Five
Five
I slipped into the Schoens’ little villa just before the break of dawn. I knew the architecture by heart. The winding stairs,
the flower-painted wallpaper. The Persian rugs over the concrete floor. Every entrance and every nook. Even with the lights
off, my small feet found their way to my room in the corner of the second floor and my head found its way to my pillow—a pillow
that I then pressed against my face to stifle a frustrated scream.
I kicked my white bedsheets while flat on my stomach like a petulant child. It was a shameful display. I came up for air,
wondering if Mama had heard. Nothing. Well, the woman slept as if her room were a grave, so that wasn’t surprising.
Bertie showing up in that opium den. That was the surprise.
He’d heard my voice. Damn it, he’d heard it, muffled behind a mask though it may have been. It’d been hours since then—did he have me figured out by now? Did he question
Harriet? Did she buckle and give me up? Panic had chased me out of London. I could still feel its remnants course in my veins.
I should have stayed. I should have followed that pampered ninny of a prince and—
No. I was losing control. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I stood from my bed and carefully removed each item of clothing strangling me. I left them in a black heap on the floor, soaking in the sensation of the red carpet against the soles of my feet. Its downy contours itched because the carpet was old; it’d started in the drawing room and moved up here only once the Schoens were able to purchase a new one.
The Schoens were not as well-off as one would think. Being on the Queen’s radar, enough to become guardians of the Queen’s
goddaughter, did not afford them any more profit than they made as humble missionaries. Still, the Schoens had made sure that
I’d had my necessities and perhaps more: A central table made of mahogany wood. A wardrobe flush against the rightmost wall.
A small bookcase filled with books I was forced to read while in Freetown. More recent fiction, like the works of the Bront?
sisters and Dickens. Older classics like Paradise Lost and Gulliver’s Travels . Voltaire and Shakespeare. Of course, various editions of the Bible. It would have been odd to the Schoens to leave any of
these out. Otherwise, they might have questioned the veracity of my “proper” upbringing.
There were other books that I was able to secure through the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Particularly moving
were the memoirs of slaves in the Americas and the West Indies. Mary Prince, John Brown. More, still more. Across the ocean,
the no-longer-united States had just begun a war over the right to continue their owning and bartering of Africans like chattel.
Here, in my room, I read about the cruelty of slavery with mixed emotions. I myself was once a slave, a victim of the Europeans’
murderous trade in which even the Dahomey king sought his fortune. My rescue by Captain Forbes and my subsequent adoption
into Queen Victoria’s family as her goddaughter were meant to symbolize a victory of British abolitionism. Queen Victoria
made sure it did.
No longer a human sacrifice and living in Britain, I wasn’t like the slaves fighting for their lives in other places of the world. I had so many things, even just in this room. These books. The washstand. The chest of drawers in the corner. A tall mirror next to my bed. My little hands cupped my heart-shaped, hollowed-out face as I looked into it. How dare I complain? That’s what they would say in the Anti-Slavery Society if I ever told them how Ade’s death had left me a body without a soul. How my identity had been stripped from me, like carving skin with a knife, layer by layer. And then the flesh down to the bone.
I didn’t like to, but if I stared hard enough at my hands, I’d surely be able to see the deep purple scars made from strokes
of a strap courtesy of the illustrious educational system of the Female Institution in Freetown. The strokes on my back were
more noticeable. Superintendent Sass wasn’t one to go easy on even a child’s flesh.
To make a puppet, one must kill a live thing first. Children then played with the little wooden doll not knowing or caring
about its former life as a magnificent tree.
Perhaps that was the most frustrating of all. Puppets were not allowed to give voice to their frustrations. They, like me,
were not allowed the grace of that ever-elusive soul.
I slipped a picture of myself I’d sketched out from underneath my pillow. With each stroke of the quill, I’d reproduced as
well as I could the portrait William Bambridge had taken of me when I was thirteen, five years after I was first brought to
England. The Queen had beamed with such pride after it’d been completed; she must not have noticed the emptiness in the eyes.
