was a small, brown man – his eyes, his wiry hair, the undertone of his skin, his clothes. A web of wrinkles extended from the outer corners of his eyes and across his forehead, forming deep furrows on his brow. Despite the wrinkles, he had a young, energetic air about him. Today he was simply drinking rather than attending a club. He pulled his daughter onto his lap, and was singing along with the rest of the pub when Jem finally reached them:

And for which I’m sure she’ll go to Hell

For she makes me fuck her in church time!

At the last line, a deafening shout went up that made Jem cover his ears. Maggie had joined in, and she grinned at Jem, who blushed and stared at his feet. Many songs had been sung at the Five Bells in Piddletrenthide, but nothing like that.

After the great shout, the pub was quieter, the way a thunderclap directly overhead clears the worst of a storm. ‘What you been up to, then, Mags?’ Dick Butterfield asked his daughter in the relative calm.

‘This an’ that. I was at his house—’ she pointed at Jem ‘—this is Jem, Pa – lookin’ at his pa making chairs. They just come from Dorsetshire, an’ are living at Miss Pelham’s in Hercules Buildings, next to Mr Blake.’

‘Miss Pelham’s, eh?’ Dick Butterfield chuckled. ‘Glad to meet you, Jem. Sit yourself down and rest your pegs.’ He waved at the other side of the table. There was no stool or bench there. Jem looked around: all of the stools in sight were taken. Dick and Maggie Butterfield were gazing at him with identical expressions, watching to see what he would do. Jem considered kneeling at the table, but he knew that was not likely to gain the Butterfields’ approval. He would have to search the pub for an empty stool. It was expected of him, a little test of his merit – the first real test of his new London life.

Locating an empty stool in a crowded pub can be tricky, and Jem could not find one. He tried asking for one, but those he asked paid no attention to him. He tried to take one that a man was using as a footrest and got swatted. He asked a barmaid, who jeered at him. As he struggled through the scrum of bodies, Jem wondered how it was that so many people could be drinking now rather than working. In the Piddle Valley few went to the Five Bells or the Crown or the New Inn until evening.

At last he went back to the table empty-handed. A vacant stool now sat where Dick Butterfield had indicated, and he and Maggie were grinning at Jem.

‘Country boy,’ muttered a youth sitting next to them who had watched the whole ordeal, including the barmaid’s jeering.

‘Shut your bonebox, Charlie,’ Maggie retorted. Jem guessed at once that he was her brother.

Charlie Butterfield was like his father but without the wrinkles or the charm; better-looking in a rough way, with dirty blond hair and a dimple in his chin, but with a scar through his eyebrow too that gave him a harsh look. He was as cruel to his sister as he could get away with, twisting burns on Maggie’s arms until the day she was old enough to kick him where it was guaranteed to hurt. He still looked for ways to get at her – knocking the legs out from the stool she sat on, upending the salt on her food, stealing her blankets at night. Jem knew none of this, but he sensed something about Charlie that made him avoid the other’s eyes, as you do a growling dog.

Dick Butterfield tossed a coin onto the table. ‘Fetch Jem a drink, Charlie,’ he commanded.

‘I an’t—’ Charlie sputtered at the same time as Jem said, ‘I don’t—’ Both stopped at the stern look on Dick Butterfield’s face. And so Charlie got Jem a mug of beer he didn’t want – cheap, watery stuff men back at the Five Bells would spill onto the floor rather than drink.

Dick Butterfield sat back. ‘Well, now, what have you got to tell me, Mags? What’s the scandal today in old Lambeth?’

‘We saw summat in Mr Blake’s garden, didn’t we, Jem? In their summerhouse, with all the doors open.’ Maggie gave Jem a sly look. He turned red again and shrugged.

‘That’s my girl,’ Dick Butterfield said. ‘Always sneakin’ about, finding out what’s what.’

Charlie leaned forward. ‘What’d you see, then?’

Maggie leaned forward as well. ‘We saw him an’ his wife at it!’

Charlie chuckled, but Dick Butterfield seemed unimpressed. ‘What, rutting is all? That’s nothing you don’t see every day you look down an alley. Go outside and you’ll see it round the corner now. Eh, Jem? I expect you’ve seen your share of it, back in Dorsetshire, eh, boy?’

Jem gazed into his beer. A fly was struggling on the surface, trying not to drown. ‘Seen enough,’ he mumbled. Of course he had seen it before. It was not just the animals he lived among that he’d seen at it – dogs, cats, sheep, horses, cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, pheasants – but people tucked away in corners of woods or against hedgerows or even in the middle of meadows when they thought no one would pass through. He had seen his neighbours doing it in a barn, and Sam with his girl up in the hazel wood at Nettlecombe Tout. He had seen it enough that he was no longer surprised, though it still embarrassed him. It was not that there was so much to see – mostly just clothes and a persistent movement, sometimes a man’s pale buttocks pistoning up and down or a woman’s breasts jiggling. It was seeing it when he was not expecting to, breaking into the assumed privacy, that made Jem turn away with a red face. He had much the same feeling on the rare occasion when he heard his parents argue – as when his mother demanded that his father cut down the pear tree at the bottom of their garden that Tommy had fallen from, and Thomas Kellaway had refused. Anne Kellaway had taken an axe later and done it herself.

Jem dipped his finger into the beer and let the fly climb onto it and crawl away. Charlie watched with astonished disgust; Dick Butterfield simply smiled and looked around at the other customers, as if searching for someone else to talk to.

