The Queen Must Die Read online

  11 January

  Went to Phoebe Schneider’s birthday party. Their apartment is so big, they had a pony ride in the playroom – with a real pony. Phoebe had a hissy fit – says she’s too old for ponies and what was the party planner thinking? There was lots of cake – which the boys ate and the girls didn’t – and games and really good prizes – but right in the middle of the whole thing I said ‘I’m lonely’. Out loud. I didn’t know I was going to say it, but I did. A couple of other girls stared at me and moved away. I don’t blame them. What’s wrong with me? I’ve known everyone at school since I was really little. And it’s not like anyone picks on me. I mean, I’m not a cheerleader, and I’m not going to be class president – but I’m not the school lowlife either. I just feel so separate from everyone now – like there’s a big wall between me and the rest of them. Went home and looked in the mirror. My nose is definitely growing. Again.

  13 January

  ‘Your eyes are like really nice when you laugh.’ That’s what Jonathan Cohen said to me today. He’s OK, Jonathan Cohen, even if he is really awful at baseball – he throws like a girl. Michael Fester ruined it by adding ‘if you can see them past her big nose’. I loathe Michael Fester, and I know he copies my algebra papers. We had a test today, so I wrote in all the wrong answers, waited until he’d copied them and then at the very end of the test period, crossed them out and put in the right ones. I do have OK eyes. I just wish there were more things that made me laugh. I used to laugh with Mimi, but not anymore. I kind of hate to write it, it sounds so stupid, but I’m seeing the people again. The girl in the costume followed me home from school today. It’s not like she’s scary or anything, she looks really nice. I wish she was my friend. She’s trying to talk to me, and her words appear, but not her voice. It’s like she’s following me, but doesn’t know it’s me. What’s with these people and these costumes?

  14 January

  Mimi’s worried about my weight, well, not so much my weight, but my bones – she says my bones are so big that they make me look heavy. She’s right. Between my big bones and my big nose I look like a horse. And not just any horse. Those horses that pull the big carts. Mimi thinks we should go on a diet together and jog together. Well, she’d jog, I’d have to trot. More weird people in weird clothes. A little boy in velvet shorts and a teenie tiny velvet jacket. Totally dorky outfit. And long blond curls to boot. I’d have killed Mimi if she’d dressed me like that. He looked really angry too, and shot me such a look. Like total hatred. It almost hurt me when he looked at me. Right behind him was a small girl with black curls. She was dressed in rags – but not homeless street rags. No – she was in dress-up rags – but the dirt on her clothes and face looked real enough. Poor thing – she was crying. Is this all going on in my mind? Or are these real people? I’ve just about had enough.

  27 January

  Spent the day with Dad and Tiffany and their new baby Angel. Angel! What a name! I wouldn’t ever tell Mimi, but I like Tiffany. She’s no brain box, but she’s, well, she’s nice – and is nice to Dad and thinks her baby is the greatest thing ever. Tiffany just seems to like being herself. I’m a lot smarter than Tiff, but I would like to learn what she knows – how to be happy being me. Is it possible? Mimi pounced when I got home – wanting to know everything about Dad and Tiff. She got out a calculator to figure out how much all the baby things have cost him – was furious that I didn’t know what ‘brand’ the pram was. Jesus.

  Katie had to admit, aside from the people in strange clothes, it was not a riveting life but, flipping the page, she wrote in today’s date.

  1 February

  I’ve really had it. Turned around today and what do I see? A woman – dressed in old-fashioned costume – covered in blood. Well! I am sure now that they’re not real people, that it’s a mental problem. It’s confirmed: I AM GOING INSANE. I’ll try to cover it up as long as possible, live as normal a life as I can until… well, until total dementia sets in. To make things worse, Mimi has run off with fish-face Fishberg. I should have been watching her more closely, looking for the signs. I’ve had such a good track record lately – saved her from the tennis instructor, yoga master, I.T. guru… it’s those damned visions I’ve been having. I took my eye off the ball and now she’s bolted… Everything is a mess. What is the point of me?

