The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (22 page)

But she was not the only one trying to sneak down the servants' staircase: suddenly she heard footsteps below her. Very carefully, she peered over the banister – and drew back the moment she saw who it was: Captain Palmer.

He had been on his way downstairs, but if he saw her . . . The last thing she wanted, the last thing she needed, was to be cornered alone on a staircase by that foul man . . .

She forced herself to calm down, and hazarded another glance. The captain had not noticed her, and was creeping slowly and carefully downstairs. He looked as if he were up to something.

She was not really Princess Caraboo, she thought, yet she had been able to move about so quietly that wild animals hadn't heard her until it was too late . . . Even if she was no longer a princess, she could still make sure she was not seen.

Barefoot, silently, and listening carefully to Captain Palmer's footsteps, she started to follow him.

It would be best, Captain Palmer had decided, to cut his losses and take what he could while he still had the chance. The girl was too much of a liability, if what had happened in Bristol was anything to go by. He could threaten her into coming with him, but it was clear that if he let his guard down for even a second, she'd escape his clutches. No, he'd slip what he could into his bags now and dispose of her as soon as he could; make it look as if she'd made off with the valuables, fooling him along with the rest of them. Maybe he'd stay around for a little more free rum and chit-chat, and then be on his merry way unscathed while the constables scoured the docks for a girl they'd never find.

Mrs Worrall's dressing room would be empty now – bound to be rich pickings there; a few of those necklaces would fetch a pretty penny, and their absence would most likely go unnoticed until he'd had the time to get rid of the phoney princess, leave her body in a ditch somewhere no one would find it – or, better, a river . . . And if anybody did find her, they'd assume the pretty little fool had simply been robbed. Cheerful old Captain Palmer would be in the clear.

He cast a quick glance up and down the empty corridor, and then allowed himself a little smile as he pushed open the door. The dressing room couldn't compare with the fashionable Chinoiserie of the drawing room downstairs, but the cabinets, he knew, would yield treasures.

He didn't notice Princess Caraboo standing at the door behind him as he started to ease open one of the drawers.

Caraboo's heart was pounding in her chest as she watched him fill up his bag with Mrs Worrall's jewellery. She'd half expected him to notice her by now, but she was a hunter, a good one, and that was the truth.

It was then that Captain Palmer turned round.

She froze in place, and he smiled. ‘Hello, Princess. Looking to claim your part in the loot, eh? Well, too bad. I've decided I don't need you after all, you see. This' – he patted the trinket-stuffed bag at his waist – ‘will do me more good than a lying little bitch like you.'

She drew herself up to her full height. She might not have been a real princess but, she realized as she stared at him with his bag of stolen treasure, she was better than he was. Captain Palmer was nothing but a pirate, and if he was so intent on acting the villain, then she could be the brave and cunning Princess one last time. ‘I am not a liar,' she hissed. ‘Not like you. And I won't let you steal from Mrs Worrall! She is a good woman – these are good people. They have been nothing but courteous to you!'

‘Is that so?' the captain sneered, taking a step towards her.

But Caraboo did not want to hear another word of what he had to say. Quick as a cat, she drew her knife to slash at him. He swung out of the way and brought down his fist to knock it out of her hand – but she had not been aiming for his body, and he was too late. The worn leather straps of his bag had been severed by the sharp blade, and as the knife clattered to the floor, Palmer's bag fell too, necklaces and rings spilling out like blood.

His eyes narrowed. ‘I'll make you regret that, girl,' he growled, and snatched up her knife.

He was going to kill her, Caraboo thought. Hadn't he just said he had no more use for her? He would kill her. She would not be able to stop him. If she ran for help, he'd pin the blame on her, say he caught
her
in the act; she wouldn't be able to explain without giving herself away.

She needed a weapon.

She thought of her bow and arrow, still on the roof, and began to run.

‘So you see, Lady Gresham, phrenology is most definitely the science of the future.' Professor Heyford beamed.

Her ladyship looked bored. ‘I have heard some say the same about electricity.'

