VII

A L L E L U I A

Sunday delivered the perfect July morning and Ashley trotted Brock in a dream of happiness. After an unusually cool summer night, the air was fresh and clean. The last dew sparkled on the grass. The straight trunks of ailanthus rose like pillars around the exercise ring, holding up an arched canopy of green.

Every day Ashley woke up feeling a little bit more at home in Carly’s life: wake with the birds, pretend to be asleep while Mrs. Venn banged around the house getting dressed and making coffee; stay far under the covers till she left for the main stable; groan when spoken to; get up when the house was empty; grab a quick piece of toast and peanut butter; make some sandwiches for later; then go down to the farthest pony barn and take care of Carly’s chores: feed and turn out the boarders, muck out the stalls, change the shavings. By the time she was done, Mrs. Venn would be back behind the bedroom door or gone to town.

Then Ashley had the whole day to play with her horse and school him for the Thursday show. The Alderwood Trials waited at the end of the week like a wedding, and Brock had never been groomed to a glossier shine or exercised with such luxurious care.

In the afternoons, she’d take the sandwiches and maybe a book, and she, Flip the dog, and Brock would have a picnic in one of the far fields under a tree. Sometime after dark, she’d creep back into the cottage and find the inevitable pizza and maybe a note saying something like: Don’t forget Molly’s hooves. Molly was an ancient Welsh pony Carly had forewarned her was prone to cracked hooves and would need an extra supplement, so that was easy.

She urged Brock into an easy canter toward the double rail and thought, It’s a little embarrassing how little I miss Mom and Dad. No fuss about what I’m wearing all the time. No one over for drinks and standing around being polite to people I don’t know. No piano, no tennis lessons, no country club.

I could live this life.

Could I live this life? How could that happen? Her mind drifted into a fantasy ... Carly decides to stay in England; it has to be something happy that makes it happen ... she falls in love with an English boy, for instance, and it’s love at first sight and they get married ... can you do that in one week? If you’re under eighteen? Whatever. It’s just a dream. So “notAshley” stays in England and I just keep being Carly. What about Mom and Dad? It’s kind of mean to them ’cuz they’d freak right out. But on the other hand, they know I’m alive and well in England so it’s not like I’d be dead or kidnapped!

It was crazy and it would never happen, but it was amazing how much she liked the picture. What could be better? Life with horses, life without parents.

Then Flip barked, woke her out of the reverie and the mesmerizing rhythm of the ride, and she saw the parent framed by the doorway of the long barn. Watching.

Mrs. Venn, she realized with a jolt of panic, had broken with routine, gone up to the house and come out again. Maybe there was something up with one of the horses. Maybe she was waiting for the vet. Maybe Phil, the owner who treated the stables like a toy, was coming for one of his inspections.

Now Flip danced a welcome round Mrs. Venn’s feet and she stroked his head, all the while gazing the two hundred feet across the stable yard. Nothing to do but keep riding and hope with desperate hope that she didn’t decide to come any closer.

The next circuits round the ring felt like forever. Keep to the canter, she told herself. Betray no emotion. Steady as she goes. Mrs. Venn watching. Ashley willing her to go away.

And finally, the woman turned back into the barn. But not before she waved to her “daughter.” And in reply, Ashley tapped her helmet with her crop, a Carly gesture borrowed in a flash of genius.

“You’re good!” she thought, giving herself an imaginary high-five as Carly’s mother disappeared.

All the same, it had been a close call.

Too close. She would have to make sure she stayed far out of Mrs. Venn’s line of vision. It was time to ride out to the farthest field and find that shady picnic place.

Sunday breakfast was exactly the same as the day before. This time, Carly had an extra helping of toast—she’d felt like an empty paper bag by the time they’d had dinner last night. Then Nigel led them off to the tube to see The Tower of London. This everything-paid-for plan is saving my bacon, she thought, as he handed them all their tube passes for the day.

And, all things considered, it was amazing how well she was doing without money. Yes, it could be a downer, like yesterday in the shops at Windsor when she had to pretend to shop with the others. Trying on a top hat you could fall in love with, Kristen the fashionista saying, “Hey, that looks great on you.”

