Barbara Cleverly - The Blood Royal

London, 1920

‘Are you sure this is the place, cabby? It looks rather grand …’

‘St Katharine’s Square, number one, guv’nor, just like you said. They’re all grand in this neck of the woods. This is a Royal Borough, sir. But if you don’t fancy it, we can always move on.’

‘No. Wait here. I’m in no hurry.’

The passenger in naval uniform peered again through the gloom of an October evening, taking in the magnificence of the four-storey mansion.

‘Well I may be in a hurry,’ the cab driver objected. ‘Fog’s coming up.’

‘A pea-souper, eh? I’ve been away for years. I’ve forgotten what they look like.’

‘Pea-souper nothing! This one’s going to be a brown Windsor, judging by the smell of it. Straight up off the river. It’s to be hoped they’ve got the acetylene flares alight round Trafalgar Square or I’ll never get you back to the station, guv.’

The Navy man was barely listening, all his attention on the stuccoed, balconied façade. Electric lights penetrated the growing darkness, offering a welcoming orange glow behind drawn curtains. In the upper floors, lamps or candles were moving between rooms as staff came off or went on duty.

‘Well at least there’s someone at home,’ he said, awkwardly throwing a conversational pebble into the silence ponding between him and the young woman by his side.

She made no reply.

He took her hand and gave it a brief encouraging squeeze. ‘Nearly there, Miss Petrovna. Three thousand miles and three years — but you’ve made it!’ He spoke with a cheerfulness he couldn’t feel.

Sensitive as he’d become to his companion’s moods, the captain interpreted the barely audible response as a mew of distress and his resolve began to crack. He had avoided saying farewell — he was embarrassed by emotional leave-takings, especially those made in public — and there was nothing more to add.

Even so, he launched into one last speech. ‘Look, Miss … um, Anna … there’s still time to change your mind. You don’t have to do this yet. Come home with me.’ After the slightest pause, he resumed: ‘My wife would make you very welcome. Joan is a fine woman — she’d care for you. Get you properly on your feet. Our family doctor is no slouch and he’d rally round, I know. It needn’t be for long. Just as long as you choose.’

She turned reproachful eyes on him and shook her head in regret.

The captain realized with a shock that he’d experienced the same devastating rejection years before. How many? Well over twenty … He’d been no more than a boy in short trousers. He’d been tramping the moors with his father when they’d come across an injured otter. A very young female. His indulgent old pa had allowed him to carry the animal home in his jacket. He’d cared for her, fed her, watched her grow strong and mischievous. And always closing his ears to the concerned parental advice: ‘Wild creatures, otters. Never think you can house-train ’em. Taking little things, of course, but you shouldn’t get fond of ’em.’

The day came when she escaped from her pen and wrecked his mother’s kitchen.

He hadn’t waited for his parents to tell him his duty. It was clear. He’d taken her back into the wild himself, choosing a spot where he knew the fishing was good and there was a thriving otter colony. On the river bank he whispered goodbye, never really thinking she would leave him.

Pain had gathered and lodged in his young throat like a ball of india-rubber, threatening to suffocate him, as he watched her leap with delight into the water, dive, surface, dive again, swimming away from him. He’d turned, swiping at the tears in his eyes with the sleeve of his rough sweater, and begun to blunder back home across the meadow.

A piercing chirp had made him stop and turn and there she was behind him, on the bank again, wet fur comically spiked, staring at him with intelligent black eyes. Black eyes he could have sworn were asking where on earth he thought he was sloping off to. The moment he started back towards her, calling her name, she turned, yipped in satisfaction and dived into the water.

He never saw her again.

In a busy and danger-filled life, he’d scarcely thought about her until this moment of parting raised the same choking pain.

‘Very well. Message received, cabby! Look, wait here with the young lady, will you, while I go and announce us. I’ll be a few minutes.’

The door was opened by a butler as he approached.

‘Captain Swinburne? Good evening, sir. Her Highness is expecting you. Will you come up to the drawing room?’

He followed the butler down the spacious hallway and up the stairs. They made towards an open door through which filtered smoky, autumnal music — a Chopin nocturne, he thought. When they entered, the pianist abandoned her piece and came smiling to greet him. A striking-looking Russian woman in her fifties, dark hair streaked with grey, she made a reassuring impression on him: friendly and … yes, he would have said — motherly. Somehow, he hadn’t expected motherly. Or small.

Sherry was offered and politely refused. He declined to take a seat by the fire. Facing him across the rug in front of the fireplace, the princess came straight to the point. ‘You have her, Captain? Our Anna?’

‘Miss Petrovna is waiting in the taxi, Your Highness, and eager to see you. I wanted to have a word with you in private before I leave her in your hands.’

She listened intently as he moved through his account. He confirmed that the girl had been found close to death on the doorstep of the British consul in Murmansk in northern Russia. On recovering sufficiently, she had begged to be given a passage to Britain where she knew members of her family were living. The consul had wired Swinburne aboard his ship, which was patrolling the Arctic waters, and he’d agreed to take her on board and bring her back to Portsmouth where he was due to call in for a refit in the autumn.

He was quite certain that none of this was fresh news to the Russian lady but she listened intently to every word, seeming to value his first-hand report.

He told her how pleased the ship’s doctor had been with the patient’s progress. The best food the galley could provide, fresh air, exercise and the stimulation of a late summer’s cruise along the coast of Norway had almost restored her to full physical health. The captain was careful to explain that the ship had been conveying back home a consular family who had gladly lent one of their maids as nurse cum chaperone so all the proprieties had been observed.

The Russian acknowledged this with a tilt of the head and an understanding smile.

But it was the girl’s mental state that he needed to lay out for her future guardian. ‘She has suffered unbelievable hardship … torture would not be too strong a word … and three years of unremitting squalor. Anyone less strong and tenacious of life would not have survived. But it will be some time before she’s fully recovered. It’s possible that the services of an alienist might be called upon with advantage.’ A radical suggestion, but the princess seemed not to be offended. She even nodded in acceptance and Swinburne felt emboldened to press his point. ‘There are physicians in London with certain skills acquired in the war … Anna’s condition is in some ways similar to what I have witnessed in men experiencing the prolonged terrors of the battlefield. And, survivor that she is, she deserves the appropriate treatment. I would like you to be aware of this. I will not leave her in any situation that I do not judge to be capable of responding to her condition.’