‘It wasn’t just that they were doin’ it,’ Maggie persisted. ‘They were – they had – they’d taken off all their clothes, hadn’t they, Jem? We could see everything, like they were Adam an’ Eve.’

Dick Butterfield watched his daughter with the same appraising look he’d given Jem when he tried to find a stool. As easy-going as he appeared – lolling in his seat, buying drinks for people, smiling and nodding – he demanded a great deal from those he was with.

‘And d’you know what they were doing while they did it?’

‘What, Mags?’

Maggie thought quickly of the most outlandish thing two people could do while they were meant to be rutting. ‘They were reading to each other!’

Charlie chuckled. ‘What, the newspaper?’

‘That’s not what I—’ Jem began.

‘From a book,’ Maggie interrupted, her voice rising over the noise of the pub. ‘Poetry, I think it was.’ Specific details always made stories more believable.

‘Poetry, eh?’ Dick Butterfield repeated, sucking at his beer. ‘I expect that’ll be Paradise Lost, if they were playing at Adam an’ Eve in their garden.’ Dick Butterfield had once had a copy of the poem, in among a barrowful of books he’d got hold of and was trying to sell, and had read bits of it. No one expected Dick Butterfield to be able to read so well, but his father had taught him, reasoning that it was best to be as knowledgeable as those you were swindling.

‘Yes, that was it. Pear Tree’s Loss,’ Maggie agreed. ‘I know I heard them words.’

Jem started, unable to believe what he’d heard. ‘Did you say “pear tree”?’

Dick shot her a look. ‘Paradise Lost, Mags. Get your words right. Now, hang on a minute.’ He closed his eyes, thought for a moment, then recited:

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and providence their guide:

They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

His neighbours stared at him; these were not the sort of words they normally heard in the pub. ‘What you sayin’, Pa?’ Maggie asked.

‘The only thing I remember from Paradise Lost – the very last lines, when Adam an’ Eve are leaving Eden. Made me sorry for ’em.’

‘I didn’t hear anything like that from the Blakes,’ Jem said, then felt Maggie’s sharp kick under the table.

‘It was after you stopped looking,’ she insisted.

Jem opened his mouth to argue further, then stopped. Clearly the Butterfields liked their stories embroidered; indeed, it was the embroidery they wanted, and would soon pass on to everyone else, made even more elaborate, until the whole pub was discussing the Blakes playing Adam and Eve in their garden, even when that was not what Jem had seen at all. Who was he to spoil their fun – though Jem thought of Mr Blake’s alert eyes, his firm greeting, and his determined stride, and regretted that they were spreading such talk about him. He preferred to speak the truth. ‘What do Mr Blake do?’ he asked, trying instead to guide the subject away from what they had seen in the garden.

‘What, apart from tupping his wife in the garden?’ Dick Butterfield chuckled. ‘He’s a printer and engraver. You seen the printing press through his front window, han’t you?’

‘The machine with the handle like a star?’ Jem had indeed spied the wooden contraption, which was even bigger and bulkier than his father’s lathe, and wondered what it was for.

‘That’s it. You’ll see him using it now and then, him an’ his wife. Prints books an’ such on it. Pamphlets, pictures, that sort o’ thing. Dunno as he makes a living from ’em, though. I seen a few of ’em when I went looking to sell him some copper for his plates when he first moved here from across the river a year or two ago.’ Dick Butterfield shook his head. ‘Strange things, they were. Lots o’ fire an’ naked people with big eyes, shouting.’

‘You mean like Hell, Pa?’ Maggie suggested.

‘Maybe. Not my taste, anyway. I like a cheerful picture, myself. Can’t see that many would buy ’em from him. He must get more from engraving for others.’

‘Did he buy the copper?’

‘Nah. I knew the minute I talked to him that he’s not one to buy like that, for a fancy. He’s his own man, is Mr Blake. He’ll go off an’ choose his copper an’ paper himself, real careful.’ Dick Butterfield said this without rancour; indeed, he respected those who would clearly not be taken in by his ruses.

‘We saw him with his bonnet rouge on last week, didn’t we, Jem?’ Maggie said. ‘He looked right funny in it.’

‘He’s a braver man ’n many,’ Dick Butterfield declared. ‘Not many in London show such open support for the Frenchies, however they may talk in the pub. P.M. don’t take kindly to it, nor the King neither.’

‘Who’s P.M.?’ Jem asked.

Charlie Butterfield snorted.

‘Prime Minister, lad. Mr Pitt,’ Dick Butterfield added a little sharply, in case the Dorset boy didn’t know even that.

Jem ducked his head and gazed into his beer once more. Maggie watched him struggling across the table, and wished now that she had not brought him to meet her father. He did not understand what Dick Butterfield wanted from people, the sort of quick smart talk required of those allowed to sit with him on the stool he kept hooked around his foot under the table. Dick Butterfield wanted to be informed and entertained at the same time. He was always looking for another way to make money – he made his living out of small, dodgy schemes dreamed up from pub talk – and he wanted to have fun doing it. Life was hard, after all, and what made it easier than a little laughter, as well as a little business putting money in his pocket?

Dick Butterfield could see when people were sinking. He didn’t hold it against Jem – the boy’s confused innocence made him feel rather tender towards him, and irritated at his own jaded children. He pushed Maggie abruptly from his knee so that she fell to the floor, where she stared up at him with hurt eyes. ‘Lord, child, you’re getting heavy,’ Dick said, jiggling his knee up and down. ‘You’ve sent my leg to sleep. You’ll be needin’ your own stool now you’re getting to lady size.’

