Sixteen
Sixteen
When I was young, whenever the Queen would invite me to Windsor, whether on Christmas or midsummer, Mrs. Mallet would meet
me at the station, sometimes with her daughter Eva. She was a good friend of Mrs. Phipps and friend to the royal household.
I wasn’t surprised Queen Victoria used her to spy on me.
That was very clearly what this was. As if her bumping into me in the middle of Windsor Castle wasn’t obvious enough. Why
else would the Queen suddenly insist that she take me to my “wife education session”?
Several days after my last visit to Windsor Castle, we were on our way to London, where we would catch a train to Miss Welsh
in Brighton. Little Eva had come with her mother. Eva, now seven years old, laid her head on her mother’s lap in the roomy
carriage. Though Eva loved rides, she could never quite seem to keep her eyes open whenever in a locomotive in motion.
“Mrs. Mallet, would you be very upset if we stopped for some coffee in London?” The carriage wheels hit a rock that nearly
shook the silly hat off Mallet’s raven head. I helped adjust it for her. Little Eva didn’t seem roused from her rest in the
slightest. “I’m just so nervous about meeting Miss Welsh. I’m worried she’ll be a little too strict with me.”
Surprised, Mrs. Mallet patted Eva’s head absently, looking around the carriage with a nervous grin before nodding. “Of course, Sally, whyever not?”
I knew why she was nervous. In the royal household, I was the Queen’s adopted goddaughter, proof of her miracle hand that
extended across the globe. But in public, I was simply a Black woman in a rather nice dress. The public would surely ask if
they saw us: What are you doing with someone like that?
It was what she was thinking. Her eyes gave it away the moment the carriage dropped us off on a busy street. Mrs. Mallet was
checking for reactions.
Under the furious morning sun, a bright-red-and-yellow carriage clopped past the white commerce tents where gentlemen and
women bartered for posh items that would give their homes the adequate wealthy facade they so desired.
I sat, with my terrible cup of coffee, at an open café on the other side of street. Across from me on the other end of the
small white table, Mrs. Mallet fidgeted in her seat. Eva sat between us, eating her cake like the happy child she was.
“This is quite a lovely spot, isn’t it?” I kept my voice low and calm as I was served some rather foul-tasting coffee.
“Yes,” she said, her bottom lip curled. “Lovely.”
She needn’t have worried. There was a reason I didn’t object to Mrs. Mallet bringing Eva along like she always did. A middle-aged
white woman, her angelic child, and an African girl. I knew how any passersby would interpret the three of us. The young woman
who served us coffee didn’t even flinch. What would she care about a woman with her daughter’s nanny?
An irritating misconception, to be sure, but in this case, at this café, I wanted to be invisible. Mrs. Mallet’s gaze was stuck on a group of gentlemen laughing and patting each other on the back at the table a few paces down from us.
So was mine.
“Wilkes, good man, you have done it again!” said a large-nosed man in a bowler hat. “Your promotion is well-deserved.”
The large-nosed man clapped the back of his friend, whose mustache drooped and fluttered about like the leaf of a palm tree.
Charles Wilkes’s cheeks were redder and puffier than usual. It must have been the booze he snuck into his tea. The chatter
at the coffee shop was that he always asked the waitresses here to give him a little spike before he went to work.
It had been a few days since I’d read his name on Harriet’s list of Miss Welsh’s associates. Of course, I wasted no time stalking
him. By now, I didn’t know all this coffeehouse’s gossip. What I did know, however, was that his favorite waitress wasn’t here.
An interesting absence.
“Excuse me,” I said to a waitress who weaved around one of the white tables. “I’ve been here before and Andrea Bradley used
to brew the most wonderful spot of tea. I’d love to have it again. Do you know where she is?”
Mentioning the name Andrea Bradley had affected the waitress the way I’d expected it to. She looked as uncomfortable as Mrs.
Mallet did now.
“Andrea hasn’t been here since—” She shut her lips quickly. Of course she did. In this wretchedly patriarchal society, Andrea,
in her state, would bring too much negative attention to the coffee shop. She likely decided to leave before Wilkes was any
the wiser.
“Are you close with her?” I asked. “Do you know where she lives?”
