The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo

by Catherine Johnson

  ‘Mama does love books,’ Cassandra whispered.

  The Princess remembered where and who she was. A story made flesh. She must not forget.

  The adults were bickering now. Mr Worrall was close to winning. The Princess thought that if she did not take her future in hand she would be sleeping on the floor of the women’s derelicts ward in the Bristol poorhouse.

  She let go of Cassandra and turned and faced Mrs Worrall. One thing she had learned was that servants never looked straight at their superiors, never met their eyes. That was for equals. But wasn’t she a princess now? She was better than the whole room of them. She must not avert her eyes.

  The Princess saluted, looked Mrs Worrall straight in the eye and smiled. She summoned up all those old languages she had ever heard – on the London streets, in the hedgerows near the Romany camps she’d spied on with her sister. She saluted again. ‘Inju jagoos!’ she said. ‘Inju jagoos, Lazor’ – she nodded at Mrs Worrall and her daughter – ‘Manjinttoo’ – she nodded at Mr Worrall – ‘Makrittoos’ – and finally at Mr Finiefs.

  Mrs Worrall gasped. ‘Oh my, Samuel! I do believe she is something very special!’ She looked at Finiefs. ‘Get Phoebe to make up a bed – until we know who she is she will stay.’

  Mr Worrall had harrumphed once more.

  She’d had to do her best not to smile too widely.

  She sat up slowly. Judging by the light it must be late. How long had she slept? The sheets were cool crisp linen that felt as exotic as the finest oriental silks. No, she reminded herself, she was a princess – this was surely the very least she would be used to. She watched the maid’s back as she bent low over the fireplace and swept up the ashes.

  What would happen if she was discovered? What if this girl could see right through her? What if they all did? She looked for the black gown – if they had taken it away, how would she ever leave? Would she have to run all the way to the city in a borrowed nightgown? She must calm down. No one would know. If she acted like a princess, then that is what they would all see. And the lady of the house certainly wanted her to be real – one of those books in the library come to life, a walking, talking, breathing native for her to study. If she could only keep her nerve, she thought, she might even play the royal savage until luncheon.

  She realized the maid was staring.

  ‘Have no fear, miss!’ the girl said. ‘It’s only, me, Phoebe, remember? Phoe-be.’ She spoke slowly and put her hand, red raw from work, on the Princess’s brow. ‘You might be ailing . . . are you ailing? You ent starting a fever, so that’s something . . .’

  The Princess nodded benignly at the maid.

  Suddenly there was a commotion on the stair outside and Mr Finiefs the steward burst unbidden into the room. He looked around; the Princess saw his eyes fall on her, and it wasn’t until then that he began yelling in his foreign accent and pointing out of the room. ‘Fire! Fire! Quick! The west stairs!’

  The Princess saw the colour drain from Phoebe’s cheeks instantaneously, as if the blood had suddenly stopped pumping. Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh Lor’!’ she said, and fled.

  It was quite fascinating, the Princess thought, how easily folk could be taken in – by love, or other much simpler lies. She herself did not move, but blinked slowly at Mr Finiefs and listened as Phoebe hurtled away down the stairs.

  ‘There’s a fire! Now! We must leave! We’ll all be burned alive!’ Mr Finiefs was still shouting and doing his best to look agitated.

  The Princess cocked her head to one side but did not get out of bed. She knew what he was doing. She was not that stupid.

  Mr Finiefs looked over his shoulder – checking that Phoebe had gone, the Princess thought – and came closer. She was not scared: he might be a man, but he was old and, more importantly, a servant. She stared back at him imperiously. She imagined she was sitting on a throne, a boy with a fan wafting cooling breezes over her, a leopard – or even better, a unicorn – curled at her feet. Now that he was close, she could see his yellow teeth, and the lines in his forehead were deeper than winter ploughing in a heavy clay field. As he spoke, spittle flew in silver droplets towards her face. He was a mere steward. She would not flinch.

  I expect, she said in her head, you miss your homeland. Well, I do too. She raised an eyebrow.

  Mr Finiefs rolled his eyes. ‘Give it a rest, girl. You won’t take me in by jabbering nonsense and putting on a show. Looking for charity, I expect.’

