Caraboo followed her gaze, and her heart sank. The man was lying spark out on a cart being pulled by a tired old farm horse. The cart stopped and the man slid off and made his way unsteadily into the house.
She looked at herself in the mirror and thought of fairgrounds and punters as drunk as him, prodding her, shouting at her. She was a fraud – not a princess any more, but Mary Willcox dressing up. Her stomach churned.
Cassandra was laughing. ‘You know, I never saw a man get so drunk so often and live.’
‘You ent seen my father, miss,’ Phoebe laughed too.
‘Oh, you do look beautiful, Princess.’ Cassandra sighed. ‘I shall look like a sparrow beside a swan next to you. My only hope is that you do not steal away my Edmund’s heart.’
The pretend Princess Caraboo’s first thought was that Edmund Gresham didn’t have a heart at all. Perhaps a pump to circulate the blood, but nothing tender. He reminded her of the seagulls that preyed on rubbish in town, small beady eyes regarding everything and seeing the value in nothing.
After the party had gone down for dinner, the fake Princess Caraboo sat on the roof, watching the sun set in the west, letting her legs swing free over the parapet of Knole Park. If she were truly Caraboo, she thought, she would not let the captain’s threat of fairgrounds – or Fred’s of imprisonment – worry her at all. She would merely stand up here in her beautiful silk dress, spread her arms, and fly all the way back to Javasu.
Her heart thumped at the thought of going downstairs, of performing. She had never felt like this before. Could she do it? Could she be Princess Caraboo again?
She stood up and stepped up onto the parapet. The Princess used to love heights. A breeze came in off the lake and she closed her eyes.
Hell, she thought, was all around her; hell was here. Hell was baby Solomon gone, hell was in a Wiltshire cherry orchard, hell was broken hearts and loving those who never ever loved you back, hell was dancing for crumbs and sleeping in barns. She shut her eyes. She had tried life, she thought, as Mary Willcox, as Princess Caraboo, as farm girl, nursemaid, lover, mother, beggar, actress. She had not been good at any of them. She stepped out, one foot over the void. Perhaps she should show them all that she was not afraid of anything.
12
PRINCESS CARABOO REQUESTS YOUR COMPANY
Knole Park House
June 1819
Fred did not recognize half the staff in the dining room. Mama had mentioned borrowing the Edgecombes’ cook – she must have half their household here, he thought. The guests, apart from the professor and the village parson, the Greshams and the Edgecombes, seemed to be academics who wore old-fashioned jackets, or thick glasses, or both, deep in discussion with some of Mama’s friends from her anthropolgical circle. Most argued about Caraboo, but only a few, he noted, doubted her veracity.
The professor from Oxford, a collegaue of Heyford’s, was convinced. ‘I have seen her writing – she is real! And I have spent three months in Calcutta . . .’
‘Mrs Worrall would not be taken in. She is intelligent – for a woman. And an American.’
Fred studied the man and thought more and more that university would be a waste of his time.
The food was, he had to admit, good, – meat jellies and pies, and even a representation of the island of Javasu worked entirely in coloured sugar paste. But he was not hungry.
He was sitting opposite Edmund and Cassandra. He felt like an old grey-haired cynic watching them flirt and talk so much rubbish. Then Professor Heyford enquired about Edmund’s forthcoming tour, and Edmund trotted out his itinerary. Cassandra told them how, thanks to Mrs Shelley’s Frankenstein, she wished to see the Alps.
Professor Heyford and Edmund laughed.
Cassandra pouted. ‘It is not fair! Why may young men travel the world and not young ladies?’
‘My dear girl,’ Professor Heyford said, ‘travel is dangerous, and most uncomfortable – so I’ve been told.’
‘Our princess managed it all the way across the world,’ Cassandra said.
‘But you are English,’ Heyford said.
‘I am as strong as Caraboo, I’m sure!’
‘Oh! You can swim and hunt and climb?’ Fred asked her.
‘No, but I could if I wanted to,’ Cassandra said. ‘My skills are—’
Edmund cut in, ‘Your skills are being the most perfect adornment to society.’
