by Lucy Worsley
From the concern in her eyes, I realised that she had suspicions of her own. ‘Last night,’ I stammered, ‘I … saw them … t-t-together.’
It was a breach of the System to mention it, I sensed that. I knew that nothing good could come of this. I had vowed to say nothing. But it was such a sweet relief to share what I knew, even with the desiccated Lehzen.
‘What were they doing?’ she hissed.
Victoria moved on to a creeping, hammering finger exercise that created a cloud of sound.
‘I saw them together. Out in the grotto. They were hugging, or … fighting, or something. It seemed wrong.’
Lehzen’s hand flew up to her mouth. ‘Lieber Gott!’ she hissed. ‘I had hoped there was no truth in these rumours.’
I hung my head, panting. For a moment I wished that she would treat me a little less like a colleague and more like what I was, her pupil. I needed someone to tell me what to do.
She seemed to recollect this.
‘Your father,’ she said sternly, ‘is not the only father in the world to have a … lady friend. It is quite normal. You know that even the king himself has lady friends, many of them. So does his brother the Duke of Clarence, who lives with an actress. It is not uncommon in good society. Even the Princess Sophia, who lives across the courtyard, has an illegitimate son, you know.’
I was surprised to hear this, but it did not really help. I hung my head lower, while tears trickled silently down into the bib of my pale blue summer dress. My own father! I had thought there were no secrets between us. It pained me to think that I was wrong.
She gave me an awkward pat on the shoulder, and in no time at all I found myself cradled against her angular bosom. ‘They have no discretion!’ she said. ‘They will bring down the System if they are not careful. And what will become of us all then?’
I sniffed and hiccupped. ‘But what should I do? I think I must ask if I can go home. I must ask my father if I can go home to my mother.’ My words came out as half a whisper, half a sob.
‘No,’ said Lehzen firmly, ‘you cannot do that. The princess needs you. We must all be together.’ She paused, sighed and continued in a softer voice. ‘Madame de Späth and I need you too. We have come to love you, you know. Do not leave us.’
A new fountain of tears started up in my eyes. Lehzen was sitting up straight now and spoke more decisively, handing me a handkerchief. ‘I am pleased that you have told me,’ she said. ‘But nothing good can come of your speaking of it to anyone else. Pretend all is well.’
Then she turned away from me. She muttered something, as if to herself, but with my sharp ears I heard her quite clearly. ‘But it is different for me. I cannot allow this to go on.’
Feeling just a little better, I took the handkerchief, dried my eyes and was even ready with weak applause when Victoria’s performance drew to its merciful end.
Chapter 18
Where Is Späth?
The following day the weather broke. There were wild winds and clouds once more, shaking the petals from the roses in the gardens and promising rain to come.
I watched my father eating his breakfast and reading his letters, marvelling that his familiar face revealed nothing of his secret life. I could scarcely eat or drink myself. For once, my thoughts returned to my mother, marooned on her sofa. I had begun to realise why he and I were here, at Kensington Palace, so far from our real home. He didn’t love her. Perhaps he had never loved her.
‘Toast, please, Miss V.’
His words were curt, and he failed to look up as I placed it silently before him.
‘Papa, have you heard from Jane?’ I asked timidly, as he riffled through the stack of papers in his hand. Although the air was still warm from the recent heatwave, I felt chilly and tired, and a headache hammered in my skull. It had just occurred to me that perhaps he didn’t love my sister Jane either, for he scarcely ever spoke of her. And if this were true, could I even be sure that he loved me? I pleased him, I knew, but that was not the same thing.
‘Of course not,’ he said. He lifted his new eyeglasses to his nose, peering at one particularly closely written letter, brow furrowed. He looked tired and unhappy, not at all like my buoyant papa. ‘She never writes. Ungrateful, my family are, ungrateful for all the advantages I have obtained for them. You’re too young to remember, Miss V, but it wasn’t always like this. It is my hard work that has made our comfortable lives.’
