The Royal Nanny (3 page)

“The children, you see,” Mrs. Wentworth added, “are bathed in their nursery each Saturday evening, and that is a lot of water for the nursemaids to tote up from the kitchen. There are two of them to help, at least, though Mrs. Peters has them down in the basement washroom, fetching and ironing right now, Martha Butcher and Jane Thatcher. They go by their given names as the duchess didn't care to hear a Butcher and Thatcher were caring for her children.”

I wasn't sure if that was a jest or not, but she was off on another turn, both in the hall and in her talk. I tried to keep track of all the new names.

At the second door, she whispered, “The day nursery.” Mrs. Wentworth opened the door a crack and “a-hemmed” without sticking her head in. Out came a square-jawed woman with her hair parted in the middle and pulled so hard back that it looked painted on beneath her lace and linen cap. Under her thick raven brows, her dark eyes looked me over.

“You'll be called by your first name, Charlotte, like my other workers,” she told me, “since I hardly need an undernurse called Bill. You and I shall talk after I tuck up the children tonight, about rules and regulations, timing, behaviors. I am the boys' head nurse. Besides the nursery footman, Cranston, I have two nursemaids. But couldn't see promoting the likes of them to undernurse, and Her Ladyship Mrs. Dugdale says you come recommended.”

Though surprised by her cold manner, I knew I had to manage a proper reply. “I tended two girls for five years as head nurse and was nursemaid before that.”

“Well, then, the demands will soon be much greater as we're about to have a third child. The baby will need close watching by you, while I tend my boys, especially the heir, a delicate, darling child. Poor duchess,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “doesn't like pregnancies any more than, they say, the queen herself did, but that will be over soon, and you'll be very busy. I'd best get back in to my boys, prepare them to meet their parents at tea, for which I hear you are to tag along. I usually take a nursemaid to keep an eye on Bertie, but you can do that now, and when the new baby arrives, you'll carry him or her.”

“I'm sure it will be a special time for the lads with their parents.”

“We'll see,” Mrs. Peters said and, without further ado, went back into the day nursery and closed the door.

I felt crestfallen, and I'm sure Mrs. Wentworth knew it.

“She becomes overtired,” she told me, patting my shoulder. “Poor thing works so hard and never agrees to take even a short holiday, so it's good you are here. And she's so protective and concerned that all goes well with the boys, especially David, but both lads have problems.”

“Problems? Such as what, Mrs. Wentworth?”

“I'd best let her tell you. How about you come down and have a spot of tea with me in my room to buck you up after your journey? Of course, you won't take tea with Their Graces, just stand back to tend to the children lest they roil their father and have to be removed.”

Removed? Presented and then removed? I had been so certain that royal children would be well behaved and that the nurse who tended them would at least be welcoming. Suddenly, I missed my Lockwood charges terribly and, for the first time in years, was homesick for my own family too.

T
eatime was fast approaching, and I was on pins and needles. Soon I would have my first real glimpse of royalty, because when I'd tried to see Queen Victoria during her Golden Jubilee ten years ago, the crowds were so huge near the Abbey that all I saw was her gilded carriage and six cream-colored horses. The press of people, that's what I remember from that day. But to see members of the royal family close, to speak to them and hear their voices . . . well!

At least I was to meet little David and Bertie before “being presented” to their parents in the queen's boudoir, as was evidently customary before the elders dressed to dine each night. I knocked on the day nursery door. Would I ever learn the twists and turns of this place with all its corridors and corners? I'd lost my way twice between my attic chamber and this hall.

“Enter,” came Mrs. Peters's crisp voice. Of course, I was to call her Mrs. Peters or Nurse Peters, however closely we would work together, not by her given name of Mary.

I went in to find two sweet-faced boys who greatly resem
bled each other, the youngest in a white dress with lots of flounces and lace, the older in a sailor suit. To my dismay, it appeared the little lads had been crying as she washed their faces none too gently. Both tried to flinch away, though she held their chins firmly and scrubbed at their already rosy cheeks.

“My dears,” she told them, still not looking my way, “this is my new helper, Charlotte. Say hello to Charlotte, David and Bertie. Char-lotte.”

“Miss or Mrs.?” David asked.

“Just Charlotte,” Mrs. Peters said.

“Good day, Charlotte,” he said with a nod but not a smile.

