Wanted: Royal Wife and Mother

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Sir,’ he gasped in his own language. ‘Sir, we’re in trouble. The landslip…There’s been a huge landslip above the village. The houses…There are people buried. The road’s blocked. Sir, you have to come. Please.’

  Rafael gripped the boy’s shoulder while he told his story. The boy looked to Rafael to take charge but Rafael’s wonderful uniform didn’t give him the local knowledge he needed now.

  He’d hardly been home since he was fifteen. Crater knew the land, the people, the emergency drills. He was in his seventies but he stepped forward now and started giving orders.

  The road was cut. They needed to get an assessment of what the damage was. He’d send a team to climb high above the castle to where a man could see right across the valley.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Rafael said. ‘I have radio gear in the workshop. I can use that to contact the outside world if the telephones stay cut. Crater, I’ll give you a handset as well so I can get back to you.’

  ‘You won’t get up there.’

  ‘I’ll take a horse,’ Rafael said and Kelly gasped. For him to ride again…

  ‘The villagers might need you,’ Crater said, not hearing the implications of what Rafael had said, thinking only of what was before them.

  ‘I’ll get back down and help dig, whatever you want, as soon as I can.’

  ‘You’re our prince,’ Crater said obliquely. ‘We’ll want you in the village.’

  ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can,’ Rafael said. ‘Kelly, love, make sure things stay safe here. Any more tremors, you’re in charge.’

  She was in charge but there was nothing to do. Everyone else left. Even Laura disappeared, donning stout walking boots and going with Ellen and Marguerite down to the little village hospital to see if they could be of help.

  Kelly stayed with Matty.

  ‘We should be down in the village too,’ Matty said, more and more insistently as the afternoon wore on.

  ‘We’d just get in the way,’ she told him. ‘Crater’s taken everyone who can dig with him. Your Uncle Rafael will be down there by now. We need to look after the castle.’

  ‘It’s cowardly to stay in the castle when our people need us.’

  It did feel wrong. But every able-bodied man and woman had joined the team to go to the village, so Kelly needed to stay here with her son. Even though it killed her not to know what was happening. Where Rafael was. What had happened in the village.

  ‘I’m the Prince and you’re the Princess,’ Matty told her, deeply disapproving of her decision to stay where they were. ‘Crater says it’s the job of a prince to lead his people.’

  ‘You’re five years old and I’m not a princess,’ she said helplessly. ‘Maybe we could play Scrabble.’

  He looked at her calmly, figuring out whether she meant it or not and intelligent enough to see that she did.

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Will we play in your room?’

  ‘I…yes.’ Retire to her attic. ‘Why not?’

  ‘The Scrabble set’s in the nursery,’ he told her. ‘I’ll fetch it.’

  Only he didn’t. Kelly checked on the dogs in the kitchen-the dog Marsha had been worried about was a bitch about to whelp and Kelly had promised to check on her every half hour. The bitch was lying peaceably in her basket, with three pups already at teat.

  ‘See, you have your priorities right,’ Kelly said, bending to fondle the big dog’s ears. ‘Home and hearth. It’d be good if we could be of help down in the village but a mother’s place is with her kids.’

  The dog gave her a long lick, which cheered Kelly immeasurably. She walked up the stairs to her attic, but when she reached it Matty wasn’t there yet.

  She wanted to tell him about the pups.

  Maybe he’d had trouble finding the Scrabble set, she thought. She walked downstairs, along to the nursery.

  She was worried, and not just about Matty. She hadn’t heard anything about what was happening out in the village. No one had come back. Rafael was out there somewhere in his magnificent uniform doing heroic stuff. Laura and Crater were down in the village helping. She was stuck here minding Matty.

  Only where was Matty?

  He wasn’t in the nursery.

  Suddenly she felt sick.

  ‘Matty?’ she yelled, but her voice echoed ominously around the empty halls.

  ‘Matty…’

  A clatter of horse hooves on the cobbles below drew her to the window.

  ‘Matty!’

  If he heard her scream he didn’t acknowledge it. He was on a horse. Somehow he’d managed to saddle one of the smaller mares. He was firm in the saddle, his hands keeping good control, turning the mare’s head towards the gate and digging his small heels into her flanks.

  ‘Matty,’ she screamed again but he was gone.

  Out of the gate towards the village.

  For a long moment she simply stared at the gate as if she couldn’t believe what she’d seen. But she’d seen all right. Through the open window she could hear the faint clip-clop of the mare’s hooves as she disappeared from sight.

  Matty was gone. Into a situation of which she knew nothing.

  Her son.

  Since Kass had kicked her out, Kelly had had her escape in a century past, a time warp that had held her close, protecting her from outside forces. Here she’d done her best to create a sanctuary again, where the outside world belonged to those who wanted it.

  She didn’t want the outside world. But her son was riding into it, with the heart of a prince.

  Something played back in her mind, some crazy lesson he’d repeated to her when she’d said it didn’t make much difference that he was a prince. When she’d talked to him of the possibility of staying in Australia.