I started at this and shook my head in dismay. I felt very sharply that he could have been talking about me. Here I was, sitting and thinking truly ungrateful thoughts, when that great stack of correspondence showed how busy he was, how much in demand and how responsible.
He must have noticed my small movement of concern and denial.
‘Certainly I don’t mean you, Miss V,’ he said. ‘You are my precious pearl.’
And so I was feeling just a tiny bit better when, at ten, I crossed the courtyard as usual to be let in through the grand doorway by Adams, the fat footman. ‘Good morning, miss,’ he said, as he always did, in response to my greeting.
He led me up the great staircase even though I had now been this way hundreds of times and knew it off by heart. It was as ill lit and chilly as ever on the stone stairs, despite the beautiful day outside.
But something was different about the palace this morning. There was sound and life above us: raised voices in the distance, the drumming of running feet, the banging of a door. Adams’ back was impassive, and yet, from the very tread of his feet, more hesitant, less confident than usual. I could tell that something was wrong.
Up in the drawing room, Victoria was waiting for me behind the sofa. We were really getting too grown up to live behind a sofa, I thought, as I sank to my knees on the all-too-familiar carpet.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, plumping myself down beside her, all my anxiety about my father’s behaviour, about the integrity of the System, come back to life. My stomach was a-flutter.
‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, ‘but something’s afoot. I have had no breakfast. It didn’t come.’
‘Victoria, you have chocolate all round your mouth!’ I got out my handkerchief, and Victoria obediently tilted her face to let me wipe it away.
‘Fusspot!’ she sighed.
She had clearly made up for the missed breakfast. We had a secret stash of chocolate hidden in the piano stool, which had been given to me by my friendly housekeeper, Mrs Keen, and smuggled into its hiding place for just such emergencies.
She gave her cheek a final rub but did not remove her eyes from the view out of our window. ‘I think I heard Späth and Mamma having a row earlier,’ she said.
My heart lurched into my mouth. What could this mean? Had Lehzen said something, then? But if so, why was Späth involved? I had not spoken to her of my troubles. She was so hot-headed I would never have risked such a confidence. I cursed myself. The bottom of my stomach was sinking away down to my soles. There was trouble, and I had a horrible feeling that it was my fault. My father would lose his post, I thought. My mother would be made homeless. I myself might have to leave my friend. I could almost feel the colour draining from my cheeks.
‘You look like a ghost!’ Victoria said, glancing across at me to see why I had not spoken. ‘Don’t take on so. It’s exciting to have something happen for once!’
I could see that our lives were so dull that she was greedy for something, anything, to take place. But nothing did for several minutes. Silence once more fell upon the palace. I began to listen for Lehzen’s step in the passage, nervous that she would catch us behind the sofa instead of getting out our schoolbooks ready for lessons.
‘There!’
It was indisputable, and Victoria turned to me with glowing eyes. We had both heard the slamming of a door and, very distantly, a high-pitched garbled stream of words and imprecations. It grew louder and louder until, with a great crash, the front door beneath us in the courtyard flew open.
Out on to the cobbles was th
rown a carpet bag. It was not done up properly, and something white and frilly was spilling out of it into the dust. Next came a trunk. Adams appeared, carefully carrying a birdcage – a small one, not the parrot’s. Whose luggage was this? Adams headed off in the direction of the street, and silence returned.
The next excitement was a hansom cab bowling into the courtyard with what seemed like a tornado of noise and dust. This was now certainly the greatest upheaval we had ever witnessed in the quiet courtyard of Kensington Palace. Adams and its driver began packing the luggage, and then, with a flounce, the short, fat figure of Madame de Späth hurled itself into the hansom.
And it drove away.
‘Späth?’ Victoria was all agog. ‘Späth! But where has she gone?’ I could see now that her curiosity was turning to fear.
I pleated my skirt nervously. Surely Madame de Späth had not abandoned us? It looked horribly like it. How could we survive within the System without her friendly face? Victoria’s stricken expression told me that the same thought had occurred to her too.
