The Queen Must Die Read online

  ‘It was an emergency,’ she explained, ‘I hadn’t time to think, but now …’

  ‘You have so many rules that make your life more difficult,’ Katie complained. ‘I mean, I’m grateful for all the clothes tonight, but it must be a nightmare moving around in them every day. And this riding thing. All women in my time ride western style, like the cowboys. And not just horses. We ride bicycles. Even motorcycles.’

  ‘What is a bicycle?’ Alice asked. Katie paused. It was hard to explain something she took for granted.

  ‘Er, it’s like a metal frame with two wheels, one in the front and one in the back. There’s a seat in the middle, and pedals, and chains. The cyclist balances the bike upright and pushes on the pedals to move the chains and make the wheels go.’

  ‘We have something like that, but it has no chains. How does it work?’ James asked. ‘Is it similar to a pulley system?’ The conversation had become mechanical, so now he was interested.

  ‘Yeah, I think so,’ Katie replied. She wasn’t really sure what a pulley system was, but she wasn’t about to let James know that.

  ‘Then what is a motorcycle?’ James asked. ‘A bicycle with a motor? How does it move? A motor has to be attached to something that generates steam. A boiler would be far too big to be that mobile.’

  Katie sighed. She just wasn’t knowledgeable enough to explain the combustion engine. ‘It’s a different kind of motor – really small and really powerful. The motorcycle can go up to 150 miles an hour.’ James had lots more questions, but Alice had grown tired of this type of talk.

  ‘I don’t even want to discuss it,’ she said primly. ‘I am very fond of you, Katie, but I feel this motor circle machine is inappropriate for a girl.’

  ‘You’re not alone in that,’ Katie conceded. ‘Mimi has a Harley Davidson, but Dad thinks it’s too dangerous for me to ride.’

  ‘Your father shows good sense. And as for riding astride a horse; it is much better that I should walk.’ So Alice stumbled beside them, in her thin, strangely deflated dress, and Katie rode, shivering, her hair crisping with ice and her feet numb.

  James felt like an idiot in his flounced drawers and short fluffy embroidered jacket. The relief of having Riordan safe was giving way to grumpiness – and worry. How had Katie got out of the water? Who was the dark figure she described swimming towards her? Could it be the man on horseback, the one behind them? And if so, where was he now? As they rode quietly into the slums of Pimlico, the clocks of Westminster struck four. Putting aside his many worries, James concentrated on the task at hand.

  ‘We’d better pick up the pace. The stable hands and lower housemaids will be up soon.’ But when they reached the stable yard, the stable lad was sound asleep in the hay – filled with porter and cheese – warmer and more content than he’d ever been in his ten years.

  ‘It’s a pity to wake him,’ Alice whispered. ‘Poor lad, he’ll get a whipping for this in the morning.’

  ‘No need,’ said James. ‘I’ll unharness and rub down Gallant myself. If I know anything about drink, he won’t even remember our coming to the stables.’ He threw Alice the now empty porter pitcher. ‘And speaking of drink, put these back in the Honourable Emma Twisted’s room. She certainly won’t have woken up, or checked on Riordan if she had.’ He pulled off the little fur jacket with great contempt. ‘And Katie, do get into bed, your shuddering and juddering is getting on my nerves.’ Katie hated being bossed around by this boy who didn’t even know what an aspirin was – but her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn’t reply.

  Alice slipped her through the garden door and skirting the walls of the quadrangle, gave her a leg up through the lower pantry window. ‘Better to avoid the servants’ hall,’ she whispered. ‘Mr MacKenzie will roam at night, making certain all his housemaids and scullery girls are abed.’

  Katie thought back to earlier in the evening, before the kidnap, when they were fiddling about with the sofa. The dark figures in the courtyard, the creaking door, the heated whispers and exchange of an object she couldn’t see. The figure who had stepped from the Palace, he’d had a bloated look, and a distinctive rolling walk. She could see him clearly in her mind’s eye, rolling down the corridor in conversation with Baroness Lehzen. MacKenzie! Could it have been Mr MacKenzie?

