Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
I was summoned by Queen Victoria to Windsor Castle that evening. Her officers had almost quite literally hauled me out of
Gowramma’s drawing room, where we’d been laughing about the fiasco with a bottle of champagne.
“Do come by and visit me and Edith sometime again soon, Sally,” she said with a wave, holding her baby in her arms outside
her mansion while some court officials shoved me into the carriage. She really did live for chaos. I suppose it was always
easier being a spectator.
I stared at my defiant reflection in the carriage window. I couldn’t give McCoskry’s real victims the justice they deserved,
but through these proxies, I believed in my heart that I’d given them an opportunity to speak their truths and expose an immoral
swindler. That this just happened to coincide with my own personal quest for justice was simply the icing on the cake.
Justice? Or vengeance? Are they the same?
Wilkes’s wife began screaming again. When I closed my eyes, I could see the bullet hole in her husband’s head.
I didn’t stop shivering until I’d entered the palace. I was led to one of the Queen’s dressing room. There, the Queen’s courtiers were moving clothing, blankets, and other paraphernalia out of the room, casting me mousy, secretive little glances as they passed by me and scurried through the door.
Queen Victoria sat in a blue chair lined in gold at a desk covered in flowing white silk. She was looking at herself in the
mirror. I wonder if she saw her younger self—the bright blue-eyed teen girl who’d fallen madly in love with her husband. Or
if she saw herself as she was now, dour and dressed in black. The love seat, couch, and chaises were also draped in black
sheets. The grand mirror at the end of the room was turned around. The drapes for the windows had been shut. And so every
day would be.
Lord Ponsonby and John Brown stood in front of the extravagant oak drawer between the two windows. I could see the candles
flickering behind them on the wood. Each man glared at me with suspicion. But it was the Queen who I was watching. She didn’t
speak to me for as long as I stood there waiting. She was glaring at herself.
“Sally,” she finally said, unmoving, her back to me. I could see her reflection in the little mirror on her desk. Her sunken
eyes. “How is Mrs. Schoen?”
Taken aback, I bowed my head almost by instinct. “Well, Your Majesty.”
“I see.” The Queen paused. “I will be going to Balmoral Castle in Scotland tomorrow. Before then, I wish to ask you some questions.”
I shut out Mrs. Wilkes’s screams and prepared myself. “Yes, Your Majesty.” I curtsied.
“I’m sure you’ve heard what happened at Exeter Hall the other day. That disaster. It’s all over the papers.” The Queen sucked
in a long breath through her nose as if trying to calm herself. “William McCoskry is bound to leave England as soon as he
can arrange it.”
So I’d sent him fleeing across the Atlantic with his tail between his legs. Good. After this fiasco, the Anti-Slavery Society would surely open up an investigation on his so-called governorship. He wouldn’t be able to hide in Lagos either. He was finished.
“Were you there at Exeter Hall the moment it happened?”
I pursed my lips. I couldn’t exactly lie. People had seen me being ushered in by the prince himself.
“Yes.” I kept my face solemn. “Bertie’s speech, at least, was wonderful.”
“He didn’t tell me he was making it. I know he’s been trying to prove himself since his father passed. But why in the world
would he ask McCoskry to aid him?”
Lord Ponsonby and John Brown watched me from the oak drawer. Only the latter actually seemed intimidating with his height
and burly brawn. And the intensity of his gaze—like a rabid dog bred only to protect its master.
“I’m sure Bertie believed McCoskry would be of some help.”
“Mistakenly so,” said the Queen.
I nodded. “Yes, unfortunately.”
Silence. The Queen clucked her tongue and placed one hand upon the other.
“Then again, I know my son. He’s not one to think deeply about stratagem. I’m not even confident he wrote his own speech.”
Well, in a way, she was right about that. The Queen squeezed her hands.
“Tell me the truth: Was it your idea that Bertie would bring William McCoskry to his address at Exeter Hall?”
I stayed perfectly still. There was no evidence that I did. Bertie didn’t discuss his speech with her.
“No, Your Majesty.”
“No?” The Queen’s tone was graveyard quiet. “But earlier today, Mrs. Schoen told me it was.”
My heart stopped. “P-Pardon?”
