Burning Bright (9 page)

“Where you been?” she greeted Jem. “I been waitin' for you for hours!”

“We was just bending a chair arm. It be easier with two. Anyway, I'm here now.”

Since the night on Westminster Bridge, Jem and Maggie had spent much of their free time together, with Maggie introducing Jem to her favorite places along the river and teaching him how to get about on the streets. While she irritated him sometimes with her superior knowledge, he knew that Maggie was also giving him the confidence to explore and extend the boundaries of his world. And he found he wanted to be with her. Growing up in the Piddle Valley he had played with girls, but never felt about them the way he had begun to about Maggie—though he would never tell her so.

“You know we missed Miss Devine,” Maggie remarked as they crossed Astley's field.

“I saw a bit of it. Ma were watching from our window.”

“She didn't fall, did she?”

“No—and just as well, as there weren't a net or cushion. How do she do it, anyway? Walk up a rope like that, and so smooth?”

Miss Laura Devine's act included, apart from her celebrated twirls and swings, a walk up a rope left slack rather than pulled tight. She made it look as if she were strolling through a garden, pausing now and then to admire the flowers.

“D'you know, she's never fallen,” Maggie said. “Not once. Everybody else made mistakes in their acts—I even saw John Astley fall off his horse once! But not Miss Devine.”

They reached the wall at the bottom of Miss Pelham's garden, a sunny spot where they often met to sit and watch the goings-on around Philip Astley's house. Maggie set down the tankard and they squatted with their backs against the warm bricks. From there they had a perfect view of the circus acts.

Occasionally, when the weather was good, Philip Astley had his performers rehearse in the yard in front of Hercules Hall. It was a way not only of emptying the amphitheatre so that it could be cleaned, and refreshing stale acts by rehearsing them in a new location, but also of giving his neighbors an impromptu thanks for putting up with the disruption the circus's presence inevitably caused the area. The day was never announced, but the moment jugglers wandered into the field and began tossing flaming torches back and forth, or a monkey was placed on a horse's back and sent galloping around the yard, or, as today, a rope was strung between two poles and Miss Laura Devine stepped out onto it, word went out, and the field quickly filled with onlookers.

As Maggie and Jem settled into place, tumblers began turning backflips across the yard and building a human pyramid, first kneeling, then standing on one another's shoulders. At the same time, horses were led out into the field and several riders—not John Astley, however—began practicing a complicated maneuver in which they jumped back and forth between saddles. Jem enjoyed watching the acts in these informal surroundings more than at the amphitheatre, for the performers were not trying quite so hard, and they stopped to rework moves, breaking the illusion he had found so hard to accept during a performance. They also made mistakes he found endearing—the boy at the top of the human pyramid slipped and grabbed a handful of hair to stop himself, making the owner of the hair yelp; a rider slid right off the back of his saddle and landed on his bum; the monkey jumped from its horse and climbed to the roof of Hercules Hall, where it refused to come down.

While they watched, Jem answered questions about Piddletrenthide, a place that seemed to fascinate Maggie. In true city fashion, she was particularly amused by the notion that there was so little choice in the village—just one baker, one tailor, one miller, one blacksmith, one vicar. “What if you don't like the vicar's sermons?” she demanded. “Or the baker's bread's too hard? Or you don't pay the publican in time an' he won't serve you any more beer?” The Butterfields had had plenty of experience with owing money and having shopkeepers banging on their doors demanding payment. There were several businesses in Lambeth—pie shops, taverns, chandlers—they could no longer go to.

“Oh, there be more'n one pub. There's the Five Bells, where Pa goes, the Crown and the New Inn—that be in Piddlehinton, next village along. And if you want a different sermon, there be a church in Piddlehinton too.”

“Another Piddle! How many other Piddles are there?”

“A few.”

