by Lucy Worsley
Lehzen’s words had the intended chilling effect. All the fight went out of Victoria, and she somehow shrank into herself, looking very small in her chair and trying to hide as much of herself as possible under the tablecloth.
She spoke in a very small voice. ‘I will be good,’ she said.
Lehzen looked satisfied. But despite my concern for Victoria’s state of mind, and despite everything my father had said, I did not like to see her cowering like that in a chair. It was almost like seeing a puppy being whipped by one of our Edwards, the cruel one, who had been dismissed.
I looked at her and tried to imagine that sulky little figure wearing a crown. It seemed impossible that such a thing should ever come to pass.
Chapter 9
Beyond the Garden Wall
After a week of these morning lessons and afternoon playtimes, this new life began to seem almost dreary. No one mentioned when the visit might end. I too began to share the princess’s pleasure when we looked down from our barred window and saw something, anything, out of the ordinary. A gentleman coming to call at one of the other apartments, for example, caused a flutter of excitement, and once the chaplain was called to the rooms of an old lady who was sick.
I was told that many, many people lived here at the palace, though they could have been invisible for all the bustle that they added to the silent and deserted courtyards.
One morning, I came into the room to see Victoria’s feet elevated over the back of the sofa. She had positioned herself in a handstand there so that she might still be able to see out of the window.
‘Miss V!’ she said in a strangled voice, as she could hardly breathe. ‘A discovery! Come quick, I’ve found a new way to look at the boring old courtyard! Look, it’s upside down!’
‘Oh, you silly!’ I said, coming over to the window. The blood was all rushing into her head, and I knew that she’d get dizzy.
‘Come on, Miss V,’ she said urgently. ‘It’s so exciting to see a new view!’
Unwillingly, I climbed on to the sofa, trying to see how she had got into that contorted position.
‘Throw yourself over the sofa back,’ she panted. ‘Come on!’
‘I can’t! I can’t!’ I was beginning to laugh, as I could tell that her arms were starting to shake and that she would soon collapse. Her little feet were bobbing about next to me in the air, and throwing caution aside, I seized them and began timidly to tickle them.
A roar of sound filled the air. I almost dropped the princess’s ankles. Was she in one of her rages? But no, it was a roar of laughter. ‘Don’t torture me, Miss V,’ she gasped. ‘Stop tickling! Help me get down!’ Her feet thrashed about, and I gripped them tighter. Slowly, ridiculously, we got her the right way up once more. We were both left helpless with the giggles. As they subsided, and as I straightened my dress, I felt rather surprised with myself. I could imagine Jane tickling someone else’s feet until they shrieked, while our mother pulled a pained face and put her hand to her head, begging for quiet. But tickling and giggling was not my usual kind of behaviour at all.
One day several weeks later, towards the end of March, I asked the princess why she never went out. I found her idleness and her indoor lifestyle rather shocking, for Dash had taught me to love fresh air and a morning walk. In our new life at the palace we had neither, and I missed them.
‘Out!’ she sighed dreamily. ‘Oh, I long to go out. To the theatre. Or even just the shops. Or – how about this? – to a grand ball in high society. How marvellous that would be. How cruel it is that I must live under this stupid System that stops me from going out.’ She fell to pouting and teasing Dash. ‘Why, Dashy, why am I to be kept prisoner?’
Prisoner! I said to myself, mentally scoffing at the word, just as I knew my father would do when I reported this conversation later that evening. I knew exactly what he’d say: ‘The villains of Newgate are prisoners, not the princess. And she is far too young and babyish for the theatre. She wouldn’t be able to sit still. Not like you, Miss V.’
I might have been able to guess my father’s sentiments, but expressing them as I knew he would want me to was quite another matter. It was too hard. I found myself glancing around, just to check that he had not somehow slipped into the room behind me to observe my treacherous silence. Of course he had not; I was being silly. I searched around for something encouraging to say.
‘But surely there is the garden?’ I said rather desperately.
‘The garden,’ she replied in grim tone, ‘is intolerably dull.’
