Burning Bright (21 page)

John Astley shut the door behind them to bellows of laughter. Maisie did not seem to notice, however, though the fresh air made her stand straight and shake her head as if to clear it. “Where we going, sir?” she managed to say.

“Just for a little stroll, then I'll get you home.” John Astley kept his arm around her and led her, not left along Hercules Buildings, but right into Bastille Row. There was a gap that way between two of the houses that led to Hercules Hall and its stables.

The cold air made Maisie progress instantly from happy drunk to sick drunk. A little way along Bastille Row she began to moan and hold her stomach. John Astley let go of her. “Idiot girl,” he muttered as Maisie sank to her knees and vomited into the gutter. He was tempted to leave her now to find her own way. It was not far back to the pub, though the fog was so dense that there was no sign of it.

At that moment a figure came pattering out of the fog toward them. They were only a few steps from the Butterfields' rooms, where Maggie had stopped briefly after work to change her clothes. She was now working at a vinegar manufactory near the river, by the timber yards north of Westminster Bridge, and though she smelled acidic, at least her nose no longer hurt and her eyes were clear. The owner even let them off early on a Saturday afternoon.

Maggie started when she saw John Astley. For a year now she had not liked going through the fog on her own, though she did it when she had to. She had walked back from the factory with another girl who lived nearby, and the pub was so close to the Butterfields' that she had not thought to worry. Seeing the horseman so suddenly almost made her scream, until she spied the huddled form at his feet, still retching into the gutter. Then she chuckled, for she recognized John Astley with one of his conquests. “Having fun, are you, sir?” she jeered, and ran on before he could reply. Her relief that this was a familiar scene and John Astley no threat to her, coupled with her haste to get to the pub out of the fog and the cold, made her give Maisie no more than a glance before she hurried on to Hercules Tavern.

“There you are, Mags,” Dick Butterfield called. “Come and sit.” He stood up. “You'll be wantin' a beer, will you?” These days he was more solicitous of his daughter; handing over her wages to him every week had bought her better treatment.

“And a pie, if there's any left,” Maggie called after him as she took his vacated place next to her mother. “Hallo, Mam.”

“Hallo, duck.” Bet Butterfield yawned. “You all done, then?”

“I am—and you?”

“For the moment.” Mother and daughter sat side by side in weary companionship.

“Is Charlie here?” Maggie asked, trying not to sound hopeful. “Oh, never mind, there he is.” Though her brother bothered her less than before—another bonus from her wages was that Dick Butterfield reined in Charlie—she was always more at ease when she was alone with her parents.

“Anything happenin' here?” she asked her mother.

“Nah. Oh—did you know that the Kellaways are going to Dublin?” Bet Butterfield had a habit of changing the possible into the definite.

Maggie snapped upright. “What?”

“'Tis true. They're leaving this week.”

Maggie narrowed her eyes. “Can't be. Who told you?”

Bet Butterfield shifted in her seat, Maggie's disbelief making her nervous. “Maisie Kellaway.”

“Why didn't Jem tell me? I saw him the other night!”

Bet Butterfield shrugged.

“But they're mad to go! They're not travelers. It was hard enough for them to come here from Dorsetshire—and they're just startin' to settle. Why would Jem hide it from me?” Maggie tried to keep the note of hysteria from rising in her words, but Bet Butterfield heard it.

“Calm yourself, duck. Didn't know you cared so much. Pity you weren't here five minutes ago—you could've asked Maisie herself.”

“She was here?”

“She was.” Bet Butterfield fiddled with an end of her shawl, picked up her glass of beer, then set it down.

“Maisie don't go to pubs. What was she doing here, Mam?” Maggie persisted.

Bet Butterfield frowned into her beer. “She was with that circus man. You know.” She waved her hand in the air. “The one what rides the horses. John Astley.”

“John Astley?” Even as she shouted his name, Maggie shot to her feet. Neighboring drinkers looked up.

“Careful, Mags,” Dick Butterfield said, halting in front of her with two full glasses and a pie balanced on their rims. “You don't want to lose your beer 'fore you've even tasted it.”

“I just saw John Astley outside! But he was with a—” Maggie stopped, horrified that she hadn't looked closely enough at the figure in the gutter to recognize her as Maisie. “Where were they going?”

“Said he was takin' her home,” Bet Butterfield muttered, her eyes lowered.

“And you believed him?” Maggie's voice rose.

“Stay out of it, gal,” Dick Butterfield said sharply. “It an't your business.”

Maggie looked from her mother's bent head to her father's set face, and knew then that they had already had this argument.

“You can have my beer,” she said to Dick Butterfield, and pushed through the crowd.

“Maggie! You get back here, gal!” Dick Butterfield barked, but Maggie had pulled open the door and plunged into the fog.

