The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo

by Catherine Johnson

  Cassandra was speaking but Caraboo didn’t hear her. This young man would not look away, and she was damned if she would be the first one to blink!

  ‘Caraboo,’ Cassandra said solemnly, then placed her hand over his heart. ‘Fred-er-ick. My brother.’

  Caraboo was still staring as imperiously as before. This man would not best her.

  Cassandra nudged him and he turned to look at her. Caraboo had won; she allowed herself a smile.

  ‘Oh, Cass!’ Fred said, and he was smiling now. ‘Do you honestly believe this girl’s not playing!’

  Cassandra looked piqued. ‘She speaks no English, Fred. Look at her! She’s not from here at all. Mama reckons she’s nobility.’

  ‘Nobility!’ He snorted. ‘She is nothing but a party turn, a show, she’s a – a flatty catcher, we call ’em in town. A beggar, a mort, one step down from a tart, I’ll warrant!’

  ‘Fred! No!’ At least Cassandra was standing up for her.

  ‘I’ve seen a dozen girls tricked out better than this dancing in—’ He stopped himself and quickly changed the subject. ‘Honestly, Cass! Did she not hide herself away from the professor?’

  ‘How could she? She didn’t understand that he was coming.’

  ‘She’s a trickster! A coney catcher and nothing more.’

  ‘Fred! Don’t say that!’

  ‘You said she didn’t understand the lingo.’

  ‘Yes, but your tone speaks volumes!’ Cassandra hissed.

  ‘Look at her! Mama said she is from the Indies or some such . . . She’s from nowhere further than London or Bristol, I’d put money on it! And as to noble . . . She’s just some girl from the street! One whose father or grandfather was an African off some boat! An octaroon, the word is. If her blood is blue, then I’m a Dutchman!’ He looked at Caraboo as if she were a piece of dirt.

  Cassandra looked upset, but Caraboo kept her face blank; she simply stamped out what was left of the fire. He was despicable! she thought. A coney catcher from the street! London or Bristol! He was so wrong! She looked back at him arguing with his sister, a good foot taller than her. How dare he think she was anything other than a princess?! She scattered the half-dried mushrooms that were to have been her supper and walked away.

  Caraboo strode into the lake, the water cooling and shaping her anger into something solid. As she struck out for the lawn, she could hear Cassandra shouting that they had a boat. Ha! Caraboo would never get into a boat with that man in a thousand years.

  She knew exactly what she would do. She would show this city braggart; she would make him believe her. She would go back to the house, and as soon as that professor liked, she would find a way to make him tell them the truth about Princess Caraboo.

  4

  AN EDUCATED OPINION

  Knole Park House

  April 1819

  Fred woke, sharply, from a dream. He had been at school, in a Latin class, but that wild brown girl Mama had taken as a pet was whispering in his ear. And although he could not understand one word, he could feel the warmth of her breath, and sometimes, perhaps, the tip of her tongue on his skin.

  ‘Master Frederick!’ The door swung open and Fred turned sideways so as not to alarm whichever of the housemaids it might be.

  Then, just for a second, he remembered Letty wailing and cursing, and felt something that might have been a prickle of guilt – but that vanished as soon as he opened his eyes.

  ‘Good morning, Master Frederick!’ It was the housekeeper, Mrs Bridgenorth, coming in with a tray of coffee and pastries which she set down on the table close to his bed. She drew back the curtains and clapped her hands together, her eyes creasing into crow’s feet as she smiled at him. ‘It is lovely to have you home, young sir. And oh, my,’ she looked him up and down with an almost motherly pride, ‘you have grown!’

  ‘Fred, darling!’ Cassandra breezed in behind Mrs Bridgenorth and sat down on the bed. ‘You must come and see!’

  ‘See? What? Cass, this feels like the middle of the night. And anyway, I am not dressed.’

  ‘It is eight already!’

  ‘Eight!’ Fred pulled a face.

  ‘She’s on her way up to the roof!’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Caraboo!’ Cassandra tried to tug the blankets off. ‘Come on, Fred! You have to see her welcome the sun – it’s wonderful!’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ He sat up. ‘Caraboo. Your new pet will make patsies and fools out of the lot of us.’

  ‘You are such a cynic, Fred.’ Cassandra was pouting.