‘Ah!’ said Lehzen. ‘The garden, a fine idea!’ She had been reading a book rather than attending to us, but the word pricked her attention. ‘The rain has, I believe, quite stopped. You young ladies can go out in the garden this very afternoon. But not beyond the railings, of course.’ She added the last words quickly, as if she well knew what Victoria was about to say. ‘Not into the park. Don’t even ask.’
I was beginning to depend on Lehzen’s calm, steady ways. I sometimes suspected her of making a bone-dry jest that sailed right over Victoria’s head, but I certainly appreciated the lack of the dramatics that we got with the warmer but more excitable Madame de Späth.
Victoria glowered at me and gave me a sharp little kick under the table. ‘What did you have to mention the garden for, Miss V?’ she hissed. ‘What kind of a simpleton are you?’
But I felt bold enough to stand up for myself. Surely to go into the garden would be good for her health, and it was my duty to think of such things.
‘I should be glad to see the pleasure grounds,’ I said equably.
‘They’re not grounds of pleasure,’ she said. ‘They are deeply displeasurable.’
As very often, although the princess spoke crossly, and naughtily, there was something in what she said that made me laugh. She had such a fiery spirit in her, even if her idea of a pleasant afternoon was to lie on the sofa with a bag of bonbons.
So after our lunch of dull, stale bread with only a thin smear of butter, we went outside.
‘Dash! Dash! Dashy!’ The princess was running ahead with Dash frisking round her ankles. ‘Come on, Miss V,’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Race you!’
I smiled and shook my head.
Victoria was wearing a light, rose pink cloak that couldn’t possibly keep her warm on this cold day. I had learned by now that if Späth tried to prevent her from wearing an outfit upon which she had set her heart, she would have a tantrum. It was very often easier to let it go.
We made a strange procession, for following on behind me at an even more sedate pace came the enormous footman, Adams, from the German apartment. He was at least six feet tall and rather stout. Accompanying us two little girls he must have looked like a gigantic fairy.
Now he hissed into my ear urgently. ‘If Her Royal Highness … ahem … makes a noise like that under the windows here of His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex … ahem … there could be unfortunate consequences.’
I understood that Adams was imparting important information. To disturb the reclusive inhabitants of this place, I had often been told, would lead to punishment, or at the very least to a scolding from Lehzen. I didn’t want Victoria to get into trouble.
So, sighing, I picked up my skirt and set off after the frisky pair at a fast clip. I very rarely ran. It seemed all too likely to have the effect of attracting people’s attention.
But the princess had been whipping Dash into a frenzy of excitement, and he had zipped off into the long lime walk down to the bottom of the gardens. I could hear her yells and Dash’s yaps, and behind me the laboured breathing of the outsize footman, who was walking as fast as he could without breaking into a trot. ‘Miss! Miss V!’ he was hissing, in a powerful whisper. ‘Not down that walk. It’s forbidden.’
He was too late. The pair ahead had raced along, and indeed had turned off the lime walk, disappearing into the shrubbery. I hesitated for a moment. Should I follow them between the lime trees, along this walk that we weren’t su
pposed to take? Yes, I must. It was my duty to bring them back to safety. Yet as I too rounded the corner and caught up with them in the shrubbery, I came to a stunned stop. I felt my jaw drop open and my eyes pop wide.
This part of the garden bordered on to the park. Some of the shrubs down here had grown thin and weak, as if diseased, and at a certain spot there was no vegetable protection at all between us and the iron garden fence. And just outside the railings, in the park itself, a great host of people were gathering around. There were still more of them coming across the park’s wet grass to join the crowd, attracted no doubt by the promise of something to see.
I thought they must have come to see Dash and half smiled. What a darling he was.
Some were dirty and ragged, but others were respectable: a lady in furs, some children in sailor hats with a hoop in tow. There were old gentlemen and nurses with perambulators. They were talking excitedly, and indeed a ragged cheer went up from the back of the crowd.