“While you were at Lady Gowramma and Colonel John Campell’s residence, I had a few men visit your mother in Chatham. She let
Bertie into your home. She heard your conversation.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to tamp down my anger, but it didn’t work. How dare this banshee wield Mama against me? Mama
wouldn’t have known the implications and she certainly wouldn’t refuse the request of a court official for “innocent” information.
My chest rose and fell as I calmed myself.
I lowered my head in a show of pure shame. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. You’re right. I did suggest it to Bertie. I just wanted
his speech to go well. I thought it such a good opportunity for him to show his worth in public.”
Lord Ponsonby stepped forward, hands clenched. “That is not for you to decide,” he started, but Brown gripped his shoulder
and kept him in place. This was Queen Victoria’s investigation.
“You must have known that although we publicly support abolition, given the prince’s position, any mishap would cause public
scrutiny.”
The key to feigning innocence for me was imagining a deer in the forest, sprinkled with dew. I’d seen one once while exploring
the woods and while I wasn’t very impressed, I thought it a good reference. I tried to channel one.
“He is the Prince of Wales. I never once doubted his ability,” I said.
“Then you haven’t been paying much attention to Bertie, have you?”
John Brown cleared his throat while Ponsonby shifted uncomfortably on his feet. What a rare display of maternal affection
from Her Majesty.
“My son has been acting strangely around you. I’ve been receiving reports. Mrs. Schoen herself confirmed that he visited your house. But this strangeness... I saw it myself the night I tried to contact my dear Albert.”
I was shocked she had paid attention to me at all during the séance, or could see me through that thick black veil she wore.
Perhaps the sight of her son holding my hand so desperately bothered her.
I planned some kind of excuse on my lips, but it didn’t have a chance to form. I jumped, startled, as Bertie burst through
the dressing room doors. Attendants flailed behind him, trying to stop him and failing miserably.
“What is the meaning of this, Mother? Why have you summoned Sally here?”
“Prince Albert!” This time Ponsonby rushed forward without Brown’s burly grip to stop him. “This has nothing to do with you.
Please return to your room—”
Bertie shoved him off. “This has everything to do with me.” He turned to his mother, his hands balled into fists. “I was the
one who bungled the speech at Exeter Hall. I was the one who created the humiliation and yet you summon Sally here. Why? To
blame her for your son’s foolishness.”
“What can be blamed for my son’s foolishness, I wonder?” The Queen stood up, vicious despite her diminutive stature. She clearly
intimidated her son, who took a sudden step back. “It can’t be our genetics because otherwise you would have gotten my sense
and your father’s intelligence and propensity for study. It couldn’t be your tutors, for they did all they could in trying
to wrangle out your disobedience so that you could learn history and arithmetic. It surely isn’t the military officers and
the professors who complained about your wayward ways. So what is it, Bertie? What has caused your absolute and complete foolishness ?”
She banged the table with her hand, rattling the mirror. John Brown rushed to her side, gripping her other hand, but the woman
was shaking, actually shaking in front of us.
“If not for that foolishness, my husband would be alive, I’m sure of it. Oh, you horrible boy.” The Queen looked away from
him, crumpling over the desk.
And Bertie. Bertie, who must have heard this a thousand times, in different words, stared at the floral-patterned carpeted
floor, gripping his brown trousers as if he might tear them off.
“You needn’t worry about Father anymore, Mother,” he whispered. “You’ve clearly already found his replacement.”
The Queen whipped around, mouth agape as if he’d committed blasphemy. But it was hard to deny anything with John Brown wrapped
around her right in front of him.
Bertie took a forbidding step forward, the sight of the two of them incensing him more by the second. “You’re going to Balmoral
soon, aren’t you? A nice little romantic getaway, I suspect.”
“Your Highness!” Ponsonby waggled about helplessly and rather uselessly; by this point there was no one in the room willing
to even acknowledge his existence.
“Are you going to give him my inheritance when all is said and done? He’d certainly make a better king than I, don’t you think,
Mama?”
“You terrible, terrible son!” The Queen broke free from Brown’s grip and stepped forward, stomping her feet on the ground
like the petulant child she was when she became the ruler of the empire, or so some whisper.
Bertie turned his gaze to me. He soaked me in, absorbing everything from the feather bonnet on my head to my high-heeled boots. “Well,” he said, grinning at his mother. “We all need our support in the wake of Father’s death. Alice just got married. Vicky has her husband. You have your support.” He strode toward me and grabbed my wrist. “And I have mine.”