  The Princess only smiled.

  Mr Finiefs paced about the room, then came to rest by the window. When he spoke again, his voice was cruel, sharp. ‘Look, I don’t know who you are but know this: I am watching you like a hawk. Remember that – like a hawk!’ He folded his arms. ‘The master is not a fool. He has not taken kindly to you and your pig Latin. The mistress and Miss Cassandra might have soft hearts, but I assure you mine is carved from hardest Grecian marble.’

  The Princess looked at Mr Finiefs and made up her mind she would depart after breakfast. There was no reason to stay once she had washed and eaten. Breakfast! Her stomach rumbled in a markedly unregal manner and she smoothed the bed linen across her lap. She imagined bread and warm milk . . . but perhaps princesses only ate pigeon, or trout freshly caught from royal fishponds. Perhaps this princess only ate food she caught herself – she was, after all, a warrior. She would have to think on that.

  Mr Finiefs was still talking. ‘The Worralls are good people, and if you have plots or plans against them, I swear I will make you suffer!’

  The Princess did not flinch. She would have liked to tell him he needn’t worry, that she would be back on the road and would leave his precious Worralls well alone. But she doubted he would have believed her.

  Her stomach rumbled again. Oh for a cup of tea! The Princess thought she would give her entire kingdom for one small cup of tea.

  At that moment Phoebe came back with Miss Cassandra. Phoebe was almost jumping up and down with delight.

  ‘See, Miss Cassandra! Mr Finiefs came in yelling “Fire!” and she didn’t move an inch. Nothing showed on her face, nothing at all!’

  The Princess kept the serene smile in place.

  ‘This is true?’ Cassandra asked Mr Finiefs, although it was obvious to the whole room that she had already made up her mind.

  He sighed and made a little shrugging gesture. Cassandra clapped her hands and approached the Princess. Her eyes shone with almost the same intensity that she had turned on the boy from the inn yesterday. And the Princess had seen the boy look back at her the same way. He would break her heart, the Princess thought, or perhaps she would break his. She remembered Robert – the father of her child, the young man who had made her forget herself – and blinked. Robert Lloyd had worked in a dairy close to the Borough. He had the loveliest, darkest, most honest eyes she had ever seen; he called her cariad and promised her marriage, and she had believed him; believed him with all her heart – until she had discovered she was pregnant, and he had found another girl quick as blinking.

  Her heart was broken – though she forced herself to watch through the window as Jenny Pierce sat behind the counter in the Lloyds’ shop and showed off her wedding band like a queen.

  The Princess reminded herself never, ever to fall in love. Cassandra had no idea. It would end in tears or worse; love always did.

  Cassandra sat down on the bed. She placed her hand over her heart. ‘Cass-andra . . .’ She spoke slowly and seriously and said it again. ‘Cass-andra.’

  Then she pointed at the Princess. The Princess paused for a long second. She was thinking about her name. Her name would have to be incredible. The Princess was a warrior, a noblewoman; no, she was more than that – she was from another world.

  The Princess looked around the room. All eyes were on her – Phoebe expectant, Mr Finiefs pretending indifference. The Princess slowly and deliberately lifted her own hand up to her heart and half closed her eyes. ‘Car–a–boo,’ she said. ‘Car–a–boo.’

  Some d
ays later the Princess Caraboo lay flat on her front against the sun-warmed tiles of the roof of the west wing of Knole Park. She was dressed in one of Miss Cassandra’s cast-off Indian muslins, though cut short and adapted into suitable warrior princess mode, the excess fabric wound around her head as a turban, a strip tied around her waist as a belt, with a small sharp knife she had taken from the kitchen tucked into it. She was very proud of her bow and arrows. She had made them the day before when Cassandra gave her a tour of the grounds.

  Cassandra had taken great care, leading her around the stables and the gardens, and along the avenue of tall trees that waved carefree in the breeze. Caraboo had sprinted barefoot across the drive and up into a tree.

  For a moment yesterday afternoon the Princess was gone and she was once again the girl who had been afraid of nothing. The girl who wanted to see the world so badly that one small village could not hold her. That girl had known how to fashion a bow, and Caraboo sat all afternoon sharpening her arrows and holding them up to make sure they were true. This would be their first test.

