The Princess and the Suffragette

by Holly Webb

  Not that there was that much of the afternoon left, Lottie realized, since it was past four o’clock already. Probably Sally had been set too many tasks to get done that morning and she wasn’t allowed out until she had finished. It was stupid to envy her, Lottie told herself firmly. Think of that attic. And she envies me! Warm and well-fed and nicely dressed, with my perfectly furled umbrella. I’m being silly. She swung the umbrella defiantly, to the shock of two of the smaller girls walking sedately along the passage, and smiled to herself as she raced back down the stairs.

  They assembled neatly in the hallway, two by two, to be examined by Miss Minchin for umbrellas and gloves and general tidiness. The seminary had always to make the right impression – it was unladylike to talk too loudly, to slouch, to rattle one’s umbrella along the iron railings of the square. The list went on for ever.

  At last, after reprimanding Jessie for her wrinkled stockings, Miss Minchin led the way down the stone steps and on to the street. Lottie, in the middle of the column, peered over Jessie’s shoulder, trying to work out where they were going. Walk Number Two, she decided, as Miss Minchin turned right going out of the square. About a mile, along Kensington Road around the outside of Hyde Park – with plenty of time to admire the lawns and the flowerbeds from a distance, without actually being able to enjoy them. Lottie sighed and stomped on.

  The park looked temptingly green after the rain and the girls slowed to look, admiring the roses and envying the other children running over the lawns. Lottie was peering through the railings at a fountain when she heard Miss Minchin calling crossly, her voice higher than usual. She sounded almost scared.

  “Girls! Girls! Turn around. Amelia, do have a little sense – turn around at once!”

  Lottie turned away from the railings, and saw that a crowd was streaming past them. There was a sound of music in the distance.

  “Oh! Is it a coronation procession?” she asked Louisa, her partner on the walk. Perhaps she wouldn’t miss all the celebrations after all.

  “I don’t know. Lottie, don’t follow Miss Amelia, let’s pretend we haven’t heard. I want to see. There are so many people. Oh, stand back!” Louisa seized Lottie’s arm and hauled her backwards as a pair of young boys came bolting past, nearly knocking her over.

  Lottie leaned against the railings, breathless, and realized that the whole crocodile of girls was slowly being separated by the crowd – they didn’t need to pretend that they couldn’t follow the others, the mass of people really was pulling them away from Miss Amelia and Miss Minchin. She spotted Ermengarde, holding on to her hat and looking frightened, and reached out to wave at her. “Ermengarde, Ermie, over here!”

  Ermengarde nodded, relieved, and began to elbow her way through the press of people towards them. “What’s happening?” she hissed. “There’s a man on a horse, in armour, did you see?”

  “No! Oh, this is dreadful, I can’t see anything,” Lottie said crossly. “Ermie, push me up here on the wall, look, and then I can pull you up, and you too, Louisa.”

  “We shouldn’t… What will Miss Minchin say?” Louisa asked, suddenly remembering her manners – or the number of times she’d been told off about a lack of them, at least. She eyed the low wall that supported the park railings doubtfully.

  “Nothing!” Lottie rolled her eyes. “She isn’t here to say anything, is she? I don’t know where she’s got to, or Miss Amelia. They won’t ever know we climbed on a wall. And if someone does tell them, we can just say that we were scared of being knocked down by all these people. We were protecting each other.”

  “I suppose…” Louisa agreed.

  Ermengarde shrank against Lottie as the crowd swelled and cheered around them. “I think I am scared. Here, Lottie, lean on me and jump.”

  Lottie hopped on to the wall, and leaned over to haul up Ermengarde and Louisa. The three of them stood with their backs against the railings, looking down on the crowd surging past.

  “Do you think they’re all trying to find places to see?” Lottie murmured to Ermengarde. “Oh, I can see the man on the horse now.” She frowned. “Ermie, that’s not a man, it’s a lady. And so is the person leading the horse, the one who looks like Robin Hood.”

  Ermengarde peered over, blinking short-sightedly. “Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. How very strange! Look at her legs, Lottie!”