Since the portrait technically belonged to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s private collection, I couldn’t take it with
me. I sketched it from memory on my own and left the eyes blank so that I wouldn’t forget that this hollow creature was what
they truly thought of me.
“Mr. Bellamy. Mr. Bambridge. Uncle George. McCoskry. Phipps...” I chanted my list as I stared at my marionette other in
ink.
Several breaths more grounded me. After slipping on a straight white chemise, I pressed the backs of my legs against the wooden frame of my bed before letting myself fall onto the mattress. The high collar of my nightgown felt tighter than usual. Like a noose.
I didn’t care if all this were to be taken away from me. But I had plans. I wouldn’t be carted off before I finished them.
An uphill battle against a ubiquitous enemy with unlimited power. Among the slave narratives I’d read, that was one theme
I could relate to.
One cannot defeat the enemy without cleverness and clear thinking.
I shut my eyes and considered my predicament. Bertie might only still have suspicions as to who was under the mask that night.
The opium and the distortion of my voice behind the plague doctor’s beak left room for reasonable doubt. As for Harriet, the
girl joined my scheme only thinking I’d cause scandal and embarrassment for her mother’s friends. After seeing Vale with a
gun and Captain Forbes seconds away from his head being blown off, her rebellion could waver. She had no idea I was behind
Mr. Bellamy’s death.
But how many hours had already passed since then? If Harriet had betrayed me, if Bertie was sure of my presence, I would have
gotten a visit by now from a man summoning me to Windsor Castle—or the police station. No, there was no need to panic yet.
Besides, even in the event of a disaster, I still had cards to play. A prince and a courtier together in an opium den on the
East End. Well, that offered several possibilities.
I grinned.
Tomorrow, I would have to find a way to ferret them both out.
“Oh no you don’t!” Mrs. Schoen came barreling down the creaky wooden stairs just as my hand touched the knob of the front
door. “No more socializing for you, Sally, until you help out around here.”
Blood rushed to my face as I let my arm drop to my side.
“Yes, Mama,” I said dutifully as she passed me and strode into the kitchen, cursing under my breath when she was out of earshot. Lazy mornings by the riverside in North Kent were still meant for chores, according to Mama. More so with her husband, Reverend Schoen, out evangelizing somewhere in England miles away and their daughter, Anne, teaching somewhere out in the countryside. I sensed that was partly the reason for Mama’s frustration as she beat the carpets into submission on clothing wires behind the house.
“I wasn’t trying to do anything terribly ‘social,’ you know,” I told her while we washed dishes in a basin. Mama poured water
from the teakettle delicately so as to not burn my hands while I scrubbed.
“What?”
“Earlier, you said ‘no more socializing.’” The clean metal bucket was for rinsing but the water was far too cold. I flinched
with annoyance when my hands cut through the surface. And I was already annoyed today. “I was just going for a walk. That’s
all. It’s not like I spend my days mindlessly flittering about looking for a good time.”
“Did I say you were?” Mama sounded exasperated. Like I was a child. I hated it.
I bit my lip, my cheeks red. Normally, whenever I was irritated with Mama, I was much better at hiding it. But every once
a while, it slipped out. “It sounded like it.”
Mama wiped her brow with a soapy hand. “Trust me, child, I know you’re far more responsible than other young girls your age.”
Other girls—like the elites she desperately wanted me to emulate. Otherwise why did she spend so much of our savings on the
latest dresses and hats?
“But responsibility is key for any woman,” Mama continued. “When you wake up in the morning, it’s not to go for walks, it’s to keep your house. That’s
how you’ll win a good man.”