‘Won’t nobody give her one, though, and I’m not talking ’bout just the stool,’ Charlie sneered. ‘Chicken-breasted little cow.’

‘Leave off her,’ Jem said.

All three Butterfields stared at him, Dick and Charlie leaning with their elbows on the table, Maggie still on the floor between them. Then Charlie lunged across the table at Jem, and Dick Butterfield put his arm out to stop him. ‘Give Maggie your stool and get another one,’ he said.

Charlie glared at Jem but stood up, letting the stool fall backwards, and stalked off. Jem didn’t dare turn around to watch him but kept his eyes on the table. He took a gulp of beer. He’d defended Maggie as a reflex, the way he would his own sister.

Maggie got up and righted Charlie’s stool, then sat on it, her face grim. ‘Thanks,’ she muttered to Jem, though she didn’t sound very grateful.

‘So, Jem, your father’s a bodger, is he?’ Dick Butterfield said, opening the business part of the conversation since it seemed unlikely that Jem would entertain them further.

‘Not a bodger, exactly, sir,’ Jem answered. ‘He don’t travel from town to town, an’ he makes proper chairs, not the rickety ones bodgers make.’

‘Course he does, lad, course he does. Where does he get his wood?’

‘One of the timber yards by Westminster Bridge.’

‘Whose yard? Bet I can get it for him cheaper.’

‘Mr Harris. Mr Astley introduced Pa to him.’

Dick Butterfield winced at Philip Astley’s name. Maggie’s father could negotiate good deals most places, but not when Mr Astley had got in before him. He and his landlord kept a wide berth of each other, though there was a grudging respect on both sides as well. If Dick Butterfield had been a wealthy circus owner, or Philip Astley a small-time rogue, they would have been remarkably similar.

‘Well, if I hear of any cheaper wood, I’ll let you know. Leave it with me, lad,’ he added, as if it were Jem who’d approached him for advice. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call in one day, shall I, and have a word with your pa. I’m always happy to help out new neighbours. Now, you’ll be expected back home, won’t you? They’ll be wonderin’ what kept you.’

Jem nodded and got up from the stool. ‘Thank’ee for the beer, sir.’

‘Course, lad.’ Dick Butterfield hooked his foot around Jem’s stool and dragged it back under the table. Maggie grabbed Jem’s half-drunk beer and took a gulp. ‘Bye,’ she said.

‘Z’long.’

On his way out, Jem passed Charlie standing with a crowd of other young men. Charlie glared at him and shoved one of his friends so that he knocked into Jem. The youths laughed and Jem hurried out, glad to get away from the Butterfields. He suspected, however, that he would see Maggie again, even if she had not said ‘Bye for now’ this time. Despite her brother and father, he wanted to.

She reminded him of September blackberries, which looked ripe but could just as easily be sour as sweet when you ate them. Jem could not resist such a temptation.

ONE

Anne Kellaway sometimes felt that a cord was tied at one end to her wrist and at the other to the window in the front room. She would be scrubbing potatoes, or washing clothes, or cleaning the ash from the fire, and find herself at the most inconvenient moment – hands smeared with dirt, sheets half-wrung, ash dusting the air – tugged to the window to look out. Often there was nothing unusual to see, but occasionally she was rewarded with something worthwhile: a woman wearing a hat trimmed with long peacock feathers, a man cradling a pineapple as if it were a newborn baby, a boy carrying an uprooted bay tree, its leaves trimmed into the shape of a dove. Maisie or Jem would have called to the others to come and see these unusual sights, but Anne Kellaway preferred to keep such little moments of pleasure to herself.

Today there were no potatoes or ash or laundry keeping her away from the window: it was Easter Monday and she was meant to rest. Maisie and Jem were clearing up after their mid-day meal, leaving Anne Kellaway to gaze down at the crowds of people moving along Hercules Buildings, many of the women dressed in new Easter gowns and bonnets. She had never seen so much colour, such bright cloth, such daring cuts and such surprising trim on the bonnets. There were the usual daffodils and primroses as you might see on hats outside the Piddletrenthide church, but there were also exotic feathers, bunches of multi-coloured ribbons, even fruit. She herself would never wear a lemon on a bonnet, but she rather admired the woman passing who did. She preferred something simpler and more traditional: a plait of daisies or a posy of violets, or one ribbon, like the sky-blue one she’d just seen dangling down a girl’s back almost to her knees. Anne Kellaway would happily wear that, though she would not have it be quite so long. London women seemed to push the length of a ribbon or the angle of a hat just that bit further than Anne Kellaway would dare to herself.

Among the traffic walked a man with a tray of white crosses on his head, calling, ‘Hot-cross buns! Four a penny, cheap for Easter, hot-cross buns! Buy ’em now, last day till next year!’ He stopped in front of the house, just below Anne Kellaway, having found a customer. From the other direction strolled Miss Pelham, her bonnet festooned with tiny yellow ribbons. Anne Kellaway snorted, trying to mask the laugh that had begun to bubble up.

‘What is’t, Ma?’ Maisie asked, looking up from wiping the table clean.

‘Nothing. Just Miss Pelham in a silly hat.’

‘Let me see.’ Maisie came over to the window, peered down and began to giggle. ‘She looks like she’s had a pile of straw dumped on her head!’