“Yeah,” you say, “I think I’ll keep it in mind.”

That was hard.

But she was surprised to notice how much freer than the others she seemed. She could really look at things and take them in. Her empty wallet liberated her from keeping a lookout for cheap postcards and a place that sells stamps, and the perfect souvenir for the endless lists of family and friends they all seemed to carry in their heads.

The Tower was a lot like yesterday’s Windsor Castle, not just a tower but a village behind walls. Their guide was a jumpy little man who talked fast and scratched the top of his head as he led them round the buildings, rattling out famous names and long stories jammed into thirty words.

William the Conqueror who built the first tower. (Nine hundred years ago! What was nine hundred years old in Canada?)

The ravens brooding on the wall with their own Ravenmaster because Charles II had been told if the ravens left the tower, the kingdom would fall.

Queen Elizabeth I, plunking herself down on the steps of the Traitors Gate, refusing to come in because she was no traitor.

The Bell Tower where Thomas More and John Fisher were imprisoned.

Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s beheaded wife, said to walk around as a ghost, carrying her head under her arm.

The Salt Tower, where the guard dogs refused to go because torture of prisoners had left behind such bad karma.

The Queen’s house where Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen, lived before they cut off her head.

“And this area here, called Tower Green, is where she was executed,” said the guide, gesturing to a lawn shaded under a beautiful tree. “She was only sixteen, but she was a brave young thing and she wanted to die with dignity. But after they put her blindfold on, she couldn’t find her way to the chopping block, so someone in the crowd took pity on her and helped her there.”

I know that, Carly realized. It was in that movie Lady Jane she’d watched with Mom. She knew all these names because her mother, in the good times, loved to watch period movies. So Carly knew about Thomas More because of A Man for All Seasons. The virgin queen because of Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth. Anne Boleyn because of Anne of a Thousand Days.

There were good times, she thought with a pang. And Mom would love all this history. And the story about the dogs that refused to go into the Salt Tower made her homesick for Flip.

It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think about home, and suddenly all her anger at her mother vanished and was replaced with worry. Yeah, she’d been pissed off after that awful scene at school, but what if Mom was really bad this time and she wasn’t there to take care of her? What if Mom stopped eating? What if she couldn’t do the chores one day and Ashley didn’t know enough to pick up the slack. Or something bad happened to one of the horses and she lost her job and the house, and they really ended up out on the street?

She sat down hard on a bench outside the little Tower chapel and tried to calm the mix of emotions churning inside. Mom didn’t mean to make that scene at school. I shouldn’t have taken it so personally. We used to have such a good time together, even >after Dad went down to the States . How could I just take off like that? Ashley doesn’t know how to take care of her—that’s my job! What if we lose the house? My God, what if we lose everything?

But there was nothing she could do, not even phone, not even call collect, because she didn’t have a 25p coin to her name.

Then suddenly, that nosy Sienna girl was right beside her, saying, “Come and have lunch with us, Ashley.”

“Thanks, but I said I’d wait for Sonnet and Kristen,” Carly lied.

Sienna said, “Oh. Fine. That’s cool. What are you doing with the free time this afternoon?”

“I think we’re going to the National Gallery.”

“That’s free, right?”

“I think so,” said Carly, though in truth that was the only reason she’d chosen the gallery.

“Yeah, it is.” Sienna nodded, her face smug, as if “Ashley” lying to get out of buying lunch, “Ashley” going to the free museum was just what she’d expected.

“Have fun,” she said, and walked off to join Lindsey and the boys.

Oh, hell, thought Carly. She knows.

After lunch, Sienna’s group was going to the London Eye, a ride on a huge Ferris wheel on the bank of the Thames near Big Ben. It cost 15 pounds a person.

I could have mentioned that, she thought, but that really would have been rubbing it in. Rubbing it in, she found, held no appeal.

Should she tell Lindsey? That idea didn’t appeal either. There was something giddy about Lindsey; you never knew what might come out of her mouth and, anyway, she was all taken up with that Josh guy.

The Ashley mystery intrigued Sienna. How did it happen, she wondered, that a kid who can afford to come on this trip, carrying the most expensive suitcase on the bus, is doing it without any money? If she’d lost her debit card, or her wallet got stolen, she’d have made a big noise about it and Mr. Robson would be all over it. But Ashley hasn’t made a sound; she’s just trying to stay under the radar, getting by.

