by Karen Harper
I was not to be put off, so I marched him a short distance to his flower bed. But a hum did vibrate in the breeze, a sort of buzz like distant music, a thrumming. We both looked up. It was too late at night for bees. Maybe someone at the church was playing the old pipe organ, but this was more like a distant droning, one I’d never heard, not a railway engine.
I glanced back toward the gazebo where the ladies were still looking under the table and chairs for the ear trumpet. But they too stopped to walk out from under the gazebo roof and look up into the windy darkness. Nothing. Nothing to see but big, shifting clouds.
Besides Johnnie’s lantern, the lights from the house windows threw pools of gold upon the lawn and vegetable beds with his few special flowers nearly at our feet. “Now you find that and bring it right over to Grannie,” I ordered and went back to tell the women I knew where it was.
The droning hum was louder. Not a motorcar. I looked up again, craning my neck. Was that cigar-shaped thing a cloud? That sound wasn’t distant thunder.
A voice I knew well shouted so loud, I nearly tripped as I hurried toward the women. Chad. Chad yelling. And farther away, men’s voices, strident, panicked, a gunshot or two. At what? Into the air?
And then I knew.
Chad shouted, “Get the lights out! A Zeppelin’s overhead! Take Queen Alexandra inside! Now!”
The two women nearly picked her up and hustled her away between them. I ran to the gazebo, unhooked the two lanterns from the roof, and thrust them in the door of the Big House after the women—then remembered Johnnie had the third lantern.
I turned around, expecting to see him with that and the ear trumpet, but I saw only Chad, emerging from the night. Where was that boy? His war in the air had come here, and if he was still out there, looking up . . .
“Johnnie! Come here!” I cried and ran past Chad only to find the lantern by the flowers but no boy. I tipped it over in the soil so it went dark. I screamed over the increasing drone that was now a roar, “Johnnie, we have to go inside!”
Chad moved swiftly toward me, swinging his body between his crutches.
“Where the hell is he?”
“He was just here!” I shouted. I lifted my skirts and started to run across the dark, dewy lawn with Chad behind me, just as an incendiary bomb hissed, then hit, blowing the gazebo where we’d just been sitting into a booming fireball.
Chapter 32
Chad hit hard into me, knocking me down. The air banged out of me. I tasted grass. He covered me with his body as another bomb hissed and—I believe—one of the glasshouses on the other side of the house blasted shards of glass that did not come this far, though they made a crackling, tinkling sound like a wind chime as they rained down in the distance.
Shingles and wooden planks flew, then thudded to the ground just behind us, while the bonfire of what was left of the gazebo lit the night. Glass windows along the back of the house shattered from the bomb or the heat. God forgive me, I gave not a moment’s thought to those inside but only to finding Johnnie.
“He’s out here somewhere!” I yelled, trying to get up despite Chad’s weight and hold on me. “If he’s under that thing, looking up, following it . . .” I choked out, “John . . . nieee!”
Chad swore. We stumbled to our feet. For once he let me help him, though in the blackness of the night, I handed him a piece of blown gazebo wood instead of his second crutch before I found it. Together, we stumbled on farther out on the lawn, then back toward the house, picking our way through debris in the flicking flames of the gazebo fire.
“It’s circling back,” Chad shouted as the monstrous thing pivoted and its grinding hum grew louder again. “Johnnie, you come right here!” he bellowed, balancing on his crutches and cupping his hands around his mouth. “Where are you? Lala and I need you!”
What if Johnnie was . . . was hit . . . was gone, I thought, as we ran under the beast into the blackness away from the house again. No! Not my Johnnie. He’d fought so hard to be born and could not die like this.
“John Charles Francis, you come here right now!” I shrieked just before another booming blast split the air ahead of us near where the lawn met the trees.
We went down on our faces again, then stumbled to our feet. Despite the droning, I heard my boy’s voice. Or did I imagine it?
“Lala, did you see that?” Johnnie shouted, but I still couldn’t spot him. Chad and I ran in the direction of his voice. “I don’t like the big booms though and what made that fire, and . . .”
