The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (17 page)

‘Are you sure, sir?' the girl said. She was still trembling a little.

The doctor pulled back Fred's eyelids, and then leaned close. ‘As I can be. There's breath here, see.' He gestured towards Fred's mouth. ‘The blood's all show. This one's a long way from death.' He shouted at the innkeeper, ‘Fetch us a pitcher of your finest Adam's ale and I'll show you a modern Lazarus come to Bristol dockside!' He laughed and clapped his hands together.

The girl watched as the doctor took the jug and threw it over Fred Worrall, and in seconds he came coughing and spluttering to life; sitting up, just as she imagined Lazarus in the Bible, white-faced and still smeared with blood. The doctor thumped him heartily on the back and handed him a tot of brandy. Fred coughed as it went down, but it seemed to spark him into life somehow.

The girl showed two emotions on her face: relief and fear. She turned away from the young man and followed the doctor to the door.

‘There you are, little lady,' the doctor said as he left. ‘Job done. Tell your young master to leave me three shillings' worth of rum on account with the innkeeper – for Doctor Bernard of the
Robert and Anne
– and I'll be one happy soul.'

The girl nodded, her voice low. ‘He is not my master. He is Mr Worrall; his father owns the Tolzey Bank – he'll see you right, I am sure. Thank you, sir.'

She stopped. One second too long – a last look back at the man on the table.

Fred looked around the room, rubbing his temple, where the blood was now congealing and a great egg-shaped lump had grown. ‘Where in God's own name am I?' He looked at the girl by the door, staring hard, his mind as woolly as one who'd drunk three skins full.

Fred screwed up his face. The light was behind her, but the girl was definitely wearing Caraboo's toga. However, she had no turban, but wore a boy's cap. He struggled to concentrate . . . The voice that had come from her mouth, the voice that he had heard, and not in his dreams, surely belonged to somebody else. His head throbbed. Perhaps he was still, in some kind of fashion, unconscious.

‘Who the hell are you?' he said.

The girl stood there, frozen. She should have run then. Run as fast as she could. Instead she was transfixed. A rabbit glaring at a lamp, awaiting the bullet.

She didn't know what to say. The Princess Caraboo no longer existed, except in oils – although she had to admit she was still wearing her clothes, holding a knife. She shut her eyes. The relief she'd felt when she heard that Frederick Worrall hadn't died, along with the dread that the future was about to spiral out of control, made her nauseous.

‘Hey! Sir! I say!' Fred called after the doctor and tried to stand up, steadying himself against the table. But the doctor had gone and Fred was still too befuddled to support himself, so he slid into a seat Mr Hurst offered.

‘Caraboo? You are covered in . . .' Fred looked at his own hands, his shirt front. ‘This is my blood? Oh God . . .'

‘Mostly water, sir,' the innkeeper said. ‘The strange maid here did well by you; you owe her your life.' He looked from the girl to Fred and back. ‘I'll get my lad to fetch you a cab to take you home. Your people can pay if you don't have the coin at present.'

‘I'm best leaving, sir,' the girl said quietly. She stood up, eyes fixed on the ground.

‘What? What did you say?
Go?
No you don't!' Fred half lunged after her, caught her by the arm, and she tried to pull away. ‘You! Speak! Who – what – are you?'

‘Please, sir, will you let me go?' Her voice belonged to someone else completely – a soft West Country burr that spoke of buttermilk and pastures.

Fred shook his head. ‘Not till you look me in the eye, dammit!'

The girl could feel his hand tight around her forearm. The blood was rushing to her cheeks. She thought she might faint clear away, and wouldn't that be a blessing? She closed her eyes for a moment, but he was still there, his hand like a vice around her arm.

She had the knife in her belt: she could slash him with it, she thought, draw a bigger cut across his pretty face and see him blinded with blood, then run out through the kitchen and away. But not in real life; not hurt someone she knew. She crumpled. All the fight had left her.

‘You leave the girl be, I say!' said Mr Hurst. ‘She saved you – whether or not you'd die, or whether suffer more blows from the mob, who knows? Either way, you owe her.' He turned to Caraboo. ‘I won't be a minute. Do you trust yourself with him? I do believe his brain is yet addled.'