  “Why are they dressed up?” Lottie stood on tiptoe, leaning out from the railings to try and see better. “I know! She’s Joan of Arc.”

  “Oh…” Ermengarde frowned. “Lottie, are you teasing me again? Is this a trick? You’re going to try and confuse me about Noah, aren’t you?”

  Louisa snorted with laughter, but Lottie shook her head. “No, no, I promise. I really do think she’s dressed as Joan of Arc. Why else would they have a girl wearing armour? Who are all those ladies following her?”

  “They’re Suffragettes,” Louisa gasped. “They must be. They were in Miss Minchin’s paper. And my mamma said something about them when I last went home. But … there are hundreds and hundreds of them. I thought there were only a few – Mamma said that no good woman would ever think of being a Suffragette, they were shameful and unwomanly.”

  “They look grand.” Lottie bounced on the wall. “All these ones have silver flags, look! From Prison to Citizenship, that huge banner says. Have they been to prison, Louisa?”

  “Well, I don’t know!” Louisa peered at it. “I suppose so. Miss Minchin was showing us the coronation details in the Morning Post, and there was something about a court case. They break windows, you know. Suffragettes are not at all ladylike.”

  Lottie watched the line of women marching past. They were almost all wearing white dresses with coloured sashes and ribbons, and pretty hats – not quite as big and feathery as the hat Lavinia had been wearing a few days before, but along the same sort of lines. They looked extremely ladylike to her. In fact, they looked very like all the mothers and elder sisters who came to visit the seminary. She glanced at Louisa. “Are you sure?”

  Louisa shrugged. “I’m only saying what Mamma said. And they made Father so cross that he told my sister Daisy she had to take back her new hat, because it had purple ribbons on it.”

  The coloured sashes that the women marching were wearing all seemed to have green and purple stripes down them, Lottie noticed. So Suffragettes had their own colours. She definitely ought to make more of an effort to look at Miss Minchin’s newspaper, though it wasn’t meant for the girls to read. Miss Minchin occasionally read articles out, if she approved of them, that was all.

  “Do you suppose we ought to go back to school?” Ermengarde asked worriedly, after several more contingents had gone past, all carrying banners, beautifully embroidered with pictures and slogans. “I think we’ve been out for ages.”

  “We can’t,” Lottie pointed out. “Look at all these people. We’d never be able to get through.” She let go of the railings with one hand and patted Ermengarde’s shoulder. “We won’t get into trouble, Ermie. We’ll just say that we were caught up in the crowd. It’s true, anyway.”

  “I suppose so,” Ermengarde murmured. Then her eyes widened. “Lottie, Louisa, look at the hats these ladies are wearing! The same as the Welsh women in those pictures of national costumes that Miss Amelia has. And they have dragons on their signs. They must be from Wales, do you think? Can they really have come all that way?”

  “The Welsh flag has a dragon,” Lottie agreed. “There’s another band coming.” Lottie frowned. “I don’t know what they’re playing.” The music was echoing around the street, cutting through the excited chatter and whooping from the crowd. It was eerie, almost wailing, and Lottie had never heard anything like it before.

  “Bagpipes,” Ermengarde said, shuddering. “I hate them. So dismal.”

  Louisa tittered. “You mustn’t say that to Miss Minchin, Ermie, they were Queen Victoria’s favourite. Though it does sound like someone crying to me.”

  It did – but Lottie could feel the music vibrati
ng over her skin, twisting something inside her. Perhaps it was the uncertainty that had come upon her over the last few days, the sense that the world was not as safe and solid as she had always expected it to be, but there was a tightness in her throat as she watched the girl pipers march by in their tartans. They were followed by a float, pulled by two white horses and draped in yards of white fabric and garlands of flowers. More young women in loose white dresses were arranged around the sides. On the top were two figures, to Lottie’s eyes rather delicately balanced, and two young girls sitting at their feet, surrounded by flowers and bushes.

  “How do you think you get to be up there?” Lottie murmured to Ermengarde, and her friend blinked back in surprise.

  “Well, I suppose they’re somebody’s daughters,” she said doubtfully. “But you wouldn’t want to, Lottie, would you?”

