“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 mustache 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!”
4
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.
Hercules Buildings was made up of a row of twenty-two brick houses, bookended by two pubs, the Pineapple and the Hercules Tavern. Each had three stories 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.
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 center, 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 mop cap that she must have fancied would go down well in London. Maggie smirked. One glance told her this family’s story: They were from the countryside, come 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 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 redbrick 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 shortcut. 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.