Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier Page B

Innocence .”
    â€œOh!” Maggie cried. Then she began to laugh, and Mr. Blake joined in from his alcove, then Mrs. Blake, and lastly, Jem. They laughed until the stone walls rang with it and the first fireworks of the circus finale rocketed up and exploded, burning bright in the night sky.

PART III
May 1792

1
    Though she was meant to be ironing sheets and handkerchiefs—the only ironing her mother trusted her with—Maggie left the back door open and kept an eye out on Astley’s field, which was just behind the house the Butterfields had rooms in. The wooden fence separating their garden from the field would normally block much of the view; it was old and rotting, though, and Maggie had slipped through it so often as a shortcut that she’d knocked it sideways and a gap had opened up. Every time the iron cooled, she shoved it into the coals in the fire and popped outside to poke her head through the gap so that she could watch the rehearsals taking place in Astley’s yard. She also looked out for Jem, whom she was meant to meet in the field.
    When she came back into the kitchen for the third time, she found her mother, barefoot and in a nightdress, standing over the ironing board and frowning at the sheet Maggie had half-finished. Maggie rushed to the fire, picked up the iron, wiped the ash from its surface, and stepped up to the sheet, nudging her mother with the hope that she would move aside.
    Bet Butterfield paid no attention to her daughter. She continued to stand, flat-footed, her legs a little splayed, arms crossed over her substantial bosom that, free from stays at the moment, was slung low and wobbled under her nightdress. She reached out and tapped part of the sheet. “Look here, you scorched it!”
    â€œIt was there already,” Maggie lied.
    â€œBe sure and fold it so it’s hidden, then,” her mother said with a yawn and a shake of her head.
    Bet Butterfield often declared that her blood ran with lye, for her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother had all been laundresses in Lincolnshire. It had not occurred to her to do anything different in her life, not even when Dick Butterfield—young enough then that the map of wrinkles was not yet etched into his forehead—passed through her village on his way from Yorkshire to London and charmed her into following him. She arrived in Southwark, where they first lived, completely unimpressed by novelty, and insisted first thing—even before marrying—on buying a new washtub to replace the one she still regretted leaving back home. Bet didn’t mind the low pay, or the hours—she started her regular customers’ monthly washes at four in the morning and sometimes didn’t finish till midnight—or even the state of her hands, reduced to pigs’ trotters by the time she was twenty. Laundry was what she knew. Suggesting that she do something else would be like saying she could change the shape of her face. She continued to be astonished that not only was Maggie not very good at laundry, she was also not interested in learning to do it.
    â€œWhere’ve you been, then?” Bet Butterfield said suddenly, as if she had just woken up.
    â€œNowhere,” Maggie said. “Here, ironing.”
    â€œNo, just now you were out back, while the iron was heating.” It was surprising, the little things Bet Butterfield noticed when so often she seemed to be paying no attention.
    â€œOh. I was just in the garden for a minute, lookin’ at Astley’s people.”
    Bet Butterfield glanced at the pile of sheets still to do; she’d agreed to take them home to iron for an extra shilling. “Well, stop spyin’ and get ironin’—you only done two.”
    â€œAnd a half.” Maggie banged her iron across the sheet on the board. She only had to weather Bet Butterfield’s scrutiny for a little longer before her mother would lose interest and shut off her probing