by Lucy Worsley
‘He said,’ I snapped, ‘that my mother is the natural daughter of the Duke of Kent! And that you married her just to become part of the princess’s family!’
The word ‘daughter’ emerged from my mouth as a strange squeak. In fact, the whole sentence had come gushing out almost hysterically.
He looked at me in surprise.
‘Yes, I am not always Miss Goody-Two-Shoes,’ I said huffily, almost under my breath. These days it often seemed that I needed to do something out of the ordinary to make him see me, his daughter, rather than his servant, the dependable Miss V. I knew that he had come to think of me as a cog in his machine. Well, I needed a little oil or I would continue to squeak.
‘Yes,’ I went on, louder and angrier now. ‘I am tired of finding out secrets second-hand. It’s as if you don’t trust me.’
He seemed positively dumbfounded and sat with his mouth foolishly hanging open. Then he jumped up, strode to the door, quickly opened it, glanced outside and sat down again. It looked like he was checking that there were no boarding-house maids in the corridor, but I also suspected that he was buying himself a little time.
‘That’s right, Miss V,’ he said. ‘Although they tried to hush it up, your grandfather was not Major Fisher, as you have always thought, but the Duke of Kent himself. Your mother is not alone in standing among the unrecognised offspring of the royal dukes. I believe that there are more than forty of them.’
‘Forty!’ I cried. ‘But is this not very … immoral of them?’
‘Why, of course it is!’ my father said, exasperated. ‘Royalty these days is debased, weakened. It’s a plant that’s dying. And that’s why you, and I, my dear, can insinuate ourselves into it. The Conroys are a very old Irish family, that’s true, but I – for example – could never have become comptroller to a royal duchess one hundred years ago. But now, today, with my energy and my hard work, I have done so. I have created a fine life for myself and for my family. A royal duchess needs me. And this need, which only I can fulfil, keeps you and me very comfortable. Is that not right?’
I had wanted an apology, and an admission that he had not been straight. Was he trying to throw me off balance with this talk of illegitimate children? But his idea intrigued me. ‘You mean,’ I began, ‘that you and I … may reach a high position in society purely through our own efforts? Normal people, like us?’ He nodded slowly as he watched me take in what he was saying.
‘Yes,’ he said firmly. ‘Even royal personages must win respect through their personal qualities. The old days when they used to receive deference unquestioned are long gone.’
Of course I had heard many people talking against the old king, who had died very soon after we saw him at the Royal Lodge, and more recently his brother the new king, and their loose and immoral ways. ‘Debased’ and ‘debauched’ were the words people used when they talked about the royal family. And then, even worse, there were the younger brothers of the two kings. Some of them lived with their mistresses, and one of them was our enemy, the Duke of Cumberland.
‘We are the people whose age is to come, Miss V,’ he said. ‘It is our time. The days of royalty are over, but we are the vigorous plants that will thrive among the ruins.’
His eyes glittered, but whether with malice or pleasure I could not tell. I remembered how cross I had felt just a couple of minutes earlier. But reluctantly I admitted to myself that I could see what he meant. Why should people rule over us just because of their blood?
‘You may be related to the princess,’ he continued. ‘You may think that it will open doors or win the admiration of others. Not true! I have found that out for myself in marrying your mother. No one cares about her, as she was born out of wedlock. Good society will never recognise a relationship unless it is dignified through marriage. But good society will recognise service and assiduity, and that you have given. And so you have earned its respect.’
He had taken the wind right out of my sails.
But still something remained. An itch at the back of my mind. An anger.
‘If all that is true, Papa … why did you marry my mother?’ I had wanted to know the answer to this question for a long time, and only now did I have the courage to ask. Was it to feed like a weed on the ruins of the royal family? I looked away, steeling myself for what he might say.
He did look shamefacedly at the floor. ‘Now, Miss V,’ he said, ‘I guessed that you would be too young to understand, and so you are. Despite your being mature beyond your years. I did not marry her just because she was the natural daughter of the Duke of Kent. I married her because we fell in love.’