He emerged from the dark, looking straight up as the Zeppelin hovered overhead. If he didn’t weigh as much, I would have swooped him into my arms and run for shelter.
Chad got to him first. “We have to run to the ravine over there!” he shouted, grabbing his arm. “I think it’s going to drop more bombs!”
Just as the two women had hustled the old queen inside, Chad gave Johnnie a yank in the right direction, then I took the boy’s other arm and half pulled, half shoved him toward the ravine. The little glen, hidden from the house, had a stream that had cut into the rock. We had explored it together what seemed years ago, in the spring, looking down from a little cliff at this level above the slippery rocks where a family of ducks played. But there were places to cling, to be sheltered by the rock overhang.
I was astounded Chad could move so fast, and I too with my dratted long skirts. At least the beast had passed over us now, heading away from the Big House, maybe toward the Wash, toward towns there or back toward whatever horrid German place had birthed it.
Then again it hovered, pivoted as if it would make another pass. I glanced back at the Big House, which now lay in darkness. I was grateful the moon wasn’t full. The increasing winds were inward from the sea. Was the Zepp going with the wind or of its own devising?
The three of us, Johnnie between, quiet now at last but breathing hard, scrambled down and huddled below ground level on the upper rock ledge of the ravine. How Chad managed that, I don’t know. It was cold here, but that’s not why goose bumps skittered across my skin. I realized I was crying, from fear and from gratitude that Chad had managed to get safely over the edge and had his arms around both of us. Over the whine of the wind, the rustle of dry leaves, and the rattle of water below, we realized the dreadful droning was gone. Yet Chad’s strong arm still circled my heaving shoulders, pressing me tight to the rock face. I felt his touch stronger than mere stone. As horrible as this attack had been, to be held by him here with the three of us safe, together—at least for a moment—was almost worth the terror.
THE NEXT DAY, Their Majesties rushed back to Sandringham to view the destruction themselves and requested that Chad, Johnnie, and I be there. The king, bless him, tousled Johnnie’s hair, then shook hands with Chad. The queen hugged her son a long time—indeed, she always did love him—and squeezed my hands, blinking back tears of relief.
Both of them were aging. The war was wearing everyone down, everyone but David on the loose in Paris, it seemed. The queen’s dark hair was streaked with gray, and her hands shook. Creases etched themselves deep into King George’s face, and dark circles shadowed his eyes. His hair was flecked with silver, and his movements were stiff rather than sharp as they had always been.
“Papa, the gazebo’s gone, and the glasshouse broke!” Johnnie told them. “But we hid in the rocks. Georgie will be so sad he wasn’t here to see that big aeroplane!” That said, he was content to go back to playing on the floor of the old queen’s sitting room with the Fabergé grouse piece his eldest brother had filched years ago.
During all this, Queen Alexandra continued to sip her tea. “I told you those Germans were evil to the core,” she said to her son.
“Yes, Mother dearest. I fear you’re right. Now if you and May will keep an eye on Johnnie, I’m going out back again, just with Chad and Lala this time.”
“And we ought to fine those bloody Huns for the price of a good gazebo!” she called after him. “Your father first kissed me out there under it!�
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Ever since his accident when his horse fell on him, King George had walked slowly, with a bit of a limp he tried to hide. He led Chad and me toward the back door. It was dark in the back hall, for several windows that had blown in were temporarily boarded up. We stepped out onto the stone porch that overlooked the pile of burned rubble.
“Thank God, the winds were up,” the king said. “That made their aim a bit erratic or they could have hit the house or cottage. But this is nothing compared to the devastation I’ve seen in France, or London either.” He cleared his throat and frowned, gazing out at the busy soldiers picking up debris and looking into the two huge craters on the lawn. “Your hiding in the ravine was better than trench warfare our lads are going through. So, Chad, how did you happen to be here when the guards I assigned to the estate should have been closer, though we never thought a damn Zepp would come here.”