‘Shh, Maisie, she’ll hear you,’ Anne Kellaway replied, though not very fiercely. As they watched, a grey horse pulling a peculiar two-wheeled vehicle trotted up the road, scattering bonnet-wearers and potential bun-buyers to the right and left. The cart had big wheels and peculiar dimensions, for though short and narrow, it had a high roof; on the side was a long vertical sign that proclaimed in black letters, ‘ASTLEY’S ROYAL SALOON AND NEW AMPHITHEATRE proudly announces its NEW SEASON beginning TONIGHT! Spectacular Acts to Excite and Stimulate! Doors open 5.30 p.m., prompt start 6.30 p.m.’

Anne and Maisie Kellaway gaped as the gig drew up in front of Miss Pelham’s house and a boy jumped down and said something to Miss Pelham, who frowned and pointed up at the Kellaways’ window. Anne Kellaway shrank back, but was not quick enough at pulling Maisie out of sight as well.

‘Wait, Ma, she’s beckoning to us!’ Maisie pulled Anne Kellaway forward again. ‘Look!’

Miss Pelham was still frowning – as she always did when anything to do with the Kellaways disturbed her – but she was indeed gesturing to them.

‘I’ll go down,’ Maisie declared, turning towards the door.

‘No, you won’t.’ Anne Kellaway stopped her daughter with a steely tone and a hand on her shoulder. ‘Jem, go and see what they want.’

Jem left the pot he had been scouring and raced down the stairs. Maisie and Anne watched from the window as he exchanged a few words with the boy, who then handed him something white. He stared at whatever it was he held, while the boy jumped back into the gig and the driver tapped his whip lightly on the horse’s neck and sped away up Hercules Buildings towards Westminster Bridge Road.

Jem returned a moment later, a puzzled look on his face.

‘What is’t, Jem?’ Maisie demanded. ‘Oh, what have you got?’

Jem looked down at some bits of paper in his hand. ‘Four tickets for Mr Astley’s show tonight, with his compliments.’

Thomas Kellaway looked up from the piece of beech he had been whittling.

‘We’re not going,’ Anne Kellaway declared. ‘We can’t afford it.’

‘No, no, we don’t have to pay. He’s given them to us.’

‘We don’t need his charity. We could buy our own tickets if we wanted.’

‘But you just said—’ Maisie began.

‘We’re not going.’ Anne Kellaway felt like a mouse chased by a cat from one side of a room to the other.

Jem and Maisie looked at their father. Thomas Kellaway was gazing at them all, but did not say anything. He loved his wife, and wanted her to love him back. He would not go against her.

‘Have you finished that pot, Jem?’ Anne Kellaway asked. ‘Once you do we can go for our walk.’ She turned away towards the window, her hands shaking.

Maisie and Jem exchanged glances. Jem went back to the pot.

TWO

In the two weeks they’d been in Lambeth, the Kellaways had not gone much beyond the streets immediately surrounding their house. They did not need to – all the shops and stalls they needed were on Lambeth Terrace by Lambeth Green, on Westminster Bridge Road, or on the Lower Marsh. Jem had been with his father to the timber yards by the river near Westminster Bridge; Maisie had gone with her mother to St George’s Fields to see about laying out their clothes there to dry. When Jem suggested that they go for a walk on Easter Monday across Westminster Bridge to see Westminster Abbey, all were keen. They were used to walking a great deal in the Piddle Valley, and found it strange not to be so active in Lambeth.

They set out at one o’clock, when others were eating or sleeping or at the pub. ‘How shall we go, then?’ Maisie asked Jem, knowing better than to direct the question at her parents. Anne Kellaway was clutching onto her husband’s arm as if a strong wind were about to blow her away. Thomas Kellaway was smiling as usual and gazing about him, looking like a simpleton waiting to go wherever was chosen for him.

‘Let’s take a short cut to the river and walk along it up to the bridge,’ Jem said, knowing it had fallen to him to lead them, for he was the only Kellaway who had begun to become familiar with the streets.

‘Not the short cut that girl talked of, is’t?’ Anne Kellaway said. ‘I don’t want to be going along any place called Cut-Throat Lane.’

‘Not that one, Ma,’ Jem lied, reasoning that it would take her a long time to work out that it was indeed Cut-Throat Lane. Jem had found it soon after Maggie told them about it. He knew his family would like the lane because it ran through empty fields; if you turned your back to the houses and didn’t look too far ahead to Lambeth Palace or to the warehouses by the river, you could more or less think you were in the countryside. One day Jem would find the direction he needed to walk that would take him into countryside proper. Perhaps Maggie would know the way.

For now, he led his family up past Carlisle House, a nearby mansion, to Royal Row and along it to Cut-Throat Lane. It was very quiet there, with no one in the lane; and, it being a holiday, few were out working in the vegetable gardens that dotted the field. Jem was thankful too that it was sunny and clear. So often in Lambeth the sky was not blue, even on a sunny day, but thick and yellow with smoke from coal fires, and from the breweries and manufactories for vinegar and cloth and soap that had sprung up along the river. Yesterday and today, however, those places were shut, and because it was warm, many had not lit fires. Jem gazed up into the proper deep blue he knew well from Dorsetshire, coupled with the vivid green of the roadside grass and shrubs, and found himself smiling at these colours that were so natural and yet shouted louder than any London ribbon or dress. He began to walk more slowly, at a saunter rather than the quick, nervous pace he’d adopted since coming to Lambeth. Maisie paused to pick a few primroses for a posy. Even Anne Kellaway stopped clutching her husband and swung her arms. Thomas Kellaway began to whistle Over the Hills and Far Away, a song he often hummed when he was working.

