“It was there already,” Maggie lied.
“Be sure and fold it so it’s hidden, then,” her mother said with a yawn and a shake of her head.
Bet Butterfield often declared that her blood ran with lye, for her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had all been laundresses in Lincolnshire. It had not occurred to her to do anything different in her life, not even when Dick Butterfield-young enough then that the map of wrinkles was not yet etched into his forehead-passed through her village on his way from Yorkshire to London and charmed her into following him. She arrived in Southwark, where they first lived, completely unimpressed by novelty, and insisted first thing-even before marrying-on buying a new washtub to replace the one she still regretted leaving back home. Bet didn’t mind the low pay, or the hours-she started her regular customers’ monthly washes at four in the morning and sometimes didn’t finish till midnight-or even the state of her hands, reduced to pigs’ trotters by the time she was twenty. Laundry was what she knew. Suggesting that she do something else would be like saying she could change the shape of her face. She continued to be astonished that not only was Maggie not very good at laundry, she was also not interested in learning to do it.
“Where’ve you been, then?” Bet Butterfield said suddenly, as if she had just woken up.
“Nowhere,” Maggie said. “Here, ironing.”
“No, just now you were out back, while the iron was heating.” It was surprising, the little things Bet Butterfield noticed when so often she seemed to be paying no attention.
“Oh. I was just in the garden for a minute, lookin’ at Astley’s people.”
Bet Butterfield glanced at the pile of sheets still to do; she’d agreed to take them home to iron for an extra shilling. “Well, stop spyin’ and get ironin’-you only done two.”
“And a half.” Maggie banged her iron across the sheet on the board. She only had to weather Bet Butterfield’s scrutiny for a little longer before her mother would lose interest and shut off her probing questions.
Indeed, Bet Butterfield’s eyes suddenly dropped and her whole face went slack, like a fist unclenching. She reached out for the iron. Maggie set it down and her mother took it up and began ironing so naturally she might have been walking or brushing her hair or scratching her arm. “Bring us some beer, would you, duck,” she said.
“None here,” Maggie announced, delighted with the errand, and the timing-for Jem was just now peering through the gap in the back fence. “I’ll just pop to the Pineapple.” She picked up a tankard from the sideboard and headed for the back door.
“Don’t push on that fence! Go round!” Bet Butterfield called.
But Maggie had already squeezed through the gap.
2
“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!”