She swallowed. She wanted to follow the innkeeper out of the room and get herself as far away from Fred Worrall as possible. ‘I must go also,' she said, but Fred threw himself against the door.

‘No! You will talk to me – for heaven's sake, talk!'

He looked at her: he was so confused – she could see it in his eyes, and she felt a little sorry for him. Her mind was racing. What could she say?

‘You are not Caraboo?' Fred's voice was low, and he was shaking. ‘Our Princess Caraboo? You spoke! I do not understand. I heard you . . . with another's voice! I swear it!'

She shook her head.

‘What are you then?'

‘Only a girl.'

‘There it is!' Fred laughed. ‘That voice! That damned
English
voice!'

Her heart was beating triple time, her eyes were round; once again she looked like a rabbit caught in lamplight.

‘Liar! Damned liar!'

The girl moved back, pressed herself against the wall.

‘It was you,' Fred said. ‘You and that bloody captain. Plotting together, the pair of you! You had us all hooked. I was hooked – a soft-hearted fool, believing you were real! Those days on the island, were they all sham?'

‘No!'

‘I cared . . .' Fred looked away. ‘You, a princess! Hah!'

‘It wasn't like that, sir!'

He jabbed a pointing finger at her. ‘Oh, it was exactly like that! I was right all along. Laughing at me, at us, were you? Do you know what you have done to my family?'

‘I meant to go.' Her voice was soft. ‘I didn't mean to stay. The captain made me, sir.' She was shaking. ‘I should never have stayed.'

‘Witch! Don't act the innocent! Oh, I was right all along! You knew what you were doing, you were a flatty catcher, a thief, a swindler. I shall turn you over to the magistrates. I shall do it today! To think that I was taken in by you . . .' He shouted for the innkeeper. ‘Sir! Landlord! Fetch me the constables! Call out the militia!'

The girl shook her head. ‘Please, sir, no, sir – you must believe me!'

‘
Must believe you?
' He frowned. ‘You and that Captain Palmer have dragged the Worralls through the filth!'

‘No! I never heard of him before I arrived at Knole! I only went along with him, until—'

‘Went along with him!' Fred was speechless for a moment. ‘You led us all a dance.'

‘I am sorry, sir.'

‘Sorry! I will make sure you pay . . .'

‘If this goes to court, won't it be even worse for your family, for your mother?'

‘Why would you care?'

‘Mrs Worrall was only kindness, sir!'

‘And you made a fool of her!'

‘It was never meant so, sir!'

Fred slid to the floor, back against the door.

‘Are you well, sir? You have lost a deal of blood.'

‘You may as well have done this yourself with your knife, lady – no, I say the wound you made is a deal deeper.'

She said nothing. Hadn't she wanted him weak like this – bootless, jacketless, with nothing, like this? She closed her eyes. She had not thought . . .

‘I never meant this.' She shuddered, holding back the tears. ‘God will judge me, sir.'

‘And the City of Bristol magistrates too.' Fred tried to sit up. ‘Pass me that water,' he said.

She nodded. She could see the vein in his neck pulsing. She took a deep breath and tried to talk softly. ‘You must not overreach yourself, sir, or the cut will open again.'

There was a banging on the door behind Fred. Mr Hurst shouted, ‘Is all well?'

Fred shouted back that it was, and that he was to send a man to fetch the constables.

The girl shook her head. ‘Please, no!' she whispered.

‘Are you certain?' came the innkeeper's voice.

Fred looked at her: her was face pleading with him. ‘Certain!' he answered. ‘This girl is a criminal, a liar and a damned thief!'

‘I have stolen nothing,' she said.

‘You have stolen our family's good name!'

The girl was close to tears.

‘For heaven's sake, keep your tears to yourself! I do not care for them.' Fred shifted against the door.

‘No, nor do I.' She sniffed.

‘So who are you, then? Some brown girl off the ships? Some whore's child brought up to lying and cheating?'

‘I was never a cheat!'

‘And how do you square that exactly?'

‘I believed it. I
was
Caraboo. I was only what your people wanted me to be, nothing more. And I never took a thing that belonged to your family. I suffered Heyford and his electricity, I was discussed and—'

‘Oh, so you loved the attention, then?'

