Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Mr. Blake did not answer until he had reached the end of the line. Then he looked up. “That I am, my lad, that I am.”
“Why?”
“I’m writing with a solution that will remain on the plate when the rest gets eaten away by acid. Then when I print them the words will be going forwards, not backwards.”
“Opposite to what they are now.”
“Yes, my boy.”
“Mr. Blake, I’m sorry to trouble you,” his wife interrupted, “but Jem and Maggie have told me something you ought to hear.” Mrs. Blake was wringing her hands now, whether from what Jem and Maggie had told her or because she felt she was disturbing her husband, Jem was not sure.
“It’s all right, Kate. While I’ve stopped, could you get me some more turps? There’s some next door. And a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, Mr. Blake.” Mrs. Blake stepped out of the room.
“How did you learn to write backwards like that?” Jem asked. “With a mirror?”
Mr. Blake glanced down at the plate. “Practice, my boy, practice. It’s easy once you’ve done it enough. Everything engravers do gets printed opposite. The engraver has to be able to see it both ways.”
“From the middle of the river.”
“That’s it. Now, what did you want to tell me?”
Jem repeated what Maggie had said down in the kitchen. “We thought we should warn you that they be coming to see you tonight,” he finished. “Mr. Roberts weren’t nice about it,” Jem added, when Mr. Blake did not seem to react to the news. “We thought they might give you trouble.”
“Thank you for that, my children,” Mr. Blake replied. “I am not surprised by any of this. I knew it would come.”
He was not responding at all the way Maggie had expected him to. She’d thought he would jump up and do something—pack a bag and leave the house, or hide all of the books and pamphlets and things he’d printed, or barricade the front windows and door. Instead he simply smiled at them, then dipped his brush into a dish of something resembling glue, and began to write more backwards words across the metal plate. Maggie wanted to kick his chair and shout, “Listen to us! You may be in danger!” But she didn’t dare.
Mrs. Blake came back in with a bottle of turps and a glass of water, which she set down by her husband. “They told you about the Association coming tonight, did they?” She at least seemed anxious about what Jem and Maggie had told them.
“They did, my dear.”
“Mr. Blake, why do they want to visit you specially?” Jem asked.
Mr. Blake made a little face and, setting down his brush, twisted around in his chair to face them fully. “Tell me, Jem, what do you think I write about?”
Jem hesitated.
“Children,” Maggie offered.
Mr. Blake nodded. “Yes, my girl—children, and the helpless, and the poor. Children lost and cold and hungry. The government does not like to be told it is not looking after its people. They think I am suggesting revolution, as there has been in France.”
“Are you?” Jem asked.
Mr. Blake waggled his head in a movement that could have meant yes or no.
“Pa says that the Frenchies have gone bad, with all that killing of innocent people,” Maggie said.
“That is not surprising. Doesn’t blood flow before judgment? Only look to the Bible for instances of it. Look at the Book of Revelation for blood flowing in the streets. This Association that intends to come tonight, though, wants to stop anyone who questions those in power. But power unchecked leads to moral tyranny.”
Jem and Maggie were silent, trying to follow his words.
“So you see, my children, that is why I must continue making my songs and not run from those who would have me silenced. And so that is what I am doing.” He turned his chair back around so that he faced the desk, and picked up his brush once more.
“What is that you’re working on?” Jem asked.
“Is it another song they won’t like?” Maggie added.
Mr. Blake looked back and forth between their eager faces and smiled. Setting down his brush once more, he leaned back and began to recite:
In the Age of Gold
Free from winters cold
Youth and maiden bright
To the holy light
Naked in the sunny beams delight.
Once a youthful pair
Filled with softest care
Met in garden bright
When the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.
There in rising day
On the grass they play
Parents were afar
Strangers came not near
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.
Tired with kisses sweet
They agree to meet,
When the silent sleep
Waves o’er heavens deep
And the weary tired wanderers weep.
Maggie felt her face sweep with heat from a deep blush. She could not look at Jem. If she had, she would have seen that he was not looking at her either.
“Perhaps it’s time to go, my dears,” Mrs. Blake interrupted before her husband could continue. “Mr. Blake’s very busy just now, aren’t you, Mr. Blake?” He jerked his head and sat back; clearly it was rare for her to break in on him when he was reciting.
Maggie and Jem stepped backward toward the door. “Thank you, Mr. Blake,” they said together, though it was not at all clear what they were thanking him for.
Mr. Blake seemed to recover himself. “It is we who should be thanking you,” he said. “We are grateful for the warning about this evening.”
As they left his study, they heard Mrs. Blake murmur, “Really, Mr. Blake, you shouldn’t tease them like that, reciting that one rather than what you were working on. They’re not ready yet. You saw how they blushed.” They did not hear his reply.