“Lala,” said little Bertie. “She Lala.”

“Well, we'll have to work on that,” Mrs. Peters said, tossing her washcloth in the basin.

Despite still wearing my walking suit, I went down on my knees to greet the boys.

“You needn't kneel to them—not here!”

“I'm only making their acquaintance on their level,” I told her, smiling at them, for it seemed smiles were in short supply. “I know a new person can be daunting to little ones at first. Hello, David, and hello, Bertie. We're are going to be friends and have lots of fun.”

Mrs. Peters snorted so hard I thought she was going to sneeze. “You, just like me, had best follow orders here about, Their Graces' wishes and mine, and that doesn't mean games.”

“Of course, I will follow orders and help you,” I promised as I shook hands with these two solemn, little boys, though I yearned to hug them. They kept looking nervously at each other and then up at their nurse, so I got to my feet and decided to bide my time for full introductions. The little poppets were blond
beauties, and I was sure their parents would be even more handsome than the drawings I'd seen of them in the gazettes at the Lockwood house.

“I always take the heir,” Mrs. Peters told me and lifted David into her sturdy arms. “You bring Bertie.” Strangely, David looked upset, when most little ones loved to be cuddled and petted. Nurse Peters was rubbing his back and arms, patting him on his bum.

Though Bertie was walking well, even with his soft leather shoes, petticoats, and skirts—for he had edged away from me—I picked him up, bounced him once and held him close. To my surprise, under all that fancy fabric, the boy seemed thin, almost bony. We went out, down the hall, and through the padded, green baize door. I followed Mrs. Peters with David looking back at Bertie and me. Bertie put his arms around my neck and clung close.

David stretched one hand back toward us, probably trying to reach out to his younger brother. Or to me?

“You wait right there 'til summoned,” Nurse Peters told me at a turn of the hall and carted a wide-eyed David around the corner where I couldn't see them.

“I hungry,” Bertie told me. “Lala, I hungry.”

“I'm sure there will be something good when you see Mama and Papa,” I told him. He stayed solemn, even as he held harder to me, seeming to stiffen as if waiting for something.

From down the hall came a high-pitched shriek. Good gracious, could she have dropped David? Though I'd been told to wait there, holding Bertie to me who clung so hard he almost cut off my air, I rushed around the corner and down the hall. David was crying and evidently Mrs. Peters was shaking him. I hurried to her and started making funny faces and meowing and chirping to distract the child, but he still cried. Oh, this was going to make
a terrible impression on his parents and on my first meeting with them!

I heard a loud male voice on the other side of the door bellow, in a voice that carried over David's wails, “Not again! What is wrong with that boy? Must he always be caterwauling?”

I was thankful that made David's cries subside to sniffles. Whatever had set him off like that? Just being momentarily separated from Bertie? Fear of his father's booming voice?

A woman's tense tones wafted through the door. “Let's bring them in and feed them. After all, it's their last meal of the day.”

“At least my stamp collection doesn't shriek. Even my hunt dogs don't bark like that. We'll never make a man of him.”

“My dearest, he's not even four. I can't take it either, not with this wretched state I'm in. I just want it to be all over, this waiting, this birth.”

I was tempted to take Bertie and flee, but Mrs. Peters rapped on the door, then opened it herself. In she swept with David starting to cry again. Could he indeed be afraid of his father? I did not know whether to wait until summoned, but I went in too, following Mrs. Peters's lead to curtsy. When I tried to put Bertie down, he clung so hard I kept him in my arms.

The room was exquisite with satin draperies in pale greens that matched the full, embroidered robe the duchess wore over her form in her delicate condition,
en negligee,
Dr. Lockwood's new wife had called that style. No corsets, no petticoats beneath. All sorts of photographs and bric-a-brac clustered on tables. May of Teck, the Duchess of York, had dark hair swept up beautifully and a regal bearing despite her big belly.

I was surprised that the duke was my height at five feet and a half. He had a brown beard clipped tight and stood ramrod
straight with his teacup in one hand and cigar in the other. Could the strong smoke from that be something the children disliked, and so they protested these visits? It did rather sting one's eyes.

“If that boy can't be quiet, take him out, Mrs. Peters,” the duke said over David's renewed sobs. His voice cut right through one, as if he were speaking to an entire shipload of men, for I'd heard he still considered himself a Royal Navy man. “How you manage him, I don't know. Her Grace doesn't need to be upset now.”

