The Curious Tale of the Lady Caraboo (11 page)

‘I did rather know that, yes.'

‘So why don't you marry her? She is fair, and a good match.'

He rolled his eyes. ‘I am eighteen.' He looked at his sister. ‘I say! It's you, isn't it? That's where all this talk of love comes from. It's
you
! So Edmund will have to fight for you, then?'

Cassandra blushed to match the strawberries.

‘I'm right! I am! Who is it, Cass? I will
make
you tell me!'

She dashed over to the trapdoor and down the ladder, with Fred hard on her heels.

Caraboo was left on her own. She would do it, she thought. He would love someone who did not even exist.

She turned her face towards the sun. Caraboo could do it – after all, she was a princess, the world bent to her will. And Caraboo was a wonderful invention; everyone loved her. It would make a fine and most worthwhile diversion.

She looked down over the estate and began to plan Caraboo's first move. Of course, it would look as though she gave not one fig for him. She would hunt and swim and climb. She would not simper or play the doxy, like every other girl he'd known. She would play the Tom Rig all the while, and reel him in.

Men, all men, were simple, stupid things to Princess Caraboo.

She skipped down the steps, two at a time, picturing, in her mind's eye, Frederick Worrall reduced to tears and eaten up with despair. She would head straight for the island, and would lay a decent bet, had she any coin, on him arriving before lunch time, looking for her.

Caraboo changed into what she called her hunting dress – a confection she had made with the help of Cassandra, knee-length, light brown Indian cotton. She tied a belt around her waist and tucked her knife in, and ran towards the open doors that led to the park.

She saw Mrs Worrall, the professor and Captain Palmer deep in discussion in the library, and even though Mrs Worrall beckoned her over, Caraboo smiled and shouted back that she was off to the island. Of course, they didn't understand her.

‘What was that?' Mrs Worrall asked the captain.

He answered something about prayer, which Caraboo thought was foolish given that the household knew she prayed on the roof. But it was, she had to agree, a safe bet. The captain had saluted, though, so she had no choice but to stop. For the first time she felt annoyed with him, whereas before she had only felt grateful. She saluted back. ‘
Manjitoo
' – to the captain – ‘
Manjitoo
' – the professor – ‘
Lazor
' – to Mrs Worrall.

‘
Ana
,' she said, pointing outside.

‘Oh, I know that one:
ana
, wa-ter!' Mrs Worrall smiled.

‘Wa-ter, yes.' Caraboo nodded.

‘Oh, she will soon be fluent in English, I have no doubt, Captain Palmer.'

‘No doubt,' he agreed.

‘Oh, Princess, we are making such plans!' Mrs Worrall beamed. ‘And, Captain, could you ask Caraboo if we could possibly have some samples of her handwriting to send to Edinburgh and Oxford?'

Captain Palmer frowned, and Caraboo thought he looked for a moment like he might be about to argue – but Professor Heyford cut in, ‘A most excellent idea, I am personally acquainted with several of the finest graphologists in the country . . .'

Mrs Worrall clapped her hands. ‘How wonderfully fortunate, don't you think, Captain?'

Captain Palmer shot Heyford a look sharp as knives, but he nodded politely at Mrs Worrall and babbled a suitably Javanese request. Caraboo nodded regally. There could be no harm in it. She would be long gone by the time any professors had deigned to reply. And if they were like Heyford, she thought, there was a good chance she could fool them too.

‘The whole county is so interested in you – not to mention the Bath Institute and the newspapers . . . I was thinking of a party, to introduce you to society.'

Caraboo smiled placidly at her hostess, then saluted again and made to leave. The captain shouted after her – some senseless babble. She turned and nodded, and saw that he was staring after her in a most unpleasant fashion. Probably the result of too much rum and his unconscionably early start, she thought, and finally escaped out into the sun.

The island was perfect. Princess Caraboo knew that wherever she had come from, this small island was her true home, her Javasu. She lit a fire – no doubt the smoke would work in much the same way as a royal standard flying from the tower of a palace: the Princess is in residence. She sat down and laid her hunting dress out on some branches to dry. There was no point in starting to hunt before Fred arrived. So after she had retrieved the bow she had left on her last visit and made a few more arrows, she cleared a space on the ground and began to practise her handwriting in order that dear Mrs Worrall should not be disappointed. Using a twig, she traced curls and arabesques like she'd seen in another of Mrs Worrall's books.

