When Mr. Blake and Philip Astley had said their farewells, Mrs. Blake took her husband’s arm and they walked toward the alley without speaking to Jem or Maggie or even acknowledging them. Maggie watched them leave with a feeling of deflation. “Could’ve said hallo, or at least good-bye,” she muttered.
Jem felt similarly, but did not say so. He walked with Maggie to sit back against the wall where they had been before Mr. Blake arrived. There was not much to see, however—the argument between Philip Astley and Mr. Blake seemed to be a signal to the performers to take a break. The tumblers and horse riders had stopped, and there was only a troupe of dancers rehearsing a scene from the upcoming pantomime. They watched for a few minutes before Maggie stretched, like a cat rearranging itself mid-nap. “Let’s do summat else.”
“What, then?”
“Let’s go and see the Blakes.”
Jem frowned.
“Why not?” Maggie persisted.
“You said yourself that he didn’t say hallo to us.”
“Maybe he didn’t see us.”
“What would he want with us, though? We wouldn’t be any interest to him.”
“He liked us well enough when we were up on the bridge. Anyway, don’t you want to see inside? I bet he has strange things in there. Did you know he’s got the whole house? The whole house! That’s eight rooms for him and his wife. They han’t any children, nor even a maid. I heard they had one, but she got scared off by him. He do stare with them big eyes, don’t he?”
“I would like to see the printing press,” Jem admitted. “I think I heard it the other day. A great creaking noise it made, like roof timbers when a thatcher’s climbing on them.”
“What’s a thatcher?”
“Don’t you—” Jem caught himself. Though he was constantly amazed by the things Maggie didn’t know, he was careful not to say anything. Once, when he teased her for thinking that cowslips referred to animals falling, she wouldn’t speak to him for a week. Besides, there was no thatch in London; how could she be expected to know what it was? “Dorset houses have thatched roofs,” he explained. “Dried straw bound together all tight and laid over timbers.”
Maggie looked blank.
“It’s like if you took a bundle of straw and made it even and straight, then laid it on the roof instead of wood or slate,” Jem elaborated.
“A straw roof?”
“Yes.”
“How can that keep the rain out?”
“It do well, if the straw be tight and even. Have you not been out of London?” He waved his hand vaguely south. “It’s not so far to proper countryside. There be thatched roofs just out of London—I remember when we first came. We could go out one day and see ’em.”
Maggie jumped up. “I don’t know the way out there.”
“But you could find the way.” Jem followed her along the wall. “You could ask.”
“And I don’t like bein’ alone out on them little lanes, with no one round.” Maggie shuddered.
“I’d be with you,” he said, surprised by his protectiveness toward her. He had not felt that way about anyone but Maisie—though this was not exactly that brotherly feeling. “’Tis nothing to be afraid of,” he added.
“I an’t afraid, but I don’t fancy it. It’d be boring out there.” 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?”
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. Blake’s skirts behind him, and the sound reminded him of another place, 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.
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 Dorsetshire too. On first coming to London the Kellaways had had to get used to different sorts of rooms: They were squarely built, with more right angles than an irregular Dorset cottage room, walls the thickness of a brick rather than as wide as your forearm, larger windows, higher ceilings, and small grates with marble mantelpieces 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 parlor 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 organized 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.
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 signaling to her like a flag of surrender. She jerked it free and hurried back toward 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 entirely sure what that power was, or why she had it with him and no one else. It made her stomach flutter.
Mrs. Blake shifted her weight from one hip to the other, and Maggie looked around for something that might keep them from having to leave. There was nothing unusual about the garden, however. Apart from the summerhouse, there was a privy by the door and an ash pit for the coal ash from the grates. The grapevine Miss Pelham was competing with grew rampant along the wall. Next to it was a small fig tree with broad leaves like hands.
“Does your fig bear any fruit?” Maggie asked.
“Not yet—it’s too young. We’re hoping next year it will,” Mrs. Blake answered. She turned to go inside, and the children reluctantly followed.
They passed by the closed door of the back room, and again Jem wished he could go in. The open door of the front room was more inviting, however, and he paused so that he could peek in once more at the printing press. He was just summoning up the courage to ask Mrs. Blake about it when Maggie said, “Mrs. Blake, could we see that song book of Mr. Blake’s you told us about up on the bridge? We’d like to see it, wouldn’t we, Jem?”
Jem started to shake his head but it came out as a nod.
Mrs. Blake stopped in the hallway. “Oh, would you, my dear? Well, now, let me just ask Mr. Blake if that will be all right. Wait here—I’ll just be a moment.” She went back to the closed door and tapped on it, waiting until she heard a murmur before she opened the door and slipped inside.