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Extracted from Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Tracy Chevalier - Author of Burning Bright
London 1792: Jem Kellaway has moved with his parents and older sister from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city, grown jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution. A surprising bond forms between Jem and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience.
Here, Maggie engineers an opportunity for the two friends to peer a little more closely into the Blakes' world...
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Maggie looked around and brightened. Stopping where the wall backed onto the Blakes' garden, she pulled her mop cap from her wavy dark hair and threw it over the wall.
'Why'd you do that?' Jem yelled.
'We need an excuse to go and see 'em. Now we have one. C'mon!' She ran along the back wall and through the alley to Hercules Buildings. By the time Jem caught up with her, she was knocking on the Blakes' front door.
'Wait!' he shouted, but it was too late.
'Hallo, Mrs Blake,' Maggie said when Mrs Blake opened the door. 'Sorry to trouble you, but Jem's thrown my cap over the wall into your garden. Is it all right if I fetch it?'
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Mrs Blake smiled at her. 'Of course, my dear, as long as you don't mind a few brambles. It's gone wild back there. Come in.' She opened the door wider and let Maggie slip inside. She gazed at Jem, who was hesitating on the step. 'Are you coming in too, my dear? She'll need help finding her cap.'
Jem wanted to explain that he had not thrown Maggie's cap, but he couldn't get the words out. Instead he simply nodded, and stepped inside, Mrs Blake shutting the door behind them with a brisk slam.
He found himself in a passage that led back through an archway to a set of stairs. Jem had the odd feeling that he had been in this passage before, though it had been darker. A doorway to his left was open and threw light into the corridor. That shouldn't be open, he thought, though he didn't know why. Then he heard the rustle of Mrs Blakes' skirts behind him and he understood: this house was the mirror image of Miss Pelham's; this was the passage, and that the set of stairs, that he used every day. Hers were darker because she kept the door closed that led into her front room.
The Good and Evil Angels (1795) by William Blake
Maggie had already disappeared. Although he knew how to get to the garden – like Miss Pelham's, you passed through an archway, then jogged around the staircase and down a few steps – Jem felt he shouldn't be leading the way through someone else's house. He stepped into the doorway of the front room so that Mrs Blake could pass, glancing inside as he did.
This was certainly different from Miss Pelham's, and from any room he'd seen in Dorset too. On first coming to London the Kellaways had to get used to different sorts of rooms: they were squarely built, with more right angles than an irregular Dorsetshire cottage room, walls the thickness of a brick rather than as wide as your forearm, larger windows, higher ceilings, and small grates with marble mantlepieces rather than hearths with open fires. The smell of coal fires was new too – in Dorsetshire they had an abundant and free wood supply – and with it the constant smoke that fogged up the city and made his mother's eyes go red.
But the Blakes' front room was different from either a snug, crooked Piddle Valley kitchen or Miss Pelham's front parlour with its caged canary, its vases of dried flowers, its uncomfortable sofa stuffed with horsehair and its low armchairs set too far apart. Indeed, here there was no place to sit at all. The room was dominated by the large printing press with the long star-shaped handle that Jem had seen from the street. It stood a little taller than Jem, and looked like a solid table with a small cabinet sitting on it. Above the smooth, waist-high plank hung a large wood roller, with another underneath. Turning the handle must move the rollers, Jem worked out. The press was made of varnished beech, apart from the rollers, which were of a harder wood, and was well worn, especially on the handles.
The rest of the room was organised around the press. There were tables full of metal plates, jugs and odd tools unfamiliar to Jem, as well as shelves holding bottles, paper, boxes, and long thin drawers like those he had seen in a print shop in Dorchester. Lines of thin rope were strung across the room, though nothing hung from them at the moment. The whole room was laid out carefully, and was very clean. Mr Blake was not there, however.
Jem stepped out of the front room and followed Mrs Blake. The back room door was shut, and he sensed a muscular presence behind it, like a horse in a stable stall.
The Angels Hovering over the Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre by William Blake
Maggie was down near the bottom of the garden, picking through a mass of brambles, nettles, thistles and grasses. Her cap had got caught on a loop of bramble well off the ground and was signalling to her like a flag of surrender. She jerked it free and hurried back to the house, stumbling over a bramble and scratching her leg. As she reached out to steady herself, she brushed against a nettle and stung her hand. 'Damn these plants,' she muttered, and slashed at the nettle with her cap, stinging her hand even more. 'Damn, damn, damn.' Sucking her hand, she stomped out of the wildness and into the patch of garden near the house, where there were orderly rows of seedlings planted – lettuce, peas, leeks, carrots, potatoes – and Jem inspecting them.
He looked up. 'What's wrong with your hand?'
'Damned nettle stung me.'
'Don't suck it – that don't help. Did you find some dock leaf?' Jem didn't wait for her answer, but pushed past and picked through the undergrowth to a bank of nettles growing near the summerhouse, where two chairs had been set just inside its open doors. 'Look, it's this plant with the broad leaf – it grows next to nettles. You squeeze it to get some juice, then put it on the sting.' He applied it to Maggie's hand. 'Do that feel better?'
'Yes,' Maggie said, both surprised that the dock leaf worked and pleased that Jem had taken her hand. 'How'd you know about that?'
'Lots of nettles in Dorsetshire.'
As if to punish him for his knowledge, Maggie turned to the summerhouse. 'Remember this?' she said in a low voice. 'Remember what we saw them doin'?'
'What'll we do now?' Jem interrupted, clearly discomfited by any talk of that day they saw the Blakes in their garden. He glanced at Mrs Blake, who was standing in the grass by the back door, hands in her apron pockets, waiting for them.
Maggie gazed at him, and he went red. She paused a moment, enjoying the power she held over him even if she wasn't sure what that power was, or why she had it with him and no one else. It made her stomach flutter.
(c)2007, Tracy Chevalier
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