‘Bravo, Princess, Bravo!' Fred was here already. He had been watching her.

Princess Caraboo shinned up the nearest tree, grabbing her hunting gown as she went. She yelled the best Javasu insults she could think of; then, once she was sitting fully clothed in the crook of the small chestnut tree, she realized that she could not have played it better if she had tried.

Except that her kriss was down by the fire.

‘Are you after this, Princess?' Fred passed it up. ‘Look, I mean no harm.' He raised his hands. ‘No harm,' he repeated, more slowly.

But Caraboo wasn't ready to forgive him yet.

‘I'm sorry, but you looked so . . . You were writing, weren't you?' He had managed to stamp all over it, but she nodded.

‘Mama will be fascinated,' he said.

That's the idea
, she said to herself, and took a deep breath. She reminded herself that she was supposed to be beguiling this self-important beau. She shinned back down the tree, saluted and bowed, and he bowed a clumsy reponse, his blond hair flopping over his face. ‘Sor-ry,' he said. ‘Fred – is – sor-ry.'

Two apologies in one day. She wanted to smile.

‘Caraboo hunt,' she said, picking up her bow and arrows, and darted into the trees ahead of him. She was small and nimble, but he struggled to keep up with her. It was like having a stupid, clumsy older brother, Caraboo thought. Twice she lost a pigeon because of an ‘I say' or a ‘Wouldn't fishing be simpler, Princess?'

But he did call her ‘Princess', and when she brought down the first bird he seemed genuinely impressed.

‘Good shot, Princess. I never thought those arrows could do any damage at all.'

She gave him her best withering look as she picked up the pigeon and removed the arrow, its sharpened tip red with blood.

He looked away first. Princess Caraboo was enjoying herself.

She tracked another bird, and made him crouch down close beside her, her finger to her lips for quiet, a good deal of her skin pressed against his fashionably tight, pale breeches. She passed him the bow and arrow and told him, with actions, that he should shoot. Caraboo was looking forward to seeing him fail.

Fred took the hand-made bow and took aim. He hit the bird cleanly and lethally with his first shot, and she had to hide her disappointment.

‘I hit it!' His smile lit up his face. ‘Wait till I tell Ed about this – doesn't half knock potting ducks into a cocked hat and no mistake.'

Caraboo stood, clapping her hands and saluting him. She spoke to him in her language, telling him that he was an excellent shot, and also a prime strutting cockscomb.

He bowed and said, ‘Princess, whoever you are, you are a marvel. Shall we take these back to the house?'

Caraboo simply picked up the pigeon and walked back to where the little fire had almost burned itself out. With gestures and signs she directed him to pluck the birds while she built up the fire.

‘Plucking! Surely
you
should deal with the birds, and
I
the fire? Isn't that a more natural division of labour?'

Caraboo made a face that said she didn't understand. With mime and action she directed him to the birds again and strode off. She heard him curse but didn't turn round.

‘As the Princess wishes . . .' He was mocking her, but she took no notice.

When she returned with an armful of twigs, Fred was sitting on a fallen tree with a still mostly feathered bird in his lap.

‘This is interminable!' he said, looking at her.

She fed the fire, took the other bird and had its feathers off and its guts out in seconds. She spatchcocked it on a grid of twigs, propped it up over the flames, and coolly passed Fred the knife.

She didn't help. She sat back, leaning against a tree, arms folded, as her pigeon began to roast. She half shut her eyes, enjoying the spectacle of Frederick Worrall trying and failing. He had obviously never gutted anything in all his eighteen years. Suddenly he swore loudly and she saw that he had cut himself.

Princess Caraboo grinned at the sight of Fred, his breeches covered in blood and mud and grass stains, laid low by a dead pigeon. He looked thunderously at her, brushed the hair out of his eyes, only managing to smear yet more blood across his face. He looked like one of the noble savages in his mother's books, she thought. She told him this, in her made-up language, but he only scowled, prompting her to laugh.

‘Just because I cannot prepare a pigeon for the table!' He threw down the sad, mangled little ball of feathers and flesh that had once been a bird.

Princess Caraboo scolded him.
That was food
, she said through mime.

