Princess Elizabeth's Spy mhm-2

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  Princess Margaret considered. “All right.” She circled Maggie, looking her up and down, taking in everything from her rolled hair to her resoled pumps. “Your hair’s red, but it’s more of an auburn, so that makes it prettier. Not like Sir Humphrey, whose hair is, unfortunately, the color of carrots. Of course, it’s fine if carrots are carrot-colored—but not the tops of people’s heads. I’m glad you’re so young and pretty. Are you really from America? You do talk funny. Do you know any movie stars? Shirley Temple?”

  “Margaret!” Princess Elizabeth admonished. “That’s enough now. Don’t overwhelm poor Miss Hope.”

  “You’re not Queen yet, Lilibet!” Princess Margaret snapped.

  Princess Elizabeth rolled her eyes. Obviously it wasn’t the first time she’d heard that. “You don’t need to be a queen to be polite.”

  Ainslie again gestured to the woman seated across the room. “Mrs. Knight, this is Miss Hope, the Princess Elizabeth’s new maths tutor. Miss Hope, this is Mrs. Knight, the princesses’ nanny, known as Alah.” Alah was an older woman with black hair, handsome features, and a no-nonsense expression. “Alah was originally nanny to the Queen.”

  “How do you do,” Maggie said.

  “How do you do,” Alah responded with a Hertfordshire accent. She went over to young Margaret and smoothed her curls protectively. Margaret looked up at her with an expression of absolute adoration.

  Ah, Maggie realized, she’s territorial. Of course. It must be difficult to have someone new come in.

  “Alah is responsible for the princesses’ out-of-school life—their health, their baths, their clothes. To help her, she has an undermaid and a nursemaid. You shall meet them later. You’ll also meet Crawfie, Miss Marion Crawford, the girls’ governess,” Ainslie explained. “She’s responsible for them from nine until six. You’ll discuss Princess Elizabeth’s academic schedule with her.”

  “Of course,” Maggie said, raising her chin just the slightest bit. “I look forward to it.” She looked at Alah. Maggie could sense the love that the woman had for her young charges. There may be a threat at Windsor, Maggie thought, but I doubt it comes from Alah. But who knows about the rest of the staff?

  After the perfunctory goodbyes, there was more walking through maze-like icy stone corridors. “I feel there must be a Minotaur lying in wait somewhere,” Maggie joked, disconcerted by the silence.

  Ainslie did not respond.

  Finally, he announced, “The Victoria Tower, Miss.” They began to climb a circular staircase. The stone of the steps was worn smooth in the center. A few of them were crumbled at the edges. Ainslie and Maggie climbed. And climbed. And climbed.

  Maggie was a bit out of breath when they reached the top. “Here are your rooms,” the butler said, opening the heavy wooden door for her. She felt a prickle of girlish excitement. I’m going to live in a tower in a castle!

  She took a few steps inside; Ainslie followed, turning on a few lamps with silk fringed shades. The sitting room was small, with kelly-green walls dotted with a few oil landscapes and a small chintz-covered sofa and small table pulled in front of a stone fireplace. A fire, set and lit by one of the castle’s fender smiths, popped and cracked merrily behind the iron grate, although it didn’t seem to be throwing much heat. Maggie shivered.

  Ainslie opened a door to the bedroom; the canopied bed was piled high with large pillows encased in white linen with handmade lace, topped by a crimson duvet. “There’s a radiator in here, Miss. In case you get cold.” In case? Maggie thought but refrained from saying anything.

  “The toilet and bath are”—Ainslie paused delicately, indicating a steep and narrow staircase—“on the roof.”

  “On the roof?” Maggie repeated, dumbstruck.

  “Castles weren’t originally built with indoor plumbing, Miss Hope.”

  “It’s enclosed?”

  “Of course,” Ainslie replied, looking shocked.

  “Well, how refreshing,” Maggie managed.

  He pointed to a bell, wired near the main door. “In the event of an air raid, you will be warned by watchers stationed on the Round Tower, and then the Wardens will ring the bell. After dinner, I shall show you the way to the shelter. It’s in the dungeon.” As he walked to the door, he added, “You’ll be expected to join the rest of the staff at eight sharp for dinner in the Octagon Room.”

