by Kate Klimo
Sir Kay looked down upon me and snorted.
Am I not a splendid specimen of horseflesh? In some other age, I would have ridden into battle with a knight in armor on my back. Now I carry a princess no heavier than a feather.
I growled. See that you trod carefully and give her a smooth and safe ride.
He pawed at the cobbles. Pishposh. She and her sister have been riding us since they were old enough to walk.
I knew that. But I also knew that, as Lilibet’s guardian and champion, it was my job to assure her safety and well-being. Riding horses was dangerous. Unfortunately, my little lady was never happier than when she was in the saddle. Chin lifted, back straight, Lilibet took up the reins and urged Sir Kay forward.
Wait for me! I called out as I ran to catch up.
“Step lively, Susan. And watch the hooves!” Lilibet warned.
Righty-ho! A more fearful mistress might have left me back at the castle. But Lilibet was tough and smart and quick, and she expected the same from me. Who was I to let her down?
As the horse strode out of the stable and onto the bridle path, I dashed at his heels to herd him. But unlike a cow or a sheep, this animal defied herding. In fact, he had rather a mind of his own! He reared up and galloped off into the woods with Lilibet clinging to his neck like a limpet. By the time I caught up, Lilibet had hauled on the reins and gotten the wicked beast in hand.
“He has spirit, this one,” she said breathlessly, her eyes bright and her cheeks rosy.
The spirit of the devil, said I, snarling at the horse.
Don’t look at me. She likes a bit of a challenge, said the arrogant steed. And unlike the other humans, she refuses to wear a helmet. She’s fearless, this one. Thinks she’s indestructible, she does.
She might be fearless, but riding without a helmet was most ill advised. I had seen other humans riding horses. They all wore hard hats. But Lilibet wore nothing but a flimsy head scarf tied beneath her chin.
Watch yourself, I warned the horse. Or else.
Or else what? Bite me with your tiny teeth? HA! Try it, and I’ll kick you into the next county. I am no docile cow. I’m a sleek and noble Thoroughbred. My ancestors carried kings and warriors. Respect must be paid.
It took me some doing, but in time, I and Sir Kay—and his stablemates—arrived at an understanding. I wouldn’t nip at them. And they wouldn’t hurt Lilibet. I learned to weave in and out between their hooves. They learned to watch where they were setting them down. But here’s a fact about horses. They are not to be trusted. For all their size, they can be the most shameless cowards. Sometimes all it took was a grouse darting across their path to frighten them senseless.
Once, when her horse spooked, he flung Lilibet clear off his back. Flying high into the air, she came back to earth with a dull thud. There she lay on her back, as still as a doll. I ran over, barking frantically, and licked her face. Her eyes opened. She blinked. Then she sat up and dusted herself off. “No harm done,” said she as she stood and climbed back onto the treacherous beast.
Sir Kay was right. She was fearless.
Perhaps it was this very fearlessness that led her to want to do something more for the war effort than baking cakes and making soup. She started traveling, every day, to the Mechanical Transport Training Center in the nearby town of Camberley. There, she got lessons on how to drive big lorries. (Americans call them trucks.) First big horses. Then big lorries. My Lilibet did things on a grand scale!
In this new life, she was known as Second Subaltern Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, reporting daily for duty in her crisp uniform. Not only did she drive lorries through the crowded and twisty streets of Surrey, but she learned to change flat tires and spark plugs, and take an engine apart and put it back together again. Many was the night when my little lady came home to me with her face smudged with grease. Lilibet was a great deal like me: happiest when she was running around and doing things.
While she was off tinkering with trucks, it was just me and Margaret Rose and the staff banging about the castle. Most of the staff were very kind. But there was this one footman. He was sweetness and light to me whenever Lilibet was about. But the moment she was gone, he kicked me whenever he found me underfoot.
“Out of my way, you spoiled little lapdog!” he muttered.
