Finally he whispered her name.
Maggie sat up with a shout. “What? What is it?” She looked around wildly.
“Shhh.” Jem tried to calm her, cursing himself for frightening her. “Miss Pelham be close by. I just saw you here, from our window, and thought-well, I wanted to see if you was all right.”
Maggie rubbed her face, recovering her composure. “Course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason. It’s just-shouldn’t you be at the factory?”
“Oh, that.” She sighed, a grown-up sound Jem hadn’t heard from her before, and ran her fingers through tangled curls. “Too tired. I went this morning, then run off at dinnertime. All I want is a little sleep. You got anything to eat on you?”
“No. Did you not get any at the factory?”
Maggie laced her fingers together and stretched so that her shoulders humped back. “Nah, left while I could. Never mind, I’ll eat later.”
They sat awhile in silence, listening to the snipping of Miss Pelham at work on her roses. Jem’s eyes kept straying to Maggie’s arm, which was now hugging her knees.
“What you lookin’ at?” she said suddenly.
“Nothing.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I just wondered-what it tastes like.” He nodded at the dusty smear on her arm.
“Mustard? Like mustard, fool. Why-d’you want to lick it?” Maggie teasingly held it out.
Jem turned red, and Maggie pressed her advantage. “Go on,” she murmured. “I dare you.”
Though he wanted to, Jem didn’t want to admit it. He hesitated, then leaned over and ran the flat of his tongue a few inches through the mustard dust, the soft hairs that grew on her arm tickling his tastebuds. He felt dizzy with the sensation of tasting her warm, musky skin for just a moment before the harsh mustard exploded in his mouth, prickling at the back of his throat and making him cough. Maggie laughed, a sound he hadn’t heard enough of these days. He sat back, so ashamed and aroused that he didn’t notice the hairs on Maggie’s arms standing on end.
“Did you hear? Mr. Blake’s ma died,” he said, trying to find his way back to solid ground.
Maggie shivered, wrapping her arms around her knees again. “Has she? Poor Mr. Blake.”
“Funeral be tomorrow. Bunhill Fields, Miss Pelham said.”
“Really? I been there once, with Pa. Shall we go to it? Tomorrow’s Sunday, so we’re not workin’.”
Jem looked sideways at his friend. “We can’t do that-we didn’t even know her.”
“Don’t matter. You’ve not been over that way, have you?”
“Where?”
“Past St. Paul’s, by Smithfield’s. The older bit of London.”
“Don’t reckon I have.”
“You even been across the river?”
“Course I have. Remember when we went to Westminster Abbey?”
“That’s all? You been here six months and you been across the river just once?”
“Three times,” Jem corrected. “I went back to the Abbey once. And I’ve been across Blackfriars Bridge.” He didn’t tell Maggie that he’d gone across but not got off the bridge on the other side. He had stood and watched the chaos of London, and couldn’t bring himself to step into it.
“Go on-you’d like it,” Maggie persisted.
“What-the way you’d like the countryside?”
“Hah! It’s not the same.” When Jem continued to look dubious, Maggie added, “C’mon, it’ll be an adventure. We’ll follow Mr. Blake, like we’ve always wanted to do. What, you afraid?”
She sounded so much like her old self that Jem said, “All right. Yes.”
3
Jem did not tell his parents or Maisie where he was going. Anne Kellaway would forbid him to go so far into London; Maisie would want to come along. Normally Jem didn’t mind if his sister was with him and Maggie. Today, however, he was nervous, and didn’t want to be responsible for Maisie too. So he simply said he was going out, and though he didn’t meet Maisie’s eye, he could feel her pleading gaze.
Perhaps it was because she’d had extra sleep the previous day, but Maggie was more sparkling than she had been for many a Sunday. She had washed herself, hair as well, so that, except for the creases in her hands, her skin was a more normal color. She had put on a clean shift over her gown, tied a light blue neckerchief around her neck, and even wore a slightly crumpled straw hat with a broad brim, trimmed with a navy blue ribbon. Her shape was different too-her waist and chest sharper, more defined-and Jem realized she was wearing stays for the first time.
She took Jem’s arm with a laugh. “Shall we step into town, then?” she said, sticking her nose up in the air.
“You look nice.”
Maggie smiled and smoothed her shift over her stays, a gesture Maisie often made but that clearly was new to Maggie, as it had little effect on the wrinkles and bunches under her arms and at her waist. Jem suppressed an urge to run his own hands down her sides and squeeze her waist.
He glanced down at his patched, dusty breeches, coarse shirt, and plain brown coat that had once been his brother Sam’s. It hadn’t occurred to him to keep on his good church clothes for going into London; apart from worrying that they would be damaged or get dirty in the city, he would have had to explain to his family why he was wearing them. “Should I put on a better coat?” he asked.
“Don’t matter. I just like to dress up when I get the chance. Neighbors’d make fun of me if I wore this round here. C’mon, we’d best get back to the Blakes’. I been keeping an eye on the house but no one’s come out yet.”
They set themselves up to wait across from no. 13 Hercules Buildings, behind the low hedge that separated the field across the road from the road itself. It was not as sunny as the day before; still warm, but hazy and close. They lay in the grass, and now and then one of them would pop up to look over and see if there was any sign of Mr. Blake. They saw Miss Pelham leave with a friend, heading for the Apollo Gardens on Westminster Bridge Road, as she often did on a Sunday afternoon, to drink barley water and look at the flower displays. They saw John Astley ride out on his horse. They saw Thomas and Anne Kellaway and Maisie leave no. 12 and walk past them on their way down to the Thames.
Just after the Kellaways passed, the door to no. 13 opened and Mr. and Mrs. Blake stepped out, turning into Royal Row to make their way through back streets to Westminster Bridge. They were dressed as they always were: Mr. Blake wore a white shirt, black breeches buckled at the knee, worsted stockings, a black coat, and a black broad-brimmed hat like a Quaker’s; Mrs. Blake wore a dark brown dress with a white neckerchief, her creased bonnet, and a dark blue shawl. Indeed, they looked more like they were going for a Sunday afternoon stroll than to a funeral, except that they walked a little more quickly than usual, and with more purpose, as if they knew exactly where they were going, and that end point was more important than the journey there. Neither looked grim or upset. Mrs. Blake’s face was perhaps a little blank, and Mr. Blake’s eyes more firmly fixed on the horizon. As they seemed so ordinary, no one said anything or took off a hat as people might have done had they known the Blakes were mourners.
Maggie and Jem scrambled over the hedge and began to follow them. At first they stayed well behind them. But the Blakes never looked back, and by the time they crossed Westminster Bridge, the children had drawn close enough that they would be able to hear them speak. The Blakes did not talk, however; only Mr. Blake hummed to himself, and occasionally sang snatches of songs in a high-pitched voice.
Maggie nudged Jem. “Those an’t hymns, like what you’d expect him to be singing today. I think those are his songs what he’d got in his book. Them Songs of Innocence.”
“P’raps.” Jem was paying less attention to the Blakes and more to the scenery around him. They had passed Westminster Hall and the Abbey-where crowds were milling about after the end of one service or before the beginning of another-and continued straight along the road from the bridge. Soon it ran into a large green space dotted with trees, with a long narrow body of water in the middle.