by Lucy Worsley
‘But you cannot leave, Lehzen!’ I said quickly. ‘The princess needs you too much!’
‘I know,’ she said, with that odd sidelong smile which transformed her face. ‘And you too, Miss V. We are her protectors, are we not?’
Shyly, I smiled back at her. Although it seemed conceited to admit it, and I would never have said the words out loud, I realised that it was true. The two of us, Lehzen and I, counterbalanced the powerful personalities of Victoria’s mother and my father, and made Victoria’s life possible. Not happy, not carefree, but possible.
‘But, Lehzen,’ I went on cautiously, as the little cart entered the shade of a wood and the shadows made the surroundings seem more intimate. ‘But recall how unwell she has been. She could have died! And it would have been the fault of my father and her mother!’
‘Yes, that would have been a terrible thing.’ Lehzen paused. ‘It is a terrible thing to see a family … eating itself. When people share the same blood in their veins, it makes their quarrels seem worse, somehow.’
I pondered upon her words. I sensed that something deeper lay behind them. In the wood, twilight was beginning to fall, and while I admired the luminous light that gave the trees an unearthly glow, I also felt a shiver go down my spine.
‘A family, Lehzen?’ What had she meant by the word?
She did not reply. But all at once I sensed that Lehzen knew the secret of who my mother really was. ‘Lehzen,’ I said, ‘do you know that I myself am the granddaughter of your old master, the Duke of Kent? Out of wedlock, of course. Did you know that I am Victoria’s cousin?’
Lehzen twitched her head round, her attention caught by something else. And then I thought I heard it too: the hoofs of a horse somewhere in the wood, somewhere behind us.
But perhaps not. She turned back to the pony and gave me a quick glance.
‘Yes, my dear, I do know it. And it has often crossed my mind how unfortunate it is that you are cousins and not sisters. It is unfortunate that your places are not reversed.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I thought I saw a fox slipping through the bracken by the side of the road. ‘Did you say that you wished Victoria and I were sisters?’
Lehzen glanced at me again, and turned away. Like me, she preferred to speak to a person without looking at them. ‘No, Miss V,’ she said. ‘It is not so much that. You are close, like sisters. I know you can read her mind. And you look just like each other. But I think that in many ways you would make a better queen.’
I choked. ‘But, Lehzen, it is treason to say such a thing!’
‘Treason?’ Lehzen scoffed. ‘That’s just a word. You know I have nothing but loyalty to the princess, and that’s why I think and say this. Have you never noticed how close to the edge of reason she stands? Like her grandfather, the mad old King George the Third? You never saw him, but it is true. They have the same high colour, the same high temper. When she stamps her foot, she is the spitting image of him. It is dangerous, dangerous to her health.’
She was right. I could say nothing. Silence fell.
‘Oh yes,’ muttered Lehzen, as if to herself. ‘I think that Miss V would sit on the throne more comfortably than the Princess Victoria.’
Once more I was aghast.
‘But this is a silly speculation, Lehzen!’ I said, pulling myself together.
‘You’re right, my dear …’ Lehzen said.
She glanced backwards again and I followed her gaze.
Yes, there was a horseman behind us. The sound was closer now. It was unnerving. But even staring hard, I could see nothing between the trees.
Lehzen lowered her voice, as if eavesdroppers might be able to overhear us.
‘It is indeed useless speculation,’ Lehzen went on. ‘But think of the consequences. If Victoria is sick, if she cannot bear it, if becoming queen kills her or destroys her mind, who will take the throne then?’
‘Oh!’ Suddenly I realised. ‘George of Cumberland? But he is evil! Cruel! Stupid! That would be terrible.’ A new thought struck me. ‘But she must take the throne. What about the law? We cannot live without laws. She has the royal blood.’
This made Lehzen harrumph.