  “No…” Lottie said sadly. Somebody’s daughter. She wondered what her papa would think of all this. The girl on the front of the float looked shy, as though she hadn’t expected to see people crammed all along the road and waving to her.

  “She can see us,” Lottie whispered, realizing that the girl was watching them, just as they were watching her. She waved and the girl stared gravely back, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She did smile, just a very little, but that was all.

  “Lottie Legh!” Louisa leaned closer to her. “You’d better not tell Miss Minchin you’d like to be part of a Suffragette parade.”

  “It’s just pretty,” Lottie tried to explain. “More than that – it’s so grand. All these people, marching together. Doesn’t it make you feel something inside?”

  “Hungry,” Louisa sighed. “I wonder if they’ll keep dinner for us? It isn’t really our fault we’ll be so late. The crowd’s easing off now, don’t you think? We could try to get down and walk back to Miss Minchin’s.”

  Ermengarde nodded, and the two older girls climbed cautiously from the wall, holding out their hands to Lottie.

  “I suppose we should…” Lottie peered one last time over at the parade, wishing they could stay until the very end. The long white column seemed to stretch for ever, banners and flags swaying. Reluctantly, she jumped down to the pavement and caught Ermengarde’s hand as they began to thread their way between the knots of people.

  “Your dress has marks all over it,” Louisa pointed out, as they turned into a quieter side street.

  Lottie sighed and held out her white skirts. She only had to look at dirt and it seemed to transfer to her dresses. Miss Amelia would scold – again. “I couldn’t help it, the railings were dusty. You and Ermie are almost as grubby as I am.” She narrowed her eyes. “We’ll just have to say that we were pushed and jostled so much we brushed our dresses against a wall.” She hurried ahead, not wanting Louisa’s grumping to spoil the memory of the women in their white dresses, the proud, determined faces, and that eerie music.

  Another girl was walking along the road in front of them, and for a moment Lottie wondered if it was someone else from Miss Minchin’s caught in the crowd as they had been. Then she saw that the girl had long skirts, even though she was only the same size as Lottie, and the fabric was faded, and darned in places. She turned her face away as Lottie came up beside her, but Lottie knew who it was.

  “Were you watching the parade too?” she asked Sally.

  The maid gaped at her and fumbled anxiously at her jacket. Lottie frowned, trying to see what she was doing and why she seemed so worried. Did she think Miss Minchin wouldn’t approve of her servants going to see a Suffragette parade? “We got caught up in the crowd too,” she tried to explain. “I don’t think anyone will be cross – you couldn’t help it.”

  “What?” Sally had finally managed to take off whatever it was she’d been wearing on her jacket. She stuffed it quickly into the pocket, but not before Lottie caught a glimpse of green and purple.

  Lottie’s eyes widened, and she put her hand on Sally’s arm. “Is that—”

  “Leave me alone!” Sally hissed. “It’s nothing to do with you!” Then she broke into a stumbling run, leaving Lottie staring after her.

  “Who was that?” Louisa asked curiously, as she and Ermengarde caught up with Lottie.

  “No one.” Lottie shook her head. “I knocked into her by accident. She was annoyed with me. Come on.”

  The three girls pounded up the stone steps to the seminary and pulled the bell. Miss Amelia answered it herself and shrieked. “There you are! You bad girls, where have you been?”

  “It wasn’t our fault, Miss Amelia.” Louisa immediately began to whine. “There were so many people, we couldn’t get through and we didn’t know what to do. Lottie got knocked over.”

  Lottie blinked. Louisa’s lying was surprisingly believable – it sounded as though she’d had practice. Lottie tried to make her face look like someone who’d been knocked down and showed her dust-stained skirt to Miss Amelia sadly.

  “Oh dear, you poor little thing,” Miss Amelia murmured. “Come along in, girls, hurry. We’ve been so worried about you. My sister was just about to telephone for the police.”

  “Amelia! Are they here? Why didn’t you tell me at once?” Miss Minchin steamed out of her sitting room, white-faced.