  He cleared his throat. “We dress.”

  It didn’t take Maggie long to unpack her suitcase. Better than the dock in the War Rooms anyway, she decided, although she wasn’t thrilled by the idea of nights in a dungeon. It must be quite safe from raids, at least. And it can’t be any worse than an Anderson shelter.

  She glanced at the tiny gold watch on her wrist. Seven o’clock. How did it get to be so late? And Ainslie’s “We dress.” What does it mean, exactly? She was annoyed yet again that Frain was in such a rush to get her installed that he hadn’t found time to get her properly briefed. “You’re a bright girl, you’ll manage,” indeed. Maggie was glad he thought so highly of her, but it didn’t help her figure out what to wear for dinner.

  She’d brought all she had, but it wasn’t that much. Skirts and blouses, mostly. Some sweaters. A few pairs of flannel trousers. Several wool dresses. Oxfords, plimsoles, and fur-lined boots. One sky-blue gown tipped in black velvet. Back in London, she’d had flatmates to borrow from.

  But she couldn’t think of that now. She pulled out one of her dresses, dark green wool with a lace collar and silver buttons. It would have to do. She brushed and rerolled her hair, dabbed on some lipstick, and changed clothes. When she opened her door to the corridor, she felt a palpable chill. I’ll just wear my coat, then.

  It was only after she descended the tower stairs that she realized she had absolutely no idea where the Octagon Room was.

  Maggie walked for what felt like miles through long, dimly lit, icy corridors filled with spidery shadows. Her feet, in her thin-soled pumps, were freezing from the rough, cold stones—all the carpets must have been rolled up and put into storage for safekeeping—and she pulled her coat tighter around her, wishing she had taken her hat and scarf as well.

  After twists and turns through the stone passageways, Maggie saw at the end of yet another long, cold hallway what looked to be a spectral figure. It was hard to tell: The few lightbulbs were the wartime-issue ones with low wattage, and all the blackout curtains covered the windows.

  She squinted. Surely it was a person. It couldn’t be a ghost—oh no. Highly illogical—as well as quite improbable. Aunt Edith would be appalled at such Gothic flights of fancy. Despite herself, she began a mental inventory of all the people who might possibly be ghosts—Henry VIII, of course. And poor Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour, too. Queen Elizabeth I. Charles I, maybe? King George III … Oh, stop it, she told herself firmly. This is no way to start your first night.

  “Hello?” she called, her voice echoing down the hallway.

  The figure turned and stared at Maggie approaching in the dim light, the taps from her leather soles echoing in the frigid air.

  It was a man, she realized. Tall, very thin, wearing a RAF-issued shearling jacket. He was standing, hands clasped behind his back, staring at an empty gilt picture frame. Without looking up, he began speaking. “There used to be a Rembrandt here,” he said. “At least, that’s what I remember. Damned war’s changed everything.…”

  As Maggie walked closer, he turned. In the dim flickering light, she could see he was young, around her age, with close-cropped golden curls, dressed in brown corduroy trousers and a wool sweater with twisted cables and honeycomb under the shearling jacket. His face appeared handsome. And yet, as Maggie approached and he turned from the shadow of the wall, she could see that one side had been horribly disfigured, transformed by angry red scar tissue and rectangular white skin grafts. His left eyelid had been reconstructed, and some gauze and tape were visible on his neck. As much as she tried not to stare, for a long second she couldn’t help it.

  His face broke into a
crooked smile. “I don’t bite, although it may look as though I might. Souvenir from Åndalsnes, I’m afraid.”

  Maggie nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I’m a bit lost, actually.…”

  “It isn’t hard to lose your way here.”

  “I’m Maggie,” she said, holding out her hand. “Maggie Hope. I’m going to be teaching Princess Elizabeth maths. How do you do?”

  He enveloped her small hand with his scarred one. “Well, hello Maggie, Maggie Hope. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re cold,” he observed.

  “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite so drafty.”

  “Samuel Pepys declared Windsor to be ‘the most romantique castle that is in the world.’” He shrugged. “Must have visited in the summer.”