‘In love?’ I asked. ‘You and my mother were in love?’ The words came out almost scornfully. All the hot rage at what I had seen that day in the park, which had been simmering ever since, boiled over.
I had pushed him too far. He slammed down his teacup.
‘YOU have no right to question your father!’ he shouted. ‘You can count on a Conroy to behave honourably. How dare you interrogate me?’
‘I’m sorry, Papa,’ I said at once, clasping my hands.
We sat silently, both of us staring at the carpet. I was shaking with the shocking violence of his words. How long would the storm last? Not long, not long, it never did. And within a couple of minutes, he was once again pouring his tea.
As I relaxed an inch, and waited, our startling earlier conversation about royalty forced its way back into my mind. I could perceive a glimmer of truth of what he was talking about. Where would the duchess and princess be without our help? Royal blood would not pay the bills. They would be penniless, and given the dangers the princess faced, possibly even lifeless too.
‘Now,’ he said, smacking his hands together, ‘now then, perhaps I was hasty. I know you are a good girl. We must go back to the business of King Leopold. You haven’t told me if he spoke to you of Prince Albert of Coburg, and his plans for the princess’s marriage. Did he?’
I was stunned into saying nothing but the simple truth. ‘Yes. He did.’
‘We must never allow that to happen,’ he said decisively. ‘That would be a great gun in Leopold’s armoury. And we cannot have a foreigner controlling who will sit upon the throne of England.’
‘But Victoria will sit on the throne, surely?’
Now that there was only the life of King William the Fourth between her and the crown, I thought constantly about when that day might come, and whether she would be strong enough to bear it.
‘Well, not if the old king dies before she is eighteen,’ my father said slowly. I could tell that he was unwilling to share so much confidence, but my questioning had certainly damaged his composure a little. ‘If that should happen,’ he went on, ‘then her stupid mother, the duchess, will be regent, and the princess will be under her care.’
The word ‘stupid’ made me blink. I could see that she was not clever like my father was, but the duchess had her own dramatic way of living which made sense to her. And certainly she did care for Victoria. Did she care for my father? I could not tell. It was confusing.
‘But I will tell the duchess and the princess what to do, and how to do it. I will know the way to rule. Leopold is thinking of the children that the princess and Albert might have. He wants another damned member of the damned Coburg family to be near the throne of England – and for Victoria’s children to be half-German.’
‘But what if Victoria herself does not wish to marry this Albert?’ I asked tentatively.
‘Ha!’ he said, almost slapping his thigh. ‘You are not foolish enough to think that she has any choice in the matter, are you? A princess can never marry for love.’
I had not thought of this. I remembered Victoria’s joke, only today, about meeting a handsome highwayman. She loved romance, the idea of falling in love. But she could never, ever do so herself. How grim!
My father could see this realisation crossing my face like a shadow.
‘So King Leopold is not quite as disinterested as he seems with his
good advice,’ he went on, with a low laugh. ‘So now we must hope and pray for something quite wicked, Miss V. We must hope and pray that a certain person does die within the next two years, so that another certain person will become regent. And then John Conroy, commoner though he is, will know what real power tastes like.’
I saw his coal-black eyes glowing, and his colour was up.
My father, always ready with an answer to every question. I turned away from him with a sigh. Sometimes I adored him, sometimes I feared him. Whichever it was, I had no way of escaping him.
Chapter 21
On the Beach
The next morning, Victoria and I went down to the beach with Dash. As usual we left the house with Adams in tow, and as usual he did not take much persuading from Victoria to wait for us in the teashop rather than follow in our exact footsteps.
I watched her running ahead, skipping almost into the foam and out again. I seated myself on a dry patch of sand and ran my fingers through it in search of shells. But I soon abandoned my quest because I fell, once more, to wondering about the future. This romping girl was to have such great power over everyone, myself included, when the old king died.