“I was nearby because I wanted to be sure Prince John and Charlotte got back safely to York Cottage. I know it’s safe with the guards here, Your Majesty, but I follow at a distance if they go out at night.”
“I see.”
I didn’t see. I had no idea Chad was secretly protecting us, but I bit my tongue. Why he had he never told me or walked back with us? It would have given me much comfort and hope.
“The queen and I,” the king said and cleared his throat again, still looking at the ruined, burned-out gazebo, “are overwhelmed with gratitude to both of you for taking care of Johnnie—and for warning my mother and the women. I’ve chosen not to let that be public knowledge, to let on or encourage the ungodly Huns that they almost hit one of the royal family.”
He spun to face us. I had expected a dressing down for letting Johnnie temporarily out of my sight and was prepared to face a scolding. I was sure Their Majesties would not dismiss me, since Johnnie needed me so much, but I was terrified that something was coming that he hesitated to say.
“Chad, I want you to know that you have served your country and king to the utmost, despite not leaving here. I have something for you to express my—our—gratitude.”
From his pocket, he pulled a dark red-and-blue ribbon wrapped around something. “This is a gallantry award,” he said, handing it to Chad. A medal with four white enamel rounded arms set in silver with a laurel wreath and gold crown in its center dangled from the ribbon. It was one he could pin on his chest, though the king just pressed it into his palm.
“But Your Majesty, I . . . I don’t deserve—this—” Chad stammered.
“My man, never say that and not to your sovereign. It’s a D.S.O. awarded for an act of meritorious or distinguished service in wartime and usually when under fire or in the presence of the enemy, and you bloody well deserve it.”
Chad bowed his head and held it close to his chest as the king turned to me. “I know how hard you try, Lala,” His Majesty told me, “but is Johnnie too much to care for now that he’s growing up? He would have left the nursery long ago. So far, you have made it possible for him to remain with us, in the heart of his family.”
“He can’t leave. He needs me,” I blurted as all my worst fears exploded. “Please don’t send him away, Your Majesty. No one else could care for his epilepsy as I do. The only medal I will ever want is that I can still care for him.”
King George narrowed his eyes. Above his neatly trimmed mustache, his nostrils flared. I feared the worst, but he nodded and said, “Charlotte Bill, you have always been a great blessing to us and our children. I don’t know what Johnnie—or his mother and I—would do without you. So far, you have made it possible for him to remain with us.”
So far? What else was coming? Did the fact the boy could have been killed last night because I wasn’t watching him closely enough mean the king would yet send him or me away? I almost blurted out that there must be somewhere I could go with him—not to a hospital or asylum as the royals had sent others who failed somehow—not . . .
“Well, enough said for now,” His Majesty added. “By the way, the queen and I didn’t want to tell you this in front of Queen Alexandra, but that same Zepp or its cohort did deadly duty last night, so we got off easy here. I never thought the kaiser would send Zepps to Norfolk where he was welcomed and entertained more than once, but he’s stooped that low. Six British citizens are dead in the attack at Woodbridge not so far from here, and King’s Lynn has been hit. Houses were bombed in Wolferton Flats near the Marsh, and craters and devastation are at Dodshill. But the strikes in London have been much worse, so Her Majesty and I intend to visit those places to keep up spirits. Meanwhile,” he added, turning to face Chad again, “I leave the care of this dear place and people in your hands, both of you.”
“We will do more than our duty, sir,” Chad promised as the king left us there and limped out onto the lawn, weaving his way among charred debris. He spoke to some of the soldiers who were cleaning up the mess.
Tears sprang to my eyes, and I reached for Chad’s offered hand. Together we looked at the medal. He turned it over, and we saw the engraving on the back of the suspension bar: Chad Reaver from his grateful King.
Though we both blinked back tears, I sensed in Chad a lifting of his spirits, some of his old self returning. He stood straighter, and his eyes had that old fire in them when he looked at me.