He sighed. ‘I will go back to the house – I won't eat your luncheon, Princess.'

He stood up to leave, but Caraboo reached for his arm and pulled him back towards the fire. It was, she thought, the first time she had touched a man for a very long while. This was lost on Fred, but he did sit down again.

‘You are sure you want me at your table, Princess? I would make a very poor member of your tribe, would I not?'

‘Tribe?' she said, head on one side.

‘Tribe. Clan? Family? Fam-i-ly?' Fred pointed at himself. ‘Cassandra, sister, Mrs Worrall, mother, Mr Worrall, father.' He sighed. ‘I'd rather be in your tribe than mine, to be honest.'

Caraboo took up the mangled bird and started to pluck and clean it.

‘All this living in the woods, hunting and swimming, sleeping under the stars – but I don't even know if you do that, do you? Perhaps you have some kind of native huts . . . I slept out once when I was young – never told a soul. Heavens, Ed would think I was on the road to Bedlam if I told him about this . . .'

Caraboo was making a grid to hold Fred's pigeon.

‘But at least there'd be no university, no marriage.' Fred sighed. ‘What I'd give to see the world, Princess Caraboo. I would swap my life with yours at the drop of a hat.' He gazed into the fire, which crackled and spat. She knew he didn't mean that. He had no idea what it was like to live on the road, to sleep hungry, to have nothing.

She swallowed. She must remember who she was at all times. Princess Caraboo, daughter of the South Seas. Regal huntress and ruler-to-be of Javasu. Not Mary Willcox, country maid ruined twice over, beggar.

She offered him the pigeon to set over the fire.

‘You are so clever,' he said, taking it, now flattened and pinned ready for cooking and propped it over the embers.

Caraboo inspected her own bird.
Clever
. Nobody had ever called her that.

‘Din-ner!' she said.

‘Dinner,' Fred repeated. His hand was still bleeding, and he saw her looking at it. ‘It's nothing,' he said. ‘Honestly.'

‘Honestly?' Caraboo said.

‘True,' he said, and his lips made a most pleasant shape when he said the word, she thought.

She sat up straight. She was supposed to be beguiling him, she reminded herself.

Caraboo took her pigeon off the fire, cut it in two and gave half to Fred. It tasted delicious.

‘The best food and the best company,' he said. ‘I salute you, Princess. I should never have doubted you.'

No, you shouldn't.

‘There is no side to you, unlike English girls, who preen and play the idiot.' He turned the second pigeon over so that it cooked on the other side. ‘I only wish I knew what you were saying to me.' He paused. ‘Something tells me you think I am an idiot.'

Caraboo said nothing.

‘I think, perhaps, you know a lot more than you say. You know, I used to think Mama a fool for all her interests, her books, her anthropology – rather than sewing or music like most mothers. But you have opened my eyes a little . . .'

He looked at his cut, which was still bleeding. ‘I should bind it up, I suppose.'

She took his hand in hers; his skin was softer than her own. All the men she had ever known had working hands, calloused and hard, not smooth as the skin on milk like his. The blood was trickling down towards his palm.

‘Really, it's nothing,' he insisted.

But before she knew it, she had taken his hand in her mouth and sucked the wound.

If she had thought about it beforehand, she would never have done it. If she had asked herself what Fred's reaction would be, she would never have believed it.

The second her mouth touched his skin, he pulled away from her, stammering apologies. Frederick Worrall, ladies' man, seducer, was blushing. Caraboo turned away and took a breath. Was he disgusted by her? What did it mean? For the first time, as Princess Caraboo, she felt nervous. This man, this dandy, hated women and hated her, didn't he? Oh! She had shown herself as nothing but a fool!

She had made Fred Worrall flush; she knew her own heart was pounding triple time. Perhaps she should run away, swim back now—

At that second, the second pigeon caught fire. Fred jumped up and took it off, but it was too late: the little thing was blackened and shrivelled, a burned offering. Caraboo looked at Fred, a mess from head to foot, holding a charred pigeon on a stick . . . She had truly never seen anything so ridiculous. She couldn't help laughing out loud, which was most unprincesslike. In that moment Fred must have realized how he looked, and he laughed too. He took a burned twig, drew some patterns on his face and arms and began to dance, the burned bird held high; finally he sat down, still chuckling.