But then a shriek of pleasure from the sea’s edge made me look up, and I saw her picking up Dash and kissing him because the cold water had splattered his coat. And it struck me once again that at heart she was kind and true. Britain could do worse, I thought, far worse, than have my blood cousin as queen.
Victoria came running back towards me, her cheeks rosy with the wind and spray. She stood before me, laughing, and Dash almost seemed to be laughing too. I resolved that whatever my father might say, whatever schemes he might hatch to take her power, I was on her side.
‘Get away from me, you two!’ I said. ‘I know your tricks. You want to spray me, don’t you, Dash?’ His quivering fur was loaded with water and I knew that in an instant he could shake it off in a shower.
‘Frowning again, Miss V?’ said Victoria. ‘Your face will get stuck like that, you know!’
Then she suddenly leaned forward, ignoring Dash, and put her hands on her knees. She dropped her head, and the laughter turned to a kind of shrill gasp. I did something similar whenever I myself felt faint, but it was so bracing out here, below the cliffs, that I could not imagine how she could be feeling the vapours.
‘Victoria!’ I said. ‘What is it? Have you swallowed sand? It’s blowing right up off the beach – just look at it!’
‘Suddenly … feeling … a little weak,’ she said, straightening up slowly.
I saw that her face had gone dead white.
‘Oh, but you’re not well,’ I said, concerned, taking her arm and threading it through my own. I patted her hand as we strolled back. ‘Perhaps you ran too fast too soon after all those weeks in the carriage.’
We took a few paces, but then there was a strong pull on my arm. This time her knees had almost given way, and she staggered.
‘Oh, sweetheart!’
Her face seemed strangely sweaty as well as pallid, and I reached out to touch her cheek. Burning hot. ‘You have caught a cold,’ I said severely. ‘That’s what comes of not wearing enough clothes.’
She was dressed in a neat navy cloak, but she had smartly refused to bring the muff I’d laid upon on her bed before we set out upon our walk, calling me an old fusspot.
‘Fusspot!’ she said again now. ‘It’s nothing. I just need to catch my breath.’
As we stumbled together across the sand, I wondered that the System did not allow Victoria more frequent opportunity to concentrate on her health and strength. This was the first time in the years I had been part of it that the household had taken a holiday. But even my father had been forced to admit, after the tour, that Victoria was run-down and needed a change of air and a rest without the pressure of any princess-ing.
‘Home to tea!’ she shouted, attempting to push on ahead of me. ‘Buns! Scones! Hot milk!’
But again she stopped and dropped her head and seemed almost to be spitting something out upon the ground. When I caught up with her, she was trembling.
‘Come on,’ I said grimly. ‘For you it isn’t home to buns. It’s home to bed.’
It was late that evening and I was in Victoria’s boarding house bedroom. Her bed was narrow and made of iron, like a servant’s bed, but it stood near the tall window so that she could see – as she insisted, for she would not have the curtain drawn – the harbour lights twinkling below.
The doctor had gone some time before, and I had crept in to say goodnight. Lehzen sat in the shadows like a sentinel. In the quiet I could hear the rasping of Victoria’s breath.
‘Ah, it’s Miss Caution!’ she croaked, beckoning me in. ‘Have you brought me sherbet lemonade? Nothing else can save me.’ Victoria had been driving the boarding house cook mad with her demands for unseasonable and unfamiliar foodstuffs.
‘No, I have not. I’ve come to see that you’re behaving yourself.’
‘Pooh! I was naughty with that smelly old doctor.’
Lehzen cackled in the corner. ‘You were indeed,’ she said, not looking up from her darning. ‘You should not have asked him what he thought of the fine new hospital in London.’
‘But how could a doctor not have heard of it?’ asked Victoria plaintively.
‘A country doctor, is how,’ Lehzen said with a sniff. ‘You should not taunt people who live outside London and know less than yourself.’
‘But, Lehzen,’ Victoria said more earnestly. ‘He says I have just a cold. I am telling you, this is something … worse than a cold. I feel dreadful.’ She flopped back on the pillows, and it is true that she still looked like a pale, washed-out version of herself.
