The stories might not be true, her father told her as he led her up the short street, but no one could dispute them, for there wasn’t anyone left alive who could remember how it had come by its name.
Margriet nodded her head and listened as he told her that there had been a street here for hundreds of years, and it was marked on old maps as Old Beverley Street. He said that he had become interested in the name when he was a young man just arrived from Amsterdam, and had been told that a Dutch family named Lindegroen had once lived here. ‘Some people think the street name is a corruption of theirs, but there are others who say that ginger was once grown here, so—’
‘In the king’s gardens?’ Margriet asked eagerly.
‘Possibly so,’ he agreed, ‘for the street was very close to the palace. Other people say that the ginger was preserved here and stored in jars and the name came from that.’
Margriet tugged on his hand and looked about her. ‘Could there have been a shop here and it sold ginger? Because I think this is the place where the little girl lives.’
‘Which little girl?’
‘The little Dutch girl, from the family that you said. Lindegroen. Green lime trees.’
‘How do you know it means green lime trees?’ he asked, astonished. ‘Spreek je Nederlands?’
She shook her head and gave a little hop. ‘Nee! But the little girl does.’
‘Does she?’ Frederik raised his eyebrows. ‘How do you know?’
‘She’s Dutch.’ Margriet looked up at the roofline of one of the buildings and pointed. ‘She said this is Lindegroen Walk.’
Frederik followed her gaze. The building she was indicating seemed unused; the door had a bar across it and the upstairs windows were dirty. He was startled when Margriet gave a sudden smile and a wave of her hand before turning back to him. ‘She’s gone now. Perhaps I’ll see her again another day.’
He felt he should mention this encounter to Rosamund once they were home. Margriet had gone upstairs to her room, where Florrie brought her a meal of soup made from yesterday’s chicken and a small bowl of rice pudding, and then suggested she had a lie down on her bed for an hour after her long walk. ‘Perhaps read a book?’ she said, but Margriet shook her head and said, ‘No thank you, Florrie, I have some thinking to do.’
Frederik preferred to eat their main meal at seven o’clock, so he and Rosamund were just served cold chicken and bread and butter, followed by coffee and cake.
‘How is your headache?’ he asked solicitously. ‘Has it gone?’
‘Just about,’ she said wearily, drawing her hand over her forehead. ‘I rested in my room and did a little sewing.’
‘Margriet and I had a good walk,’ he told her. ‘Right down to the pier.’
‘Oh!’ She gave a slight exclamation. ‘Then I’m so pleased I didn’t come. That would have been much too far.’
‘Margriet enjoyed it. I gave her a history lesson.’ He told Rosamund about showing Margriet Land of Green Ginger. ‘She took to heart what I said about the Lindegroen family, and said she knew their little girl.’
‘Who are they? I don’t know them. Are they new to the area?’
He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the myth that surrounds the street name?’
She clearly hadn’t, and he explained again. But she frowned and he saw that she was displeased and not in the least amused. ‘You are filling her head with foolishness,’ she said.
‘Not at all,’ he said brusquely. ‘I want her to be interested in what is around her, otherwise she will be unaware of the history of her birthplace.’ Much as you are, he thought, but didn’t say, and wondered how anyone could live in a town all their life and only be interested in who said what, who gave the best supper parties and where they bought their fashionable clothes.
‘And I still believe she’s lonely,’ he went on in the same tone. ‘Why else would she make up a story about a little Dutch girl? Some of your friends have children; could you not take her with you when you visit?’
‘Sometimes I do,’ she countered. ‘But it is not always convenient.’
‘Then they could come here,’ he said impatiently. ‘Perhaps share lessons together?’
‘That would hardly be fair to Miss Ripley.’
He leaned across and touched her hand. ‘Rosamund,’ he said softly, ‘perhaps we should have another child? There would be a big gap, of course, but Margriet would love to have the companionship of a younger sibling.’