My hands felt colder than the water. A good man. Like the reverend, whose evangelical mission always conveniently kept him far away from home and his lonely wife? And when he was home he wanted his food and a good rest. All the while Mrs. Schoen was withering away. I shuddered to think what would happen if I weren’t here. What depths of sadness she would fall into. But that was “marriage”: the life I was supposedly aiming for.
I bristled and turned from her to hide my grimace. The only men I was concerned with were the ones I was trying to destroy.
And at the moment, Bertie topped that list. While I was here washing dishes, he could be telling the Queen everything. The
thought made my spine snap like I’d been hit by one of Superintendent Sass’s straps. Trapping that little git before he could
expose me was my top priority.
But first: sweeping the house. I banged my head against the broomstick after Mama shoved it into my hands.
Well, these weren’t nearly as bad as the grueling tasks I was given at the Female Institution. Not more than a year after
I landed in England, the Queen had sent me to Sierra Leone to receive what she considered a “proper” education. An all-girl
missionary school just filled to the brim with little Africans ripe for rearing. And what did they have us children do? Plant
crops, plow fields, not to mention the domestic work we performed at the homes of the missionaries—all without pay, of course.
Remembering that hellhole made me quiver with rage, but it wouldn’t be sated just yet, not until I could escape the house.
After cleaning up, Mama sat at the table in the drawing room nearly slumped and sent me to make some tea. Her full cheeks
were reddened from fatigue, her large eyes sunken.
“You look tired, Mama.” I approached her with a steaming cup and, after she accepted, brought some butter and bread for good
measure. “Eat up, and then go take a good rest.”
“Thank you, darling.” She held my head with both hands, rough from years from domestic work, and gave me a soft kiss on the forehead. “But I’m fine.”
“Oh...” I swallowed the lump in my throat.
She blew on the surface of her tea, and sipped. “Come sit, Sally. What’s better than tea and bread in the afternoon? You need
to eat to keep up your strength. I don’t like how gaunt you’ve been looking these days.”
I smiled weakly. It was true: revenge hadn’t had the best effect on my appetite. Mama was probably the only one who would
notice the slightest change in my pallor.
What had begun as a pastime for Queen Victoria and her ladies had quickly set the upper classes aflame across England. Teatime:
what a splendid way to fill that void between lunch and dinner. I’d seen the ritual while visiting Windsor Castle; the ladies-in-waiting
would make sure to have their finest on outside in the gardens under the afternoon sun. But Mrs. Schoen and I were no ladies-in-waiting.
We were actors, mimicking those wealthy white women as we’d been taught.
Was Bertie having tea with his mother now, telling her all about Uncle George in the opium den?
I did as I was instructed anyway, pulling out a chair and sitting across from Mama.
“Sally, your hair has become a bit rough since the wedding,” Mama told me, buttering her bread. “Appearances are everything,
you know. We live in a superficial world.”
“I know, I know,” I said, drinking my tea, flustered. Mama was always fretting about how I looked. Clearly, being judged by
these people every day had done a number on her psyche. She did her best to transform into them, but she wasn’t them. Trying to get as close as possible was a survival technique she aimed to pass on to me.
“You’re getting to that age,” she ranted on. “It’s an important time for you. There are so many good men out there looking
for a partner and...”
Whenever she started this kind of talk, I drowned her out almost by instinct. I didn’t need to work that hard anyway. My mind
was already half-distracted with the various Prince Albert scenarios. How likely was it that he would admit to his mother
that he went anywhere near an opium den? But then, if he really did see me that night...
“...And you know, finding the right partner for a woman is of the utmost importance,” Mama finished.
“Really?” I dropped my teacup on the table with a rather loud clunk, determined to shift the direction of the conversation
now that the topic of marriage and men had finally come to an end. “Shall I break a vase and heat it in the fireplace, then?”
I rubbed the black curls lining my forehead.
Mama scrunched up her nose in disgust. “Oh, heavens no. You’d better not touch a single one of my vases, child.” And with
a huff, she added, “Where did you even learn such a thing?”
