Chapter Three
St. John’s Wood, June 1835
Benjamin Hopkins watched Sibylla, who looked very pretty in a cornflower blue dress, noticing how the color brought out her eyes. The blonde hair visible under her hat was coiffed in tight ringlets and the hat was secured with a coquettish side bow. The ladies with their parasols, colorful dresses, and patterned silk scarves resembled birds of paradise, and the gentlemen in their dark dress coats, top hats, and long slender pants seemed very elegant.
Three thousand Londoners had assembled at the cricket ground at St. John’s Wood in Regent’s Park on that warm Sunday in June in order to attend the most important social event of the season: the annual cricket match between Eton and Harrow, the two best schools in the country.
The game had been going since morning, and now Sibylla’s younger brother, Oscar, had just scored the winning run for his team. Time for tea.
Looking as proud as any family member, Benjamin stood next to the Spencers and received the congratulations of the other spectators. Today, he was no mere observer of the rich but one of them.
With a smile and a bow, he escorted Sibylla to a picnic area the servants had set up in the shade of an ancient plane tree. There were blankets spread out on the lawn, silverware and crockery on a folding table, and a jug of lavender lemonade and a bowl of fresh strawberries sat prepared. Richard opened the wine and champagne bottles, while Sibylla handed out ham-and-salmon sandwiches and her stepmother, Mary, sliced the cheesecake.
The enjoyment of these delicacies in the open had been made popular by Princess Victoria, and Lord’s Cricket Ground, a green oasis right in the middle of London, was excellently suited for it.
“Would you please get the tea, Oscar?” Mary asked.
“Why me? I want to celebrate!” Oscar replied, holding his champagne glass for the servant to fill. He looked sweaty, his white cricket uniform dusty, his hair disheveled, but he was beaming with pride. Having spent the previous year as a substitute, he had not been thought capable of such heroics.
“If you continue guzzling champagne like that, we will have to keep you away from the kerosene cooker,” Sibylla teased.
“Says the woman who fell into the harbor,” he retorted.
“A piece of rather good fortune, I daresay. For, had I not saved your esteemed sister, I would not be present here today,” Benjamin boasted.
“Incredibly good fortune, indeed,” Oscar said under his breath. He wondered whether his sister could really like this tall, pale Hopkins or whether he was just another hapless suitor whom she would scare away before long.
“Mr. Hopkins, if I might ask you to take care of the tea, please?” Mary sighed as Sibylla attempted to swat her brother with a napkin. “And, Sibylla, did you bring your father his sandwich?”
Mary had married Richard shortly after Sibylla, then just four years old, lost her mother in a riding accident. She had raised Sibylla and loved her no less than she did her biological son, Oscar. But her gentility had not rubbed off on her stepdaughter. Sibylla was mercurial, quick witted, and difficult to manage. Richard did not approve of her behavior and was constantly trying to rein her in. Yet the older Sibylla became, the harder she fought to make her own decisions.
Mary threw a furtive glance at Mr. Hopkins. Perhaps, she thought, he might be a husband for Sibylla at last.
She did have her misgivings, though. Richard had shared with her that Hopkins came from an honorable but humble background, and she knew well that a man who rose in society as a result of his marriage was rarely taken seriously.
A business associate approached Richard and clapped him on the shoulder. “What a splendid son you have there, Spencer! Someone who can truly follow in your footsteps one day.”
“That he is,” Richard agreed as his face lit up with pride.
Sibylla pursed her lips. Everyone was behaving as though Oscar had just single-handedly defeated Napoleon. But it was just a game, a leisure activity! She immediately regretted her bitterness, though. When she was a girl, she had often played cricket with Oscar in Hyde Park. She had been good, but then her father and Mary deemed it unseemly for a young lady to break into a sweat and scream and pant trying to hit a small ball. Of course, Oscar, not even particularly fond of cricket, was encouraged to practice.
But it was not in Sibylla’s nature to give up. If she was not going to be permitted to play cricket, she was going to attract her father’s attention by some other means. And today she had a particular kind of surprise in store for him.
