Thirty
Thirty
Dalton’s last words before being gunned down by John Brown: Wards of the Empire . It was not a program, per se, but a promise. A set of rules designed to keep the Queen of England from falling prey to her
own fetishes.
By the time I arrived at Strangers’ Home, Dalton Sass’s blood was long dry on the slip of paper I’d stolen from his corpse.
I hadn’t washed it off my dress. With bloodshot eyes, I began screaming at the missionaries to bring me Rui. They locked me
in a stone-cold room near the kitchen where they kept the meat in slabs on wood tables and potatoes in sacks on the floor.
They were frightened for the safety of the sailors, but they needn’t have been.
“Sally!” It was in the dead of night that Rui unlocked the door and barreled inside. “Sally!” He took in the sight of the
blood on my dress and hands. A mixture of concern and intrigue danced upon his twitching lips. He rushed up to me and bent
down. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
I stared at him without blinking. “The Queen of England,” I whispered, and gave him the letter I’d stolen from Dalton Sass.
His trump card to stay in Bertie’s circle.
I told Harriet once: letters were material evidence that could be used against you. They revealed your darkest secrets. This letter seemed to be from a journal. I remembered the yellow tint of Sass’s papers. The width and length of the size. She’d used her journal as a weapon against me multiple times, after all, slapping me with it across the face when I didn’t answer her quickly enough. This was a page from her journal. One Dalton must have pocketed before darkening the shores of England.
Rui read it.
January 1, 1855
Even in the New Year those children are still as miserable as I left them, whining about seeing their parents for those who
still had them. And worst of all, yet again, was the girl, Sarah Forbes Bonetta. I see nothing but Satan in that girl’s beady
black eyes. Pride and a pompous regality that doesn’t fit her.
Today she asked me where I was born and then proceeded to talk about how she was a princess of the Egbado Clan. Royalty in
her own right.
Something about her reminded me of the workhouse and I lost my senses. Worst still: she didn’t cry when I slapped her in the
face. It may seem cruel, but I wanted her to cry. And when she didn’t, I felt the distinct weight of my own failures crushing
me.
Did she think she better than me because she was now Queen Victoria’s goddaughter? Did she not know that she easily could
have been one of the children left behind?
Rui stopped reading and raised an eyebrow. “Children left behind?”
Pulling my knees up to my chin, I grunted. “Keep reading.”
With a sigh, Rui obliged.
One of the Queen’s courtiers let the secret slip in a letter to me last year. Lady Lena Login, whose husband was put in charge of rearing the Black Prince of Perthshire, the defeated Punjabi Maharaja, Duleep Singh. The Queen seemed to love finding new toys across the globe. She adored the gifts her captains gave her when they deposed of kings and conquered nations. She adored them more when they were children.
But only the good ones. The Queen couldn’t be seen adopting a child who turned out to be a disobedient savage. There was another
child who should have been presented to the Queen along with Duleep. He didn’t arrive to England.
Duleep had passed the test to become one of the Queen’s wards: the Wards of the Empire, as she liked the call them. The Good
Children. Exotic and easily displayed. Those were the children that were to be brought to her. All others were to be discarded.
I wonder what that pompous little girl Sally would say if she knew? For every chosen child, there’s a child thrown away.
If only the Queen had known what a monster it was that she’d taken as her royal pet.
“It would have made my life so much easier,” I finished, because by now I’d memorized the journal entry.
Silence stretched between us as Rui lowered the blood-soaked letter. “Sally... what is this?”
“Confirmation,” I said, standing up. “That Ade’s death wasn’t just an act of cruelty perpetrated by the Forbes brothers. That
his death was the result of an informally institutionalized policy that came directly from the Queen herself. And that as
a consequence of this policy that organized the Queen’s toys in a neat little row for her, Ade wasn’t the only one who died.”
Rui stared at the letter again, reading it over. I clenched my teeth. This was what Dalton meant by the Wards of the Empire.
And he was shot dead before he could breathe another word. The second he mentioned it, Queen Victoria whispered something
to her dog, John Brown, and that was the end of Sass’s wayward son. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.
