The Windsor Knot

by SJ Bennett

  ‘Well, that might be a romantic name for it, ma’am, but it’s anything but. I’m not an expert myself, but I was glad to be able to host the meeting here at the castle. It was a classified thing the Foreign Office organised, with help from MI6. Having it here gave everyone the privacy they needed, and it was useful for Kelvin, being so close to Heathrow. He was able to fly in and out quickly on his way to a conference in Virginia, although of course his plane here was delayed by bad weather so he was rather late for everything. We put off the main part of our meeting by a day to include him, because he has such an intriguing insight into what the Chinese are doing in Africa. I’m sorry – is this more detail than you were hoping for, ma’am?’

  ‘No, it’s fascinating. Do go on.’

  ‘He’s created a computer program to map their infrastructure investments across the continent and to neighbouring countries, and they really are much more massive than anyone had anticipated – or than the Chinese are owning up to.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Oh yes, ma’am. They’re building whole ports, and railways and super-highways, and even courts to settle trading disputes.’

  ‘So different from the last century, when they would hardly talk to anyone.’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am. President Xi’s making up for lost time. But there are big questions about how much debt the host nations are getting into, and whether the infrastructure can be used for military purposes. I mean, goodness, don’t let me bore you with it all now. You’ll see it in the report MI6 are putting together. And the other one the Foreign Office people are finalising, with some of our more strategic concerns. That’s the one this meeting was set up to discuss.’

  ‘And who was at it, exactly? They all seemed so young.’

  ‘They were, ma’am. It’s rather frightening, isn’t it? When people your grandchildren’s age suddenly seem to be running the country. We had various boffins from the City and academia and GCHQ. Hardly anyone over thirty-five, I’d say. Kelvin is twenty-six, would you believe?’

  She noticed that behind Sir Peter’s shoulder, Lady Caroline was trying to catch her eye. The drinks were overrunning and the chef was probably worrying about the fish.

  ‘Yes, well . . . isn’t that interesting?’ she said, twisting her wedding ring so Lady Caroline could come in and break up the conversation. It was a shame, because it really was interesting, and she would have liked to have chatted more. She hadn’t realised Sir Peter’s meeting had been so secret and strategic. It gave her a lot to think about.

  Chapter 16

  T

  he rest of the weekend was very relaxing. Edward and Sophie came over with their children on Sunday after church, and they all went out for a hack. Back inside the castle they looked through the albums of Barbers Shop winning his races as a gelding, and subsequently triumphing at several Ridden Show Horse events. His trainer was bringing him over from Essex for the horse show. At fourteen, he probably only had another year of showing in him. Everyone would miss him. He had been such a star – on the track and in the ring. It was nice to see Louise asking intelligent questions about his bloodline and schooling.

  Sir Simon appeared that evening with her schedule for the week, and for the first time in a month it looked busy: the Privy Council, the Post Office turning five hundred, herself turning ninety, and then, to round it off, the Obamas. Actually, that was the event she was most looking forward to. They had a glamour about them, that couple, reminiscent of the Kennedys and the Reagans. They were intelligent and warm, and had got on with all the family when they visited last time. That had been all the bells and whistles at Buckingham Palace. This would be something quieter and more intimate. She wanted Windsor to be at its best: ideally without the unsolved murder of a foreign national and her own Security Service’s hunt for traitors in her Household hanging over it.

  *

  She went to bed early, but couldn’t sleep. Thoughts of the Belt and Road meeting kept bubbling up to bother her. It fitted with something. Something that had happened that evening, when she had gone over to the Norman Tower, where the governor was treating his guests to a drinks reception of their own in his private drawing room, and she had agreed to pop in and say hello.

  She hadn’t stayed long. There were about eight of them in the drawing room, she recalled, most of them ridiculously young, and Sir Peter had made the introductions. They were an unusually uncohesive group. She had put it partly down to nerves, but they really didn’t seem to know each other, on the whole. It was as if they had been plucked from their various organisations and institutions for this particular event, and were still on awkward social terms. So different from the military cocktail parties she had so often attended, where the officers were a tight little band, keen to josh each other and make jokes.

