Maisie broke in. “Rosie can sew. I know she can. She used to make buttons with me. Oh, I know we can help her!”
During all this talk, they had been walking steadily, turning here and there to follow the mourners. Suddenly the funeral cart stopped in front of a gate behind which rows of gravestones loomed. They had arrived at Bunhill Fields Burying Ground.
6
Jem had not really considered what it was he had come all this way for. He had supposed Bunhill Fields would be grand, being in London-the Westminster Abbey equivalent of a graveyard, something you walked miles to see. To his surprise, it seemed to him not so different from the Piddletrenthide church graveyard. It was, of course, much bigger. Ten Piddle church grounds could have fit comfortably into this field. Moreover, there was no church or chapel for services or spiritual comfort, but simply row upon row of gravestones, broken up here and there by larger monuments, and by a few trees-oak, plane, mulberry. Nor was it sheltered from the outside world as a place for quiet contemplation, for a large brewery jutted into the field, filling it with the worldly, lively smell of hops, and doubtless very busy during the week.
Yet as he stared at the gravestones through the iron railings, waiting with the girls for Mr. Blake’s mother to be carried to her resting place, and later, as a few graveside words were spoken and they idled among the stones, Jem felt Bunhill Fields send him into the silent reverie-part tranquil, part melancholic-so familiar to him from when he used to wander around the Piddletrenthide church graveyard. Now that village graveyard included Tommy’s grave, though, and Jem knew he would feel different there. “Pear tree’s loss,” he murmured, making Maggie turn her head and stare.
The funeral was over quickly. “They didn’t have a church service,” Jem whispered to Maggie as they leaned against a large rectangular monument and watched from a distance while Mr. Blake and his brothers shoveled earth into the grave, then handed the spade over to professional gravediggers.
“They don’t here,” Maggie explained. “This is a Dissenters’ graveyard. They don’t use prayer books or nothing, and the grounds han’t been blessed. Mr. Blake’s a proper radical. Didn’t you know that?”
“Do that mean he’ll go to Hell?” Maisie asked, plucking at a daisy growing at the base of the grave.
“Dunno-maybe.” With her finger Maggie traced the name on the tombstone, though she could not read it. “We’re all going to Hell, I expect. I’ll wager there is no Heaven.”
“Maggie, don’t say that!” Maisie cried.
“Well, maybe there’s a Heaven for you, Miss Piddle. You’ll be awfully lonely there, though.”
“I don’t see why there has to be just the one or t’other,” Jem said. “Can’t there be something that’s more a bit of both?”
“That’s the world, Jem,” Maggie said.
“I suppose.”
“Well said, my girl. Well said, Maggie.”
The children jumped. Mr. Blake had detached himself from the funeral party and come up behind them. “Oh, hallo, Mr. Blake,” Maggie said, wondering if he was angry with them for following him. He did not seem angry, though-after all, he was praising her for something.
“You have answered the question I posed you on Westminster Bridge,” he continued. “I wondered when you would.”
“I did? What question?” Maggie searched her memory, but couldn’t recall much of the heady conversation they’d had with Mr. Blake on the bridge.
“I remember,” Jem said. “You were asking what was in the middle of the river-between its opposite banks.”
“Yes, my boy, and Maggie has just said what it is. Do you understand the answer?” He turned his intense gaze on Jem, who looked back at him, though it hurt, the way staring at the sun does, for the man’s glittering eyes cut through whatever mask Jem had donned to go this deep into London. As they looked at each other, he felt stripped naked, as if Mr. Blake could see everything inside him-his fear of all that was new and different about London; his concern for Maisie and his parents; his shock at the state of Rosie Wightman; his new, surprising feelings for Maggie; his deep sorrow for the death of his brother, of his cat, of everyone who was lost and would be lost, himself included. Jem was confused and exhilarated by his afternoon with Maggie, by the odors of life and death at Smithfield’s, by the beautiful clothes in St. James’s Park and the wretched rags of St. Giles, by Maggie’s laughter and the blood from her nose.
Mr. Blake saw all of this in him. He took it in, and he nodded to Jem, and Jem felt different-harder and clearer, as if he were a stone that had been burnished by sand.
“The world,” he said. “What lies between two opposites is us.”
Mr. Blake smiled. “Yes, my boy; yes, my girl. The tension between contraries is what makes us ourselves. We have not just one, but the other too, mixing and clashing and sparking inside us. Not just light, but dark. Not just at peace, but at war. Not just innocent, but experienced.” His eyes rested for a moment on the daisy Maisie still held. “It is a lesson we could all do well to learn, to see all the world in a flower. Now, I must just speak with Robert. Good day to you, my children.”
“Z’long, sir,” Jem said.
They watched him thread his way through the graves. He did not stop at the funeral party as they’d expected, however, but continued on until he knelt by a grave.
“What were that all about?” Maisie asked.
Jem frowned. “You tell her, Maggie. I’ll be back in a minute.” He picked his way through stone slabs until he could crouch behind one near Mr. Blake. His neighbor was looking very animated, his eyes glinting, though there was little light to make them so-indeed, the clouds had grown thicker, and Jem felt a raindrop on his hand as he hid and listened.
“I feel it pushing at me from all sides,” Mr. Blake was saying. “The pressure of it. And it will get worse, I know it, with this news from France. The fear of originality will stifle those who speak with different voices. I can tell only you my thoughts-and Kate, bless her.” After a pause, he continued, “I have seen such things, Robert, that would make you weep. The faces in London streets are marked by Hell.”
After another, longer pause, he began to chant:
I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man
In every infant’s cry of fear
In every voice, in every ban
The mind-forged manacles I hear.
“I’ve been working on that one. I am writing all new, for things have changed so. Think on it, until we meet again, my brother.” He got to his feet. Jem waited until he had gone back to the group in black, then went around to look at the headstone Mr. Blake had knelt by. Doing so confirmed what he had begun to suspect about the brother Mr. Blake spoke of so much: The stone read “Robert Blake, 1762-1787.”
7
The undertakers with their cart moved off in one direction, the Blakes in the other, down the long tree-lined avenue that led to the street. The infrequent spots of rain were beginning to fall more persistently. “Oh dear,” Maisie said, pulling her shawl closely around her shoulders. “I never thought it would rain when I came out. And we be such a long way from home. What do we do now?”
Maggie and Jem did not have a plan beyond reaching Bunhill Fields. It was enough to have done that. Now it was dim with rain, and there was no longer a goal to reach, other than getting home.
Out of habit, Maggie followed the Blakes, with Jem and Maisie falling in behind her. When the family reached the street, they did not turn down it and retrace their steps. Instead, the group got into a carriage that sat waiting for them. It set off briskly, and though the children ran after it, it soon left them behind. They stopped running and stood in the street, watching the carriage race far away from them until it turned right and disappeared. The rain was coming down faster now. They hurried along the street until they came to the crossroads, but the carriage could not be seen. Maggie looked about. She didn’t recognize where they were; the carriage was taking a different route back.