The girl thought for a long moment. She looked down at her bare feet. ‘I suppose that would be it, sir, yes.' She paused, and then her voice grew calmer. ‘And to be something other than who I was; something fresh, something good, something capable of love and being loved.'

‘Love?'

‘Aren't we all liars when it comes to love?'

‘You are mistaken, whatever your name is,' he said hastily. ‘Love is honest and true; love does not lie.'

She shook her head. ‘I don't believe that.'

‘Believe what you like. I am a gentleman.'

‘Yes, now, that is a truth of sorts.'

‘Of sorts?'

‘Have you always acted as a gentleman, sir? At all times?'

‘You have no right to talk to me like that!'

‘So you have always told the truth to those who would love you?'

‘Shut up!' Fred glared. ‘All that time, all that time I spoke freely and thought you dumb!'

‘Well, I am not. You have no idea about my life, about what it was like, sir.'

‘No, and I do not care for more lies.'

‘No, sir.'

Outside on the quayside, life went on: the sound of carts trundling over cobbles, of shouts, of men at work. Inside, the light came through the old windows in yellow bars.

‘I suppose, if anything, I have been guilty of thinking of nothing, these past weeks at Knole. Caraboo was a princess. She thought nothing of the future but only of the present, of comfort.' She sighed. ‘I thought of not wanting to go back to living on the road, and being vulnerable—'

Now he smiled. ‘Hah! Vulnerable? You are the fiercest girl I ever met.'

‘That was Caraboo,' she said.

‘You are Caraboo.'

She shook her head and took a deep breath; took off the cap, and pushed her hand through her dark hair. She could not be Caraboo any more, and she would never be Ruth now.

She looked at him. ‘No, sir, I am Mary Willcox, of Witheridge in Devon, just beyond the city of Exeter. I was a nursemaid in London for a year since—'

‘Well, Mary, you can keep your tales. Although perhaps the judge and the newspapers will want to talk to you.'

‘No! Can't you see that will only make things worse?! If you want to do right by the Worralls, by your mother, we will have to find another way!'

‘We?' Fred shook his head. ‘What, you would have me let you go? I suppose I must look like an idiot to you, but I assure you I am not.'

‘Do you want your family in the papers?'

‘No!'

‘Then think, sir, I beg you! Your father's business as a banker is built on trust. At the very least he would be laughed at—'

‘You could ruin us!' The thought struck Fred, and suddenly his mind raced to a future where the Worralls were the butt of an enormous joke.

‘I never meant to . . .'

He wanted to pick her up and shake her. Mother would be heartbroken, and Cass too, but the business? If no one trusted father's judgement because of this stupidity, the bank would go under; the Worralls would not only be a laughing stock, they would be ruined.

‘Was Heyford in on it? Or was it just you and Palmer?' Was there anyone he could trust? he wondered.

‘No. The captain embroidered my own history, such as it was, sir. I do believe he has his own enrichment in mind – I want nothing to do with the man. He is the one you have to watch, sir.'

‘I think you might be out to save your own skin.'

‘It is not worth saving, sir.'

‘That is the truth!' He cursed, words she hadn't heard before, spitting them out like bullets. ‘You know the worst thing of all? I believed you! The tears, the persecution by the captain! You were acting then, no doubt, in order to engage my affections!' He looked her up and down as if she were a piece of meat. ‘Women . . . I am a fool! I should have let him have you.'

‘I was glad, sir, for your intervention. Believe me, I would have left Knole if he—' She stopped herself. Sighed deeply. That was not quite the truth. ‘I stayed for other reasons, but he had a hold on me – he threatened me, you know that.'

‘Poor you.'

‘You do not understand!'

‘You have no cause to get angry. You are no more than a liar and an opportunist; a common thief of trust that hurts and ruins all and everything.'

‘And you have never hurt a soul? We are all liars, sir! All of us. One way or another.'

‘Not like this,' he said, and they looked at each other for a moment. ‘Not like this at all . . .'

They sat in silence for what seemed like an age. She wondered how her life would go from here, and saw no joy.