To my horror, Mrs. Peters curtsied and carried David right out, leaving me with Bertie facing my new royal employers. I bobbed another curtsy and put Bertie down, hoping he would go to his mother, which, thank the Lord on high, he did.

With a weary smile, the duchess said, “My friend Lady Dugdale and her London doctor recommended you highly. We hope you will be happy here. As you must know, there will be a third child soon.” She had a unique way of pronouncing her words, sharp with rolled
r
's, which I learned later were traces of her German accent.

“Yes, Your Grace. I'm honored to serve here, and I love children.”

“Well, good,” the duke chimed in, “because these two are hard to love at times. Not since they've been babies, when we doted on them. I will leave all this to you, dearest,” he said to his wife, “and be in my library with my stamps.”

He made a hasty retreat. I didn't hear David's cries anymore so I hoped Mrs. Peters would bring him back in, but perhaps she had fled. To hear this had happened before was most unsettling.

“Excuse me, milady,” I ventured, “but Bertie said he's hungry.” The moment that was out of my mouth, I was appalled. I hadn't been spoken to first. And had I just indirectly criticized Mrs. Peters or demanded something?

“He's always hungry yet doesn't seem to grow. So what do we have for you here, eh, sweeting?” she asked the child, and his face lit. “Why don't you sit on this stool and put him on your lap,” she said to me. “I don't have a lap right now to hold him right, and he can have some grapes, muffins with jam, and milk. Ah—what is it you will be called by here, Miss Bill? Not Mrs. Bill, I'm sure since you aren't the head nurse, and I believe Mrs. Peters didn't want to use Bill at all. I recall that her husband who died years ago was Bill.”

“Charlotte, she decided, milady.” I had been told by Lady Dugdale that after addressing the duchess the first time as “Your Grace,” I could switch to “milady,” so I hoped I was doing that proper.

“Charlotte it is, then.”

“Lala,” Bertie declared with his mouth full of grapes. “She Lala.”

Feeling a bit softer toward Mrs. Peters for her being a widow, I sat on the stool and held Bertie while his mother fed him as if he were a little bird—a ruffed grouse with all his fancy baby garb. And he did seem starved.

“I do hope you will be able to help Mrs. Peters deal with David,” the duchess said. “I do worry so for his delicate nature, since so much will be expected of him. And I must keep reminding myself that his father will someday be his king too.”

I was so relieved to find the children's mother a sweet and caring parent. And here I sat with her in intimate conversation.

“I will do my very best, milady.”

“As must we all, in any circumstance and station,” she whispered as if to herself. Her jaw set, and she blinked back tears. From that moment on, whatever might befall, I admired her.

I
soon came to understand how Nurse Peters could be so stern and possessive of the children, yet so well tolerated by the staff and the royal parents. Rose told me on the sly that she had actually saved the duchess's mother, Mary Adelaide of Teck, from a dreadful fall on the front staircase. Quite a feat, since Rose said the woman was cruelly nicknamed “Fat Mary,” and must be three times the size of her pregnant daughter. So the Yorks felt they were beholden to Mrs. Peters.

“I vow, Charlotte, poor ‘Fat Mary' would have been a hard one to dress and care for her garments,” Rose had whispered with a roll of her light blue eyes.

Though Rose was almost ten years older than me, she didn't seem it. I liked her partly because she told me she had also gained her position here through a recommendation from Lady Dugdale. Rose longed to design fine ladies' garments, though she knew her true lot in life was to care for them. I think she was lonely, caught between spending a lot
of time with the duchess upstairs, traveling with her, but supposedly living downstairs with the servants. Anyhow, we got on splendidly.

From Rose I learned there had been an even earlier nurse who had been dismissed before Mrs. Peters, for somehow insulting the duchess's mother, who used to be much about before her current illness kept her confined to White Lodge at Richmond Park in London. That was the location of David's birth, though Bertie had been born here.

In short, the staff, including Rose, all felt they were skating on thin ice. As one of the footmen put it, no one wanted a “fall from grace” since the Yorks were quick to sack anyone who stepped out of line. And so, more than once, I saw the butler on down to the nursery footman merely roll their eyes and keep their heads down, however brusque Mrs. Peters acted and however much David howled and Bertie cowered.

