CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

As the car slid into the ancient stone maw of Windsor Castle’s Henry VIII Gate, it felt like entering a prison.

“It’s so dark,” Margaret whimpered, looking round the lightless courtyard. “I don’t like it.”

“You mustn’t complain,” Alah said severely. “You’re very fortunate. Think of all those little evacuees who are having to leave their families and go goodness knows where. They might never see their mummies and daddies again.”

This had the inevitable result. The smallest princess burst into floods of tears.

“How long will we be at Windsor?” Lilibet asked. She was sitting quietly next to Marion in the car.

“Only for the rest of the week,” Alah said firmly.

While these had been the queen’s instructions when she called Royal Lodge earlier that day, something in her voice had stirred Marion’s suspicions. She had immediately packed everything she had.

What people called the Phony War had been going on for months. But things were now beginning to change. Reports from Europe were universally depressing, with Norway and the Netherlands falling to the Nazis and the Allies being pushed back toward the Normandy coast. Would France be next? The Dutch queen, Wilhelmina, had only days ago arrived at Buckingham Palace with nothing but the clothes she stood in. Marion had heard the story from Norman, who had been summoned to supply the refugee royal with an outfit. “We showed her any number of hats,” he reported, rolling his eyes. “But Her Majesty didn’t like any of them, oh no. Then she saw Gladys’ hat—my assistant, you remember . . .”

Marion recalled the little old woman overburdened with silk and tulle who had come with Norman for the American tour fittings.

“. . . and pointed at it and said, ‘I want that one!’”

Chamberlain had been forced to resign as prime minister, and the Hitler-hating Churchill, for so long the maverick out on a limb, had now replaced him. Marion admired what he had said to Parliament when he had taken up the job. “Blood, toil, tears and sweat”; “victory at all costs”; and vowing to “wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime.” She liked his stirring language, his air of indefatigable resolve and, especially, his growling, contemptuous pronunciation of Hitler’s followers as “Naarzis”—English-style, without the Germanic “t.”

“Why do Mummy and Papa have to stay in London?” Margaret piped up. “Do you think the Germans will come and get them?”

“Not a chance,” Marion asserted, before Alah could make one of her doomy predictions.

“I hope Hitler won’t come over here,” Lilibet said nervously.

“Well, if he does, he’ll be dealt with,” said Alah, as if she were going to put him over her knee and spank him with a hairbrush.

The great medieval gates of Windsor slammed behind them.

The Master of the Household was waiting to receive them and walked them down passages whose paneling looked black in the shadows.

“We dress for dinner,” the Master announced in his plummy tones. His name, Sir Hill Child, was as improbable as this instruction. Apart from anything else there were hardly any lights; all chandeliers had been dismantled and all bright bulbs swapped for dim ones.

“We dine in the nursery with Their Royal Highnesses,” Alah announced back. She was employing the royal plural, talking about herself.

“But we don’t,” Marion put in, hurriedly. Whatever the circumstances, dinner with grown-ups was not to be sniffed at.

“Eight o’clock in the Octagon Room,” Sir Hill instructed, before disappearing into the gloom. It was, Marion realized, a good job she had brought her evening gown, crushed in her hastily packed luggage. But was it brave or crazy that in a medieval castle in wartime people were acting as if they were at a country house party? Of course, in one sense they were. A paragraph had gone to all British and American papers saying that the princesses had been evacuated to “a house in the country.”

Lilibet, Margaret and Alah were in the Lancaster Tower, in the comfortable pink and fawn nursery suite with its roaring fire that they usually stayed in when visiting Windsor. But for reasons unknown Marion had been billeted in a distant corner of the fortress, alone at the top of a tower and reached by a winding stair. The stone steps were worn down in the center by centuries of feet. The walls, rough elsewhere, were marble-smooth at elbow level from centuries of passing arms.

Her bedroom was dark red, huge and as cold as the grave. It smelled musty, as if no one had occupied it for some time. There was a big, gloomy, dark green sitting room hung with small, dim oils. Both rooms had tiny fireplaces, and though fires had been lit, the warmth made little impression. What limited light might creep in through the pointed medieval lancet window was firmly repelled by a blackout curtain. Her bathroom, such as it was, was in a hut out on the roof. “But you do have it all to yourself, madam,” said the footman who had shown her there.

Marion forced a smile as she examined it. It was freezing, and lacked even the comforts of the one at Buckingham Palace. There wasn’t even a mouse. Just a tiny bar of soap, strips of newspaper on a nail by the lavatory and a black line painted round the inside of the bath, indicating the level above which water was not to rise. About three inches, it seemed. The king, keen not to waste resources, had introduced the initiative. A small animal might manage a good soak. But not a full-sized person, particularly a tall one like her.

The tower, the winding stair, the castle of darkness; it was like being in a frightening fairy tale. Rapunzel perhaps, except that her hair was too short. Jack and the Beanstalk, then—but no, all the bold young men were far away at the moment. There was an ogre, though, and everyone knew who he was.

Later, Marion’s heart thumped as she hurried through rooms full of furniture in dustcovers. Glass-fronted cabinets were turned ominously to the walls. The castle had so many windows to black out, she had been told, that by the time they finished for the night, it was morning again.

Down the unlit passages, the castle’s thousand-year history seemed to press close. She listened hard; was that a footstep? A distant wail from long ago? Her every turn seemed to lead her farther away from the possible location of the Octagon Room.