Cassandra blushed and giggled, and Fred thanked heaven he’d been born a man. What could Cassandra do? If there was anything she wanted for, she had only to ask, to inveigle; she could not possibly step out into the world on her own.
He sighed. Wasn’t he following a course set for him by so many others? He smeared his strawberry cream around the plate. Everything was false – not just the Princess, but the whole evening: all these people, smiling but wanting so much from each other. His mother wanting a titled lady like Edmund’s mother at her table; his sister wanting Edmund, and Edmund wanting anything but boredom. Professor Heyford was a fool of a different stripe. Was he really taken in by the girl? Or was he only going along with it all so as to have his contributions listened to?
They were all fools and liars just as much as the Princess upstairs. He pushed his plate away.
In the library the chairs had been set out for a lecture. The terrace doors were open behind the curtains as the night was still – even now that it was at last growing dark – too warm. The easel from the schoolroom had been set up and Professor Heyford had pinned up a phrenology chart showing the human head divided into sections, like the counties of some strange skull-shaped country. He busied himself arranging a pointer he had borrowed from Miss Marchbanks, and reading over copious notes under his breath.
Mrs Worrall sidled up to Fred. ‘Would you fetch Caraboo down? I think she might be on the roof – Finiefs tells me she isn’t in her room. Oh, and I forgot to ask Finiefs if the captain is fit for the lecture – I am certain Lady Gresham would so enjoy his tales of the Penanggalan.’
Fred finished his drink, and as he put the glass down on the table the whole party fell silent and turned towards the terrace windows.
Finiefs opened the doors; outside the sun was low in the sky which had turned a fantastic, dazzling crimson. Fred wanted to turn away – it almost hurt to look.
The buzz of conversation quietened, and there against the blood-red sun he saw the dark silhouette of the Princess Caraboo making her way across the lawn towards the house. One or two of the ladies gasped. Fred, despite himself, couldn’t help staring.
She came in barefoot, wearing a dress that shimmered as she moved. She had taken off her turban and wore a kind of wreath made of ivy around her head. She looked straight ahead, but even though she walked as Caraboo had done, she couldn’t feel that regal leopard curling itself around her legs; surely someone would see her shaking . . .
‘Princess!’ Mrs Worrall gazed at her and smiled. ‘You look beautiful!’ She wiped a tear from her eye, and led her into the room. ‘Princess, this is Lady Gresham and her son, Edmund. They have come especially to see you.’
Lady Gresham looked intrigued. ‘Mrs Worrall, she is most delightful!’
Mrs Worrall glowed with delight, Caraboo saluted, and Professor Heyford led her over to a chair.
Edmund sat down next to Fred and said quietly, ‘I say, her legs!’
‘Mrs Worrall,’ Lady Gresham asked, ‘is satin the costume of choice in the South Seas?’
Professor Heyford coughed and rapped his pointer against the easel. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, ‘the Princess Caraboo.’
He began a lengthy discourse on phrenology. Fred saw the Princess twitch. Cassandra was fiddling with a curl of hair.
Edmund leaned close. ‘If I’d known your mama had intended a series of lectures, I would have stayed at home.’
Fred looked over at his mother, fanning herself and looking a little agitated.
Professor Heyford’s voice droned on. ‘And so, you see, in addition to identifyin
g her previously unrecognizable tongue as from Java, I have been able to deduce, from my investigations and the new science of phrenology, that she is without doubt of noble birth.’
There was a rattle as the library doors opened and Captain Palmer, florid-faced but in a clean set of clothes, came in. He looked at Heyford, then walked right in front of him and the Princess and faced the company.
‘I know what you ladies and gentleman want – you want a tale told by a teller who knows . . .’
Lady Gresham grimaced; Mrs Worrall looked worried.
Edmund whispered, ‘The fellow’s half cut!’
‘That is his natural state,’ Fred told him.
‘This is Captain Palmer,’ Mrs Worrall said hastily, ‘a seaman of renown.’
‘I am that, good lady – ten long years in the South Seas, and adjutant to our governor in Sumatra.’ He bowed towards Lady Gresham.
