Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier Page B

struck up and Philip Astley stepped out onto the stage to address the audience, he stood for a moment, scanning the pit. Finding Anne Kellaway, he smiled, satisfied that with his charm he had turned an enemy into a friend. “Welcome, welcome to the Royal Saloon and New Amphitheatre for the 1792 season of Astley’s Circus! Are you ready to be dazzled and distracted?”
    The audience roared.
    â€œAstonished and amazed?”
    More roaring.
    â€œSurprised and scintillated? Then let the show begin!”
    Jem was happy enough before the show, but once it began he found himself fidgeting. Unlike his mother, he was not finding the circus acts a welcome distraction. Unlike his sister, he was not smitten with any of the performers. Unlike his father, he was not content because those around him were happy. Jem knew he was meant to find the novelty acts astonishing. The jugglers throwing torches without burning themselves, the learned pig who could add and subtract, the horse who could boil a kettle and make a cup of tea, Miss Laura Devine with her twirling petticoats, two tightrope walkers sitting at a table and eating a meal on a rope thirty feet above the ground, a horseman drinking a glass of wine as he stood on two horses galloping around the ring—all of these spectacles defied some rule of life. People should tumble from standing on ropes strung up high or on galloping horses’ backs; pigs shouldn’t know how to add; horses can’t make cups of tea; Miss Devine should become sick from so much spinning.
    Jem knew this. Yet instead of watching these feats in awe, with the wide eyes and open mouth and cries of surprise of the people around him—his parents and sister included—he was bored precisely because the acts weren’t like life. They were so far removed from his experience of the world that they had little impact on him. Perhaps if the horseman stood on the back of one horse and simply rode, or the jugglers threw balls instead of burning torches, then he too might have stared and called out.
    Nor did the dramas interest him, with their oriental dancers, reenactments of battles, haunted houses, and warbling lovers—apart from the scenery changes, where screens of mountains and animals or rippling oceans or battle scenes full of soldiers and horses were suddenly whisked away to reveal starry night skies or castle ruins or London itself. Jem couldn’t understand why people would want to see a replica of the London skyline when they could go outside, stand on Westminster Bridge, and see the real thing.
    Jem only brightened when, an hour into the show, he noticed Maggie’s face up in the gallery, poking out between two soldiers. If she saw him, her face showed no sign of it—she was enrapt by the spectacle in the ring, laughing at a clown who rode a horse backward while a monkey on another horse chased him. He liked watching her when she didn’t know it, so happy and absorbed, the hard, shrewd veneer she cultivated dropped for once, the pulse of anxiety that drove her replaced by innocence, even if only temporarily.
    â€œI’m just going out to the jakes,” Jem whispered to Maisie. She nodded, her eyes fixed on the monkey, who had jumped from its horse to the horse carrying the clown. As Jem began to push through the dense crowd, his sister was laughing and clapping her hands.
    Outside he found the entrance to the gallery around the corner, separating the rougher crowd from the more genteel audience in the pit. Two men stood in front of the staircase leading up. “Sixpence to see the rest of the show,” one of them said to Jem.
    â€œBut I just been in the pit,” Jem explained. “I’m going up to see a friend.”
    â€œYou in the pit?” the man repeated. “Show me your ticket, then.”
    â€œMy ma has it.” Anne Kellaway had tucked the ticket stubs back into her stays, to be kept and admired.
    â€œThat’ll be