I, who worked closer than anyone with the woman, felt ill at ease with her all the time, so what must her little charges feel? Both were tense and skittish. I'd been in service at York Cottage for twenty-three days to be exact, and I feared Mrs. Peters might get me sacked for my cheery and affectionate way with the boys—Bertie, at least, since David always seemed off limits. The fact I was appalled at David's behavior more teatimes than not didn't sit well with her either. She mostly kept me at bay and treated me more like another nursemaid than undernurse, but I hesitated to complain.

Today was Sunday, April 25, and we'd been to St. Mary Magdalene Church on the grounds, though without the duchess in her usual place since the birth was so close. Day of rest or not, that afternoon I planned to store a pile of clean nappies in the
day nursery in preparation for the birth of the new royal baby. Arms full, I walked right into the day nursery without the required knock.

I thought Mrs. Peters had taken the boys outside in the spring air. Bertie wasn't to be seen. But there she stood, leaning over David who was bent facedown over his bed. She was spanking his bare bum with the bristle side of a hairbrush!

“You'll learn, you bad, bad boy,” the woman muttered. “You are my boy, aren't you? Aren't you?”

The child's hysterical cries were muffled by a pillow pressed against his face. In that moment, all the strange and horrid pieces of the puzzle flew together for me. She must have pinched and scratched the child before taking him in to see his parents each afternoon, then carried him out in triumph as if he were hers alone to comfort and cuddle. Bertie and David both feared her, yet were coerced and groomed—like this—to think she loved them and they must love her. Love demanded by pain—so wrong.

“Stop it! Unhand that child!” I shouted, though I knew the moment I spoke that my time here was doomed. I dropped the nappies on the bed, ready to leap at her. I wanted to seize that brush and hit her, but she stopped and yanked the child, clad only in his shirt, to a sitting position on his bed.

“You, leave at once!” she cried, advancing on me, keeping her voice down as I had not. “He's been naughty. He's in my charge.”

Her expression terrified me. Her gaze seemed askew; her features twisted, unnatural. Could she be not only cruel but demented to treat the future heir to the throne like this? And she had gotten away with it?

“Where's Bertie?” I demanded.

“None of your business, which will soon be ended here,” she
snapped and threw the brush at me. It bounced off my shoulder onto the floor. I felt sick to my stomach, for the boys, and yes, for myself.

Tears streaking down his face, behind her back, David pointed to the cabinet where we kept extra clothing and where I'd meant to put the nappies. I marched to the cabinet and pulled the door. Locked! The boy was locked in here? I grabbed the key from off the top shelf, unlocked the cabinet, and opened the door wide. Bertie was doubled up inside with his eyes screwed tight shut and his hands over his ears.

“Come on, poppet,” I said and stooped to pull him out, but he'd gone rigid as a statue. “It's Lala, come on now.” As I lifted him into my arms, he clung hard to me. I'd made some inroads with him at least.

“You'll be out of here now,” Mrs. Peters said, propping her hands on her hips as if to keep me from seeing David, who peered around her. “My husband wouldn't give me babies of my own, but these are mine.”

“We'll see about that,” I told her. “I'm taking them outside for some fresh air as you were to do, and if you make a fuss, I'll tell Her Grace what I saw. You have lost your mind and—”

She began to make great, sucking sobs where she was standing. Her shoulders shook and heaved. “Three years . . . since he was born, not a day off . . .”

“But everyone has their time off here, so—”

“I didn't. Couldn't leave him, not for a moment. He wants me, not them.” Hysteria convulsed her.

“David, come here to me,” I told him, and he scrambled around her with his thin white legs sticking out the bottom of his shirt—legs with black and blue bruises. “Where are your trousers?” I
asked. He pointed to the floor where they'd been thrown. “Pick them up and bring them.” He still wore his shoes, so I grabbed a tweed coat for him and one for Bertie, who was hardly dressed to go out either. I took the washcloth from the bowl, dripping wet, and grabbed a jar of salve from medicines I'd recently arranged on top of the cupboard. My arms full, and without another word, I took both boys out into the hall and closed the door.

I put Bertie down, though he pressed himself against me as I knelt next to David and gently washed his crimson pinprick cuts and blue bruises on his little, white bum. He was trembling but didn't cry. God help me, if someone came upon us in the hall like this.

