The Princess Victoria and I were crouched behind the sofa. I knelt on the floor, my heels tucked under me. No one had proposed that I should take off my cloak, and indeed I did not suggest it myself as the room was so far from warm. I also had a distinct need of the water closet, but these strange people did not seem to think it necessary to offer their visitors such things.
Over near the fireplace, the two German ladies and my father were chatting together in a hearty manner.
‘You wanted to play, Your Royal Highness,’ my father had said, rubbing his hands so hard the knuckles cracked. ‘So play!’
Given such an instruction myself, I would have stood uncertainly, wondering in what manner to begin, but the little princess did not pause for a moment. She had grabbed my elbow and pulled both Dash and I behind the sofa. And there she’d seemed to look at Dash properly for the first time.
All at once, her face had changed. From pale and peevish, it lit up like a lamp. Her little mouth dropped open. ‘Oh!’ she breathed. ‘He is beautiful!’
At that Dash arched his back and pulled his lips back from his teeth, just as if he understood her words and was smiling. He did it so quickly and sweetly that, to my surprise, I heard a small giggle slip out from between my lips.
My poor crumpled heart unfurled itself, just a little bit.
Soon the strange princess was caressing his long ears and trying to trick him into rolling over so she could tickle his belly. Dash, forever docile, was squirming in delight. I could not help putting out my own hand to the soft white hair of his stomach, and in doing so I drew near the princess on the carpet. We were hidden from the room by the sofa. I now saw that the dark green velvet curtain was looped over a corner of it, making a kind of tent against the window.
The princess caught me looking around in bemusement.
‘This is my playroom,’ she said.
‘Here, behind the sofa, Your Royal Highness?’
‘Indeed, yes.’ She dropped her voice and spoke to me very confidentially across Dash’s belly. ‘They can hear us, but at least they can’t see us here.’
‘Who do you mean? Those German ladies?’
Barely in time, I remembered and corrected myself.
‘I mean, do you speak of the German ladies, Your Royal Highness?’
I was worried that she would reprimand me for forgetting her title, and perhaps, even worse, that my father might overhear her doing so. And perhaps her eyes – which were a bright blue, but somewhat bulging – did widen a little. But she was clearly eager to seize her own turn to speak.
‘Madame de Späth is my nurse. Of course, I’m too old to need a nurse now, but she helps look after me, and sorts out my clothes, you know. That kind of thing. And Baroness Lehzen is my governess. But they are both spies.’
Although the Princess Victoria spoke exceedingly quietly, I had noticed before that people have an uncanny ability to hear their own names spoken, even over a buzz of general conversation.
‘Louder, girls!’ called the tall, thin governess. ‘Play together with more volume, please, so that we may hear you.’
The princess rolled her eyes.
‘What a DELICIOUS dog!’ she said shrilly. At the same time, she gave Dash such a volley of tickles that he barked. As she did it, I noticed that her fingers were red and raw where she had been biting her nails. There was also an unhealed sore on her lip.
The burble of adult conversation resumed. ‘Lord!’ she said, returning to her former tone. ‘Your clothes are very dull. You look like a nursemaid.’ She cast her eye critically over what I had thought that morning to be a neat, trim outfit.
‘But anyway,’ she quickly ran on, not giving me the chance to respond in any way, ‘I didn’t want you to come here to Kensington Palace. I thought you’d be just another of Sir John’s spies. But I’m quite glad you’re here now.’ She sniffed. ‘I have no brothers and sisters to live with,’ she went on, ‘and never had a father – he died when I was a baby. And I am not on comfortable terms, or at all intimate, with my mother. It is a very melancholy life that I lead.’
She gave a theatrical sigh.
I could only gape at her. She had left me quite astonished by her flood of personal information. I should never have revealed such things to a stranger; I had been brought up properly. But it was clear that this was no ordinary little girl, and not just because she was a princess. She seemed to have no notions of ladylike behaviour or discretion. My father had quite a job on his hands looking after her, I could see that. But then, it was only fitting that such a brilliant man should be chosen for such a difficult and important task.