  The housekeeper poured out two cups of coffee and put them on the bedside table.

  ‘Bridgenorth?’ Fred said as he pulled his dressing gown from the end of the bed and wriggled his arms into the sleeves. ‘You are always so sensible. What do you make of Mama’s new fancy? This Caraboo – is she all that she seems?’

  The housekeeper shook her head and tutted, looking almost amused. ‘Cassandra told me you didn’t like her, Master Frederick. Well, I think her lovely. In all ways.’

  Fred humphed. ‘I think the whole household has gone mad. Surely you can see she’s playing us all for a load of fools! I worry Mama has the wool pulled down firmly over her eyes. The Worrall name will be mud across the county if we’re not careful.’

  ‘But that’s why the professor is here!’ Cassandra said. ‘And Mama has engaged a naval captain too – a gentleman who knows the East Indies better than you know the West End. They will arrive soon, she said.’

  ‘Indeed, Master Frederick, your sister is right.’

  ‘Bridgenorth, please. It is Mister Fred. You may have noticed that I am no longer a ten-year-old boy.’

  Mrs Bridgenorth bobbed a curtsey. ‘Indeed I have, Mister Frederick.’ Fred frowned a little – he got the impression she was patronising him.

  ‘See!’ Cassandra said. ‘Bridgenorth agrees with me. Now bring your coffee and come up to the roof. I’ll warrant you’ve never seen anything like this in all your years in London!’

  Fred put on his dressing gown and followed Cassandra up past the schoolroom towards the attics. He hadn’t been up here for such a long time.

  At the end of a long corridor a ladder had been let down, and the morning sun slanted in through the open trapdoor.

  ‘There!’ Cassandra said. ‘You go up first. Go quietly, for she may have started.’

  Frederick shook his head and climbed up the ladder.

  He didn’t see Caraboo straight away, in amongst the sloping roofs and chimney pots. He climbed through the trapdoor and looked around. There was a most excellent view all the way down to the Bristol Channel, and even the docks – he could just see a small forest of masts, so far away they could have been toothpicks – and the blue of the water stretching away to the west, the sky arching up overhead. It was breathtaking.

  ‘Can you see her?’ Cassandra shouted up.

  ‘No.’

  There was a scrabbling noise. A couple of pigeons flew up and Fred inched round the roof to where a flat space opened up towards the back of the house, overlooking the stables. There she was – Caraboo, arms outstretched, sitting on the parapet, legs dangling over the edge. Her hair was unpinned and she was wearing what looked like one of Cassandra’s cast-off nightdresses.

  The hair and dress billowed, and Fred saw her throw her arms out wide and put her head on one side.

  Not three months ago he had seen Polly Marsden jump from the second floor of Eden’s Retreat. A crowd had gathered and he had, to his shame, been stupid and drunk enough to laugh and shout at her as she teetered, weeping, on the window ledge. Mrs Ingrams had been calling her in, Polly wailing all the while that her heart was broken – although how a woman like that could have a heart, Fred could not fathom. But she had jumped, heart or no, and the sound and the sight of the twisted body hitting the roadway had made him sick to his stomach with both horror and shame.

  He called to Caraboo, ‘Miss! Miss?’

  She didn’t turn round.

  Cassandra, com
ing up behind him, must have heard the tone of his voice. ‘Fred, what is it?’

  ‘Miss, please! Come away now!’

  In her right hand Caraboo held a small bunch of pink willow herb. She held one hand out at right angles and let the flowers fall.

  ‘Miss!’

  Fred ran forward and grabbed the girl by the shoulders, dragging her away from the edge. For a second he felt his own centre of gravity sway perilously into the wind, and his heart swooped and his stomach tightened. ‘There!’ he said, as calmly as he could.

  Caraboo wasn’t in the least grateful, though. Instead, she pulled away from him and started up a stream of angry babble, half directed at Fred, half at Cassandra.

  Fred looked at his sister. ‘What in the devil’s name is she saying! I thought she was going to jump!’

  Cassandra was trying to calm Caraboo, making soft shushing sounds and patting her shoulder. Fred looked at the flat roof where the girl had chalked strange symbols; in front of a kind of home-made altar, she had set out a bowl of water, her bow and arrows, and her knife.

