Courting Her Highness_ The Story of Queen Anne - Jean Plaidy [76]
The Queen slept through the beginning for she could sleep through most things, but the sound of the rising wind which seemed to shake the very battlements of St. James’s Palace kept Abigail awake.
She rose from her pallet on the floor in the Queen’s room and wrapped her robe about her, for she was certain that even Anne could not continue to sleep through such noise. Even as she did so the chamber was lightened by a brilliant flash of lightning followed immediately by the loudest clap of thunder Abigail had ever heard.
“What is it?” called Anne. “Hill! Hill!”
“I am here, Madam. It’s the thunder and lightning. It seems to be a bad storm. Shall I make some tea or would Your Majesty prefer brandy?”
“I think brandy in the circumstances, Hill.”
Abigail had disappeared, but before she was back there was another violent clap and the sound of falling masonry.
“I think, Madam, that it might be wise to leave your bed.”
There was Hill with a warm robe to put about the Queen’s shoulders.
“Shall I need this, Hill?”
“I am afraid the draughts might bring on the shoulder pains, Madam.”
“You are right, Hill. Of course you are right. Oh dear … what is happening?”
“It’s a very violent storm, Madam.”
“And right overhead. Oh dear me … Hill. There again!”
The Queen shut her eyes. Abigail knew that whenever any disaster threatened she thought of the wrong she had done her father and that some curse had come upon her.
“It’s only a storm, Madam.”
“I do hope damage has not been done to the poor, Hill.”
“We must see what can be done about it, if that should be so, Madam.”
“Yes, yes, Hill.”
“My angel. My dearest.” George was bursting into the apartment, a robe about him, his wig, having been put on in a hurry, awry. He was wheezing painfully. “Vot is this? You are safe, my angel. Ah, thank Got. Thank Got.”
“I’m safe enough, George. I have Hill here. You must not get so excited, dear love. You know it brings on the wheeze. Is that Masham? Oh, Masham, is His Highness warmly clad? I do not want him to take a chill again.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. He is wearing his warm underwear.”
“I want no more chills.”
“Masham,” said the Prince. “We need a little something for the cold to keep out.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Hill,” said Anne, “brandy for his Highness. Oh dear, who is that screaming?”
It was some of the maids of honour who were terrified of the storm. “Bring them in, Hill. We will all be together.”
Abigail obeyed, and all through that horrifying night she remained beside the Queen.
That was the most fearful night Abigail had ever lived through and it was not until the next morning that the furious gale had abated; by that time it had left behind tremendous damage.
The streets were blocked with fallen masonry; trees had been uprooted by the hundred; the Thames was blocked with broken craft of all description and many battleships had been damaged in the North Sea.
All through the days that followed news of the disaster was brought to the Queen. Fifteen of her warships with countless smaller craft had been destroyed, hundreds of merchant ships were missing; the sea had swept inland; the rivers had overflowed; houses had been demolished.
There had never before been such a storm in living memory; all prayed that there never would be again.
The south of England lay shattered beneath its impact, although in the north it had been scarcely felt, and it was said that nowhere in London had it struck so fiercely than at St. James’s Palace where part of the battlements and many of the chimneys had been wrenched off. In the parks, trees had been pulled up and flung aside as though by some giant hand—trees which had stood there for many, many years.
“Nothing,” said the Queen, “will ever be the same again.”
They were sad days which followed the great storm as news of disaster after disaster kept coming in.
Anne was horrified to learn that a stack of old chimneys in the episcopal palace of Bath and Wells had fallen and that the Bishop and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Kidder,