The Royal Nanny (15 page)

I could only hope and pray that David and Bertie would get over their frustrations and fears, just the way I hoped and prayed that someday I would get past my hopeless love for Chad Reaver.

I
n August of 1905, when Johnnie was a month old and fully in my care, all of us were told we would be summoned to Princess May's boudoir at midafternoon. That, of course, was not unusual, but the timing for it was—earlier than our usual promptly-at-four. I knew something was afoot, though she was much recovered, quite her old self. She went about during the day, corseted as tight as ever, though Rose said not with the same waistline. She held Johnnie from time to time, but treated him as if he were fragile. She would pass him back to me quickly, sometimes right after he settled into her arms.

I had a policy of always telling the princess the truth about her children when she asked. That Mary did not like to study, unless it was about horses. David still fidgeted and Bertie still stuttered. The prince and princess were dismayed that little Harry, now five years old, lisped, switching his
w
's and
r
's, so that he said his own name as Hawee. I had worked with him but felt as helpless as I did with Bertie's sad stammering.
But most unsettling of all to me was that Johnnie still had rough breathing spells.

“Well, whatever will it be next with these children, who are given every benefit?” the prince had shouted one day at Finch, Mr. Hansell, Madame Bricka, Mary's governess, and me. I found him and the princess both short with me, despite their earlier appreciation, but then we all understood outside pressures as well as those within.

Despite the king's increasing popularity here at home and even in finicky France, Britain was wracked with unrest. Rural folk of my class had dared to organize a so-called March for Unemployed People to London, but the king had refused to meet with them. At least, thank God, he had not ordered the crowd to be fired upon as had his cousin Tsar Nicholas in a similar situation this January in Russia, an event that had been dubbed Bloody Sunday in the British press.

Also, women called suffragettes were demanding the vote, though most of the royals and nobles, I had heard, called them “New Women.” I rather liked that title, for I had lately come to think of myself as a “new woman,” one whose vocation was to be her life, one who would not marry and have children of her own. I thought it strange, though, that the word “suffrage” sounded as if it had to do with suffering, but meant having the vote. And hadn't women, even in these modern times, always suffered?

Sadly, Chad's wife, Millie, had miscarried again, and I'd only seen him from afar. I guess the prince had decided Chad's field trips and nature lectures to his eldest children were over. At age thirty, I knew I had best be my own woman, if not exactly a new one.

Here at Sandringham, Princess May and Queen Alexandra
were still not getting on. Mabel, Rose, and I were among the few to realize this had all come to a head in a sort of unspoken contest over which woman could collect the most Fabergé agate animals. It was a sort of joke between Mabel and me to keep count of our respective mistresses' new birds and beasts.

I'd learned much about the little carvings in these last years, such as Fabergé was not a Frenchman but a jeweler and artist who lived in Russia and was mostly patronized by the Waleses' cousin, Tsar Nicholas II, and his Romanov family. But what the queen and princess coveted now was something called Fabergé eggs. Mabel and I had a bet on which of our mistresses would come up with one of those first, and then a new competition would be on.

One day Mabel and I sat on the bench by the lake in our few hours off that we could coordinate. Mabel told me, “Agate animal number twenty-one, a rooster, no less, has appeared right on the table next to the piano. When someone plays it loud, the rooster scoots across, and I'm afraid it will fall off. Well, I tell the maids when they dust there, like I did for years, move it back away from the edge. I heard Her Majesty tell Milady Knollys that Princess May doesn't have a rooster or a tally of statues that comes even close to hers.”

I didn't say it, even to Mabel, but with so much upheaval in the country, didn't the queen have more to worry about than besting her daughter-in-law's stone animal collection? But I did confide to Mabel, “I heard the princess is getting things she fancies from homes she visits. She admires something so fervently that they can't help but offer it to her. Lady Dugdale had the pluck to tell her that her hostesses will start hiding things soon. Princess May lived in Italy once, you know, and learned all about great art and such.”

“Which the queen finds boring. Not that those agate animals
aren't fine art. Char, why do you keep looking up at the window of York House?”

“I made your sister promise that she'd wave a handkerchief at the window if Johnnie has a spell, that's all.”

“That's all? You worry about him all the time. He's better, isn't he?”