It was dark now, with only the street lamps cutting through the dense mist, casting weak, yellowy green pools of light at their bases. Maggie ran past the spot—now deserted—where she had last seen John Astley and Maisie, and headed down Bastille Row. She passed her own house, then stopped a neighbor just going inside two doors down. He had not seen the couple. When he shut the door behind him, Maggie was alone on the street in the fog.

She hesitated, then ran on. In a minute she reached the gap between the houses, where an alley led to the field around Hercules Hall and its stables. She stood looking down the dark passageway, for there were no lights on at Philip Astley's house to guide her through it. She could not go around and enter by the Hercules Buildings alley on the opposite side of the field, however—it was a long way around and just as dark. As she stood, undecided, the fog swirled around her, leaving a shiny, sulfurous film of sweat on her face. Maggie gulped. She could hear the sound of her heavy breath thrown back at her.

Then a figure stepped out of the fog behind her, and Maggie gasped—it was so like the man looming out at her from another fog on another night. The scream got caught in her throat, though, and she was grateful for that—for the figure was her brother, who would have teased her ever after for screaming in his face.

Maggie grabbed his arm before he could speak. “Charlie, c'mon, we have to go down here!” She tried to pull him along the passage.

Despite his lean frame, when Charlie planted his feet, it was impossible to move him, and Maggie's arm-pulling had no effect. “Hang on a minute, Miss Cut-Throat. Where do you think you're takin' me?”

“Maisie,” Maggie hissed. “He's taken Maisie down here, I'm sure of it. We have to get to them before he…he…”

“He what?” Charlie seemed to enjoy drawing this out.

“You know what he's goin' to do. D'you really want him to ruin her?”

“Didn't you hear Pa say it was none of our business? The rest of the pub did.”

“Course it's our business. It's your business. You like her. You know you do.”

Charlie's face hardened. He did not want others—particularly his sister—thinking he had such feelings.

“Charlie, please.”

Charlie shook his head.

Maggie dropped his arm. “Then why'd you follow me here? Don't tell me you didn't follow me—no one'd be out here just for a wander.”

“Thought I'd see what you're so bothered about.”

“Well, now you know. And if you're not goin' to help me, then go away.” To make clear that she would do this on her own if she had to, Maggie stepped into the darkness, though beads of sweat broke out once again on her upper lip and brow.

“Hang on a minute,” Charlie said. “I'll come with you, if you tell me something first.”

Maggie turned back. “What?” Even as she said it, her stomach clenched, for she knew there was only one thing about her that interested her brother.

“What was it like?”

“What was what like?” she said, playing his game of drawing it out, giving him the time and space he craved for the line he was now to deliver.

“What was it like to kill a man?”

Maggie had not heard these words spoken aloud, and they had the effect of taking her clenched stomach and twisting it, knocking the wind out of her as effectively as if Charlie had punched her.

There was a pause while she recovered her voice. It gave her the time to think of something that would satisfy him quickly and move them on. “Powerful,” she answered, saying what she thought he wanted to hear, though it was the opposite of what she had actually felt. “Like I could do anything.”

What she had really felt that night a year ago was that she had actually killed a part of herself rather than someone else, for she felt sometimes that she was dead now rather than alive. She knew, though, that Charlie would never understand that; she herself didn't. Mr. Blake might understand it, though, she thought, for it fell into his realm of opposites. One day maybe she would get him to explain it to her so that she would know where she was. “Nothing was the same after that,” she added truthfully. “I don't know as it ever will be.”

Charlie nodded. His smile made Maggie shudder. “All right,” he said. “Where we going?”

Maisie felt much better after being sick, for it cleared the rum from her. She was sober enough to say to John Astley as the stables appeared out of the fog, “You taking me to see your horse?”

“Yes.”

He did, in fact, lead her to the stall where his chestnut mare was stabled, lighting a candle first so that they could see. After the rehearsal at the amphitheatre the mare had been brought here and groomed, watered, and fed, and was standing stolidly, chewing, waiting for a circus boy to come and get her for the evening performance. She snorted when she saw John Astley, who reached over and patted her neck. “Hallo there, my darling,” he murmured, with considerably more feeling than he used with people.

Maisie also reached out a timid hand to stroke the horse's nose. “Oh, she be lovely!”

“Yes, she is.” John Astley was relieved that Maisie was no longer quite so drunk. “Here,” he said, stooping to fill a ladle from a bucket of water. “You'll want a drink.”

“Thank'ee, sir.” Maisie took the ladle, drank, and wiped her lips.

“Come here a moment.” John Astley led the way past other horses—Miss Hannah Smith's stallion among them—to a stall on the end.

“Which horse—oh!” Maisie peeked in to see nothing but a pile of straw. John Astley set the candle down on an upturned bucket and pulled a blanket from the corner, which he spread out over the straw. “Come and sit with me for a moment.” The stench of horses all around had aroused him, and the bulge of his groin was prominent.