‘Miss V!’ she said. ‘As I said, I was born a commoner, like your father, although I don’t care to be bracketed with him. We have made our own way in the world. We haven’t been born to high positions; we have made high positions for ourselves. Positions of power. Surely the country should be ruled over by the best person, not the person with the best so-called blood?’
I thought hard about the logic of her argument. Yes, how happy it would make me, and those others who cared about Victoria, if she did not have to be queen! And yet it was all a fancy.
‘Lehzen, I don’t think we should talk like this. Surely we must believe that Victoria can, and will, make a good queen.’
‘I bring it up because my doubts about her strength and her sanity are a heavy load for me to carry, my dear,’ said Lehzen quietly. The occasional gleam of evening light through the trees flashed across her face. ‘I trust you to help me bear it. You are young in years, but you are also old and wise inside your head.’
I was overcome with feelings I can scarcely describe. It was wonderful to feel needed, wanted. It warmed me inside.
‘Oh, Lehzen,’ I said, speaking to her perhaps more honestly than I ever had before. ‘You know that it makes me glad to help other people, if I can.’
‘Ach!’ Lehzen suddenly spat out the sound. Her attention was once more fixed upon the road behind us. ‘I fear, my dear, that I have made an error. Can you hear that?’
The hoof beats in our wake were growing steadily louder.
‘I have brought you to a deserted wood at twilight, and to the untrained eye you will look very like Victoria in that cloak. I fear that this has been a security breach.’
Now my own heart leapt into my mouth. Lehzen had whipped the pony forward, and with a great jolt the little cart began to bounce even more quickly over the rough road. A low branch snatched my hat from my head, and I let out a cry.
‘Leave it!’ Lehzen said sharply, whipping the pony again. And now, glancing back, I could see the dark shape of the horseman against the trees behind us. He wore a long, dark greatcoat and a scarf that muffled his face. He looked like nothing on earth so much as a highwayman. And what was that long and heavy item he carried across his saddle?
‘Lehzen,’ I whimpered, too frightened to scream. ‘Lehzen, I think he has a musket with him.’
‘Lieber Gott!’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘Hold on.’ I was indeed clinging on for dear life, and the pony, barrelling forward as fast as its little legs could carry it, was speeding us out of the wood. Now we were passing through a meadow, and then, ahead, we could see the blessed sight of the main road. It was busy: there were carts upon it, and we heard the blessed sound of tramping feet. The horseman was left behind.
We drew up at the junction. A great company of militiamen went marching by ahead of us, taking some minutes to pass, impeding our progress. But we did not care. They could protect us if need be. We sat in silence, staring at each other in horror. I could feel my hands trembling with shock and fear, and clasped them tightly together to still them.
I was certain that Lehzen was thinking, as I was, of the assassination attempt on the princess at Kensington Palace. This looked very much like a second try.
And if that was the case, then the Duke of Cumberland and his son were behind it, no doubt about that: a man and his son who would be murderers if they could. A man and his son who must never, never sit upon the throne.
I felt enormously glad when we saw the comforting lights of Ramsgate ahead of us. But of course I could not relax. My heart still thudded unpleasantly. How could I unwind when we had been in such danger, and when Lehzen – solid, pragmatic Lehzen herself, whom I trusted – had shared her own fears that Victoria would never be strong enough to rule?
Chapter 24
A New Beginning
The
next day, on a morning of sparkling sunlight, the dusky woods and our dark fears seemed far away. The more I thought about the mysterious horseman, the less I could clearly remember of him. I certainly could not describe his face. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps we had been melodramatic.
But my father was just as grim at breakfast as he had been over dinner when I told him what had happened in the wood.
‘Of course we must go back to Kensington Palace without delay,’ he said shortly, when I asked about our plans. ‘Security is too weak here. I had in any case been meaning that we should go. The holiday season is over.’
‘It seems … harsh on the princess,’ I said carefully. ‘She is still not quite perfectly well.’ My memory of Ramsgate would be forever scarred by the painful scenes we’d all experienced here. But to return to the palace, to turn our backs upon the sprightly little tufts of foam on the blue sea, would feel rather like going back to prison.