  Katie chewed on the end of her pen. The thought of herself as a gibbering lunatic in a straitjacket was bizarrely com-forting. She wouldn’t have to worry about her nose or her heavy bones, or what the other kids at school thought of her or how to guide Mimi through life with minimum catastrophe. She’d just dribble and shriek. Bliss. Stuffing her diary back in her rucksack, she took a look at the rest of the week’s school reading.

  She found a book with a singularly striking cover. ‘Mummy, Say No!’ was emblazoned over a photograph of a child taking a hypodermic needle from her drug addict mother. This story did interest Katie. She was fascinated by illness and medicine. It was one of the things she liked to read about. Her library was peppered with books on disease. Typhoid, typhus – ‘not the same thing’ Katie would explain to anyone who would listen – cholera, dementia, haemophilia, and consumption could be found in her stacks. Katie was not just a nerd, she was a morbid nerd. One of Mimi’s boyfriends, the professor who rabbited on about parallel histories and healing and time – was it Professor Diuman? – he’d actually been interested in what Katie read, and gave her lots of books. Letters from hundreds of years ago, doctors’ essays, ancient newspaper clippings – it was fun, at least for Katie, and it was an easy relationship for Mimi, as he lived at 23c. But he made Mimi yawn, and then she’d found someone new, a mountaineer. It was Katie who had to break the news to the professor: Mimi was gone, this time to Everest.

  Katie pulled a book from the pile propped against the wall. It was the letters of Queen Victoria’s daughters. Wasn’t there something about drug addiction in these letters? A letter to the Crown Princess of Prussia? Was it Von Bismarck? Was it morphine? Katie opened the book at random, and was immediately absorbed in a letter. It was from the Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second daughter, to her older sister Vicky, the Princess Royal:

  My dearest Vicky,

  Your journey to the North sounds so interesting. How lovely for you to be able to travel with your fiancé. I know that Mama and Papa find Frederick William to be everything a future son-in-law should be. A marriage of dynasty AND love. You are so fortunate, and will make a most wonderful Empress of Prussia. But I weep at the thought that you will be leaving us for foreign lands. We are all destined for such a future, though you are the first to fly the nest.

  I was alarmed by what you said of Frederick William’s young nephew, Felix. It is terrible that he should develop such a high fever. I but hope that the fever will drop. Perhaps the boy should be sent back to London, though I have the highest confidence in your household’s attendance upon him. What are the doctors saying?

  The tours of the new mills must have been most enlightening. To learn of the actually ‘doings’ of our people is so important. I look forward to hearing of your trip to the coal fields.

  Last night we had ever so much fun. Our only sorrow was that you were not here to join in. After supper in the nursery, we were all brought down to Mother and Father. The poet Tennyson was there and had composed rhymes with each of our names in them! It ended in disaster though, as Bertie sneaked up behind me and whispered:

  ‘Poor dinky little Alice

  Hates living in a Palace

  She wants to live in a hovel

  The palace fills her with malice.’

  I couldn’t stop giggling and was sent to my room in disgrace. Today I am confined to the nursery as punishment, with Fräulein Bauer dozing at the door as sentinel. It is raining and so stuffy and the nursery still smells of new plaster. I think I will have to slip away just to stretch my legs. No one is ever in the North corridor flanking the quadrangle at this time of the day, so I should be safe there. But if Lehzen catch
es me… she’s already in such a temper…

  It was stuffy under the bed too, and Katie became dozy as she read. Did the bit about drug addiction come before or after this letter? She had a fuzzy memory of reading it before. Poor young Felix was sent back to London, but died of scarlet fever on the way. Vicky did marry the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick William for both love and country – but that too had a tragic ending. And Alice, what could she remember about Princess Alice? From what she wrote, she seemed like a nice girl. Katie read the letter again, and everything around her – the bed, the books, the pink shag carpet – dropped away. The letters drew her on. She could see what she was reading. There was Princess Alice: skipping back and forth in the palace corridor, pausing on tiptoe and pushing back the green satin curtains to look out of the window at the rain-sodden courtyard, where the servants were unharnessing the horses, steaming from the rain and their fast trot… Alice is bored with the rain outside, she twirls on the polished floors, navigating her way between the many small tables, large urns and potted palms; she gets down on her knees to peek under the carved legs of a sofa… Katie’s eyes became heavy… she really was very sleepy… ‘I could use a nap,’ Katie thought and her head drooped into the book…

