For the Astleys, however, the sparks were green tears. They dismounted from their horses at the same moment as John Fox, his half-lidded eyes opened wide on this occasion, arrived at their side. “Fox!” Philip Astley bellowed. “Have the men all got out?”
“Yes, sir,” he reported, “and no injuries but for John Honor, who hurt himself escaping out of a window.”
“How bad is he?”
John Fox shrugged.
“Have a boy fetch Honor’s wife, and a doctor.”
Philip Astley looked around and took in the situation quickly. As a military man as well as a circus owner, he was used to crises and to directing large numbers of people, many of them temperamental or under strain. A crowd of gaping men and hysterical women proved no challenge to him. He stepped naturally into his position of authority. “Friends!” he shouted over the pops of firecrackers and the hiss of fiery serpents. “We have need of your services, and quickly! Women and children, run home and fetch every bucket you can find. Quick as you can, now!” He clapped his hands, and the women and children scattered like dust blown from a mantelpiece.
“Now, men! Form a chain from the fire to the nearest well. Where is the nearest well?” He looked around and descended on a surprised man idling across the street from the blazing house. “Sir, where is the nearest well? As you can see, we need quantities of water, sir-quantities!”
The man thought for a moment. “There’s one down by Shield’s Nursery,” he said, not quite matching Astley’s sense of urgency with one of his own. He thought again. “But the closest is in there.” He pointed through the fence along which the orphan girls ranged in a mass of dark brown serge.
“Open the gates, ladies, and have no fear-you are doing us a great service!” Philip Astley cried, ever the showman.
As the gates swung back, a line of men-and soon women and children, and even a few of the braver orphans-strung out across the yard to the well near the Asylum building, and began passing buckets of water along toward the fire. Philip and John Astley themselves stood at the front of the line and threw the water onto the flames, then handed the empty buckets to children who raced with them back to the beginning of the line.
It was organized so quickly and effectively, once Philip Astley had taken charge, that it was impossible for anyone standing nearby not to want to join in. Soon there were enough people for two lines and twice the buckets. Along those lines could be found Dick and Charlie Butterfield, Jem and Maisie Kellaway, Bet and Maggie Butterfield, and even Thomas and Anne Kellaway who, like Jem, had found it impossible to remain at home with so much noise going on, and had come over to see the blaze. All of them passed buckets till their arms ached, none of them knowing that there were other family members there doing the same.
The Astleys threw hundreds of buckets of water onto the flames. For a time it seemed to be helping, as the fire on one side of the ground floor was extinguished. But other flames kept finding stores of fireworks and, igniting them, sent them blasting and rocketing all over and starting fires again. Then too, the fire had spread quickly upstairs, and burning parts of the ceiling and roof kept raining downward and reigniting the bottom. Nothing could stop the destruction of the house. Eventually the Astleys admitted defeat and concentrated the contents of the buckets on either side of the house to keep the fire from spreading to other properties.
At last Philip Astley sent word to those at the well to stop drawing water. The last bucket moved along each line, and when people turned to their neighbor for the next one, as they had been doing for the last hour, they found none was being swung at them. They looked around, blinked, then began to move toward the house to see the effect of all of their work. It was dispiriting to find the building in ruins, a wrecked gap among the other houses, like a rotted tooth splintered and pulled from its neighbors. Although the fire was now out, smoke still billowed from the charred remains, darkening the air so that it seemed like dusk rather than midmorning.
6
There was an awkward pause after the energized organization of the firefighting. Then Philip Astley once again stepped up to the responsibility of raising spirits. “Friends, you have come to the aid of Astley’s Circus, and I am forever in your debt,” he began, standing as straight as he could, though the physical exertion of the last hour had taken its toll on him. “This has been a grievous, calami-tous accident. Stored here were the fireworks meant for the celebration of the birthday of His Majesty the King in two days’ time. But we can thank God that only one man has been injured, and because of your heroic efforts, no other properties have caught fire. Nor will Astley’s Circus be affected; indeed, the show will take place this evening at the usual time of half-past six, with tickets still available at the box office. If you haven’t seen it, you will have missed an event far more spectacular than this fire. I am tremendously grateful to you, my neighbors, who have worked tirelessly to keep this unfortunate incident from becoming a tragedy. I am…”
He went on in the same vein. Some listened to him; some didn’t. Some needed to hear the words; others wanted only to sit down, to have a drink or a meal or a gossip or a sleep. People began to mill about, looking for family and friends.
Dick Butterfield stood close behind Philip Astley so that he might overhear what the situation called for. For instance, when he heard Philip Astley tell a man who lived in the street that he would rebuild the house immediately, Dick Butterfield began thinking of a load of bricks he knew of down in Kennington that were just waiting to be used. In a few hours he would go down to the pub where the brickmaker took his dinner and speak with him. There were a few timber merchants along the river he would call on in the meantime. He smiled to himself-though the smile disappeared quick enough when he saw Charlie Butterfield kicking burning embers about in the street with some other lads. Dick Butterfield grabbed his son and pulled him out of the makeshift game. “Use your head, you idiot! How does that look to a man who’s just lost his property for you to be making sport of it!”
Charlie scowled and slunk to a less crowded spot, away from his father and the boys he had been with. Though he had never admitted it to anyone, he hated helping his father. The line of business that Dick Butterfield pursued required a certain charm that even Charlie knew he didn’t have and would never develop.
Once they’d finished with the buckets, Maisie dragged Jem to the crowd gathered around Philip Astley so that she could watch John Astley, who stood close by, his face black with ash. Some in the crowd who liked to speculate before the smoke had even dispersed were already muttering to one another that, as John Astley was the general manager of the circus, he ought to be making the rousing speeches rather than his father. Old Astley couldn’t stay away and let his son run the show, they whispered. Until he truly let go, his son would continue to drink and rut his way through the circus women, as he just had with Miss Laura Devine, Europe’s finest slack-rope dancer. That sighting at the window by the strawberry seller had already jumped beyond one set of old eyes. Gossip spread quickly in Lambeth. It was a kind of currency, with coins newly minted every hour. The strawberry seller held that particular coin with Miss Devine’s head stamped on it, and even as she passed buckets, the old woman was spending the coin on her neighbors.
Maisie had not heard this gossip, however, and could still look passionately on John Astley as he gazed into the distance, while his father spilled over with gratitude. The charitable might say that behind his charcoal-colored mask he was stunned by what had happened to the King’s fireworks and the Astley laboratory; others would say that he simply looked bored.