The Royal Nanny

by Karen Harper

  “One last week, delivered right to Wood Farm’s door. He was very sarcastic about his father, terribly. He referred to his war appearances to boost morale as stunts . . . stunts! I should burn the letters, all of them. But, you know, he’s been so callous toward Johnnie—”

  “Jealous of your love and attention for his younger brother, whom he considers damaged and unimportant compared to him.”

  “I forget you know David well too. But I thought—when and if he becomes king—if he tries to belittle Johnnie or lock him away, I would just remind him I had some letters that would not make him look too good.”

  Chad looked surprised, then hooted a laugh. “Why, Charlotte Bill, alias Lala, a blackmailer.”

  “I wouldn’t do it, of course, just suggest it to him, that he treat Johnnie better. I’m grateful his mother and grandmother still visit and care for him, but he does feel he’s been sent away at times—for being ill or naughty. I try to talk him out of that.”

  “I have always loved your backbone—and the rest of you,” Chad said. “And I am proud to help you with Johnnie. Who could not love him? So, since you’ve said you will marry me, let’s ask Their Majesties’ permission together the first chance we get—when they’re visiting here and the time is right with all this death and destruction. Maybe it would be best when the war is over. Surely, he will think we’ll both be good for his boy, and Penny can live with us too. And, of course, I will write to your parents.”

  “Yes, Chad Reaver, again I say that I will marry you and somehow, someday, we will live happily ever after.”

  FINCH APPEARED ONE evening at Wood Farm when Johnnie and I were working on his writing a letter to his parents. I hadn’t seen the man who was David’s valet for over a year—and here he was in a spiffy uniform!

  “Finch, it’s so good to see you! Is David here too?” I asked when I opened the door myself and glanced out at David’s motorcar.

  He gave me a light hug and patted Johnnie’s back as the boy ran up and hugged him.

  “How are you, Johnnie, my boy?”

  “Fine, but I think I’m really Lala’s boy. Since I don’t live at York Cottage anymore, I was sad but mostly not now.”

  “Oh, I see. But you are still a fine lad, and a prince of a boy.”

  I shook my head at Finch and frowned behind Johnnie’s back, for I’d gone round and round with the boy about whether he was still a prince. He’d finally declared on his own that he’d rather be a farmer and help Chad with the peeps than go back to London again because there were too many noisy people there. But on some deep level—I prayed he had not sensed it from me—he must have felt he’d been betrayed. And yet he seemed happy here.

  “So how is David?” I asked as I put my arm around Johnnie’s shoulders.

  “He’s in London,” Finch said, “much enamored of a new lady and generally raising Cain. I motored down to collect some things for him. He’s officially moved out of York Cottage now.”

  “Haven’t we all? But not another French girl, I hope. Come in, sit down by our very own hearth and tell us all you know.”

  “All right to tell . . . both of you?” he asked, with a roll of the eyes toward Johnnie, who came up to his shoulder now. “Prince John is growing fast, but—”

  “Yes, all right. Johnnie, why don’t you go to the kitchen and ask Cook for some tea for us—and feed Peep George before you come back too, all right?”

  “I will have tea with you, because Finch is on our side in the war.”

  “Yes, he is,” I assured him as he went out.

  “Another peep?” Finch asked. “Isn’t this peep the sixth about now?”

  “He’s named this one after George, whom he misses terribly. He won’t give it up so it’s much too big. Chad had to clip her wings so she won’t fly away.”

  “Ah, Chad. And has he clipped yours?”

  “I’m not leaving Wood Farm as long as Johnnie needs me.” I lowered my voice. “His spells are getting worse as he gets older, when I hoped it would be the opposite.”

  “But about David. He’s taken by—and taken up with—a married woman of his set, Freda Dudley Ward. Her husband knows it, but is quite amenable and prefers to look the other way.”

  “Oh, no. Do Their Majesties know?”