  A ray of light from the setting sun flashed under the bed and woke Katie. ‘I’ve got to stop disappearing into my books. I can’t mess around with Princess Alice all day,’ she thought, shaking her head at her childish imaginations. ‘I’ve got tons of homework and I haven’t even started.’ As she turned her head, she realized the floor was cold under her cheek. And the dustballs were gone. Had Dolores actually cleaned under the bed? The television must have broken. Raising her head, she practically knocked herself unconscious on a wooden strut. The bed was high, but this was low. ‘What’s going on?’ thought Katie. At the sound of a small cry, she turned her head to see two serious grey eyes, wide with astonishment, staring directly at her.

  Chapter Two

  Who Are You?

  The grey eyes narrowed. ‘Have you come to kill my mother?’

  ‘Kill your mother?’

  ‘Yes, an assassin. Are you an assassin? Why else would you be hiding under the sofa? The last one was about your age. The boy Jones. Tried and tried to get her. They had to ship him off to Australia in the end.’

  Katie spoke aloud, to herself rather than the girl peering at her. She thought she knew who that girl was, and she definitely knew this was impossible. So Katie said as slowly, deliberately and loudly as she could, ‘I am not loony. I am under my bed, having a dream. I’ve been reading too much and am under some stress. I will now wake up and go into the kitchen and have a glass of milk. I will skip my homework and go directly to bed. No reading. Tomorrow everything will be OK.’

  ‘Oh please do keep your voice down,’ said the girl with the serious grey eyes. ‘If Lehzen finds you you’ll be marched off to Newgate prison in no time. And for your information, if you are an assassin, insanity is by far the best plea. It will keep you from hanging. They would probably flog you and assign you to hemp-picking, which is not too taxing, though it does make the fingers bleed.’ She backed away from Katie slightly. ‘Do not think I am trying to help you in your devilish plot. I love and revere my mother with all my heart. But I can tell by the look of you that you could never, ever have carried it out. You’re not English – what a strange accent you have. Are you part of a gang? Are they holding your family hostage and forcing you to act in this dreadful manner?’

  Trying to still her panic, Katie opened her mouth to protest, but a sudden noise made them both stiffen. Footsteps were coming towards the corridor. The girl slid under the sofa next to Katie. ‘Shhhhh, Lehzen,’ she warned, ‘and MacKenzie too. This is double trouble.’

  The footsteps rang across the marble floor – a man’s boots and a woman’s slippers appeared inches from Katie’s nose. Twisting her neck, she could see the two people, grotesquely foreshortened from her position. ‘I don’t think they’d look much better from any position,’ Katie thought. They were a most unattractive couple. The woman was in her sixties, but was dressed like a giddy young girl. She wore a long pink and lavender gown bunched awkwardly with ruffles and ribbons from the waist to the toes. Her dyed black hair was divided into three enormous puffs, one on the forehead and one behind each ear. Each puff was decorated with lace, bows and artificial flowers, which trembled and bobbed above her craggy features and yellowed teeth. ‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ was Katie’s verdict, making a mental note to talk to Mimi about dressing her age.

  The man was younger, but certainly no better to look at, with small mean eyes set low in a receding hairline. What hair he had looked as if it had been sewn into his skin, high atop his head. Though smartly dressed in striped trousers and a cutaway coat, the extremely tight fit of his clothes made him a figure of fun. He was not just round, but corpulent to the point of bursting. As he turned with a strange rolling walk, Katie could see the perspiration falling from his bright red face – he looked as if he’d been boiled.

