It was dark now, with only the street lamps cutting through the dense mist, casting weak, yellowy green pools of light at their bases. Maggie ran past the spot-now deserted-where she had last seen John Astley and Maisie, and headed down Bastille Row. She passed her own house, then stopped a neighbor just going inside two doors down. He had not seen the couple. When he shut the door behind him, Maggie was alone on the street in the fog.
She hesitated, then ran on. In a minute she reached the gap between the houses, where an alley led to the field around Hercules Hall and its stables. She stood looking down the dark passageway, for there were no lights on at Philip Astley’s house to guide her through it. She could not go around and enter by the Hercules Buildings alley on the opposite side of the field, however-it was a long way around and just as dark. As she stood, undecided, the fog swirled around her, leaving a shiny, sulfurous film of sweat on her face. Maggie gulped. She could hear the sound of her heavy breath thrown back at her.
Then a figure stepped out of the fog behind her, and Maggie gasped-it was so like the man looming out at her from another fog on another night. The scream got caught in her throat, though, and she was grateful for that-for the figure was her brother, who would have teased her ever after for screaming in his face.
Maggie grabbed his arm before he could speak. “Charlie, c’mon, we have to go down here!” She tried to pull him along the passage.
Despite his lean frame, when Charlie planted his feet, it was impossible to move him, and Maggie’s arm-pulling had no effect. “Hang on a minute, Miss Cut-Throat. Where do you think you’re takin’ me?”
“Maisie,” Maggie hissed. “He’s taken Maisie down here, I’m sure of it. We have to get to them before he…he…”
“He what?” Charlie seemed to enjoy drawing this out.
“You know what he’s goin’ to do. D’you really want him to ruin her?”
“Didn’t you hear Pa say it was none of our business? The rest of the pub did.”
“Course it’s our business. It’s your business. You like her. You know you do.”
Charlie’s face hardened. He did not want others-particularly his sister-thinking he had such feelings.
“Charlie, please.”
Charlie shook his head.
Maggie dropped his arm. “Then why’d you follow me here? Don’t tell me you didn’t follow me-no one’d be out here just for a wander.”
“Thought I’d see what you’re so bothered about.”
“Well, now you know. And if you’re not goin’ to help me, then go away.” To make clear that she would do this on her own if she had to, Maggie stepped into the darkness, though beads of sweat broke out once again on her upper lip and brow.
“Hang on a minute,” Charlie said. “I’ll come with you, if you tell me something first.”
Maggie turned back. “What?” Even as she said it, her stomach clenched, for she knew there was only one thing about her that interested her brother.
“What was it like?”
“What was what like?” she said, playing his game of drawing it out, giving him the time and space he craved for the line he was now to deliver.
“What was it like to kill a man?”
Maggie had not heard these words spoken aloud, and they had the effect of taking her clenched stomach and twisting it, knocking the wind out of her as effectively as if Charlie had punched her.
There was a pause while she recovered her voice. It gave her the time to think of something that would satisfy him quickly and move them on. “Powerful,” she answered, saying what she thought he wanted to hear, though it was the opposite of what she had actually felt. “Like I could do anything.”
What she had really felt that night a year ago was that she had actually killed a part of herself rather than someone else, for she felt sometimes that she was dead now rather than alive. She knew, though, that Charlie would never understand that; she herself didn’t. Mr. Blake might understand it, though, she thought, for it fell into his realm of opposites. One day maybe she would get him to explain it to her so that she would know where she was. “Nothing was the same after that,” she added truthfully. “I don’t know as it ever will be.”
Charlie nodded. His smile made Maggie shudder. “All right,” he said. “Where we going?”
7
Maisie felt much better after being sick, for it cleared the rum from her. She was sober enough to say to John Astley as the stables appeared out of the fog, “You taking me to see your horse?”
“Yes.”
He did, in fact, lead her to the stall where his chestnut mare was stabled, lighting a candle first so that they could see. After the rehearsal at the amphitheatre the mare had been brought here and groomed, watered, and fed, and was standing stolidly, chewing, waiting for a circus boy to come and get her for the evening performance. She snorted when she saw John Astley, who reached over and patted her neck. “Hallo there, my darling,” he murmured, with considerably more feeling than he used with people.
Maisie also reached out a timid hand to stroke the horse’s nose. “Oh, she be lovely!”
“Yes, she is.” John Astley was relieved that Maisie was no longer quite so drunk. “Here,” he said, stooping to fill a ladle from a bucket of water. “You’ll want a drink.”
“Thank’ee, sir.” Maisie took the ladle, drank, and wiped her lips.
“Come here a moment.” John Astley led the way past other horses-Miss Hannah Smith’s stallion among them-to a stall on the end.
“Which horse-oh!” Maisie peeked in to see nothing but a pile of straw. John Astley set the candle down on an upturned bucket and pulled a blanket from the corner, which he spread out over the straw. “Come and sit with me for a moment.” The stench of horses all around had aroused him, and the bulge of his groin was prominent.
Maisie hesitated, her eyes drawn to the bulge. She had known this moment would arrive, though she had not allowed herself to think about it. What girl nearing womanhood does not know, after all? The whole world seems to wait and watch for it, a girl’s move from one side of the river to the other. It seemed strange to Maisie that it should come down to a blanket that stank of horse on a bed of straw, in a dim puddle of light, surrounded by fog and dark and London. She had not pictured it that way. But there was John Astley holding out his hand, and she reaching across and taking it.
By the time Maggie and Charlie reached the stall John Astley had her chemise off, and her stays loosened and pulled down so that her pale breasts had popped out. He had a nipple in his mouth, a hand up her skirt, and the other holding her hand over his groin and teaching her to stroke him. Maggie and Charlie stared. It was agonizing to Maggie how long it took for the couple to realize the Butterfields were there and stop what they were doing-plenty of time for her to ponder just how embarrassing and inappropriate it was to watch lovers unawares. She had not felt that seven months before when she and Jem had seen the Blakes in their summerhouse, but that somehow had been different. For one thing, they had been farther away, not right under her nose. And since Maggie hadn’t known them well, she could look on them more objectively. Now hearing Maisie groan flooded her with shame. “Leave off her!” she shouted.
John Astley leapt back and to his feet in one movement, and Maisie sat up in a daze of pleasure and confusion, so befuddled that she did not immediately cover her breasts, though Maggie made frantic gestures at her. Charlie Butterfield kept looking from John Astley to Maisie’s exposed flesh, until at last Maisie pulled up her stays.
To Maggie’s surprise, no one responded as she’d expected them to. John Astley did not show remorse or shame; nor did he run away. Maisie did not cry and hide her face, or scramble away from her seducer and go to Maggie. Charlie did not challenge John Astley, but stood gaping, his hands at his sides. Maggie herself was frozen in place.