He pulled me into a kiss, long and deep, his hands pressed against the small of my back while he crushed my head against his.
It was an aggressive kiss, one meant to prove something. I could hear everyone in the room gasping, and somewhere in the room,
the legs of a chair screeched against the carpet. I peeked out of the corner of my eye: it was Ponsonby. The man looked as
if all his hair would trickle off his scalp and land in a pile on the floor all at once.
But it was Queen Victoria’s reaction that ignited me. Her expression of utter disdain and disgust. But I was her precious
goddaughter and she my good-hearted, altruistic mother who believed in the equality of peoples. The Queen of the Whites who
brought an African slave into her royal family out of the goodness of her heart. She didn’t seem upset when Bertie dumped
honey on my hair. She didn’t stir when her own attendants and courtiers mocked me loudly whenever they saw us together. But
now, now she seemed very interested. Scandalized.
I wanted to punish her. I felt, indeed, that she deserved to be punished.
I returned Bertie’s kiss so passionately even he was taken aback, but that didn’t relieve his tongue, which found the crevices
of my mouth and flicked my lips.
“This is absolute madness!” John Brown growled. And he was a big man. When he growled, the whole castle could hear it.
Bertie didn’t care. He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me to him. “What’s madness is that I’ve been putting up with my
mother’s nonsense for so long and for no reason nor gain.”
He was a brat. A brazen prince who only saw himself and his own well-being in his mind’s eye. In that way, I suspected, he was just like his mother. Perhaps utter and complete self-absorption was what it meant to be the heir to the throne of England. But what Bertie didn’t know, as he was using me, was that I was also using him. Seeing Queen Victoria’s expression twist and turn and make shapes I never thought possible made my heart tremble with glee. I hadn’t felt so alive in so many years. It took everything I had to hide my triumphant grin.
The room was silent. The grandfather clock in the corner of the room ticked as time ominously seemed to slow to a halt.
The Queen parted her lips. “Tell him, Sally. What you did to Captain Frederick Forbes.”
My arms fell to my sides. I couldn’t feel them.
“What? You mean the man who brought Sally here, don’t you?” Bertie looked down at me and shook me a little. “What’s she blabbering
about, Sally?”
The Queen said nothing more. She knew. Somehow she knew that Forbes didn’t die of an illness. His medicine had been replaced
by poison by a frightened and furious little princess. He’d saved her from ritual sacrificial in Africa only to sacrifice
her soul to a different god. He’d killed her friend.
I didn’t confirm or deny anything. I gave her a noncommittal frown with a hint of confusion, looking up at Bertie, because
there was no proof. As long as there was no proof, what did it matter? Bertie would never believe her. That she would know
her goddaughter was a murderer only to ignore it for years, likely for the sake of her own reputation.
The Queen’s gamble was nothing but an empty threat. I snuggled closer to Bertie.
And yet.
The hisses of those I’d gotten killed in this war was pandemonium battering my skull.
But Ade. My ancestors. My gods. I could hear them cheering me on.
I could see my younger self dancing in Mrs. Phipps’s drawing room, crying on the inside.
They started this.
I placed my head on Bertie’s shoulder, my face a perfect mask while the storm raged within me. It felt like the air had been
sucked out of the room. Like nobody could breathe unless they were given permission by some higher being. I didn’t want them
to breathe.
If we were to all die, then let us die together.
I wouldn’t feel guilty. I had no reason to.
They started this.
Because, from the start, their “love” for me was conditional.
The door opened behind me. Lord Ponsonby, John Brown, the attendants. The Queen. Their gazes tore away from Bertie and me
and toward the entrance.
My throat closed. Queen Victoria was shrieking.
Time slowed. My nerves tingled as if they’d been set on fire. Bertie and I turned to find Dalton Sass shutting the door behind
him with his gun pointed at me. My heart stopped.
“What in the blazes!”
“Protect the Queen!”
I don’t know which man said what. All I heard was Dalton calling my name.
“Sally... dear Sally...”
Dalton? My mind was playing tricks on me. What stood in front of me must have been some kind of specter. It’s what my mind
had tricked me into believing until he began to taunt me.
“Do you know why my mother hated you so?” He bared his teeth, his eyes unfocused. He was wearing dingy clothes that hadn’t been washed, his face bruised, perhaps roughed up by the police officers who were supposed to have him under lock and key. “I suspect for the same reason the Queen’s love for you is nothing but a facade. You were nothing but a project from the beginning, Sally, and had you shown your true face from the beginning, the Queen would have had you disappear like so many others.”