“I know this hurts, but this will make it feel better soon, I promise,” I told him and smoothed the aloe ointment on his bottom. He barely winced. Could he be used to this? I prayed he did not think I meant to treat him as she had. Why had I not realized she was pinching and bruising him each time we went to visit his parents? Why didn't they?

“Get your trousers on, here, help me,” I told David, and he instantly obeyed, putting a hand against the wall and stepping into them though we didn't have his drawers. “We'll put your coats on downstairs, both of you. Come on.” I picked up Bertie again and led them through the green baize door, down the hall, past their parents' private rooms—I heard muted voices inside—toward the front staircase. Bertie clung, and David stuck so close he almost tripped me.

“Hitchetty-hatchetty, down we go,” I said in singsong fashion on the steps, but what tormented me were lines from the nursery rhyme I had recited to Bertie just last night:
W
hen the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle
and all.
I had no doubt their little world had crashed, but I was determined—if I could find a way to stay here—they would not be broken.

It was a glorious spring day. I had no coat, but I didn't mind. Outside on the steps, I put their coats on, then we went round to the side of the house where their pram was waiting. Though David usually walked, I decided to put them both into it, Bertie between David's legs with the pillow under his sore bottom. He was still shaking. I bent to hug him, held him a moment, then put my arms around both of them.

I needed time to think how I would handle this. Inside, Mrs. Peters might be tattling on me or might have collapsed, but I had to decide whom to tell the truth to and when. Their mother—I would have to risk telling their mother, but she was going to be delivered of a third child any day now. Could I convince her to keep me on until, hopefully, they would bring in another head nurse? If it was the last thing I did here, I must be certain Mrs. Peters was dismissed.

“We're going for a nice ride,” I told the boys, who hadn't said a word. “And later we're going to talk to your mama about Mrs. Peters taking a long rest away from here. David, you may have to help me explain that Mrs. Peters hurts you.”

“I can't, Lala,” he said. “Then she will hurt me again.”

“We'll just see about that. But right now we are going to have some time just to be together.”

With a helpless feeling—exactly what these little ones must have felt with that woman—I pushed the pram out toward the gardens, where I nearly ran down Chad Reaver, whom I had not laid eyes on since the day he'd brought me here. I'd thought of him, though, especially when I'd heard the drumming of the ruffed
grouse's wings at night, calling for his “lady friend,” as he had put it.

“Oh, Mr. Reaver! I didn't think to see you here!”

He had papers in his hands. He doffed his tweed cap and shot me a smile that didn't calm me down but stoked my emotions even more.

“Hello, Miss Charlotte Bill, and my favorite young men! And, ask for Mr. Reaver and you'll get my father, so call me Chad, eh, but never Chadwick, which my sire named me.” He rolled his eyes and bent down to make a funny face at the boys.

Then he straightened and said to me, “The duke asked me to bring a reckoning of pheasants and grouse, but Mrs. Wentworth said to come back later. You see, she just told me, what you must already know.” He turned away from the boys and began to whisper. “About keeping the lads away today, because the duchess has gone into labor.”

“Oh, I didn't know . . . yet.”

“What's labor?” David piped up, the first time I'd heard him so much as ask a question, despite the sharp mind I was sure was buried in there somewhere. He'd been so scared to move or speak that his father thought him quite the ninny.

Before I could think how to explain childbirth to the lad, Chad told him, “It's hard work for something that's good, something important, like I'm going to go hitch a horse to a wagon and instead of you lads riding in that perambulator, we're all going for a ride round the pond, down to the church and back.”

“Is that all right with Mrs. Peters?” David asked me, which nearly broke my heart.

“It's all right with
me,
” I declared, figuring I might be gone tomorrow anyway.

Bertie almost cheered, “Lala says yes! Lala says yes. Get a horsie.”

“Righto, my lads. If Lala says yes, that's it then,” Chad said with a laugh and wink at me.

As he started away toward the stables, he ruffled David's hair. It might have been the first time a man had touched him playfully. The corners of his mouth lifted in a hint of a smile.

I vowed I wouldn't go without a fight. New baby or not, these beaten and beaten-down boys were never going back to Mrs. Peters. And for an hour or so, I was going to love them and be with Chad, even if it was the last day I ever spent at Sandringham.