The waitresses folded her arms, closing herself off to me. I thought quickly. “It’s really for my mistress.” I gestured toward a confused Mrs. Mallet. “Her dreadful cold is interfering with her ability to converse with others. So wished for me to implore you on her behalf.”
The wrinkles on Mrs. Mallet’s face creased as she narrowed her eyes. I reacted quickly. The moment she pried open her lips
to protest, I placed my heel on her foot under the table. A little threatening pressure caused her to hush.
“Would you tell us?” I continued meekly to the waitress. “I’d love to have a chat with her when I get the chance.” I put a
few shillings in her white apron pocket.
The waitress felt around her pocket and pursed her lips, blushing. “She’s in Bethnal Green. Old Nichol Street. Everyone there
knows her. Just ask around and you’ll find her quick.”
“Good.” Taking the heel of my shoe off Mrs. Mallet’s foot, I sipped my coffee as the waitress scurried away.
Wilkes took a shot out of his alcohol-spiked coffee, laughing with his chaps. He wasn’t a target of my revenge. I didn’t even
know the man. Nevertheless, some sacrifices were necessary in a war.
“Sally, why did you—what on earth are you doing?” Frowning, Mrs. Mallet rubbed Eva’s little raven head as the girl gulped down her pastry.
“Just small talk. I have a question for you too, Mrs. Mallet—interestingly enough, about talk.” I took the first of the crumpets I’d ordered for myself and gave it to Eva. The child liked her sweets. “Some at Windsor
Castle have some rather disquieting things to say about the Queen’s current mood. They act as if the Queen of England is dabbling
in the dark arts. Then again, when I spoke to the Queen personally some days ago, it did seem as if she’d been rather taken
with spiritualism as of late. Is that true? Surely, you would know.”
Mrs. Mallet shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It’s not something that she would talk about freely, but given her connections, and the twitching of her fingers, it was clear she knew something of a scandalous nature as I figured she would.
“I’m not sure what you mean?” the woman lied.
What a waste of time. I tilted my head. “You mean she hasn’t been engaging in any strange photography sessions lately?”
Mrs. Mallet’s eyebrows flew up to her hairline. That’s how I knew it was true. Still, Harriet couldn’t get her hands on concrete
evidence—only gossip. I needed Mallet for the physical element of this scheme.
“Sally, you shouldn’t ask such things!” Mrs. Mallet folded her arms in disapproval. “What if the Queen knew you were asking
such rude questions?”
“And if the Queen didn’t know, you would tell her, wouldn’t you?” I sipped my coffee. “It’s why she ordered you to accompany
me to and from Brighton?”
Mrs. Mallet unfolded her arm and let her hands rest on the table. Her fingers gripped the white tablecloth. “Sally...”
I swirled my cup. “First of all, you certainly won’t be following me anywhere. You’ll continue to pretend to do as you’re told, but in actuality, I’ll go to Brighton—and everywhere else—on my own.” I said all this without looking
at her. “You will also not tell anyone of our discussions from now on. But you will tell me all you know about the Queen’s
strange behaviors.”
Mrs. Mallet’s hands clenched into fists. “ Sally —”
“You’ll do so promptly and without delay so that I won’t tell others that you had to steal money from your mother-in-law to
pay for little Eva’s governess.” I patted Eva’s head, but she didn’t respond. She never responded to much when cream filling
was in her mouth.
Mrs. Mallet’s face turned pale. “What... what did you just say?”
I shrugged. “You’ve done a good job so far covering up your husband’s gambling problems. Nobody knows— yet . But I didn’t think you’d steal from your own illustrious in-laws.”
“That isn’t true!” Mrs. Mallet said in a hushed whisper, her wild gaze flying about the open café.
With a sigh, I offered Eva the last of my uneaten crumpets. But before I gave it to her: “Eva, you’re always with your mother.
Does she have the tendency to take things that aren’t hers from time to time?”
“You mean nick things?” Eva swallowed her food. “Oh, all the time.”
I gave her the crumpet.
Betrayed by her little angel. The Queen’s unsuccessful spy deflated.
“Your thread work is impeccable, Miss Bonetta. But you’ll need a more tender touch if you’re to one day knit dresses for your
infants.”