  ‘She was sitting on the edge! I thought—!’

  ‘She was praying. And you scared her! Honestly, Fred. She was praying to Allah Tallah.’

  ‘Allah Tallah?’

  ‘Mama thinks that’s her god.’

  After listening to Cassandra’s soothing words, Caraboo gave Fred a look that would have curdled milk, then knelt down on the flat part of the roof facing east.

  ‘Fred, get back,’ Cassandra hissed. ‘And be quiet. No quick movements.’

  ‘Hah! She gave me the scare, not the other way round!’ Though Fred was whispering too.

  ‘You shouldn’t have touched her. She doesn’t like men touching her.’

  Fred sneered. ‘Tell you that, did she?’

  ‘Shut up, Fred.’

  They watched the girl bow down before rising onto her knees again and pressing her raised hands together.

  ‘Allah Tallah!’ she intoned seriously. ‘Allah Tallah!’ She faced the morning sun, which had just risen over the birch wood towards the village. Then she bowed three times, each time taking a deep breath.

  ‘Is that it?’ Fred whispered. ‘I’ve seen the Mussulmen in London make more of a show. We had a boy in school, son of a maharajah, who worshipped, of all things, a bright blue elephant.’

  ‘Fred, you are teasing.’

  ‘No, I swear, it’s the truth. Edmund ragged him until he got so sore he hit Ed square in the face.’

  ‘I don’t believe Edmund would do such a thing.’

  ‘Hah! You do not know him so well, then.’

  ‘Well, perhaps he deserved it.’

  ‘Aha, you do have your eye on him, don’t you? After all, he has more cash than anyone I know – isn’t that the way to a girl’s heart? And he’s not far from handsome. Girls fight over him almost as much as they fight over me.’

  ‘Well, that just shows you know nothing about girls! Money is nothing without tenderness! Edmund Gresham?’ Cass pulled a face. ‘I would sooner put out my own eyes with a soup spoon!’

  ‘Aha again! You protest too much! You carry a torch for the fellow and no mistake. Even when you pretended affection for Thomas Slatherton . . . and then, after that . . . who was it? Yes, I remember! That George Farthing! George Farting, more like! I wonder what happened to him after you threw his heart away so coldly.’

  ‘I did not!’

  ‘Cass, I’ve never known a girl so fickle! Always! You favour one thing wholeheartedly, and then, sometimes the following day, another! Remember, when you were small, that doll – Amelia? She was loved and hated, turn and turnabout. Your heart has a different favourite every school holiday. I pity those you pin your affections on, really I do.’

  ‘And you, Fred, are Sir Constant!’

  ‘I am a man; the rules are different.’ Fred smiled. ‘Admit it – you and Edmund.’

  Cassandra had gone pale with fury. ‘Why are the rules different, Fred? Tell me that! I wouldn’t have your Edmund if he was the last man alive. He is arrogant and so full of his own importance he might burst. He knows nothing of the world. I doubt he has ever done a day’s honest toil in his life!’ She turned to look at her brother. ‘In fact you two are alike in, oh, so many ways. You know only of London fancies and nothing of the soil, of real existence . . .’ She got up and turned to look at Caraboo, but the Princess had gone.

  ‘The soil?’ Fred shook his head. ‘What are you on about? Oh, I have needled you, which only proves my thesis: you like him, Cass, I can tell. Lady Cassandra Gresham – you’d be the wife of an earl.’ He turned back to where Caraboo had been. ‘Hell, the pigeon’s flown. You don’t think . . .?’ He pointed towards the parapet.

  ‘No, you idiot! She went down while we were bickering.’ Cassandra made her way back to the ladder.

  ‘That wasn’t bickering,’ Fred said, following her. ‘That was an insightful observation on my part. You and Edmund Gresham. It will happen.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Cassandra said. ‘You know, I so look forward to your return from school, and then when you do come, I wish you away almost at once.’

  As Professor Heyford set up his apparatus in the library, Caraboo watched through a crack in the door. Frederick Worrall was helping – she could hear them talking about electricity.

  Mrs Worrall was excited: she was quoting passages from one of her books on the anthropology of primitive peoples of the southern hemisphere. Caraboo had looked at that very book only this morning. It was a favourite of hers – the pictures were wonderful, in full colour, so that it was like looking into another world.