Fred had never heard that tale before.
The captain motioned for the Princess to stand up. Heyford, affronted, protested feebly, but no one took any notice.
‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ the captain said, sitting in the chair she’d left. ‘Though, to be fair, the Malays are without doubt a most attractive, most friendly people.’
Lady Gresham sat up. ‘So you speak her language, do you?’
‘I do.’
‘So who are her people, exactly?’
‘Ah, the Princess’s father is Jesse Mandu, originally from Congee – what we would call China. According to the Princess, he rules the southern tip of her island home, Javasu.’
He looked at Caraboo and she nodded. ‘Javasu.’
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Edmund leaned forward. ‘What I fail to understand,’ he drawled, ‘is why, if her father is a Chinese, your Princess Caraboo has so little of the Chinese about her – especially the eyes, don’t you know.’
There was a ripple of agreement.
‘Ahh!’ the captain said, and swept his pointer round until it almost touched the Princess. ‘You see her skin colour . . .’
‘Well, that’s it, Captain,’ Edmund said. ‘To my mind she doesn’t look far from an octaroon or some such as you see in town.’
‘That’s it! That is right on the nose, young man! She is of mixed parentage. In Malay, the races of clear one half of the world swirl and mingle. The people there are all shades of brown and yellow. The Princess’s mother, who sadly died many years ago, was a Malay.’
‘So she is a mongrel of sorts?’ Edmund looked Caraboo up and down.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t put it like that myself.’ The captain stared back at him. ‘Princess Caraboo’s story is a sad, tragic one. One morning, after prayers, she was walking by the shore outside her palace with her handmaids – three or four of them . . .’ He turned to Caraboo, showing three, then four fingers. ‘Trua, ne tan?’ he said.
‘Trua,’ she replied, holding up three fingers.
‘Three . . . and a pirate ship anchored offshore swooped down upon the helpless maidens and carried them off’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘just like that! The handmaids were killed instantly – decapitated by sabres, one, two, three!’ The captain made hacking motions with his hand, and Cassandra gasped and reached for Edmund’s hand for reassurance.
‘The sea around the ship foamed red with the young girls’ blood. But those fiends saw that Caraboo was worth a small fortune in ransom, so they locked up her below decks. All the while she was crying out for her father—’
‘And the pirate ship bought her to England?’ Lady Gresham asked.
‘Not quite. She was sold for a sack of gold dust to a pirate chief.’ The captain sat back in his chair as if exhausted.
Mrs Worrall began applauding. ‘Most informative, Captain Palmer. I hope we will hear more about the Princess tomorrow, when Mr Gutch from the Bristol Advertiser and Mr Williamson of the Bath Scientific and Literary Society will be joining us. Princess, perhaps you would dance?’ She said the word again, louder and slower: ‘Dance?’
The Princess saluted Mrs Worrall and moved towards the centre of the room. She had failed to step out into nothing. She was a coward – she did not want to die.
She would do her best to give them Caraboo, she thought, even though her heart was beating so fast it felt as if it might burst. It must be plain as day that she was not a princess; that she was nothing. She stepped right then left, her dress shimmering. A little of the old confidence came back as she danced. She would try her best to be a South Seas princess.
It was a vicious, angry dance. She used the knife, and imagined all her trials and obstacles slashed to pieces. Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped, saluted, and ran out into the dark, her heart thumping. She might have fooled them for now, but it was Mary Willcox who would pay for this. Somehow.
‘That was quite remarkable!’ Lady Gresham’s booming voice was clear even from the terrace.
Princess Caraboo had done her job.
Cassandra slept lightly. Edmund had come close to . . . had almost – she was certain – kissed her. And the night was so warm she tossed and turned, winding herself up in her sheet. She dreamed she was standing at the top of the most famous glacier, the Mer de Glace, in Switzerland, wearing some suitably fetching ensemble edged with fur, Edmund Gresham holding her close as the moonlight seared blue across the huge moving river of ice. The sound was of the ground, the ice, creaking and moving under their feet.
