The Queen Must Die Read online

  Alice passed her the rest of the sticky bun. ‘Where did you learn to catch a ball like that?’

  ‘It’s called baseball. The game I told you about before. The one that girls play as well as boys.’

  ‘Well, boy or girl, I’m not certain even James could have caught that ball,’ Alice said admiringly. ‘Though you did look about as ladylike as a chimpanzee when you leaped for it – and landing on the Reverend Duckworth! I don’t know how I kept my countenance.’

  They both laughed. ‘To yell “Crystal Palace” was not your best idea,’ Katie conceded, ‘but the rest of your plan was really good. And though James is sure to hog all the credit for “sav-ing me” you were the one who came up with my escape route. If it weren’t for you I’d be with DuQuelle right now.’ Alice shuddered.

  ‘I can’t even begin to think about that – would he really hurt you?’

  ‘He’d kill her,’ James said, coming around the corner. ‘If he decides Katie is the wrong child in time, he will kill her. We must never forget that.’ James was trying to look stern, but kept breaking out in a grin.

  Alice clapped her hands. ‘You won!’ she exclaimed. ‘The household won the cricket match!’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘The cadets were decidedly unnerved when one of their own team-mates almost killed a member of the Royal Family. They fell like rabbits after that. And once we came to bat, they couldn’t bowl to save their lives.’

  ‘How did your brother take the loss?’ Alice asked. James’s grin doubled in size.

  ‘Jack? He had to take it. He laughed and clapped me on the back. But Jack’s a gentleman through and through. He told me he’d leave the bats to me and stick to his horses from now on. You should see him on horseback – the finest equestrian of his class. The military academy is grooming him for the cavalry. He’s hoping for the 17th Lancers – the Light Brigade.’

  The Light Brigade. Katie didn’t like the sound of that. Was the Light Brigade a bad thing? Somehow she thought so. Was it a war? Or a song? Or a scandal? Again, she just didn’t know enough. All those books under her bed, and she still didn’t know enough. ‘Damn,’ she said to herself.

  Alice shot her a look of disapproval. ‘If Bertie can’t get away with that, neither can you. Please do watch your language, Katie.’ But Alice could never be harsh for long. ‘Of course you are a bit anxious. I put you in such jeopardy today. I am sorry. And Jamie, you will wonder at my halfbaked plan…’

  ‘It is not my place to question the actions of a princess,’ James replied stiffly. ‘Nor is it necessary for a princess to apologize to me. And besides, Katie is quite capable of getting into trouble without your help.’

  Katie butted in. ‘Admit it, James, I was a star today, and so were you. The mute story was great – saved the day – but it has put you on a collision course with DuQuelle. He might seem like a total bozo, but he’s powerful and dangerous; I wish you would stay out of his way. Do be careful, James.’ James turned bright red, and Katie realized he thought she was flirting with him. ‘Alice says you could never have caught that ball,’ she added, desperate to change the tone of the conversation.

  ‘Of course I could have caught that ball – and not in a poky straw bonnet either. As for DuQuelle, we’re all in his sights.’

  ‘I know my last plan rather backfired,’ Alice said, ‘but I’ve been thinking, we don’t have our priorities right. There are an awful lot of people we need to avoid right now: MacKenzie and the Black Tide, DuQuelle and his strange visitors… We need to understand what’s going on – to resolve the mysteries – but doing so puts us all in danger. We can only really tackle one thing at a time, and the most important is to get Katie home. The future of the world might depend on that.’

  Katie and James protested vigorously. This wasn’t the answer. First and foremost they must foil the Black Tide. Look at the kidnap attempt they argued, and the ‘accident’ at the Crystal Palace. But Alice could be stubborn when she chose. ‘My family can and must take care of themselves,’ she maintained. ‘Being Royal is not just about privilege. We all know that, even a girl like me. And if fate has a shock in store for my family, we must face it with fortitude. I cannot continue to endanger the two of you.’ She took Katie’s hand. ‘My affection for you is great,’ she said and, turning to James, added, ‘and I have grown to admire you. It is my duty as a princess to protect my people – and there have never been two people I wanted to protect more.’

