Maggie felt her face sweep with heat from a deep blush. She could not look at Jem. If she had, she would have seen that he was not looking at her either.
“Perhaps it’s time to go, my dears,” Mrs. Blake interrupted before her husband could continue. “Mr. Blake’s very busy just now, aren’t you, Mr. Blake?” He jerked his head and sat back; clearly it was rare for her to break in on him when he was reciting.
Maggie and Jem stepped backward toward the door. “Thank you, Mr. Blake,” they said together, though it was not at all clear what they were thanking him for.
Mr. Blake seemed to recover himself. “It is we who should be thanking you,” he said. “We are grateful for the warning about this evening.”
As they left his study, they heard Mrs. Blake murmur, “Really, Mr. Blake, you shouldn’t tease them like that, reciting that one rather than what you were working on. They’re not ready yet. You saw how they blushed.” They did not hear his reply.
3
While the Kellaway men were at the timber yard with Dick Butterfield, the Kellaway women had remained at Hercules Buildings. With the arrival of winter, Anne Kellaway no longer worked in the garden, but stayed indoors, cooking, cleaning, sewing, and trying to find ways to keep out the cold. As the Kellaways had not experienced proper cold weather in London until now, they’d hadn’t realized how poorly heated the Lambeth house was, nor appreci-ated how snug a Dorsetshire cottage could be, with its thick cob walls, small windows, and large hearth. The Hercules Buildings’ brick walls were half the thickness; the fireplaces in each room were tiny and took expensive coal rather than wood they could cut and haul for free in Dorsetshire. Anne Kellaway now hated the large Lambeth windows she had spent so much time looking out of earlier in the year; she stuffed bits of cloth and straw in the cracks to keep out drafts, and double-lined the curtains.
The fog often kept kept her inside as well. Now that coal fires were burning all day in most houses in London, fog was inevitable. Of course the Piddle Valley had had occasional fogs, but not such thick, dirty ones that settled in for days like an unwanted guest. On foggy days there was so little light that Anne Kellaway drew the curtains against it and lit the lamps, in part for Maisie, who sometimes grew agitated when she looked out at the murk.
Maisie was almost always indoors. Even on clear sunny days, she did not go out. In the two months since losing her way in the fog-for that is what she and Maggie and Jem allowed her parents to think had happened-she had been out of no. 12 Hercules Buildings only twice, to church. At first she had been too ilclass="underline" The cold and damp had settled on her chest, and she was in bed for two weeks before she was strong enough even to go downstairs to the privy. When she did get up at last, she was no longer fresh as she had been, but rather like a whitewashed wall that has begun to yellow-still bright, but without the glow of the new. She was quieter as well, and did not make the cheerful remarks the Kellaways had not even realized they relied on.
Anne Kellaway had gone out earlier to pick a cabbage and pull up some late carrots from Philip Astley’s now-deserted garden, and had got a bone from the butcher for a soup. She’d boiled the bone, chopped and added the vegetables, and cleared up after herself. Now she wiped her hands on her apron and took a seat opposite Maisie. Anne Kellaway knew something was different about her daughter, even apart from her recent illness, but she had put off for weeks asking Maisie, until she seemed strong enough and less skittish. Now she was determined to discover what it was.
Maisie paused as her mother sat, her needle hovering above a button she was working on for Bet Butterfield, who had hired her to make Dorset High Tops. There was little in it for Bet, but it was the least she could do for the girl.
“It be a lovely day,” Anne Kellaway began.
“Yes, it do,” Maisie agreed, gamely glancing out of the window at the bright street below. A cart passed carrying a huge pig, which sniffed daintily at the Lambeth air. Maisie smiled despite herself.
“Not like that fog. If I’d known it be so foggy in London I’d never have come here to live.”
“Why did you then, Ma?” One of the changes Anne Kellaway had noticed in Maisie was that her questions now occasionally contained a sharp sliver of judgment.
Rather than chiding her daughter, Anne Kellaway tried to answer honestly. “Once Tommy died I thought the Piddle Valley were ruined for us, and perhaps we’d be happier here.”
Maisie made a stitch in her button. “And are you?”
Anne Kellaway dodged the question by responding to a different one. “I’m just glad you be less poorly now.” She began to twist a knot in her apron. “In the fog that day-were you frightened?”
Maisie stopped stitching. “I were terrified.”
“You never told us what happened. Jem said you was lost and Mr. Blake found you.”
Maisie looked at her mother steadily. “I were at the amphitheatre and decided to come home to help you. But I couldn’t find Jem to see me home, and when I looked out at the fog it seemed to be a little clearer, and I thought I could get home by myself. So I walked along Westminster Bridge Road, and I were fine, as there were people along there and the street lamps were lit. It were just that when I got to the turning for Hercules Buildings I didn’t turn sharp enough and went down Bastille Row instead, so that Hercules Tavern were on my right rather than my left.” Maisie deliberately mentioned Hercules Tavern, as if by naming it she could dismiss it too, and Anne Kellaway would never suspect that she had been inside the pub. Her voice only wavered a tiny bit when she said the name.
“After a bit I knew I weren’t on Hercules Buildings, so I turned back, but the fog were so thick and it were getting dark and I didn’t know where I were. And then Mr. Blake found me and brought me home.” Maisie told her story a little mechanically, except for Mr. Blake’s name, which she said reverentially, as if referring to an angel.
“Where did he find you?”
“I don’t know, Ma-I were lost. You’ll have to ask him.” Maisie said this with confidence, sure that Anne Kellaway would never ask Mr. Blake-she was too daunted by him. He and Mrs. Blake had visited Maisie once she was improving, and Anne Kellaway had been disturbed by his bright, piercing eyes and the familiarity he’d had with both Maisie and Jem. Then too, he had said something very odd to her when she thanked him for finding Maisie. “‘Heaven’s last best gift,’” he had replied. “‘Oh much deceived, much failing, hapless Eve.’”
At Anne Kellaway’s blank stare, Catherine Blake had leaned forward to say, “That’s Paradise Lost, that is. Mr. Blake is very fond of quoting from it, aren’t you, Mr. Blake? Anyway, we’re glad your daughter is on the mend.”
Even stranger, Jem had murmured under his breath, “Pear tree’s loss,” and Anne Kellaway had felt the familiar shard in her heart that signaled Tommy Kellaway’s death-a feeling she had managed to suppress for months, until the departure of the circus. It was back, though, as strong as ever, catching her out when she wasn’t looking, making her draw in her breath sharply with grief for her son.
Now Anne Kellaway looked at her daughter and knew that she was lying about the fog. Maisie returned her gaze. How had she come to grow up so quickly, Anne Kellaway wondered. After a moment she stood. “I must check that the bread an’t stale,” she said. “If it be I’ll pop out for more.”
4
Thomas Kellaway said nothing to the Kellaway women about what had gone on between him and John Roberts when he and Jem returned, with Maggie in tow. Rather than go home, Maggie spent the rest of the afternoon with the Kellaways, learning how to make High Tops with Maisie by the fire while Jem and his father worked on a chair seat in the workshop and Anne Kellaway sewed and swept and kept the fire bright. Though Maggie was not especially good at button-making, she preferred to be busy with this family rather than idle in the pub with her own.