  “I was coming to tell you, sister,” Miss Amelia said sharply. “They were caught up in the crowds and couldn’t get back.”

  “What nonsense,” exclaimed Miss Minchin. “They have been running about the streets like hoydens. They must go to bed at once.”

  “But we haven’t had any dinner!” Louisa moaned. “Please, Miss Minchin…”

  Lottie stayed silent. Miss Minchin didn’t like her, and if she whined too, they’d probably be sent upstairs at once.

  “Maria,” Miss Amelia said, her voice lowered. “Don’t. Let them have their supper.”

  Miss Minchin’s lips thinned so much that they almost disappeared. But she nodded and turned away, her black silk dress swishing as she marched back into her sitting room.

  “Thank you, Miss Amelia,” Ermengarde whispered, but Miss Amelia glanced nervously towards her sister’s door, before waving them away to the dining room.

  Chapter Four

  Dearest Lottie,

  I regret to say that I will not be able to visit you for your birthday. The work of the estate keeps me very busy, and of course I need to be prepared for the grouse shooting. I have written to Miss Minchin, asking her to arrange for a suitable present. She is far more likely to know what is suitable for a young lady of eleven than I am!

  Lottie’s fingers tightened on the letter, and the thick paper strained and creased. One nail dug in a tiny hole. She had been almost sure that he would come, and her birthday was in two days’ time. She had been waiting – for a letter – or even for a summons to Miss Minchin’s sitting room to see him.

  She had begged. She shouldn’t have to beg, should she?

  Something fluttered and coiled inside Lottie’s chest as she thought, Would he have sent me away if I were a boy?

  If she were a boy, he would have kept her. He would have known what to do with her, instead of packing her off to Miss Minchin as a motherless and inconvenient four-year-old. Her hands shaking, she forced herself to continue reading the letter.

  However, I have also sent her a small amount of money, for you to choose a pretty trinket for yourself, with Papa’s love. It is a great comfort to me, Lottie, that you are lodged with Miss Minchin, a lady of good breeding and high moral standards, when I read in the newspapers of the antics of these disgraceful women, disrupting the capital with their ridiculous parade.

  “It wasn’t ridiculous,” Lottie murmured. “It was beautiful. They were all beautiful. And it was so exciting. How can you say that, when you didn’t even see?”

  Even though she resented being exiled from her father’s house to Miss Minchin’s, Lottie had still always assumed that he was right. That his reasons were sound. He couldn’t look after a little girl properly, so he had sent her to someone who could. It was much bett
er for her to be surrounded by girls her own age than running wild in a lonely house. Adults were right. Her father was right – it was the way things were.

  Except … about this one strange little moment, he was clearly wrong. Lottie had been there, she had seen. And she knew.

  This cast doubt on the other things – and Lottie’s fragile understanding of the world rocked even further. The rest of the letter seemed to be the same dutiful questions her father usually asked about her schoolwork and her friends. There was nothing important. Lottie laid it down on her writing desk and folded her hands in her lap, her head hanging. She was nothing important either. It had never been so obvious before.

  Lottie had not been up the attic stairs for years – and back then, when she had made the decision to keep climbing and climbing until she found her Mamma Sara, she had only made the journey once. But she still knew, vaguely, where the attic stairs were. It was simple just to keep on climbing. At the age of seven, it had seemed a great effort to get all the way up those stairs, and perhaps after a long day of running everyone’s errands it still would be. Lottie’s breath was coming a little fast by the time she reached the tiny landing outside the two attic rooms.

  There was a faint light coming from under one door – from an oil lamp, or perhaps a candle. Lottie glanced back down the stairs, biting her lip. She didn’t want to barge in on one of the other servants. But she was almost sure that their rooms were all on the floor below. It was only the scullery maid, the least important servant in the house, who slept in these dismal rooms.

  She knocked lightly on the door and then turned the handle, slipping quietly inside. Sally was lying on her bed, still dressed, but obviously half-asleep. She sat up, trying blearily to push her cap straight, and blinked at Lottie.

  “What are you doing up here?” she muttered. “Get back downstairs before you’re missed. You’ll get me in trouble.”