“Look, Father,” she told him with gleaming eyes as she reached into one of the wicker baskets. “I’ve grown these myself in the greenhouse.”
“Tomatoes?” he asked impatiently. “What for?”
“To eat,” she replied and then took a hearty bite out of one of the red fruits.
“What, are you mad?” Richard leapt over, tore the tomato from her hand, and cast it into the bushes. “Spit that out at once! Or do you want to kill yourself, you foolish girl?”
Sibylla’s eyes filled with tears as she turned away to spit the piece of tomato into the handkerchief that Mary had quickly handed her.
“They aren’t poisonous,” she sputtered. “A Colonel Gibbon Johnson has proven that by eating them in public. They’re quite palatable, in fact. You could make a lot of money if you sold them, to city dwellers, for instance, because they have no time or space to grow them themselves.”
“Nonsense!” Richard said. “And terrible business sense. Even if they weren’t poisonous, people would believe they are. It is difficult to eradicate superstition.”
“If Oscar had come up with this idea, you would have been thrilled,” she replied furiously.
“Enough!” Richard roared. “Stop it with your foolish schemes and adventures. Accept your station in life.”
“Richard, please,” Mary admonished him quietly, because he had attracted the attention of several people. She signaled Benjamin, standing by the kerosene heater, to start pouring the tea.
“Sibylla, dearest,” she began gently. “Won’t you pass your father a cup of tea?”
Sibylla obeyed without comment or expression. The festive mood of that summer’s day had been dashed. Oscar went off with his teammates to celebrate. Mary’s spirits only lifted once two of her lady friends came over to inquire in detail about the young man accompanying Sibylla. Richard had fished the Times out of a picnic basket and was studying a report about the progress of the Commercial Railway, set to link the western part of the docks to central London.
Sibylla watched Benjamin, who was reading the label of one of the champagne bottles. Presumably, he wanted to remember the name in order to show off at the next available opportunity. She had been noticing how much he tried to impress her, only she was not sure whether to find this ridiculous or touching.
She sighed softly, then took out the book she had brought along. It was the account of a marvelous journey that an English merchant named Mr. James Curtis had taken to Morocco. He had even been a guest at the sultan’s palace.
The ruler’s invitation had been discussed at length in the Spencer office. Richard, gleeful at the thought of an untapped market, had sent one of his traders, a Mr. Fisher, who had previously worked for Spencer & Son in Algeria, to Mogador. To Sibylla, the very idea of an exotic country like Morocco was thrilling. She would have loved to be in Mr. Fisher’s place, but she was well aware that was out of the question. So she had gone to Lackington, Allen and Company, a large bookseller in Finsbury Square, and purchased not only James Curtis’s but also James Grey Jackson’s travelogue, as well as a translated edition of One Thousand and One Nights.
She became so engrossed in Curtis’s description of the colorful bazaar in Tangier that she forgot all about her quarrel with her father.
“Might I persuade you to accompany me on a walk around the cricket field, Miss Spencer? Your mother assures me that she would have no objections.” Benjamin stood in front of her expectantly.
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bsp; Sibylla, caught up in her reading, was on the verge of declining his invitation before thinking differently. She would never be able to evaluate Hopkins’s potential as a husband who would grant her freedom and value her opinions if she did not afford him an opportunity. She closed her book and flashed a radiant smile. “With the greatest pleasure, Mr. Hopkins. Would you be so kind as to help me up? My legs have grown stiff from sitting.”
“But of course!” Benjamin quickly offered her his arm.
“Do you believe that this time it will come to anything?” Richard asked his wife, watching the pair walk away arm in arm.
Mary smiled dreamily. “We should allow them the opportunity to find that out for themselves.”
London, February 1836
“We make a beautiful couple, my love. Everyone who sees us together says so.” Benjamin stood behind Sibylla in the hallway of their home and smiled at his reflection in one of the full-length crystal mirrors.
