“Oh, but it’s important, ma’am!” Maggie cried, in her impatience darting to one side as if to get around her. But Mrs. Blake comfortably blocked the doorway, and did not move.
“He is in the middle of making one of his plates, and he likes to do that all in one sitting,” Mrs. Blake explained. “So we mustn’t stop him.”
“I’m afraid it be important, ma’am,” Jem said.
“Then you may tell me, and I’ll pass it on to Mr. Blake.”
Jem looked around, for once wishing there were a deadening fog about that would hide them from curious passersby. Since their earlier encounter with John Roberts, he’d felt as if there were eyes on them everywhere, watching them as they walked up the road. He expected any moment that Miss Pelham’s yellow curtains would twitch. As it was, a man driving past on a cart loaded with bricks glanced at the little group in the doorway, his gaze seeming to linger.
“Can we come in, ma’am? We’ll tell you inside.”
Mrs. Blake studied his serious face, then stood aside and let them pass, shutting the door behind them without looking around, as others might. She put her finger to her lips and led them down the passage, past the front room with the printing press, past the closed door of Mr. Blake’s workroom and down the stairs to the basement kitchen. Jem and Maggie were already familiar with the room, for they had sat there with Maisie to warm her up after her encounter with John Astley. It was dark and smelled of cabbage and coal, with only a bit of light coming in from the front window, but the fire was lit and it was warm.
Mrs. Blake gestured for them to sit at the table; Jem noted that the chairs were his father’s Windsors. “Now, what is it, my dears?” she asked, leaning against the sideboard.
“We heard something in the pub,” Maggie said. “You’re to have a visit tonight.” She described the meeting at Cumberland Gardens and their encounter with John Roberts, leaving out that her father had signed the declaration.
A deep line appeared between Mrs. Blake’s eyebrows. “Was this meeting run by the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property Against Republicans and Levellers?” She rattled off the name as if she were very familiar with it.
“They was mentioned,” Maggie answered, “though they just called the local branch the Lambeth Association.”
Mrs. Blake sighed. “We’d best go up and tell Mr. Blake, then. You were right to come.” She wiped her hands on her apron as if she had just been washing something, though her hands were dry.
Mr. Blake’s workroom was very tidy, with books and papers in various stacks on one table, and Mr. Blake at another table by the room’s back window. He was hunched over a metal plate the size of his hand, and did not look up immediately when they came in, but continued dabbing a brush in a line from right to left across the surface of the plate. While Maggie went to the fire to warm herself, Jem stepped up and watched him at work. It took him a minute to make out that Mr. Blake was writing words by painting them with the brush onto the plate. “You’re writing backwards, an’t you, sir?” Jem blurted out, though he knew he shouldn’t interrupt.
Mr. Blake did not answer until he had reached the end of the line. Then he looked up. “That I am, my lad, that I am.”
“Why?”
“I’m writing with a solution that will remain on the plate when the rest gets eaten away by acid. Then when I print them the words will be going forwards, not backwards.”
“Opposite to what they are now.”
“Yes, my boy.”
“Mr. Blake, I’m sorry to trouble you,” his wife interrupted, “but Jem and Maggie have told me something you ought to hear.” Mrs. Blake was wringing her hands now, whether from what Jem and Maggie had told her or because she felt she was disturbing her husband, Jem was not sure.
“It’s all right, Kate. While I’ve stopped, could you get me some more turps? There’s some next door. And a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course, Mr. Blake.” Mrs. Blake stepped out of the room.
“How did you learn to write backwards like that?” Jem asked. “With a mirror?”
Mr. Blake glanced down at the plate. “Practice, my boy, practice. It’s easy once you’ve done it enough. Everything engravers do gets printed opposite. The engraver has to be able to see it both ways.”
“From the middle of the river.”
“That’s it. Now, what did you want to tell me?”
Jem repeated what Maggie had said down in the kitchen. “We thought we should warn you that they be coming to see you tonight,” he finished. “Mr. Roberts weren’t nice about it,” Jem added, when Mr. Blake did not seem to react to the news. “We thought they might give you trouble.”
“Thank you for that, my children,” Mr. Blake replied. “I am not surprised by any of this. I knew it would come.”
He was not responding at all the way Maggie had expected him to. She’d thought he would jump up and do something-pack a bag and leave the house, or hide all of the books and pamphlets and things he’d printed, or barricade the front windows and door. Instead he simply smiled at them, then dipped his brush into a dish of something resembling glue, and began to write more backwards words across the metal plate. Maggie wanted to kick his chair and shout, “Listen to us! You may be in danger!” But she didn’t dare.
Mrs. Blake came back in with a bottle of turps and a glass of water, which she set down by her husband. “They told you about the Association coming tonight, did they?” She at least seemed anxious about what Jem and Maggie had told them.
“They did, my dear.”
“Mr. Blake, why do they want to visit you specially?” Jem asked.
Mr. Blake made a little face and, setting down his brush, twisted around in his chair to face them fully. “Tell me, Jem, what do you think I write about?”
Jem hesitated.
“Children,” Maggie offered.
Mr. Blake nodded. “Yes, my girl-children, and the helpless, and the poor. Children lost and cold and hungry. The government does not like to be told it is not looking after its people. They think I am suggesting revolution, as there has been in France.”
“Are you?” Jem asked.
Mr. Blake waggled his head in a movement that could have meant yes or no.
“Pa says that the Frenchies have gone bad, with all that killing of innocent people,” Maggie said.
“That is not surprising. Doesn’t blood flow before judgment? Only look to the Bible for instances of it. Look at the Book of Revelation for blood flowing in the streets. This Association that intends to come tonight, though, wants to stop anyone who questions those in power. But power unchecked leads to moral tyranny.”
Jem and Maggie were silent, trying to follow his words.
“So you see, my children, that is why I must continue making my songs and not run from those who would have me silenced. And so that is what I am doing.” He turned his chair back around so that he faced the desk, and picked up his brush once more.
“What is that you’re working on?” Jem asked.
“Is it another song they won’t like?” Maggie added.
Mr. Blake looked back and forth between their eager faces and smiled. Setting down his brush once more, he leaned back and began to recite:
In the Age of Gold
Free from winters cold
Youth and maiden bright
To the holy light
Naked in the sunny beams delight.
Once a youthful pair
Filled with softest care
Met in garden bright
When the holy light
Had just removed the curtains of the night.
There in rising day
On the grass they play
Parents were afar
Strangers came not near
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.
Tired with kisses sweet
They agree to meet,
When the silent sleep
Waves o’er heavens deep
And the weary tired wanderers weep.