‘Lehzen!’ I said in alarm. ‘Does this doctor know what he is doing?’
‘Her Royal Highness and Sir John have approved him,’ Lehzen said grimly, snipping through a thread with her scissors. But this gave me no confidence.
‘Well, Victoria, do sleep well,’ I said. ‘Let me plump up your pillow.’
‘Oh, fusspot,’ she said, as she rolled over and refused to accept my help. But there was a smile in her voice. I dropped a small kiss on her shoulder, and I know from her wriggle that she’d felt it and was pleased.
Comforted, I crept quietly away to go to my own sleep.
The next day, the doctor was back in the house before breakfast was over. ‘Unnecessary expense!’ my father huffed, as he returned to his toast. ‘I really think the little minx is putting it on. You haven’t been encouraging her, have you, Miss V?’
At that he looked at me sternly over the top of his cup.
‘Encouraging her?’ I said drily. ‘It’s my duty to encourage her.’ The Lord knows, I added silently to myself, that she needs encouragement to get through these next few years. Whether she becomes queen sooner or later, she needs strength and help.
‘You know what I mean,’ he said sternly. ‘I hope you haven’t encouraged her in her disobedience to her mother and me. Which I fear takes the shape of this pretended illness.’
I stood up, so angry I was trembling a little. ‘If you had been on the beach with her yesterday,’ I said, ‘you would not be accusing anyone of falsehood. She was so weak she could hardly walk.’
At that I flounced out and banged the door. It gave me great satisfaction to think of that final glimpse of my father’s face, open-mouthed in wonder and horror.
I took care to hum a little tune as I ran downstairs, so as to discourage the boarding house staff from thinking that anything was amiss, but beneath my grey dress, my heart was beating rather fast. I was worried to hear that she was still ill.
I sought out Lehzen in her cramped, dark bedroom at the very back of the house. ‘Lehzen,’ I said breathlessly, having knocked on her door with less circumspection than was my usual habit. ‘I think that Victoria is really ill, but my father does not seem to agree.’
Lehzen looked up, surprised, from the mirror. She had a turban round her head, and it wa
s quite shocking to see her without her usual frontage of corkscrew curls.
So Lehzen wears a wig! was my inconsequential thought.
But she did not seem to care that I had seen her without her hair. ‘She is certainly very sick,’ she said grimly. ‘I saw the evidence of it in the night. But the duchess is very frightened, and she does not want to believe it. And that local doctor only cares about his fee and wants to reassure her.’
I had known that Lehzen would give me the facts straight. I could almost have hugged her, but now she had her sharp elbow raised to fasten her locket round her neck.
‘But, Lehzen, what ought we to do?’
‘We must send for Dr Clark from London.’
‘Of course! I must speak to my father at once!’
‘Stay.’ She held up her hand before I had the chance to withdraw and spun around on her chair to face me directly. ‘Sir John,’ she said calmly and deliberately, ‘has already refused to call Dr Clark. You must consider your own position, Miss V. The System is not kind to those who cross Sir John.’
‘But the princess’s life could be in danger!’
‘So it could. But this morning she did look a little better, and she ate some chicken and some broth.’ Then she added quickly, ‘I, too, am in favour of calling Dr Clark, but you know that a victory against the System is dearly bought.’
I knew exactly what she meant, of course. She was thinking of Madame de Späth.
I crept back along the passage, discouraged. The boarding house was now alive with the sounds of maids doing the morning cleaning, the few other guests departing for their clifftop walk and the cheerful clanging of the milk pails being washed downstairs.
Quiet as a mouse amid the bustle, I tiptoed to Victoria’s door and listened at it for a while.
Nothing. Perhaps she was resting.
Then there was a sharp whack on my back, right between the shoulder blades. It was the duchess, who had crept up behind me in uncharacteristic silence. It was so unexpected that I almost shrieked.
‘Go away,’ she hissed. ‘Vickelchen is sleeping. She does not want you.’