I told him, “You no doubt saved my life and Johnnie’s, and I am grateful too. From your grateful Charlotte,” I whispered and lightly kissed his cheek. “So I don’t want to hear anything about how you didn’t save me from that demented poacher. You saved me from a German Zepp attack because I would have gone right out there after Johnnie, and we would both be at the bottom of that farthest crater now, in a very big German-made grave.”
“We did win our own little war last night, didn’t we, love?”
“I hope we also won the one between us.”
“Truce? Better relations?”
I smiled and blushed. “Truly? I will sign that peace pact with my life.”
“The old queen said the king first kissed her out here. The gazebo’s gone but we aren’t, and one kiss deserves another.”
He took my hand and led me back inside so we would be out of sight of the king and the soldiers. Just as we went through the battered doorway amid the broken windows, he kissed me, hard and long.
Chapter 33
Queen Alexandra insisted there not be so many candles this year,” Mabel whispered as the two of us stared at the tall Christmas tree while Johnnie kept walking around it, looking up at the angel on the top. “I hope Johnnie and the others won’t be disappointed. I mean, I understand, since so many of our men are stuck in wet, cold trenches, feeling homesick and with lice and all—and our poor lads from Sandringham gone for good.”
Mary, ever with her ears open, came up behind us and said, “Funny saying, gone for good, isn’t it, when things are really going from bad to worse? Mama says the injuries she’s seen when she visits the hospitals are horrible and that dreadful chorine gas the Hun beasts are using . . .” She shuddered.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said and gave her a hug. She was also chilled to the bone from her trek to the Big House where we were to celebrate this Christmas Day, 1916, with the family—except for David and Bertie. But George and Harry were happy to be back together, and Johnnie was thrilled to have George home for a while. Here came Harry and George now, stomping off snow while one of the footmen waited for their coats and hats.
“You might know,” George told us, as Mabel hurried back to her duties, “David’s living it up in Paris.”
Mary said, “He can’t be living it up in a nation so beleaguered by war. France is even worse off than we are.”
“I’m not talking about the war, but about David. I hear he has a tootsie-wootsie there and—”
“George,” I interrupted, “not here and not now.”
He cocked his head, shrugged, and grinned as if he were the cat who’d eaten the canary. I’d expected Finch and David’s superiors, especially his father, to
keep control of David during the war. But apparently that was impossible.
Mary and I went over to the tree, and she studied the packages there, looking for a large one with her name on it. I knew she had her heart set on a gramophone. David had one, and she figured she should too. And Johnnie—I dread to think what he’d do if he got the one he’d asked for, because whenever he heard a lively tune, he always took my hands and jumped around as if he knew how to dance—as if I did too.
My mind skipped back to when I used to recite nursery rhymes or singsongs to my little brood. How David and Bertie had loved Rock-a-bye, baby, on the treetop, but I’d stopped using that after their little world fell apart with cruel, crazy Mrs. Peters—and now the big world was falling apart with the war.
Later, when the adults arrived, we ate a lovely but not sumptuous Christmas dinner as we had in the old days. It was a simple beef roast with potatoes, carrots, Yorkshire pudding, then just tea, no wine, but a lovely plum pudding brought to the table with its brandy coating all aflame, which pleased Johnnie mightily. I realized I much preferred this fare to the opulent array of dishes I’d seen served here before, wartime or not.
We were a much smaller group than other years when friends attended, for Their Majesties felt everyone homeside should be with their own loved ones this year. Even Queen Alexandra’s loyal Charlotte Knollys wasn’t here, nor were Eva Dugdale and her husband.
It was the first holiday dinner I sat at the same table with the family, so I could watch Johnnie. Imagine that, me at the table with the royals, but times were changing. Even here, the traditional barriers between uppers and lowers were coming down a bit. Queen Alexandra also broke tradition by giving the children their gifts immediately after we finished dessert. Both Mary and Johnnie opened big boxes with gramophones from their grannie, despite the fact the king had said that the one in their mother’s boudoir was quite enough for one house and family.