‘See,’ Edmund Gresham said, his eyes dark brown like warm chocolate. ‘We can do anything!’ She smiled at him, before she realized there was another figure standing a little way off. She could smell him in the cold crisp air. It was Will Jenkins, stripped to the waist and throwing barrels of ale at them, yelling at the top of his voice that Cassandra was his.
She felt the ice move, and her whole body seemed to spin out of control; as she fell, she heard a strange hard noise and her eyes snapped open.
She was in bed – her own bed – with the curtains open and the moonlight streaming in, the light silver and icy, like the Switzerland in her dreams. She gripped the blankets.
The noise came again. Now that she was properly awake, it didn’t sound like ice creaking, but was it rain? It couldn’t be. The sky was clear.
There! The noise. It wasn’t rain, it was gravel thrown up at the window. A parcel of fear unfolded inside her. Frankenstein’s monster, she was sure, was standing outside in the park throwing stones up at her window.
Then another sound. Her name, whispered, but loud. ‘Miss Cassandra!’ More stones.
Whoever it was, it was not a character from a novel made flesh. She pulled on her dressing gown and went to the window.
It was Will Jenkins. He had walked right out of her dream and was standing under her window.
‘Miss Cassandra!’ He sounded desperate.
‘What are you doing?! Anyone could hear!’ Cassandra spoke in a stage whisper.
‘I need to see you! I’ve come to the house but you’re not—’
‘Shhh!’ She tied the dressing gown tight. ‘Come back in the morning!’
‘This cannot wait!’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No! I have to speak to you!’
Cassandra’s heart was thumping at least as loud as Will Jenkins’s shouting. If she was not careful, the whole household would be roused and all would be lost.
‘I will come down. Wait for me on the terrace!’
Cassandra felt sick. She’d hoped he had understood, after their meeting this afternoon, that things had changed. She could taste something that she imagined must be guilt, sharp and acid at the back of her mouth.
Will Jenkins was not like her, not really, not deep down. He’d never even heard of Mary Shelley. She imagined the look on Mama’s face if she knew about their – what was a suitable word? – their connection. Which was definitely over. The guilt evaporated. She had to do this. For her own sake and her family’s.
She took a deep breath and wriggled her feet into her slippers. She
had to tell him plainly now; there must be no scene, and this madness would be forgotten. He was not the kind to blab to Father or Mother, was he? No, surely Will Jenkins wouldn’t do that. And anyway, who would believe the word of an innkeeper’s boy over hers? She felt sick. Believed or not, it could cause no end of damage.
She would give him money if she had to. That pearl necklace she got for her birthday last year had to be worth something.
Cassandra made her way through the silent house and down the stairs. She tried to breathe deeply and rehearse what she was going to say. She would be kind, she would be firm, she would explain; and he would leave, saddened, but accepting. He must have known it all along. As if someone like him could ever really have a girl like her.
As she crossed the hall, she mouthed every oath she knew, and prayed that God would please make Will Jenkins vanish most completely.
He was sitting on the low wall outside the drawing room, the moonlight across his face. He stood up when he saw her coming, his face softening into a broad smile, and Cassandra felt a pang of something – fancy, perhaps – remembering his kisses . . . But she knew she must be severe.
‘Will.’
‘Miss Cassandra! Thank heavens!’ He took her hands and she pulled them away, pretending to rearrange her dressing gown, then folding her arms tight across herself.
‘I had to see you . . . alone. We must make plans – to be together.’
She cleared her throat: the quicker the better, like Vaughan dispatching a lame horse with one blow. It would be for the best. She took a deep breath.
But Will was still speaking. ‘America, remember?’ He stared at her intently and Cassandra had to look away. This was too painful.
‘Cassandra, please!’ He was pleading now. ‘You swore love to me, as clear as I stand here—’
‘Will, stop it!’ she said. ‘You are mistaken.’
‘Our plans! You said you desired . . .’ His voice was a thin croak, and his eyes shone in the moonlight. Was he crying? She had never seen a grown man shed tears.
‘Oh, Will! I could never have come away with you! It was a dream, a fancy—’
The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo Page 15