Weird.

It made her want to hang out with Ashley, try to find out more about her. If Sienna wasn’t already committed to the Eye, she would have found a way to attach herself to the Gallery group. In fact, she was getting a little tired of doing everything with Lindsey. The girl could be fun at a party, and she certainly knew how to pull in the boys. But you had to be cautious with a person who could ditch a best friend the way Lindsey had turned her back on Kristen.

And being with Lindsey always seemed to mean hanging out with Josh and Tim, who were passable by themselves, but often came with a cluster of followers like Devon, who tried to outdo Josh in high spirits, but mostly were just louder and ruder. Like yesterday in the restaurant with Devon, it was “Fuck this” and “Fuck that,” until Mrs. Robson, who wasn’t even their teacher, made that lame speech about representing your country when you travel.

And now, in the lineup for the Eye, they amused themselves mimicking English accents at full volume.

“All right, duck, that’ll be a fiver.” That was Lily, who had backed off after the first night, but kept her eye on Josh just the same.

Devon especially laughed like a fool at Lily’s exaggerated “fivah.”

Josh said, “Would you like that take-away, Luv?”

Devon read aloud the posted instructions: “Queue to the right. What the hell kind of word is queue?”

And Lindsey, putting up her umbrella when a few drops threatened rain: “Looks like a spot of rain, what?”

More laughs, but none of them was bright enough to notice the way the other people in the line looked away or, worse, met each other’s eyes with glances that said something like, “Stupid tourists.” Sienna liked a good time as much as anyone, but these guys were so lame. It was embarrassing, and she hung back in the faint hope that people would think she belonged to the elegantly dressed German family behind her.

Except maybe Tim. It was so overcast, he’d taken his sunglasses off for once, and she could tell by the way he looked away that he was embarrassed, too. What made such a silent person hang out with Josh and his wired friends she would never know.

Luckily, their group was large enough to fill the egg-shaped capsule of the World’s Largest Observation Wheel, so they could be as goofy as they liked without bothering anyone. Ever so slowly, the glass bubble began to leave the ground for their thirty-minute ride, and the sights of London spread out below—the river stretching wide in both directions, the boats getting smaller and more toy-like as they climbed. The Dome of St. Paul’s. Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge.

It was hard to hear the voice of the commentary piped into their capsule (“The Eye travels at a speed of 9 kilometers per hour or 26 centimeters per second … at its highest point reaches 135 meters above the London skyline ...”) because everyone was running from side to side, taking pictures and shrieking when they saw something cute or awesome or wicked.

Sienna deliberately set herself apart by taking a seat on the bench. How to strike an elegant pose? She tried crossing her legs and swinging her foot. It was a nice foot in a red leather flat. Come to think of it, hadn’t Next Top Model filmed one of its modeling sessions in something like the Eye? Good idea, she thought, with the views as a backdrop.

“What are you sitting there posing for?” Lindsey giggled.

Quick glances her way. “Yeah,” Lily mocked. “She thinks she’s on England’s Next Top Model.”

Laughs all round. Sienna turned red and stood abruptly, mortified and furious. Luckily they had Attention Deficit Disorder and in seconds were back to running around, shouting over the commentary.

“... on a clear day providing views of the city and countryside stretching as far as Windsor Castle to the north and ...”

But it wasn’t a clear day. The cloudy sky suddenly burst into lashing rain and, at the top of their rotation, the capsule stopped moving. The taped commentary broke off and a man’s voice came on to the public address system: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing a slight technical difficulty due to the weather conditions and have had to halt the progress of the Eye briefly. There will be a very short delay while we attend to the problem. Please continue to enjoy your ride on British Airways London Eye.”

“We’re stuck up here!” Lily shrieked.

“No! It’s cool! We get all this extra time!”

“Right. Time for what? It’s raining so hard you can’t see anything. We might as well be looking into a shower stall.”

For five minutes, they wrangled about whether it was a good thing or a bad thing to be stuck at the top of the London Eye.

For a few minutes, they took pictures of the rain.