  Very quietly she took an arrow from the quiver on her back and lined it up. She held her breath. A few feet away were two pigeons, the male puffed up and cooing and pouting around a smaller female, who was doing her best to feign disinterest. How like humans, the Princess thought, and pulled the bowstring taut, her arrow tip aimed fast upon the bird’s heart.

  At that moment there was a clatter and a thud as the trapdoor opened and Cassandra popped her blonde head up directly in Caraboo’s line of fire. The pigeons flapped noisily away and Caraboo had to stop herself from taking Cassandra’s eye out.

  ‘Oh, I say! Oh, I am sorry!’ Cassandra clambered up, smoothing out her dress. ‘Scared them off, did I?’ She stood up straight, looked around and took in the view, one hand shading the sun from her eyes.

  ‘This is marvellous, Caraboo! Absolutely wonderful!’ She took a deep breath in. ‘I’ve never been up here before. You can see clean across to the village. If I had Father’s glasses I could see right into the yard of the Golden Bowl!’

  Cassandra coloured to match the pink flowers on her dress, and even though she had lost the pigeon, Princess Caraboo smiled.

  ‘What do you know, Caraboo?’ Cassandra said. ‘A lot more than you say, I am sure of it!’

  Caraboo titled her head on one side, and pointed at the pigeons, which had flown in a lazy loop away from Knole and then back to the roof of the stable block.

  Cassandra turned back in the direction of the village. ‘Do you know, my heart burns just to think of him. And try as I might, I cannot help thinking about him; I cannot eat for wanting him!’ She looked almost sad, Caraboo thought. ‘This is love, I am certain of it. No passing fancy, I am sure as sure,’ she went on.

  Caraboo had to look away in case she smiled.

  Cassandra sighed. ‘You have no idea what I am saying, do you? And it’s lucky, for I hate to think what Papa would do if he knew. Or Fred.’ She sat down next to Caraboo. ‘He’ll be back soon, my brother. He’s nicer than he seems, all bluster and show. He’d knock my Will down if he knew, but Will would surely hit him harder!’ She paused. ‘My Will . . . Have you ever felt like that – so completely and utterly belonging to another that you will die without them?’

  Caraboo tucked her bow across her shoulder, then reached out and touched Cassandra’s arm. Forget him, she wanted to say. Ride your horse as fast as you can, gallop him out of your heart, because he will leave you, or hurt you, or hit you – or, worse, despise you. But she couldn’t.

  Cassandra changed the subject. ‘We must get you ready for this afternoon. Mama says that a gentleman, a professor from London, is coming to talk to you and wishes to write down your every word. Who knows, perhaps he can talk to you? I know I wish I could.’

  Caraboo kept smiling, but cursed inwardly. She was the stupid one – hadn’t she meant to leave by now? She could have been far away on the other side of Bristol, four days closer to home, and instead she was still here, playing at princesses.

  A professor! What was she thinking?! She should stop this now. She did not want to hurt Cassandra, or Mrs Worrall, who was kindness itself. And even Mr Worrall, who had not taken kindly to her but was always out at the bank in Bristol.

  Knole had been so easy – the cool sheets, a bed of her own, three meals a day; and yesterday hadn’t she caught her first pigeon? She had plucked and roasted it over a little fire she’d made in the rose garden, Mrs Worrall watching the noble savage at work all the while. It had been too diverting, being the Princess, worshipping the sun, imagining a life far away where her father was King, speaking in tongues like the old ladies in the Primitive Baptist chapel in Witheridge, another lifetime away.

  After all, she was Caraboo now, a princess who had stepped new and entire onto the earth upon the Bristol road. That was the whole truth of it, nothing more, nothing less.

  So many thoughts chased around inside Caraboo’s head. She would have to leave, and soon. She could pick up a cart on the road to Bristol, but she’d need her old clothes back; she couldn’t wander around like this. And even if she couldn’t keep the bows and arrows, perhaps she would take a knife, just for protection—

  No! She would take nothing. She was a princess. She was not a thief. She would leave this house exactly as she had come into it.

  ‘Oh, Caraboo! What shall I do?’ Cassandra was about to start up about her Will again. Caraboo wanted to think straight, to make plans, to stop the bees of indecision buzzing around inside her head.