Her footsteps were closely followed by the eerie slither of velvet on stone; once or twice she had turned, expecting a terrifying phantom. But there had been only gaping darkness. She realized it was her own dress she was hearing. Her mother had sewn the gown from blue tapestry curtain material once intended for her bedroom. It had a low-cut front which Mrs. Crawford had had doubts about; they had argued about it, Marion remembered with a stab of regret.

Suddenly, round a corner, came the sign that she had arrived. A half-open door revealed a dark cavern of a room with a carved Gothic ceiling and a fire roaring in a black marble fireplace. It was indeed, she saw as she hesitated on the threshold, octagon-shaped.

Beneath the light of a single dim bulb, three men in immaculate black tie sat around a table set with silver and crystal. It looked like dinner in the underworld.

The surreal tableau broke up as Sir Hill rose to his feet. “Miss Crawford. May I introduce Sir Dudley Colles. And Mr. Gerald Kelly, whom I believe you have met before.”

Marion nodded at the small, ebullient Irishman. Kerald Jelly, as the princesses called him, was a familiar sight around the palace. He had, for the past few years, been painting coronation portraits of the king and queen, neither of which ever seemed to be finished. It was said that he enjoyed life in the royal circle so much he scrubbed out part of what he had painted every day to prolong his employment.

Footsteps could be heard coming up the stone passage. The table was set for five, she now noticed. The one next to her was empty, but the last guest was about to appear. She felt a stir in the air, a sudden tightening of her muscles. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

“Tommy! Good to see you, old chap.” A scrape of chair as Sir Hill stood up again, extending a long white hand.

And there he suddenly was, dashing in his dinner jacket, the candlelight gleaming on his thick black hair. She felt the familiar shooting longing but composedly shook his hand. His touch seemed to scald her skin, and from the depths of his brows, his dark gaze flicked across her breasts like a riding crop. She felt it and her blood raced.

As they sat down, he looked at her briefly, expressionlessly, but placed his leg hard against hers. Shock barreled through her. It was, she sensed, no accident; he was asking an unspoken question.

It was as if a switch had been flicked, one long untouched. She felt suddenly, thrummingly alive. She did not move. His thigh pressed against her once more, as if in confirmation, then edged away. He settled into his seat.

Her stomach swooped and swirled, which was just as well, given the food now borne in with due ceremony by two footmen. She eyed a brown crust of potatoes with some sort of mince underneath.

Tommy leaned toward her. “Shepherd’s pie,” he said in a low voice. “Probably made with actual shepherd.”

Wizened chops were laid to rest on a thin bed of gray mashed potato. Any hope that Windsor would be somehow exempt from the rationing that gripped everywhere else was unfounded. But she did not care. She was full of a barely contained excitement. This dark, confined wartime world suddenly seemed full of thrilling possibility.

Tommy was keeping the table amused with a laconic ease that amazed her, given the circumstances. He described how the king, giggling helplessly, had knighted him on a train during the tour of North America.

“And how is Lady Lascelles?” Dudley asked, suddenly. “Is she here at Windsor too?”

Marion held her breath. She felt as if she were a glass vase, about to fall off a shelf.

“In the country,” Tommy said smoothly, and she felt her whole body relax.

A conversation began about the queen. “The mere sight of Her Majesty raises morale,” Sir Dudley said of her visits to Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, Air Raid Precaution and Red Cross units the length and breadth of London.

“But she never wears a uniform,” Sir Hill pointed out. “There’s the brilliance of it. Her Majesty is always dressed as a civilian while the king is always in uniform. So, while he stands for all the fighting men, she represents every British housewife rolled into one.”

“The most dangerous woman in Europe,” Sir Dudley said with a smile, struggling with his chop.

It was agreed that the king was finding the war much more difficult. “Without the queen, he would collapse under the strain” was the general view.

“Those big blue eyes of hers,” Kelly remarked dreamily, helping himself liberally to more port. “But she’s as tough as old boots underneath.”

Blue eyes and a will of iron, Marion remembered. That is all the equipment a lady needs! Pudding came: a gray jelly. “Reminds me of Dead Man’s Leg at school,” remarked Sir Hill, peering at it.

“We used to call it Nun’s Toenails,” said Sir Gerald, in his Irish accent.

When, at long, endless last, the final glass was emptied and they all stood up, Tommy turned to Marion. “Perhaps, this being the blackout, you might allow me to escort you to your door, Miss Crawford.” His tone, so deceptively formal and distant, sent a delicious shiver down her spine. A powerful desire filled her. This was the moment!

They filed out. Polite good nights were exchanged with the others. The heels of handmade shoes crunched off down stone-floored passages. They were left alone.

She waited. He was hard to see in the dark. Just the tip of his cigarette, marking the location of his mouth. She swallowed.

She jumped as his fingers touched her elbow. “This way, Miss Crawford.”

“Marion, please,” she said, giggling. Perhaps the wine had gone to her head slightly.

He steered her along, talking about gardening. “Last weekend Joan and I were carting potatoes, of which we have a fine crop. I was continually struck by the resemblance that General de Gaulle has to the average potato, although the potato is the more malleable of the two.”

“What?” He was making the smallest of small talk, and mentioning his wife into the bargain. And yet he had stared at her breasts, pressed his leg against her. She was sure of it. Or was she? Had she, once again, misinterpreted the situation?

He left her at the entrance door to her tower. She stood, watching him walk into the shadows. “Good night, Miss Crawford.”