  They had dressed for the occasion. Not evening gowns, of course, but black tie and cocktail dresses. All but two were men, including the senior official from the Foreign Office who had arranged the meeting and a couple of spooks from MI6. All the others were analysts and academics, she supposed. One of the girls had been very pretty, with elfin looks and a cropped, blonde shingle that reminded one of Twiggy. The other was dark, with curtains of straight hair that half obscured her face. This was Rachel Stiles – the young woman who would soon be dead of an overdose. Had someone in that room caused her to take it? All must have stayed the night, if the main meeting had been postponed to the following day.

  China and Russia.

  Could there be some connection? Geopolitically – as Sir Simon would say – of course there could. Was Maksim Brodsky some sort of Russian spy? Had he been planted by Peyrovski to get hold of Chinese secrets? Had Rachel Stiles been helping him? Is that why they both had to die?

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, she was getting as bad as the director general. The very idea was absurd. And yet her mind kept going back to that little gathering in the Norman Tower. Something was wrong. She’d noticed it at the time, and then dismissed it, but now she knew she should have trusted her instincts. If only she could remember what it was.

  She tried to picture the men. One had been unusually tall, she remembered. One had an Indian-sounding name. One had talked exceedingly fast about something to do with debt ratio formulas and then stood waiting for her to say something intelligent. She had smiled and said, ‘How very interesting.’ What else was one supposed to do?

  Meanwhile, if she was going to find the killer by the President’s visit on Friday, she would have to work very fast indeed.

  *

  On Monday morning Rozie showed up for work wearing jodhpurs and an old tweed jacket over a long-sleeved T-shirt. This was not how an assistant private secretary usually dressed, but she had been told to meet the Boss at the back entrance of the Royal Mews, ready for a ride.

  The Queen was already there, in a quilted jacket and with a signature silk scarf knotted into position. Rozie couldn’t remember ever having seen her in a hard hat. Queens did not fall off horses, it seemed. And to be fair, the glossy black fell pony looked to be the most placid of creatures, waiting patiently with her groom in the immaculate yard, next to a mahogany bay with short, powerful legs and a black silky mane that he tossed flirtatiously in Rozie’s direction.

  ‘Ah. Hello!’ the Boss greeted her with a grin, indicating the bay. ‘We thought we’d get Temple tacked up for you. He’s about the right size and a nice character, as long as you tell him who’s in charge.’

  Rozie curtsied, which felt odd in riding boots. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’

  The Queen was in good spirits, but sharp. ‘One reads one’s papers. I gather you learned to ride in Hyde Park. So did I. Come on.’

  They mounted their rides and two grooms accompanied them, one on a black pony almost identical to the Queen’s, and one on a sturdy Windsor Grey. The day was gloomy, with scudding clouds and a distant hint of rain. The Queen glanced up at the sky.

  ‘I checked the weather on the BBC. We’ve got an hour or so, apparently.’
>
  They headed east, over grass and under trees, towards the wide spaces of Home Park, where Temple settled into a steady walk and Rozie flexed her riding muscles, relaxing into the rhythm and realising how much she needed this.

  ‘You grew up not far from where I did,’ the Queen observed, referring to her parents’ house in Mayfair.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I’m very impressed that you rode in central London. It can’t have been easy, getting lessons?’

  She was too polite to say exactly what she meant, Rozie thought, but she was right: it had been bloody difficult. Girls who grow up on council estates aren’t supposed to ride horses. Yes, it was near Hyde Park, but it’s one life if you live in one of the big houses in Holland Park or Mayfair, and quite another if you live in a two-bed flat in Notting Hill and your dad works on the London Underground, putting up with passenger aggro every day, while your mum works as a midwife and a volunteer in the local community to replace the services that somehow kept disappearing. Time and money for horses weren’t exactly a priority.