3
While the Kellaway men were at the timber yard with Dick Butterfield, the Kellaway women had remained at Hercules Buildings. With the arrival of winter, Anne Kellaway no longer worked in the garden, but stayed indoors, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and trying to find ways to keep out the cold. As the Kellaways had not experienced proper cold weather in London until now, they’d hadn’t realized how poorly heated the Lambeth house was, nor appreci-ated how snug a Dorsetshire cottage could be, with its thick cob walls, small windows, and large hearth. The Hercules Buildings’ brick walls were half the thickness; the fireplaces in each room were tiny and took expensive coal rather than wood they could cut and haul for free in Dorsetshire. Anne Kellaway now hated the large Lambeth windows she had spent so much time looking out of earlier in the year; she stuffed bits of cloth and straw in the cracks to keep out drafts, and double-lined the curtains.
The fog often kept kept her inside as well. Now that coal fires were burning all day in most houses in London, fog was inevitable. Of course the Piddle Valley had had occasional fogs, but not such thick, dirty ones that settled in for days like an unwanted guest. On foggy days there was so little light that Anne Kellaway drew the curtains against it and lit the lamps, in part for Maisie, who sometimes grew agitated when she looked out at the murk.
Maisie was almost always indoors. Even on clear sunny days, she did not go out. In the two months since losing her way in the fog—for that is what she and Maggie and Jem allowed her parents to think had happened—she had been out of no. 12 Hercules Buildings only twice, to church. At first she had been too ill: The cold and damp had settled on her chest, and she was in bed for two weeks before she was strong enough even to go downstairs to the privy. When she did get up at last, she was no longer fresh as she had been, but rather like a whitewashed wall that has begun to yellow—still bright, but without the glow of the new. She was quieter as well, and did not make the cheerful remarks the Kellaways had not even realized they relied on.
Anne Kellaway had gone out earlier to pick a cabbage and pull up some late carrots from Philip Astley’
Maisie paused as her mother sat, her needle hovering above a button she was working on for Bet Butterfield, who had hired her to make Dorset High Tops. There was little in it for Bet, but it was the least she could do for the girl.
“It be a lovely day,” Anne Kellaway began.
“Yes, it do,” Maisie agreed, gamely glancing out of the window at the bright street below. A cart passed carrying a huge pig, which sniffed daintily at the Lambeth air. Maisie smiled despite herself.
“Not like that fog. If I’d known it be so foggy in London I’d never have come here to live.”
“Why did you then, Ma?” One of the changes Anne Kellaway had noticed in Maisie was that her questions now occasionally contained a sharp sliver of judgment.
Rather than chiding her daughter, Anne Kellaway tried to answer honestly. “Once Tommy died I thought the Piddle Valley were ruined for us, and perhaps we’d be happier here.”
Maisie made a stitch in her button. “And are you?”
Anne Kellaway dodged the question by responding to a different one. “I’m just glad you be less poorly now.” She began to twist a knot in her apron. “In the fog that day—were you frightened?”
Maisie stopped stitching. “I were terrified.”
“You never told us what happened. Jem said you was lost and Mr. Blake found you.”
Maisie looked at her mother steadily. “I were at the amphitheatre and decided to come home to help you. But I couldn’t find Jem to see me home, and when I looked out at the fog it seemed to be a little clearer, and I thought I could get home by myself. So I walked along Westminster Bridge Road, and I were fine, as there were people along there and the street lamps were lit. It were just that when I got to the turning for Hercules Buildings I didn’t turn sharp enough and went down Bastille Row instead, so that Hercules Tavern were on my right rather than my left.” Maisie deliberately mentioned Hercules Tavern, as if by naming it she could dismiss it too, and Anne Kellaway would never suspect that she had been inside the pub. Her voice only wavered a tiny bit when she said the name.
“After a bit I knew I weren’t on Hercules Buildings, so I turned back, but the fog were so thick and it were getting dark and I didn’t know where I were. And then Mr. Blake found me and brought me home.” Maisie told her story a little mechanically, except for Mr. Blake’s name, which she said reverentially, as if referring to an angel.
“Where did he find you?”
“I don’t know, Ma—I were lost. You’ll have to ask him.” Maisie said this with confidence, sure that Anne Kellaway would never ask Mr. Blake—she was too daunted by him. He and Mrs. Blake had visited Maisie once she was improving, and Anne Kellaway had been disturbed by his bright, piercing eyes and the familiarity he’d had with both Maisie and Jem. Then too, he had said something very odd to her when she thanked him for finding Maisie. “‘Heaven’s last best gift,’” he had replied. “‘Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve.’”
At Anne Kellaway’s blank stare, Catherine Blake had leaned forward to say, “That’s Paradise Lost, that is. Mr. Blake is very fond of quoting from it, aren’t you, Mr. Blake? Anyway, we’re glad your daughter is on the mend.”
Even stranger, Jem had murmured under his breath, “Pear tree’s loss,” and Anne Kellaway had felt the familiar shard in her heart that signaled Tommy Kellaway’s death—a feeling she had managed to suppress for months, until the departure of the circus. It was back, though, as strong as ever, catching her out when she wasn’t looking, making her draw in her breath sharply with grief for her son.