Too soon the lane made a sharp right and skirted along the edges of the gardens surrounding Lambeth Palace. When they reached the river their short idyll ended. In front of them stood a series of dilapidated warehouses, flanked by rows of workmen’s cottages. The warehouses were shut today, which added to their menacing atmosphere; normally the bustling action of the work made them more welcoming. Anne Kellaway took her husband’s arm again.

Though Jem and Thomas Kellaway had been down to the Thames to buy wood and have it cut at the timber yards, the female Kellaways had only seen it briefly when they first arrived at Astley’s Amphitheatre, and had not really taken it in. Now they had unwittingly chosen an unimpressive moment in which to get their first good look at the great London river. The tide was out, reducing the water to a thin murky ribbon running through a wide, flat channel of grey silt that reminded Anne Kellaway of an unmade bed. Granted, even in its reduced state it was twenty times bigger than the Piddle, the river that ran alongside the Kellaways’ garden in Piddletrenthide. Despite its small size, though, the Piddle still had the qualities Anne Kellaway looked for in a river – purposeful, relentless, cheerful and cleansing, its sound a constant reminder of the world’s movement.

The Thames was nothing like that. To Anne Kellaway it seemed not a river, but a long intestine that twisted each way out of sight. It did not have clear banks, either. The bed slid up towards the road, awash with pebbles and sludge, and it was easy enough to step straight from the road down into it. Despite the mud, children had done just that, and were running about in the riverbed, some playing, some picking out objects that had been left exposed by the low tide: shoes, bottles, bits of waterlogged wood and cloth, the head of a doll, a broken bowl.

The Kellaways stood and watched. ‘Look how dirty they’re getting,’ Maisie said as if she envied them.

‘Hideous place,’ Anne Kellaway stated.

‘It looks better when the tide’s in, like it were when we first arrived.’ Jem felt he had to defend the river, as if it were the embodiment of London and his family’s decision to move there.

‘Funny it has a tide,’ Maisie said. ‘I know our Piddle runs down to the sea somewhere, but it still always runs the same way. I’d feel topsy-turvy if it changed directions!’

‘Let’s go to the bridge,’ Jem suggested. They began to step more quickly now, past the warehouses and the workmen’s cottages. Some of the workers and their wives and children were sitting out in front of their houses, talking, smoking and singing. Most of them fell silent as the Kellaways passed, except for a man playing a pipe, who played faster. Jem wanted to step up their pace even more, but Maisie slowed down. ‘He’s playing Tom Bowling,’ she said. ‘Listen!’ She smiled at the man; he broke off playing and smiled back.

Anne Kellaway stiffened, then pulled at her daughter’s arm. ‘Come along, Maisie!’

Maisie shook free and stood still in the middle of the road to join in singing the last verse in a high, clear voice:

Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,

When He, who all commands,

Shall give, to call life’s crew together,

The word to pipe all hands:

Thus death, who Kings and tars dispatches,

In vain Tom’s life has doffed,

For though his body’s under hatches,

His soul has gone aloft,

His soul has gone aloft.

She and the pipe player finished together, and there was a small silence. Ann Kellaway stifled a sob. Tommy and Maisie used to sing the song together in beautiful harmony.

‘It be all right, Ma,’ Maisie said. ‘We has to sing it still, for we don’t want to forget Tommy, do we?’ She bobbed at the man and said, ‘Thank’ee, sir. Ar’ernoon.’

THREE

On the approach to the bridge, the road curved briefly away from the river and passed the amphitheatre, with its grand pillared entrance where they had first met Philip Astley, and posters plastered on the wall in front announcing ‘SHOW TONIGHT!’ It was only early afternoon and yet people were already milling about. Jem felt in his pocket and curled his hand around the tickets Philip Astley had sent them.

Anne Kellaway had a handbill thrust at her by a man running past calling, ‘Only a shilling and a penny to stand, two shillings tuppence a seat!’ She stared at the crumpled paper, unsure what she was meant to do with it. Smoothing it against her skirt, she turned it over and over before at last starting to make out the words. When she recognised ‘Astley,’ she understood what it was and thrust it at her husband. ‘Oh, take it, take it, I don’t want it!’

Thomas Kellaway fumbled and dropped the paper. It was Maisie who picked it up and brushed the dirt from it, then tucked it into the stays beneath her dress. ‘The show tonight,’ she murmured, sadly to Jem.

He shrugged.

‘Do you have those tickets on you, Jem?’ Anne Kellaway demanded.

Jem jerked his hand from his pocket as if he’d been caught touching himself. ‘Yes, Ma.’

‘I want you to take them to the theatre now and hand them back.’

‘Who’s handin’ back tickets?’ called a voice behind them. Jem looked around. Maggie Butterfield jumped out from the wall she’d been idling behind. ‘What kind of tickets? You don’t want to be handin’ back any tickets. If they’re good you can sell ’em for more’n you bought ’em for. Show ’em to me.’

‘How long have you been following us?’ Jem asked, pleased to see her but wondering too if she had witnessed anything he’d rather she not see.

Maggie grinned and whistled a bit of Tom Bowling. ‘Not half a bad voice you’ve got, Miss Piddle,’ she said to Maisie, who smiled and blushed.

‘Away you go, girl,’ Anne Kellaway ordered. ‘We don’t want you hanging about.’ She glanced around to see if Maggie was on her own. They’d had a visit a few days before from Maggie’s father, trying to sell Thomas Kellaway a load of ebony that he quickly spotted was oak painted black – though he was kind enough to suggest that Dick Butterfield had been hard done by someone else rather than trying to cheat the Kellaways. Anne Kellaway had disliked Dick Butterfield even more than his daughter.