  ‘And what is the Queen’s complaint?’ the man asked.

  ‘It is not the Queen’s complaint,’ the woman snapped indignantly. ‘That gentle and gracious person does not complain, Mr MacKenzie. It is the Prince Albert. He is the one that does complain. He says there is the noise in the corridors late at night, that the movement in the Palace does keep him from sleep.’ Her English was awkward, with a deep German tinge, and she pronounced the words ‘Prince Albert’ with a guttural contempt.

  MacKenzie rolled from one foot to the other. ‘As the husband of the Queen, the Prince has every right to complain,’ he replied stiffly. ‘But the sounds he speaks of must be in his imagination. Or perhaps it is the plumbing… I knew no good would come of indoor plumbing. Please inform the Queen and the Prince that we will flush through the pipes.’

  ‘Do the pipes speak?’ asked the woman, ‘because he is hearing the voices, and scuffling and doors that are banging.’ She had been chewing something throughout the conversation, and now turned her head and spat a stream of brown liquid on to the floor. MacKenzie stepped aside in distaste.

  ‘I assure you, Baroness Lehzen, there is no irregularity in the Palace,’ he said, nodding his head emphatically. ‘It is the plumbing, and that is all it is.’ Baroness Lehzen shot MacKenzie a suspicious look. The man seemed more and more uncomfortable. What was afoot?

  ‘There is, perhaps, an easy answer, yes?’ she replied. ‘As the Master of the Royal Household, Mr MacKenzie, all servants are to your charge. And this corridor. It is popular – yes – with the lower housemaids. They play the game of sliding on the polished floors.’ She moved her tasselled slipper across the surface, detecting an imaginary scuff mark. ‘I will have the furniture replaced along the corridor to discourage games, and they will gif the floor polish in the morning. For your part, Mr MacKenzie, I think you need to keep your eye sharp on your staff.’

  From under the sofa, Katie saw Mr MacKenzie suddenly relax. Mopping his brow with a large handkerchief, he replied: ‘Baroness Lehzen, you have got it in one… the under housemaids… acting up… absolutely correct. They shall be severely reprimanded. I cannot think how the Queen would survive without you. But then you have nurtured and protected her since she was a wee babe…’

  Lehzen’s suspicions grew. Compliments from Mr MacKenzie always boded ill. But her next question was silenced by the sound of horses in the courtyard. ‘The Queen, we must go.’

  Katie had been clutching the sofa leg so tightly, her hands had gone stiff and cold. She unhooked her fingers and let out a long breath, ‘Thanks, thanks a lot.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘You didn’t give me away.’

  ‘My motives were not entirely charitable,’ the girl said. ‘Can you imagine the trouble I would have had with MacKenzie? And Lehzen? She might have spat her dreadful caraway seeds all over me!’ The grey-eyed girl got up from under the sofa, and Katie looked her over. She had silky brown hair hanging
down to her waist. Her delicate angular features and steady calm gaze gave her an extremely grave look. She was wearing a long starched skirt and high, buttoned boots – just like all the other times Katie had seen her on the streets of New York. Katie turned pale, and then flushed, but the other girl smiled and held out her hand. ‘That floor cleaning will be happening soon. You’ll be discovered and put on the first sloop heading for Australia. Unless you want to be seasick for the next six months, I suggest you come with me.’

  As Katie crawled out from under the sofa it was the other girl’s turn to flush. ‘Goodness,’ she cried, ‘did they take your clothes away?’ Coming close she took Katie’s hand and whispered in her ear, ‘Are you some kind of slave? I have heard a bit of this, but I don’t quite understand…’

  Katie was wearing her school uniform: grey pleated skirt rolled up at the waist to minimum shortness, long green knee socks, and a decidedly soiled white blouse. With her thin legs and large bony knees, it was not a good look. And compared to the layers and layers of clothing worn by the girl next to her, she did appear practically naked. ‘No, no,’ she reassured the girl, ‘my clothes are OK. It’s what we wear. It’s a uniform.’