  ‘They’re my people. I should be with them,’ he’d said sternly. ‘Crater says when there’s peril that’s when the people need their prince. He said in World War Two the English King and his Queen and their two little princesses should have gone to America to be safe. Only they didn’t. They stayed, and every time there was bombing the King would be there, just to say to everyone be brave.’

  He was right. King George’s commitment to his people had possibly been the difference between submission or victory.

  But Matty was too young to make such a call. He was her son. He was five years old.

  He was her prince.

  And so was Rafael. Somewhere out there was Rafael. With…his people? While she stayed here like some Cinderella, hiding in her attic. Being no one.

  Not even brave enough to put on a dress.

  All these thoughts took no more than seconds-seconds while her frightened mind came to terms with what had happened and what now must happen.

  She wheeled away, taking the stairs at a run, across the forecourt to the stables. Tamsin would no longer be here but other horses would. The road would be impassable for cars. She had to ride.

  She might be a nuisance in the village. She couldn’t see how her presence and Matty’s presence could make a difference. Her reasons for staying separate from the royal household might still hold true.

  But Matty…Prince Mathieu…and Prince Rafael, Crown Prince and Prince Regent of Alp de Ciel, had decided otherwise.

  What was their royal princess to do but support them?

  She hit mud at the first bend after the castle and her mare reacted with alarm, seeing the damage before she did. She’d been looking ahead, not at the road, and the horse edged sideways, rearing in fright.

  She looked to where the horse was looking and looked again.

  There was seeping, oozing mud in the woodlands on the higher side of the road. The road was still clear but it looked as if a flood of mud-laden water had slopped down the mountainside.

  The horse-a mare whose name above her stable door decreed she was Gigi-must have come this way often. She knew it was different now. She whinnied in nervousness as Kelly settled her and forced her to keep on.

  They slowed. Matty was somewhere ahead but the road now h
ad patches of silt, with small stones and bigger rocks in their path.

  How fast would Matty have come? Where would he go?

  And where was Rafael?

  There was no other road than this. She had to follow it.

  Where was everyone?

  ‘Come on, Gigi. Come on, girl. You can do it.’

  The horse flattened her ears, but responded to her reassurance and picked her way on.

  And then they were at the outskirts of the village and fear was starting to wash over in waves that made her tremble. She was frantically trying to suppress it. Horses sense fear and she had to keep Gigi calm. But…But…

  The road ran through the foothills of the mountains. Above and beyond, she could see rough, jagged and newly formed scarring, a mass of ripped earth as if a great chunk of the hillside had slipped from its moorings.

  There was silence as they approached the township. The mare was whinnying in fear and it took all Kelly’s skill to keep her from turning home.

  She couldn’t go home. Somewhere ahead was Matty. He’d be moving faster than she was. He wouldn’t have an adult’s fear that the horse might slip on loose rocks; that he might be thrown.

  He was heading for the village. Heading to his people. Was Rafael before him?

  And then she rounded the final curve in the hills before the village, and as she did she drew in her breath in horror.

  The full extent of the slip could now be seen. It was a great gash on the hillside, starting as a thin wedge maybe a mile above, reaching down to a slash of tossed earth maybe half a mile wide. It was as if a great chunk of the earth had simply slid out from where it should have been and lurched its way towards the village.

  The village…Dear God, the village.

  She could see massive destruction. Huge trees uprooted, cast aside by the power of the earth.

  Houses…

  What had been houses.

  She put her hand to her mouth, feeling ill. She wanted to stop. She wanted to block it out.

  She forced herself to look.

  There were people. From here they were in the distance, like ants over an anthill, looking insignificant, moving aimlessly, or simply standing on the great mounds of tumbled earth.

  She saw a red coat-a sliver of crimson on a horse…

  Matty.

  Sick at heart, she motioned her mare forward. ‘It’s okay, Gigi. It’s okay.’

  Only of course it wasn’t. She could see from here…

  Houses crushed. Roads impassable…

  She pressed on. The ants became people, tearing at their houses, working furiously. The mud was everywhere. They didn’t notice her as she passed-tragedy was everywhere.

  Matty…

  She reached him. He hadn’t seen her approach. He’d stopped in the middle of the road. He was still on his horse, staring before him, his eyes wide with terror.

  There was another horse beside his. He was holding the reins in his hand. He looked crazily small so near such a great creature.

  The horse was Blaze. Kass’s stallion.

  How had Blaze reached here?

  Rafael?

  ‘Matty,’ she whispered and the child turned to her, his face devoid of all colour. She had him, reaching across to take him from his horse, hauling him into her arms whether he willed it or not. He came but he was still enough of a horseman-enough of a prince-to keep the reins of both the other horses in his hand.

  Before them were people, men and women, attacking a vast mound of debris with their hands. The silence was broken by sobbing.

  A sign on a flattened gate told her what horror they were facing.

  A school. Crushed.

  ‘Matty,’ she whispered into his hair and he crumpled against her, his face soaked with tears.