“Yes. Difficulties fewer and farther between. It's just he expects to see me when he wakes. He's . . . he's different from the others, even the ones I tended as babies. A bit more sensitive. Well, I've got to run, my dear. And will Sandringham House still be standing without you? There's something big coming at the little house, I can smell it in the wind.”

“Big, like what, Char?” she asked, stopping to turn to me. “Come on, tell true!”

“Some sort of announcement from the prince and princess. I only pray the king is not ill with all this national ado, because—just like little David doesn't want to be king, so he says—I don't think the prince ever wants to be king either. And don't you dare even tell one of the queen's agate animals I said so!”

We hugged and were on our ways, Mabel cheekily humming “Rule Britannia” and I, glancing up at the window again. It was the one from which I used to watch for Chad down by the lake, the one now where little Johnnie slept.

“Y
OUR MOTHER AND
I have something to tell you,” the prince announced to his children and their staff as we stood behind the five of them and I held Johnnie in my arms.

To my surprise, rather than letting him do the talking, the princess spoke. “We had such a triumphant tour of the empire the year your grandfather became king, that we are being sent to India in mid-October, and will be away until April.”

Mary said, “But that's—why, that's nearly half a year!”

“My dearest ones, I know you will miss us, and we shall miss you all greatly, but this is very important for your grandfather, for Britannia, and us too.”

Princess May beamed as she explained it all with a smile and sweeping gestures as if showing them exotic India itself. I recalled how the previous tour had given her a lift, more self-confidence, to be so welcomed and cheered—and how the children had hardly known her when she returned home.

She went on explaining the places they would visit, “Indore, Benares, Bombay—we'll send you wonderful postcards, of course.”

All that meant little to any of them, though David and Bertie would soon have Hansell making them memorize details about those sites. These two oldest would run rampant again, with the blessing and abetting of their royal grandparents. I could read Bertie's face and demeanor: He was happy to escape his father's correcting and scolding him for his stuttering. David would be even harder to control, but it would give me more time to work with Harry's lisp. And in those six months of Johnnie's delicate infancy, the precious child would be more mine that ever.

F
EW COULD PRY
me away from Johnnie while the Waleses were gone, but one glorious late autumn day while they were in India, Hansell and Finch dragged me outside, though I protested that I didn't want to ride a bicycle. If they did their lessons well, David and Bertie with Mary right behind, were allowed to go flying down the slant of road toward Wolferton Station on the two-wheeled wonders of freedom.

David had told me it made him feel the “very, very best ever,” so I was all for it. Bertie stammered less these days, especially when he came in from rides. Like Mary, the boys rode horses, but not
with the love she did. It was their bicycles that were their escape from lessons and worries, and, at time, loneliness.

“Come on, then, Mrs. Lala,” Finch insisted, hustling me outside before I even had time to pin on a hat. The cool wind lifted my skirts, and the sun felt like a warm caress on my pale face. I did manage to untie my apron, so it wouldn't be soiled. It was a new one with fine trim, sent to me by Dr. Williams to replace the one that had held Johnnie—which I wish I hadn't discarded now. That baby on my lap was perhaps the closest I would ever come to childbirth.

Finch went on, “There will be a good lot of us, and you won't have to fret for the children. We'll do that, eh, Mr. Hansell?” he asked with a wink at his coworker.

“But I don't really ride,” I protested. “I've watched it often enough, but I never had a bike of my own, and Finch has only given me two lessons on Bertie's bike, and that was months ago.”

“We'll get you started. No fretting,” Hansell insisted in his best tutor's voice. “And someone will be with you.”

We walked out to the cluster of bicycles, leaned against the side wall of York Cottage. I believe the king had purchased every one of them though he never rode himself. David and Bertie grabbed theirs and began riding in circles, impatient to be off. Mary held on to her handlebars strangely, as if they were a horse's reins. I saw one bike was built for two. Were Mr. Hansell or Finch planning to ride with me? Was that why I had nothing to worry about?

I hesitated only a moment longer, thinking the children deserved this fun while their parents were off cutting ribbons in faraway India. I was just enough in the “new woman” mood to give this a try. Dr. Williams had said I had grit and go, and I supposed I was out to prove it today.

Hansell steadied me as I climbed onto the backseat of the bi
cycle built for two. The seat seemed oh so small, but I managed it despite my skirts. Balance was the hardest thing. I remembered that from my maiden voyage and another attempt on one of these contraptions. Truly, I had the hang of it but was yet a bit afraid to ride downhill as the others always did. I feared the so-called brakes wouldn't break my headlong hurtle clear to the railway station.