Behind John Brown’s protective figure the Queen stiffened. I saw her out of the corner of my eye. She whispered something
in his ear. And he nodded.
“My mother knew it. She knew the truth about you children. And she wasn’t the only one.” He looked over at Ponsonby and grinned.
“Oh dear, look who’s grown back his confidence. Lord Ponsonby, don’t stand there as if you aren’t anything other than a sorry
sack of excrement. Last we spoke, you were terrified as any that the truth would come out.”
As Ponsonby’s knees knocked, I gathered my courage. “What truth? What are you talking about? Or is this just more of the rantings
of a madman?”
Dalton batted his jacket pocket by his hip. “You would love to know the truth, wouldn’t you? But the Queen would just die
if you knew. About you wayward children. You ‘Wards of the Empire’—”
I’d been so captured by Dalton’s ramblings, his sudden appearance, that I hadn’t notice John Brown bring out a revolver.
If I had been but a moment quicker. But nothing was faster than John Brown’s trigger finger. The shot rang out, rattling my
bones, the noise slicing through my skull. And it took me a moment to realize.
John Brown shot Dalton Sass in the head.
I screamed, stumbling backward. Bertie backed up until he was flat against the luxuriously papered wall. Ponsonby fell to
his knees. The only ones who didn’t move a muscle, who remained perfectly still and in control of themselves, were the Queen
and her John Brown.
I stared at the pool of blood seeping out from Dalton Sass’s skull, staining the carpet. I stared at it for so long, I couldn’t remember whose blood it was. Was it Bellamy’s? Wilkes’s? There was just so much. Endless, like a rippling river. My head felt light while my body felt heavy. How strange. I couldn’t feel my arms.
I crumpled to the floor.
“Take him away this instant,” said the Queen. “And tell no one of this. I don’t want the press knowing anything about this.”
Dalton wouldn’t have been the first person to sneak into a British palace. Years ago, a lad, Boy Jones, snuck into Buckingham
Palace despite its security. He had done it so many times he became a folk hero. But that wasn’t what Dalton was trying to
achieve. He was here to kill me. And not just physically.
I stared at him as Ponsonby and John Brown lifted his body. Wards of the Empire...
“Wait a minute,” I said as they began to take his body away, because I spied something in his jacket pocket. I took my chance
and ran toward him, hugging his body as if grieving. “He was our friend. Oh, what a terrible tragedy!” I cried as my fingers
snagged the slip of paper from his pocket.
“Sally, you poor girl, don’t do this to yourself,” said Bertie, rushing to my side. “You’ll faint, poor thing.”
He didn’t notice me slipping the bloody paper into the top of my glove.
When Dalton beat his hip, it wasn’t just for theatrics. This was the true weapon he’d come here to wield.
The letter. The Queen hadn’t seen me pocket it. But it was clear from the words Dalton had uttered and her wild eyes and heavy
breath that Lord Ponsonby was right to be wary of it.
“He was a madman. And perhaps if my mother wasn’t so busy with her John Brown and her séances, we’d have better security around here.” He shot his mother a glower and grabbed my shoulder. “Come on, Sally. This is all too much. I’ll take you home.”
He began to push me toward the door when Queen Victoria cleared her throat. “Mr. Brown! Separate them,” the Queen ordered.
John Brown did as he was told, grabbing both of Bertie’s arms and hauling the cursing boy away from me.
“Sally,” she called after me as I stood paralyzed by the door. “I don’t know what all of this nonsense is about, but it’s
clear you are at the center of it. You are to marry Captain Davies as soon as I return from Scotland. Then you will be taken back to your home in West Africa, where I suspect you’ll spend the rest
of your days. Until that time comes you will behave. You will not spend your last two weeks in Britain making trouble. I forbid
it. And I will ensure it. Be the obedient, malleable little girl I first met all those years ago.”
Malleable. I pressed my lips together. “That’s not really a life,” I whispered.
“But at least you’ll live.”
Bertie wasn’t smart enough to hear the direct threat. Both of us seemed to have left our masks behind in this civilized, murderous
struggle. I gave Queen Victoria one final curtsy before leaving the bloody dressing room with her son.