Degroot’s Drapers, Haberdashery and General Store
23 Cortlandt Street
New York City
April 1820
‘And then,’ she said, pausing as she folded the velvet ribbons into place, ‘the Princess let fly her arrow straight into the pirate chief’s heart!’
‘Did he die, Mary? Did he die?’ Little Jacob Degroot jumped up and down, tugging at her apron.
Mary finished with the ribbons and began to dust down the dark mahogany counter of the draper’s shop.
‘No, silly’ – his older sister, Martha, made a face – ‘that would never have happened.’ She pulled her cotton bonnet into place and tied it under her chin. ‘Even I know that could never happen and I am seven years old!’
Mary and Jacob exchanged looks.
‘Why not? Why not, Martha?’ Jacob looked at Mary. ‘Martha thinks you made it up – she says you make everything up.’
‘They are only Mary’s stories, Jacob, and when you start your lessons with Papa, as I have, you will understand that Princess Caraboo is only tales. Tappa Boo and Frederick of the South Seas are all pretend.’ Martha turned on her heel, then ran out of the shop and up the stairs at the back.
‘Well, what does Miss Martha know?’ Mary said, bending down to look at Jacob. ‘I don’t think she would recognize a princess or a pirate even if she tripped over one, do you?’
Jacob shook his head.
The door jingled as it opened, and the post boy from the office round the corner in Liberty Street smiled as he stepped into the shop. ‘Delivery, miss!’ He left the parcel on the counter top and winked at Jacob, and then at Mary.
After he’d gone, Jacob tugged at her apron. ‘Martha says he is sweet on you.’
‘He is not!’ Mary scolded. ‘Martha scorns my tales but loves to spin her own!’
She straightened up. The shop looked perfect. She sighed, a half happy sigh: she loved New York City . . . if only Devon and the ones she loved were not so far away. But there were worse places. In New York City it was as if all the world had met in one place. It reminded her of London, if London had been put together with considerably more haste. She loved the fashions: whalers in skins in winter, traders from the north in dark sables, women from the East in such wonderful embroidery. Most of them on their way farther west or out to sea.
She’d seen pictures of farther west, the land where everyone went to seek their fortunes. The woman next door’s husband was an artist – she had never set eyes on him, for he travelled all over the country, painting the native people, mostly. The house was full of his paintings. They made her think of Mrs Worrall, who would no doubt have redecorated her Chinese drawing room around one of those images. Perhaps when she had made her own fortune, out west somewhere, she would send one to Knole Park as a present, to make up for everything.
The pictures reminded her of Caraboo, and a short life lived half a world away.
She had not swum, or climbed, or eaten roasted pigeon, for close on a year, and the urge to live a wilder life had begun to rise in her.
Mr Degroot was a good man, a widower whose wife was dead, and who could not afford more than one extra pair of hands: Mary worked in the shop, cleaned and cooked, and looked after the children. She worried a little about what might happen if she did leave, but ever since Christmas, when he’d had one glass of advocaat too many and asked her to marry him, Mary thought it would be best to move on. She hadn’t saved quite enough money yet, and in any case he had never mentioned it again. But still, she thought, some day soon she would go west, into the sun, with a party of travellers . . .
She sighed and began unwrapping the parcel. It would be trimmings of some kind – that new lace edging Mr Degroot was waiting for. The box was easy enough to open, but inside, the lace – it was handmade and the best quality – had been wrapped in layer upon layer of tissue. And oh! It was beautiful! She held some up to the light and gasped, it was so perfect. She laid it out flat. It was fit for the finest wedding dresses. She could imagine an East Side princess walking down the aisle in a dress dripping with this lace trim.
She was still absorbed in the material when the door tinkled again, and she almost didn’t notice the new arrival until the man spoke.
‘Mary?’ he said.
She knew him at once. Tall and, when he took off his hat, fair – no, golden haired, blue eyed. Someone she thought she’d never see again. She had to lean on the counter to stop her legs giving way.
‘Mr Worrall,’ she said, trying to compose herself. ‘You are here?’
He put a hand out to touch her face, and she stood frozen for a moment before moving away.
‘I never did thank you. I wrote so many letters, but could not send them.’ Mary looked away. ‘Is Mrs Worrall well? And Cassandra? I was thinking about her only this morning . . .’
He smiled. ‘All, eventually,’ he said. ‘You made quite a stir when the papers printed your story, and Mama was inconsolable – until Christmas, when Cassandra announced a rather early wedding to Edmund Gresham.’
‘No! I thought he was travelling?’
‘His grand tour was somewhat curtailed after he came down with something nasty in Leghorn.’
Mary took a deep breath, and sat down. ‘I was worried, you know, about them all,’ she said. ‘I know it was the wrong—’
‘Stop it.’
‘But you saved me from jail . . .’
He shook his head. ‘The papers were all on your side. They thought Princess Caraboo a phenomenon.’ He paused. ‘They loved you. You had a score of imitators in every penny gaff in every city.’
At that moment Jacob Degroot came rushing downstairs, in floods of tears. ‘Martha says I am stupid!’
Mary scooped him up and dried his tears with the edge of her apron. ‘Well, you are not.’ She turned him round to face Fred. ‘This is my friend, Mr Frederick Worrall.’
‘Frederick? Is he a pirate, like in stories?’ Jacob said.
Mary blushed. ‘Absolutely not!’
‘Delighted to meet you.’ Fred put out his hand for the boy to shake. ‘I’ve come all the way from England to see Mary.’
‘Across the sea? Did you find any pirates?’
‘Luckily no, not a one. But it seems I have found Mary, eventually.’
‘You shouldn’t have,’ she said. ‘You do not know me – I am nothing.’
‘You are not nothing!’ Jacob said.
‘You are so right, young sir,’ Fred said. ‘And in any case, I know someone who knew Mary very well, in England. And I never really understood, but that person made me so sad when she left that I could not live without her. I could not study, I could not think, I could not sleep,’ he said.
‘Who was that?’ Jacob said.
‘A princess,’ said Fred.
‘A real one?’
‘No, Jacob, he’s just playing,’ Mary said.
‘I’m not. I do assure you, she was a real princess,’ Fred said. ‘A beautiful, fearless warrior princess.’
‘Really?’
‘She spoke her own language – one nobody in the whole world had ever heard – and she could climb the tallest trees, and she was a crack shot too. She could bring a pigeon down with a bow and arrow.’
‘Like Princess Caraboo! She was real! Wait till I tell Martha!’ Jacob’s eyes were as wide as saucers. ‘So, what happened to her?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fred. His eyes met Mary’s and she couldn’t look away; he was lovely, a million times better than the memory. ‘That’s why I’m here in New York – to find her and ask her to make a new life. If we can . . .’