I tried not to scowl at Miss Welsh. The idea of having children near me sucked the life from me. Sewing was Wife Lesson Number
One. Welsh wasted no time shoving a white sheet of cotton into my hands, expecting me to transform it into a baby’s cap.
There were no children here in Welsh’s tiny, stuffy sitting room, where the floral pattern walls were mismatched with the
red carpet and green velvet couch, and red, orange, and brown chairs. Chairs that in particular were very uncomfortable. Welsh,
with her scarecrow figure, sat pin straight in one and expected me to do the same.
Not true for the woman who sat near the fireplace in the violet rocking chair. She was even older, so she could sit however she liked. In her rumpled dark blue dress, she hunched over with her beaklike nose and glared at me through her glasses as she knitted a scarf. Who was she again? Miss Welsh’s older sister? Cousin? Mother? Hard to know: the woman wouldn’t say a word to me, though her eyes never seemed to leave me.
Age was starting to hollow out Miss Welsh’s oval face. With a crooked finger, she pointed at the cap-to-be in my hands. “Concentration
and focus, Miss Bonetta. Concentration and focus are the key to perfection.”
Oh, I knew that all too well. The connections I’d made in the past few days were evidence of that: Inspector Charles Wilkes,
Miss Welsh, William Bambridge, and—if I moved my pieces just right—Queen Victoria. What a tangled web of deceit and vice the
elites of society lived in.
I would destroy all of them in one fell swoop. And I knew just how to do it: with concentration and focus.
“Being a wife is about delicacy and self-sacrifice,” Miss Welsh said, her white hair held up in a tight bun that tugged her
eyebrows up, causing her to look eternally surprised. “You must embody that concept in your very flesh—in how you speak to
your husband, behave around him—”
“Pleasure him.” The older woman’s voice was rough as bark, but I understood her perfectly. I stared at her in shock while
Miss Welsh clutched the collar of her white blouse.
“No, Mother!” Ah, so it was her mother. Welsh’s pale cheeks finally got some color in them. “That’s—”
“I am curious about that.” I put down my sewing needles and white cotton. “How exactly am I meant to pleasure my husband if
I am to be delicate and modest at all times? It feels somehow like a contradiction,” I asked very seriously.
I could tell by the sputtering of Miss Welsh’s lips that she didn’t have an answer. She was too busy being scandalized. “That
is—”
While she flailed, I gazed upward at the gaudy chandelier, thought about it, and shrugged. “Well, I suppose if I cannot pleasure
my husband, then he can always go to the whorehouse.”
“Miss Bonetta!”
“Speaking of improving oneself,” I interrupted quickly. “I was told by one of the associates that an upstanding friend of her father’s is about to be promoted. I believe you know him: Inspector Charles Wilkes—well, soon-to-be chief inspector now.”
Miss Welsh seemed pleased at the sound of his name.
“Yes, Wilkes is a family friend! A very close family friend.” She nodded at her mother, who had, unfortunately, after her
momentary and delightful outburst, gone back to glaring at me. “His promotion at Scotland Yard has been years coming.”
“I heard he worked with that Jack Whicher on that dreadful Constance Kent murder case a few years ago. For him to be promoted
before Whicher is quite the feat. I’m sure the papers can’t get enough of him. How amazing that you’re so close.”
Flattery, even of the smallest kind, went very far with these types. Miss Welsh preened like a peacock. “Well, that’s the
result of good breeding.”
Right. I tried not to roll my eyes while on the job. “Good breeding indeed. Why, you should throw him some kind of party to celebrate!
A garden party perhaps? Here in Brighton. It would be so lovely.”
Miss Welsh mulled it over quite shamelessly. What was the point of having connections if one couldn’t flaunt it? Clearing
her throat, she pointed again at my unfinished infant’s cap.
“Concentration and focus, Miss Bonetta,” she reminded me.
“Yes, yes, but isn’t this also part of my training? Married ladies are expected to chitchat as we do our duties. Else why
even have a sitting room?”
I got her there. Gossip was the number one currency here for a reason.
“At least think about it. It would be a wonderful opportunity for the chief inspector and such a lovely surprise for his wife. You’ll be the talk of Brighton for days. Maybe even weeks.”