  Mrs Worrall stopped reading. ‘You see, Fred,’ she said, ‘the way she uses her knife, you haven’t witnessed it, but Cassandra and I watched her use it on a pigeon – she calls pigeon rampu – the other day, and she knows what she is doing! It’s awfully like the kriss, the knife used by the Malay. Stamford Raffles talks about it in his History of Java, see? And that’s another of her words – Javasu, you see? Quite fascinating! You must read it – here, look . . .’

  ‘Well, madam.’ This voice, Caraboo reckoned, must be the professor. ‘When your Caraboo has submitted to examination under electrical stimuli, you will at last be sure of the young lady’s provenance.’

  ‘What I expect he means, Mama, is that if you gave her a few volts she’d be talking in English in seconds.’

  ‘Frederick!’

  ‘You know what I think about the girl. And Papa agrees with me.’

  ‘Your father has not yet made up his mind. He agrees she is not a beggar.’

  ‘Hah!’

  There was a buzzing sound from the library and the smell of singed horsehair.

  Mrs Worrall gasped. ‘My word, Professor, are you sure your apparatus is quite safe?’

  In the hall, Caraboo studied herself in the large oval looking glass. The Princess wore a white muslin turban and the dress she had adapted herself, with a square neckline and cut short to the knee. She was barefoot, and the marble tiles of the hall were cool under her feet. She must remember that feeling. She must be icy today; she must not think of running out into the park, as far away as possible. Not quite yet.

  Caraboo took a deep breath, then walked slowly into the library, as if entering a throne room, head held high, steps even and measured. She was a princess, she told herself, and as soon as these people, especially that smug Frederick Worrall, realized the fact, the better. It had been fun, seeing the look on Mr Frederick’s face this morning; wiping that smile off his arrogant face would be worth any discomfort the professor might have in store for her.

  ‘Good morning, Caraboo!’ Mrs Worrall put down her book, opened her arms and embraced her.

  Caraboo saluted, her right hand pressed flat against her left temple.

  Mrs Worrall spoke slowly. ‘This is Professor Heyford.’

  The professor put out his hand, but Caraboo merely saluted, touching her right hand to her right temple.

  �
�You see, Professor,’ Mrs Worrall said. ‘The little salute, see? Right for gentlemen, left for ladies. I have noted that she will not, or chooses not to, have any contact with the male. She will embrace me, she will allow Cassandra to come close, but she will not shake hands with a man. Perhaps you have come across the like on your travels?’

  ‘I am afraid the farthest my travels have taken me is Edinburgh.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mrs Worrall looked disappointed.

  ‘However, I am an expert in theoretical linguistics and the utterly new sciences of phrenology and electronic deduction,’ the professor said. ‘I feel that we, at the heart of the British Empire, have no need to travel. The world has come to us. You see, Mrs Worrall, I believe that by the twenty-first century all other languages will decline into obsolescence. English will be paramount. It is a far superior language to any other. Indeed, my thesis is that other tongues are poor substitutes; merely half-baked gropings towards the proper and most ideal form of communication that is the English tongue.’

  Mrs Worrall looked uneasy. ‘But what of French? I imagined French to be sublime . . .’

  Professor Heyford shook his head and flapped a hand. ‘French is a mongrel tongue.’ His tone was dismissive.

  ‘As is English, surely,’ she said confidently.

  ‘Aha!’ The professor jabbed a finger into the air. ‘It may have begun so, but I can assure you, madam, that its pedigree is spotless! Spotless.’

  Fred made a face. ‘What exactly does that—?’

  But Mrs Worrall cut him off. ‘How does all this’ – she waved a hand towards the apparatus – ‘aid your study of linguistics and – what was it . . .?’

  ‘Phrenology – the deduction of character and disposition as manifested in the shape and formation of the head. All will be revealed!’ The professor took a kind of shining brass skullcap out of a leather satchel.

  Caraboo tried to keep her expression blankly calm.

  Apparatus. Electricity. It meant nothing. The Princess Caraboo had no knowledge of these things. She had never, as a child, frequented Exeter Fair and seen the fairground booths which promised instant cure-alls by means of shocks and starts. Or the punters exiting those tents with their jelly legs and wild eyes.