She stiffened, and her expression froze. ‘You have forgotten, Frederik,’ her voice was tight and cold, ‘just how much I suffered in giving birth to Margriet. I have tried to be a good wife and I hope I have not been neglectful of my wifely duties, and of course if you insist it is not my place to refuse, but—’
He pulled his hand away, spreading his fingers in dissent, almost as a shield against her suggestion that she would agree in spite of her dread. It was true that she never refused him, but any loving advance he made towards her was, he knew, quite abhorrent to her. It was enough, he thought, to drive a man into another woman’s arms.
Margriet was indeed thinking as she lay on top of her coverlet; she was considering how she could persuade her mother to allow the little Dutch girl to visit her. She had called down her name but Margriet couldn’t recall what it was. Was it Klara, like the daughter of Papa’s friend? Anika or Liesel? It was something like that, she was sure. Margriet closed her eyes, the better to think; her own name in English was Marguerite, which was why her father sometimes called her Daisy. She liked that, but she preferred Margriet to Marguerite because it was easier to spell.
Anneliese. The name came suddenly as she had known it would if she didn’t think too hard about it. If only I could go out alone I could knock on their door and ask if I might speak to her, or perhaps we could take a walk in the gardens? Surely the king wouldn’t mind if two little girls walked in his shrubbery. She turned her head on the pillow and sighed. But how to find the gardens again? Then she smiled to herself; of course, Anneliese would know the way. She lived in the Land of Green Ginger, after all. She’d be sure to know.
She thought about it for a while and then made a decision. Papa and Mama were downstairs in the sitting room. Florrie and Mrs Simmonds would be busy with chores and Cook hardly ever stirred out of the kitchen. She slipped off the bed and put on her shoes. The weather was nice so she wouldn’t need a coat, and she could be out of the house and down the street before she was missed. She wouldn’t be long, could be there and back quite quickly, only needed time enough to introduce herself and arrange a meeting for another afternoon.
She was quite sure that Mrs Lindegroen wouldn’t mind her calling without an appointment. The Dutch were very liberal, she had heard her mother say so. Margriet wasn’t quite sure what liberal meant, but it sounded comforting, she thought. She had a picture in her head of Mrs Lindegroen, plump and kind, wearing a skirt of dark material and a pretty white blouse, her fair hair tucked under a white cap with small white wings, like the pictures she had seen of Dutch ladies. Anneliese had long golden hair dressed in plaits just like the miller’s daughter in Rumpelstiltskin, the story Papa had read to her.
She ran down the stairs, crossed the hall and the lobby and quietly opened the front door. Closing it behind her, she sped down the seven steps and along Parliament Street into Whitefriargate; none of the shoppers took any notice of her as she ran towards Land of Green Ginger. She paused at the top and looked up. The window where she had seen Anneliese was open and there she was, waving her hand, beckoning Margriet to come inside.
Margriet and Anneliese met often after that, during the afternoons when she had finished her lessons with Miss Ripley and was supposed to be resting. Sometimes they played at Margriet’s house and climbed up to the top floor and into the maids’ room, where they stood on a chair and looked out of the window over the rooftops of other houses to where the estuary showed as a thin silver line, and sometimes they played at Anneliese’s house, where her mother, Mrs Lindegroen, was just as friendly and welcoming as Margriet had thought she would be. And occasionally the two little girls walked hand in hand in the king’s garden, down long paths that were bordered by small trees and spicy-smelling bushes, or sat in the sunshine on carved wooden seats with little dogs playing by their slippered feet until ladies and gentlemen of the court walked by, when they would rise and curtsey as children were meant to do.
Anneliese’s mother, who said Margriet should call her Mevrouw Lindegroen, would then come to fetch them home herself instead of sending a servant, and take Margriet to the top of Parliament Street where the girls would say goodbye and promise to meet the following day. But the strangest thing, Margriet thought, was that her mother didn’t seem to notice her absence, or even Anneliese’s presence, in the slightest.