“I want to publish this in a newspaper. The Illustrated London News , perhaps, in exchange for a full exposé on how I got rid of their former editor, Mr. Bellamy.”
“Sally,” Rui started, but I wasn’t listening. I’d begun pacing in this tiny stone room.
“Or I could blackmail George Reynolds. I already did my research on the editor of the Reynolds Weekly Newspaper . He’ll pay me back for the gift of scandal I gave him at the beginning of last month.”
“Sally!”
Rui gripped my arm and pulled me toward him. That was my cue to suck in a deep breath, but it hardly calmed me down.
“How do you know Dalton didn’t write this himself?”
“I was her student. I know Miss Sass’s handwriting as surely as I know my own. It’s the genuine item.”
Genuine. Which meant that Miss Sass truly did write these things. And why would she write them unless they were true?
Wards of the Empire. Was that what the Queen considered us? Me? Duleep? Gowramma? And others, no doubt, in the future? Children
from all corners of the world who fascinated Queen Victoria as her bottom grew fat on taxes and stolen resources from her
colonies. As she paid mediums for silly séances and ate seven-course meals without ever leaving the comfort of her many estates
paid for by my people’s blood.
Rui gripped my cheeks softly, drawing me back to reality. “Sally,” he said with the sternness of a man used to the world of crime. “This is a journal entry. It’s not proof. Even if you recognize this woman’s handwriting, there’s no definitive proof that others can point to as it being written by her. And even if it was, how do they know it wasn’t just her mad ramblings? As far as the public is concerned, it can easily be dismissed as fiction.”
“Then what do you suppose I do?” I gripped his hands, but didn’t pull them away from my face. Angry tears brimmed in my eyes.
I felt detached from my own body. Like my spirit and mind had been conjured by a madman or written in a children’s tale. But
they didn’t exist. I didn’t exist. Or rather, our existence didn’t matter. Not mine. Not Ade’s.
My body contracted, rigid in this room filled with slabs of meat. Because that’s all we were to her. Slabs of meat. A corpse
sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Oh, Ade. I’d never felt so stripped of my humanity.
It was insane. That the Queen would allow for the culling of children as if we were cattle, all for her own image’s sake.
But was it really out of the realm of possibility for her to do? There was an enslaved African man in America who once started
a revolution that could have freed his people. Nat Turner. And in response to his bid for freedom, what did the slavers do?
Execute him and use his skin to make a coin purse. Not satisfied with that, they boiled his flesh into grease to be consumed
as medicine.
The world created by Queen Victoria and her ancestors allowed for monstrosities such as this. Cannibalism was only an atrocity
when we were imagined to be the cannibals. Were a few discarded children really out of the realm of possibility for the Queen
of an Empire of Ruin? No. Not when I’d seen it with my own eyes.
How many others? How many others died like Ade? I couldn’t stop myself. The tears slipped down my cheeks one by one.
Rui brushed them with the back of his hand. “Sally, we need something more concrete. Something written to the Queen—or better yet, by the Queen’s hand.”
“The Queen is going to Balmoral tomorrow with John Brown and her attendants.”
At the sound of the man’s name, Rui’s touch suddenly was not so gentle. He withdrew it, clenching his fingers.
“Have your friend search the palace in the meantime. I’ll do what I can.”
“I don’t understand.” I wiped the remaining tears in my eyes, shaking my head. “What did we ever do...?”
All of us children. Ade and Gowramma and Duleep. I’m sure there would be more taken from their lands, cut off from their communities.
What kind of special property did we have that made us so ripe for collecting like jewels of an ancient tribe?
Rui gripped my shoulders and forced me to look at him. He leaned in close, so close I could smell the faint spice on his breath.
And he smiled.
“Well, dear Sally,” he said. “That’s what revenge is for.”
After my last standoff with the Queen, I found it in the best interest of my sanity to stay clear of the palace. Even with
the Queen off to Balmoral with Ponsonby, John Brown, and her attendants, I couldn’t bring myself to return. Harriet stayed
behind. She was to join them with Mrs. Phipps in a few days.