  “More or less—mostly less, since he tells them she is just one of many friends, but it’s much more. But the thing is, she dominates him, and he seems to love it. Bloody damn—sorry for that language,” he whispered, “but he’s lost his mind. He likes her to order him around and talks baby talk to her sometimes. I swear, he lisps worse than Harry used to. The thing is, there has been an Inspector Palmer snooping around.”

  “Trying to get something about all this on David?”

  He shook his head. “Just the opposite. Trying to clean up after him in a way, cover his tracks. With this awful, endless war and the way royal houses are falling, I think the king is trying to—as the Prince of Wales describes it—‘put the skids’ on him. So the prince just wants you to know that dealing with Inspector Palmer, in case he comes here, can be a two-edged sword. It looks like he’s trying to help, but he may report to the king.”

  I heaved a huge sigh. “As if King George doesn’t have enough on his mind right now. Thank you for the warning but I doubt any inspectors will come here to talk to a nanny from years ago.”

  “The prince admitted he’s sent you letters—and he’s sent some that could be blackmail fodder to the French mistress he had. At least Freda Dudley Ward is not some guttersnipe and knows how to keep her mouth shut. But the prince regards you highly. You were like a moth—”

  I held up my hand to stop what he would say, but Johnnie bounced back into the room then too. “Finch,” he said, “I want you to meet Peep George out by the back door to the kitchen.”

  “I’d be honored, sir,” he said and stood.

  “My name is Johnnie here at Wood Farm where I am happy. But if I go anywhere else, my name is Prince John.”

  The two of them headed toward the kitchen. I went to the front window and frowned out at the distant pine trees, which looked as if they were spearing the racing clumps of clouds. My mind raced too. Finch had properly called Johnnie “sir,” though how often I thought of him as my boy and tried to forget that he was a prince. Now, David, heir to the throne, was running amok in these terrible times. We’d heard just this week that the tsar was actually under arrest with his family, though I had not told any of this to Johnnie.

  “Now that’s a smashing peep!” Finch told Johnnie as they came back in. “You take good care of him.”

  “I do. Chad and I take good care of Lala too.”

  Finch shot me a look over the boy’s head. “I’m glad to hear that. Which reminds me, after a spot of tea, I’ve got to go back to taking care of another of your brothers, namely David.”

  “David doesn’t like my peeps or my papa. And I don’t think he likes me. But Lala does, better than she likes him.”

  I gave a little gasp. From the mouths of children—even Johnnie’s—but I should know that by now. It hit me full force then: David had been permanently damaged by his first nanny. When I rescued him, he thought it his due to be cherished above the others. Even before Johnnie, he’d fought for that. But my necessary and obvious love for the youngest royal child had angered and hurt him too. I dreaded how his relationships with his two nannies might shape and shake his future as prince and king. Was it true that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world?

  GOD FORGIVE ME, I was happy when Finch left. He’d brought the outside world with him, brought out Johnnie’s buried feelings that he’d been abandoned by David and his family. But it had also emphasized Johnnie’s love for the life I had built for him here.

  As if to celebrate that dream of mine, the four of us went on a picnic that very afternoon, not far from the house. Because we were all together, it seemed a wonderful outing as we headed toward the meadow. We could have been on a desert isle and we would have felt that way
. Chad must have been thinking the same, because he began to sing the lively, old Boer War song “Marching to Pretoria.”

  Walk with me I’ll walk with you,

  And so we will walk together . . .

  Dance with me, I’ll dance with you

  And so we will dance together . . .

  We are marching to Pretoria . . .

  Pretoria, hoorah!

  “And Wood Farm, hoorah!” Johnnie shouted.

  I looked at the boy as he went back to singing lustily, swinging his arms and marching along. It reminded me of that day he had marched and stomped on his father’s precious stamps. But Wood Farm and this lovely surrounding area on the great estate were his home and now mine too. The four of us were a little family of God’s making and our own.

  I recalled the old tune “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” an American Civil War song Queen Mary used to play on the piano at York Cottage: “We’ll give him a hearty welcome then, hurrah, hurrah!”