  ‘My Uncle Rafael,’ he whispered against her breast. ‘He’s gone in there. He’s gone in there and the stuff moved on top of him and no one can get him out.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  K ELLY had spent the last five years on the goldfields. She’d panned for gold and she’d dug. Sure she’d been a research historian, she’d spent hours at her desk, but she could handle a spade with the best of the men.

  She also knew the basics of mining. She’d researched every shaft dug back at the theme park and they were authentic. She knew what the miners had done to make themselves safe a hundred and fifty years ago, and she knew what they’d had to do to make the tourist mines even safer now.

  She handed Matty to the care of the women. She took a deep, steadying breath, looked at the heap of sludge they were facing and decided they risked more people being buried alive the way they were going.

  The school house was built against a cliff face. The sludge had washed down the mountain from the other direction. In most places it had swept over and onward, but here the cliff face had stopped it, so it had mounded up in a vast heap, completely obscuring the school buildings.

  It was one vast, unstable mass. To dig in without shoring it up as they went was the way of disaster. She rolled up her sleeves and started issuing orders.

  Amazingly, the men listened. Amazingly, they did what she said.

  Matty couldn’t dig but he wouldn’t shift from where he was. The older people in the town would have taken him into one of the undamaged homes but Matty refused. He stayed, taking care of the horses. Wanting desperately to dig himself if only his elders would let him.

  The damage in the town was awful, Kelly learned as she worked, but not as catastrophic as she’d first thought. Yes, houses were crushed, but the landslip had started high up. The tremors had been felt before it had hit, and most people had been outside. The mass had moved slowly, giving people time to run to higher ground.

  Two elderly couples had been killed instantly when their houses had crashed around them. There were injuries-people had been hit by the sliding mud-but the worst of the rush of earth had been over before it had hit the town.

  But the school…It was on the outskirts, which meant it had been one of the first buildings to be hit. To have the children run to higher ground would have been impossible.

  ‘There’s a basement underneath,’ Kelly was told by the grim-faced mayor. ‘We’re thinking the teacher panicked and had everyone head for the basement. Then the mud hit the front, blocking the exit. When we got here, we could hear screaming. Prince Rafael…he took a torch in. He could just make it in through a gap in the debris and we thought we could get everyone out that way. Only then the whole lot shifted and the roof came down. And now…’

  ‘You can’t hear?’

  ‘Muffled stuff when everything’s still,’ the mayor told her. ‘We’re hoping against hope they’re all down there. Twenty kids and their teacher and our Prince. And all we can do is dig.’

  ‘Is help coming?’ she asked, trying not to sound terrified.

  ‘The roads are all blocked,’ the mayor told her. ‘The tremors have been felt all the way to the border so outside help isn’t going to happen. We can’t get equipment in.’

  So they dug. It sounded simple. Moving a small mountain of mud from over a basement. Trying not to do any more damage. Working from the outside in, so no more weight would go on to the basement roof-if indeed it had held.

  There were people alive in there. When the mayor held up his hand for silence they could hear faint cries but the mass of mud stifled everything.

  ‘If Rafael’s down there…he has a radio,’ Kelly said as she dug and the men around her looked at each other and didn’t respond.

  If he had a radio then he’d be able to communicate. He wasn’t communicating. He wasn’t…he couldn’t be…

  She dug.

  It was mind-numbing work, with nothing to alleviate the fact that tons of mud had to be shifted by hand. No one thought of bringing in machinery-to cause vibrations on top of the basement would be crazy. Care was taken to distribute diggers so no further pressure was on the mass, making the risk of further falls as small as possible.

  Fatalities elsewher
e had been accounted for-the injured were being cared for. This was the only area where people had yet to be found.

  There were twenty children missing, one schoolteacher-and Rafael.

  The workers who’d been here when Rafael had gone in were grim-faced. They’d cleared an area around the stairway into the basement. What they thought had happened was that the front of the building had collapsed. The rear of the building was set hard against the cliff face, leaving no form of exit. So the children must have fled for safety downstairs.

  They’d heard them calling clearly when they’d first arrived. They were safe, they were okay. So they’d hauled the mass of timber blocking the path away. As it had cleared, the teacher below had wanted to send children up, but Rafael had stopped them.

  ‘Let me try it first,’ he’d growled. ‘I don’t want a child halfway up if that mass above decides it’s unstable.’

  Which was pretty much what had happened. Armed with a torch, Rafael had disappeared into the gloom. And then another tremor had struck and the entire building and some of the cliff face behind had subsided, leaving a mountain of debris with no one knew what underneath.

  Had Rafael reached the safety of the basement? Was the basement still safe? They could hear muffled cries through the rubble but it was too thick to decipher words.

  Please…

  Please.

  Kelly dug as she’d never dug in her life before. But all around…

  People were deferring to her.

  ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Should we send for bulldozers?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem safe but if you think we should…’

  It didn’t seem safe and no, she didn’t think they should but that they deferred to her was astonishing. She was a historian.

  A historian who knew about mine management, she conceded, but they didn’t know that. She found herself snapping orders-sending people to find shoring timbers, assessing load strengths, standing back from digging every few moments to see the whole picture…