“Harriet,” I told her, meeting her at a café on Change Alley. “I need you to search the Queen’s correspondences for anything
concerning me, Victoria, Gowramma, and other, shall we say, exotic wards.”
“That’ll take a long time....” She clasped her glass of water, her eyebrows raised.
“You have a few days before meeting the Queen’s party in Scotland, correct?” I thought for a moment. “Start with old correspondences Queen Victoria had with Captain Frederick Forbes and his brother George. James Stuart Fraser as well.” The man who brought Gowramma to England after disposing of the Coorg ruler. “John Login as well.” He cared for Duleep Singh after he was overthrown by the British after the second Anglo-Sikh war. “Especially the letters dated in the late forties and fifties. That might narrow things down.”
Harriet huffed, exasperated. “You ask so much of me,” she muttered. “And what is this for? This doesn’t seem to have anything
to do with your revenge.”
“This has everything to do with my revenge.”
I didn’t know I’d yelled it, not until I realized I was on my feet. People were staring. I had to calm down. Who knew how
the passersby would interpret this, with me, a furious Black woman, frightening a young English lady who looked as if she
wouldn’t hurt a fly. These were the ridiculous hoops I’d had to jump through since being dragged across the Atlantic against
my will.
With a sigh, I sat back down, not at all surprised to see Harriet grimace, scandalized and disturbed. “I’m sorry,” I said,
and tried very hard to mean it, but some gentlemen were still staring at me from across the street. Chatting and staring.
Like they all did in Britain. At me. The fate I was resigned to because of their queen. Anger bubbled up inside me again and
I wanted to lash out at something. I couldn’t hide it, not even if Harriet sat back in her white chair across from me to create
distance between us.
“I’m sorry,” I said again roughly. “But I need your help. I can’t go back to the castle, not now.” I straightened up in my
chair. “Besides, you wanted to be a part of this. When I came to you, you said you’d do anything your mother wouldn’t approve
of.”
“I know. I know .” Her shoulders slumped. I watched my once-faithful henchman deflate before my eyes.
“Please just... just do this for me. Okay?” I leaned over, closing the distance between us. “It’s so incredibly important. I’m so close to finding the truth....”
Taking her hand, I gave it a warm squeeze. But, to my surprise, she pulled it away.
“Fine. But I want you to promise me something.”
“Oh?” I placed both my hands on my lap. “And what’s that?”
“Tell me the gossip around the castle isn’t true,” she said quietly, unable to meet my eyes. “You’re not actually... with
Prince Bertie, are you?”
I frowned, watching the girl stew quietly in her seat. “What? Harriet—”
That’s when she looked at me. She was serious. About Bertie? It couldn’t be. Harriet had never shown any romantic inclination
toward him before.
“I’ve heard some strange rumors, Sally,” she continued. “That the prince is thinking of calling off his engagement to be with
you.”
My shoulders rose to my ears but I did my best to keep silent. The night Dalton Sass was killed, Bertie had kissed me in front
of so many attendants, it would have been impossible to keep it under wraps.
“Don’t worry about him. Trust me when I say that boy is incapable of love. And as for me, I don’t have romantic feelings one
way or another for anyone. Not even my own husband-to-be.”
I smirked as I thought of Captain Davies. He was right about the barbarity of the Crown. I wonder what he’d do if he knew
just how right he was. Would it stop him from demanding his bride? Or would it make him even more determined to whisk me away
from this evil land?
No matter how hard we tried to assimilate, we would never be truly wanted. He must have known that.
Rui did. I thought of him, my heart beating ever faster. And I’d just told Harriet I didn’t have romantic feelings for anyone. But what’s one more lie?
“Harriet, why would something so silly matter to you in the first place?” I asked her as she breathed a sigh of relief.
She scrunched up her nose and turned away. “It’s not silly. I agree with you on many things, Sally. I’ve enjoyed wreaking
havoc on my mother’s friends. But there are some rules—” She paused and swallowed carefully. “Not all of this is ‘silly,’
you know. Not to me.”
Perhaps she did love him. Well, if that was the case, then she could have at it once I was finished with him. When he was
king, he was sure to have more mistresses than issues with his poor future wife. She could be one of them, if she so chose.
