Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

towers, the Kellaways stopped, causing those behind them to grumble and push past. Maggie, who had continued on into the abbey, turned around and blew through her lips. “Look at those country fools,” she muttered, as the four Kellaways stood in a row, eyes up, heads tilted at the same angle. She couldn’t blame them, however. Although she had visited the Abbey many times, she too found it an astonishing sight on first entering and, indeed, throughout the building. At every turning, every chapel and tomb contained marble to be admired, carving to be fingered, elegance and opulence to be dazzled by.
    For the Kellaways the sheer size was what pulled them up short. None had ever been in a place where the ceiling arched so high over their heads. They could not take their eyes off it.
    Finally Maggie lost patience. “There’s more to the Abbey than the ceiling,” she advised Jem. “And there’s better ceilings than this too. Wait till you see the Lady Chapel!”
    Feeling responsible for their first proper taste of what London could offer, she led them through archways and in and out of small side chapels, casually throwing out the names of people buried there that she remembered from her father’s guided tour of the place: Lord Hunsdon, the Countess of Sussex, Lord Bourchier, Edward I, Henry III. The string of names meant little to Jem; nor, once he grew accustomed to the size and lavishness of the place, did he really care for all of the stone. He and his father worked in wood, and he found stone cold and unforgiving. Still, he couldn’t help marveling at the elaborate tombs, with the carved effigies in tan and beige marble of their inhabitants lying on top, at the brass reliefs of men on other slabs, at the black-and-white pillars ornamenting the headstones.
    By the time they reached Henry VII’s Lady Chapel at the other end of the Abbey, and Maggie triumphantly announced, “Elizabeth I,” Jem had stopped listening to her altogether and openly gaped. He had never imagined a place could be so ornate.
    â€œOh, Jem, look at that ceiling,” Maisie breathed, gazing up at the fan vaulting, carved of stone so delicate it looked like lace spun by spiders, touched in several places with gold leaf.
    Jem was not studying the ceiling, however, but the rows of carved seats for members of the royal court along both sides of the chapel. Over each seat was an eight-foot-high ornamental tower of patinated oak filigree. The towers were of such a complicated interlocking pattern that it would not have been a surprise to hear carvers had gone mad working on them. Here at last was wood worked in a way the Kellaways would never see the likes of in Dorsetshire, or Wiltshire, or Hampshire, or anywhere in England other than in Westminster Abbey. Jem and Thomas Kellaway gazed in awe at the carving, like men who make sundials seeing a mechanical clock for the first time.
    Jem lost track of Maggie until she rushed up to him. “Come here!” she hissed, and dragged him away from the Lady Chapel to the center of the Abbey and the Chapel of Edward the Confessor. “Look!” she whispered, nodding in the direction of one of the tombs surrounding Edward’s massive shrine.
    Mr. Blake was standing alongside it, staring at the bronze effigy of a woman that lay along the top of it. He was sketching in a small sand-colored notebook, never looking down at the paper and pencil, but keeping his eyes fastened on the statue’s impassive face.
    Maggie put a finger to her lips, then took a quiet step toward Mr. Blake, Jem following reluctantly. Slowly and steadily they rounded on him from behind. He was so concentrated on drawing that he noticed nothing. As the children got closer, they discovered that he was singing under his breath, very soft and high, more like the whining of a mosquito than of a man. Now and then his lips moved to form a word, but it was hard to catch what he might be