  Katie began to object again, but James’s training as a loyal subject kicked in. Moved by the princess’s words, he bowed his head. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand. We will object no further.’

  ‘Katie will have to stay in the nursery,’ said Alice, ‘guarded by one of us at all times. We will arrange regular outings and experiment at night with ways to send her home.’

  ‘There’s no way to send me home,’ Katie protested. ‘Our one and only idea was the “magic sofa” and that was a total flop.’

  James looked annoyed. The ‘magic sofa’ had been his idea. ‘You claim to be a great reader, but you never think of books,’ he countered. ‘I suggest extensive reading and research. There are rules that regulate everything. We will find those rules.’

  ‘I could be a lot more help to you if you’d let me talk about the future. I do take physics at school, you know, and that’s all about time and space and…’

  Alice, as usual, made peace between the two of them. ‘You can both help,’ she said. ‘My father’s excellent library is stocked with scientific and philosophical works. Jamie – I’ll pass them on to you and Katie – I can slip them under the bed. At least you’ll have something to do all day while you’re hiding.’ Alice hugged her friend. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to part with you – ever – but your welfare must be foremost.’

  ‘I thought you were done making plans,’ Katie grumbled. But she hugged Alice back. ‘Don’t worry, Alice, I’ve spent most of my life under a bed, reading a book. This isn’t going to be, like, that hard.’

  ‘Katie, we’d both like you to stay,’ James added awkwardly. ‘You’re unreasonable and obstinate, but no one can say you are not interesting to have around. Alice is right, though, you’re in the wrong time and it has become dangerous for you. Don’t worry about us. We’ll solve our own problems, all by ourselves, without help from another time; but first we have to send you home.’

  Home. Katie had never understood that word. Her home had often appeared in magazines: ‘Modern & Marvellous: Madcap Mimi’s Manhattan Bolt Hole’ or ‘Mimi’s New York Apartment: It Rocks’. The best interior designers in Europe had created it as a showcase for Mimi’s celebrity, but it wasn’t much of a home. It was depressing to think about the slick chrome and white interior. And then there was the water feature. Nothing was more irritating than a tinkling fountain in a tranquillity pool. ‘Look on the bright side,’ Katie said to herself, ‘James has called me interesting. INTERESTING!’ She thought of herself as a fairly average person and knew Mimi found her downright boring. Yet here was this boy, someone who didn’t suffer fools gladly, and he found her interesting. ‘Thanks, Jamie,’ was all she said.

  ‘Don’t call me Jamie.’

  ‘But Alice calls you Jamie.’

  James wanted to push her over. Why could girls never leave well enough alone? ‘Alice is the daughter of the Queen. She can call me whatever she wishes. Unless you can prove your own royal standing, which from the looks of you would be impossible, I suggest you stick with James.’ His fleeting moment of affection for Katie seemed to be over.

  Leopold began to call from the next room. ‘Alice, who are you talking to, you promised to keep me amused. I’m so hot and bored.’

  ‘Poor chap,’ said James.

  ‘I must go to him,’ said Alice, ‘but we’ll meet again tonight and map out a plan of action.’ Tonight, they all agreed, and went their separate ways.

  Chapter Thirteen

  To Open Time

  The bright day had clouded
over. Moon and stars made no impression on the thick, close clouds. Katie’s curly black hair formed a net of frizz about her head, while damp tendrils circled Alice’s neck. ‘Even when it’s dry here,’ Katie thought, ‘it’s wet.’ Things were as Katie had feared. Sending her home was proving near impossible.

  The first stop was the corridor where Alice had found Katie, but the furniture had been moved yet again, and six nearly identical chinoiserie sofas now flanked the long hall. ‘They really liked matching things when my great uncle commissioned these,’ Alice explained sheepishly. ‘I suppose they look nice in a very large room…’ Sportingly Katie climbed under each sofa, and attempted to push herself through time. How had she got here in the first place? She remembered being tired, and then it was as if she were flying through time. Flying or falling. She tried to imagine home, but for some reason New York and the twenty-first century seemed very far away. She couldn’t even see her home inside her own head, much less travel to it through time.