“It’s ridiculous, Harriet. Just forget such things.” I dismissed it all with a wave of my hand. “You know how he is. He’ll
be onto some cabaret dancer or an opera singer after he’s done with his little infatuation.”
“That even the Prince of England himself would be infatuated with you in the first place.”
I blinked, not quite sure what I’d heard. “Excuse me?”
Harriet stood. “Never mind. I’ll look. I’ll scour the palace. Then I’m taking a break from all this.”
My fingers twitched. “Of course!” I took my teacup and sipped. “Absolutely. I won’t ask anything of you again, I promise.
You’ve been wonderful, Harriet. A real friend in all this.”
“Friend.” Harriet rolled the word over her tongue and fell silent. I watched her carefully and studied everything. Every twitch
of her nose. Every direction her gaze turned in order to avoid me.
“Goodbye, Sally,” she said.
“Until next time, friend.” I said it again, as if to remind her. She did not respond.
I watched Harriet’s back as she walked away. When I was first taken to England, I steadfastly refused to make any true friends. A friend was too troublesome a thing. Loneliness made brooding far easier. Even during my time at Freetown, I found it difficult to relate to any of the other children. Innocent as they were, they felt wholly separate from me, like they were from another earth where children could learn to forgive and adapt even in the face of the harshest realities. Love is conditional. Ade had taught me this and I’d kept this lesson in my heart.
I remembered his lesson now. And as I did, my heart curiously sank into the depths.
Loneliness was easy. But it was unbearable.
Perhaps I didn’t have the right to expect anything out of Harriet.
But it was unbearable nonetheless. It followed me home, that loneliness. It embraced me in the middle of the night as I slouched
on the front steps of my house in Chatham. Not even when Mama wrapped a shawl over my shoulders and sat next to me did it
lose its grip.
“The stars are beautiful tonight,” Mama said, looking up at the night sky. “You know, I got a visit from Lord Ponsonby the
other day. I wonder if they’re worried about your upcoming marriage? I told them they needn’t be. You’re a good girl, Sally.”
I didn’t confront her about leaking information about me to the Queen. What would be the point? She hadn’t done it to hurt
me. How could she? She didn’t understand the grave context of my situation with the Queen. She didn’t know what I knew. How
happy she was to be friend to the Queen of England.
“You’ll be happy, Sally, once you’re married.” She rubbed the back of my neck outside this empty house that hadn’t seen her
evangelizing husband for the past few weeks. “You’ll see.”
The roses we had planted just the other day were already starting to wilt despite Mama’s daily care. I buried my face in my
hands, still shivering in the cold.
The next few days that passed, I felt the sword of Damocles dangling over my head, lowering inch by murderous inch. Under the pretense of checking on Mrs. Forbes after Uncle George’s regrettable fate, I searched through boxes of letters in every room in the Forbes estate. The Wards of the Empire were never once mentioned. There was nothing to even suggest that the Queen had given her horrid instructions on what kind of children she sought or what fate she’d condemned them to should they not meet her high expectations. The only letters that referenced me were that of Captain Frederick Forbes gushing over my intelligence.
For her age, supposed to be eight years, she is a perfect genius; she now speaks English well, and has a great talent for
music. She has won the affections, with but few exceptions, of all those who have known her, by her docile and amiable conduct,
which nothing can exceed.
I’d read these words before. In the context of what I now knew, I shivered more deeply than I thought I ever could.
Ade was right about their love. He died never knowing how truly right he was.
Still, this wasn’t enough to accuse the Queen. I needed something more concrete.
By Monday, Harriet had found nothing, as I expected. Which was why I’d already put Bertie on the task of searching through
the Queen’s correspondence as well, just in case Harriet’s newfound apathy caused her to miss something important. But he
didn’t find anything either. The Queen was very “clean” about things. Of course she was. She wasn’t one to get her hands dirty,
not unless she slipped up by mistake.
But everyone made mistakes. Even a Queen.
Monday night I made good on my unspoken promise to see Gowramma and Edith again. As I played with the child in Gowramma’s extravagantly furnished parlor, I readied myself for any questions the girl had. And she had them.