Then Devon the maniac decided to see if they could rock the capsule by getting them to run in a group from side to side. A tiny tremor seemed to run through the capsule in response and Sienna was terrified.

“Are you nuts?” she yelled.

“Are you a bitch?” Lily said, clearly trying to score points with Josh.

“Snap!” Josh awarded them.

Lindsey crept over to the bench, her face white. “My stomach’s starting to get upset. It’s really high up here. I can’t look down anymore.”

Josh stopped running around and sat on the bench beside her.

“Cut it out, guys,” he ordered and his boys obeyed.

Was Lindsey sticking up for me, Sienna wondered, or just getting at Lily? Maybe both. The boys stopped running and Lily looked more pinched than ever.

In the end, they were stuck up there for forty-five minutes. The last fifteen had been spent listening to one of the girls whine about how badly she had to pee. When they finally got back down to the ground, Sienna was more certain than ever that she should have gone to the Gallery.

Sonnet was inside Westminster Abbey, listening to the thunder and the rain pounding the roof high above her, warm and dry and in heaven.

The morning at the Tower had been one more tourist experience. Too many people. Not enough time. Then lunch, sitting on a wall, eating “take-away” chips with Kristen and Ashley. Well, not Ashley—she said she wasn’t hungry.

“Come with us,” Ashley said. “Kristen wants to study fashion in the portraits but, once she’s sick of that, we can go back to Covent Garden.”

“Thanks,” Sonnet replied. “But I think I’ll check out Westminster Abbey. I can’t really visit the Poets’ Corner because it’s Sunday, so they make you go to a service, but I still want to be able to say I went there.”

“Poets’ Corner, eh?” Kristen teased her gently. “I guess it’s almost a family obligation, eh, Sonnet?”

“You’d rather go to church?” Ashley asked incredulously.

“If that’s the price I have to pay.”

“And you’re okay with going on your own?” Kristen again, taking care.

Sonnet assured them that she’d be fine. “I just go from the Tower Hill stop to Westminster. You guys have to change trains. I should be worried about you.”

“And you know how to get to Covent Garden to where we meet for dinner?”

“I’ll be fine. Go. Have a good time. Say hi to the pictures for me.”

“Yeah, say hi to God for us!”

Then they’d gone off, chattering, and Sonnet luxuriated in solitude for the first time in four days. Was it really just four days? It seemed like forever since they’d gathered in the Toronto airport with all their expectations and excitement. How could she go home and tell her family what a letdown so much of it had been?

Still, here I am in London, she thought, and told herself to cheer up. I’m in London; I’m on my own! I can use a Tube Map and find my way to Westminster Abbey, and that’s pretty cool.

But being on her own soon ended. She was standing at the cathedral gate, waiting with a gathering crowd for the gate to open for the 3:00 o’clock service, when a familiar voice behind her said, “Shouldn’t Evensong be in the evening?”

It was Christian, Alan’s roommate. What a drag. Now she’d have to make awkward conversation like she always did when guys were around. One more London experience spoiled by a tourist, especially maddening when today no tourists were allowed in the Abbey.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted out, then realized how rude she sounded. “I mean”—she tried to backtrack—“they don’t let tourists in on Sunday.”

“Who says I’m a tourist?” He smiled, so she knew she hadn’t offended him.

“You’re not?”

His voice was shy. “Actually, I’m on a pilgrimage.”

Before she had a chance to ask what he meant, a miniature old man wearing a red robe came out of the cathedral, walked to the gate, and unlocked it. Another man in a suit led them into the church, through the doors, to the left. Sonnet was conscious of a change in tempo, of things slowing down, voices quieting. A hundred people trooped in behind her and this strange boy, but only murmurs of sound trailed in with them. On the right stood rows of chairs, in the stone wall, memorials for the dead, in the floor beneath their feet, gravestones.

Before leading them a step up to another part of the church, the little man said, “Just wait a minute here, please.” There’s even something churchy about the way he moves.

Christian gestured to the monument just to their left. “Look, Isaac Newton,” he said quietly. Then an electric current of excitement: “I think he’s taking us into the north transept. Yes!”

“What does that mean?”