‘Better that she should travel now while the weather is dry and fine for the journey,’ he said, ready with an answer for everything. ‘In her delicate state she should not travel in wind and rain.’
This was as close as he had come, in my hearing, to acknowledging that she had been ill, and I bowed my head in recognition of the concession on his part.
‘And the boarding house bills are running up,’ he went on.
Suddenly, with an impatient toss of the head, he rose from the table.
‘Yet I cannot think why we are even discussing this in the face of yesterday’s security breach.’ He strode over to the window. ‘And the other day,’ he said, staring out at the sea, ‘you girls were on the beach without a visible escort. I saw you through this window. I should never have tolerated it. My authority,’ he concluded, his voice rising, ‘must be heeded on this matter.’
‘I shall go and pack at once, Papa,’ I said meekly.
*
I was to travel with Lehzen and Victoria in the big carriage, while my father drove the duchess in the phaeton.
‘I think we might arouse less attention,’ said Lehzen, just before we left, ‘if you were to wear these, Vickelchen.’ Now that there were no more hairdressing secrets between us, she boldly handed the princess a row of false curls. Victoria’s hair had grown only an inch since it had been shaved in the depths of her illness.
‘Lord love a duck!’ cried Victoria in her most rakish music hall manner. ‘I’m going to be the belle of the ball!’
She tucked the curls under her bonnet at once, and kept batting them and fluffing them in imitation of a coquettish lady of the theatre. Then she thrust her arm through mine to descend the boarding house steps. ‘Come on, Charlie boy,’ she said to me. ‘Help a girl into her carriage.’ Lehzen and I smiled to see her japing around once more.
As we travelled, and it was a delightful journey, Lehzen revealed that there was a present waiting for us at Kensington Palace. Victoria tried to guess what it was. ‘A lovely new atlas, is it, Lehzen, for you to use to beat some geography into our brains?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘It’s a ruler, the better to smack our fingers when we play wrong notes on the pianoforte.’
‘Both wrong!’ said Lehzen complacently, and however hard we begged and wheedled, she remained silent.
The journey lasted for two whole days, and Victoria was growing weary and wan by the time we finally reached the familiar road running through the park. The trees had been just budding when we left, but now their leaves were fallen, and drifts of burnt umber and orange covered the walks of the gardens. We passed the guards at the gate, and remembering the horseman of the woods, I shuddered. There was one thing to say for our prison: it did at least make such attacks much less likely.
At the moment we turned into the familiar quiet courtyard, Victoria’s aunt the Princess Sophia was out on her step. Probably she was looking for her cat.
‘I hope you like it, my dear!’ she called out to us in her croaky voice, as we clambered down from the carriage.
I looked at Victoria. ‘What does she mean?’ I whispered.
But Victoria shrugged. ‘Thanks, Aunt Sophia!’ she yelled back, rather like a hoyden. ‘But I don’t know what “it” is yet!’
We were both now burning with curiosity.
And then we saw it. The front door had changed. It was new and shiny and had upon it a great brass knocker. Then Adams himself was opening the door, just as of old. And yet he too was different: he wore a smart new livery with brass buttons.
He bowed and beckoned.
‘Welcome home, Your Royal Highness,’ he said.
Victoria led the way inside, and we realised what had been going on. A stupendous amount of building work had taken place. Instead of the crooked passage to the dirty painted steps, an elegant, sweeping low staircase of stone now stood before us. Gasping, we climbed it and found ourselves in a red-curtained saloon: fine, fashionable, with porphyry pillars and a long shining table down the middle.
Like sleepwalkers, we moved forward into the next room, a drawing room with fresh sprigged wallpaper and new plush furniture. An unfamiliar and beautiful piano stood to one side, and a gold-framed pier glass hung between the two tall windows with their swagged and ruched curtains. I caught a glance of us both in the mirror – like as two peas, young ladies for certain. We would not be playing behind the sofa any more.