“What did the Queen want from you the other time?” she asked me while brushing her hair with her fingers, staring into a hand
mirror.
I lifted the pudgy little baby up high in the air, terrified she might throw up on me. Wasn’t that what these things did?
“She thought I was at fault for Bertie’s failure of a speech on Friday.”
“Well, weren’t you?”
I nearly dropped Edith. Instead, I placed her safely onto my lap and stared at Gowramma.
“What?” she said, lowering her mirror. “You think I’m stupid? All the chaos around you lately so carefully planned. Your uncle
being committed, Bambridge and McCoskry’s disgrace all in a few short weeks. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were
behind it all.”
Sucking in a breath, I gave her a sidelong look. Gowramma was already pouring herself a glass of chardonnay. “And what if
I told you I did have something to do with these things?”
Gowramma laughed so loudly it shocked poor Edith. As the baby began to cry her mother picked up her wineglass. “Then I say
keep going. Serves them all right, the dolts.”
I bounced Edith on my knee because I couldn’t figure else how else to stop her from crying. But as Gowramma gulped down her
chardonnay, I quietly remembered the hollow look in her eyes in the gala as she stared at the photographic portrait of herself.
How she’d walked, afterward, as if she’d slightly lost her balance. I remembered this and took a chance.
“Have you ever heard of the term Ward of the Empire before? Perhaps in relation to your adoption by the Queen? And perhaps...” I considered it. “Perhaps in any conversations
you might have had with Duleep Singh? You two were betrothed at one point, weren’t you?”
Gowramma put her glass down and blinked. “Ward...” She stayed quiet for a long time. It was the first time I’d seen her look so serious. She rubbed her lips with a finger and stared at the framed photograph of herself and her elderly husband.
“When I was seventeen,” Gowramma began, “a woman named Lady Login did indeed try to force my marriage to Duleep. I refused,
of course. What fool would let herself be married to a man of someone else’s choosing, especially some out-of-touch old crone?”
She stopped and gritted her teeth sheepishly, covering her mouth as I shifted bitterly on her Persian love seat.
“Anyways,” she continued, “I set up a meeting with Duleep myself to speak to him about the whole affair. We were in agreement—neither
of us wanted to marry each other. But he did say something quite interesting.”
“What?” I said, holding Edith close to my chest, patting her on the back while she sucked back her tears. “What did he say
to you?”
“He told me that Queen Victoria would love to play matchmaker between her favorite wards . Surely we wouldn’t be the last either. But knowing what it meant to be a ward, he was steadfastly against it. He called
it his defiance. He didn’t want the Queen to have her way....”
Duleep... did he know about this whole evil affair? I was holding Edith a little too tightly. When she began to squirm
in my grip, I handed her to her mother, who regrettably had to put down her alcohol.
“When I asked him to explain himself, he only said that he’d written the Queen so many letters about it from Mulgrave Castle.
But he never had the courage to send them.”
Mulgrave Castle: an ancient castle built centuries ago near Whitby in North Yorkshire. Duleep had indeed lived there for a
time.
Gowramma leaned in next to me with a conspiratorial grin. “He’s still renting the castle. We’re good friends, you know. I think he’s in Scotland visiting his mother. A letter from me, and I’m sure he’d give us the keys.” She winked. “Wanna go?”
“You’re rather keen to.” I tilted my head. “Make no mistake. This isn’t a vacation.”
She shrugged. “It is to me. Goodness knows I need to get out of the house.”
I watched her pat her child on the head curiously.
“What do you think of all this? You don’t care? About any of it?”
“You mean I’m not crippled by my hatred for the English? Why? Despite a few indignities I’ve had to suffer, I have everything
I need here.” She brought her daughter up to her face and nuzzled their noses together.
“And it is worth the indignities?”
Gowramma didn’t answer. Not everyone was ready to unpack this horrid institution. For some, it was easier not to. But wherever
she was, Gowramma enjoyed a good mess. That alone was beneficial to me.
Since it brought me one step closer to the Queen’s ruin.