I waited patiently for Welsh to relent. That didn’t take long.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, straightening out her shoulders.
The party was set for Thursday, promptly at five. That, at least, gave me a chance to reach out to a very special guest in
London—Bethnal Green, to be precise. Old Nichol Street. This was an invitation I knew wouldn’t be declined.
Focus and concentration were indeed a woman of society’s greatest weapon, especially when a party was involved. Welsh put
hers together with lightning speed. By Thursday her efforts had come to fruition. Little white round tables filled her backyard
garden, decorated with flowers and the best of the plates in her cupboard. Of course, the old men here didn’t care and their
wives still had things to complain about—the teacups, bowls, and saucers, though made of expensive porcelain, were old in
design and simply out of fashion. There was only one maid to spare between them. Still, the fruit was fresh and the bread
and cakes freshly baked.
And, of course, the tea.
“Is this Darjeeling tea?” One old man with a tuft of black hair sniffed his steaming cup with approval. “Miss Welsh, why,
I don’t say. I haven’t had this since I worked overseas in the East India Company. What wonderful nostalgia to go with these
lovely biscuits.”
I’m sure the folk working their fingers to the bone in the Queen’s Indian plantations didn’t quite share the same lovely nostalgic feeling when thinking about the tea they gathered. I plastered on my smile and offered him a cucumber sandwich. I wasn’t officially a maid, but Welsh only had the one. She was reluctant to go ahead with the celebration until I offered my services. Unsurprisingly, something about me serving her friends scones and tarts didn’t feel strange to the old woman and her mother. I didn’t even have to insist.
On the other side of the crowd was Harriet, offering her mother some sherry. Miss Phipps was a busybody. I’d need her mouth
running for this little scheme to succeed.
There he was at the head table decorated with white and purple geraniums: Inspector Charles Wilkes of Scotland Yard, newly
promoted, with a long, drooping brown mustache, an anchovy finger sandwich halfway down his throat and his faithful, snooty
wife by his side. They crushed daisies beneath their feet as they went from friend to friend shaking hands and accepting congrats
without an ounce of modesty between them.
“Miss Bonetta. I believe there are more tea cakes in the kitchen,” Miss Welsh said, ordering me around like her personal servant
as she sat down and talked with a friend.
“Of course, Miss Welsh.” I bowed graciously.
“Oh.” She waved me over and leaned in to whisper so her friend couldn’t hear. “And my mother alerted me to a recent mouse
problem in the living room. Do get the arsenic in the cupboards and lay a trap, will you? I can’t be seen to have rodents.”
I thought I noticed bite marks on the door frames. “Of course, Miss Welsh,” I said again before giving Harriet, eyes ever
on me, a rough nod.
As Miss Welsh prattled on—“Isn’t my charge so well-behaved? So different than what you’d expect. The Queen asked for me especially,
you know”—Harriet followed me discreetly into the kitchen.
Harriet stumbled into the soup ladles hanging over the softwood table, where the meals were prepared. Surprised at the noise,
she grabbed them and held them still, blushing as I stifled a groan. Miss Welsh’s plain white kitchen was as modest as most
upper-middle-class homes, except all the washing was done in the scullery.
To business. “Did you deliver my message to our special guest as I asked?”
“You know I did, Sally.” Harriet, always eager to please. It must have been a lesson bullied into her by her mother. From
wherever I was in the garden I could hear her mother nagging her without regard to the other guests. When I noticed the poor
girl’s hands were shaking as she set the ladles down on the table, I took them in mine.
“Good. So she should be here, then.”
Harriet nodded. Her expression softened a little at my touch. “I told her to be here at half past five.”
“Before the toast.”
“I prepared her transportation and everything.”
“Yes, I know, Harriet. You’ve been amazing so far.”
It saddened me a little to see just how far a compliment could go with the mousy brown-haired girl. Her mother was a demon.
I knew that much. Even she couldn’t hide how happy she was, though she tried, turning to the table, fiddling with the ladles,
the plate of tea cakes, and the full pot of spare tea. There were a few unused cups—the ones Miss Welsh didn’t think appropriate
for the party because her maid couldn’t get the stains out of them.