‘The princess!’ shrilled out the girl with the hoop. ‘It’s our beloved princess!’
‘The hope of the nation!’ came a quavery old voice.
For a second I could not think whom they meant. Although I knew very well that Victoria was in theory a princess, she looked so unlike a dignified royal personage that I’d come to think of her as another girl. A very odd one, doubtless, but essentially like me.
But then it came over me like a thunderclap that it wasn’t Dash attracting the attention. It was the princess herself. Victoria was playing up to the spectators, holding the corners of her pink cloak, curtseying to the crowd and waving and beaming as if born to it. But of course! She had, in fact, been born to it. This was her natural state.
I wondered what I ought to do, for I certainly could not have endured to step forward beneath the eyes of all those people. I could not even see how many they were because of the surrounding shrubs. And yet I knew, deep down, that this cavorting before the crowd had no place in the System and ought to be stopped.
The decision was made for me by a huge bellow, a roar of rage with hardly any words in it. It might have been ‘Disperse!’ or ‘Away!’
Adams from the left and my father from my right swept past me and picked up the princess, one arm each. They carried her bodily back to the palace, her legs kicking uselessly beneath that inappropriate cloak, and her body writhing in impotent rage. As he went, my father turned back to look at me. His face was dark like thunder. I shuddered to think what he would have to say later on.
The stunned and disappointed crowd still stood there. In the absence of anything better to see, they were all now staring at Dash. Lurking in the bushes, I realised I had to rescue him.
‘Shame!’ called an old lady.
‘Villains!’ called an old gentleman.
‘This baggage must be part of the establishment,’ the nursemaid was saying to the boy and girl with her. ‘Look, she’s fetching the princess’s dog.’ My face glowed and my hands trembled as I realised, to my absolute horror, that she meant me. Under their gaze, I fumbled the business of clipping Dash’s leash to his collar and was forced to listen to their buzz of chatter for far longer than I thought I could bear.
‘It’s the work of the evil King Georgy-Porgy,’ the nursemaid was now saying to the well-dressed lady.
‘He’s not fit to be king,’ the lady agreed. ‘George the Fourth, pah. Nothing like good old King George the Third; he was a kindly gentleman. It’s cruel the way the king keeps the poor, sweet little princess locked up in that prison. Little lamb!’
The nursemaid did not answer, and I guessed that she, an experienced manager of children, would not have categorised the princess as ‘sweet’ or a ‘lamb’.
‘The gloomy old place looks just like a loony bin, doesn’t it?’
‘More than looks like – it is one! Lots of nutters they’ve got locked away in there, princes, princesses and so on.’ This was from a fellow who looked like a dustman.
‘Mad, mad, all of the royal family. And the king the worst of all, they say, though his blessed royal brothers are not much better.’
‘Dash, Dash – oh, please, please come!’ I called his name softly, frantic for him to return from the railings, where hands were eager to pat him. I could hardly stand the eyes upon me, and the sense that the crowd had me down as one of the princess’s tormentors.
When at last I had Dash under my control, I headed disconsolately back to the palace. The horrible things I had witnessed would not leave my mind. I knew that my father would be furious about this breach of the System.
But another thought chilled me almost even more deeply. I’d heard, for the first time, someone else say what Victoria herself claimed about her situation. She was not alone in her belief that she was being locked up like a prisoner. Other people thought it too.
So the misunderstanding had even spread beyond the palace gates! I wished I was bold enough to go back, to shout through the bars that the lady had got it wrong and that the palace was not a prison.
As I trailed back up the lime walk, head bowed, I recommitted myself to my task. With so many mistaken views and misapprehensions out there in the world, I would have to try even harder to keep Victoria safe.
Chapter 10
The Behaviour Book
After I had fully understood that Victoria would never lead a normal life, I felt more and more sorry for her. But she did not make it easy for people to like her. She would happily play at cards until you started to win, and then it would be, ‘Don’t call me Vickelchen. I am Your Royal Highness!’