It was thrilling being able to visit the high-end tailors, hatters, and glove makers, and order whatever one’s heart desired, then simply have the invoice sent to Hopkins, Stanhope Gate in the exclusive Mayfair district.
Benjamin had managed to acquire quite an impressive new wardrobe in the ten weeks he’d been married to Sibylla. Each time yet another package was delivered, Sibylla would tease that they would soon need to build an addition to the house in order to accommodate everything.
Now, too, she was looking at him archly. “Could it be that I have mistakenly married a peacock?”
Benjamin smiled uneasily. He wasn’t fond of her teasing because he could never be sure if it was meant to be loving or derisive. But he was very fond indeed of being able to count himself among the rich. Many people exhibited a new reverence for him. He had his own office and his former coworkers tried nearly as hard to please him as they did the boss.
That evening, he and Sibylla were going to visit Sibylla’s parents. Richard Spencer had invited a special guest to dinner, a Scotsman by the name of Liam Moffat, who had traveled to North Africa on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Richard was keenly interested in any information that might affect his trade with Morocco.
“Your carriage is here, sir,” the butler announced.
Benjamin placed Sibylla’s cape over her shoulders. He arranged the collar and nodded with satisfaction when her amethyst necklace sparkled in the light from the wall sconces. Even though it was just a family dinner, he had insisted on selecting her gown and jewelry. She had humored him to a point because his childlike delight in luxury amused her, but when he had tried to instruct her maid on her hairstyle, she had protested, saying, “You are treating me like a doll. I don’t even recognize myself anymore!” His face had been so crestfallen that she regretted her objection at once.
It was the same look he’d given her that June afternoon at Lord’s Cricket Ground when he asked permission to call on her soon and she hesitated. They had not discovered many things in common during their walk. Sibylla feared that, if married, they would live parallel lives. Then she remembered the unpleasant quarrel with her father and felt a renewed determination to break out of her circumscribed existence.
“I would be delighted if you came to call,” she’d said, and Benjamin’s bright smile had eased her doubts.
In August, he had asked for her hand. In December, when they were married, the one thing that Sibylla knew for sure was that she did not love him.
Benjamin seemed to her like a boy in a giant toy shop allowed to choose whatever he liked. They had been married in the elegant St. George’s in Hanover Square, although Sibylla would have preferred a modest ceremony in a simple church. He had compiled a very long guest list, which she would dearly have loved to reduce by half. And yet she could not find his parents’ names anywhere.
He had been very embarrassed when she pointed it out, hemming and hawing, saying that they lived very private lives and did not take pleasure in lavish fetes.
“Are you ashamed of your parents? Don’t you even want to invite them?”
Benjamin had fallen silent, his face a deep red. Sibylla ended the conversation by adding his parents to the list and telling him that, if they were honorable people, she would be happy to welcome them.
Sibylla would never forget that moment. It revealed much about the character of her future husband and so, while Benjamin was busy choosing menus, engaging musicians, and hiring a dance instructor to teach him the Viennese waltz, Sibylla asked her father to place her dowry in a trust. It was a rare occasion when she and he were of the same mind. A trust was the only way for a woman to retain the fortune she brought into her marriage. Otherwise, every penny went to the husband.
It took them ten minutes to get from Stanhope Gate to Sibylla’s parents’ at Hamilton Place. It was snowing, and the cold dampness crept through the cover of the landau in which they rode. Sibylla snuggled into her fur blanket, which Benjamin had carefully tucked in around her. It was gestures such as these, unexpected and rare as they were, that made her feel a fondness for him. Had it not been for the blanket and a coal pan provided by the butler, she would surely have frozen to death in her silk evening gown and thin satin shoes.
She leaned her head back and listened to the steady beat of the horses’ hooves. Park Lane was almost deserted. People did not leave the warmth and comfort of their homes without good reason in weather like this. The snow was now accompanied by a dense fog. Pea soup, Londoners called the impenetrable fog that rose up from the Thames and mixed with the sulfurous smoke of countless fires.