‘Indeed, but in the fullness of time I doubt whether it has the possibilities that phrenology—'

‘But electricity has shown to be most beneficial for women with all forms of hysteria,' she said.

‘For women, yes, it's true' – he nodded – ‘electricity is most therapeutic. The energy given off can impart a most enlivening “kick”!'

Fred looked at the professor and thought that he was as big a liar as Caraboo.

‘Professor, your equipment was not a roaring success.' Fred turned to Lady Gresham. ‘The Princess was nearly fried to a crisp.'

‘No, no, no.' The professor shook his head. ‘I think it was merely that the machinery is calibrated for our European heads and brains. Did you not notice, your ladyship, the distinct slope of the Princess's skull, so obviously foreign?'

Fred didn't want to stay and listen to this nonsense any longer. He left the room and went out into the sunshine. It was a perfect summer's day: swallows crisscrossed the high blue sky, and the distant hills shimmered. On the terrace his sister and Diana were giggling over some joke of Edmund's. Fred could hear the wheels and hoof beats of a two-seater coming down the drive. Probably the newspaperman. He should feel content and happy – he was heir to Knole and the Tolzey Bank: a long life of pretence stretched out ahead of him. Pretence that he was happy and that he was a gentleman – when any who looked inside, who saw his heart, would know just how sullied it really was.
Every one of us
, Fred thought, looking at Edmund,
is a liar.

Suddenly there was a sound, a shout, a girl's voice. He looked up to the roof. He couldn't see a thing except blue sky and swallows and a rain of flowers. He frowned. It was pink willow herb falling from the sky – and something else; something that looked like a solid streak of black ink.

An arrow.

Fred dashed back inside and up the stairs, taking them two, three at a time.

Palmer shut the trapdoor behind him as he stepped out onto the roof after Caraboo. ‘Don't want anyone hearing, do we?' he said as, stony faced and more serious than she'd ever seen him, he came towards her. ‘Too bad you dropped your knife,
Princess
. You will go down, and I'll tell everyone what a clever liar you were to fool even old Captain Palmer, when all you ever really wanted was the family jewels.'

Caraboo still did not know what she meant to do. But they were on her territory now, and though she was cornered, she felt safer here. More in control.

She snatched up her bow and arrow from where they lay by the altar – but the arrow jumped out of her hand and fell off the roof, tumbling down with the flowers she'd arranged so carefully earlier. Caraboo backed up, breathing hard, but she was too near the edge – there wasn't room, he was cornering her . . . She had been too hasty, and now the chance was gone.

Captain Palmer laughed. ‘You owe me,' he said, and there was something dark in his voice. ‘I didn't have to play along with your silly games. I could have revealed to everyone what you were, had you thrown out in the street . . .'

Caraboo didn't want to listen. She tried to ram the end of the bow against his neck and get past him, but as she tried to push by, he grabbed her by the elbow with one hand; with the other he disarmed her. He had obviously done this many times before.

‘Easy, now . . .' His face was next to hers. She turned away, but he had pressed her up against the tiles.

That was when she screamed. He smothered her cry, his hand over her mouth –
in
her mouth . . . She gagged at the taste of tobacco and spirits – and suddenly the months rolled back and she was face down in the cherry blossom again.

She would not let it happen twice. She bit hard and he cried out, hopping backwards, shaking his hand. ‘You little bitch – you drew blood!'

She backed up to the parapet. ‘I'll scream again,' she said breathlessly, and he lunged for her, slapping her face so hard it burned. She pushed him away as hard as she could, but then she felt his hands on her body, pulling at her; she pushed again – and it was over.

Fred saw it happen. If he'd got the trapdoor open with the first kick, he thought, he might have been in time. As it was, the captain stumbled, and one foot caught against the altar. He went over the edge and fell, screaming shrilly – reminding Fred of the sound one of their horses had made when it broke its leg.

Then there was a soft, crumpled thud, and the horse pulling the gig that had just drawn up in front of the house whinnied and danced on the gravel.

Captain Palmer was dead.