  But maybe they had one thing in common apart from Hyde Park, which was being elder daughters, whose parents had high expectations of them.

  ‘I found a way, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh? How?’

  ‘I worked at the stables.’

  Night and day, first thing in the morning, weekends – whenever they would let her, to pay for rides. Rozie often did an hour before school and another couple of hours in the evening, fitting in homework somehow, never quite making top of the class but keeping her head well above water academically, which was the deal with Mum: ‘If you can’t get good grades, say goodbye to the ponies.’ ‘Horses, Mum.’ ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And you rode competitively?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. For the army.’

  Rozie did everything competitively. After combining school and the stables, uni seemed like a breeze and she had joined the Officer Training Corps and still got a first. She wasn’t the world’s best rider, never would be, but she was utterly fearless going round an eventing course. Give her a decent horse and a bit of practice, and she would fly, swim, whatever it took.

  She was a good shot, too, with a top 100 badge at Bisley. Rozie always felt out of place in those worlds, but beat the boys at it anyway. There was nothing in life as satisfying as beating a posh boy at something he was good at. Early on, she had also learned to look like she didn’t care, which made it better. And now here she was, with a good degree, a tour in Afghanistan and a fast-track job in a posh boys’ bank, working for the Queen.

  Normally, she put all of this behind her and just got on with the day, but the horse underneath her took her back to those Hyde Park early mornings. How could she ever possibly have imagined she would end up here?

  ‘What do you think of Temple?’ the Queen asked.

  ‘He’s not happy,’ Rozie laughed. ‘I can sense he wants to get going.’

  ‘Don’t let him.’

  ‘He’s very taken with himself, isn’t he?’

  The Queen grinned across at her. ‘And quite right too. With looks like that. Yes, Temple, you’re gorgeous and you know it.’

  They ambled along one of the walks, listening to birdsong between the full-throttle roar of the jets overhead. Rozie had never seen the Queen so deeply in her element. She felt as if she had somehow crossed a threshold, and now she, the girl from the council estate, was one of them: a fellow rider, a member of the inner circle. Was this ride a reward for the work she’d done in London? The Queen would never say, and Rozie would never ask, but it felt that way.

  They talked about Rozie’s recent trip to Lagos, and how big the city had grown now, to contain twenty million people. This was not news to the Queen, who was familiar with the capital cities of all the Commonwealth countries. It had been a big surprise to Rozie, though, the first time she visited. She realised how prejudiced she had been about Nigeria, assuming it was some kind of would-be England in the sun. If anything, it was the opposite – heading in its own direction with a confidence that put this little island in the shade.

  ‘And was it your grandparents who first came to live in London?’

  It was. Rozie talked with pride about her father’s parents, who had arrived in the sixties. Her grandfather had started out washing bodies in the morgue. It was the only job they would let him have, but he had always worked hard for his community. Everyone in Peckham knew Samuel Oshodi. If there was anything you needed, he worked out how to get it and made it happen somehow.

  ‘He got an MBE,’ Rozie added. ‘I was tiny when he received it, but I remember him going to the palace and we all met up afterwards to celebrate. He met you that day and—’ She stopped, still smiling at the memory. He had said Her Majesty was ‘very small, but quite dazzling – even her skin seemed to glitter’. It was family folklore now. It was meant to be flattering, but Rozie wasn’t sure how the woman herself would take it.

  The woman herself was giving Rozie the strangest look. Had she accidentally said the words out loud? She was sure she hadn’t. The Queen was staring at her as if she had asked a difficult question. Or as if somebody else had, and Rozie wasn’t even there . . .

  She had it now, the memory that had been so elusive.

  It had come back with Technicolor clarity while Rozie was talking – so strong, in fact, she was amazed she had forgotten it at all.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ she decided, cutting short the ride. ‘The sky looks threatening.’