From home. When I was little, whenever we needed to comb our hair, we’d use pieces of a broken pot and heat it over a hasty
fire. The heated concavity of the vase helped straighten out the thick curls when we rubbed the broken clay on our heads.
It wasn’t to achieve straight hair; it was to make the curls a little easier to comb through. I quite liked shaving my hair
entirely. My head was cleanly shaven when the Dahomey killed my parents and enslaved me.
A shaven head wouldn’t do here. Not if Mrs. Schoen could help it. It wasn’t “proper.” Mama herself had a full head of hair,
which she tamed down to two braids down the back of her skull. With her high black collar, she indeed looked suitably Protestant.
Light knocking on the door drew my attention from my tea. Mrs. Schoen went to answer it and returned with a letter.
I knew that red seal.
“My Sally, it’s a letter for you from Prince Albert!” She handed it to me, beaming with excitement.
My whole body went rigid. So Little Bertie had made his move.
I had to calm down.
“Why, aren’t you popular?” Mama said, giggling behind a hand. “Are you sure something interesting didn’t happen at the wedding
that I should know about?”
Sometimes, that petulant, childlike side of me had half a mind to tell her that I was being pursued by one of the Queen’s
sons just to see her head explode with panic. Imagining things was all fun and games, but one mustn’t fly too close to the
sun. Especially women like the two of us. She almost certainly would have told me this.
I unfolded the letter.
“What does it say?” Mama asked, tilting her head to the side.
It took a special skill to read Bertie’s crass handwriting. He didn’t mince words. There was only one line written here:
Be at Hill House today at four o’clock in the afternoon so we can speak face-to-face.
And his royal seal at the bottom. He certainly wasn’t a poet.
Damn it. I folded it up quickly. “Just thanking me for being present at his sister’s wedding.”
“Three days late? Well, I believe it’s better late than never.” Mama folded her arms.
It was bound to happen sooner or later. I was a girl with a plan to get things done. Not to be taken lightly. If this was
to be a battle between minds, it went without saying that I had the upper hand.
Hill House, then.
I could see the Royal Navy Dockyard from outside Hill House. The place had housed senior naval officers and several royals over the many centuries, so why not an irritating prince?
I arrived promptly. The royal naval coat of arms hung on the chestnut walls of Hill House. The short man who opened the door
almost shooed me away the moment he saw me. I was used to it. I always carried an old newspaper with my photograph with me
so they could confirm my identity.
“Sarah Forbes Bonetta—oh, you’re her ?” He looked me up and down. My attire matched the name of Queen Victoria’s famous goddaughter: an eggshell-white pinafore,
a billowing green dress, and a bonnet covering my hair. But for men like him, something about a Black woman dressed in the
elaborate clothes of the upper class inspired suspicion regardless of the evidence presented. He brought out a monocle from
his jacket pocket and began examining the newspaper. I tried very hard not to roll my eyes.
“Humph.” Finally, he relented, straightening up. “I was told to expect a woman like you.”
Which meant this inspection was entirely unnecessary. The greasy oaf. Plastering a smile on my face, I gave him a ladylike
nod and showed him the letter.
Be at Hill House today at three o’clock in the afternoon so we can speak face-to-face.
And his royal seal at the bottom.
The doorman gave the letter a sidelong look. “Three o’clock? I thought the prince was expecting you later?”
“I did only as the letter instructed me to do.” I absently tugged at my long white gloves. “It’s almost three now.” At least according to the grandfather clock in the corner of the foyer. I folded up the letter and slipped it into my pinafore. “It’s not proper to be late for a meeting, especially with a royal. If you would please?”
“Uh, b-but—” The man’s thin lips pursed in indignation, and a quick flash of worry in his eyes was enough of a clue that my
suspicions were true. After a pause, he relented and showed me to the staircase that would take me to the second floor of
the south wing, where Bertie was staying.