Maggie ignored Jem’s mother. ‘Have you got tickets for tonight, then?’ she asked Jem coolly. ‘Which kind? Not for the gallery, I shouldn’t think. Can’t see her—’ she jerked her head at Anne Kellaway ‘—standin’ with them rascals. Here, show me.’

Jem wondered himself, and couldn’t resist pulling out the tickets to look. ‘“Pit,”’ he read, with Maggie peering over his shoulder.

She nodded at Thomas Kellaway. ‘You must be makin’ lots o’ bum catchers to buy pit seats, and you only a couple o’ weeks in London.’ A rare note of admiration crept into her voice.

‘Oh, we didn’t buy them,’ Maisie said. ‘Mr Astley gave ’em to us!’

Maggie stared. ‘Lord a mercy.’

‘We’re not going to see that rubbish,’ Anne Kellaway said.

‘You can’t give ’em back,’ Maggie declared. ‘Mr Astley’d be insulted. He might even throw you out of his house.’

Anne Kellaway stared; she had clearly not thought of such a consequence from giving back the tickets.

‘Course if you really don’t want to go, you could let me go in your place,’ Maggie continued.

Anne Kellaway narrowed her eyes, but before she could open her mouth to say that she would never allow such an impudent girl to take her place, a deep drumbeat began to sound from somewhere over the river.

‘The parade!’ Maggie exclaimed. ‘It’ll be starting. C’mon!’ She began to run, pulling Jem along with her. Maisie followed, and, fearful of being left alone, Anne Kellaway took her husband’s arm once more and hurried after them.

Maggie raced past the amphitheatre and on towards Westminster Bridge, which was already crowded with people standing along the edges. They could hear a march being played at the other end but they couldn’t see anything yet. Maggie led them up the middle of the road and squeezed into a spot a third of the way along. The Kellaways crowded around her, trying to ignore the grumblings of those whose view they were now blocking. There was a fair bit of jostling, but eventually everyone could see, until the next lot of people stood in front of them, and the crowd had to rearrange itself.

‘What we waiting for?’ Jem said to Maggie.

Maggie snorted. ‘Fancy standing in a crowd not even knowin’ what you’re there for. Dorset boy!’

Jem flushed. ‘Forget it, then,’ he muttered.

‘No, tell us,’ Maisie insisted. ‘I want to know.’

‘Mr Astley has a parade on the first day of the season,’ Maggie explained, ‘to give people a taste of the show. Sometimes he has fireworks, even in the daytime – though they’ll be better tonight.’

‘You hear that, Ma?’ Maisie said. ‘We can see fireworks tonight!’

‘If you go.’ Maggie threw Anne Kellaway a look.

‘We an’t going tonight, and we an’t staying for the parade now,’ Anne Kellaway asserted. ‘Come, Jem, Maisie, we’re leaving.’ She began to push at the people in front of her. Fortunately for Jem and Maisie, no one wanted to move and give up a place, and Anne Kellaway found herself trapped in the dense crowd. She had never had so many people around her before. It was one thing to stand in the window and watch London pass beneath her, safe at her perch. Now she had every sort of person pressing into her – men, women, children, people with smelly clothes, smelly breath, matted hair, harsh voices. A large man next to her was eating a meat pie, and the flakes of pastry were dropping down his front as well as into the hair of the woman standing in front of him. Neither seemed to notice or care as much as Anne Kellaway did. She was tempted to reach over and brush the flakes away.

As the music drew closer, two figures on horseback appeared. The crowd shifted and pushed, and Anne Kellaway felt panic welling up like bile. For a moment she was so desperate to get away that she actually put a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of her. He turned briefly and shrugged it off.

Thomas Kellaway took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. ‘There now, Anne, steady, girl,’ he said, as if he were talking to one of the horses they’d left behind with Sam in Dorsetshire. She missed their horses. Anne Kellaway closed her eyes, resisting the temptation to pull her hand away from her husband. She took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, the riders had drawn close. The horse nearest them was an old white charger, who walked sedately under its burden. The rider was Philip Astley.

‘It’s been a long winter, has it not, my friends?’ he shouted. ‘You’ve had nothing to entertain you all these months since October. Have you been waiting for this day? Well, wait no more – Lent is over, Easter has come, and Astley’s show has begun! Come and see The Siege of Bangalore, a sketch at once tragical, comical and oriental! Feast your eyes on the splendid operatic ballet La Fête de l’Amour! Wonder at the talents of the Manage Horse, who can fetch, carry, climb a ladder and even make a cup of tea!’

As he passed the Kellaways, his eyes fell on Anne Kellaway and he actually stopped in order to raise his hat to her. ‘Everyone is welcome to Astley’s Royal Saloon and New Amphitheatre – especially you, madam!’

The people around Anne Kellaway turned to stare at her. The man with the pie dropped his mouth open so that she could see the meat and gravy mashed up in there. Sick from this sight and from the attention of so many especially from Philip Astley, she closed her eyes again.

Philip Astley saw her turn pale and shut her eyes. Pulling a flask from his coat, he signalled to one of the circus boys who ran alongside him to take it to her. He could not stop his horse any longer to see if she took a swig of brandy, however – the press of the procession behind him pushed him on. He began his patter again: ‘Come and see the show – new acts of daring and imagination under the management of my son, John Astley, the finest equestrian rider in Europe! At little more than the price of a glass of wine, come for a full evening’s entertainment that you’ll remember for years to come!’