  In her jumbled brain, Katie had a thousand questions, and slowly answers were beginning to come. Could MacKenzie have opened the door and handed something to the kidnappers? Was it a key, to the secret passage? And who were the kidnappers? Were they the anarchists? The ones who wanted to kill the Royal Family? The Prince’s Private Secretary Bernardo DuQuelle seemed to know all about them. What else did Bernardo DuQuelle know? She wanted to tell Alice that the danger to her was closer than she thought – was at the very heart of the Palace – but Katie was shaking so hard only a jumble of words came out of her mouth.

  ‘Shhhh, shhhhhh, dear Katie,’ Alice soothed, half carrying her friend through the secret passageways and into the nursery. ‘Here, give me Riordan, you’re about to drop him. Now let me take these things off you, and here’s a nice fresh nightgown.’ Alice placed Katie into her own bed and pattered down the hall to tuck the sleeping Riordan into his cot and replace the empty tankard.

  It was all so confusing for Katie. The images flashed before her eyes – the lone rider and the dark man in the river, the kidnap, the key, and the insider from the Palace with the rolling walk. Was he the one putting them all in danger …? ‘Mr MacKenzie!’ Katie tried to cry out, but her voice had deserted her, and she sank down.

  Chapter Five

  Prince Albert

  Katie kicked off the blankets and tugged at her nightgown. ‘I’m burning up,’ she thought, ‘why is it so hot?’ The heat moved through her, settling in her head. She felt as if there were flames behind her eyes. Through a white haze Katie could see a small figure, coming closer and closer. It was the pretty little urchin girl, the one she’d seen in her own time, in her dreams. Katie needed to feel her cool little hand against her forehead. She knew this would make her better. ‘Help me,’ Katie mouthed, ‘help me.’ The little girl nodded timidly.

  ‘I will help you,’ the little girl said in a soft French accent. ‘There is much bad around us, as I have seen, many times over. But for all that, I believe in the good. I can lead you to what is best in yourself, what is fine …’ She bent towards Katie, extending her tiny, sweet little hand.

  ‘Ha!’ said a voice behind the girl, and her little hand was swatted away before she could touch Katie. In her place was the smug boy in the velvet suit. He leaned his unpleasant face close to Katie and laughed in a loud flat voice, a laugh with no humour. He locked Katie in a triumphant stare and began to talk in a high nasal pitch. She couldn’t understand a word he said. What language was this?

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she thought wearily, ‘just from the sound of it I know it’s bad. What an awful little boy.’ A light shone from his blond curls. It made him look as if his hair was on fire. Katie’s eyes felt like they were melting, her head as if it was bound. She tried to turn away but she couldn’t move, her body seemed riveted to the bed-springs.

  And then she was shivering and shuddering, her teeth clacking together with such violence she was afraid they might fly out of her mouth. She was back in the river, it was so cold … Riordan … the baby… she had to save the baby. And then through the murk of the icy water she was face to face with a man. He was pale in the extreme, with heavily lidded black eyes and a large arched nose. His black hair streamed behind him in the water as he reached out for Katie. Was he going to lift her to safety? Or pull her under? Katie thrashed about, trying to reach the river bank, but found she was in bed, tangled in her blankets. A great heaviness seemed to weigh upon her and then she was too tired to care. ‘Whatever,’ she mumbled, and fell into a coma-like sleep.

  Someone was shaking her by the shoulder, but the light hurt her eyes and she didn’t want to open them.

  ‘Katie,’ Alice called softly. ‘Kati
e, you need to wake up, you must have something to drink.’ Katie rolled over and tried to ignore the voice. But Alice, though gentle, was persistent. ‘You’ve been sleeping for well over two days. Hallucinating too – thrashing about and yelling. We had to move you behind the Japanese screen in the school room, and I bound your head in a muslin cloth to muffle the noise. Even then it was touch and go, whether we’d be discovered. But the fever has passed now, thank goodness. James says in order to make you better, you need to have some fluids. I’ll just prop you up on these pillows and we’ll have some nice beef broth, it’s very strengthening.’

  Though the fever was gone, Katie was so weak she could hardly sit up. Alice had to spoon the broth into her mouth.

  ‘Thank, you Alice,’ Katie said faintly. ‘You’d make a good doctor.’