“You ready, Chad?” Finch bellowed, looking behind me. “We got her out, and she's set to go!”

“What?” I said, twisting to see Chad jogging around the corner of the cottage. “They didn't tell me you would be here. I heard you helped Bertie when he fell off near the woods but I'm not sure . . .”

“I am,” Chad interrupted and mounted the same bike on the seat ahead of me. “You need to get out now and again, and today's the day.”

I leaned forward and said to his broad back, “Are you certain this is wise?”

“No. But life is even shorter than I ever realized, Charlotte Bill, so here we go!”

David, Bertie, and Mary were long gone, with Finch and Mr. Hansell riding after them. “Finch owed me a favor,” Chad threw back over his shoulder as—I'm sure without much help from me—he righted the bike and started off, while I struggled to stay upright. Had I just been abducted? And by the man I'd adored for years? It seemed wrong and yet so right.

“Hang on!” he called back and pedaled even harder as we started downhill.

I had no choice. I hung on for dear life. And it was fine with me.

T
he wind ripped long strands of my hair loose behind me. Pine trees lining the road whizzed by. I found my pedaling had to match Chad's, and he set a fast pace. This ride downhill was foolhardy, outrageous, and quite grand.

He began to sing, which I'd never heard him do before, from that song about Daisy, written about King Edward's previous mistress, no less:
“
I
'm half crazy all for the love of you . . .”

Peering around his shoulder, I could see the others ahead of us, racing toward the station. We passed some village workers on the road, trimming trees. Chad shouted a
halloo
to them. I would have waved, but my hands were gripping the handlebars for dear life. Had this solid, reliable man taken leave of his senses? Wouldn't it spread like wildfire that Chad Reaver, the head gamekeeper, a married man, was riding madly with a woman not his wife? It was my duty to guard my reputation too.

“Chad, this is a lark, but we should turn round and go back,” I called over his shoulder.

“You and I can't go back, my love. Too late.”

“Don't call me that. Your duty—”

“Yes, I know. Duty calls, but I'm not listening.”

Despite the fact we were hurtling downhill, he somehow applied the brakes and we came to a slow stop. He put one foot down to steady us as we tipped a bit.

“Get off,” he said.

“What?”

“Charlotte, get off the bicycle and stand beside it. I need to speak to you and we can stand here, looking at the bike as if there's a problem with it.”

“There is a problem with it. We shouldn't be together like this, in private at night or in broad daylight with half the estate folk watching.”

“Get off the bicycle.”

I did while he held it steady. As I stood beside it on the side of the road nearly to the station, he bent over it, looking at it, not me. I should have waited for him to speak, but I blurted, “I wanted to write a condolence message for the loss of your second child, but I thought it unwise, that Millie might take it amiss. I see you buried the baby next to her brother.”

Not looking at me, he nodded. “Did you leave the bouquet of flowers there about a week after?”

“Yes.”

He looked up, frowning. For one moment I feared he was angry with me for interfering. “Thank you,” he said. “That was kind. And like some silly, love-struck swain, I kept one of the roses, dried and dead as it is now.”

“Oh. And, how is she—Millie?”

“Hell-bent on being a mother, while I fear for her—and us.
The doctor said it could kill her, so our . . . our relationship is difficult. I'm finding it hard to take the bad with the good.”

Tears prickled behind my eyes, but I didn't cry. “Like Princess May and Prince George now. No more children, I think, but perhaps it isn't even possible after Johnnie's difficult birth.”

“And how is your newest charge?” he asked, going back to fussing with the bike.

“Better at breathing. Growing some, but not as he should. Slow to roll over. He should have done that about a month ago.”

“Well, you would know about those things. You're more mother to him than Princess May,” he said, straightening and clapping his hands as if ridding himself of dirt.

“You mustn't say that.”

“Only to you. I just wanted to talk, though I admit I'd rather kiss and caress you.”

My cheeks flamed with heat, and my lower belly began to flutter. “Talking like that doesn't help.”