The nerve! If there’s anything that drives me round the twist, it’s people who take pleasure in pushing defenseless dogs around. As it happened, I was not without defenses. I left more than my share of tooth marks in the ankle of that villain. Still, you’ll be happy to know that he did not serve the household for very long before he was given the sack. I often thought there should have been a sign posted at the servants’ entrance: DOG LOVERS ONLY NEED APPLY.
—
On May 8, 1945, when I was one year old, Victory in Europe Day was declared. It marked the official surrender of the Germans and the end of the war in Europe following nearly six grueling years.
We left Windsor Castle and returned to London. I had been born into wartime, and war was all I knew. But now I sensed something new in the air. It was called peace! The city streets teemed with joyful people celebrating the end of the war. At Buckingham Palace, Lilibet and I joined her sister and parents on the balcony. With us was the funniest little man, who called himself Churchill. He was frightfully important, the prime minister and leader of the English government. He seemed fond of my little lady, so I tolerated him even though he reeked of Cat. People! They can’t all be dog lovers, can they? Although they should be. How much finer a place would the world be then? Rather!
That night, Lilibet donned her crisp uniform and left the palace along with her sister. Outside the gates, the streets echoed with music and voices raised in song. Inside the palace, the servants were having their own celebration, raising glasses and passing around trays of food.
Wherever there are trays of food, I may be found. You’d be surprised how much food drops off trays onto the floor. Eventually, the servants all drifted to bed and left me to clean up the last of the crumbs. Near dawn, while the crowds outside still milled about and celebrated and cheered, Lilibet came back to me.
I have a tail. It is quite short. So short, some say, as to be invisible. But they would be wrong. It may not be much, but it’s enough for me to wag. And wag it I did every time my little lady came through the door.
“I danced all night, Susan!” she said as she held me in her arms and we watched the sun rise outside the window. “Imagine! I was out there, among all those people, and not a one of them recognized me. I was just another face in the crowd!”
Even then I knew that she was not Just Another Face. She was the Face. The Face of England. And one day she would also be the trusty Shepherd of Its People. Do you see now why she and I were so very well suited to one another?
Born herders, the both of us. Quite!
My little lady met her prince more than four years before I was born. So while I was tempted to resent him as an upstart and an intruder, His Royal Highness Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was here first. The Greeks had booted Philip’s family out of Greece. Unlike the English, the Greeks didn’t care to have a monarchy. So he was a prince without a throne, a man without a country and all but penniless. He was not the prince Lilibet’s parents would have chosen for her. He was tall and handsome and strong and proud. He was rather like a Thoroughbred: long-legged and ever so full of himself. No surprise, Lilibet fell madly in love. I will say this about him: he had the good sense to love her back.
As the story goes, Lilibet was just a girl when she first set eyes on Philip at a family wedding in 1934. In 1939, she saw him again when she and her parents visited the naval college where he was studying to be an officer. They became pen pals and kept in touch. Later, during the war, when he wasn’t on duty, he was a regular visitor at Windsor Castle. Lilibet was always over the moon to see him, and he, her. As for me, I could hear him coming from clear across the city, zooming toward the palace in his sporty roadster.
Was he as pleased to see me? One might say that corgis were not as precious to Philip as they were to my princess. Philip was a big man who liked big dogs: Labrador retrievers and other great slobbering hounds. The prince and I circled each other warily. He didn’t want me to bite him. I didn’t want him to break my little lady’s heart.
While Philip finished his tour of duty in some far-off land, Lilibet and I spent the summer in Scotland at Balmoral, yet another of the royal residences. It was there that I made myself a couple of new friends. You’ll be surprised to learn that they were horses.
They certainly didn’t look like any horses I had ever seen. They were ponies, actually. Fell ponies, to be exact. Their legs were quite short. Not as short as mine, mind you, but much shorter than the Thoroughbreds’ at Windsor. They didn’t act like horses, either, all hoity-toity and above it all. They were regular blokes, descended from the pack animals that once hauled loads from the lead mines to the seaports.