Before Jem could list them, however, a disturbance broke in on their conversation. Wandering among the various performers in the Hercules Hall yard was a boy dragging a heavy log attached to his leg, of the sort used to keep horses from straying. A cry arose near him, and when Jem and Maggie looked over they saw Mr. Blake standing over him. “Who has put this hobble on you, boy?” he was shouting at the terrified lad, for in his anger—even though it was not meant for the boy—Mr. Blake could be frightening, with his heavy brow contorted, his prominent eyes glaring like a hawk's, his stocky body thrust forward.

The boy could not answer, and it was left to one of the jugglers to step forward and say, “Mr. Astley done it, sir. But—”

“Loose him at once!” Mr. Blake cried. “No Englishman should be subjected to such a misery. I would not treat a slave like this, no, nor even a murderer—much less an innocent child!”

The juggler, similarly intimidated by Mr. Blake's manner, melted into the crowd that had gathered, Maggie and Jem among them; and as no one else stepped forward to help, Mr. Blake himself knelt by the boy and began to fumble with the knots in the rope that attached the log to his ankle. “There you are, my boy,” he said, throwing off the rope at last. “The man who has done this to you is not fit to be your master, and a coward if he does not answer for it!”

“Is someone calling me a coward?” boomed Philip Astley's unmistakable circus voice. “Stand and call me that to my face, sir!” With those words he pushed through the crowd and stepped up to Mr. Blake, who rose to his feet and stood so close to the other man that their bellies almost touched.

“You are indeed a coward, sir, and a bully!” he cried, his eyes blazing. “To do such a thing to a child! No, Kate,” he growled at Mrs. Blake, who had joined the circle of spectators and was now pulling at her husband's arm. “No, I will not stand down to intimi-dation. Answer me, sir. Why have you shackled this innocent?”

Philip Astley glanced down at the boy, who was in tears by now with the unwanted attention, and in fact was holding on to the rope as if he did not want to let it go. A small smile played across Philip Astley's lips, and he took a step back, the flames of his anger quenched. “Ah, sir, it is the hobble you're objecting to, is it?”

“Of course I'm objecting to it—any civilized man would! No one deserves such treatment. You must desist, and make amends, sir. Yes, apologize to the lad and to us too, for making us witness such degradation!”

Rather than reply in kind, Philip Astley chuckled—a response that made Mr. Blake bunch his fists at his side and lunge forward. “Do you think this is a jest, sir? I assure you it is not!”

Philip Astley held up his hands in a placatory gesture. “Tell me, Mr.—Blake, is it? My neighbor, I believe, though we have not met, for Fox collects the rent from you, don't you, Fox?” John Fox, watching the encounter from the crowd, gave a laconic nod. “Well, Mr. Blake, I should like to inquire: Have you asked the boy why he's wearing the log?”

“I don't need to ask,” Mr. Blake replied. “It is clear as day that the child is being punished in this barbarous manner.”

“Still, perhaps we should hear from the lad. Davey!” Philip Astley turned his foghorn toward the boy, who did not cower from it as he had from Mr. Blake's twisted brow and fiery eyes, for he was used to Astley's boom. “Why were you wearing the log, lad?”

“'Cause you put it on me, sir,” the boy replied.

“D'you see?” Mr. Blake turned to the crowd for support.

Philip Astley held up a hand again. “And why did I put it on you, Davey?”

“So's I could get used to it, sir. For the show.”

“Which show is that?”

“The panto, sir.
Harlequin's Vagaries
.”

“And what part are you playing in this panto—which, by the way, will be the centerpiece of the new program and will feature John Astley as the Harlequin!” Philip Astley couldn't resist an opportunity to promote his show, and directed this last remark at the crowd.

“A prisoner, sir.”

“And what are you doing now, Davey?”

“Rehearsin', sir.”