Bertie should have locked his door. I made sure the hallway was empty before I opened it to the sound of frenzied panting—both
his and that of the woman he was crushing against the bed frame.
The prince’s time in the military, however controlled, was certainly serving him well. Now that his clothes were strewn about
the floor, I could see he’d gained weight; his back muscles were more defined, his arms thicker and hairier than the scrawny
sticks I was used to. I wondered how long they’d carry on before they realized I’d already shut the door behind me.
I leaned back against the door with a casual yawn. That seemed to do the trick. The blonde woman, whose languid head had been
rolling from side to side against the wall, gasped and immediately pushed the prince away from her. It took a few awkward
tries to get Bertie to stop; he yelled when he glanced behind him and practically threw the poor naked girl off the bed.
“S-Sally!” he sputtered, and immediately searched for something to cover him, except his clothes were all on the ground.
I could barely hide my giggles as I watched him wrap a white bedsheet around his pelvis while his paramour du jour scoured
the floor for something to cover herself.
“Sally, what on earth are you doing here?”
“Goodness, but didn’t you summon me?”
Always catch your enemy off guard. Then you have the upper hand.
The letter I’d forged had done the trick—each word the same, except for the meeting time. Trips to Windsor Castle had provided me plenty of opportunity to nick his royal seal. It wasn’t as difficult as one would think. Boy Jones managed to pilfer from Buckingham for years before they shipped him off to Australia. When his seal went missing, Bertie didn’t tell his mother. He just did as always: got another one. Replacing items like he replaced women.
“You’re early.” With a scowl, Bertie slipped off the bed. After yanking the nameless woman off her feet, he began pushing
her toward the door with nothing on but the skin she was born in. He shoved the rest of her clothes into her arms before shoving
her out of the room.
“How cruel,” I remarked, watching him adjust the bedsheet around himself. “There’s quite a draft out there.”
“She’ll be fine.”
I walked by the arched windows, the velvet curtains predictably drawn. If I were any other lady, this would be scandal. But
Bertie and I had grown up together, and he knew telling the Queen what I’d seen would be bad for both of us.
The room had its typical royal indulgences. At the center of the room was a four-poster bed with golden tassels hanging from
the green drapery. The floral wallpaper depicted red parrots perched on trees. In nearly every corner were grand leather couches,
and above me a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, illuminating the perfectly clean red-and-green rug. The room had
golden-framed mirrors stuck on the walls—everywhere. I wondered if Bertie much liked looking at himself when he was with women.
A shuddering thought.
“Why on earth did that bloody doorman let you in early?” Bertie muttered.
Sitting down on one of the couches, I crossed my legs and gave him a sidelong look. “Well then, Bertie, why did you ask me to see you? Surely it wasn’t to give me a front-row seat to...” I hesitated and stared down his sweaty body, from his chest to the bedsheet he was dragging around. “Whatever this was.”
His face was still boiling red. I wouldn’t look away even if he told me to. Instead of facing me outright, he positioned himself
strategically halfway behind the green drapes of his bed. It was as good a shield as any.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Certainly not my permission. You’re old enough now to engage in a number of activities, though I don’t think your fiancée
would approve of this one.” Satisfying wasn’t a strong enough word to describe how it felt to see Bertie stiffen up. “Alexandra, I believe her name was? The Princess
of Denmark.”
Bertie cleared his throat to buy himself some time. He was hedging his bets. Finally, he opened his mouth again. “There are
some establishments in London that a lady should never go near. Especially over on the East End.”
“Do you mean a lady like the one who just left here with nary an undergarment on?” I pointed to the door.
Flustered, Bertie made sure the drapes properly covered him.
“Sally, I want to know where you went after my sister’s wedding.”
“Oh, that dreadful affair.” I tugged at my gloves again. “Of course, congratulations to your sister, but goodness, there were
times during the ceremony I felt as if I were attending a funeral. Needless to say, I went home to Mama as soon as I could.”