Caraboo – or Mary, or whoever she was – stood stock still at the edge of the roof, wide eyed and trembling. ‘It was an accident, sir,' she said softly, terrified. ‘I was trying to stop him – he was going to . . . Please. It was an accident.'

She gathered up the skirts of her plain black dress as she made her way down the drive, away from Knole Park. It was early morning, and there was dew on the ground; the house was asleep, the only noises distant birdsong and the sound of her own footsteps and Fred Worrall's on the gravel.

She'd told Fred he didn't need to walk her down to the road, that he should be back in his bed before anybody else woke, but he had insisted. He'd also insisted on giving her one of Cassandra's old coats, and – he'd smiled when he'd handed it to her – a knife. It wasn't Mrs Worrall's kriss, but a good sharp knife from the kitchen – which, seeing as she was no longer Princess Caraboo, was far more appropriate. She had tried to turn him down – she'd told him she wanted to leave with nothing more than what she'd arrived with. However, with a wry smile he'd told her that Caraboo had brought such liveliness to their house that it would be impolite to send her on her way with nothing at all.

‘It won't even seem strange for her to leave now,' he'd pointed out. ‘The Princess was obviously so badly shaken by Captain Palmer's terrible fall that she fled . . .'

‘When did you come to know Caraboo better than I do?' Mary had asked, smiling sadly at him, and Fred had laughed, and held out the coat for her again, and the knife, and she had taken them.

Now the coat was warm about her shoulders, the knife tucked safely away underneath. As they came to the road, she started to slow down, and so did Fred. For a long moment they stood together in silence.

‘You don't have to go, you know,' he said suddenly. ‘You could stay. Go back to being Caraboo. Now that Palmer is gone, no one could stop you.'

She gazed up at him. He was ivory and gold in the morning light, his eyes filled with a longing that said he knew what he was asking was impossible.

She shook her head. ‘Caraboo is finished, you know that. I won't lie any more.'

‘You wouldn't be lying to me. I'd know.' There was something desperate in his voice that made her think of Will Jenkins, pleading with Cassandra by the lake. ‘You could pretend to learn English; we could—'

‘You know I can't. I need to live my own life, not someone else's.'

Fred nodded, a small, sad smile tugging at his lips, and she knew he understood.

‘I don't think Caraboo was someone else,' he said, ‘not completely.' He touched her face lightly, and with one finger gently lifted her chin so that she was looking him in the eye. ‘I think Mary Willcox is every bit as clever and fierce.' And before she could tell him otherwise he was kissing her, softly and wistfully. Her hands found his, and held them tight, twining their fingers together. As their warm breath mingled in the chill air, she knew that for all his sadness, and hers, Fred Worrall's heart would not be broken as Will Jenkins' had been; he would never see her again, but he would always know that she had loved him back.

The sun was beginning to dry the dew off the road. It was a long way yet to Bristol; she'd had an early start but, on foot, it would still be evening before she reached the docks. If she closed her eyes she could see the masts, towering black silhouettes against the shimmering red sky, and beyond them the sea, the horizon. And beyond even that, America . . . She had no idea what that would look like, but she pictured tall buildings in gleaming new cities, where a hard-working, honest girl could make a life for herself no matter where she came from.

Somewhere behind her, Knole Park was waking up, and the end of Princess Caraboo's story was being spun out from what she'd left behind, by those who had wanted to believe in her so much that, for a while, she had been real. And Mary Willcox, of Witheridge, in Devon, near Exeter, carried on westward, with the sunshine warm on her back and the whole world ahead of her.

Degroot's Drapers, Haberdashery and General Store
23 Cortlandt Street
New York City
April 1820

‘And then,' she said, pausing as she folded the velvet ribbons into place, ‘the Princess let fly her arrow straight into the pirate chief's heart!'

‘Did he die, Mary? Did he die?' Little Jacob Degroot jumped up and down, tugging at her apron.

Mary finished with the ribbons and began to dust down the dark mahogany counter of the draper's shop.

‘No, silly' – his older sister, Martha, made a face – ‘that would never have happened.' She pulled her cotton bonnet into place and tied it under her chin. ‘Even I know that could never happen and I am seven years old!'