Not knowing quite what to say, I asked if I was correct in thinking her mother to be Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Kent.
‘The Duchess of Spent, more like.’ Now something like a convulsion passed over her face, and that chubby lower lip dropped open again. It was a silent giggle. ‘She spends all her time on a sofa like this one. “Oh, Vickelchen, I am spent!” she says. Yes, she means tired, but also …’ There was another silent peal of laughter. ‘She also could mean that she has spent all our money. She is a spendthrift. Or so says Sir John, master of everything.’
‘My mother, too, likes to lie upon a sofa,’ I said lamely. It was all I could think of to say. It had given me something of a start to hear my father talked about like this, casually, by a third person. I had never really imagined much about his life when he was away from Arborfield, and I had not considered that strangers might know him well. I had only wished he would spend more time with us at home. Maybe then my mother would not be so sleepy.
‘But … Your Royal Highness, why do you call your ladies “spies”?’
This question had been nagging me ever since she had first used the word.
‘Ah, they’re part of the System, of course.’
‘The System?’
‘Why! You really don’t know anything, do you?’ She laughed out loud this time, opening her mouth a bit too wide. I could see a gap in her pink gums where a tooth had fallen out, and there was a powerful, unclean scent of gumdrops from her breath.
It crossed my mind to say that I certainly didn’t know why a person in her right mind would live behind a sofa, but when in doubt, silence has always been my policy. I looked down at the floor. When we’d been playing with Dash, I had felt I could almost come to like her. But now she was just making me feel small.
She sighed, unable to wait more than two seconds, it seemed, before leaping into any conversational void.
‘They call it the Kensington System,’ she said with emphasis, but speaking once more in a furious whisper. ‘They think I don’t know what the word means, but I do. The System means that I’m not allowed to sleep in a room by myself. I’m not allowed to meet other girls. I’m not allowed to see my relatives. The System is why I’m never allowed to be alone but must always have Späth or Lehzen or my mother with me. I’m not even allowed to go downstairs without holding someone’s hand, in case I fall and hurt myself, they say. Well, it hurts me, I can tell you, to be so muffled and mollycoddled and spied upon. That’s what hurts and upsets me! They say I upset myself, but they … bring it upon me.’
As she spoke, her tone grew more and more violent. Her little chest was heaving for breath, and I noticed that her hands were gripping the blue and white skirt so hard that I thought it might rip.
‘Lehzen, Späth, they do their best, but they’re just his spies!’
She hissed the last words so aggressively that it was as if the malignant parrot had spoken again.
‘But …’ I groped for words in my confusion. ‘But, Your Royal Highness, whose spies are they? Who has created the System?’
‘Oh, you are a fool,’ she cried softly. ‘They’re the spies of your father, of course. Sir John Conroy.’
I felt my own mouth fall open to mirror hers, in an ‘O’ of astonishment.
I gathered my breath to tell her at once that she must be mistaken, that my father was kind and good, but her passionate words had attracted unwelcome attention.
‘Your Royal Highness!’
The adult conversation had stopped. The room was completely silent.
‘Young ladies! Come out from behind the sofa at once!’ The words rang out in Lehzen’s booming tones. ‘You have become overexcited, Your Royal Highness, have you not?’
I believed that the little princess was being melodramatic with her talk of spies and a mysterious System. And of course she was quite mistaken about my father. What a ridiculous claim to make! But as we rose together to our feet, I could see that my companion was panting hard, still fighting for breath, and terribly upset. My own heart was pounding too, for we had obviously done something deeply wrong for Madame Lehzen to yell at us like that.
I gave a sheepish glance sideways at the princess. On her face was hostility, yes, and crossness, but something else too. She gave me a private little moue of the mouth as if to say that she didn’t blame me for the scolding.
‘You can keep your dog,’ she whispered as we crossed the carpet. ‘Just let me play with him sometimes, will you? That will keep Sir John quiet.’
Again, I opened my mouth to say that my father wasn’t her enemy. But I was too late. The adults were watching us intently. So I closed it silently, swallowing my words.