We were still on the carpet, craning to see any further developments, when, as I feared, the drawing room door suddenly slammed open. Lehzen was calling out, ‘Girls! What is the meaning of this? Why are you not at the table?’
But Victoria’s emotions were running far too high to be quashed, and she leapt up and out from behind the sofa like a young colt.
‘Where has Späth gone?’ she almost shouted. ‘What have you done with Späth?’
She stood before Lehzen, panting, clenching her fists and almost stamping her foot on the carpet. Again the fear of her losing her mind entered my head.
Lehzen was glacially calm. ‘She and our mistress, the duchess, have had a … disagreement,’ she said in an even tone. ‘She has decided to return to Germany.’
Victoria was closing her eyes and opening her mouth. I knew that she was filling her lungs to scream and yell. Lehzen gave a flicker of her eyes towards me. I needed no more information, guessing immediately the disagreement’s subject. What else could it have been? Lehzen had told Späth that I had seen my father and the duchess together, and the fiery-tempered nurse had made a fuss about it. More than ever I wished I had been strong enough to keep my secret to myself.
I sat down. I could not help it. My insides had turned into icy cold water.
‘This … is … the … doing … of … Sir … John.’ Victoria could only speak in jagged, gulping gasps between her tears. ‘He wants me to be alone! With no one to love me!’ She threw herself down on the sofa in a passion of tears. ‘He is a monster,’ Victoria moaned, ‘a devil!’
Lehzen shrugged her shoulders at me, and we eyed each other across Victoria’s heaving body. It was as if we were silently exchanging the same words: This is a fine pickle. What do we do now?
All of a sudden, the duchess was in the room, scooping up Victoria in her arms and turning upon Lehzen and me. ‘Leave!’ she snarled. ‘Leave Vickelchen and me alone! We do not need spies and traitors around us!’ At his mistress’s words, the grey parrot gave a terrible scream, like a banshee.
Lehzen simply raised an eyebrow, but I could see that she was shaken by this new and unexpected turn of events.
‘Now, Vickelchen, don’t be afraid,’ the duchess was cooing. ‘I will love you myself, of course. You don’t need Späth. You are too big to need a nurse. Now, I have some medicine for you. Drink this.’
‘Where is Madame de Späth?’ Victoria spat out the words. ‘I WANT her.’
‘I had to give her notice. She said something very wrong, very improper.’
The duchess was stroking Victoria’s hair, while her shoulders heaved and strange, awful mewling noises continued to pour out of her.
‘She said that Sir John presumed to act towards me in a way that is not proper for royalty and subject,’ the duchess went on urgently. ‘It is true, I am sometimes so foolish he shakes me or slaps me. But that is because I forget things, or overlook duties, or neglect to pay bills. A strong man like him occasionally loses his temper and forgets himself, and shakes me – like I shake you, Vickelchen, when you are very, very naughty.’
She gradually, gently, reached out an arm away from her daughter, as if groping for something. And then I saw what her goal was. She had brought with her the small green bottle. I observed it, sitting on the little table by the sofa, with extreme distaste. I felt sure that this was the bottle with which my father treated the duchess herself for ‘nerves’ and ‘indispositions’ and other vague illnesses. I also felt sure that Victoria should not drink from it.
Lehzen saw me looking at the bottle and gave a sharp shake of the head. Not now, she was saying silently. Not today, not with this other fight going on. Our forces are too weak. She took me by the elbow and led me through the door. ‘Go back,’ she hissed. ‘Go back to Sir John and tell him what has happened. He will know what to do.’
I trailed disconsolately down the staircase. I feared for my friend, but on top of that, I feared for my father. Did he love Victoria’s mother or loathe her? At the very least, he bullied her. I did not think that he would know what to do. I did not know what to do.
My father … and the duchess. Those two were the very architects of the System, and yet I feared they had built it upon shaky foundations. I decided that everything I did from that moment on must be aimed at protecting Victoria. And I didn’t want her to drink from that green bottle again.