The first time Lilibet swung a saddle onto one of them, he said to me, Let’s have a race, shall we, wee doggie? His name was Jock. As fast as my little legs could carry me, this wee doggie dashed after Jock as Lilibet galloped him over the moors. He won the first race. I won the second.
You’re a fleet-footed little thing, Jock said to me when we were back at the stables and Lilibet was giving him a brisk brushing.
Righty-ho, said I. I was bred to chase down and herd cattle.
Done much of that herding lately, my darling? the cheeky pony asked.
I dipped my head. No. Not really, I said. Mostly I herd the princess.
A princess herder, is it now? He tossed back his head and snorted. That’s a new one on me. Did you hear that, Hans? he said to the pony in the nearest stall. This one says she herds princesses.
Saucy Hans joined in the merriment. It’s a devilish tough job, I hear, he said. But somebody has to do it. Wouldn’t want them wild princesses stampeding all over the countryside, would we now? There’d be mass hysteria, I wager.
I couldn’t help but laugh along with them. That Jock and Hans: what a couple of wags.
—
The war ending had lifted a great weight off England and the royal family. With her mum and dad, my lady picnicked on the moors. Still, I could tell, Lilibet missed her prince.
That autumn, we returned to London. The streets rang with the sounds of hammers and saws as the city built itself up from the rubble of wartime. In Buckingham Palace, Lilibet and I had our own posh suite of rooms. She now had her own staff: two ladies-in-waiting, a page, and a maid, in addition to Margaret MacDonald, also known as Bobo. Bobo was her lady’s maid, taking care of all her personal needs, such as her hair, her clothing, and her bath.
And who took care of me and my personal needs? Lilibet—that’s who! It was she who fed me and groomed me daily with a special brush she kept in her desk drawer. She checked me for fleas. (Yes, those of us who dwell in palaces are not above getting fleas.) She made sure that my teeth were healthy and sparkling. She protected my tender paw pads from injury. She had the most cunning little magnet, which she used to pick up any loose pins Bobo might have accidentally left behind after a dress fitting.
One blustery spring day, she happened to be grooming me when my ears pricked up at the familiar sound of the sporty black roadster roaring up the drive. It was the prince himself, returning from the war. Lilibet dropped my brush and bounded off to meet him. So much for my grooming.
Later that evening, they had dinner together up in our rooms with Crawfie, her Scottish nanny, and myself as chaperones. It would be the first of many such cozy get-togethers. He looked frightfully large and masculine wedged into our fuzzy pink drawing room. But here they had something they would rarely find outside the palace walls: peace and quiet and privacy.
Philip wasn’t the only man who claimed Lilibet’s attentions in those days. Her dear papa, the king, was ever so eager to spend time with her. He would invite her on long walks with him to discuss the business of government and politics and the crown, which he called the Royal Firm. If you have not already guessed, let me make this clear: Lilibet was a serious young woman, educated by some of the finest minds in the realm. And she adored the company of the king, very nearly as much as she enjoyed mine. Fortunately, the king was as big a dog lover as his daughter, so I never felt less than welcome in his presence.
At night, when we were alone together, Lilibet fretted. Working for the Royal Firm required long hours, much travel, and a world of worry. It was taking a toll on her father’s health. He looked gray and thin and smelled of the cigarettes his physicians urged him to quit smoking. He asked Elizabeth to go with him on a tour of South Africa and Rhodesia. “We’re traveling by royal yacht,” she explained to me as she prepared to depart. “I’m afraid you’d get awfully seasick if you came along.”
Did I ask to tag along? I was a bit of a homebody, and I never doubted for a moment that my little lady would eventually return to me. In the meantime, I was busy with the business of the Corgi Firm. There were maids and footmen needing constant herding, up and down the halls and the great staircases. There were gardens to patrol for birds and vermin. There were roaring vacuum cleaning machines to supervise. And legions of mice to be flushed from their cover behind costly tapestries and drapes.
After three months, my little lady returned home. My tail practically wagged me, I was so chuffed to see her. And she arrived bursting with the good news.
A royal wedding was in the offing!