“I’m still not sure how this will help you deal with you-know-who,” Harriet said, and I looked around quickly to make sure
we were alone. Noticing my expression, she covered her mouth and lowered her voice accordingly. “You know—Bambridge. He’s
a photographer, after all, and—”
“Yes,” I cut her off. That old mother of Welsh’s was still in the living room—not that her legs or ears were working at optimal
strength, but one could never be too careful. “Well, you’ll see once the plan comes together.”
“The plan.” Harriet smirked, half-sheepish with admiration. “You always seem so sure of yourself. Even despite all you’ve been through. Your intellect is...” Harriet laughed. “Well, far more impressive than mine by any measure.”
That was true, but saying that could be considered insensitive by some. Harriet wasn’t a bad woman—just an incredibly frustrated
one.
“More impressive in every measure, really. Smart, beautiful, courageous...”
“So you say in one of the many letters you wrote to me earlier this year while you were in Balmoral with the Queen. I received
each one—they’re in my closet in Chatham.”
Harriet’s cheeks reddened. I sighed.
“I hope you’ve stopped that little habit, by the way. Letters can easily turned into physical evidence against you.” Or me.
I thought of the letter Dalton Sass had shown Ponsonby that day in Windsor Castle and shivered.
“Sorry. I swear I’ve stopped.” Harriet turned her back to me.
“Oh, Harriet. You’re capable of much more than you know,” I said, giving her the encouragement I knew she needed, and she
perked up. I squeezed her shoulder before opening the cupboard.
When I looked back, I saw Harriet’s gaze lingering on me. The moment she noticed me watching, she gave me a sad smile. “Mother
is just so terrible,” she said, pouring herself some tea. “She doesn’t see any worth in me. Tells me every day. And yet, she
expects me to become Queen Victoria’s number one most confidential attendant. How does that make sense? How can I one day
be ‘The Honorable Harriet Lepel Phipps’ if I’m also lazy, stupid, foolish, childish—”
Her nerves got the better of her and she spilled a little on the table. Embarrassed, she grabbed some cloth and began drying
it up.
“Don’t listen to your mother. She’s bored and dead inside.” I shuffled around jars of jam. That new book, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management , was tucked away in here too. I doubt Mrs. Beeton would approve of seeing her book in a kitchen cupboard.
“Dead inside? Like I was when they made me junior attendant a few months ago?” Harriet shook her head. “An appointment given
to me only because of my father’s rank in court.”
Sir Charles Phipps was the Queen’s private secretary, and Keeper of the Privy Purse, and other nonsense titles I couldn’t
care to memorize. It was a lot for little Harriet to live up to. No wonder she was rebelling.
“If you don’t want to be that woman they’ll write about in the history books as her mother and the Queen’s good little dog,
then create the life you desire. Be who you want to be.” My fingers touched a little round bottle. I pulled it out. “Ah, the
arsenic.”
“Be who I want to be?” Harriet seemed to deflate. “Be who I want to be. Create the life I desire. But what if that’s impossible?
What if I...?” She paused. “Wait, arsenic?” She blinked when she saw the bottle of poison in my hand. “What’s the arsenic
for?”
“Yeah, Sally. What’s the arsenic for? You planning on killing someone?”
In a flash, Harriet and I turned to the kitchen door. The Prince of Wales had his eyes set on the tea cakes. He let his taunt
go unanswered as he sauntered in, but he wasn’t alone.
The bottle shook in my hand as I tried to catch my breath. “Captain Davies?”
As usual, his pearly white grin was as perfect as his gentlemanly bow. “We’ve come to celebrate with you and Welsh. Now don’t
get mad—” Davies added just as I began to part my lips in protest. “This wasn’t our idea.”
“’Course not.” Bertie already had his mouth full of cake. “We wouldn’t even know about that Scotland Yard bloke and his little
tea party if it weren’t for—”
“Me.”
As Bertie began to choke, Dalton Sass slid out from behind Davies’s broad frame and went to help him. A few pats on the back
and Bertie was back to normal, but I wasn’t. I glared at the Freetown boy, Superintendent Sass’s son, as he waved to me.
“It was my idea, Sally. I hope you don’t mind.”