  The next night they were back in the nursery and back to square one. ‘There must be some kind of key that will open time for us,’ James thought aloud. ‘There must be something that will connect Katie to her own time. Was there anything else under your bed, Katie, that might have travelled with you?’

  ‘What about the book I was reading right before I arrived here – the letters from Alice and her sisters? When I was reading, I could see Alice, and then suddenly, I was here. But the book’s back in New York.’

  ‘No, I believe it’s here,’ Alice exclaimed. ‘There was a book under the sofa. I took it with us on the first day and hid it in the schoolroom.’ Alice fished it out of a chest filled with her old dolls. ‘Do you think it’s safe to read it?’ she asked. ‘I believe it contains letters I haven’t written yet, letters from the future.’

  ‘I’ll look first,’ Katie decided. ‘Since I’m the only one the future cannot harm.’ But when she flipped through the pages, half the book was blank.

  ‘This must be it,’ said James excitedly. ‘The book is the key to the future. Look where it stops.’ It was a letter from Alice.

  Dearest Vicky,

  I have prayed for the recovery of Frederick William’s nephew, young Felix, so your last letter was received with much joy. We are all thankful that young boy’s life has been spared. It is wonderful news that you are returning for the household cricket match. We are to have the prettiest matching dresses and ribbons for the outing. The colours chosen are most perfect for your complexion – though I look a bit green in them. The Baroness Lehzen has punished me over my neglect of my lessons, but I suppose she is used to a more apt pupil in you. I do try though…

  ‘I wrote that letter six days ago,’ Alice gasped. ‘But why does it stop there?’

  ‘I can’t figure it out,’ Katie added. ‘Here’s young Felix, alive and well, when I swear he died in the letter I first read.’

  ‘Died!’ Alice recoiled.

  ‘I think this letter shows that there is some form of active energy working between the centuries,’ James said. He’d been reading prodigiously – they all had. Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, T. H. Huxley, Herbert Spencer – anything they could get their hands on that discussed science, time and progress. ‘If the book is still writing, the opening between times must still be active. We have to find the opening and move Katie through it.’

  Katie could feel the gears in her mind, turning slowly, trying to figure things out. ‘When did Vicky leave Buckingham Palace?’ she asked Alice.

  ‘The day after the cricket match she left for the Isle of Wight.’

  ‘Would she have received this letter yet?’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely. And I’ve had a reply.’

  ‘Have you written again?’

  ‘Yes, two days ago,’ Alice answered. ‘But she won’t have received that letter yet. Where are your thoughts going, Katie?’

  Katie frowned with concentration. ‘I don’t really know. I’m trying to figure it out. Somehow the letters don’t exist until your sister’s read them – and then 150 years later they appear in a book. But this letter isn’t right. Look at the part about young Felix: I remember this letter. It’s like I keep saying. In the book I read young Felix dies. I’m sorry, Alice, but he dies of scarlet fever. Yet here he is, recovered and well.’

  Alice look worried, and James looked grim. ‘The sooner you are out of here, Katie, the less change there will be. So rather than chatter away and distress everyone, I suggest we return to those sofas, and you try reading that book under each and every one – and concentrate!’

  Back in the corridor, Katie crawled meekly under the first sofa. ‘I’m so sorry, Alice,’ she said. ‘It must be so creepy – me coming from the future.’

  Alice got down on her hands and knees and watched Katie open the book. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘the reason we can’t make you leave is because we don’t want you to go.’

  ‘James is desperate for me to go.’

  ‘Jamie O’Reilly doesn’t know what he wants,’ Alice replied. ‘He finds you quick and funny. In addition you are able to catch a cricket ball at 300 paces. But you are an attractive girl – that is the part that so confuses Jamie.’

  ‘You don’t confuse him – and I’m not attractive, I have a huge nose.’