“Well, my father casts as large a shadow in death as he did in life.” And those shadows passed over Bertie’s face as his expression
wilted. His father had never approved of his gallivanting ways, and his tragic illness and death did nothing to sway his son,
much to the Queen’s sorrow. Was it rebellion or compulsion that kept a girl in his bed?
“I’m sure if your father could see you now—”
“That’s not important.” Bertie waved me off and turned his head from me, though not quickly enough to hide his shame. “Are you sure you went home after Alice’s wedding?”
“Of course. Do you have any reason to believe I didn’t?”
Bertie stepped out from behind the green drapes to reach inside the dresser drawer next to his bed. And in his hand...
“It looks like a playing card,” I said, my tone neutral. “The Queen of Spades.”
The one Harriet had slipped into Uncle George’s pocket. Bertie was watching my expression very closely. I frowned and blinked
as if endlessly curious.
“I found this in an opium den on East End. Aren’t you always fiddling with this one?”
Rui was right. It was a bad habit I had to get rid of.
“It’s a playing card.” I scoffed as if he was a fool. Well, he was. A suspecting fool.
“I followed Harriet there. She told me it was yours .”
I didn’t so much as flinch because I knew it was a lie. His tell was a slight tremble in his bottom lip. “She did not.” I
said it confidently, confidently enough to shake his resolve. “And I can barely believe Harriet would find herself in such
a place of ill repute.”
“She was.” The lift of his chin told me he was finally telling the truth. “I saw her with my own eyes.”
“Then I guess the better question is, what in the world were you doing in an opium den in London after your own sister’s wedding
while your family is still in mourning?”
A direct hit.
“I—I told you,” Bertie stuttered, his jaw locked. “I followed Harriet to the East End and—”
“And did she go inside the opium den like you did? And why follow the young lady Harriet in the first place? I’m well aware of your appetite for women, but surely you’re not in the habit of stalking courtiers in the dead of night, are you?”
For several moments, Bertie didn’t know what to do. I took advantage of the silence. Rising to my feet, I picked his trousers
off the floor and handed them to him.
“Bertie, what in the world is going on with you?” I made sure to add a soft tone to my voice. “Opium dens and women? Really,
what would your mother think if she knew about all this?”
“That’s not—” Bertie started as I shook my head and turned away from him. “You’ve got me all wrong.”
“And now you’re accusing me of terrible things. How heartless .” Sniffling, I walked toward the window, placing a hand on the curtain as if threatening to open it and expose his secrets
for the docks to see.
Bertie wasn’t a tough nut to crack. A mixture of embarrassment, shame, and confusion was enough to make him relent. “Harriet
was there, but she said nothing about you. Nothing at all. I—I lied,” he confessed.
I showed Bertie my most heartbroken expression. “Oh, Bertie...”
“Harriet said she was there following Captain George Forbes. She found him by accident on his way to the den and had to verify
with her own eyes.”
“What did you say?” I frowned in disbelief. “Harriet followed Captain Forbes ?”
“I believe he’s your uncle, correct?”
I covered my mouth with a dainty hand. “Uncle George? At an opium den. That can’t be true! If the Forbes family ever found
out...”
I knew seeing me in distress would make him believe he now had the upper hand. He puffed out his chest accordingly. Everything
about him was so predictable.
“Don’t worry, Sally,” he said. “No one has to know about that night. Not about your uncle George and not about me either. Let’s just the both of us drop it.”
If you catch my drift.
I nodded. “You’re right. Let’s just drop it.”
And drop it we did. I left him to dress, my eyes lingering on the Queen of Spades for just a second before shutting the door
behind me. Bertie was out of my way for now.
As for Captain Forbes, well, Bertie was more than a little mistaken. The Forbes family would know soon enough about his disgrace
in the opium den. As a matter of fact, in a few days, they’d have a hearty helping of disgrace to deal with.
I’d make sure of it.