I could hear my father laughing as he and the duchess came up the stairs behind us. ‘Do you like it?’ he was saying, eager for praise. ‘Isn’t it fine? The workmen have done a good job, have they not?’
We all turned to him in amazement. ‘It’s heaven!’ said Victoria, her mouth a perfect ‘O’ of astonishment.
‘At last we are to live in a palace,’ sighed the duchess, ‘and not a rackety boarding house!’
‘Your Royal Highnesses both,’ my father said, sweeping off his hat and bowing down low before them. ‘Let this be a fresh start. I am the first to admit that I am impetuous, sometimes tempestuous. Sometimes more masterful than I should be. But I am sincerely attached to you, and it is my great honour and delight, as your comptroller, to have commissioned these new rooms for you.
‘Now that Your Royal Highness is so near the throne,’ he said, turning to Victoria in particular, and bowing even lower than before, ‘you must live in more splendour and state.’
Victoria was blushing with pleasure, looking almost pretty in her enthusiasm. She was paying no attention to my father, but staring every which way at the elegant new furnishings.
‘All right, Sir John,’ she said distantly, eventually letting her eyes fall upon him. ‘Let us make a new beginning.’
Lehzen and I exchanged a glance that spoke more loudly than words. We kept silent, so as not to spoil the moment. But I knew that we were wondering exactly the same thing. How had all this been paid for? From where in the world had the money come?
Yes, the new rooms were exquisite, I thought, as my father and I passed back down the staircase. The sight of my elegant pale pink slippers on the marble of the steps took me back, somehow, to my first experience of the cold and cavernous entrance hall, when I had climbed the stairs to the schoolroom for the first time. Of course, the palace was much finer now than it had been all those years ago. But then my heart had not contained this cold little nugget of distrust for my father.
Chapter 25
Two Princes
Once they were settled into their grand new apartment at Kensington, the duchess and the princess began planning a ball. I brought the news back to my father in our own little drawing room.
‘There are to be ices,’ I told him eagerly, ‘and musicians. And probably flowers. Victoria has a new book on the language of flowers, and we must consult it before we choose which ones to order.’
‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I suppose it is indeed a good time to start introducing the princess to London society. I hope that she is ready for it.’
He interlaced his fingers, as if considering the matter judiciously.
But his frown confirmed my secret suspicion that he was merely cross that he hadn’t thought of the idea himself. I looked down to hide my smile, plucking at the tablecloth and tweaking out a crease. By comparison with the splendours over the way, our room now looked shabby and a little dingy, whereas before it had seemed so snug and comfortable.
‘I fear that it is a path fraught with considerable risk,’ he eventually said, sounding at his most pompous. ‘She has been sheltered, so very sheltered, from the roughness of the world.’
‘But, Papa,’ I said, ‘she longs to meet young men, you know. And even if you don’t approve of Uncle Leopold’s choice of a husband, you must admit that the country and her people will expect her to marry. And soon.’
He went on looking sullenly at the floor. He said nothing, but we both knew that I was right. And also, we both knew that a husband would oust him from his position as the princess’s most important advisor. Was this a bad thing? I was beginning to think it might not be.
The guests of honour at this ball, the duchess had announced, were to be cousins of Victoria’s, the sons of one of the duchess’s brothers from the House of Coburg. This was not Albert and his brother Ernest, of whom Leopold had spoken, but two more cousins, Ferdinand and August. Victoria was wild with excitement to meet some strange new German gentlemen.
‘It would not be wrong for me to marry a first cousin, would it?’ she asked me on what seemed like most mornings that month. ‘Such things are often done in royal families, are they not?’
‘Why … yes,’ I said.
The possible consequences of such a course of action, given that the offspring of close relatives could sometimes inherit characteristics such as the madness that ran in the Hanoverian family, made me pause before I answered.