“I know, but I dare hope you feel somewhat the same. It helps me to be honest with you. No more rolling around on the ground together, but I didn't want you to think I was angry with you. Life is precious and short—too short for some,” he added, his voice bitter. “Whatever happens, I just wanted you to know. And now, we shall say the bicycle is fixed, and we'd best catch up with your three eldest children before David and Bertie come charging up here to help us. Here,” he said, taking my elbow and helping me to get back on. “You'll have to really work hard, sweetheart, when we pedal back uphill. Milady Lala, you have a man who shall always love you from afar. No, don't say a thing. Here, your skirt is going to be caught.” He pulled my hem from the pedal and mounted ahead of me.

We whizzed on down the road, though my heart was thumping as if we already rode uphill. I hoped no one would see my tears and trembling lower lip, but the truth was I didn't need this bike, for I was flying. Still, the pain of being so near and yet so far from him was renewed agony.

“Isn't it great, Lala?” Bertie called out when we joined the others. “I can say words like ‘big, beautiful bicycle' and not stutter one bit, so when they get back, I want you to tell P-Papa!”

“David beat me here,” Mary interrupted, “but I'm getting closer! Girls can ride fast too!”

So I was back with my own little family, the only one I would ever really have.

M
Y NINTH
C
HRISTMAS
at York Cottage, the year of 1905, with the prince and princess in India, seemed different. That day, the children's grandparents were with us, and later we'd be going to Sandringham House for the gala celebration. Perhaps I was getting used to the glamour and generosity that had once amazed me. I would not say the glitter was off the tree or the shine off the candles, but this year Christmas did make me strangely homesick—not as much for my own family as for a home of my own.

I'd heard Princess May say last year that Christmas at Sandringham was like the world of Charles Dickens wrapped in an exquisite package. It was becoming a new tradition that Mr. Hansell, using broad gestures and different voices, read Dickens's
A
C
hristmas
C
arol
to all of us assembled at York Cottage before we went to the Big House.

As ever, the children were on pins and needles to have to wait so long to open their gifts. Yet my charges, even David, sat as if entranced from the very first lines “Midder” Hansell read:
M
arley
was dead, to begin with.
T
here is no doubt whatever about that.
T
he register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner.
S
crooge signed it . . .
O
ld
M
arley was as dead as a doornail.

“But he still comes back as a ghost,” Bertie whispered, twisting around in his chair ahead of me. “Remember that ghost who locked us in the t-tower in Scotland?”

Holding the sleeping Johnnie in my arms with George beside me on the same seat, I motioned for Bertie to turn around and pay attention. But the ghosts of Christmases past were in my thoughts, happy memories tinged with sadness. I hadn't gone to London to see my parents this summer because Johnnie needed me. Then there was the haunting of my heart with memories of the Yuletide with Chad the year he gave me the gloves, the time we made snow angels, the time . . .

Johnnie sucked in a breath, and his eyes flew open in surprise. I knew a rough breathing spell was coming, so I immediately tipped him up against my shoulder and patted his little back. His velvet-soft head tilted against my neck. He cuddled in, the little gasps not so bad and quickly past.

I jumped when David and Bertie shouted “Bah! Humbug!” the first time Mr. Hansell read those words. I wished they would quiet that down, for Johnnie jumped each time, so I rose and, bouncing him against my shoulder, walked him out into the hall. Even with the door barely ajar, I could hear how they chimed in—now with their grandfather's booming voice—each time “Bah! Humbug!” was said until the happy, tearful ending when Tiny Tim cried out, “God bless us every one!”

Applause, of course, for Mr. Hansell. At this point Princess May always led the children in singing carols in the sitting room,
but without her, there was no one to lead. I loved to sing and could have done it, but I would not presume. Chad might have once implied I was more mother to my charges than was Princess May, but I dared not think such thoughts. Besides, with their grandparents here, that helped to fill the gap of their parents' absence.

A bit later, I left Johnnie sleeping heavily in his cradle with his undernurse Jane watching him and traipsed outside to the coach house near the stables to watch the presentation of Christmas gifts to the York household and estate staff from the king and queen, in place of the wandering Waleses. In a curved queue, about three hundred folk waited outside in the frosty but snowless night, gardeners, foresters, stable hands—including Chad and his wife with his gamekeeping staff.

Since his parents were away, David, who was nearly twelve, had the honor of sitting just inside the coach house door with Their Majesties. While the rest of us stood behind their chairs, I kept a good eye on George and Harry. I and the nursery staff had received new outfits and a holiday stipend, the latter of which I'd sent home for my parents' gift.

