“She’s something of a substitute mother, I think. Aunt Caroline told me his real one was less than maternal. Perhaps that explains his reserve.”
“He just needs someone to bring him out of himself.”
“Aunt Caroline proposes me for that role. I see she’s recruited you in her campaign.”
Her grandfather chuckled. “Well, we’re both fond of the chap. Your aunt believes you are, too. If only you’d make up your mind to it.”
“She tells me so. Often.”
They’d reached Bloomfield Street. At the corner, Dr. Lewis pointed his walking stick at a rough, triangular remnant of the ancient wall. “Those old Romans … they had a saying for every occasion, my dear.Carpe diem.”
“I’ll match your ‘seize the day’ withcaveat emptor,Grandfather. ‘Let the buyer beware.’”
He took her elbow. “Have it your way.”
When they turned onto East Street, Julia spotted Kate exiting the side door of St. Mary’s Chapel, one of the few Roman Catholic churches in central London. The maid looked right and left and then hurried across the road to the servants’ entrance of their town house.
“Kate looks almost furtive, Grandfather. As if she’d donesomething wrong by attending Mass on Christmas Day.” Julia shook her head. “It’s a little heartbreaking.”
“It’s not an easy time to be Irish and Roman Catholic,” he said.
“These old hatreds … They endure like pieces of the ancient wall. It’s a depressing thought.”
“The other day, an old fossil at my club said there was ‘something un-English’ about being Roman Catholic.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, I agreed with him. As un-English as every king from William the Conqueror to Henry VII.”
Julia squeezed his arm. “Good for you, Grandfather.”
On the Isle of Wight, the third time between Christmas and New Year was not the charm. Nor was the queen amused. Susan Styles hid her smiles and feigned sympathy.
For a third night, shouts and flares at Osborne House disturbed Her Majesty. On two earlier occasions, it woke her from her sleep. Victoria was a great believer in the health-promoting properties of leaving windows open a crack, no matter the weather. Hadn’t Miss Nightingale proved the case for fresh air in the hospital wards of the Crimea? So, there was no muting the Fenian false alarms that erupted on three nights.
John Brown was the culprit in the first instance. He had consumed a “wee dram” more than he could hold of his favorite Highland blend. Around midnight, he staggered across the terrace beneath the queen’s bedroom windows. Then he tumbled into the bushes, roaring and swearing as he tried to disentangle himself. Four Scots Fusiliers ran with guns pointed and torches blazing. They led Brown away, cursing colorfully in a broad Highland dialect. In the morning, the queen’s assistant dresser, a Scotswoman, giggled when she related the story to Susan.
“The queen watched from her window,” the dresser said, “but she didn’t understand a word, thank goodness.”
Two nights later, a pair of roe deer invaded the estate grounds. They emerged from the woodlands after dark, looking for food and water. Osborne’s terraced gardens and fountains provided ample supplies of both. The queen woke at the crack of a gunshot and struggled from her bed. She parted her window curtains to see a pair of kilted soldiers holding torches over a dead deer rather than an Irish intruder.
A third incident proved to be the last straw. That evening, the queen and her household ladies had lingered unusually late in the drawing room. Prince Bertie played billiards in the adjacent games room, growing jittery and impatient for a smoke. Victoria loathed the habit and forbade it in the house, a rule ignored as soon as Her Majesty retired to her bed. Frustrated by the delay, the prince slipped out a side door while his companions continued with the game.
It mattered not that it was late December. The drawing room windows stood open an inch, and Susan shivered at the piano, partway through the first set of Mendelssohn’sSongs Without Words. Shouts interrupted. A red-faced young officer, mistaking the prince for an intruder, appeared with Bertie, his cigar extinguished.
The queen had had enough. Crimson, furious, and perspiring, she fanned herself at hummingbird speed and delivered a decree: they would stay one more night and be gone. Victoria would leave for Windsor Castle on New Year’s Day; the prince and princess would return to Marlborough House a week earlier than planned.
Susan started packing.
On New Year’s Eve, Julia stopped at a vendor by the cabstand on Whitechapel Road for the most recent copy ofPunch, her grandfather’s favorite illustrated magazine. She’d left the clinic early, so she was home, dressed for dinner, and in the librarybefore her grandfather came downstairs. And for once, she’d arrived before her aunt. Lady Aldridge would stay the night with them, ringing in the first day of January. They kept the celebration small. Each December 31, they raised a glass to the dawn of another year and to Julia’s grandmother. She died on New Year’s Eve while Julia was in Philadelphia attending medical school.
Julia had time to spare, so she poured herself a sherry and paged throughPunch. She had the magazine open on her lap when her grandfather entered the library with an envelope.
“This came for you in the afternoon post … my dear, what’s wrong?”
Julia held up a page. “This cartoon. Despicable.”
She exchangedPunchfor her letter. An article on the Clerken well bombing included a caricature of an Irishman. He sat on a barrel of gunpowder with a lighted torch in his hand, looking like a cross between a leprechaun and an ape. A woman and a group of angelic children gathered at the foot of the keg.