  ‘You must still be delirious,’ Alice replied. ‘Girls cannot become doctors, or nurses, though I can still dream. And it’s Jamie O’Reilly you have to thank for this broth. He said you must drink something to bring the fever down. He smuggled the broth out of the kitchens himself.’ Alice placed a cold compress on Katie’s forehead and took her pulse. ‘Much more steady,’ she commented. ‘It was racing away through the night.’

  ‘How long did you say it’s been?’ Katie asked.

  ‘Two days and two nights,’ Alice responded. Katie thought about Mimi. Did time work the same between the two centuries? If it did, they must know she was missing by now. Dolores would be furious. And Mimi? Who knew how Mimi would react? Katie’s forehead wrinkled at the thought of Mimi, and Alice reached down to smooth it. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, dear Katie, though we have been frightfully afraid. You’re on the mend now. I’ll leave you to rest, and later in the day, if you can stand up, I’ll move you behind the screen in the schoolroom. You’ll be much more comfortable on the chaise longue, and I can keep a watch on you during my lessons.’

  Katie sighed and lay back down, drowsy again. ‘Dehydrated … need fluids … beef broth … I guess James O’Reilly does know something about medicine after all … and Alice, you watched over me … all through the night …’ Katie, as an only child, had spent most of her childhood alone. This must be what it is like to have a sister, she thought, someone who is close to you, that’s what the word related must mean … and scrappy and difficult as James was, he had risked much trouble to get her the broth. Maybe that’s what a brother was like. Funny, but the wall that separated her from the rest of the world wasn’t there with Alice and James.

  Time seemed suspended as Katie lay on the chaise longue. The sun moved across the ceiling of the schoolroom, Fräulein Bauer droned through German lessons and chalk squeaked on the blackboard. Alice came and went behind the screen with cordials, gruels and broths. Katie rejected the more modern medicines offered by James. ‘Laudanum, barley water, tinctures of alcohol – they’re either opiates or palliatives,’ she tried to explain to James.

  ‘You know best,’ James replied curtly, ‘I suppose you have all kinds of really effective treatments – medicines you think we’re too stupid to discover.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Katie protested, ‘yes, we have antibiotics and chemotherapy, and we can give people a mechanical heart and a liver from a pig. But everything we know is based on the discoveries your time has made. Come on, James, you live in a time that believes in progress. We’ve just progressed, from you.’

  James struggled between hurt pride and burning curiosity. ‘Can you really make a mechanical heart?’ he finally asked. ‘How do you do it?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’

  ‘And a pig’s liver? I’m not very religious, but that seems … well … ungodly.’

  ‘Really, James, I’m not a moral judge of these things. I don’t do the transplants myself, I mean …’ They argued back and forth until Katie’s temperature shot up again and Alice had to intervene.

  ‘Katie needs her sleep,’ she remonstrated. ‘And when she’s rested I believe there’s something a bit more urgent than a pig’s liver that we need to discuss.’

  In Katie’s waking moments, they went over and over the kidnap attempt. It was obviously directed at Princess Alice. Whoever was behind it knew the layout of the Palace, had access to the most private quarters, and had not been detected by the numerous guards stationed throughout the building. More worrying still, they knew about the secret passage.

  ‘It’s got to be an inside job,’ Katie said. ‘How else could they come and go undetected? I’m almost certain MacKenzie is involved, and he has access to everything.’

  Alice looked more grave than usual. ‘Though they’ve failed once, they are certain to try again. We will have to act immediately,’ she decided. ‘The seriousness of the situation is beyond us. We’ll need to involve the adults. I will have to tell my father.’ Katie thought about Prince Albert, the stooped and tired man in the nursery. He wouldn’t have been her first choice of confidante, but then she’d never really had a father around.

  James looked sceptical too. ‘Are you certain, Princess Alice, that it is wise to involve your father, even if he is the illustrious …’

  Katie cut across him. ‘Illustrious or not, he’s still a grownup, and from my experience they always make everything worse.’

  Alice went to her writing desk and dipped her pen in ink. ‘I thank you for your concerns about my judgement, but I am comfortable with my decision. I will send a note, explaining briefly and ask Papa to come to me. If the footman delivers it this afternoon, he will be with me by tea time. He will know what to do. Now Katie, back to sleep for you – you’re still too weak for such sustained effort.’

