Free Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier Page B

her crash to the ground as her son Tommy had from the pear tree, reaching for that pear that was always—and now always would be—just out of his reach. But Miss Devine did not fall; indeed, she seemed incapable of it. For the first time in the weeks since her son’s death, Anne Kellaway felt the shard of grief lodged in her heart stop biting. She craned her neck to watch her even as Miss Devine moved far down the bridge and could barely be seen, even when there were other spectacles right in front of her—a monkey on a pony, a man riding his horse backward and picking up dropped handkerchiefs without leaving his saddle, a troupe of dancers in oriental costume turning pirouettes.
    â€œJem, what’ve you done with those tickets?” Anne Kellaway demanded suddenly.
    â€œHere, Ma.” Jem pulled them from his pocket.
    â€œKeep ’em.”
    Maisie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.
    Maggie hissed, “Put ’em away!” Already those around them had turned to look.
    â€œThem for the pit?” the meat pie man asked, leaning over Anne Kellaway to see.
    Jem began to put the tickets back in his pocket.
    â€œNot there!” Maggie cried. “They’ll have ’em off you in a trice if you keep ’em there.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThem rascals.” Maggie jerked her head at a pair of young boys who had miraculously squeezed through the crush to appear at his side. “They’re faster’n you, though not faster’n me. See?” She snatched the tickets from Jem, and with a grin began to tuck them down the front of her dress.
    â€œI can keep them,” Maisie suggested. “You haven’t got the stays.”
    Maggie stopped smiling.
    â€œ I’ll keep them,” Anne Kellaway announced, and held out her hand. Maggie grimaced but handed over the tickets. Anne Kellaway carefully tucked them into her stays, then wrapped her shawl tightly over her bosom. The stern, triumphant look on her face was armor enough to keep away any rogue fingers.
    The musicians were passing them now, and behind them three men brought up the rear of the parade waving red, yellow, and white flags that read ASTLEY’S CIRCUS .
    â€œWhat’ll we do now?” Jem asked when they had passed. “Go on to the Abbey?”
    He could have been speaking to a family of mutes, oblivious to the surging crowd around them. Maisie was staring after John Astley, who by now had become just a flash of blue coat over winking horse flanks. Anne Kellaway had her eye on the amphitheatre in the distance, contemplating the unexpected evening ahead. Thomas Kellaway was peering over the bridge’s balustrade at a boat piled high with wood being rowed along the thin line of water toward the bridge.
    â€œC’mon. They’ll follow.” Maggie took Jem’s arm and pulled him toward the apex of the bridge, sidestepping the traffic of carriages and carts that had begun to cross it again, and making their way toward the Abbey.

4
    Westminster Abbey was the tallest, grandest building in that part of London. It was the sort of building the Kellaways had expected to see plenty of in the city—substantial, ornate, important. Indeed, they had been disappointed by the shabbiness of Lambeth, even if they had not yet seen the rest of London. The filth, the crowds, the noise, the indifferent, casual, neglected buildings—none of it matched the pictures they’d conjured of London back in Dorsetshire. At least the Abbey, with its pair of impressive square towers, its busy detail of narrow windows, filigreed arches, jutting buttresses, and tiny spires, satisfied their expectations. It was the second time in the weeks they had been in Lam beth that Anne Kellaway thought, There is a reason for us to be in London—the first time being only half an hour before, when she saw Miss Laura Devine performing the Pig on a Spit.
    Just inside the arched entrance between the two