Chapter 19
A King’s Coach
How cold it was, how blowy! The howling wind whipped past me as I stood on the pavement with Dash’s leash in my hand. It continued on its way to batter the lonely street lamps and the benches before transforming the spray from the fountain in the clifftop garden into crazy horizontal rain.
‘Go on, then, Miss V! The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll be back, and you need to be back soon.’
Victoria was holding the boarding house door half open against the wind, poking her nose out just far enough to feel the force of it.
‘Are you sure you won’t come?’ I tried to make it sound inviting, but I knew she would refuse to venture outside on such a day.
‘You must be joking!’ She wrinkled her nose in distaste, just as she had when we were much younger girls, not young ladies of sixteen, and she was refusing to eat her bread-and-milk. But then she smiled. ‘You and Dash enjoy yourselves,’ she added kindly. ‘I know that there have been too many carriages and drawing rooms for you recently. Go on out and perhaps you’ll meet a handsome highwayman!’
‘You might like that,’ I said, and she grinned, ‘but I would be frightened. Goodbye! See you soon!’
She was right about my need for air. The last few weeks before we had come for our seaside holiday in Ramsgate had been a blur of travel sickness and temporary accommodation in houses great and small. It had been a trial, and I ran off with pleasure into the wind. If I squinted into the gale, I could see the grey tufty waves of the sea far below. Dash was pulling on his leash, for the wind had excited him and he was skipping and yapping like a mad thing.
As we went, I kept a careful watch out for the regular public omnibus on the road to Broadstairs. Its passage would mark the passing of half an hour, and the time for our return. With the visit of the princess’s Uncle Leopold, the King of the Belgians, expected later today, the boarding house was busy, almost frantic, with preparations. It would not do to be absent for too long.
It was pleasant to be avoiding the bustle, even if only for a few minutes. It had been a weary business, these last few weeks of our tour, getting Victoria’s dresses clean and brushed, and her hair curled, and our long, ever-changing succession of temporary drawing rooms tidy. These were the duties of Lehzen and I during our month-long ‘popularity tour’ of the nation, as my father and the duchess called it when they thought that no one else was listening.
My father and the duchess were thicker than ever, as they had been since the departure of Späth, oh, more than four years ago. We had all of us nev
er talked about that upsetting scene again, doing our best to forget that it had happened. Uneasily I had watched and waited, doing my best for Victoria, all of us precariously linked by the same purpose: to see her safely to queenship. They had been very clear in public that the point of our recent tour was to educate the princess about her realm. But the journey’s real purpose had been to introduce Victoria to those of her future subjects who loved her, or who loved at least the idea of a young princess, so as to pave the way for her reign. And I suspected that the tour was intended, too, to win popularity for my father and the duchess themselves. Everywhere they introduced themselves as Victoria’s most trusted advisors.
And so our little travelling circus had been traipsing from town to town, country house to country house, to attend parties and to stay in the mansions of great noblemen. Victoria wore ringlets and danced, and I followed her all the time with my eyes, hoping that she would not overexcite herself. She had lost a little weight, and we looked more like each other than ever before. Each evening I took care to dress drably and to have my hair done plainly. It had to be instantly clear which of us was the princess and which her loyal lady-in-waiting. And as much as possible I stayed demurely behind the scenes, taking no part in the entertainment.
The omnibus passed. I turned neatly on my heel and at once headed home, the wind whipping free some strands of hair that obscured my sight. During our tour, we had had the benefit of nightly attendance by a hairdresser, and the duchess had plunged deeper than ever into debt in order to clothe her daughter. But I was happy that at least Victoria had been guided by me towards sky blue or bottle green rather than the pinks and gaudy golds of her natural taste. Now that we were sixteen, Victoria could see perfectly well for herself from the illustrated papers that I was not alone in thinking that young ladies should not dress as the duchess did. Gradually she had come to share my views. I would never say anything out loud, but Victoria was well able to read my mind each evening when her mother appeared in some fringed and tasselled creation with a low décolletage. A fashion assessment was just one of the many things we could communicate without words.