But the man in the red robe was back. He led them to a rank of chairs that faced sideways across the church and gave them each a program as they were seated. Christian put his backpack on the floor and sat down beside Sonnet. She couldn’t believe it; they were in the front row.

“Is he a priest or something?” she asked him. He seemed to know more about the place than she did.

“No, no. A verger? Or maybe a warden.”

“That’s the altar,” she said, nodding to the left, “and the pulpit, but I’ve never been in a church set up like this. What are those fancy seats?” On the right were rows of carved wooden seats in raised rows that made their flimsy fold-up chairs look like nothing.

“Choir stalls,” said Christian. “Monks used to sit there.”

How did he know all this? “I wanted to see Poets’ Corner,” she told him, sadly. “But there’s no walking around allowed today.”

He smiled. “No walking around, but you got lucky. That’s Poets’ Corner straight ahead. You’re looking right at it.”

In the shadows behind the chairs that faced them across the open space, she could see the shapes of gray stone.

“You see the one on the front corner? That’s Chaucer’s Monument, I think,” Christian continued. “I’ve been studying the geography on the Internet.”

“Wow.” What a feeble word, you’d think I could come up with something better than “wow.”

Awesome. Amazing. Astonishing. None as good as “wow” to describe what it felt like to be sitting there when the singing began and the procession came in of boys in their red gowns with white ruffs on top, clergymen in robes, the man from the gate carrying a staff. The voices soared and they led your eyes to the ceiling high above. Then the service with prayers and readings. The rain began during the psalm and reached a crescendo during the First Lesson. Jacob wrestled with the angel in the wilderness (“I will not let Thee go unless Thou bless me,”) while thunder hammered on the roof.

Then the homily. The preacher recited from William Blake’s poem, “The Tiger.”

Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forest in the night

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

Not a child’s rhyme, he said. Huge with meaning. God who made the lamb made the tiger. Not a soft and comfortable God, then. Unpredictable, perhaps a little wild. Like the tiger. (Sonnet thought, Yes! Like Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia.)

And what shoulder and what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And, when that heart began to beat

What dread hands and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

In what anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

He said, “Do we try to tame God? Is this a God with whom to wrestle, as Jacob wrestled with the angel?”

Somehow he got from there to the beauty of music and a farewell to the choir boys leaving the school, with thanks for their voices.

Then more Blake.

When the stars threw down their spears

And watered heaven with their tears

Did He smile his work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

She had heard speech makers use quotations, a phrase here, a line there. But never this fearless go-for-broke luxuriating in every line, every word. This is for real, she thought.

The hymn that followed was “Jerusalem.” More Blake, also wild and crazy and true.

... and was the holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen?

Then the Valediction of Choristers. Real boys named Freddie, Kit, Oliver (the cutest, with dark eyes and long blond hair), Theodore, Jacob, and Jinseong, thanked and prayed for, Presented by the Organist and Headmaster, a gift from the Dean and Chapter.

At last, Sonnet thought with relief she felt in her bones and under her skin, England. Real boys. Real poetry. Real song. The real thing.

And, when the choir and clergy departed to the music of Elgar’s “March No 1 in D,” another story. Instead of following the stream of people out of the church, Christian walked back into the side area. “It’s in the north transept,” he said, his eyes scanning the stone floor.

“Are we allowed to do this?” she hissed, conscious of the verger’s watchful eye.

Who backed off when he saw Christian stop, staring down.

“Here it is,” he said.

And knelt.

It was a simple dark gray slab. The words carved into it read:

William Wilberforce

born 24th August, 1759,

died 29th July, 1833

Christian swung off his backpack, unzipped it, pulled out a small bunch of white daisies circled with red tissue, and set them on the stone.

“Who was he?” asked Sonnet, who had never seen such a gesture.

“He led the charge in England for the abolition of slavery.”

“You’re related to him?”

Christian grinned. “I wish. My mother’s great-grandfather was a plantation slave in Jamaica.”

“So that’s where you get ...”

“My crazy hair. Yeah!”

So, Sonnet thought, more real. He really was a pilgrim, a fellow traveler. And, like all good pilgrims, she backed off to join the patient, knowing verger and give Christian a moment to reach his destination.