  Johnnie not only felt welcome here but was surrounded by love. It was a bit daunting how perfect and precious our lives seemed to me in that moment, a million times better for my boy than living in a palace or a grand house amidst power and position. Oh, yes, I resented that the king and queen had seen fit to exile him, to hide him, but I vowed to make up for that.

  Johnnie looked at me again and grinned. “I’m going to grow up to be just like Chad, Lala,” he told me. “And someday I will have hundreds of peeps, and no one will steal them or shoot at them from the sky either! I will keep them safe here, take good care of them, and they will be happy just like me! Am I like a peep to you, my Lala?”

  “Yes, my dear,” I told him as Chad smiled at both of us. “Only, always, I love you so much better than that.”

  FINALLY THE KING was coming for a brief respite from the war, and Chad and I were going to ask him for permission to wed. My father had written back a lovely letter—in my mother’s handwriting, for his had never been good. If we could stay in Their Majesties’ good graces, we would be married in the church here, small, private with just Johnnie, Penny, my parents, and my friends Mabel and Rose. I even decided to be daring enough to hire Rose to make me a new gown.

  Thank God, things were looking up a bit. The Americans had entered the war at last and had given all of us a great boost in morale and men. Meanwhile, speaking of sending letters, poor Margaretta Eager poured her heart out to me in correspondence, especially when the assurance of British asylum for her dear girls and their family seemed to move so slowly—and then halted when King George privately admitted he feared bringing the once autocratic despot here to England when his own powers were under fire by some liberals in the government. How I wished I dared plead with His Majesty to help his Russian cousin’s family, for I could not stand the idea of those five lively children imprisoned all their lives.

  “Mrs. Lala,” Victor, our elderly Wood Farm footman, announced with a knock on the open upstairs schoolroom door, “a male visitor to see you, not Mr. Reaver or Mr. Finch this time, but an Inspector Palmer, says he’s from a government Special Branch, that he did.”

  Johnnie looked up from laboriously writing a “Welcome Back” letter to his parents. “A special branch of a tree?” he asked.

  “Thank you, Victor. I’ll come down to see the inspector if you will sit with Johnnie here.”

  “Oh, yes, miss. Johnnie and I get on smashing, don’t we, sir?”

  My heart was pounding. Was I to be interrogated, as Finch had suggested? I steadied myself by reviewing what he’d said, that Special Branch was working to protect David and, in a way, perhaps the king too.

  As we sat across from each other—I did not call for tea—the red-haired, broad-shouldered man complimented the summer gardens and the well-kept estate. “But, of course,” he said at last, tugging at his shirt cuffs, “I’m here on official business. Mrs. Bill, I need to inquire if you still have the correspondence the Prince of Wales has sent you over the years since he has lived away from Sandringham.”

  “Letters to me, yes, but I consider them personal and private.”

  “His Majesty’s government would like to ask the greatest of favors, Mrs. Bill, that you allow me to take those letters into custody for the good of all. I’m sure the notes are sentimental to you, but as time goes on, we must be certain the private correspondence of the heir to the throne does not fall into the wrong hands—and I surely don’t mean yours, for the prince trusts you implicitly and thinks of you with admiration.”

  “Into the wrong hands, here, in this secluded area on the king’s rural estate?” I asked, getting into even more of a fret. I must admit, I was ashamed and angry at myself that I had thought to use those careless comments if David ever tried to hide or harm Johnnie, so I understood what he meant. But if Special Branch shared those letters with the king, His Majesty would have a conniption.

  “The Prince of Wales said you had grit, but this is wartime, Mrs. Bill, and I would greatly appreciate—as would the prince and the king—if you would entrust all of those missives to me.”

  “Yes, I see,” I said and rose to fetch them. I was annoyed again. Never had I felt more like one of those suffragettes both my father and the king tried to dismiss and keep in their place. “But please tell David,” I added, “that this should be a nanny’s lesson to him—not to put anything in writing or do anything in his life he will regret.”

  Inspector Palmer rose too. “I will tell him. Good advice for all of us, especially for our Prince of Wales.”