But over time there came to be no doubt in my mind that for the most part she was glad to have me and Dash with her. Sometimes, behind the sofa, we would laugh so much that Madame de Späth would bustle in.
‘Shush, girls!’ she would say. ‘Do not disturb the Duke of Sussex!’
‘You mean the Duke of Shush-ex,’ said Victoria, choking, while Späth’s face grew uncharacteristically stern with wrath. We clapped our hands over our mouths and continued to shake with silent laughter until tears ran from our eyes.
Then Victoria would be all aghast at what she considered the drab nature of my clothes, and would drape me in the fringed green velvet cloth from the table and place a crown upon my head. Made from a twisted napkin, it held a ring of candles that she insisted upon lighting.
‘It’s dangerous!’ I cried, as she lit the taper to the last wick. But she clapped her hands and crowed with jubilation.
‘Oh, nonsense!’ she said. ‘You always say that anything exciting is dangerous. Now you look like a real heroine from an opera.’
So I stood there, terrified at first that molten wax from my fiery crown would drip on to my shoulders, while Victoria danced around me, cooing with pride at her creation. Eventually something of her pleasure began to rub off, and I began to swish my green velvet gown around my ankles, and to tilt my head from side to side, the better to model my crown.
I was growing strangely accustomed to the System. It was with a start that I would sometimes recall my initial impression that a trip to the park and a crowd of other children were what the princess needed, rather than a life lived in isolation except for the occasional visit from an elderly bishop.
One day the old lady from the apartment with the blue front door was crossing the courtyard, and Victoria threw down a ball of paper so accurately that it biffed her neatly on the head. The princess squealed with laughter as the mob-capped figure peered about to left and right, trying to work out what had happened.
‘Oh!’ I breathed, aghast, glancing around to make sure Lehzen was out of the room. I considered it to be in rather poor taste to behave badly towards servants. ‘Surely it’s not fair for us to tease the duke’s housekeeper?’
‘Housekeeper?’ asked Victoria scornfully. ‘That’s no housekeeper. That’s my Aunt Sophia. You wouldn’t think that she was a princess too, would you? She’s as mad as a bucket of frogs.’
I could only take Victoria’s word for it, b
ecause although I often saw the old lady, and although she smiled and inclined her head to me whenever we met, we had never yet spoken. She did not look like my idea of a princess, but then neither did a pallid little girl in a dirty dress falling into screaming, panting rages, as Victoria so often did.
Usually Lehzen or Späth were our constant companions. But Victoria’s mysterious mother suffered from attacks of ‘the nerves’ that sometimes required them both to bustle off to her bedchamber to comfort her, leaving the princess and me to play quietly in the schoolroom. ‘Quietly, my sweets, quietly!’ was always Späth’s parting injunction. ‘I am leaving the door ajar,’ Lehzen would add. ‘We shall hear any naughtiness.’
On rainy afternoons when we were left to ourselves, we would huddle on the hearthrug before the glowing coals in the schoolroom grate. While Dash slept in a heap by our feet, I would read Victoria a fairy story, and watch her eyes glow like the coals as she imagined the palaces and mountains that the tale described. Her mouth would drop open. At peace for once, she looked almost like a little cherub. Sometimes, if the story were long and the rain heavy, she would come near to falling asleep. Once, her heavy head lolled down on to my shoulder. I looked at it, slightly aghast to have someone so close to me, but gradually, slowly, I relaxed, and even lifted my arm to place it round her scrawny shoulder.
And so, as the days passed, I became used to palace life, and I grew almost happy. I lived amicably with Victoria for the morning and afternoon, and then generally had tea with my father, when I would make my report on what Victoria had said and done. Sometimes my father spent the rest of the evening with me too, in our own Kensington Palace apartment, although more often than not he went out and left me with Edward and Mrs Keen. I grew fond of them both, and Edward confided me his wish that one day he might become a butler. He even showed me the letters that his sister wrote to him, encouraging him on in his work. It made me realise, a little sadly, that none of my brothers, nor even Jane, had written to me. Of course I had no expectation that my mother would ever do such a thing.