Beside him rode the son he spoke of. John Astley had as commanding a presence as his father, but in a completely different style. If Astley Senior was an oak – large and blunt, with a thick, strong centre – Astley Junior was a poplar – tall and slender and trimmed, with handsome, even features and clear, calculating eyes. He was educated, as his father had not been, and held himself more formally and self-consciously. Philip Astley rode his white charger like the cavalry man he once was and still thought himself to be, using the horse to get where he wanted to go and do what he wanted to do. John Astley rode his slim chestnut mare, with her long legs and nimble hooves, as if he and the horse were permanently attached and always on show. He jogged smoothly over Westminster Bridge, his horse capering sideways and slantways in a series of intricate steps to a minuet, played by musicians on trumpet, French horn, accordion and drum. Anyone else in his seat would have been jolted over and over and dropped gloves, hat and whip, but John Astley remained elegant and unruffled.

The crowd gazed at him in silence, admiring his skill rather than loving him as they did his father. All but one: Maisie Kellaway stood with her mouth open, staring up at him. She had never seen such a handsome man and, at fourteen, was ready to take a fancy to one. John Astley did not notice her, of course; he did not seem to see anyone, keeping his eyes fixed on the amphitheatre ahead.

Anne Kellaway had recovered herself without the aid of Philip Astley’s brandy. That she had refused, to the disgust of Maggie, the meat pie man, the woman in front of him with the pastry flakes in her hair, the man whose shoulder she had touched, the boy who delivered the flask – in fact, just about everyone apart from the other Kellaways. Anne Kellaway didn’t notice: her eyes were fixed fast on the performers in the parade behind John Astley. First came a group of tumblers who walked along normally and then simultaneously fell into a series of forward rolls that turned into cartwheels and backflips. Then came a group of dogs who, at a signal, all got up onto their hind legs and walked that way for a good ten feet, then ran about jumping over one another’s back in a complicated configuration.

Surprising as these acts were, what finally captured Anne Kellaway’s attention was the slack-rope dancing. Two strong men carried poles between which a rope hung, rather like a thick clothesline. Sitting in the middle of the rope was a dark-haired, moon-faced woman wearing a red and white striped satin dress with a tight bodice and a flared skirt. She swung back and forth on the rope as if it were a swing, then wrapped one part of the rope casually around her leg.

Maggie poked Jem and Maisie. ‘That’s Miss Laura Devine,’ she whispered. ‘She’s from Scotland, and is the finest slack-rope dancer in Europe.’

At a signal, the men stepped away from each other, pulling the rope taut and making Miss Devine turn a graceful somersault, which revealed several layers of red and white petticoats. The crowd roared, and she did it again, twice this time, then three times, and then she turned constant somersaults, twirling round and round the rope so that her petticoats were a flashing blur of red and white.

‘That’s called Pig on a Spit,’ Maggie announced.

Then the men stepped towards each other, and Miss Devine came out of the last somersault into a long swing up into the sky, smiling as she did.

Anne Kellaway stared at Miss Devine, expecting to see her crash to the ground as her son Tommy had from the pear tree, reaching for that pear that was always – and now always would be – just out of his reach. But Miss Devine did not fall; indeed, she seemed incapable of it. For the first time in the weeks since her son’s death, Anne Kellaway felt the shard of grief lodged in her heart stop biting. She craned her neck to watch her even as Miss Devine moved far down the bridge and could barely be seen, even when there were other spectacles right in front of her – a monkey on a pony, a man riding his horse backwards and picking up dropped handkerchiefs without leaving his saddle, a troupe of dancers in oriental costume turning pirouettes.

‘Jem, what’ve you done with those tickets?’ Anne Kellaway demanded suddenly.

‘Here, Ma.’ Jem pulled them from his pocket.

‘Keep ’em.’

Maisie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.

Maggie hissed, ‘Put ’em away!’ Already those around them had turned to look.

‘Them for the pit?’ the meat pie man asked, leaning over Anne Kellaway to see.

Jem began to put the tickets back in his pocket.

‘Not there!’ Maggie cried. ‘They’ll have ’em off you in a trice if you keep ’em there.’

‘Who?’

‘Them rascals.’ Maggie jerked her head at a pair of young boys who had miraculously squeezed through the crush to appear at his side. ‘They’re faster’n you, though not faster’n me. See?’ She snatched the tickets from Jem, and with a grin began to tuck them down the front of her dress.

‘I can keep them,’ Maisie suggested. ‘You haven’t got the stays.’

Maggie stopped smiling.

‘I’ll keep them,’ Anne Kellaway announced, and held out her hand. Maggie grimaced but handed over the tickets. Anne Kellaway carefully tucked them into her stays, then wrapped her shawl tightly over her bosom. The stern, triumphant look on her face was armour enough to keep away any rogue fingers.

The musicians were passing them now, and behind them three men brought up the rear of the parade waving red, yellow and white flags that read ASTLEY’S CIRCUS.

‘What’ll we do now?’ Jem asked when they had passed. ‘Go on to the Abbey?’

He could have been speaking to a family of mutes, oblivious to the surging crowd around them. Maisie was staring after John Astley, who by now had become just a flash of blue coat over winking horse flanks. Anne Kellaway had her eye on the amphitheatre in the distance, contemplating the unexpected evening ahead. Thomas Kellaway was peering over the bridge’s balustrade at a boat piled high with wood being rowed along the thin line of water towards the bridge.

‘C’mon. They’ll follow.’ Maggie took Jem’s arm and pulled him towards the apex of the bridge, sidestepping the traffic of carriages and carts that had begun to cross it again, and making their way towards the Abbey.

