Sofy said, ‘She does look very pale, Ernie.’ She rubbed my hands between hers.
I said, ‘If it’s so important I’m sure one of the Major’s maids would go.’
He said, ‘Do you think Garth keeps servants to fetch and carry for you, Miss? Now do as I tell you or you’ll be sorry.’
No one spoke up to defend me. They all feared Ernie’s famous temper.
Enoch Heppenstall was watching for me. ‘I reckoned you’d be back,’ he said. ‘Come to see what I’ve got for you?’
I said, ‘You’ll please to put Her Royal Highness’s mare to the trot directly.’
‘When I’m good and ready. Only I’m good and ready for something else just now.’
He was so close I could see every particular of his mouth: a crooked tooth and bristles he’d missed when he’d shaved that morning, and a string of spit between his parted lips.
I said, ‘Don’t touch me. My beau’ll kill anyone who touches me.’
He sniggered.
‘Your beau? Face like your’n, I don’t reckon you’ve got no beau. And if you have, well, I like a slice off a buttered loaf. Now up you go.’
He twisted my arm till I thought I should faint, then he pushed me up the ladder and into the hayloft. I thought to fight him off at first but that seemed to please him so I lay perfectly still instead. Let him make his own pleasure, I thought, and I hoped he’d choke on it. Indeed I thought he might, he looked so angry as he spent himself. There was a sweet smell of wheat straw and the horses below made soft, shifting noises. It was soon over.
He had to help me down from the loft. My legs wouldn’t carry me. It was an unavoidable act of gentleness after the violence he’d done me and I hated him all the more for it.
He said, ‘You’re not bad, you. Apart from your face you’re like a normal lass.’
I couldn’t look at him.
He said, ‘And you can tell the Duke there’s nowt wrong with that mare. She’s as right as ninepence.’
I found a kitchen maid and asked for a glass of water but my appearance alarmed her so much she ran for Mrs Chaffey. She took me to her pantry and sat me in her high-backed chair.
‘You sit here, nice and quiet, my dear,’ she said. ‘You’ll have been thrown about too much in that gig. Bumpeting around the countryside, all unnecessary. I don’t know what the Royal Highnesses are thinking of.’
I closed my eyes. I don’t know how long I sat there, only that I came back to consciousness with a jolt and was quite certain I wasn’t alone. On a shelf, beside the jars of pickled quinces, Garth’s parrot was watching me with one black eye. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, in that unearthly voice of hers. ‘Oh dear.’
Sofy insisted on sitting with me in the carriage instead of hacking back to Weymouth on her cursed horse.
‘Poor Nellie,’ she said. ‘I expect it was the pie they served us. I didn’t care for the look of it at all.’
Amelia said, ‘I ate the pie and I’m quite well. I don’t think Nellie’s sick at all. I think she’s sulking because Ernie put her in her place. He was rather fierce.’
Sofy said, ‘Is that it? I do wish you’d say.’
Minny said, ‘Leave her in peace. Whatever it is it won’t be helped by pestering.’
At Gloucester Lodge I conducted myself very carefully. I answered when spoken to, took nothing but a little egg custard for my dinner, and accepted Mrs Che’s suggestion to go to bed early. Sofy crept in to see me.
She said, ‘We are still friends?’
‘Of course, but Sofy I shall never go to Ilsington House again so please don’t ask me.’
‘Lord,’ she said, ‘how very dramatic. But actually, I agree with you. It was too boring. In future, if Ernie wants to go he can go alone.’
We began our last week in Weymouth and word came that the Prince of Wales intended to pay us a visit. He was in Hampshire and expected to be with us by dinner time the next day. This caused great excitement. The arrival of any visitor brought relief from our routine and with the Prince of Wales there was also the likelihood that he would bring his sisters gifts.
Only Elizabeth demurred. She said, ‘I wish he wouldn’t come. He’ll discompose the King and then the Queen will get headaches and we shall all pay for it.’
Minny said there had to be a very good reason for him to leave his jolly friends and come to what would assuredly be a cool reception from the Majesties, and she was right. The Prince of Wales had the soundest possible reason for interrupting the King’s summer. He had chosen a bride: Caroline, daughter of the Duke of Brunswick.
Princess Caroline was also a first cousin and for that reason it was possible that the King wouldn’t allow the match. He believed removal by one or two degrees was a much sounder principle of husbandry. Also, it was well known that at least half the Brunswicks were mad. But the King didn’t reject the idea. In fact he seemed so amenable that the Prince of Wales sent Ernie off to Brighton immediately, to break the news to Mrs Fitz. It was the Queen who raised objections to the marriage.
Sofy said, ‘Why must she always spoil everything? I should so like to have a sister-in-law.’
Of course, Sofy already had sisters-in-law but they didn’t count. Freddie York’s wife divided her time between her bed and the card table and was never seen at Windsor or in town. Goosy Murray was banished, and Billy Clarence’s household arrangements were too shameful to be spoken of. Royal and Augusta tried to explain the Queen’s reservations.
‘Her Majesty feels,’ Augusta said, ‘that Caroline may not be fitted to the life she’d have to lead.’
Amelia said, ‘How can she not be fitted? She is a princess.’
‘Let’s say she may be accustomed to a busier life than a princess of Wales might expect.’
Sofy said, ‘But surely no busier than we’re kept? I never have a moment to myself.’
Royal said, ‘A life can be busy, Sofy, without being industrious. It can be filled from morning to night with silliness.’
‘Yes,’ Augusta said. ‘And that’s the point. The Queen feels that Caroline may have been left to run too free.’