  “I’m trying to find the Octagon Room and I’m lost. I’ve just arrived, you see. I really feel as though I should have been issued a map, or a guidebook, at least.”

  “Street signs at the juncture of the corridors?”

  Maggie smiled. “Exactly.”

  “Well, I happen to know the way to said Octagon Room.” He offered her his arm. “May I escort you?”

  “I’d be delighted.” Maggie took the proffered arm. “By the way, you never told me your name.”

  “Gregory. Gregory Strathcliffe … Le Fantôme,” he added to himself as they walked.

  “You’re much, much too substantial to be a phantom,” Maggie said, squeezing his arm. Le Fantôme de l’Opéra was one of her favorite books.

  “Then La bête. La belle et la bête.”

  “I’m only beastly in the morning,” Maggie quipped.

  He raised one eyebrow. “I can see we’re going to get along, Maggie Hope.”

  Endless corridors, staircases, and sudden turns later, they were at the double doors to the Octagon Room, in the Brunswick Tower.

  As they stood in the outside doorway, Maggie could hear the meal was already in progress. “What’s the worst they can do—cut off my head?”

  “Oh, we haven’t done that here for, well, at least a few hundred years,” Gregory answered gravely.

  Maggie grasped the rose-and-dragon brass doorknob and opened the ornately carved wooden door.

  It was a dark cavern of a room, with a high vaulted Gothic ceiling and the dim light from tapered candles glinting off the silver table service. Seated around the long, linen-covered table were Ainslie, Alah, and at least twenty other people with pale faces—the men in white ties and black dinner jackets, the ladies in long gowns—in the middle of their soup course. A black marble fireplace roared orange at one end of the room, which was, in fact, octagon-shaped.

  One of the men, short and slender, with an Edwardian center part and a bulbous red nose, dabbed his lips with a linen napkin, then rose to his feet. “Miss Hope, I presume?” he boomed in a port-wine voice.

  “Yes,” she said, taking a step inside. “Sir.”

  The other staff members paused in their conversations to listen, and a tense silence fell over the room.

  “You. Are. Late!” he intoned.

  “Well, I’m here now,” Maggie said.

  “I am Baron Clive Wigram, Governor of the castle. Meaning the Keeper—the Keeper of Time, among other things. We are all, always, on time. We”—he took in Maggie’s simple frock and coat—“dress for dinner. Do you understand, young lady?”

  It had been a long day. Maggie was cold and hungry. And she wasn’t in the mood to deal with a pompous idiot. “I am dressed, Lord Clive. And I should think you wouldn’t be so quick to point out my supposed fashion faux pas. Wasn’t it Queen Victoria herself, here at Windsor Castle, who drank from her fingerbowl, when one of her dinner guests did by mistake? Obviously, she understood the difference between good manners and slavish adherence to etiquette.”

  “Well, Miss Hope, I—I …” Lord Clive spluttered. At the table, there was soft whispering. One of the footmen standing near the wall, a tall young man in a powdered wig, gave her a discreet wink. From behind her, Maggie heard a snort, and then Gregory stepped into the room.

  Lord Clive colored slightly. “Oh! Lord Gregory!” he said, in a much more cordial tone. “I didn’t see you there.”

  Gregory gave a brilliant smile, which pulled at his scar tissue, causing it to turn white. “If you don’t mind, Lord Clive, I think I’ll take Miss Hope for a bite in town.”

  “Why, Lord Gregory,” Maggie said, playing along with him, “that sounds just lovely. Since I’m already late. And not dressed for dinner.”

  “Oh,” said Lord Clive, “oh, I didn’t mean …”

  “No, of course you didn’t,” Maggie said. “Thank you so much, your Lordship. Ladies, gentlemen—bon appétit.” And with that, Maggie took Gregory’s arm and walked out of the room with him.

  “My hero!” she exclaimed, after the heavy door clicked closed.. “Although now I’m hungry enough to gnaw on a table leg.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Gregory said. “Let’s get some real food and a pint—and then I’ll draw up a map of the old pile for you.” When he smiled, his scars were less noticeable. “Come on, then.”