  Leaving Alice to her writing, Katie lay back down – she was tired, and the worry made it more acute. Her anxiety was greater than Alice or James knew. On top of everything else, there were those strange visions. Katie decided to keep them to herself for the moment. It was all so confusing, too exhausting.

  The noise that roused Katie was a most annoying guttural screech. It was the Baroness Lehzen, and she was hissing with anger.

  ‘So I find the footman with the note. And what do I find in the note? A silly, silly story from the Princess Alice – hooded intruders! This is what one does get when the silly child does get the newsprint sheets from the footmen. So – you think your father would want ever to hear a silly tale that you might write? No, you are to be cured of the lies. We will change your lessons. There will be no more of the poetry, the science and the history – they are for the clever Kinder. You will learn only the needlework and the scripture. And there will be no outings, no treats. Only the needlework, the darning, the prayer book.’

  Katie peeked over the screen. Baroness Lehzen was strid-ing back and forth, waving her arms in jerky fury. Clenched in her fist was an unfolded piece of paper – the letter to Prince Albert. Princess Alice stood very straight in front of Lehzen, looking at the floor, but at Lehzen’s ban on her few favourite studies, her lips trembled and she reached involuntarily for Woolie Baa Lamb. In a rage, Lehzen grabbed the toy from her, pulling so hard one of its ears tore off, and it bounced across the floor.

  Just then, the door to the corridor opened. Prince Albert and half a dozen members of the Royal Household appeared. Woolie Baa Lamb hit him in the foot. ‘He’s got to have heard at least some of this,’ Katie thought, ‘Lehzen has a voice that could wake the dead.’ The Baroness curtsied deeply, stuffing Alice’s letter into the pocket of her skirt. The Prince, barely acknowledging her, picked up the soft toy.

  ‘Ah, a game of catch with the toy between your studies,’ he said, handing it to Alice, ‘a good idea, yes, to clear the brain.’ Taking Alice’s hand he turned to the Baroness Lehzen. ‘I have been thinking about the Princess Alice’s academic progress. She has lost her schooling companions as the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales prepare for the wider world. The Queen and I feel strongly that she must be allowed to study what she likes, at least for a few months, to adjust to this change.’ He fixed the Baroness Lehzen in his gaze
. ‘We particularly wish her to concentrate on history and science. And of course poetry – so nourishing for a young person’s imagination, don’t you agree?’

  Baroness Lehzen curtsied her assent, but Katie could see a muscle in her cheek twitching angrily.

  Princess Alice kissed his hand, her eyes glowing. He was her dear Papa, her guide in everything. ‘It is bold to ask for more,’ she said, ‘but I have one more favour. I would so love to study medicine – well, nursing at least. Would that be possible?’

  Dr O’Reilly was standing behind the Prince. ‘The study of medicine is not to be attempted by the female, even from the highest pinnacle of society,’ he interrupted, smoothing his glossy side whiskers. ‘Nursing would not be appropriate for a Princess of the royal blood. Princess Alice will be busy enough soon, as a leading ornament of our society, and perhaps the blushing bride of some fine foreign Prince – though I don’t believe there’s a man in the world fine enough to wed any of the English princesses.’ He bowed to Prince Albert and the assembled courtiers, very pleased with his speech.

  Prince Albert sighed. The Queen liked Dr O’Reilly with his good looks, flourishes and flattery. For himself, he would have preferred a doctor in the Royal Household who was more interested in medicine and less interested in society. His reply to the doctor was stiff and cold.

  ‘Everyone is in agreement that women cannot and should not be doctors,’ he replied. ‘But nursing, if privately undertaken, is a fine accomplishment – of far greater value than glittering in society. What more could a woman want than to tenderly care for the health and well-being of her family? It is what God has made them for. Perhaps Dr O’Reilly will not find it beneath himself to teach the simpler elements of his trade to a princess?’

  Dr O’Reilly bristled at the word ‘trade’ but bowed grudgingly to Prince Albert. This was not the outcome he had anticipated from his grand speech.

  Alice was overjoyed, but at this moment there was something far more crucial she had to discuss with her father. She had to get her father alone, to tell him about the intruders and the kidnap attempt. ‘Father,’ she blurted out, ‘I cannot thank you enough for all you have given me today, but there is one more thing of great importance – if we could talk in private for but one moment.’