The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (16 page)

The artist's studio was in a building adjoining his house, on the west, and more fashionable, side of town. The light coming in from the north-facing skylights was very bright, and the room smelled strongly of linseed oil and turpentine. There were unfinished canvasses propped up against the wall, mostly portraits – men and women in fine clothes, smiling with their mouths shut.

Mr Barker steered Caraboo towards a chair in the centre of the room. ‘And, Captain Palmer,' he said, ‘can you please direct the Princess to be still today!'

The captain saluted and burbled in Javasu to Caraboo.

She took off her turban while Captain Palmer looked at the painting, and then sat in a corner and opened his flask – not a very responsible chaperone, Caraboo thought. He began telling Mr Barker how much he would love the South Seas; the ruined temples, the captain promised, were most picturesque.

Princess Caraboo took no notice and concentrated on sitting as still as possible. Back home, many homes ago now, in the life before the South Seas, she had seen portraits in the fine houses in Exeter. And then, in London, even richer people, dressed in all their finery, their hair perfect, their faces free of pockmarks or blemishes that troubled them in life. She couldn't imagine seeing herself like that.

Captain Palmer was still talking. He had been around the world in both directions more than once, he said. Mr Barker said nothing and continued working, only sighing every so often and staring so hard at Caraboo that it was as if he was looking right through her. But after a while, when the captain got on to his tales of disembodied spirits, the artist exploded, throwing his palette to the floor and swearing with old-fashioned West Country obscenities that Caraboo remembered from long ago, when her father, the village cobbler, had injured himself with a hammer.

‘Captain Palmer!' Mr Barker said. ‘Can you not keep your own counsel? I am trying to work! Go! Now! Take a turn about the garden, walk out to the river, anything! I cannot abide your prattle one moment more!'

Captain Palmer told him that he was required to stay with the girl; that she was a wild one and could not understand English; that he was honour-bound to watch her. But the artist insisted, and had his valet escort the captain out of the house, telling him not to come back until five.

Caraboo tried to keep a straight face. This was even better than she could have hoped. Mr Barker called for a drink of water and told Caraboo she could rest for a moment. She stood up and stretched, arching her back like a cat.

‘Come along,' he said. ‘Have a look.'

Caraboo went round to the other side of the canvas and could not help gasping.

The portrait was beautiful, in a way she had never thought possible for Mary Willcox, but had always imagined for Caraboo. The girl in the picture, regal in her turban, looked as if she had been painted on the distant shore of some kingdom she ruled, only now brought back to England – so far removed from the girl she had once been, the other girl; the one who had lost a baby, and—No, she would not think of it.

Caraboo smiled. She could walk away from Knole Park and the Worralls now; she could do so knowing that she had not lied, she had entirely become the Princess they all desired her to be. The soul of the Princess was there, in this painting of the odd girl with the dark skin and the strange hair curling out from under her turban. Princess Caraboo. Mrs Worrall would have her proof that the Princess had existed, and suffer no misfortune from any kind of hurtful or uncomfortable gossip. She would not have her possessions stolen by Captain Palmer, or her family's name dragged through the mud. All her memories would be preserved in this picture.

Looking at it, Princess Caraboo knew that she was now free to be someone else. She could have danced there and then.

Outside, through the door that led out into the artist's garden, she could see that the sun was shining. The artist's pocket watch told her it was nearly twelve. She climbed back into her chair. The man was bound to break for lunch, wasn't he? By that time the captain would have found a local hostelry and would be working his way to the bottom of a glass, and she would be making her way into the centre of town. She would take the fabric the artist had draped around her shoulders as a cloak, leaving him her turban in exchange. She would dance out of Bristol, and if she could earn a little money, maybe there was an alternative to taking the stage to Exeter. This was Bristol. The harbour was crammed with ships going everywhere, anywhere, all across the world. Anywhere.

She felt sure the painting was some kind of sign. She would miss Mrs Worrall's kindnesses, and Cassandra too, and, though she would have laughed at the thought only a week ago, she would miss Fred. But they would not be interested in her any more – Caraboo was there, in the picture, for them to keep for ever.