“Rehearsing,” Philip Astley repeated, turning with a flourish back to Mr. Blake, who was still glaring at him. “You see, Davey was rehearsing a part, sir. He was pretending. You, sir, of all people will understand that. You are an engraver, are you not, sir? An artist. I have seen your work, and very fine it is too, very fine. You capture an essence, sir. Yes, you do.”

Mr. Blake looked as if he did not want to be affected by this flattery but was nonetheless.

“You create things, do you not, sir?” Philip Astley continued. “You draw real things, but your drawings, your engravings are not the thing itself, are they? They are illusions, sir. I think despite our differences”—he glanced sideways at Mr. Blake's plain black coat as against his own red one, with its gleaming brass buttons that his nieces polished daily—“we are in the same business, sir: We are both dealers in illusions. You make 'em with your pen and ink and graver, while I”—Philip Astley waved his hands at the people around him—“I make a world out of people and props, every night at the amphitheatre. I take the audience out of their world of cares and woes, and I give 'em fantasy, so they think they are somewhere else. Now, in order to make it look real, sometimes we have to
do
real. If Davey here is to play a prisoner, we get him to drag a prisoner's hobble. No one would believe in him as a prisoner if he were just dancing about, now, would they? Just as you make your drawings from real people—”

“That is not where my drawings come from,” Mr. Blake interrupted. He had been listening with great interest, and now spoke more normally, the sting of anger drawn from him. “But I understand you, sir. I do. However, I see it differently. You are making a distinction between reality and illusion. You see them as opposites, do you not?”

“Of course,” Philip Astley replied.

“To me they are not opposites at all—they are all one. Young Davey playing a prisoner
is
a prisoner. Another example: My brother Robert, standing over there”—he pointed to an empty patch of sunlight, which everyone turned to stare at—“is the same to me as someone whom I may touch.” He reached out and flicked the sleeve of Philip Astley's red coat.

Maggie and Jem gazed at the empty spot, where dust from the yard was floating. “Him an' his opposites,” Maggie muttered. Even a month later she still felt the sting of Mr. Blake's questions on Westminster Bridge, and her inability to answer them. She and Jem had not discussed their conversation with the Blakes; they were still trying to understand it.

Philip Astley was also not inclined to take on such heady topics. He gave the dusty spot a perfunctory glance, though clearly Robert Blake was not there, then turned back to Mr. Blake with a quizzical look, as if trying to think how to respond to this unusual observation. In the end, he decided not to probe and perhaps be drawn further into uncharted territory, which would take more time and patience than he had to navigate through. “So you see, sir,” he said, as if there had been no digression, “Davey is not being punished with his log. I can understand your concern, sir, and how it must have looked to you. It is very humane of you. But I can assure you, sir: Davey is well looked after, aren't you, lad? Off you go, now.” He handed the boy a penny.

Mr. Blake was not finished, however. “You create worlds each night at your amphitheatre,” he announced, “but when the audi-ence is gone and the torches have been blown out and the doors locked, what is left but the memory of them?”

Philip Astley frowned. “Very fine memories they are, sir, and nothing wrong with them—they see a man through many a cold, lonely night.”

“Undoubtedly. But that is where we differ, sir. My songs and pictures do not become memories—they are always there to be looked at. And they are not illusions, but physical manifestations of worlds that do exist.”

Philip Astley looked about himself theatrically, as if trying to catch sight of the back of his coat. “Where do they exist, sir? I have not seen these worlds.”

Mr. Blake tapped his brow.

Philip Astley snorted. “Then you have a head teeming with life, sir! Teeming! You must find it hard to sleep for the clamor.”

Mr. Blake smiled directly at Jem, who happened to be in his line of vision. “It is true that I have never needed much sleep.”

Philip Astley wrinkled his brow and stood still in thought, a pose highly unusual for him. The crowd began to shift restlessly. “What you are saying, sir, if I understand you,” he said at last, “is that you are taking ideas in your head and making them into something you can see and hold in your hand; while I am taking real things—horses and acrobats and dancers—and turning them into memories.”