FOUR

Westminster Abbey was the tallest, grandest building in that part of London. It was the sort of building the Kellaways had expected to see plenty of in the city – substantial, ornate, important. Indeed, they had been disappointed by the shabbiness of Lambeth, even if they had not yet seen the rest of London. The filth, the crowds, the noise, the indifferent, casual, neglected buildings – none of it matched the pictures they’d conjured of London back in Dorsetshire. At least the Abbey, with its pair of impressive square towers, its busy detail of narrow windows, filigreed arches, jutting buttresses and tiny spires, satisfied their expectations. It was the second time in the weeks they had been in Lambeth that Anne Kellaway thought, ‘There is a reason for us to be in London’ – the first time being only half an hour before, when she saw Miss Laura Devine performing the Pig on a Spit.

Just inside the arched entrance between the two towers, the Kellaways stopped, causing those behind them to grumble and push past. Maggie, who had continued on into the Abbey, turned around and blew through her lips. ‘Look at those country fools,’ she muttered, as the four Kellaways stood in a row, eyes up, heads tilted at the same angle. She couldn’t blame them, however. Although she had visited the Abbey many times, she too found it an astonishing sight on first entering and, indeed, throughout the building. At every turning, every chapel and tomb contained marble to be admired, carving to be fingered, elegance and opulence to be dazzled by.

For the Kellaways the sheer size was what pulled them up short. None had ever been in a place where the ceiling arched so high over their heads. They could not take their eyes off it.

Finally Maggie lost patience. ‘There’s more to the Abbey than the ceiling,’ she advised Jem. ‘And there’s better ceilings than this too. Wait till you see the Lady Chapel!’

Feeling responsible for their first proper taste of what London could offer, she led them through archways and in and out of small side chapels, casually throwing out the names of people buried there that she remembered from her father’s guided tour of the place: Lord Hunsdon, the Countess of Sussex, Lord Bourchier, Edward I, Henry III. The string of names meant little to Jem; nor, once he grew accustomed to the size and lavishness of the place, did he really care for all of the stone. He and his father worked in wood, and he found stone cold and unforgiving. Still, he couldn’t help marvelling at the elaborate tombs, with the carved effigies in tan and beige marble of their inhabitants lying on top, at the brass reliefs of men on other slabs, at the black-and-white pillars ornamenting the headstones.

By the time they reached Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at the other end of the Abbey, and Maggie triumphantly announced, ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ Jem had stopped listening to her altogether and openly gaped. He had never imagined a place could be so ornate.

‘Oh, Jem, look at that ceiling,’ Maisie breathed, gazing up at the fan vaulting, carved of stone so delicate it looked like lace spun by spiders, touched in several places with gold leaf.

Jem was not studying the ceiling, however, but the rows of carved seats for members of the royal court along both sides of the chapel. Over each seat was an eight-foot-high ornamental tower of patinated oak filigree. The towers were of such a complicated interlocking pattern that it would not have been a surprise to hear carvers had gone mad working on them. Here at last was wood worked in a way the Kellaways would never see the likes of in Dorsetshire, or Wiltshire, or Hampshire, or anywhere in England other than in Westminster Abbey. Jem and Thomas Kellaway gazed in awe at the carving, like men who make sundials seeing a mechanical clock for the first time.

Jem lost track of Maggie until she rushed up to him. ‘Come here!’ she hissed, and dragged him away from the Lady Chapel to the centre of the Abbey and the Chapel of Edward the Confessor. ‘Look!’ she whispered, nodding in the direction of one of the tombs surrounding Edward’s massive shrine.

Mr Blake was standing alongside it, staring at the bronze effigy of a woman that lay along the top of it. He was sketching in a small sand-coloured notebook, never looking down at the paper and pencil, but keeping his eyes fastened on the statue’s impassive face.

Maggie put a finger to her lips, then took a quiet step towards Mr Blake, Jem following reluctantly. Slowly and steadily they rounded on him from behind. He was so concentrated on drawing that he noticed nothing. As the children got closer, they discovered that he was singing under his breath, very soft and high, more like the whining of a mosquito than of a man. Now and then his lips moved to form a word but it was hard to catch what he might be saying.

Maggie giggled. Jem shook his head at her. They were close enough now that they were able to peek around Mr Blake at his sketch. When they saw what he was drawing, Jem flinched, and Maggie openly gasped. Though the statue on the tomb was dressed in ceremonial robes, Mr Blake had drawn her naked.

He did not turn around, but continued to draw and to sing, though he must have known now that they were just behind him.

Jem grabbed Maggie’s elbow and pulled her away. When they had left the chapel and were out of earshot, Maggie burst out laughing. ‘Fancy undressing a statue!’

Jem’s irritation outweighed his impulse to laugh too. He was suddenly weary of Maggie – of her harsh, barking laughter, her sharp comments, her studied worldliness. He longed for someone quiet and simple, who wouldn’t pass judgement on him and on Mr Blake.

‘Shouldn’t you be with your family?’ he said abruptly.

Maggie shrugged. ‘They’ll just be at the pub. I can find ’em later.’

‘I’m going back to mine.’ Immediately he regretted his tone, as he saw hurt flash through her eyes before she hid it with hard indifference.

‘Suit yourself.’ She shrugged and turned away.

‘Wait, Maggie,’ Jem called as she slipped out of a side entrance he had not noticed before. As when he first met her, the moment she was gone, he wished she was back again. He felt eyes on him then, and looked across the aisle and through the door to Edward’s Chapel. Mr Blake was gazing at him, pen poised above his notebook.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.