  The Queen was right. Steel-grey clouds had given way to huge columns the colour of Tahitian pearls. The temperature had dropped by a degree. Not for the first time, the BBC weather report had been unduly optimistic. They turned for home and set the horses and ponies to a trot.

  All the way she pictured the seraphic look on Rozie’s face when she had talked about her grandfather’s MBE. That’s how it was with medals. She should have thought of it at the investiture last Wednesday, but that had been routine, though pleasant. It took Rozie’s memory of childish excitement to bring her own, half-buried memory back to life.

  Awards were a special thing, personal and enduring. The odd person turned them down, but anyone who accepted treasured theirs with fierce pride. They remembered the day they got it, and everything they had done to earn it, and so did their families. She had had countless conversations with proud wives and widows, husbands and sons, about decorations won in war and in the community. People could be shy on first meeting, but never when it came to medals. One question, and they opened up. Sometimes they were overcome with emotion, if friends and fellow soldiers had died during a brave campaign, or if they were wearing it on behalf of a relative who had died. But they were never neutral, ever.

  Rachel Stiles had been wearing a fitted dinner jacket over her cocktail dress. On the lapel was a miniature silver cross, backed by a laurel wreath. She was not the only person in the room to be wearing a decoration. Sir Peter had seven, after an illustrious career, and two of the other men in the room had one each. Dr Stiles’ particularly interested the Queen, though, because it was the Elizabeth Cross, awarded to the next of kin of members of the armed forces killed in action, or in a terrorist attack. She had instituted it herself, to recognise their sacrifice, less than ten years ago.

  ‘And who was this for?’ she remembered asking.

  The girl had looked startled. ‘My father.’

  The words had seemed forced, and came out almost as a question. Nevertheless, one persisted. ‘Where was he?’

  Now the girl looked confused. ‘Er, Buckingham Palace?’

  She had been trembling, the Queen noticed; eaten up with nerves. The Queen had decided not to pursue it, and she had blamed herself a little for being vague with her question. She didn’t mean ‘Where did he get the medal?’ of course, because he must have been dead in order for it to be awarded to his family. But that was obvious, surely? She meant, ‘Which attack was he caught up in? Or which campaign?’

  This was a sensitive
subject, naturally, but she had learned over the years that families were keen to share their loss. Perhaps it was because one was in some way representative of what they had died for. Perhaps it was because she cared very much, and had met many other families in similar situations, and indeed lost very dear loved ones to war and terrorists herself.

  She had been expecting, in brief, the undoubtedly tragic story behind the medal – not a two-word answer for where it had been given to someone else. Although Buckingham Palace was an unusual answer in this case. The Elizabeth Cross was normally presented by Lords Lieutenant in ceremonies around the country. She had personally given only a handful of them to relatives, and rarely at the palace. But perhaps this was why it had stood out.

  It was a complicated situation, she had told herself at the time, in the brief flash during which she had considered it. The girl was emotional, and shy. That explained the strange answer. Clearly, she was not a great conversationalist. It was this girl she had been briefly reminded of by Kelvin Lo’s insistence on staring at his shoes the following day. She who had looked unwell, standing in the group behind him.

  Soon after their brief exchange that first evening, the Queen had gone from the Norman Tower to the State Apartments, and then she was focused on the evening à la russe with Charles. She had thought no more about it.

  But Rachel Stiles had not been emotional. Her confusion was just that. Her answer had been plain wrong – about an event that should have been seared into her very essence. She was not the owner of that medal. She did not know what it meant. She was wearing somebody else’s jacket.

  Was she even Rachel Stiles at all?

  As if on cue, there was a sudden clap of thunder in the skies above the park and the first heavy raindrops began to fall. Emma, the fell pony, shook her head slightly and carried on at a steady trot, but Temple glanced up as if at a gunshot and rocketed forward without warning, taking Rozie with him.

  ‘Go after them!’ the Queen instructed the groom on the Grey. Temple was heading for the trees at a canter. Rozie might get knocked off by a branch if she wasn’t careful.