  Chapter Seven

  They walked through the middle and lower wards, out the Henry VIII Gate and down the cobblestone walk to narrow and picturesque Market Street. It was another side of Windsor—as much as the castle belonged to the Royals and their community, the town was full of a different history: Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, the house where “pretty, witty” Nell Gwyn trysted with King Charles II, Christopher Wren’s Guildhall, the Crooked House.

  At the Carpenters Arms, Maggie refused to let Gregory take her coat. “I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again,” she told him, trying to make herself heard over the cacophony of the crowd, as they walked over the worn red-flowered carpeting through the smoky warmth and past the throng at the long dark wooden bar, where a bartender in a white apron pulled on one of the taps. Next to him was a sign proclaiming “No Guinness. No Sausages. No problems.”

  “It’s a good walk from the Upper Ward of the castle, true,” Gregory said. “Still, better than dinner with that crew. More snobbish than the Royals themselves, if you ask me.” He found them a rickety wooden table near a fireplace outlined with ceramic tile painted with red and pink roses.

  Maggie sat down and watched as Gregory removed his overcoat. A young waitress with a blond bun made her way toward them in the dim golden glow from the brass sconces with Victorian etched-glass globes. “What would you like?” she asked over the noise of the crowd and a recording of the Andrews Sisters singing “Begin the Beguine.”

  Maggie had already glanced at the menu. “Cider, please. And the shepherd’s pie.”

  “Two. But I’ll have an ale.” The waitress stared in horror at Gregory’s face for a moment before composing her features. She gave a nervous smile and walked away.

  “You know, Clive’s not really so bad,” Gregory said, turning back to Maggie. “Distinguished military career, then private secretary to the Sovereign. Retired just a few years ago to Windsor and only recently been named Governor. He tries to run things with military precision—a bit obsessive about time, but I think he quite misses ordering a bunch of sailors about.”

  “Of course.” Maggie was ready to be magnanimous, now that her toes were beginning to warm up. “And what about you? What brings you to Windsor?”

  Something closed in Gregory’s face. “I’m here as equerry—an assistant of sorts—to the King. Was a pilot before that, if you couldn’t tell by the jacket. Got a bit singed early on in Norway. Not just my face, either. Scars go down my left side.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Maggie said. What if it had been John? she thought. What if it is John, burned and somewhere in France or Germany?

  “The equerry position goes to some poor wounded soldier every six months or so,” Gregory said, arranging and rearranging the table’s salt and pepper shakers, bottle of vinegar, and HP Sauce. “We get to live in the ca
stle, do a few things for His Majesty, heal up a bit. Not a bad situation, by any means.” His face darkened, eyes looking to the middle distance, seeing things only in his memory. Then he shook his head, as if to clear his nightmares. “All things considered. I’ll have to go back to military duty after the new year. I’m not looking forward to it.”

  The waitress brought their drinks and pies.

  “Oh, heaven,” Maggie said, eyeing the steaming plate of vegetables and some kind of meat covered with a browned crust of mashed potatoes.

  “Careful, it’s hot,” Gregory warned, as he took a sip of his beer. “And probably made with actual shepherd.”

  “At this point, I don’t care,” she declared, sticking her fork into the mashed-potato crust. “I’m starving.”

  After she’d eaten a bit, and Gregory had pushed his food around on his plate, he said, “So you’re teaching the little princesses maths, then?”

  Of course she couldn’t tell him MI-5 had placed her there. “Yes,” she said, through a bite.

  “Excellent idea! Crawfie’s a good Scottish lass, but she’s not that well educated, really. Of course, Lilibet’s taking a few classes at Eton, my alma mater, but if she’s going to be queen someday …”

  “Exactly,” Maggie agreed, taking a sip of cider. “So, not just pure maths but statistics, economics, even physics, architecture, engineering—”

  “And how do you know all that?” Gregory asked, surprised. He’d finished his ale and set down the empty glass. “No offense, of course.”

  “Long story.” Maggie laughed. “I majored in mathematics at Wellesley College, back in the States. I was going to go on to do a Ph.D. at M.I.T. when my British grandmother passed. So I came to London in thirty-eight to sell her house, and, well, never left.”

  “Well, good for you, then,” he said. “I studied Classics when I was at university—could hardly get past algebra, let alone calculus. How’d you get the position with the Royal Family?”