  CHAD AND I were at sixes and sevens, waiting for Their Majesties to come to Sandringham for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary on July 6, 1918. It had been over a year since we’d formally pledged to each other and, though being together was a joy, it was getting terribly difficult to wait. More than once we’d thought of writing the king, but Chad believed our chances were better to face him in person. I too feared his answer, for nannies were always single women—yet, was not Johnnie’s situation, almost hidden from the outside world, different enough that an exception could be made?

  But we grew bold as the war seemed to be winding down. The German navy had refused to fight, and it was rumored that the kaiser would flee to a neutral country. The royal family had dropped their German last name and formally had become the Windsors, named after that most British of castles. Enough things seemed to be going well that they had decided to risk a week away from London—and we would risk asking them as soon as we could.

  It was very windy for July, and it had been raining, but I could have flown as high as the kite that Queen Alexandra had given Johnnie. Penny was visiting her mother’s family over in the village today, but Chad had taken a few hours off to greet the king when he arrived—and to be with me.

  Our boy had insisted on bringing Peep George, but the old bird was tethered by one leg and was pecking for insects in the slight depression where a Zeppelin bomb crater had been filled in and sodded, while Chad and Johnnie wrestled with the wind to keep the kite aloft.

  Johnnie shouted to me, “The other George, my brother, would like to see this kite flying, Lala! I’ll write him about it.”

  “You are getting very good with your handwriting,” I called to him. Johnnie was ecstatic, and Chad was managing to keep himself upright and let the boy help to control the kite.

  “Righto!” Chad told Johnnie. “But now tug on the string and run a bit with it when it starts to come down.”

  “It’s as high as the clouds, Lala!”

  “Don’t run too far!”

  He screeched in his excitement, which made Peep George try to fly. Somehow the grouse’s tether came off. Despite her clipped wings, she managed to get aloft for a few feet and flew right into the ravine where we’d sought shelter from the Zeppelin.

  “Oh, no!” I cried.

  Chad saw it too and started over. “Stay with him,” he called back to me, “and I’ll see where she is. Maybe just down on that first ledge.”

  Hoping Johnnie didn’t no
tice Peep George was missing, I went over to him and helped him keep the kite from diving into the ground when he yanked it too hard. I looked back at Chad. The bird must have been reachable, because I didn’t see him. He had managed to get to that ledge in the dark, no less, under attack with Johnnie and me that terrible night, so I just went back to watching Johnnie. Chad would be here with the bird soon.

  But where was he? His crutches lay in the grass near the rim of the ravine. Surely, he hadn’t gone down too far for that bird.

  “Johnnie, leave the kite where it hits this time. Look, here comes Mabel, maybe to tell us your mama and papa are here or it’s time for lunch. Go tell her about the kite, all right?”

  “But . . . where is Peep George?” he demanded. “Did he fly away?”

  “He’s fine. He’s with Chad. Go with Mabel now,” I ordered, gesturing to her. “Chad and I will bring Peep George into the house.”

  I strode right for Chad’s crutches. I looked down onto the first ledge—no. I held to a sturdy, young tree and leaned out, looking down—down to where Chad lay sprawled and unmoving far below by the little stream, down into the depths of my soul.

  Chapter 35

  So we had a funeral instead of a wedding. Many local folk attended because so many had known and admired Chad. Despite my dazed state, I came to grasp that in burying him, a real body in an actual casket—a rather fine oak one the king purchased—for the villagers, it was like having one of their once strong fathers, brothers, and sons, who were buried in France, home again to lay in Sandringham soil.

  At first, I could barely risk being with Johnnie, not that I blamed him, but I was so distraught that I upset him. I could not stand to look at Peep George, though she didn’t live much longer from her injuries, which made Johnnie more difficult too. Bless her, Queen Alexandra and Toria kept him for a few days, with Mabel’s help. But when I heard Alexandra’s sister, Maria Feodorovna, the mother of Tsar Nicholas, was staying there, I knew I had to pull myself together and get Johnnie back.