  Behind the house the park sloped away towards a lake, sparkling blue in the sunlight. In the centre Caraboo could see a small island shaped exactly like a comma. She longed to sit upon that island and think.

  She took Cassandra’s hand. ‘Ana!’ she said.

  Cassandra smiled. ‘Oh, I know that one! That means “water”, doesn’t it?’ She mimed drinking. ‘Yes, well, it is rather warm up here.’

  Caraboo half nodded and tugged her back to the trapdoor. ‘Ana!’ she said.

  ‘Ana,’ Cassandra said back.

  But Caraboo didn’t stop when she reached the kitchen: she pulled Cassandra out through the front door and down along the little path to the lake. ‘Ana!’ she said, pointing at the water.

  Cassandra shrugged. ‘You don’t want a drink?’

  Caraboo laid down her precious bow and arrow. She took the knife she wore at her waist and set it carefully next to them on the grass, then sprang into the water and swam, striking out for the island.

  She sat on the island, made a fire, and wrung her dress out to dry by it. She was wondering how to get a dress she could wear on the road home. She cursed in her new language. If only she’d had the foresight to keep the black cotton gown – buried it somewhere instead of allowing Mrs Bridgenorth, the housekeeper, to take it away.

  Cassandra had so many: maybe just one would not be stealing? Oh! If only she could be left alone on this island, like a kind of hermit, free to hunt and fish. The water was as good as any high wall . . .

  Once it was dark she would make her way back to the house and take one dress, one dress alone, then head quietly across the fields to meet the Bristol road without passing through the village. Perhaps in Bristol she could pick up pennies begging or even find some work and save enough to travel back to Devon from there. Even if Father wouldn’t be glad to see her, Peg would, wouldn’t she? She blinked away the tears. Peg would be sixteen now. She hoped to God life had been kind to her sister. In her mind’s eye she saw the house – two storeys, cob built; Father hard at work at his cobbler’s bench. She and Peg would walk along arm in arm, and when she told her tale, her sister’s mouth would gape in amazement, her eyes widening like the Worralls’ soup dishes, and they would laugh and hug and laugh again.

  She sniffed. She was Princess Caraboo. Caraboo did not cry.

  For a while she lay on her back in the clearing and wished it was September, when there would be berries to eat. She found a few mushrooms and laid th
em by the fire to dry. Princesses had no truck with salad, she thought.

  Caraboo felt her dress – it was still damp – and noticed that the sun had lowered in the sky. She imagined the professor and Mrs Worrall twiddling their thumbs, but she tried not to feel guilty. She was just putting her dress back on when she heard footsteps, the breaking of twigs – the sound of two people, not one. She felt for her knife and cursed herself for not bringing it with her.

  Just then she heard Cassandra’s voice, high, excited and relaxed. Whoever was with her made her laugh. Cassandra would not hurt her. Not yet, at least. Perhaps she had brought the professor. Perhaps there was a whole party of visitors.

  She didn’t have time to climb up a tree and disappear, so she took a deep breath, and tried to look realistically and thoroughly surprised when she noticed Cassandra standing close by with a young man.

  But the man who stood next to her, arm in arm, was far too young for a professor. His eyes were the same bright blue as Cassandra’s, and although his hair was less glossy, less golden, he was still very fair. She stared at him. Very fair in all ways, in fact.

  Caraboo stood up. She was a princess, she reminded herself. She was brave, even without her weapons. The young man looked as if he was about to laugh out loud; then he studied her in the way young men did, pausing over her bare legs.

  Caraboo lifted her chin and stared back at him, directly into his bright blue eyes.

  So this was Fred Worrall. She could read the arrogance in his face as surely as if it had been printed in letters. Any fairness she had seen was cancelled out by the curl of his lip and the flint-hard edge to his eyes. Caraboo imagined the leopard at her side growling at him.

  ‘There you are!’ Cassandra said. ‘Mama’s professor has not arrived, but we have a much more exciting visitor!’ She smiled and hugged the young man on her arm.

  ‘She is fierce, Cass, I grant you that,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes! And a great shot, Fred. She bagged a pigeon yesterday, right through the heart!’