In turn, the household, then the estate staff, many of the latter who were married, stepped forward with their mates and were each able to select a large, wrapped joint of beef and wished “A Happy Christmas!” by the king.

I held my breath as Chad and Millie Reaver stepped forward. Like the others, Chad doffed his cap and made a slight bow while Millie bobbed a quick curtsy. Chad's gaze met mine, lingered, then darted away. Millie stared at me and when she turned sideways to move on—just as that time so long ago when we had talked in the glasshouse—I was certain she was slightly pregnant. Well, I mean one can't be a little bit pregnant, but she could not be too far
along. Maybe she had conceived about the time Chad and I had our last privy chat, that day on the bicycles. If that was the time—somehow, that hurt.

As if I'd caught Johnnie's malady, I gasped and sucked in a throat of chill air. I started coughing and gestured to Mary to watch the two youngest boys as I moved to a far corner of the coach house. No way was I going outside, so that Chad and Millie might think I was following them.

Despite the evident danger of another childbirth for her, I had to admire her pluck. She was desperate for a child at the risk of more grief, and I understood that. I would die for Johnnie, and he wasn't even really mine.

“Char, are you all right?” Mabel asked as she came up beside me. The king and queen had brought some of their staff with them, including Mabel. Bless her, she extended a little flask of something in her hand, and I took a swig from it.

“Spiced cider,” she whispered, “nothing like the toffs drink. I've got to hurry back to the Big House, see that the tree candles are lit for the children in the grand saloon. I oversaw the decorating of the tree, with the queen standing right beside me. A Christmas tree is one of the few things Queen Victoria's Prince Albert liked that the king abides.”

“I remember,” I told her, my voice sounding raspy. “King Edward redid Buck House and got rid of the old queen's beloved Osborne House. Must the royal offspring always resent their father?”

“Char, you think too much. Come on, it's Christmas. Oh, by the way, you should see the wrapped gifts—some for your little Johnnie too. I guess you'll have to open those for him this year with the princess gone.”

She took back the flask and darted off.
Y
our little
J
ohnnie,
she had said. Yes, unlike with the other children, I felt that he was mine, though someday, I supposed, I'd have to give him up. But not to death's cold hand, not like Chad and Millie had to do, and the king and queen also. That indeed would be a haunting far worse than any fiction of what poor old Scrooge went through. How sad the story of Tiny Tim being crippled, and Johnnie had problems too. By next Christmas Eve, I vowed, he would be stronger, better, if not normal, in his own way, just fine.

B
UT, AFTER THE
York Cottage festivities, I could not help but think that sometimes the royals nearly abandoned their children. Not only would Johnnie's parents be in India for months, but almost as soon as they returned, I'd been informed, they were heading for Norway, and Mary was to be prepared to go along. The event was the coronation of the prince's sister Maud, as queen, and her husband, newly named Haakon as king of Norway.

Mabel had also told me that Queen Alexandra thought all that a farce because the new Norwegian king had been elected by a popular vote, no less, and it set a dreadful precedent. I rather thought that sounded fair, though a bit too American. But Mabel had whispered that Alexandra was also incensed that her daughter-in-law May must have convinced Prince George to sanction such an event. Well, the only thing about all that which really bothered me—besides the children being without their parents longer—was that the Waleses were going to miss David's twelfth birthday.

I hurried to catch up with the children piling into the horse-drawn omnibus for a traditional ride to the Big House. The estate workers had greatly dispersed, but a few stood about. Not the Reavers, thank heavens, for it yet bothered me to see them to
gether. But a lanky man was calling to a woman who was maybe his wife. He was calling her Lil and telling her to keep back from the omnibus full of “'em uppers.” And there was something about his voice . . .

I jerked my head around. That man. It had been over three years, but I could have sworn he was the leader of the pack that had halted this very omnibus and threatened us as we were heading to a picnic with the kaiser. And yet, it was Christmas and the prince—even Chad—were not here to tell right now. Nothing else had come of that for a long time, so the rebellion must have died down.

Still, if anything untoward happened, I'd have a better description of the lanky man. I would be able to say, at least, that he had a wife named Lil. If I ever had another chance to talk to Chad, I'd warn him, though. I looked around, craning my neck to see if there could be any of that man's cohorts hanging about to stop us again, but I saw only darkness.