Maisie hesitated, her eyes drawn to the bulge. She had known this moment would arrive, though she had not allowed herself to think about it. What girl nearing womanhood does not know, after all? The whole world seems to wait and watch for it, a girl's move from one side of the river to the other. It seemed strange to Maisie that it should come down to a blanket that stank of horse on a bed of straw, in a dim puddle of light, surrounded by fog and dark and London. She had not pictured it that way. But there was John Astley holding out his hand, and she reaching across and taking it.

By the time Maggie and Charlie reached the stall John Astley had her chemise off, and her stays loosened and pulled down so that her pale breasts had popped out. He had a nipple in his mouth, a hand up her skirt, and the other holding her hand over his groin and teaching her to stroke him. Maggie and Charlie stared. It was agonizing to Maggie how long it took for the couple to realize the Butterfields were there and stop what they were doing—plenty of time for her to ponder just how embarrassing and inappropriate it was to watch lovers unawares. She had not felt that seven months before when she and Jem had seen the Blakes in their summerhouse, but that somehow had been different. For one thing, they had been farther away, not right under her nose. And since Maggie hadn't known them well, she could look on them more objectively. Now hearing Maisie groan flooded her with shame. “Leave off her!” she shouted.

John Astley leapt back and to his feet in one movement, and Maisie sat up in a daze of pleasure and confusion, so befuddled that she did not immediately cover her breasts, though Maggie made frantic gestures at her. Charlie Butterfield kept looking from John Astley to Maisie's exposed flesh, until at last Maisie pulled up her stays.

To Maggie's surprise, no one responded as she'd expected them to. John Astley did not show remorse or shame; nor did he run away. Maisie did not cry and hide her face, or scramble away from her seducer and go to Maggie. Charlie did not challenge John Astley, but stood gaping, his hands at his sides. Maggie herself was frozen in place.

John Astley didn't know who Maggie was—he was not in the habit of noticing neighborhood children—but he recognized Charlie as the boy who had bumped into him in Hercules Tavern, and wondered if he was sufficiently drunk or angry to act.

The horseman would have to do something to take charge. He had not thought lying with this girl could possibly be so difficult, but now that he had been with her on the straw, he was determined to return to it. He didn't have much time, either—the circus boys would come soon for the horses for the evening's performance. However, obstacles always strengthened John Astley's resolve. “What in hell's name are you doing here? Get out of my stables!”

At last Maggie found her voice, though it came out feebly. “What you doin' to her?”

John Astley snorted. “Get out of my stables,” he repeated, “or I'll have you sent to Newgate so fast you won't have time to wipe your arse!”

At the mention of Newgate, Charlie shifted from one foot to the other. Dick Butterfield had spent time in that prison and advised his son to avoid it if at all possible. He was also uneasy being in a stables at all, with horses all about waiting to kick him.

Now Maisie began to cry—the sensation of swinging from one extreme emotion to its opposite was too much for her. “Why don't you go!” she moaned.

It took Maggie a moment to realize that the words were di-rected at her. It was gradually dawning on her that perhaps no one else thought that what had been happening was wrong. John Astley of course thought nothing of lying with a girl in the stables; he'd done it dozens of times. To Charlie a man was simply having what he wanted and a girl was giving it to him; indeed, he was beginning to look sheepish for interrupting them. Maisie herself was not protesting and—Maggie admitted—had seemed to be enjoying herself. Only Maggie linked the act to the man in the fog on Lovers' Lane. Now she, rather than the man, was being made out to be the criminal. All of her indignation suddenly fled, leaving her without the energy she needed to fight.

There was no Charlie to back her, either. Much as he hated John Astley, he was also cowed by his authority, and quickly lost what little confidence he possessed to stand up to such a man, alone, in a stable in the fog, surrounded by hateful horses, and with no friends about to encourage him. If only Jem were here, Maggie thought. He would know what to do.

“C'mon, Maggie,” Charlie said, and began to shuffle out of the stall.

“Wait.” Maggie fixed her eyes on the other girl. “Come with us, Miss Piddle. Get up and we'll go and find Jem, all right?”

“Leave her alone,” John Astley commanded. “She's free to do as she likes, aren't you, my dear?”

“That means she's free to go with us if she wants to. C'mon, Maisie—are you comin' with us or stayin' here?”

Maisie looked from Maggie to John Astley and back again. She closed her eyes so that she could say it more easily, though taking her sight away gave her the sensation of falling. “I want to stay.”

Even then, Maggie might have remained, for surely they wouldn't continue as long as she was there. But John Astley pulled a whip out from the straw and said, “Get out,” and that decided matters. Maggie and Charlie backed away—Maggie reluctant, Charlie in his relief pulling her after him. The horses whinnied when they passed, as if commenting on the Butterfields' lack of courage.