She felt brave again.

It was neither Princess Caraboo nor Mary Willcox who left Mr Barker's studio on the premise of relieving herself in the privy. It was a girl without a name – she'd find one soon enough – wrapped in what could have been a kind of toga, her hair stuffed into a boy's flat cap which she'd found in the hall.

A few boys playing on the road called out as she passed, but she paid them no mind at all. She ran, her bare feet slapping hard on the flat road, all the way back into town, past the great open earthworks that were the new docks, heading for the quayside, where the huge ships packed the river's edge like a wooden city. There were so many people – none, admittedly, as outlandishly dressed as herself, but several not far off. There was the smell of tobacco and spices, and things she didn't even have names for.

She breathed in deep and tasted the salt, and carried on down the hill. She made it all the way to a vantage point on a street than ran above the dockside, where she leaned on a rail and watched the ships, ignoring the shouts, stares and whoops of passers-by and stevedores. There were all sorts of people: lascars, even browner than Caraboo, white-turbaned, lugging sacks off a huge four-master; another boat was crewed by Greeks or Turks, she thought. And Africans, Americans, and some West Country men – she could tell by their speech. So much activity!

The sun shone down on her as if blessing her new enterprise, and she decided that she would choose a new name better than Mary, which was two or three a penny. The ships all had grand names –
Enterprise
and
Venturer
– she'd had enough of that sort of name. The family next door in London, the Silvers, had all had beautiful names; that was why she had chosen Solomon for her baby. The girls were called Esther and Ruth. Good names both, but she decided on Ruth: it sounded like a soft breath out, and it rhymed with truth. That's who she would be, hard-working, honest Ruth. Ruth would need clothes – a plain skirt, dark material preferably, not too showy, and a white apron. If she could knock on a few doors, offer to clean – anything – just enough for a pair of boots and a second-hand dress, then perhaps she could find a passenger ship that was taking settlers somewhere new – America . . .

All at once, even without the modest clothes she knew Ruth would favour, the world seemed all possibilities, all new. She hadn't felt so happy in a long time.

Suddenly, from a tavern down below on the dockside, she heard a shout. It was only men fighting. Ruth pulled her cap lower over her face. She must go away from here, perhaps find a church or a synagogue. She reminded herself that just because she felt brave, she was not necessarily safe.

She had turned to climb back up to town when she heard a loud crack, bone against stone. She looked back at the fight and realized that it wasn't a fight at all. Three sailors – two as tall as they were wide, a third smaller – were setting about one well-dressed unfortunate. When they were certain that he was insensible, they pulled off his jacket, his boots and his pocket watch. Ruth saw that he was fair-haired, and even from this distance noticed the dark red blood spreading from a cut on his head.

When Fred walked into the Maiden's Farewell he knew that he might well be on the right track. At the Admiralty there had been no record of a Captain Palmer of the right age. He'd been directed to the Maiden's Farewell because, the clerk assured him, the landlord, Mr Hurst, had been a sailor, and knew everything there was to know about the South Seas, having spent his life on East Indiamen sailing as far east as Peking.

It had not occurred to Fred to feel afraid until he walked through the door. In London he had entered many such low dives, but always mob handed – Edmund and fellows from school; they would drink the low beer and laugh at the poor sort, and return to their school and their warm beds and their money.

Fred thought it best to show no fear. If he did, no doubt this pack of press gang rejects – which is what at a glance the drinkers looked like – would fall upon him.

It was dark and his head almost brushed the low ceiling; he smelled stale beer, wood smoke, tobacco and sweat. He kept walking until he reached the bar counter, aware of three men hunched over a table playing dominoes, another knot playing cards. Fred knew he must not, on any account, look indecisive or weak. He was aware that every eye was on him; he was also aware that the value of his jacket alone was probably equal to the combined cost of every scrap and thread of clothing in the whole place.

Fred ordered a beer and attempted to pay using the smallest coin he could lay his hand on. He cursed under his breath – why hadn't he thought first and then acted!