  ‘I’m a Princess, otherwise he’d be just as rude to me. Royalty has its perks. And you do not have a huge nose, you have what’s termed a Roman nose, and it’s a sign of good breeding. Now let’s try again. Read the last ten pages leading up to the current letters.’

  ‘You lead an exciting life, but you write really boring letters,’ Katie said.

  Alice pinched her. ‘What’s that expression you use? Is it slam up?’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Well, shut up then.’

  Day after day Katie, James and Alice absorbed everything they could read on space and time. Alice used her access to the extensive royal library to keep them provided with reading materials. Cramped under Alice’s bed, even Katie began to tire of books. What she really wanted was TV – a silly comedy show with pre-recorded laughter. A gameshow where people jumped up and down and won lots of money. Instead she was cooped up with John Stuart Mill’s A System of Logic.

  James, on the other hand, was in seventh heaven. Every book, pamphlet and tract available on the modern sciences was at his disposal. At almost any hour of the day he could be found in the linen cupboard across from the nursery, shirking his apprenticeship to his father and scanning academic journals until the words blurred on the page.

  ‘Your eyes will give out if you keep reading at this pace,’ Katie warned him.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said James. ‘There’s an interesting treatise on electric velocity that Professor Thondike Verber-Brun read at the Royal Academy of Sciences. Do you think Prince Albert has a copy in his library?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘Sometimes James, you are such a geek.’ James looked confused.

  While the three spent most of the day reading, the night was reserved for carrying out their experiments. Alice was certain the answer lay in phrenology. ‘The shape of one’s skull tells a great deal about one’s character,’ she explained. ‘By studying the individual’s skull shape – all the different curves and indentations – we can learn what kind of person they are. Papa is a great believer. Last year he had a specialist come to the Palace to examine Bertie. The specialist consulted his charts and using Bertie as his specimen was able to diagnose his learning and behavioural difficulties. See – the specialist left a chart behind for us to use. The skull has been divided into forty-three separate areas. This little bit here, above the right eye, represents willpower. Bertie’s skull has a slight indent there, his willpower is low. But if you look at Katie’s head, you’ll see that her skull protrudes in the same area.’

  James smirked. ‘So your chart shows us that Katie has great willpower; in other words, she’s impossible and bossy. I don’t think we needed a chart to show us that.’

  Ali
ce ignored James. Boys. They always wanted to pick a fight. ‘The ability to time travel must lie within Katie herself,’ she continued. ‘We need to stimulate her brain so that she can remember how to do it. If we simply massaged the cranium this could activate…’ So for two nights running Alice kneaded Katie’s temples, pushed forcefully on the back of her head and even tapped it with a small hammer.

  James enjoyed the spectacle, but did finally protest. ‘It would be a wonderful thing if you knocked some sense into Katie, but frankly, I don’t think the key lies in the lumps and bumps on her head.’

  ‘Quite a few new lumps and bumps since we started,’ Katie said ruefully, rubbing her head. ‘Boy, do I have a headache.’

  They tried James’s pet theory next. He was absolutely certain the solution lay in electromagnetic theory. ‘It’s called mesmerism,’ he explained to Alice and Katie. ‘The universe is filled with an electromagnetic fluid that can move through space and time. If only we could hook Katie up to this fluid, she could travel with it.’

  ‘And how are you going to hook me up to this fluid thing?’ Katie asked sceptically.

  ‘Through a process called animal magnetism. We put you in a type of trance and get control of your mind. Through auto-suggestion we can move you forward in time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, James,’ Katie said.

  ‘There have been great successes with mesmerism,’ James argued. ‘Legs have been amputated with no pain, the deaf can hear again.’

  Katie knew perfectly well that mesmerism was as big a hoax as phrenology. ‘We might as well pull out Mimi’s New Age crystals and perform a vision quest ceremony,’ she thought. But she’d promised not to reveal anything from her own time, so she donned midnight blue silk robes and listened to James chant and chant and chant at her.

  ‘You don’t have enough sensitivity to connect to the universe,’ he accused her.

  ‘Maybe you don’t have enough animal magnetism,’ she countered. The experiment was a failure.