Now Anne Kellaway looked at her daughter and knew that she was lying about the fog. Maisie returned her gaze. How had she come to grow up so quickly, Anne Kellaway wondered. After a moment she stood. “I must check that the bread an’t stale,” she said. “If it be I’ll pop out for more.”
4
Thomas Kellaway said nothing to the Kellaway women about what had gone on between him and John Roberts when he and Jem returned, with Maggie in tow. Rather than go home, Maggie spent the rest of the afternoon with the Kellaways, learning how to make High Tops with Maisie by the fire while Jem and his father worked on a chair seat in the workshop and Anne Kellaway sewed and swept and kept the fire bright. Though Maggie was not especially good at button-making, she preferred to be busy with this family rather than idle in the pub with her own.
They worked, and waited, even those who didn’t know they were waiting for anything, and time pressed down like a stone. Once it began to get dark and Anne Kellaway had lit the lamps, Jem kept coming in from the workshop and going to the front window until his mother asked him what he was looking for. Then he stayed in the back, but listened keenly, stealing glances at Maggie through the open door, wishing they had a plan.
It began as a low hum that at first wasn’t noticeable because of more immediate sounds: horses clopping past, children shouting, street criers selling candles and pies and fish, the watchman calling the hour. Soon, though, the sound of a company of feet crunching along the road and voices murmuring to one another became more distinct. When he heard it Jem left the workshop and went to the window again. “Pa,” he called after a moment.
Thomas Kellaway paused, then laid down the adze he had been using to carve a saddleback shape into the chair seat, and joined his son at the window. Maggie jumped up, scattering the High Tops she had accumulated in her lap.
“What is’t, Tom?” Anne Kellaway said sharply.
Thomas Kellaway cleared his throat. “I’ve some business downstairs. I won’t be long.”
Frowning, Anne Kellaway joined them at the window. When she glimpsed the crowd gathering in the street in front of the Blakes’ door—and growing bigger all the time—she turned pale.
“What do you see, Ma?” Maisie called from her chair. A few months ago she would have been the first out of her seat and to the window.
Before anyone could respond, they heard a rap at Miss Pelham’s front door, and the crowd in the street broadened its attention to include no. 12 Hercules Buildings. “Tom!” Anne Kellaway cried. “What’s happening?”
“Don’t you be worrying, Anne. It’ll be all right in a minute.”
They heard the door open downstairs and Miss Pelham’s querulous voice ring out, though they could not make out what she said.
“I’d best go down,” Thomas Kellaway said.
“Not on your own!” Anne Kellaway followed him from the room, turning at the top of the stairs to call back, “Jem, Maisie, stay here!”
Jem ignored her; he and Maggie clattered down after them. After sitting alone in the room for a moment, Maisie got up and followed.
As they reached the front door, Miss Pelham was signing a book similar to John Roberts’s ledger. “Of course I’m happy to sign if it’s going to do any good,” she was saying to an older man with a crooked back who held out the book for her. “I can’t bear the thought of those revolutionaries coming here!” She shuddered. “However, I don’t at all appreciate a mob in front of my house—it paints me in a poor light among my neighbors. I would like you to take your…your associates elsewhere!” Miss Pelham’s frizzy curls quivered with indignation.
“Oh, the rabble an’t for you, ma’am,” the man replied reassuringly. “It’s for next door.”
“But my neighbors don’t know that!”
“Actually, we do want to see”—he referred to his book—“a Thomas Kellaway, who was a little reluctant earlier to sign. I believe he lives here.” He looked past Miss Pelham’s head into her hallway. “That will be you, will it, sir?”
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“You were reluctant earlier?” Anne Kellaway hissed at her husband. “When were that?”
Thomas Kellaway stepped away from his wife. “Pardon, Miss Pelham, if you do just let me pass I’ll go an’ straighten this out.”
Miss Pelham continued to glare at him as if he had brought great shame on her household. Then she caught sight of Maggie. “Get that girl out of my house!” she cried. Thomas Kellaway was forced to squeeze past his landlady so that he could stand on the doorstep next to the man with the humpback.
“Now, sir,” the man said, with more politeness than John Roberts had shown earlier. “You are Thomas Kellaway, is that right? I believe you were read earlier the declaration of loyalty we are asking each resident of Lambeth to sign. Are you prepared now to sign it?” He held out the book.
Before Thomas Kellaway could respond, a cry went up from the crowd, who had turned their attention back to no. 13 Hercules Buildings. The man with the hump stepped away from Miss Pelham’s door so that he might see what was, after all, the main attraction. Thomas Kellaway and Miss Pelham followed him onto the path.
5
William Blake had opened his door. He did not say a word—not a hallo, or a curse, or a “What do you want?” He simply stood filling his doorway in his long black coat. He was hatless, his brown hair ruffled, his mouth set, his eyes wide and alert.
“Mr. Blake!” John Roberts stepped up to the door, his jaw flexing as if he were chewing on a tough piece of meat. “You are requested by the Lambeth Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers to sign this declaration of loyalty to the British monarchy. Will you sign it, sir?”