The man behind the bar did not look as old as Captain Palmer, but his face was weather-beaten and leathery like his. His arms were covered in dark blue tattoos, the like of which Fred had never seen, not even in London – not the usual sailors' mottoes, or anchors or flowers, but strange whorls and curlicues.

‘South Seas,' the man said. ‘Put your eyeballs back in your head, lad.'

‘Oh, yes, right.'

As Fred took the tankard of dubious, cloudy ale, he knew that the whole bar was listening. He looked at the innkeeper: this was the man he needed to talk to. ‘Mr Hurst?'

‘Mebbe. Who's asking?'

Fred took a sip of the sour beer. Perhaps he would have done better to stick to spirits, he reflected. He lowered his voice. ‘My name is Worrall.' He tried to sound firm. ‘I'm looking for Captain Palmer. Served in Malay, Indian Ocean.'

Mr Hurst looked at him. Fred noticed that where one eye was blue, the other was milky white and clouded. ‘Palmer?' He spat onto the floor.

Fred took another sip. ‘Did you sail with him? Know of him? In Java? Sumatra? Tells a lot of tales – Penanggalan, bloodsuckers . . .'

One of the company laughed. ‘The only bloodsuckers round here are the rich!'

The innkeeper stared at Fred with his good eye. ‘What's it worth to you?'

‘Two guineas.' Fred hoped his face was stony as he set the money down on the bar.

Mr Hurst raised his eyebrows and, apparently satisfied, leaned forward. ‘Aye, I know a Palmer,' he said. ‘Been in here more'n once, collecting stories. I tell you what, though. I've spent the past twenty years crisscrossing the Indian Ocean like it was the Corn Market, and I never heard nor seen nothing of any Captain Palmer until he walked through the door of my inn.'

‘You're sure? He said he was in Sumatra – for five years, round about the turn of the century . . . did a lot of business . . .'

The innkeeper shook his head. ‘I tell you, lad, I know your man, and he likes to spin tales all right, but mark me, that cove's seen more rum in his life than seawater, and I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. I could tell you things about that man . . .' He shook his head, and spat on the floor again.

‘Yes?' Fred leaned forward, but the innkeeper just laughed and swept the two guineas off the counter into his hand. Fred knew what that meant. He'd have to pay up if he wanted to know more.

He put his tankard down on the counter. ‘I've heard all I need to, thank you.'

Caraboo had been right, then. Palmer was crooked. And knowing that, he could threaten the man, force him to leave . . .

A chill thought struck him. If Palmer was a fake, if he had never been to the South Seas, what was that dialect he spoke with the Princess? And what was she?

He pushed the thought away. Perhaps he had picked it up in places like the Maiden's Farewell, along with his ghost stories . . . Perhaps.

Fred got up, and the company went back to their games. Maybe he had been foolish to see the place as a den of thieves ready to fall upon him for whatever he had in his pocket. The clock behind the bar chimed two o'clock; he was late for his meeting with Mama and Cassandra.

He stepped out into the street. Mama would not be pleased to learn that the captain was a fraud, but if he was threatening Caraboo—

‘Watch where you're going!' A huge man barged into him and almost knocked him to the ground.

‘I say!' Fred exclaimed back, and the second he said it he knew it was a mistake. He felt the blow across the back of his legs that felled him, and cried out as his head cracked on the stone pavement, and the whole world went black.

For a moment the world slowed for Ruth. She told herself she had never seen that man before in her short life. She was brand new, unburdened.

But now the blood had spread out in a small circle, like a halo around his blond head. A hundred souls walked past, a boy only stopping to check his breeches pocket for change. No one was doing anything!

Ruth gathered her toga tight around her and ran. When she reached the man, she sat down, cradling his head, unwound the toga and used it to staunch the flow of blood.

‘Someone fetch a doctor!' she yelled, as fiercely as she could. ‘NOW!'

The Maiden's Farewell
Bristol
June 1819

Frederick Worrall was laid out on a table in the back bar of the Maiden's Farewell. The bleeding had stopped, and although Fred was out cold, the sawbones who'd been called down off an ocean-going four-master looked him over and pronounced him alive.