They arrived at her parents’ house, an elegant white building with pillars on each side of the black, lacquered entrance.
“I can’t wait to hear what Mr. Moffat has to say,” Sibylla gushed, stepping out of the carriage. “I have already read so much about the Orient, but how much more exciting it will be to hear a first-hand account.”
“I just hope it doesn’t get around that I’m married to a genuine bluestocking,” Benjamin replied with a shake of his head, thinking of the books and magazines stacked on Sibylla’s nightstand. “The gentlemen at the club might begin to think that I’m henpecked.”
Once they had entered the house and been welcomed by Sibylla’s parents, Richard whispered to Benjamin, “Hopkins, I must have a quick word with you.”
Liam Moffat had arrived just behind them. While Mary and Sibylla were greeting the guest of honor, Richard pulled his son-in-law into a corner of the dining room.
“I’m afraid I’ve had some bad news. Our man in Mogador has died. It appears he fell victim to a typhus epidemic.” Richard pulled out an envelope and handed it to Benjamin.
“It’s very bad for us, indeed,” he continued as Benjamin scanned the letter. “Considering all we have spent on the gifts for the sultan and his court alone just to ensure our business goes smoothly. And now this!”
“We must quickly send someone in his stead,” Benjamin agreed. “Our ventures in Morocco have been going so well. It would be a terrible pity if we had to pull out.”
The butler opened the dining room’s double doors and Liam Moffat entered with Mary on one side and Sibylla on the other.
“Why have you two been huddling together?” Sibylla whispered as Benjamin took her arm.
“Your father has just informed me that our commercial agent in Mogador has died.”
She looked at him pensively. “So we need someone to take over the business there.”
A fire crackled in the marble fireplace. A large rug lay on the hardwood floor. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling and crystal mirrors graced the walls. The long rosewood dining table was surrounded by delicate chairs on slender legs. The food was arrayed around a splendid silver centerpiece. There was carrot-and-potato soup with parsley, turbot fresh from Billingsgate, cutlets and game pie, French cheese, and exotic fruit for dessert. Benjamin served Sibylla, and Mr. Moffat insisted on serving the hostess.
“Of course, compared to this sumptuous meal, my fare in M
orocco was rather plain. I would live for days on nothing but dates, flatbread, and goat cheese,” Mr. Moffat commented.
“I so wish I could see the places you have visited with my own eyes!” Sibylla said.
“I am quite sure that an intelligent and energetic woman like yourself can realize such a plan,” Moffat replied chivalrously.
“And I suppose you wouldn’t mind assisting my wife in implementing this plan,” Benjamin nearly spat.
Sibylla looked up in surprise. It was the first sign of jealousy her husband had shown.
Moffat inclined his head. “Inshallah, as they say in the Orient: if God wills it.”
Benjamin’s face began to blaze, and Mary quickly took over. “Please, Mr. Moffat, do share some of your adventures with us.”
While the Scotsman was talking, Benjamin leaned over and hissed in Sibylla’s ear, “What a showoff!”
Moffat was a cartographer and land surveyor whom the Royal Geographical Society had sent to Morocco at the behest of Sultan Moulay Abd al-Rahman because the Alaouite ruler wished to modernize his country. By collecting data on boundary lines, river valleys, mountain ranges, oases, and deserts, Moffat had made the mysterious country in northwest Africa somewhat more accessible to foreigners. Richard wanted to know all there was to know about trade goods and natural resources, and Sibylla was captivated by the description of the old caravan routes that led through the Sahara from the Mediterranean to Timbuktu.
When Moffat reported that some of the most important items being traded in the country were slaves taken from the heart of the continent, the table grew quiet. Richard’s father, Horatio, had founded the family shipping company with funds derived from the slave trade. His captains had used glass beads and colorful cotton cloth to buy young men and women from local tribal chiefs along the coast of Guinea and sold them to sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Horatio had been a respected businessman at the time, but no one spoke openly of this blood debt anymore. The slave trade had been outlawed in England for almost thirty years now.
The Lioness of Morocco Page 3