A ball was held at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the royal engagement of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. People from all over the world attended. I would have loved to take a spin or two across the dance floor, but I, alas, was not on the guest list. From up in our suite, I could hear people laughing and singing and chattering. I heard the rhythmic thumping and laughter that told me the king himself was leading a long conga line through the staterooms down below. How I longed to be at the head of that line! Can corgies conga, you ask? One, two, three, kick! You can bet your dance shoes on that, boys and girls.
On the morning of the wedding, in November of 1947, Bobo and the other ladies assisted the princess in donning her wedding gown. Cloth and thread, like food and drink, were still in short supply. Elizabeth had to use ration coupons to obtain some of the fabric she needed to make her dress and train. I like to think, as the companion of a princess, that I had a feel for such things as gowns and balls and precious gems. The garment itself was the creation of the Court Designer. Made of soft white satin decorated with crystals and seed pearls, it had a thirteen-foot-long train of ivory silk and a veil of tulle that was to be attached to her head by a jeweled tiara belonging to her grandmum, Queen Mary. But just as they were attaching the veil to her head, the tiara broke!
Horrors! A royal bride without a tiara. Rarely had I seen my little lady so put out. Fortunately, the Court Jeweler was standing by. Police officers escorted him to his shop. He repaired the tiara and returned it to the palace in short order. Crisis averted! The wedding proceeded.
Before she left the palace, Lilibet knelt down and held my face in her hands. “Soon, Susan, I’ll be a married woman. But you’re not to worry. I’ll always have time for you.”
I should jolly well hope so. I knew this much: I would always have time for her.
Off she swept, in her dazzling gown. After she left, the palace fell into a dull silence, as if Lilibet had taken all the life and sparkle with her. I confess I would have known very little of the wedding itself were it not for a chance meeting with a certain feathered creature.
The footman had taken me out to the garden for my afternoon walk. The poor lad shifted from foot to foot, his breath streamy in the damp and freezing air. I was poking my nose into a bed of thyme when the creature in question alighted nearby on the branch of an ancient mulberry. She fluffed her wings.
I’d seen this one before. She was one of those Trafalgar Square pigeons. Some humans adored and fed them. Others foun
d them dirty and irritating. I belonged to the latter camp. Normally, I would have given chase. But today I had other uses for her. You see, unlike we four-legged earthbound types, birds fly everywhere and see everything.
I say, there, Madam Pigeon! I called to her. Might I have a word with you? The name’s Susan.
My mates call me Windy, she said.
Lovely to meet you, Windy. I don’t suppose you happened to catch sight of the royal wedding happening across town?
She crooked her neck and fixed me with a beady eye. A bit hard to miss, wasn’t it, luv? Why, I see you’ve even got crowds here outside the palace.
It was true. On the other side of the palace gates, people had been gathering since the night before. They certainly are a noisy enough lot, I said.
Windy said, This ain’t nothin’. You should see the crowds over at Westminster Abbey. Thousands of folks, I tell you, lining the streets and milling about outside the doors. All of them, just standing there in the bitter cold, waiting to catch a glimpse of the bride and groom. Being in a festive mood, people brought all sorts of tasty tea and cakes. Me and my mates were treated to a regular wedding feast of crumbs.
Jolly good for you, I said. But what of the bride and groom? Did you see them?
First I saw the princess and her father, His Majesty, the king. They arrived in a fancy coach. When them great doors swung open, dashed if there weren’t even more people waiting inside. Very important people, too, from the looks of their fancy plumage. Anyway, the crowd outside continued to wait whilst inside, the ceremony went on and on. You know these royals. Love their traditions, they do. The folks waiting seemed happy enough, in spite of the weather. After the ceremony, bride and groom, hand in hand, led the guests down the aisle and out onto the street. The roar from that crowd! I’ve never heard the like. Remember, these are the people who have gone without the bare necessities. For six whole years, no good food, no new clothes, and no jobs. This wedding turned out to be just the ticket. The pick-me-up they needed to put them back on their feet.
